Thirty Years in Australia Part 6

In other ways this fourth home was a great change from the other three. We were now down in the flat, settled, macadamised country, only twenty miles or so from Ballarat and fifty from the metropolis--quite "in the world." I say "down," but it was a colder, wetter, snowier place to winter in than any other that we have known on this side of the globe--seventeen hundred feet above sea-level.

Apart from the trouble I have spoken of, and a bitterer one of the same nature that was soon to follow it, and the further misfortune of a carriage accident from the results of which I suffered for many years, my life at B----, socially considered, was more to my taste than had been the case before in Australia, or than has been since.

For there I first discovered the resources of the colony in its intellectually-cultivated cla.s.s, and enjoyed the society and friends.h.i.+p of some who represented it at its best--members of a small, inter-related, highly exclusive circle of about half a dozen families, who had had time and the means to read, travel, and generally sustain the traditions of refinement to which they were born.

Chronologically, they were the first gentlefolk of the land--"Rolf Boldrewood" speaks of some of them in his _Old Melbourne Memories_--and they still merit the t.i.tle in another sense. The clans have dwindled, indeed, but not all the original heads have fallen yet, and I have not heard of a _mesalliance_ amongst their descendants. If they do not marry with each other, they marry with their kind. As with the Salisburys and Buccleuchs and modern London Society, they remain uncontaminated by the influences which have made our own little world of fas.h.i.+on a faint copy of the big one at home. Money, which "runs the show" elsewhere, is no pa.s.sport to those dignified homes, dating from "before the gold," in which I have spent so many happy hours.

My own pa.s.sport to it was a little tale in the _Australasian_--my first to run as a serial in that paper. It is gone now, and was never worth keeping, but as a story about the colony, written from within, it aroused interest in its anonymous author at the time, amongst those whose eyes were keen to note literary events, small as well as big. My friend, "Rolf Boldrewood," had not yet received the worldwide recognition that he now enjoys; he was a "Sydneysider," and supposed to belong to his own colony. Poor "Tasma" had scarcely begun her brief literary career; Mary Gaunt, and others now on the roll, were mostly in their nurseries or unborn. So that I had the advantage of a stage very much to myself, which of course accounted largely for the attention I received. And of all the pleasure and profit that I derived from my long connection with the Australian press, nothing was more valuable to me than the uplifting sympathy of those readers I have mentioned, who were also as fine critics as any in the world.

The first night at B---- gave me the key of the position. The one socially "great house" of our new parish entertained us. Its owner, an old Wykehamist and cadet of a n.o.ble Scottish family, who, having practically built the church, and being its main supporter, stood for what would have been the patron of the living at home, himself fetched us from Ballarat, driving the wonderful "four greys" that were as well known as he was. Never shall I forget my first sight of that sweet old house in its incomparable old garden--of the sunset from the plateau along which we drove to it from the lodge gates, the picture that has delighted me so many, many times. And never shall I forget my reception, the dinner, the evening, the sensation of finding myself suddenly and unexpectedly in a place where brains and good breeding alone counted, and nothing else was of any consequence. From the hour that I set foot in that house the situation, as it concerned me personally, was completely changed. I found, if not my level, the level which suited me.

