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238 traits of mind, that he leaves his delineator little whereby to designate him, save a confused and parenthetical habit of speech, by which he very often appeared to those who did not profit by long experience, or close observation, to say exactly, and somewhat ludicrously, that which he did not mean to convey.

"I say, Lucy," observed Mr. Brandon, but without lifting his eyes from the paper; "I say, corn has fallen—think of that, girl, think of that. These times, in my opinion, (ay, and in the opinion of wiser heads than mine, though I do not mean to say that I have not some experience in these matters, which is more than can be said of all our neighbours,) are very curious and, even dangerous."

"Indeed, Papa!" answered Lucy.

"And I say, Lucy, dear," resumed the Squire after a short pause, "there has been (and very strange it is, too, when one considers the crowded neighbourhood—Bless me! what times these are!) a shocking murder committed upon (the tobacco-stopper—there it is)—think, you know, girl—just by Epping!—an old gentleman!"

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Rh "Dear, how shocking! by whom?"

"Ay, that's the question! The Coroner's inquest has (what a blessing it is to live in a civilized country, where a man does not die without knowing the why and the wherefore,) sat on the body, and declared (it is very strange, but they don't seem to have made much discovery; for why? we knew as much before,) that the body was found (it was found on the floor, Lucy,) murdered; murderer or murderers (in the bureau, which was broken open, they found the money left quite untouched,)—unknown!"

Here there was again a slight pause, and passing to another side of the paper, Mr. Brandon resumed in a quicker tone,—

"Ha! well, now this is odd! but he's a deuced clever fellow, Lucy! (that brother of mine has, and in a very honourable manner too, which I am sure is highly creditable to the family, though he has not taken too much notice of me lately;—a circumstance which, considering I am his elder brother, I am a little angry at;)—distinguished himself in a speech, remarkable, the paper says—for its great legal—(I wonder, by the by, whether

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240 William could get me that agistment-money! 'tis a heavy thing to lose; but going to law, as my poor father used to say, is like fishing for gudgeons [not a bad little fish, we can have some for supper,] with guineas)—knowledge, as well as its splendid and overpowering—(I do love Will for keeping up the family honour; I am sure it is more than I have done—heigh-ho!)—eloquence!"

"And on what subject has he been speaking, Papa?"

"Oh, a very fine subject; what you call a—(it is astonishing that in this country there should be such a wish for taking away people's characters, which, for my part, I don't see is a bit more entertaining than what you are always doing—playing with those stupid birds)—Libel!"

"But is not my uncle William coming down to see us? He promised to do so, and it made you quite happy, Papa, for two days. I hope he will not disappoint you; and I am sure that it is not his fault if he ever seems to neglect you. He spoke of you to me, when I saw him, in the kindest and most affectionate manner. I do think, my dear father, that he loves you very much."

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Rh Beneath a dome and shatter'd light,

A sign that all are lost and doomed.

Toward jagged heights black oaths float,

To skies of jasper light, adverse

To Doom's rich fold, prayers reach thro' night

That some malignant monster tombed

In phantom-blankets stark and bold.

All mountain-chasms growl and roar;

Each ocean froths black waves of lust;

King Thunder rasps the trembling night;

Giant lightnings split their fevered hold;

Encharneled guilt hastes to this shore

As hydras squirm along the dust,

Affrighted at this Cauldron's sight.

For we are unsubstantial wrecks

Beyond the pale of scale and fin;

Adventurers tossed by king Time

In region 'neath supernal skies.

To dungeoned knells where venom specks

The robes of priestesses with sin,


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Rh "Ahem!" said the Squire, evidently flattered, and yet not convinced. "My brother Will is a very acute fellow, and I make no—my dear little girl—question, but that—(when you have seen as much of the world as I have, you will grow suspicious,)—he thought that any good word said of me to my daughter, would—(you see, Lucy, I am as clear-sighted as my neighbours, though I don't give myself all their airs; which I very well might do, considering my great great great grandfather Hugo Brandon, had a hand in detecting the Gunpowder plot,)—be told to me again!"

"Nay, but I am quite sure my uncle never spoke of you to me with that intention."

"Possibly, my dear child; but when (the evenings are much shorter than they were!) did you talk with your uncle about me?"

"Oh, when staying with Mrs. Warner, in London; to be sure, it is six years ago, but I remember it perfectly. I recollect, in particular, that he spoke of you very handsomely to Lord Mauleverer, who dined with him one evening when I was there, and when my uncle was so kind as to take me to

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242 the play. I was afterwards quite sorry that he was so good-natured, as he lost—(you remember I told you the story)—a very valuable watch."

"Ay, ay, I remember all about that, and so,—how long friendship lasts with some people!—Lord Mauleverer dined with William. What a fine thing it is for a man—(it is what I never did, indeed, I like being what they call 'Cock of the Walk'—let me see, now I think of it, Pillum comes to-night to play a hit at backgammon)—to make friends with a great man early in (yet Will did not do it very early, poor fellow! he struggled first with a great deal of sorrow——hardship that is——) life! It is many years now, since Will has been hand-and-glove with my ('tis a bit of a puppy) Lord Mauleverer,—what did you think of his Lordship?"

"Of Lord Mauleverer? Indeed I scarcely observed him, but he seemed a handsome man, and was very polite. Mrs. Warner said he had been a very wicked person when he was young, but he seems good-natured enough now, Papa."

"By the by," said the Squire, "his Lordship has just been made—(this new Ministry seem very

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80 And prowling apes get drunk with wine,

We turn each thought to coral eyes

That seas have blurred with coffined night,

And whisper deeds wrought in silence.

A quiver that the tomb-sweat bore

When walls were split with Typhon's ire;

And monstrous shapes that carved the light

As dragon-worms brought pestilence

To souls who grovel on this shore,

Proclaim each gyving djinnee sire.

And dryades whom the mists have struck

With ague—A Sceptre of Despair!

(Sklayres to the night, and suns unstunned)

Dank dulse, where templed vaults of man,

Coarse-grained, who gambled with king Luck,

'Mid pulse of life below the air,

Shake at the throb of this unsummed

Sphere, where haunted thoughts and dreams scan

Athward at a untower'd home.

Where vitals that the glow-worm lit—


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 northern pioneers with the means which subsequently enabled them to improve and stock their pastoral holdings.

There seems no end to the splendid sheep country of the north, and the tenures are easy and the runs of vast extent. For plucky young men with money, who will make up their minds to face a tropical climate with very few tropical advantages on the prospect of doing well in a few years out of wool, this fly-tormented region may present attractions, and there is this to be said for it, that droughts on the scale experienced in the other colonies are unknown, no such prolonged cessations of rainfall having been recorded as, say, in some of the best pastoral portions of Northern Queensland.

Mr. Brown was obliged to admit to me that the Geraldton district was practically a gameless one, with the exception of kangaroos, emus, wild ducks and wild turkeys, which latter he asserts to be the true bustard. There is not very much, therefore, to tempt the sportsman. There had not been any rain to speak of when I left Geraldton on May 19th, 1891, since the previous October, so that I saw the country in its least attractive autumnal jacket. Mr. Brown said that the best season for farmers was when the rain commenced on May 20th, and curiously enough, on the second day of our cross-country journey, down came the rain in torrents, very much to our discomfort in the open wagonette, but immensely to the joy of the whole country  side. We did the first 40 miles back to Dongara, on our way to Gingin, by the railway, which in this part of its course runs through the famous Greenough Flats, which the Agricultural Commission class amongst the richest agricultural land in all Australia. These flats, which run parallel, are severally about 25 miles in length, and about three-quarters of a mile to two miles in width. They are already taken up, so I only dwell on their deep loamy richness, averaging wheat crops of 30 bushels per acre, because they may be regarded as samples of a good deal of the best land on the Upper Irwin River further south, which will shortly be at the disposal of the Midland Railway Company to alienate as they will. The journey across the sand plain after leaving Dongara was dreary


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 enough in the steady downpour, but even these desolate expanses have their use, as they afford excellent summer feed for cattle. They are pretty enough in their way, too, the banksias with their vari-coloured cones and several kinds of heather and innumerable flowering shrubs making the plains bright enough even in winter, and encouraging a belief in all that was told us of the glorious display of flowers which the summer sun brings forth, making the country a veritable Florida after a fashion which the English imagination can hardly compass.


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 Rh unlike the old! which rather puzzles me; for I think it my duty, d'ye see, Lucy, always to vote for his Majesty's Government; especially seeing that old Hugo Brandon had a hand in detecting the Gunpowder plot; and it is a little odd, at least, at first, to think that good now, which one has always before been thinking abominable) Lord Lieutenant of the county."

"Lord Mauleverer our Lord Lieutenant?"

"Yes, child; and since his Lordship is such a friend of my brother's, I should think, considering especially what an old family in the county we are,—not that I wish to intrude myself where I am not thought as fine as the rest,—that he would be more attentive to us than Lord was: But that, my dear Lucy, puts me in mind of Pillum, and so, perhaps, you would like to walk to the Parson's, as it is a fine evening. John shall come for you at nine o'clock with—(the moon is not up then)—the lantern."

Leaning on his daughter's willing arm, the good old man then rose and walked homeward; and so soon as she had wheeled round his easy-chair, placed the backgammon-board on the table, and

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Rh Friends to the Doom! as sorrowed soul,

Repress'd with rage, knelt down and prayed,

Rise from the hollowed void a moan

As sins upon papyrus, writ

In vyper's blood—Jems in this shoal!

Confess'd by men whom friends have flayed,

Teem in the wind-swept, shatter'd strands—

Blind batter'd keels that know no rest

'Mid surge of moans that tombs have spilt.

Upon the air that Doom hath wrung,

Beyond the fields where numberless hands

Point to the headland of the West,

Lights and vague shadows spell no guilt

Unto the wraiths whom Torpor stung.

And all night-thoughts in this strange sphere,

Tred in the skirts of waters cold,

Of hell-winds that the beaches swirl

Dome-high within this shrunken realm;

And crested billows toss giant Fear

Unto each culprit's hidden fold:

The studded roof where flares a pearl,


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244 wished the old gentleman an easy victory over his expected antagonist the Apothecary, Lucy tied down her bonnet, and took her way to the Rectory.

