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 proposition perhaps more completely than any other which ever landed on our shores. For, consider what manner of colonisers they were! Explorers, sailors, whalers, farmers, squatters, merchants, politicians (Mr. William Henty was chief secretary of Tasmania)—in all these different avocations the brothers were of approved excellence. Indeed, each displayed in his own personality an aptitude for the whole range of accomplishments.

Stalwart and steadfast were they in body and mind, well fitted to contend with the rude forces of nature, and still ruder individuals, among which their lot was chiefly cast in those days. But withal genial, hilarious, and in their moments of relaxation prone to indulge in the full swing of those high animal spirits which, for the most part, accompany a robust bodily and mental organisation.

Always familiar with the great industry of stock-breeding both in Tasmania and their new home, they imported, from their earliest occupation, the very choicest stud animals, as well as the best implements in all departments of husbandry. "Little John," "Wanderer," imported thoroughbreds, were at one time in their possession. Suffolks and Lincolns were not lacking to ensure production of waggon horses, and in general effect to speed the plough. And I saw at Muntham the first English coaching sire that my eyes had rested upon—a grand upstanding bay horse, with a well-shaped head, lofty forehand, and clean, fiat legs. I remember describing him to a horse-loving friend as an enlarged thoroughbred in appearance—a description which would hold good of some of the better sort of

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 coachers of the present day, the only doubt being whether, having regard to the abnormal shapes of some of our modern racehorses, the coacher's reputation might not suffer by the comparison.

At the time of which I speak Mr. Edward Henty was at Muntham—that Australian "promised land" of rolling downs, hill and dale, all equally fertile, well grassed, well watered; favoured as to climate, soil, and situation; the only drawback being that the great grass crop, summer-ripened, was occasionally ignited in a dry autumn, and, like a prairie fire, swept all before it. In a later day preparation was made for such a contingency, and light waggons, with adequate teams known as the "fire-horses," kept ready to start at a moment's notice for the warning smoke-column. Mr. Frank Henty abode at Merino Downs, the name of which explains the early attention paid by him to the chief source of Australian wealth. Mr. Stephen Henty had his residence in the town of Portland, where at that time he was the leading merchant, and, excepting Mr. Blair, the police magistrate, the leading inhabitant.

No more delightful country home ever existed than the wide-verandahed spacious bungalow, from the windows of which the view was unbroken of the waters of the bay. A well-trimmed garden hedge hid the intervening street and slope to the beach without obstructing the view. There, if anywhere, was to be found true earthly happiness, if such can ever be predicated of this lower world and its inhabitants.

A promising family, full of health, spirits, and intelligence; parents and children alike overflowing

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 with kindness; hospitality unostentatiously extended both to friends and acquaintances, residents and strangers; a noble property gradually and surely increasing in value; family affection exhibited in its purest form. But

Where are now the energetic, kindly husband and father, the merry boys and girls, the tender mother, then sheltered and united in that most happy home? The mournfullest task of memory lies in realising how large a toll is yielded in a few fleeting years to the unsparing tax-gatherer Death.

Portland, although devoid of the fertile lands which encompass Port Fairy and Warrnambool, had yet beauties of its own. Its situation was romantic. Lofty cliffs rose from the beach, and from many a picturesque eminence the residences of the townspeople looked on the broad ocean and the peaceful waters of the bay. Still were visible when I first saw Portland the grass-grown furrows turned by the hand of Edward Henty, who had not only accomplished that highly important feat—vitally necessary, indeed, in a settlement poorly provided with grain—but put together the plough with which the first rite to Ceres was performed. In those days a deep-rutted, miry road connected the port with the rich lands of the Wannon—forty miles of sore affliction to the driver of any species of vehicle, bullock drays included. Now the rail has simplified all difficulties. From the glorious "downs country"

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 to the shore is but a journey of hours—from Hamilton to Melbourne how trifling a stage!