Another house of the charmed circle began to help to make life interesting for us both. It lay within comfortable driving distance, and its family had recently returned to it from extensive travels about the world. The actual structure, to which I paid my first visits, was a modest relic of the fifties, but already there was arising from the crest-of a neighbouring hill the most desirable country house, in its own style, then built or a-building--to my thinking, at anyrate--the final dwelling-place of the owner of the surrounding land, who had been its owner from "before the gold." It was after this home of taste had been completed that we held our famous International Exhibition of 1880, which first taught us as a community the rudiments of modern art; and I remember the satisfaction with which the mistress of G---- wandered from court to court, and found no exhibits more pleasing, in their respective cla.s.ses, than the treasures she had gathered for herself in foreign parts. Whether it were a Persian rug or a Venetian wine-gla.s.s, her specimen was, in her opinion, unsurpa.s.sed by any picked model of the like manufacture; in which I agreed with her. There is no lack now of what are generally described as artistic things; hundreds of Victorian homes, big and little, may in the tastefulness of their appointments outs.h.i.+ne G---- to-day; but it was otherwise twenty years ago. At that date, when we stay-at-homes were all for gold and white wall-paper and gra.s.s-green suites (but the reader bears in mind that I put holland covers over mine) in our drawing-rooms, I believe G---- was unique in the colony as the first example of the new order. I may say here that we became rapidly aesthetic afterwards, because it is our constant habit to follow English fas.h.i.+ons ardently as soon as we get an idea of what they are.

I had not been long in B---- before I heard of the flattering notice excited by my story--_Up the Murray_ was its name--and by the discovery, on the part of our neighbours aforesaid, that the humble author was living where she was. Arrangements, unbeknown to me, were made for mutual introductions and acquaintances.h.i.+p, and one day I was invited to join a driving party from our "great house"--which I wish I could describe in less vulgar terms (but to call it B---- would be confusing)--to meet half-way upon the road a driving party from the other. The day was beautiful, and I see now before my mind's eye the panorama of the spring landscape. We halted on the brow of a hill--the four greys dancing themselves into complicated knots and being dramatically disentangled with the whip-thong--and down below the carriage from G---- toiling up the stony Gap track towards us. How well we learned that road afterwards, going to and fro continually either in the vehicles of our friends or in our own. If I have ever done anything to earn a respectable place in my profession I owe it to the awakening and educating influences that surrounded me at this time. My intellectual life was never so well-fed and fortified.

Of Melbourne Society, so called, I knew little as yet. My "set" held much aloof from it, gathering only its own affinities into the charming house-parties that brought whiffs of the gay world to us from time to time. Although I was now so near to it, I do not think I paid one visit to the metropolis while we lived at B----; invitations I had, but the inclination was lacking. I was satisfied as I was. We made expeditions occasionally to Ballarat, then, as now, the second city of our state, where a small group, long since vanished, of the old families still resided, to attract our particular old family thither, and where on our own account we had a few clerical and other friends to welcome us. One of these expeditions was typical of several.

The date it stands against in my diary is September 10th, 1873--the time of budding spring. Our "squire," with a part of his family, arrived at the parsonage in the lovely morning, with the "old carriage," as it was called--a deep-seated, roomy vehicle that I can hardly give a name to, but which was the easiest and cosiest that I ever rode in. G. and I joined the party, and we started on our long drive. It took us about three hours if we did not stop by the way, but these excursions would have been very incomplete without the roadside picnic. Picnics were our joy, also our _forte_, and the country is made for them. So we stopped when we met the groom who had been sent ahead with fresh horses--the "old carriage" was heavy, and not built for Australian roads--and we lunched under the gum-trees with that exquisite appet.i.te that we never know indoors. Then, at our leisure, on again until we trundled into the streets of the golden city--which, I may remark in pa.s.sing, is a truly charming city, and to my mind ought to be the Federal Capital, if only because of its cool and bracing climate (although it is also almost exactly central for all the states as well). But in discussing sites for the future Was.h.i.+ngton, no one seems to take into account what an effect upon legislation a languid air and mosquitoes of a night may have.

We spent the balance of the afternoon shopping, and were then deposited, with our evening clothes, at the house of one of the historical few--perhaps the most witty and world-cultured of them all, certainly the brightest company. He had been much in France, I think; he spoke often of Paris, with the air and knowledge of a born Parisian; his singing of French songs was as un-English as it could be. It was always said of Colonel R. that he would never be old, and I met him the other day on a tram, and in the course of our ride together found him as mentally alert as ever, although he confessed to me, with a comical dolefulness, that he was some years past eighty.

