or ghostly. Great gray kangaroos hop noiselessly over the coarse grass. Flights of white cockatoos stream out shrieking like evil souls. The sun suddenly sinks, and the mopokes burst out into horrible peals of semi-human laughter. The natives aver that when night comes, from out the bottomless depths of some lagoon the Bunyip rises, and in form like a monstrous sea-calf, drags his loathsome length from out the ooze. From a corner of the silent forest rises a dismal chant, and around a fire, dance natives painted like skeletons. All is fear-inspiring and gloomy. No bright fancies are linked with the memories of the mountains. Hopeless explorers have named them out of their sufferings--Mount Misery, Mount Dreadful, Mount Despair. As when among sylvan scenes in places "Made green with the running of rivers, and gracious with temperate air," the soul is soothed and satisfied, so, placed before the frightful grandeur of these barren hills, it drinks in their sentiment of defiant ferocity, and is steeped in bitterness.
Australia has rightly been named the Land of the Dawning. Wrapped in the midst of early morning her history looms vague and gigantic. The lonely horseman, riding between the moonlight and the day, sees vast shadows creeping across the shelterless and silent plains, hears strange noises in the primeval forests, where flourishes a vegetation long dead in other lands, and feels, despite his fortune, that the trim utilitarian civilisation which bred him shrinks into insignificance beside thecontemptuous grandeur of forest and ranges coeval with an age in which European scientists have cradled his own race.
There is a poem in every form of tree or flower, but the poetry which lives in the trees and flowers of Australia, differs from those of other countries. Europe is the home of knightly song, of bright deeds--and clear morning thought. Asia sinks beneath the weighty recollections of her past magnificence, as the Suttee sinks jewel-burdened upon the corpse of dread grandeur, destructive even in its death. America swiftly hurries on her way, rapid, glittering, insatiable even as one of her own giant waterfalls. From the jungles of Africa, and the creeper-tangled groves of the Islands of the South, arise, from the glowing hearts of a thousand flowers, heavy and intoxicating odours, the Upas-poison, which dwells in barbaric sensuality. In Australia alone is to be found the Grotesque, the Weird, the strange scribblings of Nature learning how to write. Some see no beauty in our trees without shade, our flowers without perfume, our birds who cannot fly, and our beasts who have not yet learned to walk on all fours. But the dweller in the wilderness acknowledges the subtle charm of this fantastic land of monstrosities. He becomes familiar with the beauty of loneliness. Whispered to by the myriad tongues of the wilderness, he learns the language of the barren and the uncouth, and can read the hieroglyphs of haggard gum-trees, blown into odd shapes distorted with fierce hot winds, or cramped with cold nights, when the Southern Cross freezes in a cloudless sky of icy blue. The phantasmagoria of that wild dreamland termed the Bush interprets itself, and the Poet of our desolation begins to comprehend why free Esau loved his heritage of desert sand, better than all the bountiful richness of Egypt
Learning "Colonial Experience"
There were three of us, Dougald McAlister, Jack Thwaites, and myself. The place was called in the grandiloquent language of the bush, "The Dinkledoodledum Station" (I like these old native names), because it was situated in the Dinkledoodledum Creek. Dinkledoodledum--as any philologist can guess by the sound of it--means the Valley of the Rippling Streamlets; but alas! never a rippling streamlet did our eyes behold during our stay in the inhospitable valley.
The station had just been purchased by Thwaites' brothers--is not his name now synonymous with gold, from the Great Glimmera to the Adelaide Desert?--and had been overstocked by its former proprietor. Along the Glimmera banks, where jovial but family-burdened Boschman kept his boundaryriding habitation, the ground was as bare as a billiard-table, and the travelling sheep that called the Great Glimmera their "feeding track," were only too glad to escape beyond the Dinkledoodledum boundary into the pleasant paths of Whistlebinkie. Let it not, however, be imagined that our station was always in this condition. On the contrary, it had been renowned as a place flowing with milk and honey. It was reported that Clibborn had made his fortune out of it; that Wallum had retired to independence and hot grog after twelve months of it; and that Thwaites was in a fair way to do exceedingly well if he could but "hold on" to it.
