on the desert air of Australia, does not come over to England, and exhibit the quart-pot feat? The professional swordsman who severs legs of mutton, bars of lead, and silk handkerchiefs, at a single sweep of the sabre, would be utterly eclipsed by the trenchant power of the Australian thong. We shudder to think of the condition of the stubborn or refractory bullock to whom the strongarmed stockman gives the full length of his lash. The poor brute must surely be cut up before it is killed. Colonel Mundy has brought home one of these whips as a curiosity, but declares his inability to use it. The art, to be properly acquired, should be practised long, and, if possible, studied young. Novices are apt to practise the cuts upon their own hides. Australian bush-brats devote much time to the accomplishment. The dashing, break-neck life of the stockman captivates their juvenile fancy. Formerly no Australian youth ever dreamed of applying himself to other occupations than those of the shepherd or stockman, and preferred them to Government situations. "Those were doubtless the days when the gentlemen squatters played whist at sheep points, and a bullock on the rubber; and remunerated a doctor for setting a broken limb (no other ailment is ever heard of in the bush)

with a cow-fee."

Coombing, the seat of Mr Icely, before named, gives us, as well in Colonel Mundy's sketch as in his description, a charming idea of the residence of an Australian farmer and -cattle-breeder.

"We drew up at the portico of a romantic cottage, surrounded by a wide verandah, whose columns and eaves were completely overshadowed with climbing roses, honeysuckles, and other flowering creepers. The front looks over a garden luxuriant with European flowers and standard fruit-trees oppressed with their glowing produce. Beyond are large enclosures, yellow with ripening grain, and sloping to a winding watercourse; and all around the prospect is bounded, somewhat too closely, by lightly wooded hills, some of them almost aspiring to be mountains."

The owner of this delightful place, and of all the tens of thousands of

acres, sheep, and cattle, enumerated a few pages back, is an Australian "squatter." The idea associated in most European minds with this inelegant word, is, we believe, that of a rude, hard-handed, needy vagabond, who builds a log shanty and clears a plot of ground in some remote prairie or forest, where none claim the soil, and law is unknown. But the squatters of Australia are of a different class from those of America. The lands they occupy are ceded to them by Government at an almost nominal rent for certain terms of years, at the expiration of which they may be put up for sale, the lessee having right of pre-emption at a fair price. There are squatters of all classes, and on every scale, from the man who himself works as stockman or shepherd, up to the grazing princes, the squatting maguates, on whom Colonel Mundy was so fortunate as to be repeatedly quartered during his rambles with Sir Charles Fitzroy. Here is his first reveille at Coombing—a pretty Australian picture.

"November 18th.-A lovely morning. I was awakened early by a chattering of parrots, absolutely stunning, and looking forth, I found the standard cherry-trees thronged with these birds-a thousand beautiful and mischievous creatures, frisking among the branches, eating no small quantity of the fruit of these exotic

plants, reared with so much trouble, and

bud within reach of their strong little wantonly destroying every berry and beaks. What wonder that the old Scotch gardener strewed the ground, in vain, however, with their painted corpses, as he prowled round the garden with a vengeful face, and a gun as long as himself! Beyond the garden fence, down on the cultivated land, the fields were covered, as by a snow-drift, with flocks of the large white cockatoo."

Australia is a great place for queer birds and beasts. One of Colonel Mundy's earliest feathered acquaintances was the Laughing Jackass, of whose extraordinary and comical song-which he declares it is impossible to listen to without laughing one's-self-he gives a ludicrous description. This bird is a large species of woodpecker, black and grey, with little or no tail, and an enormous head and bill-altogether as strange in appearance as in note. The large

white cockatoo, with an orange topknot, is to be seen at any zoological garden or bird fancier's in England. Parrots are of various sorts, sizes, and colours. A chain of ponds outside Mr Icely's park abounds with that paradoxical creature, the Platipus, or water-mole-" always cited among the inconsistencies of Australian natural history, and very like a large mole, with the head and mandibles of a duck." Colonel Mundy, who is an ardent sportsman, went down to have a shot at these composite beasts, which are prized for their soft fur, prettily shaded from black to silver grey. They are very shy; and perfect immobility, whilst watching their rising, is indispensable. This the Colonel found it impossible to preserve, owing to the torment inflicted on him by flies-an intolerable nuisance on that side of the Blue Mountains. In houses, fields, and bush they swarm, and their attacks are apt to cause what is termed the "fly-blight" in the human eye, a malady whose symptoms are acute inflammation, and temporary deprivation of sight. These insects are the common fly, harmless in Europe. The "blight" is occasioned either by their bite, or by the deposit of their larvæ, and is most disastrous to working men. "We sometimes met a dozen bullock-drivers in a day, more or less affected by this blight-poor wretched fellows, with large green leaves bound over their eyes, staggering along almost blind, but unwilling to give in." Mr Icely's daughters invented the "Fitzroy paramouche"--a net to hang from the hat over the face; and although the meshes were large, not to obstruct the air, the flies ventured not within.