He still wore his smart, "well-groomed," gallant air (accent on the first syllable of this adjective, please), and was as ready as of old with his pretty compliments.

We dined with him and his wife, and then went all together to the Academy of Music (newly built) to hear Ilma de Murska. She was a small, fair-haired, glittering person, with a frilly train like a pink serpent meandering around her feet, and the way she trilled and rouladed was amazing. After the concert we had a merry supper, and then--by this time indifferent to the flight of the hours--changed our clothes and prepared for the homeward drive. We had but one pair of horses now for the whole journey, so that it was necessary to take the hills at a walk, and we reached B---- at about four in the morning. We inside the carriage could have slept almost as easily as in our beds, but we were obliged to keep awake to watch the swaying bodies on the box. It was funny to see us winding scarves round our squire's ample waist, and tying him to the low rail behind him, without disturbing his slumbers. These precautions would have been useless, however, had not one of us stood ready to clutch his sleeve at critical moments. On finding himself too sleepy for our safety, he had given the reins to his little son, who was a perfectly competent subst.i.tute. But that it was thought well to tie him into his seat to prevent them from dragging him over the dashboard, he could at nine or ten years old drive four horses so well that I preferred to trust myself to him rather than to any casual man, if I was to ride behind them.

It was upon one of the hills between B---- and Ballarat that the accident took place which impaired my health for many years; but then no member of this family was driving. We had just started after our picnic lunch on the second stage of the journey, and had come to the top of a steep bit of road that had a sharp turn at the bottom, when something went wrong with the brake. The huge, top-heavy vehicle--one we called "the caravan"--ran upon the horses, which, as usual in Bush harness, had no breeching to back against, and there was nothing for it but to send them downhill at full gallop; they did their part, but the sharp corner was too sharp for us, and as we swung round it we swung right over. It seemed an inevitable thing, yet I am convinced that our squire would not have allowed it to happen. He was taking a brief rest inside the carriage, with the ladies, and so got a broken arm and a dislocated shoulder, which, together with the disgrace of the catastrophe, much incensed him. We used to get into marvellous tight places under his devil-may-care handling of his notoriously wild, half-broken horses, but never without coming safely out of them; they were the occasions of proving what a miraculous whip he was. Once a wheel came off when the team were in mid-career, and in the twinkling of an eye he had so turned the other three wheels as to balance the waggonette upon them until its occupants could get out.

One day four other horses were rushed up a broken hill track amongst trees to some mine workings on the top, and as there was no turning s.p.a.ce here they had to come down backwards. We were showing the country to some officers of an Italian man-o'-war, and the dumb dignity with which those men went through the ordeal spoke volumes for their breeding as well as for their nerve.

But I feel clogged and dulled while talking of this place. I do not want to go on talking of it, but to get past it to scenes that are not forever a.s.sociated with sorrows that do not bear thinking of. It was a pleasant dwelling-place, indeed, but now it remains, even at so great a distance off, but the stage setting of the second domestic tragedy, so much more terrible than the first--the death of our eldest son when he was five. He was one of those bright and beautiful children of whom people say, when they are gone, "He was too good for this world," and "He was not meant to live"--that was the first thing my friends said to me, or I should know my place better than to thus speak of him; and every year and day your child is with you adds that much more of strength and depth to the love whose roots are the very substance of the mother's heart; and the bitterest thing of all is the suffering you cannot alleviate, and not to lose them at a stroke, which I had thought so supremely dreadful. After ailing nothing all his life, he took scarlet fever in its worst form, struggled against it with all the power of his perfect const.i.tution and brave and patient temper, rallied and relapsed, got dropsy, and died by inches--conscious nearly to the last, and only concerned for his mother's tears and the trouble he was giving people. If he had been humanly restive under the agonies that he must have borne I could myself have borne it better; it was his heroic patience and unselfishness--that "Please," and "Thank you,"

and "Don't mind," and "Don't cry" which only failed when he could no longer force his tongue to act--which seemed the most heart-breaking thing of all. "If you had read of this in a book," they said who helped to nurse him, "you would never have believed it;" and so I may expect incredulity from the reader to whom I now have the bad taste to tell the tale; but whenever I have thought of his conduct during that last and only trial of his short life, I have realised to the full what he would have been to us if he had lived. People say to me, "Oh, you cannot tell how he might have turned out." But I can tell.