When she arrived at the clerical mansion, and entered the drawing-room, she was surprised to find the Parson's wife, a good, homely, lethargic old lady, run up to her, seemingly in a state of great nervous agitation, and crying.

"Oh, my dear Miss Brandon! which way did you come? Did you meet nobody by the road? Oh, I am so frightened! Such an accident to poor dear Doctor Slopperton. Stopped in the King's highway—robbed of some tithe-money he had just received from Farmer Slowforth; if it had not been for that dear angel, good, young man, God only knows whether I might not have been a disconsolate widow by this time."

While the affectionate matron was thus running on, Lucy's eye glancing round the room, discovered in an arm-chair, the round and oily little person of Doctor Slopperton, with a countenance from which all the carnation hues, save in one circular excrescence on the nasal member that was left, like the last rose of summer, blooming

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Rh alone, were faded into an aspect of miserable pallor: the little man tried to conjure up a smile while his wife was narrating his misfortune, and to mutter forth some syllable of unconcern; but he looked, for all his bravado, so exceedingly scared, that Lucy would, despite of herself, have laughed outright, had not her eye rested upon the figure of a young man who had been seated beside the reverend gentleman, but who had risen at Lucy's entrance, and who now stood gazing upon her intently, but with an air of great respect. Blushing deeply, and involuntarily, she turned her eyes hastily away, and approaching the good Doctor, made her enquiries into the present state of his nerves, in a graver tone than she had a minute before imagined it possible that she should have been enabled to command.

"Ah, my good young lady," said the Doctor, squeezing her hand, "I—nay, I may say the Church—for am I not its minister?—was in imminent danger;—but this excellent gentleman prevented the sacrilege, at least in great measure. I only lost some of my dues—my rightful dues—for which I console myself with thinking

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 XV.

with the help of the completed portions of the railway at either end, my buggy journey along the course of the inchoate "Midland" resolved itself into a south-easterly drive of a little over 200 miles from Dongara, which, like the far-flowing Greenough, also boasts its "flats," to Gingin. This was, however, quite enough for comfort, and quite enough to give me a good general idea of the quality of the country. At first our four-in-hand team was somewhat of the "scratch" order, but about midway the contractor's buggy met us, with a crack team, and the most skilled imaginable of bush Jehus. The first day's journey was mostly in the valley of the tortuous Irwin, which, like most of the rivers of Western Australia, is a mere storm-water channel, assuming sometimes the dimensions of a torrent during the winter rains, but becoming dry as a bone in summer, with here and there an occasional water-hole in its parched and deeply-scored bed to remind one of its winter destiny. The next day we were on the sand plains which intersect the whole of this rich loamy and red ironstone country, and which are really more "downs" than plains. Forty or fifty miles of "sand plain" might well damp the ardour of the most sturdy of would-be settlers, and enabled one to realise, as our team ploughed painfully through it, what sort of chance the old denizens on the adjacent good land had had of making farming remunerative, with from 40 to 80 miles of such cartage in front of them before they could get their produce to the nearest market. What with the present rain and the prospect of railway facilities in the near future, the latter all seemed cheerful


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246 that the infamous and abandoned villain will suffer hereafter."

"There cannot be the least doubt of that," said the young man: "had he only robbed the mail coach, or broken into a gentleman's house, the offence might have been expiable;—but to rob a clergyman, and a rector, too! Oh, the sacrilegious dog!"

"Your warmth does you honour, Sir," said the Doctor, beginning now to recover, "and I am very proud to have made the acquaintance of a gentleman of such truly religious opinions!"

"Ah!" cried the stranger, "my foible, Sir—if I may so speak—is a sort of enthusiastic fervour for the Protestant Establishment—Nay, Sir, I never come across the very nave of the church, without feeling an indescribable emotion—a kind of sympathy, as it were,—with—with—you understand me, Sir—I fear I express myself ill."

"Not at all, not at all!" exclaimed the Doctor: "such sentiments are uncommon in one so young."

"Sir, I learned them early in life from a friend and preceptor of mine, Mr. M'Grawler, and I

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 HIS MAJESTY'S SHIP THE INVESTIGATOR,

AND SUBSEQUENTLY IN THE ARMED VESSEL PORPOISE AND CUMBERLAND SCHOONER.

SHIPWRECK OF THE PORPOISE,

IN TWO VOLUMES, WITH AN ATLAS.

VOL. II.

LONDON:

1814.


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John Murray, commander of the brig Lady Nelson, having received orders to put himself under my command, I gave him a small code of signals, and directed him, in case of separation, to repair to Hervey's Bay; which he was to enter by a passage said


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 enough, and had somehow managed to "pull through" up to date, with sandalwood and kangaroo-ing to eke out their primitive agriculture. This is not a region of large timber, though there is plenty for every needful purpose. The species of grass-tree known as the "blackboy" rears its brown rough trunk and grassy topknot in every direction, whilst of real timber trees the jarrah and York gum, both of eucalyptus origin, are the main features in the landscape, in addition to the little raspberry jam tree, which is greatly in demand for fencing, but should be reserved for nobler uses considering its adaptability for furniture making and all the mysteries of the wheelwright's art.

Dr. Robertson's account of the "sand plain" is one of the most interesting portions of his report. Talking of the region which I have just described, he says the sand plains "represent the wear of the oldest rocks, probably deposited by aerial currents."

"These sand plains," Dr. Robertson continues, "are a striking feature of Western Australia, and to a material extent regulate the climate. In some parts they are redolent with flowers of every hue and are by no means unproductive or useless. These are not desolate barren wastes such as those of Central Asia, Egypt, Arabia, Algeria, Arizona or Chili, but are covered by rough grasses, herbs, bushes, and flowers. To some extent they resemble the country surrounding Madrid, the capital of Spain. Nor are they thoroughly desolate and useless as large tracts of the other colonies. North of Perth sand plains exist parallel with the Darling Ranges, and between them and the sea, broken at intervals, in the course of brooks and rivulets, by irregular 'straths' (valleys) of rich and fertile soils. North of Bindoon, in breaks of the range, zones of sand having a south-easterly bearing stretch inland and are of varying width. The coastal sand plain is divided by a long strip of excellent land forming the famous farming and agricultural districts of Yatheroo and Dandaragan. This is separated by about sixteen miles of sand plain, from and parallel to the route of the Midland Railway, while a south-easterly branch forming Long's sand plain connects the coastal with those of the interior.

Long's sand plain is 25 miles wide and is crossed by the Midland Railway. In it several good patches of land occur, while several springs yield water for travellers and stock. Further north the squatters, withdrawing their flocks of sheep from the drought now prevailing in the interior, are depasturing them on these much-despised sand plains. They really afford fair summer feed for sheep, as in Chinchilla, near Dalby, bounding the famous Darling Downs of Queensland, or the weary steppes of Algeria (where esparto grass is now successfully cultivated), or the vast waste to the east of the Rocky Mountains of America. The small area crossed by the Midland is insignificant in extent to


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 any of those referred to. One remarkable and valuable feature of the colony is the abundance of water found at shallow depths. Innumerable wells a few feet in depth furnish water for the requirement of stock and settlement."

The next day we stopped at the station of a Mr. Whitfield, where we made acquaintance with that ingenious instrument of torture, the American buckboard buggy. The worst that we could wish the inventor was that he might have to sit on the back seat of his contrivance and be driven perpetually over such country as our kindly host drove us through, whilst our own horses were resting, in order to show us some of the copper deposits which abound over the whole of this portion of the country. The latter have never been profitably or systematically worked, but they may show another face in the good time coming. Close to Mount Scratch are the 5,000 acres which Sir John Forrest was allowed to select as part of the recompense for his services in the exploration of his native colony, of which it then seemed hardly likely that he was the predestined Premier. He sold his rights for 8s. 6d. an acre, and the land was now, Mr. Whitfield told us, worth £2. Some twenty miles to the north-east lies the famous coal seam on the Upper Irwin, which has inspired so many sanguine hopes for the future development of the district, and which the Midland Railway Company are now having tested in a business-like way, which promises to set at rest for all time the quantity and quality of the deposits, hitherto disclosing poor shaly stuff, which are traceable over a vast extent of country.

Dr. Robertson was inclined to class the product of the Irwin seam as lignite, and poor at that; but Mr. Robert Etheridge, F.R.S., of the British Museum, who was appealed to as an expert by Mr. Woodward, the Government geologist of West Australia, gives an opinion more favourable to the Company's hopes, though not quite on a par with their original wishes, which fathered a more sanguine belief.

Mr. Etheridge pronounces as follows on the sample sent him:—"It is a dull, soft, impure, sooty coal, ignites quickly, and burns to a fine ash, giving out great heat. This example, although impure, is not a lignite. It resembles 'Mother-coal,' bands of which often occur in the coal measure seams,


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82 The charnel vapours o'erwhelm.

In caverns where gyte jinnee lee—

Noctivagous lepers in the gloom—

Unhollowed regions wrapped in light

Where groans are drowned by revels coarse

(Seen by a gump throughout the year

Above the strife where horrors soom)

Lurk crafty gnomes who with the night

Rant oaths in voices cracked and hoarse:

Blood-thirsty jinn in essling caves,

Where rubic dyes tinge Torture's dome,

And vypers' whispers pierce the night

As ghouls—whose baneful eyes conspire

With the surge of hell's roaring waves—

Rear mounts of bone—Dame Sorrow's home!

As charnel scarn parades in light—

Unfathomed crafts rayed in wowed attire.

And dusky mists peer at the show,

Obtest the gloom to further deeds

Of haste, to Horror's added might;


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HIS MAJESTY'S SHIP THE INVESTIGATOR,

AND SUBSEQUENTLY IN THE ARMED VESSEL PORPOISE AND CUMBERLAND SCHOONER.

SHIPWRECK OF THE PORPOISE,

IN TWO VOLUMES, WITH AN ATLAS.

VOL. I.

LONDON:

1814.


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Rh Tho' twilight-witches spill their gloom,

(Betelguese's priestesses of woe)

Abhorrent gawks lure in the reeds

Where shatter'd lights wing sudden flight,

'Mid spun-waves kiss'd by poppy bloom.