What if the gallant explorer, the immortal Major Mitchell, could return and look upon the network of farms, the metalled roads, the railway terminus, the telegraph, the mail-coach! How would he recall the day when, with his toil-worn party, he reached Portland, and, unaware of the presence there of wayfarers other than themselves, took the Hentys' settlement for one of an escaped gang of bushrangers! How little can we forecast the future in these days of rapid development and almost magical national growth! Besides the Messrs. Henty the principal Wannon squatters were the Winters (George, Samuel, and Trevor), men of remarkable intellect; the Messrs. Coldham were at Grassdale, where, indeed, they have the good fortune still to remain; Lang and Elms were at Lyne, near neighbours to Mount Napier; Acheson Ffrench at Monivae, near Hamilton; John Robertson Nowlan, who rented Murndal for some years from Mr. Samuel Pratt Winter. He afterwards went into partnership with Captain Stanley Carr, an ex-military man domiciled in Silesia, who imported Saxon merino sheep, and had a very proper idea of the "coming event" in Australia—the great rise and development of the merino interest. Farther on, the Hunters (Alick, Jemmy, and latterly Frank and Willie) were at Kalangadoo, Mount Gambier, with Willie Mitchell, Evelyn Sturt, and John Meredith as nextdoor neighbours. Charles Mackinnon and his partner Watson—am I trenching on sacred confidences when I allude to the sobriquet "Jeeribong"?

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 What a lot of splendid fellows, to be sure! All the men I have named were gentlemen by birth and education. It may be imagined what a jolly, genial society it was, what a luxurious neighbourhood, when a few miles' ride was a certain find for culture, good fellowship, and the warmest hospitality. While at the race meetings at Portland and Port Fairy, when these joyous comrades amalgamated confessedly for enjoyment, as the old song has it—

there was a week's revelry fit for the gods on high Olympus.

Not only from across the Adelaide border—for Mount Gambier was on the farther side—did both knights and squires wend their way in pilgrimage to the Port Fairy revels, but from Trawalla and Mount Emu, from Warranbeen, Ercildoune, and Buninyong. Adolphus Goldsmith from Trawalla, William Gottreaux from Lilaree, Philip Russell from Carngham (I can hear him now ordering his gray colt's legs to be bandaged the night he rode in), Charley Lyon, Compton Ferrers, Alick Cuningham, Will Wright. Ah!

Well, perhaps not exactly. They abide on those hills

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 which overlook the winding Thames, and in the season the Serpentine or historic Seine. Any robbery they may engage in is getting the better of unwary brethren at pool, or picking up the odds on the favourite a trifle before the general public is taken into the confidence of the stable.

It is hard to find a poet who expresses your feelings and circumstances with precision. Yet even Byron's friends and fellow-believers in Greek independence have hardly had a more complete dispersion than the comrades of that lost "Arcady the Blest."

We ought to have made the most of those days—of the time which came "before the gold." We never saw their like again. Then we tasted true happiness, if such ever visits this lower world. Every one had hope, encouragement, adequate stimulus to work,—hard work which was well paid,—leading to enterprise, which year by year fulfilled the promise of progress.

Nobody was too rich. No one was wealthy enough to live in Melbourne. Each man had to be his own overseer; had to live at home. He was, therefore, friendly and genial with his neighbours, on whom he was socially dependent. No one thought of going to Europe, or selling off and "cutting the confounded colony," and so on. No! there we were, adscripti glebæ as we thought, from a dozen or so to a score of years. It was necessary for all to make the best of it, and very cheery and contented nearly everybody was.

In these days of universal fencing it seems curious to think that from Portland Bay to Geelong, from Geelong to Melbourne, was there never a fenced-in

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 estate—only the horse and bullock paddocks. Tens of thousands of cattle were managed and controlled by the stockman—as he was then called—(stock-rider came later), with, perhaps, an assistant black boy or white urchin of some sort. It was held that in that respect the cattlemen had the best of it, as one good stockman with occasional aid could look after two or three thousand head of cattle—none of our herds were over this number—whereas every thousand or fifteen hundred sheep needed a shepherd, great loss ensuing if the labour and tendance were not provided.