Well, if he had lived he would have been a man of thirty now--married, doubtless, and perhaps to some woman who would have made him wretched.

There is always that pitfall in the path of the best of men. Also the success that must have attended the possession of such mental powers as his would have been a danger. "Don't you teach that child anything until he is seven at the least," our old German doctor was continually warning us, and we did not; but somebody gave the child a box of letters, and he could read the newspaper before he died. If you recited to him, once, a long narrative poem--"Beth Gelert" or "The Wreck of the Hesperus"--he would go off to his nurse or somebody and repeat it from end to end, almost without a mistake. He had a pa.s.sion for mechanics, and, having seen a railway or mining or agricultural engine at work, would come home and, with bits of string and cotton-reels and any rubbish he could lay his hands on, make a model of it in which no essential part was lacking. The frequent appeal at the study door, "Just a few nails, please, daddy, and I won't 'sturb you any more," was the nearest he came to teasing anybody.

Well, he died at five years old, and the common impulse of all who knew him, including his fool of a mother, was to say, "Of course!" I was childless for a fortnight. Then another little daughter came, as it seemed, to save my life.

CHAPTER XI

THE FIFTH HOME

We left B---- in 1877. The diocese of Ballarat had been carved out of that of Melbourne, hitherto bounded by the boundaries of the colony; and the knife had lopped off a portion of our parish, leaving only enough to support a "reader," who is supposed not to want anything to live on.

We pa.s.sed then into the new diocese. And, to begin with, we did a stupid thing--possibly two stupid things. G., after consultation with his bishop, accepted a living without seeing it. A charming photograph of the parsonage, and the knowledge that it was situated in a pleasant district, within a short drive of our then metropolis, Ballarat, seemed to make a preliminary inspection unnecessary, especially as the financial soundness of the parish was guaranteed. We had dismantled our house at B---- and packed our furniture for L---- before personally making acquaintance with the latter place. Then--for I was fretting to see and rummage over my new home with a measuring tape in my hands--we arranged to drive over. It was on a Sat.u.r.day that we started, in very wintry weather; and all our subsequent lives might have been different if only it had been summer or a fine day.

We spent the night in Ballarat, and after breakfast drove to L----, timing ourselves to get there for morning service, G. having taken duty for the day. It teemed. There was hardly any congregation in consequence, and the church was dark, cold, and dismal. Amongst the absentees was the organist, and I was called upon to play the selected music, without preparation, to a few watchful critics. They gave us a kindly welcome after service, and invitations to dinner and tea; after which we were able to inspect the parsonage in privacy. It had been empty for some weeks, and rain had rained on it for days. The picturesqueness of the photograph had been wholly washed away. We should have made allowances for all this, but when we found one room with the paper peeling from the wall, and another showing a wet patch, and when we sniffed the fusty, mouldy, shut-up air, we exclaimed to each other, "A damp house!" and there and then determined that it was impossible for us to go into it. We had lost two children; nothing should induce us to imperil the safety of the third.

At dinner, and again at tea, our entertainers apologised for the exceptional weather, and a.s.sured us that all was quite otherwise as a rule. The parsonage needed fires for a few days, perhaps a patch on the roof, possibly the clearing of leaves and birds' nests from the water-pipes. They answered for it that, when in order, it was a perfectly healthy house. I daresay they were right, for we never heard that the family of the clergyman who subsequently jumped at it took any harm while living there. But the possibility of its being damp was enough for us; we dared not risk it.