Dank dulse, and rushing waters cold;

Eternal signs of shadowed night

Beyond the zephyr-haunted space

Of adequate lees 'neath the sky:

Unfathomed haunts of stark souls bold

That squat on waves of darkest dight,

Malignly mute as foam-waves race

To pyres where men in torture lie.

When thrones are levelled to the dust,

And glories fade in cauldrons tossed,

'Mid waters vaster than the night

In scarlet tombs that rasp grim Death,

Supernal selves, loosed from king Lust

As Dissolution bulwarks crossed,

Conviction of an undreamt might


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84 Assail each mongrel afrite's breath.

Hushed gasps permeate the solemn air

As coral Twilight flaunts its sheen,

And vapours wreath phantastic forms

Till vaulted domes glow like the noon.

Vague dreams plague souls beyond repair,

Phantoms, black demons call their queen,

Skinks and owls whom no conscience storms

Make faces at the leprous moon.

And bleak dungeons dank with odours

Strong, within each encrusted gyre,

'Mid treasure-vaults digged by gray Age,

Affronting witches incense burn;

And howling ghouls gape thro' vapours,

Two siffling vampyres dance on fire,

Each mottled sage a conqueréd page

To him whose hate no Doom can turn,

No bat-faced gnome can stem the blaze:

Hence harlots, ghastly with giant sin,

Chant runes to him in strobic gloom

As figgum's plied before his throne.


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Rh trust they may continue with me to my dying day."

Here the Doctor's servant entered with (we borrow a phrase from the novel of * * * *) "the tea-equipage," and Mrs. Slopperton betaking herself to its superintendence, enquired with more composure than hitherto had belonged to her demeanour, what sort of a looking creature the ruffian was?

"I will tell you, my dear—I will tell you, Miss Lucy, all about it. I was walking home from Mr. Slowforth's, with his money in my pocket, thinking, my love, of buying you that topaz cross you wished to have."

"Dear good man!" cried Mrs. Slopperton; "what a fiend it must have been to rob so excellent a creature!"

"And," resumed the Doctor, "it also occurred to me, that the Madeira was nearly out—the Madeira, I mean, with the red seal; and I was thinking it might not be amiss to devote part of the money to buy six dozen more; and the remainder, my love, which would be about one pound eighteen, I thought I would divide,—'for he that

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Rh Malignly mute, he peers thro' haze;

Infernal pæons shake each Inn,

Blue lights 'twixt opals burn and bloom

In deep-hued haunts of Typhon's home.

In vain we seek an isle of peace

Beyond the pale of siffling Doom!

'Mid stillness vaster than the tomb,

Made equal with the ghouls who lurk

On battlements where witches ease

Their minds as rubic censers fume,

A Fiend bubbles in ruddy bloom

As turgid dyes the night-dwales shirk.

No sunsets crimson this stainéd sea,

No Ev'ntides her plume unfolds;

An opaque light that Silence wrought.

Careens thro' space in quest of toll.

Then demons storm each sea and lee,

Abhorrent sights each Cauldron holds,

Dim shapes flit to the distant ghaut

Where Doom sits poised—Each monster's goal!


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248 giveth to the poor, lendeth to the Lord!'—among the thirty poor families on the Common; that is, if they behaved well, and the apples in the back garden were not feloniously abstracted!"

"Excellent! charitable man!" ejaculated Mrs. Slopperton.

"While I was thus meditating, I lifted my eyes, and saw before me two men; one of prodigious height, and with a great profusion of hair about his shoulders; the other was smaller, and wore his hat slouched over his face; it was a very large hat. My attention was arrested by the singularity of the tall person's hair, and while I was smiling at its luxuriance, I heard him say to his companion,—'Well, Augustus, as you are such a moral dog, he is in your line, not mine, so I leave him to you.'—Little did I think those words related to me. No sooner were they uttered, than the tall rascal leaped over a gate and disappeared; the other fellow then marching up to me, very smoothly asked me the way to the church, and while I was explaining to him to turn first to the right and then to the left, and so on—for the best way is, you know,

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86 Erelong the air shakes with a roar—

Forebodings of souls on Death's dome!

Bright cyphers spell the new-damnéd name

In letters 'gainst a leprous home:

Oaths peel like the hammer of Thor—

The screaming thing is flayed to bone!

Its sins—an outraged Body's shame—

Laid bare as whipcords dye the foam,

Whereon nepheloid imps and night,

Soom on with tidings of a moan,

Of dews, and whisper'd groans and sighs.

And, as vague forms writhe in despair,

A native in phantastic dight

Stills Torture's hold in weazened tone,

Black incense lifts its wand and flies

To haunts where mattoids rave and swear.

Where figent gawks sken at a gnome,

Decked in byssin and beads of gold;

And glozing jinn on a scree's height,

That leer as geysers boil and flow,


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Rh exceedingly crooked—the hypocritical scoundrel seized me by the collar, and cried out—'Your money, or your life!'—I do assure you, that I never trembled so much; not, my dear Miss Lucy, so much for my own sake, as for the sake of the thirty poor families on the Common, whose wants it had been my intention to relieve. I gave up the money, finding my prayers and expostulations were in vain; and the dog then, brandishing over my head an enormous bludgeon, said—what abominable language!—'I think, Doctor, I shall put an end to an existence derogatory to yourself and useless to others.' At that moment the young gentleman beside me sprang over the very gate by which the tall ruffian had disappeared, and cried—'Hold, villain!' On seeing my deliverer, the coward started back, and plunged into a neighbouring wood. The good young gentleman pursued him for a few minutes, but then returning to my aid, conducted me home; and, as we used to say at school,

Which being interpreted, means,—(Sir, excuse a

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Rh Feazing imps on serai's dome,

Drink from olpes icy philters cold,

Whilst scarn assails the morning light—

And gumps haste to the Dawn's first show.

Then pyres don mystic sklayres agleam,

A faffling fool leads gawks thro' hall

Where fays, in stones of ancient art,

Dance as Scorpions shake with glee:

Infernal pomps spread tawny sheen,

Strange figgum, amid unholy pall,

Pierce Sorrows with its poisoned dart

Whence horrors shake their limbs and flee.

And scenes, profound in Aspect's hue,

Play havoc with eyes of each soul:

Crimson dales (vague tho' they be)

And swards rise from the lurid moat;

Knees bend in Adoration's pew,

Blithe songs of cheer, far and near, roll

Thro' the halls to ebony sea,

Above whose breast twin whispers float—

Tremendous signs of dooms to be!


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250 pun, I am sure so great a friend to the Church understands Latin,)—that I am very glad to get back safe to my tea. He, he! And now, Miss Lucy, you must thank that young gentleman for having saved the life of your pastoral teacher, which act will no doubt be remembered at the Great Day!"

As Lucy, looking towards the stranger, said something in compliment, she observed a vague, and, as it were, covert smile upon his countenance, which immediately, and as if by sympathy, conjured one to her own. The hero of the adventure, however, in a very grave tone, replied to her compliment, at the same time bowing profoundly

"Mention it not, Madam! I were unworthy of the name of a Briton, and a man, could I pass the highway without relieving the distresses, or lightening the burthen, of a fellow-creature. And," continued the stranger, after a momentary pause, colouring while he spoke, and concluding, in the high-flown gallantry of the day,—"Methinks it were sufficient reward, had I saved the whole Church, instead of one of its most valuable

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Rh, to receive the thanks of a lady, whom I might reasonably take for one of those celestial beings, to whom we have been piously taught that the Church is especially the care!"

Though there might have been something really ridiculous in this overstrained compliment, coupled as it was with the preservation of Dr. Slopperton, yet, coming from the mouth of one whom Lucy thought the very handsomest person she had ever seen, it appeared to her any thing but absurd; and, for a very long time afterwards, her heart thrilled with pleasure when she remembered that the cheek of the speaker had glowed, and his voice had trembled, as he spoke it.

The conversation now turning from robbers in particular, dwelt upon robberies in general. It was edifying to hear the honest indignation with which the stranger spoke of the lawless depredators with whom the country, in that day of Macheaths, was infested.

"A pack of infamous rascals!" said he, in a glow; "who attempt to justify their misdeeds by the example of honest men; and who say, that they do no more than is done by lawyers and

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88 And, ere falt'ring noon wings itself

To shadow peaks and portals bright

That scyle veiled augueries of Hell,

An agate light arrays this sea,

Each glabrous fay sports with an elf,

A one-eyed owl blinks at the light,

A green-horned toad croaks from a well.

Then pageantries fade in the gloom:

'Mid Cyclopean storms unstunned

Dank treasure-houses spill their quest

And march with thunder from far West;

Whilst lightning flashes skirr the noon,

Giant moans ascend from shoals unsunned,

The turf, Tartarus' coals of rest—

Helots to the haunts of Sin's crest—

Whereon jimp jinn ride to hell's mouth,

The silence stir with oaths of might;

Vile dragons roar at a zimb's sting;

A swarthy gump leers at the damn'd:

All soom to mountains of the South

Where sultry winds war with the light,


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252 doctors, soldiers, clergymen, and ministers of state. Pitiful delusion, or rather, shameless hypocrisy!"

"It all comes of educating the poor," said the Doctor. "The moment they pretend to judge the conduct of their betters—there's an end of all order! They see nothing sacred in the laws, though we hang the dogs ever so fast; and the very peers of the land, spiritual and temporal, cease to be venerable in their eyes."

"Talking of peers," said Mrs. Slopperton, "I hear that Lord Mauleverer is to pass by this road to-night, on his way to Mauleverer Park. Do you know his Lordship, Miss Lucy? he is very intimate with your uncle."

"I have only seen him once," answered Lucy.

"Are you sure that his Lordship will come this road?" asked the stranger, carelessly: "I heard something of it this morning, but did not know it was settled."

"Oh, quite so!" rejoined Mrs. Slopperton. "His Lordship's gentleman wrote for post-horses to meet his Lordship at Wyburn, about three miles on the other side of the village, at ten o'clock

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Rh And zanies' voices rise to sing,

Hosannah to the idol's stand,

Where azure-censers' fumes enhance

The pomps, adverse to Sorrow's home.