The great industries of Port Fairy were agriculture on the one hand, and pastoral on the other. The rich lands which lay westward of Warrnambool were gradually sold, always after survey and by auction, having been subdivided into moderate-sized farms. These were purchased by resident farmers or small capitalists who desired to try agriculture for an occupation. There was a good market for produce, and the fame of the Port Fairy wheat crop, as well as that of the potato harvest, commenced to spread.

Than the lands on the banks of the Merai, around Warrnambool, and between that town and Port Fairy, none more fertile are known in Australia. They enjoy the conditions of deep, rich loam, resting on a substratum of tufa and limestone, with perfect natural drainage. So friable, too, as to be ready for the plough immediately after rain. Apparently of an inexhaustible fertility, and lying near the sea, which occasionally sends its spray over the wheat sheaves, they are but little subject to frost. The coast showers preserve the moisture of the soil, and,

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 No. 5. THE

ANTI-SLAVERY EXAMINER.

THE

AN INQUIRY INTO THE

PATRIARCHAL AND MOSAIC SYSTEMS

HUMAN RIGHTS.

Third Edition—Revised.

NEW-YORK:

PUBLISHED BY THE AMERICAN ANTI-SLAVERY SOCIETY,

NO. 143 NASSAU STREET.

1838.

This periodical contains 5 sheets.—Postage under 100 miles, 7 1-2 cts.; over 100 miles, 12 1-2 cts.

Please read and circulate.


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 whether for grain, roots, or grass, prevent the disastrous desiccation so unhappily common in the fields and pastures of the interior.

As the farmer commenced to press closely upon the pastoral Crown tenant, a certain soreness was engendered, but no complaint of wrong-doing on the part of the Government followed. The squatters accepted the situation; they did their best to lighten the difficulty. Those who had high-class grazing or arable lands bestirred themselves to buy as much around the homestead as would serve to make a moderate estate. The situation and climate being undeniably good, they argued that they could make as much out of a few thousand acres of freehold as formerly from the whole area under an imperfect tenure.

As a matter of fact, when the dreadful "auction day" arrived, the greater portion of the menaced squatters thus saved themselves. Men sympathised with them, too, and did not bid too persistently against the former Lord of the Waste, whose day of dominion was over.

The nearest station to Port Fairy was Aringa, the property of Mr. Ritchie. It was only distant about four miles. Partly arable land, but possessing more "stony rises" and oak ridges, it was capable of growing excellent grass, but not likely to need the plough.

The proprietor made an excellent survey of his run, carefully excluding the more tempting agricultural portions. And so judiciously did he purchase at auction that he found himself the owner of twelve or fourteen thousand acres of splendid grass land,

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WM. S. DORR, PRINTER,

123 Fulton Street.


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 without a road through it, and therefore capable of being enclosed within a ring fence. The average of price was, I fancy, below 25s. per acre. After fencing this truly valuable freehold, Mr. Ritchie discovered that he could let it for such a yearly rental as would enable him to live handsomely without the responsibility of stock. Mr. Edols, of Geelong, was, I think, the first tenant on a five years' lease, and ever since that day Aringa has been a highly productive estate, covered with a matted sward of clover and rye-grass, adapted either for sheep or cattle, equally profitable to farm or to let.

Yambuk, formerly the property of Lieutenant Andrew Baxter, a retired military officer, did not come off quite so well. But I fancy the present proprietor, Mr. Suter, who has lived there since 1854, or thereabouts, finds that he has a freehold sufficient for all ordinary wants.