It was with some difficulty, and not without unpleasantness, that we backed out of the engagement we had deliberately made. It was our unexpected luck not to suffer more than we did. In the end, instead of declining upon a lower level in the matter of the next appointment, it fell to our lot to be promoted to what I think was considered at the time the most important country parish in the diocese.

Here, at anyrate, there was no fault to find with the parsonage house, unless one objected to its lonely situation--which we did not. As a parsonage house it was unique in Victoria, and I believe in Australia.

The wayfaring stranger might have taken it for but another station homestead, on a smaller scale than most; as a fact, he frequently did, in the person of the professional sundowner.

We did not go there at once on leaving B----. Our first welcome was to one of the "mansions" in its neighbourhood--the seat, as it might be called, of the new squire of the parish--and such was the treatment we received in it that we remained there as visitors for nearly half a year. The lady of the house was young, and we became friends. She said, "Why should I be here by myself, while you are over there by yourself? Let us keep each other company." Never did I live in such utter ease and luxury. Men and maid-servants to wait on one at every turn, and to pet the year-old baby so that even her nurse found her place a sinecure; a dear old housekeeper continually pursuing me with "nourishment"; daily drives with my hostess, alone or with a cavalcade of more ephemeral guests--so numerous that we seemed to have a dinner-party every night; no domestic cares; no parish work--the conditions were not only pleasant, but most beneficial to my health.

Meanwhile G. worked the parish from this base, using the horses and buggies of the establishment as if they were his own.

From July 25th, 1877, to January 8th of the following year, we lived this feather-bed life. Then our friends set us gently down upon our own premises--there had been a doubt as to whether they were to be our own, up to this time, which partly accounted for the delay--and started us in life again on our own base. A Brussels carpet from one, a set of tea-things from another--it was like the going to housekeeping of the newly-married. The buggy that finally took us to our fifth home was found on arrival packed with toothsome tokens of affection which the housekeeper had stuffed in at the last moment.

That fifth home was a survival of the old, old times--quite the beginnings of the colony. In those old times, before towns.h.i.+ps were, the princely pioneer squatters (our late host the chief), wis.h.i.+ng to have their church represented amongst them, made a first gift for the purpose of one hundred acres of their fat lands and a house--the nucleus of this house. It was an inalienable endowment, not to any parish--for there was none--but to the inc.u.mbent for the time being; so that afterwards, when it came to belong to a parish, whose centre of town and church was six miles off, the vestry could not turn it into money, as they desired, so as to bring their parson to headquarters.

The first inc.u.mbent--a D.D. eminent in the Church and in the history of the Western District, a pioneer himself, whose name is now perpetuated in a Trinity College scholars.h.i.+p--began his long ministry as a missionary at large. He saw all the changes that turned that fertile wilderness into the garden of Victoria, studded with wealthy homesteads and prosperous towns, while sitting, as Dik would say, upon his own valuable bit of it, living the same pastoral life as the squatters around him. The reader will remember that the term "squatter," with us, means roughly the landed gentry; in its original sense the word has no meaning now.

In his old age Dr R. went "home" for a holiday, leaving two curates in charge. Shortly before he was expected back, came the news of his death, and, after a sorrowful time of inaction on the part of the mourning parish, G. was selected to take his place. It was always impressed upon us that it was to take his place, not to fill it, which n.o.body could do.

For six years we lived as he lived. Then the authorities six miles off decided to put an end to the old _regime_. Inc.u.mbent No. 3 had to be brought into line with other inc.u.mbents somehow. His property could not be sold, but apparently (with his consent, I presume) it could be let; for let it was, as soon as we had vacated it. Tenants of a cla.s.s to suit the house needed more than a hundred acres of land with it, so it was let to a farmer, an ex-free-selector, whose selection adjoined.

He took up his abode in what we called the "old part"--the original house (our kitchens, store-rooms, etc.), to which, according to Bush custom, another and better had been attached, the two being connected by a planked, bark-roofed, trellis-walled pa.s.sage; and he used my drawing-room and our other living-rooms to stack his produce in. And the parson went to live in the town, beside his church--in a corrugated iron house that was run up for him.