Figent hydras squat on each throne,

Mute souls peer at the altar's flame

As phantom images do dance

In honour of this Hybrid's zone,

Bred in this gorce by some strange gnome,

Sib to him who plays Satan's game.

A Cesspool vext with leprous stench

And oils—A sign that spells a curse!

Visioned with Temples' diamonds bright

In domes as guide to those whose cry

Of fear, sprung from a wench's bench,

Lure all to this strange shore, adverse

To moonlit skies. By the ghaut's light,

(Ten-thousand furlongs wide and high)

The gaud, spun from sorcerers' art,

Reveals its part unto each soul—


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Rh to-night. His Lordship is very impatient of delay."

"Pray," said the Doctor, who had not much heeded this turn in the conversation, and was now 'on hospitable cares intent;'—"Pray, Sir, if not impertinent, are you visiting, or lodging in the neighbourhood; or, will you take a bed with us?"

"You are extremely kind, my dear Sir, but I fear I must soon wish you good evening. I have to look after a little property I have some miles hence, which, indeed, brought me down into this part of the world."

"Property—in what direction, Sir, if I may ask?" quoth the Doctor; "I know the country for miles."

"Do you, indeed?—where's my property, you say? Why, it is rather difficult to describe it, and it is, after all, a mere trifle; it is only some common-land near the high-road, and I came down to try the experiment of hedging and draining."

"'Tis a good plan, if one has capital, and does not require a speedy return."

"Yes; but one likes a good interest for the loss of principle, and a speedy return is always

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90 Imperishable signs of groans

That time nor cyclones can eschew.

No lulling lanes point to a mart,

No tidings good their billows roll;

In fretful haunts where Sorrow moans,

Swarm souls in Penance's rasping pew:

Disastrous sights of Torture's dome!

Red-embered coals that burn their feet

And reeking pools, vile with odours,

Make monstrous this blood-crimson vale.

Where demon-lovers chew a bone

As men and women choak in heat,

And blood-veinéd sights writhe in vapours—

Eternal shadows in each gale!

To groves where stiliness sat supreme,

Flee seers in quest of lagging rest:

To regions where giant echos roar,

Haste begotten sons in this lair:

There man-born wrecks lie down and dream

Of sea-winds that foam-billows bless'd,


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254 ; although, alas! it is often attended with risk!"

"I hope, Sir," said the Doctor, "if you must leave us so soon, that your property will often bring you into our neighbourhood."

"You overpower me with so much unexpected goodness," answered the stranger. "To tell you the truth, nothing can give me greater pleasure, than to meet those again who have once obliged me."

"Whom you have obliged, rather!" cried Mrs. Slopperton, and then added, in a loud whisper to Lucy—"How modest! but it is always so with true courage!"

"I assure you, Madam," returned the benevolent stranger, "that I never think twice of the little favours I render my fellow men—my only hope is, that they may be as forgetful as myself."

Charmed with so much unaffected goodness of disposition, the Doctor and Mrs. Slopperton now set up a sort of duet in praise of their guest: after enduring their commendations and compliments for some minutes with much grimace of disavowal and diffidence, the stranger's modesty

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Rh Of auric realms where censers pour

Violaceous fumes thro' the air.

And in the deep-hued depths of gore,

(Blind bowels in Betelguese's hold)

Gyte vandals that a Dragon bore

Sleep with one eye as Midnight rules

These sons of Circe whom pyres adore;

Their thoughts vie with the luring fold,

Each sleepless orb glares like a boar—

Infernal hounds of shambling ghouls!

Porphyry mounts where crystals glare—

Twin carcants strung on idols' thighs

Whereon stones, blaze like fire bright,

And moonstones add their silver sheen,

A Circean draught, boiled in the air,

Is poured on cippus where Set lies;

Where vanquished Soldans sleep each night,

A greenish fungus-torch doth gleam.

Giant battles have been fought in hell,

Principalities rot in dust,

The tombs of kings speak of the past


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Rh seemed at last to take pain at the excess of their gratitude; and accordingly, pointing to the clock, which was within a few minutes of nine, he said,

"I fear, my respected host, and my admired hostess, that I must now leave you; I have far to go."

"But are you yourself not afraid of the highwaymen?" cried Mrs. Slopperton, interrupting him.

"The highwaymen!" said the stranger, smiling, "No! I do not fear them; besides, I have little about me worth robbing."

"Do you superintend your property yourself?" said the Doctor; who farmed his own glebe, and who, unwilling to part with so charming a guest, seized him now by the button.

"Superintend it myself!—why, not exactly. There is a bailiff, whose views of things don't agree with mine, and who now and then gives me a good deal of trouble!"

"Then why don't you discharge him altogether."

"Ah! I wish I could: but 'tis a necessary evil. We landed proprietors, my dear Sir, must always

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92 When Incubi reigned with a rod.

Unnumberéd bones adorn each dell—

Where Rulers lie there stands a bust;

Blood-stainéd the hands of him whose task

Is blasting varlets like a god.

And when some spirit stalks thro' space

In quest of vaults—Temporal lees!

Treads in the grandeur of dank hell,

A batter'd shape that shakes its frame,

Spacious regions Courage chase,

Winds drive it to Misery's seas,

Laughs ascend from sequesteréd well,

Thro' shadows vague it hears its shame.

And tomb-thrown groans and sighs we hear—

Tho' midnight's near and afrite's sleep:

An Owl, perturbéd at some strange sound,

Scares bats in space and wings for domes.

All signs of woe hath flown with fear,

No maidens heave their breasts and weep,

All wrecks of Flesh lie on the ground,

Removed from shoals where Terror moans.


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 between thick coals of the best quality. It appears to me to have been taken from near the outcrop, or at a little depth from the air. No woody, earthy, or sedimentary matter occurs in this sample, and although far less valuable than Nos. 1 and 2 (samples from another part of the colony), yet it is quite equal to much of the coal used on the North German railways, and is (although inferior) a true coal—measure coal, and not a lignite. No evidence of the ligneous structure could be observed under the microscope. It is to be regretted that such very small samples of coal were furnished for examination. Larger pieces would have been much more satisfactory to study."

On the evening of the third day, after passing the Carnamah lakes, which contain large salt deposits, we reached the farmhouse of a Mr. Long, where, as everywhere else along the road, we were hospitably accommodated with sleeping quarters and the best the larder afforded. Here Mr. Kellett, the Company's mineralogist, left us, and Mr. Stafford, the Company's engineer, and I went forward in Mr. Keane's buggy. The driver of the latter amused me by his racy converse as we all sat down at the common table to tea. He was talking of having overtaken a Chinaman whilst crossing the dreary sand plain alone in the buggy earlier in the day. Apologising for the momentary weakness, he confessed that he had at first thought of offering him a "lift," but at once said to himself, "No, you nasty beast; I'd see you hanged first." I asked him if the man had been an aboriginal instead of a Mongolian whether his decision would have been any different, and he confessed it would. This will illustrate how deep-rooted in the minds of the "bone and sinew" of this country is the hatred of the "yellow agony." There is not much love lost in the feelings with which the working class regard the "niggers," as they call the natives; but the slightly more humanitarian light in which they are viewed is due to the existence of a sneaking remembrance that the latter are the original owners of the soil and the whites themselves only interlopers.


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256 be plagued with something of the sort. For my part, I have found those cursed bailiffs would take away, if they could, all the little property one has been trying to accumulate. But," abruptly changing his manner into one of great softness, "could I not proffer my services and my companionship to this young lady? Would she allow me to conduct her home, and, indeed, stamp this day upon my memory, as one of the few delightful ones I have ever known?"

"Thank you, dear Sir," said Mrs. Slopperton, answering at once for Lucy; "it is very considerate of you; and I am sure, my love, I could not think of letting you go home alone with old John, after such an adventure to the poor dear Doctor."

Lucy began an excuse which the good lady would not hear. But as the servant whom Mr. Brandon was to send with a lantern to attend his daughter home, had not arrived, and as Mrs. Slopperton, despite her prepossessions in favour of her husband's deliverer, did not for a moment contemplate his accompanying, without any other attendance, her young friend across the fields at

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Rh that unseasonable hour; the stranger was forced, for the present, to re-assume his seat; an open harpsichord at one end of the room, gave him an opportunity to make some remark upon music, and this introducing an eulogium on Lucy's voice, from Mrs. Slopperton, necessarily ended in a request to Miss Brandon to indulge the stranger with a song. Never had Lucy, who was not a shy girl—she was too innocent to be bashful—felt nervous hitherto in singing before a stranger; but now, she hesitated and faltered, and went through a whole series of little natural affectations before she complied with the request. She chose a song composed somewhat after the old English school, which at that time was reviving into fashion. The song though conveying a sort of conceit, was not, perhaps, altogether without tenderness;—it was a favourite with Lucy, she scarcely knew why, and ran thus:—

Why sleep, ye flowers, ah, why, When the sweet eve is falling, And the stars drink the tender sigh Of winds to the fairies calling?

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Rh On skulls that some in Death hath left,

Croak toads to lizards in a well;

In cajons that the Ancient's digged,

Swim snakes that hiss at burning oils:

And bats and owls that offal cleft,

Proclaim their burdens to a dell,

Whilst crafts that some strange witch hath rigged,

Bring slaves unto this Cesspool's coils.

When carcants gleam like scarlet foam,

And hiss of pyres froth at each light

In dongas vext as jazels flare

From splinter'd tombs of Kings in dust,

A straggling mist that cleft Hell's dome,

Peers at the gloom and strobic sight

Of charnel shard as vypers blare

Wrathfully at each Monarch's bust.