Unluckily, what with the former proprietor's mania for feeding two sheep to every three acres (one sheep to every five acres was about the Dinkledoodledum standard) and a succession of bad seasons, the "holding on" was hard work. Economy was absolutely needful, and McAlister, Jack and I practised it healthily. Mutton and damper all the week, and damper and mutton on Sundays, was the order of the day, and we carried it out to the letter. No epicurean feasts of beef or of pork disgraced the frugality of our board. Never to our table came the feeble fowl or the enervating kitchen-garden vegetable. We had no milk, for our dairy cattle were starving; no eggs, for our poultry refused to lay; no pumpkin pie, for our soil was too poor to grow even that harmless esculent. Yet on Spartan fare we led Spartan lives, and were happy.
Oh, that bark hut! Never shall I forget the first day when I, a slim and somewhat effeminate youth, with London smoke not yet cleared from my throat, beheld its dilapidated walls. "You will sleep here," said Jack, pointing to a skillion which seemed to have been used as a sheep-pen, so marked was the "spoor" of those beasts. "With all my heart," said I, as that organ sank within me--down, down, down, until I could feel it palpitating in the very tips of my riding-boots. But I did not regret my acquiescence. How many nights in that humble shelter have I listened to the skirr of the wild cats, and watched the one bright star that pertinaciously peeped through the chinks of the bark sheets. How many nights have I lighted my lonely pipe, and wrestled alone with my own particular angel, even as Jacob wrestled at Pennel. Happy Jacob! would I owned thy cunning of wrist and elbow. How many nights have I trimmed the reed in the pannikin of tallow, and read the half-dozen books I possessed until I could read no more. How many nights have I slept the unutterably sweet slumber of virtuous weariness, until my Jack, bursting in with clanking spurs, would rouse me with his "All aboard!" Aye, old skillion, I have had some happy hours in thee; so peace to thy ashes, for, sooth to say, thou art now but fit for burning.
It is proper to boast of the Australian summer. Those who have lived in tents, camped by rocky waterholes, kept dew-sprinkled watch beneath the yellow moon, and ridden through fiery noons hard upon the tails of the head-long herd, can with justice boast of the wild intoxication of that burning ether. I have known it, I! Not the draught which the great spirit gave to eager Faust maddens so gloriously. Australian summer, dost thou say? I am with thee. With open shirt ballooned behind thee, with streaming hair and bloody spurs, urge, urge the straining steed across the level plain! No tree mars the prospect of immensity. In front, the flying emu, and behind--naught but the whistling air! The grey grass spins, the grey plain reels, the cloudless sky glows molten brass above. It comes--the hot wind of the desert! Bitter--fierce from the sand--hills of the scorching north, it sweeps upon thee! Ride! Ride!
There are fifty miles of grass before thee, and the blood of an Emperor's battle steed beats beneath thy saddle-flaps. What are fears, griefs, loves? Throned upon the rocking saddles of our stretching barbs, we laugh at fate. Stand in thy stirrups now, and shout! Ha! ha! Tell me what draught of love or wine compares with this--the champagne nectar of a hot-wind gallop!
But the time to enjoy our hut was in the winter--the wild, wet winter that lashed the groaning gums, and scoured to white rage the risen river. All the hot summer wooed us to the air. Through parching noons and dewy nights we rode and revelled. Then camped the cattle by the shrinking swamp, and the wild horses came down to drink at the famished springs. Then we went expeditions in the balmy moonlight, and roused the drowsy township with the clattering echoes of our hurrying hoofs. Then came Harry of the Gap, Tom of the Scano, and Dare-devil Dick, of Mostyn's Folly, to "foregather" with us. Then were Homeric days, musical with chanted melody, and fierce with the recklessness of horsetaming youth. Then were our hearts great within us, and in that glowing atmosphere, beneath that
