"consideration,"
the same weighty word also inducing extra personal comforts in every way, and evidently beyond the ordinary run of feeding witnessed in the hut, as the half-dozen children therein congregated opened their eyes with astonishment at the unexampled display made upon the board. By the way, it is astonishing the difference that the gold-fields have made to the traveller in the bush. At every hut, farm, or station that he comes to, he is examined through a chink of the door, or from behind a stack; and the shortest possible answers are given to all interrogatories, lest by inducing conversation he may be led to ask for that shelter, or refreshment, which some years ago was not only offered, but prepared as a matter of course. In fact, now he is looked upon as though, like Washington Irvine's schoolmaster, he were the spirit of famine descending upon the land to eat up the very fatness thereof. Even the magic word"payment"
is often inefficacious; and I have heard of instances of persons letting loose savage dogs when ever they saw strangers approaching. The family on the station in the present instance consisted of a man and his wife, two sons of 22 and 20 years respectively, a grown-up daughter, and some half-dozen youngsters gradually ranging down from 13 to 2 years old. The two eldest each tended a flock of sheep, whilst the employments of such of the others as were capable of the work, consisted of plaiting cabbage-tree for the manufacture of hats. This last branch of industry I was told turned in a very good income; the prices at which they were sold ranging from 10s. for the most common, to 30s. for hats of the finest quality. Plaiting and making one of the latter kind would give one person full occupation for three weeks. Whilst here I witnessed one of the phases of a shepherd's life, and one perhaps of the most disagreeable. The youngest of the two sons lost the largest half of his sheep. The night was dark as pitch, the rain poured down in torrents, whilst the wind howled and groaned through the giant forest, making altogether as fine a Der Frieschutz kind of scene as the wildest of weird dreamers could wish for. How they were to find the sheep, for the two brothers issued out into the bush for the purpose, through all this"precious pother,"
I was at a loss to conceive; but find them they did, some four miles away, though in such a situation that they could not be brought home till morning. They had therefore to camp out with them through the whole of that stormy night, in a broken mountain country perfectly alive with native dogs, whose howlings as they hovered round the tempting mutton pre vented even the faintest idea of sleep. Numerous and good fires, with a constant look out by men and dogs, preserved the erratic flock, and I had the satisfaction of seeing them reach the station before I left. On starting the next morning I found my poor old horse none the better for his night's exposure to the tempest; he walked off as heavily and unwillingly as if he had been at the close instead of the beginning of a day's journey. The track led over heavy rocky ranges for about three miles, and then descended a deep hill down to the Abercrombie River. By this time the rain had again set in, cold and sleety, threatening to make another day of it. However, it gradually changed to heavy showers, which wore off by degrees, and before I reached Tuena, the weather was once more fine. I crossed the Abercrombie, with about three feet of turbid muddy water on the ford, showing me that I was but just in time to escape being shut up by a flood. The same night, I believe, it came down high enough to prevent all crossing, except by swimming. On the farther or southern side of the river I passed an old station, formed on a deep bend or point of the river, on which there had evidently been at some time a considerable amount of cultivation. The track now took up a stony creek, on which there had been a good deal of digging done, both the creek itself and the adjoining flats having been extensively worked. Not a soul was left, when I passed, to tell the tale of good or ill success, though something must have been got there to have induced men to do so much work. The road now entirely deserted me, and I had only a number of tracks, diverging in every direction, from which to choose. About ten minutes' examination of these led me to select one that appeared less like a cattle track than the rest, and by good luck it happened to be the right one. Doubtful of my road, and following this devious track through the very heart of the massive ranges that overhang the Abercrombie, the way seemed interminable, and when at last I was pulled up by two enormous kangaroo dogs that seemed half inclined to spring upon me and pull me off my horse, I was perfectly rejoiced for I was sure the brutes' master was not far off. Sure enough up came the dogs' owner at full gallop, his air of excitement changing at once to a scowl of regret as, in place of the kangaroo he anticipated, he met only an ordinary traveller. From him I learnt that I was on the right trail, and better still, that I was then no more than two miles from Tuena. This distance was soon got over, and without further accident or adventure I reached"mine inn,'"
in which I took"mine ease,"
with a feeling of luxury and comfort from the privations of two days that any one, looking at the miserable style of diggings' public-houses, would have thought it impossible to experience.