And doleful dirges rake the gloom,

A whisper'd sin sobs at the wrecks;

Graven imps clasp papyrus old


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 XVI.

were now nearing the great Benedictine settlement at "New Norcia," and were reminded of the fact on the fourth day by reaching one of the out-stations of the great central establishment at Marah. Here we were kindly received by the one "father," who directs the operations of the lay brethren employed in sheep-tending in this portion of the vast pastoral estate, held in fee or on lease by the Lord High Abbot, Bishop Salvado, on behalf of the community, which is composed exclusively of Spanish and a very few Italian monks and lay brethren—the latter being largely in the majority. It was Friday, and, of course, a fast-day, so the brethren were obliged to restrict their hospitalities to some tinned salmon and a plenteous mass of stewed lentils, followed by some excellent fresh figs and pomegranates, and a dish of dried almonds locally grown. All were served in tin dishes, and the modest beer we had also to imbibe out of the common or garden "pannikin." None of the wine for which New Norcia is famous appeared to have found cellarage at Marah, or perhaps it was not de règle to produce it on a fast-day. With our refreshed horses, for whom it was no fast, we bowled steadily along to Mr. H. B. Lefroy's station at Wale or Welbing, which we reached shortly after dusk, and were very hospitably received by Mrs. Lefroy, who comes of the well-known Western Australian family of Wittenoom. And here it may be remarked that entertainment for man and beast is a due which every traveller claims as of


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94 And rant each Body's deeds of shame.

Come from a dank and sunken womb

All stranded ghouls on keels and decks

Where Cyclops fought as Vellum told

In cyphers bright, sprung from each flame,

Make hideous eyes at the night.

And terrors that Tartarus bred

Assail each kingdom treblefold:

A gangrel clan that someone flayed,

Skirr thro' the dungeoned halls in flight

And seek the caverns of the dead.

Where tapers gleam like virgin gold

The tombs of dead queens are arrayed:

There, too, a witch unfurls her cowl

And scans the shambling hordes to curse,

And with the light that cyclones split,

She juggles secrets of her lust,

And hurls her voice at Néphele's owl,

Past portals dark, where harlots nurse

Their skinless limbs that Torture bit,

And stamps her feet into the dust


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258 Calling with plaining note, Most like a ringdove chiding, Or a flute from some distant boat O'er the glass of a still sea gliding.

Why sleep, ye flowers, ah, why, What time we most must miss you? Like a bride, see, the loving sky, From your churlish sleep would kiss you.

Soft things, the dew, the breeze, All soft things, are about you; Awake, fair flowers, for scarcely these Fill the yearning sense without you!

Wake ye not yet? Alas! The silver time is fleeing! —Fond idler, cease! those flowers but glass The doom of thy changeless being!

Yea, ever when the hours As now seem the divinest, Thou callest, I know, on some sleeping flowers. And finding no answer—pinest!

When Lucy ended, the stranger's praise was less loud than either the Doctor's or his lady's; but how far more sweet it was; and for the first time in her life Lucy made the discovery, that eyes can praise as well as lips. For our part, we have often thought that that discovery is an epoch in life.

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 right, and which every rural householder concedes as of course, throughout the whole scantily peopled, wide-stretching realm of Western Australia. The custom is not often subjected to abuse, but it is open to it. On the other hand, in these out-of-the-way locations, a visitor from the outside world is a godsend to the pastoral exile, and if five out of every ten prove bores they are endurable for the sake of the other five who make themselves entertaining by their intelligence or their idiosyncrasies. It was indeed a joy to sit once more at a brightly set flower adorned table, and to luxuriate in the comforts of a downy bed and well-furnished English-like bedchamber. Our host, whom we met further along the road on his return home, is a grand nephew of that doughty old Lord Chief Justice of Ireland who, long after he was an octogenarian, held on to his office, in order that the privilege of appointing his successor might not fall to the lot of the Liberals whom his soul loathed. An inscribed cup in the dining- room showed that he had been "first in the mile" at Rugby as far back as 1870. We were thus in the midst of bush surroundings tempered by a pleasant admixture of English traditions.

The next morning we tore ourselves away from pleasant Welbing, and a little after midday found ourselves at the gates of the far-famed monastery of New Norcia, where Bishop Salvado for more than forty years past has conducted the most successful mission to the aborigines which exists in any part of Australia. The cruciform church and the brick monastery, with its wooden wings, its swarthy brethren, and its groves of oranges and almonds, loomed up before us like a piece of old Spain in this shrineless land. The abbot himself—a veritable "gentleman of Spain"—walked slowly across the courtyard to welcome us to his domain. With his whiskers and moustache and everyday style of dress he looked very little of the ecclesiastic, and still less of the mitred abbot of the Protestant imagination. Courteously entreating us, we were very shortly seated in his modest sanctum drinking of the home-made wine and eating of the home-dried almonds which are the speciality of the establishment. Guest-chambers having been assigned to us, the good bishop, who bears his eighty years better than


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Rh As, into olpes she pours a tear:

And, musing at the clouds of gloom,

She wrinkles face and lifts her hands

To mutter words unto the night.

Whereon a ghoul-king hath writ Fear,

And changes gloom to purple bloom,

The shoals to opal-sanded strands

That reach, past wrecks to crystal light,

Where mossy vales with poppies bloom,

And hastes her flight from Terror's urn,

To onyx seas where agates glow,

And feats her eyes on woes of hell,

Upon the foam-dreams of king Doom,

Where monsters in red cauldrons burn,

'Mid shrieks that from their vitals flow

With airs that rasp each bone-strewn dell.

And sea-linkt skies of charnel black—

A savage dome! streaked scarlet red,

Where maids for demon lovers mourn;

And caskets spew a dusky foam

That quench the thirst of yon lone wrack


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Rh It was now that Mrs. Slopperton declared her thorough conviction that the stranger himself could sing—"He had that about him," she said, "which made her sure of it."

"Indeed, dear Madam," said he, with his usual undefinable, half-frank, half-latent smile, "my voice is but so so, and my memory so indifferent, that even in the easiest passages, I soon come to a stand. My best notes are in the falsetto, and as for my execution—but we won't talk of that."

"Nay, nay; you are so modest," said Mrs. Slopperton; "I am sure you could oblige us if you would."

"Your command," said the stranger, moving to the harpsichord, "is all-sufficient; and since you, Madam," (turning to Lucy,) "have chosen a song after the old school, may I find pardon if I do the same? My selection is, to be sure, from a lawless song-book, and is supposed to be a ballad by Robin Hood, or, at least, one of his merry men; a very different sort of outlaws from the knaves who attacked you, Sir!"

With this preface, the stranger sung to a wild

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96 That holds the sultry, naked dead,

Who caught the eyes of waves forlorn,

Now bathed in blood in Hecate's home.

There garnet wrought and purple lights

Shine thro' poisoned vials of age

On churning pomps of casements old,

Where, when lofty aisles and halls

Ring rich with tenor runes in nights

Made solemn by a hoary sage

With darkling eyes that gleam like gold,

A prowling vandal storms the walls,

Nursed with dank venom broths and oils.

A blood-shot minx hunts for a man;

In stys and broken pyxs she peers

For him who ruined her honour, soul;

A harlot doomed in clinging coils

That now her longings curse and damn,

Squats on a skull and pulls her ears:

Or, just when she finds her life-goal,—

A cow'ring cur hid from the sight


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Rh Beneath a putrid mount of bone,

And tombs grow dank as rising sun

Makes red each dragon in the West,

She splits his heart and rasps with might,

A curse that rides the surging foam,

A message that this dastard son

Dies longing for a fatal quest—

Surcease of soul and conscience lost!

Then rants she sins unto each tomb

That sweat the lusts of those in dust,

And scarlet foam and hiss of oils

That her black deed to domes hath tossed,

Break into writhing life and bloom

As iron crowns and ceptres rust

Of fall'n monarchs crossed in coils.

Anear, two carcants glare like gold;

Afar, a ruby's light of red

Straggles thro' the pellicléd mist,

And to its vinewed dell haste I,

To catch the fleeting whispers told

To marble-lamps and head-stones, said,


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 common mortals bear sixty, showed us over the garden, with its acres of vines, its golden orange and lemon trees, its flourishing tobacco plants, which supply snuff to the brethren, and its wealth of various kinds of healthy vegetables. Wheat cultivation is carried on over a large area, but the sheep are the mainstay of the mission, the wool-money supplying funds for the purchase of clothing, farming utensils, and other things which are not producible on the spot. Horse-breeding is also found profitable. There are a score or so of married aborigines about the place, each of whom is provided with a separate cottage and paid an average wage of £1 a week. Having full liberty to leave when they like, they rarely or never exercise the privilege, and the mere threat of banishment is nearly always enough to restore them to order in cases when they display a disposition to be refractory. Besides these married couples there are a number of orphans and foundlings at the mission, the sexes being housed separately and taught useful trades and handicrafts, as well as the usual rudiments of secular and religious education. There are about 120 natives at the mission of all ages, and the tillage of the young minds and of the far-spreading lands of the community is carried on by about half-a-dozen fathers and seventy lay brethren, nearly all drawn from sunny Spain. One wonders what can have been the influence which made them give up country and home and every hope of domestic joys to settle in a strange land, under stringent rules, and with nothing in the way of remuneration for a life of unremitting toil beyond a bare subsistence, the least possible amount of sleep, and only the absolutely necessary modicum of bodily raiment. If one could be convinced that this life of sacrifice had been of practical avail, one would feel less grudging of its cost in narrowed lives and depleted human sympathies. But though I have spoken of the New Norcia Mission as being the most successful ever established in Australia, the expression really means very little, especially when one regards Bishop Salvado's attempt as the high-water mark of what has been done to civilise and regenerate the remnant of the dispossessed race. He has certainly been the means of a few families who might otherwise have gone to the


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260 yet jovial air, with a tolerable voice, the following effusion:—

On the stream of the World, the Robber's life Is borne on the blithest wave; Now it bounds into light in a gladsome strife, Now it laughs in its hiding cave.

At his maiden's lattice he stays the rein, How still is his courser proud! (But still as a wind when it hangs o'er the main In the breast of the boding cloud)—

With the champèd bit and the archèd crest, And the eye of a listening deer, And the spirit of fire that pines at its rest, And the limbs that laugh at fear.

Fit slave to a Lord whom all else refuse To save at his desperate need; By my troth! I think one whom the world pursues, Hath a right to a gallant steed.

"Away, my beloved, I hear their feet!" "I blow thee a kiss, my fair, And I promise to bring thee, when next we meet, A braid for thy bonny hair.

