ROUGH STAGE-SALISBURY COURT-A VERITABLE SQUATTER-SHEEP AND

SHEPHERDS-BLACK-MAIL

- DIVIDING

RANGE-ARMIDALE

- GYRA

-A DEATH STRUGGLE-BEAU IDEAL OF A BUSHMAN-BUCK-JUMPING, ETC.RETURN TO SYDNEY-SCHEHERAZADE IN A STEAMBOAT.

WE passed within twelve miles of Mount Sea View, whose elevation is about 6,000 feet, and from whence. Oxley, the eminent surveyor, revived the despondent spirits of his exploring party, when bewildered among the mazes of the scrub, by a glimpse of the ocean at a distance of sixty miles. Although the road was all but impassable for horsemen, we overtook several bullockdrays laden with stores for the squatting districts, or met them on their way to the coast with loads of wool. One of them had been ten days in going twenty miles. As we neared them, the savage shouts of the drivers and the clang of their terrible whips echoed through the arcades of the forest. Soon our ears were saluted by the most brutal and blasphemous execrations ever lavished by human lips upon quadruped objects. As the Governor rode past one of the most excited and foulmouthed of these fellows, we were diverted by his

sudden mollification of tone and language to his beasts,

"God bless your heart, Diamond! Come up, will you?" And he accompanied his benediction with a flank of his wattle-stick whip that would have cut a crabtree in two. This was an act of homage to social propriety hardly to be expected from the wildest of all savages, the Australian bullock-driver, a class that knows nothing of a Supreme Being, except to desecrate his Name by obscene and blasphemous oaths.

At Tobin's Hole we halted for an hour, finding some refreshments planted there for us by the Major,—for that is the colonial phrase, borrowed from the slang lingo of London burglars and thieves, for any article sent forward or left behind for future consumption in spots only indicated to those concerned, after the manner of the caches of the French Canadian trappers on the American prairies. To "spring" a plant is to discover and pillage it, an art which is well understood and pretty often practised by the blacks, from whose keen eyes and quick instinct it is difficult to conceal the locality of a " plant." Horses and bullocks are sometimes driven off and "planted" in some secluded gully by ingenious persons, who will find and produce them when a good reward is advertised. In Sydney, moreover, good round sums of hard cash have been "planted" by pretended ruined tradesmen and men of business, who, after passing the Insolvent Court, contrive to exhume them again, and again to launch forth into life with handsome equipages and expensive establishments. Such is the meaning of the term, "a plant," singularly applicable to Botany Bay.

A SECLUDED SQUATTAGE.

31

At length, after many tedious and fatiguing miles of rapid descent, we came down upon the little settlement of the Messrs. Todd & Fenwick,-the first habitations of the great table-land of New England,-our billet for the night. Two slab cottages of four rooms each, with offices behind, farm huts around, and divided by a brook, constitute the station. These gentlemen, until lately partners, are at present separated, because one of them has taken a partner for life, as all squatters ought to do, -sole means of saving them from a lapse into partial or complete savagehood. A woman gives good and practical evidence of disinterested affection when she quits her mother's side in the city to follow a husband into the bush. Many a hardship, many an alarm, perhaps, will she have to undergo, many a lonesome hour to pass. If of a sentimental habit, she will meet many a rude reality, calculated to disenchant her of pastorals. The lady who gave rise to these remarks commenced her wedded bush-life with becoming spirit, if it be true that, the ceremony occurring early in the morning at Port Macquarie, the bride and bridegroom rode on horseback the same two stages just performed by ourselves,-that is, 100 miles in two days.

On our arrival to-day at the station, the bachelor was alone at home. On the return of our party, however, the married pair were present, and the lady presided with graceful tact and quietness over the humble but plentiful ménage that had fallen to the lot of an old soldier's daughter. We were all well tired, wet to the skin, and were most grateful for the homely but hearty shelter, fireside, and fare here bestowed upon us.

I never recollect being so sick of my saddle as I was this day. It was somewhat humiliating to an old staffofficer and sportsman to find himself in the predicament in which the worthy Samuel Pepys, F.R.S. must have been, when, after an unwonted equestrian journey, he remarks, "but I find that a coney-skin in my breeches does preserve me perfectly from galling."

Mr. T. told me that the worst feature of the squatter's life is the occasional ill-behaviour of the shepherds and other farm-servants. They usually break out together with one consent, have a regular drunken bout, and will not put a hand to work until they have had it out. If the master resolve to punish such infraction of engagement, he may have to ride one or two hundred miles for a warrant. Sometimes a hold is retained upon the men by keeping them considerably in arrears of pay. The Commissioner of Crown Lands for New England met us here, on the frontier of his district.

March 10th.-An early start for Salisbury Court, the residence of Mr. Marsh. There were seventeen horses in cavalcade including the pack-horses. These trotted along very quietly after a day's practice, sometimes indeed jostling their saddle-bags against the trees or each other, and sometimes stopping to graze; but never requiring to be led. We rode ten miles through undulating open woodland, affording excellent pasturage, to the prettily situated sheep station of Mr. Dens, where, after breakfast, Sir Charles and myself exchanged our hacks for a tandem. Thence to "Waterloo," a station of our friend the Major, where we lunched on roast mutton and potatoes, damper, champagne and hock, in the correctest of

green glasses-Mr. -, a Yorkshire gentleman, and a superintendent of onr host's, doing the honours of the house.

Pursuing thence our onward march-the two gighorses doing their thirty miles with perfect ease--we encountered, at the side of a waterhole, twelve miles from his residence, Mr. Marsh with his desert-transit-van, built on the principle of the Egyptian Overland carriages, and driven by him four in hand. It something resembles a large jaunting car on two wheels, rigged like a curricle as far as the wheelers are concerned, and holding six or eight inside. This vehicle seems particularly well suited to the flat roads, and sandy stony plains of Egypt. One might, after a trial such as we had this day, question its adaptation to the rough, rocky, and hilly tracts of the Australian squatting districts; but, certainly, no doubt of the kind appeared to haunt the mind or daunt the courage of its worthy owner, who, putting his team along at mailcoach pace, after an hour of galvanic exercise to our bones and joints, placed us down safe and sound at his hall door. Some of our party rode the whole distance of fifty-five miles this day on the same horses ;-so much for the grass-fed hacks of New South Wales.

The country we passed through latterly did not give us a very favourable idea of the soil of New England, its vegetation, or its scenery. The timber is poor in size and tiresome of aspect. Being lightly wooded, it is however well calculated for stock farming.

Salisbury Court is a roomy one-storied house, solidly built of rough stone, and looking over a well-watered vale, just beyond which rises the Mountain Range, divi

VOL. II.