"Tarrone," lying to the eastward, was not distant more than ten or twelve miles from Port Fairy. It was occupied in those early days by another army man, Lieutenant Chamberlain. Both of the ex-militaires made exceptionally good squatters, refuting the general experience which does not assign a high rank as successful colonists to soldiers. With enormous reed-beds and marshes, and a certain proportion of stony rises and well-grassed open forest, Tarrone was a model cattle run, carrying generally between two and three thousand head of cattle. It was a splendid tract of fattening country, and some of the grandest drafts of bullocks that ever left the West bore the Tarrone brand, "KB." It had formerly belonged to Messrs. Kilgour and Besnard,

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 but for alleged doing to death of aboriginals the license of these gentlemen had been withdrawn. It was subsequently granted to Mr. Chamberlain. The paternal Government of New South Wales, until late years, kept the whip-hand of the squatters by reason of its power to withhold the only title by which we held our lands, and occasionally, as in the case referred to, the power was exercised. This run was also assailed by the auctioneer's hammer, but being strictly non-agricultural land, it retained virtually its integrity as a grazing estate. "Tarrone" was the station which suffered most on that day of fiery wrath, long remembered as "Black Thursday." All did so more or less; but Mr. Chamberlain, who then lived there, lost fences and homestead, house and furniture, his household escaping barely with their lives. For weeks previously the summer weather had been hot and dry. There was, for a wonder, a cessation of the coast showers. The fated morning was abnormal—sultry and breezeless. The vaporous sky became lurid, darksome—awful. More than one terrified spectator believed that the Last Day had come, and not altogether without reason. The whole colony of Victoria was on fire at the same time, from the western coast to the eastern range of the Australian Alps. Farms and stations were burning at Port Fairy and Portland. The wife and children of a shepherd on the Upper Plenty rivulet, eastward of Melbourne, were burned to death, nearly three hundred miles in another direction. Far out to sea passengers viewed with wonder and alarm a dense black cloud overhanging the coast-line like a pall, such as may have shrouded buried Pompeii when the

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 volcano heaved its fiery flood. Far from land showers of ashes fell upon the decks of approaching ships.

Though not without expectation of a larger bushfire than usual, we were chiefly unprepared as the flame-wave rolled in over grass and forest from the north. The fire travelled fast on the preceding night, and the north-east wind rising to a gale towards midday, the march of the Destroyer waxed resistless and overpowering. Mr. Chamberlain told us afterwards that, feeling indisposed for exertion, and unaware of actual danger, he was lying down reading Vanity Fair. So enthralled was he by Becky Sharp's fascinations that he delayed going out to reconnoitre, though uneasily conscious that the smoke-clouds were thickening.

He went at length on foot. Then he saw, to his astonishment, a wall of fire approaching the homestead with appalling rapidity. He turned and fled for his life, but had barely time to warn the station hands when the devouring element swept after. It was idle to resist in any ordinary method. The flames seemed to leap from the tree tops, as they scaled the trunks, then the higher branches, and were borne on loose fragments of bark far ahead of the line of fire.

In a quarter of an hour each fence, building, and shed of a well-improved homestead was in flames. So great was the heat that after the first flight of the inmates from the dwelling-house, it was impossible to re-enter. Nothing of the contents was saved but a desk and a picture, while the household stood awe-stricken in a plot of garden vegetation, moistening their parched lips from time to time, suffocating

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 THE

spirit of slavery never seeks shelter in the Bible, of its own accord. It grasps the horns of the altar only in desperation—rushing from the terror of the avenger's arm. Like other unclean spirits, it "hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest its deeds should be reproved." Goaded to phrenzy in its conflicts with conscience and common sense, denied all quarter, and hunted from every covert, it vaults over the sacred inclosure and courses up and down the Bible, "seeking rest, and finding none." , glowing on every page, flashes around it an omnipresent anguish and despair. It shrinks from the hated light, and howls under the consuming touch, as demons quailed before the Son of God, and shrieked, "Torment us not." At last, it slinks away under the types of the Mosaic system, and seeks to burrow out of sight among their shadows. Vain hope! Its asylum is its sepulchre; its city of refuge, the city of destruction. It flies from light into the sun; from heat, into devouring fire; and from the voice of God into the thickest of His thunders.