"Hurra! for the booty!—my Steed, hurra! Thorough bush, thorough brake go we; And the coy Moon smiles on our merry way, Like my own love—timidly."

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98 By demon-husbands as I list,

To hold each mongrel harlot's sigh.

There, then, in tatter'd rags and hair,

Coarse-grained of features once so fine,

She spews her evil wrath and rage

Into the wriggling hands and face

Of him who lifts his voice to swear

A curse that stirs the air, whose time

(Tho' to king Satan speeds a page)

Hath come as Vengeance wins the race.

When crimson skies and stellor eyes

Swathed palace domes and turrets strong,

Her lips kiss'd mine, and mine did hers,

Ere evil smote her virgin soul.

And livid lights of bleeding dyes

(Whenas she prods him with her prong)

Make terrible her words so terse

That brands this scoundrel on this shoal.

And mutt'ring quick a ghastly oath

As turgid mists veil shadows vague,

She plucks his lying tongue that stole


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Rh Her husband's love and honour old,

And smites him stark and cold, tho' loath,

It peers to me her demon-ague

That binds her to this perjured soul,

She drinks his gore from carvels cold

And leers with fiendish lips at him,

Now tossed in phosphorescent holes.

And as I list to aspen cries,

Veiled augueries in vapours hie

And spell these tokens to each Inn:

Kingdoms, empires, nations, souls,

Shall miss the haunts of Paradise,

And in Subjection, crumbling, lie.

And when the regions, wrapped in light

By pillared dreams and pomps supreme

As curses stir the charnel air

That hide dank caverns deep and bold,

A battling monster smites the night

As lepers wink their orbs and dream

Of maidens that the men forswear,

Of templed vaults now stiff in cold.


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 bad living in comparative decency and happiness according to European ideas. But upon the mass of the genuine aborigines throughout the country the Benedictine Mission has prod11ced no more effect than if it had never existed. The little leaven has not leavened the whole lump. The New Norcia aborigines are mostly half-castes already, and will become more so as time goes on, and either be absorbed into the mass of the population or die out altogether. Upon the genuine aboriginal of the bush the Church has gained no hold through any efforts of Bishop Salvado. The Christianisation of the natives as natives has proved a complete failure, and it might seem that the Bishop had been merely beating the air all through his forty years of travail in the West Australian wilds. But it is at least something to have lifted the banner of the higher life, and to have lived it, too, all through these long years and amidst these rough surroundings, as rough almost for the pioneering whites as for the expatriated blacks. Hardly a West Australian exists who does not know Bishop Salvado, and the stranger who comes into the country must be a stranger indeed if he does not hear of him within the first week of his arrival. In his regard sectarian intolerance has absolutely no existence, and the most puritan Protestant unites with the most pious Catholic in extolling his virtues, and belauding his hospitality, which is extended without question to every visitor of whatever rank, race, or religion. Taking him all in all he may be regarded as the most striking individuality who has ever held episcopal rank in the Roman Catholic Church in Australia. Men of greater ability there have been, but none have impressed themselves in the same manner on the popular imagination. His powers of organisation must be very great, as, though at one time large subsidies came from Spain, the community, with its couple of hundred or so of regular inmates and its hundreds of yearly guests, is now virtually self-supporting; and this despite the fact that the Bishop has learned farming, as he did the English language, as he went along, and without any previous training or experience.

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Rh The Parson he rides with a jingling pouch, How it blabs of the rifled poor! The Courtier he lolls in his gilded coach, How it smacks of a sinecure!

The Lawyer revolves in his whirling chaise Sweet thoughts of a mischief done; And the Lady that knoweth the card she plays Is counting her guineas won!

"Ho, Lady!—What, hollo, ye sinless men! My claim ye can scarce refuse; For when honest folk live on their neighbours, then They encroach on the Robber's dues!"

The Lady changed cheek like a bashful maid, The Lawyer talk'd wondrous fair, The Parson blasphemed, and the Courtier pray'd. And the Robber bore off his share.

"Hurra! for the revel! my steed, hurra! Thorough bush, thorough brake go we! It is ever a virtue when others pay To ruffle it merrily!"

Oh! there never was life like the Robber's—so Jolly, and bold, and free; And it'sits [sic] end?—why, a cheer from the crowd below, And a leap from a leafless tree!

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100 And when a dim, unholy tomb,

Wreathes odours damp and vapours strong—

Heirs of the Doomed! as savage domes

Drip palsied sweat and carnal howls

Assail the stationed halls of gloom,

Where imps and devils march along

Beside a monarch's crumbling bones

As witches don their filthy cowls

And rant their sins thro' whistling halls,

Shake women fists at fleeing souls

And wail for bâtard children dead;

Whilst quickly from the burning dust

Ascends an oath that storms the walls

And rasps the distant mounts and shoals

Until each pyre glows scarlet red,

Each idol leers with wicked lust.

Forth from rubies flare scented fumes

As beacons glare and bubbles hiss

To crimson strands and altars' glow

Of burning oils in carvels deep,

Where; when Torture's bloody dome looms


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 of Spain, one of his brothers filling the much more delicate position of confessor to Queen Isabella. I fancied that there must have been some life-tragedy or love trouble at the bottom of Bishop Salvado's self-abnegation. But he assured me that it was no single sorrow or disappointment that had driven him to assume the cowl, but simply a general impression of the world's hollowness, derived from the contemplation of the social hypocrisies pervading the class amongst which he moved and to which he belonged. Once having taken the leap, the desire for self-immolation grew upon him, and all he asked his superiors was to send him amongst the heathen, a desire which was gratified by his being despatched to Western Australia in 1845, his sojourn in the wilds having lasted for forty years. He was at one time nominally Bishop of Port Victoria; but finding his lot cast at a distance from his proper official location, he asked leave to resign, and is now only Bishop of Adrana in partibus. He has, however, been "Abbot nullius" since 1867. The next day (Sunday) was the anniversary of the consecration of the church, Saturday being a fast-day; but, contrary to our experience at Marah, we were not called on to fast with the brethren, and greatly enjoyed some wild ducks with which the good Bishop plied our plates, though only eating bread himself. In the evening vespers were celebrated at the church, and I stood outside with Bishop Salvado listening to the singing; the deep voices of the brethren and the nasal quavering tones of the natives diffusing themselves through the darkness with a weird but softening effect. Far away in the wilds of this new land we were listening to the symphonies of Christian antiquity—the old wine put into new bottles—with a result strangely combining pathos and in harmony. There was a resigned pessimism about the Bishop's talk which made me think that he was not wholly unconscious of the comparative futility of his work, and he could not think much of his converts when he repudiated so strongly the idea of their ministering at the altars of a Church whose chief charm lies in the extraordinary universality of its functionaries. We left first thing on Sunday morning, but, early as it was, breakfast was provided, and the good Bishop was at the gate to wish us a safe journey. I shall


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262 This very moral lay being ended, Mrs. Slopperton declared it was excellent; though she confessed she thought the sentiments rather loose. Perhaps the gentleman might be induced to favour them with a song of a more refined and modern turn—something sentimental, in short. Glancing towards Lucy, the stranger answered, that he only knew one song of the kind Mrs. Slopperton specified, and it was so short, that he should scarcely weary her patience by granting her request.

At this moment, the river, which was easily descried from the windows of the room, glimmered in the starlight, and directing his looks towards the water, as if the scene had suggested to him the verses he sung, he gave the following stanzas in a very low sweet tone, and with a far purer taste than, perhaps, would have suited the preceding and ruder song.

As sleeps the dreaming Eve below, Its holiest star keeps ward above, And yonder wave begins to glow, Like Friendship bright'ning into Love!

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Rh Cold as shambling shapes of men kiss

Trembling women before the show,

Wraiths point to where their daughters weep.

To lie in vaults and chambers cold

'Mid tombs that ghouls in hatred wrought!

To sleep in dank Subjection's shard

'Mid hanuts of purple sins and shales

A Thirst gyre! as bleak, untold,

As ever haunted woman sought

For incubi on scented sward

As bleary owls and vulpine wails

Rake stationed nights and seas forlorn,

Until, when star-linkt domes are red,

And Oceans' shells and sands grow white,

Dusky isles and lights—Twins of the Gloom!

Betray each soul cursed and forsworn;

Or awed, at Twilights' scarlet bed,

When nightshades blot the conjured light

As javels vomit death and doom,

Dank vapours veil the seaward flight


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 never forget this mild-mannered man, with his collected demeanour and restrained smile, without sentiment and without fanaticism, resignedly doing his duty without doubts or remorses, but with no particularly high-pitched enthusiasms of any sort to illumine the path of his life-sacrifice.

By midday we were amongst the navvies again, the line being in a forward state, a good many miles north of Gingin. The tents have a picturesque look, but the life is a rough one. The navvy is a nomadic animal, with very little turn towards settlement and domesticity, and the amateurs imported from home soon fall into the wandering ways of the old colonial hands. The wages seem good—1s. an hour for an eight hours day, with occasionally a good deal more for overtime. Most of the men live in tents, and get their meals at the boarding houses which spring up like mushrooms along the line. For these meals, which are plentiful if rough, they pay £1 a week, so that they have 28s. a week left for clothes and drink, on which the balance too often goes. There is, however, a fair sprinkling of saving men, many of whom "batch" for themselves, as they call it. The difficulty is in getting supplies at reasonable rates, the contractor's underlings having a virtual monopoly of the importations, and a species of truck system thus comes into vogue. This had become so much of a grievance that soon after my visit the men struck, on the plea that their wages were not high enough with the exorbitant prices ruling for provisions.