I am glad it was he--not his predecessor. There is no ill-nature in this, seeing that he doubtless congratulated himself also. For he could get daily letters and newspapers, immediate access to the stores, the schools, the church, the doctor, and next-door neighbours; whereas we were often in straits owing to our six miles' distance from them. Between us and the road lay a (to us) bridgeless river--it is called a river--which it was necessary to pa.s.s to get to church and back, and at the best of times its banks at the crossing-place were so steep down and up again that I dreaded the spot on a dark night, after going through it in safety hundreds of times, and after all the breaking-in to such things that I had had. Its flood-water used to overflow into what we called our "lane," the unavoidable approach to the house, covering the fences on either side in the lower parts, which between-whiles were either soft bogs or rough ruts and ridges like those of a frosted ploughed field. Owing to these lions in the path, we had few visitors in winter. In summer there were Bush fires--of which I will say more presently.

Then there were long waits for the doctor in dire emergencies, and per-mile fees (if the doctor were non-Church-of-England, or you could successfully save yourself from taking charity) for his tardy attendance. Our groom nearly killed a pair of horses one night--when a commonplace domestic event was impending--trying to make them do twelve miles in time that would but comfortably cover four. One day my nurse and I found a white speck on the throat of the youngest baby, when no man or buggy or even wood-cart was at home. While I looked at my devoted colleague in despair she began briskly to gather and tie on our respective hats. "We have to get him to the doctor somehow," said she. And off we started, and carried him (he was then twenty-one months old), turn and turn about, the whole six miles, all up-hill, since there was practically no alternative. As it chanced, the doctor, when we got to him--dead beat as ever women were--laughed at the baby's throat; but the incident ill.u.s.trates some of the drawbacks of our isolated life which were not suffered by our successors.

Household supplies had to be laid in wholesale--sacks of sugar and flour, chests of tea, boxes of kerosene and candles. We had to make our own bread, and our own yeast for it; we had to kill our own mutton and dress it; gather our own firewood and chop it. This meant keeping a man (for the first time); beside whom we had a general servant, a nurse, and a young lady companion.

The kitchen party were not at all lonely in these wilds. They had friends on the neighbouring stations and farms, with whom they foregathered in their leisure hours; they had many picnics and excursions to the town; they gave a ball every Christmas (which rather scandalised a section of the parish, although the rigid etiquette observed at them might have been copied with advantage in higher circles), and were tendered b.a.l.l.s in return. At ordinary times they seemed sufficient for themselves. Sitting in my detached house of an evening, I would hear cheerful sounds from the other building, and, being mysteriously summoned thither, would find the groom, with his concertina, playing reels and jigs for the little ones to dance to, the dancing-mistresses standing by to enjoy the achievements of their pupils and the surprise they had prepared for me.

A new member was added to the household in a singular manner. The selectors with families needed a school. To get a school, Government had to be a.s.sured that so many children--twenty-five or thereabouts--were ent.i.tled to it; and the parents came to ask if we would aid them to make up the number. Our three were babies, and we certainly did not mean to foist them on the State for their education, but we somehow reconciled it with our consciences to sign the requisition on our poorer neighbours' behalf. Thus they got their school--a tiny white wooden building, and one teacher. The building, consisting of schoolroom and teacher's quarters, was set up on the public highway, just outside our outer gate, on the bank of the so-called river (where the bridge was), a night camping-place of all the teamsters and drovers on the road; and the teacher appointed to live there, beyond call of any other house, was a good-looking young woman.

She came to us one day in great distress--perplexity, rather, for she was far too sensible to make a fuss. She could not, under the circ.u.mstances, live alone in her school quarters, and she had tried in vain to find lodgings in the farmers' cottages: they were all too small and full. What should she do?