DEFINITION OF SLAVERY.

If we would know whether the Bible sanctions slavery, we must determine what slavery is. A constituent element, is one thing; a relation, another; an appendage, another. Relations and appendages presuppose other things to which they belong. To regard them as the things themselves, or as constituent parts of them, leads to endless fallacies. A great variety of conditions, relations, and tenures,


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 with heat and smoke, and holding much doubt as to their ultimate safety. As they gazed around they could see the wild birds dropping dead from the forest trees, the kangaroos leaping past with singed and burning fur, while cattle, bellowing with fear and astonishment, dashed wildly to the river-bank, to plunge into the deeper pools.

At Dunmore a better look-out had been kept. By the united efforts of the establishment the flames were arrested on the very verge of the homestead; but so close and desperate was the contest that the garden gate was burned, and Mr. Macknight was carried indoors insensible, having fainted from the severity of the protracted struggle. Had he died it would not have been the only instance on record of the danger of over-exertion with the thermometer at more than a hundred and fifty degrees of Fahrenheit in the sun.

We at Squattlesea Mere were more lucky than our neighbours, inasmuch as the fire took a turn southward, behind Dunmore, and continued its devastating progress through the heaths and scrubs which lay on the north bank of the Shaw. It was in a manner shunted away from our homestead by the region of marsh country which stretched around and beyond it.

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 GRASMERE

tales came in from far and near of ruin and disaster—farms and stations, huts and houses, rich and poor!—all had equally suffered in the Great Fire, long remembered throughout the length and breadth of the land. However, a bush fire is not so bad as a drought. A certain destruction of pasture and property takes place, but there is not the widespread devastation among the flocks and herds caused by a dry season. Heavy rain set in a short time afterwards, in our district at any rate. The burned pastures were soon emerald-green, and Mr. Chamberlain, who had been compelled to flee to Port Fairy homeless, and there abide till a cottage was built at Tarrone, made sale of a thousand head of fat cattle in one draft before the year was out.

If the system of moderate alienation of Crown lands then prevalent could have been carried out in after years—viz. the disposing of agricultural areas from time to time, as the demand increased—no great harm would have accrued to the pastoral interest, and the legitimate wants of the farmers

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 would have been fully supplied. The owners of the stations referred to, as the wave of population approached, chiefly applied themselves to secure the purely pastoral portions of the runs, leaving the arable land for its legitimate occupiers. No squatter was then suddenly ruined, while all intending farmers were satisfied. Good feeling was maintained, as each class of producers recognised the necessity for compromise, when the mixed occupation had become a fact. It was far otherwise when the whole land lay open to the selector, who was thus enabled to enter at will into lands which other men's labour had rendered valuable, or to exact a price for refraining.

In good sooth, the pioneer squatter of that day had many and divers foes to contend with. Having done battle with one army of Philistines, another straightway appeared from an unexpected quarter. We had had trouble with our aboriginals: a canine "early Australian," the dingo, had likewise disturbed our rest. He used to eat calves, with perhaps an occasional foal, so we waged war against him. We were not up to strychnine in those days. The first letter I saw in print on the subject was from the ill-fated Horace Wills, whose sheep had been suffering badly at the time. He had come across the panacea somewhere, and lost no time in recommending it to his brother squatters. With the help of our kangaroo dogs, and an occasional murder of puppies, we pretty well cleared them out. As cattlemen, taking a selfish view of the case, we need not have been so enthusiastic. Though he killed an occasional calf, the wild hound did good service in keeping down the kangaroo, which, after

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 his extinction, proved a far more expensive and formidable antagonist.