Disappointed of a Platipus, Colonel Mundy stepped into a luzerne field and shot a dozen brace of quails, a bird plentiful in New South Wales, and the only description of English game found there. With the quails,

or near at hand, is also found manna, the juxtaposition recalling the miraculous supplies vouchsafed to the wandering descendants of Abraham.

"In the lowlands, the Eucalyptus mannifera, or Flooded Gum, grows in great profusion, and to a majestic size.

It sounds strange to English ears, a party of ladies and gentlemen strolling out in a summer's afternoon to gather manna in the wilderness. Yet more than once I was so employed in Australia. This substance is found in small

pieces on the ground under the trees at certain seasons, or in hardened drops on the surface of the leaves. It is snowy white when fresh, but turns brown when kept, like the chemist's drug so called; is sweeter than the sweetest sugar, and softer than Gunter's softest ice-cream. This manna is seldom plentiful; for birds, beasts, and human beings devour it, and the slightest rain, or even dew, dissolves its delicate components. Theories have been hazarded, and essays published, as to the origin of this singular substance; but whether it be formed by the puncture and deposit of an insect, or is the natural product of the tree, no one, I believe, can

venture to assert."

On the 30th of November, the governor and his suite, being then at Wellington, were invited by some gentlemen of the neighbourhood to join in a kangaroo hunt, the nearest approach that can be made in Australia to the English fox-hunt. Three or four powerful greyhounds composed the pack; the sportsmen, all well mounted, struck into an extensive tract of forest land, famous for kangaroo. They found but one; a strong, fleet animal, five feet high, of the kind known as "red flyers." And fly he did-or rather jumped— his fore-feet never touching the ground. At first, hounds and horses, going a fast pace, kept up pretty well with the gentleman, but, on coming to a descent, kangaroo made the running, and soon distanced all pursuers. His rate of speed, according to Colonel Mundy's estimate, far exceeded that of a stag. The kangaroo prefers a down-hill course, when pursued, as giving more time to gather up his hind legs, to repeat his tremendous spring, than he could have in facing

an ascent.

the wild boar's tusk. When hard pressed, he not unfrequently takes to a waterhole, where, from his stature, he has a great advantage over the dogs, ducking them under water, and sometimes drowning them as they swim to the attack. The tail of the kangaroo makes excellent soup; the haunch is tolerable vension, but, like most really wild venison, it is too lean. An officer from Van

Diemen's Land told me that he had once killed, in that colony, a kangaroo of such magnitude, that, being a long way from home, he was unable, although on horseback, to carry away any portion except the tail, which alone weighed thirty pounds. This species is called the boomah, and stands about seven feet high. Besides the single kangaroo, we saw this day no other animals, with the exception of a few kangaroo rats, which the dogs eccasionally bounded after, with little success, amongst scrubby rockland; two large guanas, about two feet long, swarming lazily up a tree, one of which a black fellow brought down with a cast of his boomerang ; and a poisonous ash-coloured snake, which I cut in pieces with my hunting-whip under my horse's legs."

of

Although within a few hours of December, the kangaroo hunt was warm work in every sense the word, for December is a sultry month in those latitudes. After describing Wellington, in two lines, as "a town where there are scarcely two houses within a stone's throw of each other, and where every second one is a public-house," Colonel Mundy goes on to the little settlement of Summerhill, the scene of the first gold discovery. It will be remembered that it was in the Summerhill Creek, in the year 1851, that this took place. In 1846, none dreamed of the metallic wealth that lay so near at hand. In 1850, on a second visit paid by the Colonel to Coombing, Mr Icely showed him some minute specimens of gold in a quartz matrix, visible only through a microscope. He showed him at the same time a letter from Sir Roderick Murchison, with reference to a specimen sent home, expressing that eminent geologist's opinion that the western slopes of the Australian Cordillera would be found highly auriferous. This was in September 1850; the specimen and the opinion probably stimulated research, and in May 1851 the newspapers announced the discovery, by