With just a few more general observations I will have done with the Midland Railway Company, which I take as my text simply because its career is yet virgin before it, not a single acre of its vast concession having yet been alienated. It has, therefore, the proud opportunity of proving that the much-abused land grant railway system may minister to national development in superior proportion to individual profit. It is very much to the interest of the Government to keep this and other companies of the kind in the right way, as they are likely to become an intolerable evil, and to form a sort of imperium in imperio, which would overshadow even the Executive, unless they are encouraged, nay, compelled, to retail their lands with all possible


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 promptitude to a yeoman proprietary. With regard to the Company's territory (and, of course, this applies to the adjacent Government land), the poison-plant has got very slight hold of it, and with the exception of the sheep-worrying native dog, whose existence necessitates a little extra expense in wire  fencing, there are no natural pests of any importance to interfere with the farmer's prosperity. The rainfall is sufficient, even with the carelessness with regard to its conservation which now prevails. Water can also be got at a shallow depth by digging, and there are numerous natural springs which the Government, with culpable negligence, has in many cases allowed private owners to monopolise by the purchase of small strips of land around them. This may some day prove a serious obstacle to popular settlement on the public lands, as the run holders no doubt designed that it should be, and at a future date the resumption of springs may have to be enforced in the national interest. The rabbit has not yet got any foothold in Western Australia, though he is said to be slowly burrowing his way across the South Australian border. In any case, he has a vast desert to luxuriate in before he touches the settled districts of Western Australia. Here I may ad d that settlers taking up farms in the Irwin, Strawberry, and Victoria plains districts, which I traversed, have plenty of room for expansion eastward, where there is a vast area of good sheep country, with the drawback, of course, of an uncertain rainfall. The existing settlers in the districts named manage to do well with flocks "eastward," so that with improved methods of water conservation, the future settler may expect to do still better if he has capital enough to adopt a policy of pastoral extension in addition to the less ambitious pursuits of agriculture. English and artificial grasses are almost unknown in Western Australia, and the majority of the settlers say that "they won't do" there, but this is a superstition which time and "new blood" will dissipate, with the result of revolutionising the grazing and dairying industries in the colony.

I daresay the very mention of the "sand plain," to which I have often had occasion to refer, will damp the pioneering ardour of some of my readers; so I will just quote from the


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Rh Ah! would thy bosom were that stream, Ne'er woo'd save by the virgin air! Ah! would I were that star, whose beam Looks down and finds its image there!

Scarcely was the song ended, before the arrival of Miss Brandon's servant was announced, and her destined escort starting up, gallantly assisted her with her cloak and her hood, happy, no doubt, to escape, in some measure, the overwhelming compliments of his entertainers.

"But," said the Doctor, as he shook hands with his deliverer, "by what name shall I remember and"—(lifting his reverend eyes)—"pray for the gentleman to whom I am so much indebted?"

"You are very kind," said the stranger; "my name is Clifford. Madam," (turning to Lucy,) "may I offer my hand down the stairs?"

Lucy accepted the courtesy, and the stranger was half-way down the staircase, when the Doctor, stretching out his little neck, exclaimed,

"Good evening, Sir! I do hope we shall meet again."

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264 "Fear not," said Mr. Clifford, laughing gaily, "I am too great a traveller to make that hope a matter of impossibility.—Take care, Madam—one step more."

The night was calm and tolerably clear, though the moon had not yet risen, as Lucy and her companion passed through the fields, with the servant preceding them at a little distance with the lantern.

After a pause of some length, Clifford said, with a little hesitation, "Is Miss Brandon related to the celebrated barrister of her name?"

"He is my uncle," said Lucy; "do you know him?"

"Only your uncle?" said Clifford, with vivacity, and evading Lucy's question—"I feared—hem!—hem!—that is, I thought he might have been a nearer relation." There was another, but a shorter pause, when Clifford resumed, in a low voice, "Will Miss Brandon think me very presumptuous if I say, that a countenance like her's, once seen, can never be forgotten; and I believe, some years since, I had the honour to see her in

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Rh London, at the theatre. It was but a momentary and distant glance that I was then enabled to gain; and yet," he added, significantly, "it sufficed!"

"I was only once at the theatre while in London, some years ago," said Lucy, a little embarrassed; "and, indeed, an unpleasant occurrence which happened to my uncle, with whom I was, is sufficient to make me remember it."

"Ha!—and what was it?"

"Why, in going out of the playhouse, his watch was stolen by some dexterous pickpocket."

"Was the rogue caught?" asked the stranger.

"Yes; and was sent the next day to Bridewell. My uncle said he was extremely young, and yet quite hardened. I remember that I was foolish enough, when I heard of his sentence, to beg very hard that my uncle would intercede for him; but in vain."

"Did you, indeed, intercede for him?" said the stranger, in so earnest a tone that Lucy coloured for the twentieth time that night, without seeing any necessity for the blush. Clifford continued in

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 evidence given before the Royal Commission a. single expression of opinion on the subject, and also on the matter of "mixed farming." Mr. Oliver, a farmer of twelve years' standing on the Lockyer River, was asked, "Do you think that the sand plain country here could be utilised for corn-growing?" and his reply was, "I have broken up some poor sand-plain country, and got twelve bushels to the acre off it; I believe I am the only one who has tried it in the district. It was in a dry season; I rather fancy it would be too cold in a wet season. It was simply £allowed out of the bush, and the yield was as I say." "Then you think," the chairman asked him, "that there is some good even in the sand plains?" "I think a great deal of them," was his reply, "especially for fruit growing. It is this yellow sand which seems to suit fruit growing. There is plenty of this kind of land alongside all the flats." I need hardly say that with 15,000,000 of acres to choose from, the Company will take as much of the good agricultural land and leave the Government as much of the sand as possible. Still, despite all their efforts, they will have to take a certain proportion of sand plain, and I only quote Mr. Oliver to show that even then the case is not so utterly desperate.

With regard to "mixed farming," a witness named Maley was amusingly emphatic. "They say," was his response to a question on the subject, "that the farmer is the backbone of the colony; but I say that if he does nothing else than grow wheat there will soon be nothing left of him but his backbone. Unless he goes in for mixed farming, unless he goes in for stock, he may as well give up the ghost. That's my opinion." I may add that the Midland Railway Company have got 154 miles of their railway open for traffic, or more than half of the whole length, and they expect to get the balance in working trim by the end of June next. The selection of the vast area accruing to the Company, about 3,540,000 acres, has been completed, and embraces an area of country such as probably forms the finest agricultural territory, possessed by one interest, in the whole of Australia. The surveys have been rapidly pushed forward, and the end of last year saw the plans of


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266 a gayer tone, "Well, it is surprising how rogues hang together. I should not be greatly surprised if the person who despoiled your uncle, were one of the same gang as the rascal who so terrified your worthy friend the Doctor. But is this handsome old place, your home?"

"This is my home," answered Lucy; "but it is an old-fashioned, strange place; and few people, to whom it was not endeared by associations, would think it handsome."

"Pardon me!" said Lucy's companion, stopping, and surveying, with a look of great interest, the quaint and Elizabethan pile, which now stood close before them; its dark bricks, gable-ends, and ivied walls, tinged by the starry light of the skies, and contrasted by the river, which rolled in silence below. The shutters to the large oriel window of the room, in which the Squire usually sat, were still unclosed, and the steady and warm light of the apartment shone forth, casting a glow, even to the smooth waters of the river: at the same moment, too, the friendly bark of the house-dog was heard, as in welcome; and was followed by the note of the great bell, announcing the hour

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Rh for the last meal of the old-fashioned and hospitable family.

"There is a pleasure in this!" said the stranger, unconsciously, and with a half-sigh: "I wish I had a home!"

"And have you not a home?" said Lucy, with naïveté.

"As much as a bachelor can have, perhaps," answered Clifford, recovering without an effort his gaiety and self-possession. "But you know we wanderers are not allowed the same boast as the more fortunate Benedicts; we send our hearts in search of a home, and we lose the one without gaining the other. But I keep you in the cold, and we are now at your door."

"You will come in, of course!" said Miss Brandon, "and partake of our evening cheer."

The stranger hesitated for an instant, and then said in a quick tone.

"No! many—many thanks; it is already late. Will Miss Brandon accept my gratitude for her condescension, in permitting the attendance of one unknown to her?" As he thus spoke, Clifford bowed profoundly over the hand of his beautiful

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 nearly a million acres in the hands of the Western Australia Land Department, the preliminary to the issue of certificates of title.

In the evening of the same day on which we quitted the Benedictine monastery we reached Gingin, which is an agricultural township forty-eight miles from New Norcia and fifty-four miles from Perth. We had to wait here till the following morning, when a special train was to run us to Guildford, where the Midland and the Government lines join, some nine miles from the capital, which, with its select little society and quiet ways, re minds one of some English cathedral town rather than of one of the pushing metropolises of the eastern colonies. I have, how ever, said nothing of Gingin, of which the future settler will hear a good deal. Dr. Robertson speaks of Gingin as "one of the prettiest and best settled districts in the colony." Proceeding, he says, "A considerable area of land, probably 2,500 acres, is under cultivation. Gingin Brook is a clear, copious, perennial stream. The rainfall averages twenty-five inches. Principally wheat is cultivated, and the yield averages about twenty bushels per acre in an ordinary season; but oats and barley grow well; for the latter a good market does not yet exist. No fertilisers are used. The land is fallowed. No attention has apparently been generally paid to the land that yields the best crops of wheat or of barley. Potatoes and root crops, such as beet and mangold, grow luxuriantly, but are not cultivated as crops. Vegetables of all kinds and of great size are raised without trouble. The finest and largest oranges I have ever seen are grown here. Citrons, lemons, and vines grow luxuriantly, and, if cultivated on intelligent principles, would materially augment the returns from the land. A few cattle are fed, but if root crops, peas, cabbages, beet, mangolds, &c., were raised, with the advantage of ensilage and the railway, a profitable dairying trade could be conducted."

I was not much impressed with the country between Gingin and Guildford as seen from the railway. Dr. Robertson says: "The railway from Guildford to Gingin passes over a level and uninteresting sand plain, covered with worthless vegetation and surcharged with water. A few miles to the east, however, and


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268 charge; and Lucy wishing him good-night, hastened, with a light step, to her father's side.

Meanwhile, Clifford, after lingering a minute, when the door was closed on him, turned abruptly away; and muttering to himself, repaired with rapid steps, to whatever object he had then in view.