We had more than once seen a small pack of dingoes surrounding an "old man kangaroo" in the winter time, when from weight and the soft nature of the ground he is unable to run fast. They also kill the "joeys" or young ones, when too small to run independently, though not to feed. I saw this exemplified on one occasion when returning late from a day's stock-riding. There was still light enough to distinguish surrounding objects, when a doe kangaroo crossed the track in front of me, hard pressed by a red dog close at her haunches. At first I took the pursuer to be a kangaroo dog, but seeing at a second glance that it was a dingo, I pulled up to watch the hunt. The forest was clear; rather to my surprise he gained upon her, and, springing forward, nearly secured a hold. She just got free, and not till then did she rid herself of the burden with which she was handicapped, and without which the dog could not have "seen the way she went," as the stock-riders say.

"Needs must when the devil drives" is an ancient proverb, and some idea of corresponding force must have passed through her marsupial mind as she cast forth from her pouch poor "Joey"—a good-sized youngster of more than a month old. He recognised the situation, for he scudded away with all his might, but was caught and killed by "Br'er" Dingo before I could interfere, his mother sitting up, a few yards off, making a curious sound indicative of wrath and fear. I somewhat unfairly deprived dingo of his supper by placing it carefully out of his

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 reach in a tree; but in the kangaroo battues which ensued, it more than once occurred to me that I was interfering with a natural law, of which I did not then foresee the consequences.

On the eastern side of Port Fairy lay Grasmere, which on my first introduction to the district, in 1843, was the property of the Messrs. Bolden Brothers. Pleasantly situated on the banks of the Merai, its limestone slopes formed beautiful paddocks for the blue-blooded Bates shorthorns, of which these gentlemen were, at that time, the sole Australian proprietors. They had also a share in the Merang and Moodiwarra runs jointly with Messrs. Farie and Rodger. It was, however, arranged that they should remove their cattle within a certain time, and, I think, early in 1844 the arrangement was carried out. These enterprising and distinguished colonists also owned Minjah, then known as "Bolden's sheep station," now Mr. Joseph Ware's magnificent freehold estate.

A considerable sum of money for those days had been spent, as early as 1843, at Grasmere, when the Rev. John Bolden and I rode in there, having been piloted from the "lower station," where we had spent the previous night, by a grizzled old stockrider hight Jack Keighran. It was pitch dark, and I was glad to hear the kangaroo dogs set up their chorus, and to know that we were at home. Messrs. Lemuel and Armyne Bolden were then the resident partners.

In the morning I was able to look around at my leisure, and as I had just become inoculated with the shorthorn complaint, which I have never wholly

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6 indispensable to the social state, are confounded with slavery; and thus slaveholding becomes quite harmless, if not virtuous. We will specify some of those.

1. Privation of suffrage. Then minors are slaves.

2. Ineligihility to office. Then females are slaves.

3. Taxation without representation. Then slaveholders in the District of Columbia are slaves.

4. Privation of one's oath in law. Then disbelievers in a future retribution are slaves.

5. Privation of trial by jury. Then all in France and Germany are slaves.

6. Being required to support a particular religion. Then the people of England are slaves. [To the preceding may be added all other disabilities, merely political.]

7. Cruelty and oppression. Wives, children, and hired domestics are often oppressed; but these forms of cruelty are not slavery.

8. Apprenticeship. The rights and duties of master and apprentice are correlative and reciprocal. The claim of each upon the other results from his obligation to the other. Apprenticeship is based on the principle of equivalent for value received. The rights of the apprentice are secured, equally with those of the master. Indeed, while the law is just to the master, it is benevolent to the apprentice. Its main design is rather to benefit the apprentice than the master. It promotes the interests of the former, while in doing it, it guards from injury those of the latter. To the master it secures a mere legal compensation—to the apprentice, both a legal compensation and a virtual gratuity in addition, he being of the two the greatest gainer. The law not only recognizes the right of the apprentice to a reward for his labor, but appoints the wages, and enforces the payment. The master's claim covers only the services of the apprentice. The apprentice's claim covers equally the services of the master. Neither can hold the other as property; but each holds property in the services of the other, and. Is this slavery?