She was an extremely nice girl, and, finding we could solve her difficulty in no other way, we took her in ourselves. Strange to say, the experiment answered admirably. In the servants' house there was a large spare room, which had once been Dr R.'s study. We put a screen across the middle of it, made a bedroom behind and a simple sitting-room in front, and there installed her. She attended to her own little housework, and the servants took her in her meals from the adjacent kitchen--a job to which they had no objection in the world; and she used to sit in her basket-chair on their common verandah and pa.s.s the time of day with them when so inclined, and adjusted herself to the position generally with perfect taste, just as they did. To us personally she made no difference whatever, except in her services to the children. She paid us the trifle that covered the cost of her board, and as a further return for hospitality took the two older little ones to school with her once a day, taught and specially shepherded them while there, and brought them back again. So, by accident, we kept faith with the Government after all; and anything like the rapidity and thoroughness with which all the drudgery of the three R's was got through in that little school-house I never saw. I used to walk over the paddock of an afternoon to see the process. We made a new track across the paddock with our goings and comings, the home-returning before nursery tea being usually a family procession, led by the baby's perambulator. We were amused one wet winter to find Miss C. and her charges making a bridge of a bullock's carcase that conveniently spanned a muddy rift. They went over it, they said, until the ribs bent too much and threatened to "let them through."

Besides the milking cows of the establishment, we always had a herd of bullocks on the place. We bought them as "store," intending to sell them as "fats"--intending, indeed, to make our fortunes as land-owners and cattle-dealers. Our hundred acres were notoriously one of the rich patches of the district, coveted by our wealthy neighbours as badly as ever Ahab coveted Naboth's vineyard; anything could be made of it--on paper.

Alas! the usual fate of the amateur farmer befell us. Perhaps we were not there long enough. Certainly we had the worst of luck in the matter of seasons. It was one long series of droughts, punctuated by those floods already alluded to, which came at the wrong time to benefit the gra.s.s. The store cattle would not make fat, on which we could make profit; the precious "water-frontage," when it became a rope of sand threaded with water-holes, unfenced one side of the property, allowing the stock to stray at large. The stock, also, by degrees became largely composed of unproductive horses, those happening to be G.'s special weakness and temptation. He had an a.s.sortment, continually being added to, for his own riding, and we had two concurrent pairs for the buggy; the groom had one or two for his constant journeys to the post, and there was one for the wood-cart.

They were for ever going to be shod, or they met with accidents and had to be replaced. The most valuable that we ever possessed was p.r.i.c.ked in the haunch with a point of fencing wire--a wound almost invisible to the naked eye--and died of lockjaw from it.

Finally, we let fifty acres to a real farmer at 1 per acre. He strongly fenced this off, and grew lovely crops of corn on it. And I think that was about all the "increment" we enjoyed.

Here we learned something of what Bush settlers have to suffer in our frequent years of drought. We had a large underground rain tank, with a pump to it, but there were times when it seemed a perfect sin to wash. Our selector neighbours had only their zinc tanks and the river--muddy, and fouled by creatures alive and dead; and the nurse and children used to make it an object of their summer evening walks to carry little cans of water to their friends, to make at least one nice cup of tea with. It was regarded as a handsome present. Hydatids raged over the country-side. Two of our servants (who married each other, and went to live at the school-house by the river, in Miss C.'s empty quarters) were crippled with the disease.

"The reservoiring of rain-water is the greatest economic question in South Africa," says the Subaltern in those charming _Letters to His Wife_. "At present little or nothing is done to combat drought." The same here, to the very word and letter. Another thing he says:--"After all, it is the atmospheric conditions that make the veldt, and give their character to its children." That applies as exactly to the Australian Bush.

A young soldier of ours came home from the war the other day. He had been in seventy-five engagements, and might reasonably have felt a little sick of South Africa. But no. "When it is all over, I am going back there to settle," said he. "The climate and the country--somehow they just suit me."