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 running parallel to the railway, is the Chittering Brook (a tributary of the Swan River), and along the course of this brook a large number of small farms have been selected. Surrounding these farms a proportion of the open land is of good quality, and is fitted for cultivation. The soil here is reddish clay or light sandy loam, and in this magnificent crops are raised. The district, likewise, is suited for growing vegetables, oranges, grapes, lemons, fruits of all kinds, and root crops. The largest lemons and the most prolific vegetables I have ever seen grew in this district. The traffic from the lower part of Chittering would naturally gravitate along the main north road to the railway."


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 XVII.

I returned to Perth, on May 24th, after my cross-country trip through the region discovered by Sir George Grey, I expanded with the pride of a full-blown explorer, and almost expected to hear a re-echo of the glad strain which greeted Sir George more than half a century ago when, utterly exhausted by famine and fatigue, he was cheered on to cover the few remaining miles between what is now Geraldton and the capital by the familiar sound of the bugle-call of his old regiment issuing from the Perth barracks. If he wept tears at Adelaide at the recollection of his experiences as administrator of the infantile destinies of South Australia fifty years before, he might well do so over the knowledge that the wilderness through which he penetrated with so much of anguish and privation even earlier still is now in all likelihood to "blossom as the rose"—the rose of prosperous settlement and peaceable development.

The Queen's birthday festivities were in full swing when I once more re-entered the hospitable portals of the Weld Club, whose name commemorates the popular Governor who passed away in his English retirement a few months after my visit to the colony, much to the regret, I am sure, of all West Australians, by whom his modest personality and progressive policy were duly appreciated. The colony has not yet found its feet after the plunge from Downing-street domination into self-governing blessedness. Old habits will assert themselves under the altered régime, and the result is that "Government House" invitations are received with awe and


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 obeyed as "commands," after a fashion which does not obtain in the other colonies, and which serves to remind one how short a time has elapsed since the nod of the Governor and the smiles of the Governor's lady were the "be-all and end-all" of official and social ambition in Western Australia. The "old order" has changed, but the tradition lingers, and like boys just let out from school the West Australians require a moment's breathing-space before they burst into the full cry of unconstrained liberty. All this is meant to indicate that Sir William Robinson's Birthday Levée was exceedingly well attended, and that the leading members of the Civil Service and of the local haut ton sent formal excuses in cases where they could not come to do homage personally. Even "at home" a levée agitates a certain limited section of West-end London, and it may be imagined what was the excitement in the little more than village of Perth when a procession of swallow-tails and white ties, which are a pestilence even at night-time, walked through the principal streets at noonday. Proud and happy he above his fellows whose official position, or the accident of presentation "at home," permitted to strut forth in the peacock like paraphernalia of his privileged caste, his braided or velvet coat, silken hose, and cocked hat reducing to "felt" insignificance the plain cloth apparel, common "stovepipe" or rare opera hat of his less fortunate fellow-citizens. However, the latter enjoyed some slight compensation in the jeers which greeted the gayer-plumaged birds from a gang of unmannerly "larrikins," not educated up to the mysteries of Court attire.

Later on there was the inevitable "Birthday Ball"-the great piece of crush and colour in the colonial year. At these functions the invitations are widened so as to admit into the charmed circle a bevy of aspirants not normally numbered within the "Society pale." Amongst the latter there was great jubilation and an air in which suitable modesty struggled visibly with suppressed pride; whilst on the part of the élite, who have the entrée on more select occasions, there was a tendency to speak of the Birthday Ball as "crowded" and "mixed," and to feel a little that it prefigured the "wild rush of democracy" under the new régime.


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 It is easy for the globe-trotter to amuse himself with the harmless vanities of colonial existence, which are at the worst but a watery reflection of the intricate snobberies which exuberate at home. He has the conceit taken out of him, however, when those whom he thinks it his right to criticise from an English standpoint take up the parable in their turn and give him the outside view o:f things as they are in the old country. I was never more impressed with this than when the witty Nestor of Western Australia, Mr. George Leake, formerly Acting Chief Justice, expatiated to me on the awful situation of the "submerged tenth" at the East End of London. He seemed to think that our statesmen were sitting on a suppressed but not long suppressible volcano whilst such an "open sore" was permitted to fester unhealed. Smug critics at home, ignoring the multitudinous good things which the colonies have achieved and the many evil emanations of the Old World which they have ameliorated or checked, expatiate on shortcomings trivial in comparison with the foul excrescences on the:face of older civilisations. What, after all, are the temporary miseries of an ill-considered strike, a possibly too lavish policy of borrowing (never, be it remembered, in excess of assets), and the occasional waste of a million or two on unremunerative public works or railways in these democratic communities, in comparison with the record o:f crime and suffering which cries to Heaven as the outcome of centuries of class waste, domination, and selfishness in the Old World?

Before I finally left Perth on my way south to Albany to catch the P. and O. steamer Shannon, which was to take me back to the eastern colonies, I had a peep at Rottnest, an island seven and a half miles long by two and a half broad, lying out to sea about eleven miles from Fremantle. It boasts "its palace and its prison on each hand," being the site both of the summer resort of the Governors of Western Australia and of the prison for native offenders, who, whatever the dark rumours of their past ill-treatment at the hands of white gaolers, are now benevolently cared for under the paternal régime of Colonel Angelo, an old Imperial officer, who, after holding high military position in India, became commandant of the Tasmanian local


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 forces, and is now Government Resident and Convict Superintendent in this paradisiacal little island, which the Perth people would like to purge of its criminal associations and convert into a summer watering-place for their wives and olive-branches. The difficulty is to know what to do with the native offenders who would quickly die in the close confinement of an inland gaol, whilst at Rottnest they can be afforded reasonable liberty of movement without any fear of their escaping. Even at Rottnest, the colonel told me, he regarded five years of the mitigated restraint in vogue there as tantamount to a death sentence on these nomadic children of the "bush." It may be imagined what would be the effect, therefore, of working them in chain-gangs, or keeping them locked up in mainland prisons. The colonel, loyal to his office, tried to persuade me that as far as their feelings went they were happy enough, and preferred Rottnest to their old wilderness haunts. But like perverse children called upon to "show off" before their parents' guests, they entirely repudiated the soft impeachment, and in reply to questions, put in the most insinuating tone of voice, unanimously expressed a desire to return as speedily as possible to their old hunting-grounds, "Me like um bush, possum, kangaroo," the answer of one of them, being the gist of the answers of them all. Most of them presented fright fully animal, repulsive-looking physiognomies, but I could not help pitying their sad fate, dying by inches £or the breach of enactments in direct contravention of their tribal laws. Many of them, too, were "in" for sheep-stealing, which they regard as only a just toll on the men who have driven them back from their old fishing and hunting grounds, and who have thus deprived them of their normal means of livelihood. When some great Roman Catholic dignitary—Cardinal Moran, I think it was—inquired of one of the Rottnest prisoners whether he was not sorry for having killed an unfaithful wife, his attitude was expressed in the indignant, "What for me sorry?" which was the only answer the shocked prelate could get from him in response to a homily on the heinousness of his crime, which in no way abated the savage's belief in the conjugal code of his ancestors. I should have liked to have lingered in this charming


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Page:Public General Statutes 1896.djvu/47

1896.
 * 19 Geo. 2. c. 37.
 * An Act to regulate Insurance on Ships belonging to the Subjects of Great Britain, and on Merchandises or Effects laden thereon.
 * 20 Geo. 2. c. 30.
 * An Act for allowing persons impeached of High Treason, whereby any Corruption of Blood may be made, or for Misprision of such Treason, to make their full Defence by Council.
 * 20 Geo. 2. c. 42.
 * An Act to enforce the Execution of an Act of this Session of Parliament, for granting to His Majesty several Bates and Duties upon Houses, Windows, or Lights.
 * 20 Geo. 2. c. 43.
 * An Act the title of which begins with the words " An Act for taking away," and ends with the words " Two Kingdoms more complete."
 * 20 Geo. 2. c. 50.
 * An Act title of which begins words "An Act for taking away,"and ends with the Settlements in the Highlands."
 * 20 Geo. 2. c. 51.
 * An Act ... to enable Heirs of Tailzie, Guardians, Tutors, Curators, and Trustees in Scotland to sell Lands to the Crown.
 * 21 Geo. 2. c. 19.
 * An Act .... for abrogating the Practice of taking down the Evidence in Writing: in certain Criminal Prosecutions ; and for making some further Regulations relating to Sheriffs Depute and Stewarts Depute and their Substitutes; and for other purposes therein mentioned.
 * 21 Geo. 2. c. 34.
 * An Act to amend and enforce so much of an Act made in the Nineteenth Year of His Majesty's reign as relates to the more effectual disarming the Highlands in Scotland .... ; and for other purposes therein mentioned.
 * 22 Geo. 2. c. 27.
 * An Act the title of which begins with the words " An Act for the more effectual" and ends with the words "Payment of their Wages."
 * }
 * 20 Geo. 2. c. 51.
 * An Act ... to enable Heirs of Tailzie, Guardians, Tutors, Curators, and Trustees in Scotland to sell Lands to the Crown.
 * 21 Geo. 2. c. 19.
 * An Act .... for abrogating the Practice of taking down the Evidence in Writing: in certain Criminal Prosecutions ; and for making some further Regulations relating to Sheriffs Depute and Stewarts Depute and their Substitutes; and for other purposes therein mentioned.
 * 21 Geo. 2. c. 34.
 * An Act to amend and enforce so much of an Act made in the Nineteenth Year of His Majesty's reign as relates to the more effectual disarming the Highlands in Scotland .... ; and for other purposes therein mentioned.
 * 22 Geo. 2. c. 27.
 * An Act the title of which begins with the words " An Act for the more effectual" and ends with the words "Payment of their Wages."
 * }
 * 21 Geo. 2. c. 34.
 * An Act to amend and enforce so much of an Act made in the Nineteenth Year of His Majesty's reign as relates to the more effectual disarming the Highlands in Scotland .... ; and for other purposes therein mentioned.
 * 22 Geo. 2. c. 27.
 * An Act the title of which begins with the words " An Act for the more effectual" and ends with the words "Payment of their Wages."
 * }
 * 22 Geo. 2. c. 27.
 * An Act the title of which begins with the words " An Act for the more effectual" and ends with the words "Payment of their Wages."
 * }
 * }