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Mr Hargrave, of indigenous gold in the Bathurst district. The first news were discredited by many, and set down as a hoax. "The suspicious asserted that the hoax was got up by the Bathurst people in order to attract custom; that the specimens circulated in Sydney were of Californian origin, and had been planted and found again with a view to tempting persons inland." Now that the first novelty has worn off, that the gold mines of Australia have ceased to be matter of doubt or wonder, and that specie from New South Wales appears as natural an item in a ship's entry, as do dollars from Mexico or iron from Sweden, it is interesting to read, in Colonel Mundy's Glimpse of the Gold Fields, of the various indications-called to mind after the factwhich ought, one would fancy, to have long ago led to the unearthing of Australia's mineral treasures. For many years past, it appears, gold, in the virgin state, had occasionally found its way to Sydney, and been sold to jewellers there, but some infatuation always led them to doubt that it was indigenous. An old prisoner, named M'Gregor, disposed periodically of bits of the precious metal whilst he was employed as a shepherd in the Wellington district. This man being in prison for debt at Sydney, when the gold-find took place in 1851, a party proceeding to the diggings engaged to pay his debts and to liberate him, on condition of his binding himself to them for a term, and giving them the benefit of his gold-hunting experience. He soon disengaged himself, however, from this association; and when I was at the mines," continues Colonel Mundy, "he was supposed to be lying up' in some blind gulley' near his old haunts, with a countryman named Stewart for his companion. I have heard that in 1823-so far back a convict of an ironed gang, working on the roads near Bathurst, was flogged for having in his possession a lump of rough gold, which the officer imagined must have been the product of watches or trinkets stolen or melted down!" Rather hard upon the unlucky transport, who had perhaps chipped the prize out of a pebble in the course of his com

pulsory Macadamic pursuits; just as at Bathurst, this time twelvemonth, gold was found in a stone, picked up in the street and smashed with a blacksmith's hammer. This happened just after the great find of the "Kerr Hundredweight," and helped to augment the fever, which had previously been subsiding. Dr Kerr owed his good fortune to his and his wife's uniform kindness to the aborigines. Colonel Mundy heard from his own lips the story of the find. This was in no out-of-the-way or rarely-visited spot, but on a gentle slope, in the middle of a frequented sheep-walk. The black shepherd, its destined discoverer, had passed-perhaps sat upon, the mass of treasurenot once, but hundreds of times. The man had long been there, but the hour had not yet come. At last it struck. Sauntering along, Blacky's eye was caught by a glittering speck on a lump of rock. A clip with his tomahawk revealed a mass of pure gold. Without a thought of appropriation, he hurried to his master, who in an instant was on horseback and away-taking saddle-bags to receive the spoil. Afterwards, these bags, like everything and everybody connected with the wonderful lump, became objects of great curiosity.

"It was amusing to hear that the worthy doctor, on his long ride homewards with the gold on his saddle, being compelled to halt at some human habitation for refreshment, had, in order to avert suspicion from the precious freight, lifted it with assumed ease from his horse's back, and flung it with forced indifference over a rail-fence. It seems heavy,' remarked a bystander. Full of gold, of course!' replied the owner, with a smile, and with more truth than he desired to get credit for."

The first gold discoveries occurred only a few weeks before Colonel Mundy's departure for England, but he would not leave the country without seeing the diggings, and, with his accustomed activity, he once more turned his face to the Blue Mountains.

Since December in Australia is a hot, sultry season, we need not wonder to hear of rain and snow in July, on the 14th of which month the Colonel started, in a light phaeton, with a pair of good horses, and an experi

enced servant. The roads were destroyed by recent heavy rains, and by the passage of innumerable heavy vehicles, conveying stores, provisions, and tools to the mines. The Colonel met nothing but bullock-drays, and travellers on foot and on horseback; and as he himself was obliged to walk beside his carriage for a great part of the way, he soon began to think he might as well have left it behind him. At Bathurst he saw the monster lump, felt slight premonitory symptoms of the gold fever as he gazed at, and handled, the glittering mass, resolved to apply the homœopathic remedy of a day's prospecting when he reached the mines, and bought a dogskin bag (the saddlers were all busy making these) which he proposed filling at the diggings—either by work or by purchase. At Bathurst, too, he was so fortunate as to make the acquaintance of the Assistant Commissioner appointed by the Colonial Government to reside on the Gold Fields-for the double purpose of keeping order, and of collecting the license tax of thirty shillings a-month, levied on every miner; and in his company he continued his journey, and reached the valley of the Summerhill Creek and the camp of the Chief Commissioner, whose duties are anything but a sinecure, the country being highly unfavourable to his ex

ertions.

"Miners of insolvent inclinations easily contrive to dodge the officer as he proceeds down the windings of the creek; the rocks and gulleys presenting endless and convenient hiding-places, for the skulkers. At Ophir, the simulated croak of the raven was the signal for evasion agreed and acted upon by the unlicensed. One fellow shoulders the cradle and runs to earth, whilst his comrades disperse themselves among the legitimate workmen, assuming the innocent look of spectators hesitating to commence the arduous and precarious trade of gold minNumbers will doubtless always ing. manage to work without payment in sequestered gulleys; but when any such long kept secret. spot is found to be profitable, it is not The solitary miners must go somewhere to obtain supplies. They are watched and followed by others who have been less successful, and the 'sly' diggings soon become known to the Commissioner and his myrmidons."