9. Filial subordination and parental claims. Both are nature's dictates and intrinsic elements of the social state; the natural affections which blend parent and child in one, excite each to discharge those offices incidental to the relation, and constitute a shield for mutual protection. The parent's legal claim to the child's services, while a minor, is a slight return for the care and toil of his rearing,


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7 to say nothing of outlays for support and education. This provision is, with the mass of mankind, indispensable to the preservation of the family state. The child, in helping his parents, helps himself—increases a common stock, in which he has a share; while his most faithful services do but acknowledge a debt that money cannot cancel.

10. Bondage for crime. Must innocence be punished because guilt suffers penalties? True, the criminal works for the government without pay; and well he may. He owes the government. A century's work would not pay its drafts on him. He is a public defaulter, and will die so. Because laws make men pay their debts, shall those be forced to pay who owe nothing? The law makes no criminal,. It restrains his liberty, and makes him pay something, a mere penny in the pound, of his debt to the government; but it does not make him a chattel. Test it. To own property, is to own its product. Are children born of convicts, government property? Besides, can property be guilty? Are chattels punished?

11. Restraints upon freedom. Children are restrained by parents—pupils, by teachers—patients, by physicians—corporations, by charters—and legislatures, by constitutions. Embargoes, tariffs, quarantine, and all other laws, keep men from doing as they please. Restraints are the web of society, warp and woof. Are they slavery? then civilized society is a giant slave—a government of, the climax of slavery, and its executive, a king among slaveholders.

12. Compulsory service. A juryman is empannelled against his will, and sit he must. A sheriff orders his posse; bystanders must turn in. Men are compelled to remove nuisances, pay fines and taxes, support their families, and "turn to the right as the law directs," however much against their wills. Are they therefore slaves? To confound slavery with involuntary service is absurd. Slavery is a condition. The slave's feelings toward it, are one thing; the condition itself, is another thing; his feelings cannot alter the nature of that condition. Whether he desires or detests it, the condition remains the same. The slave's willingness to be a slave is no palliation of the slaveholder's guilt. Suppose the slave should think himself a chattel, and consent to be so regarded by others, does that make him a chattel, or make those guiltless who hold him as such? I may be sick of life, and I tell the assassin so that stabs me; is he any the less a murderer? Does my consent to his crime, atone for it? my partnership in his guilt, blot out his part of it? The


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 lost, I had a treat. The paddocks, in size from fifty to two hundred acres, were securely enclosed with three-rail fences, and were well grassed, watered, and sheltered.

I have never ceased to regret that the low prices which ruled then and for several years afterwards, coupled with the failure of a well-considered experiment in shipping salt beef in tierces from Melbourne, should have caused the breaking up of that model stud farm, the dispersion of a priceless shorthorn tribe. I had been previously introduced to "Lady Vane," a granddaughter of "Second Hubback," and her inestimable calf "Young Mussulman," at Heidelberg. Here I had the pleasure of seeing them again, if not on their native heath, still in pastures befitting their high lineage and aristocratic position. Also a former daughter of Lady Vane and the Duke of Northumberland. There grazed the imported cows Lady and Matilda; the imported Bates bulls Fawdon, Tommy Bates, Pagan, and Mahomet. Besides these a score or more of Circular Head shorthorn cows, then perhaps the purest cattle which the colony could furnish.

No pains or expense were spared in the keep and rearing of these valuable—nay invaluable cattle—for which, indeed, high prices, for that period, had been paid in England. Everything seemed to promise well for the enterprise—so incalculably advantageous, in time to come, to the herds of Australia. And yet ere the year had rolled round the whole establishment had been disposed of to the Messrs. Manifold. The bulk of the herd cattle went to Messrs. John and Peter Manifold, of Lake

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 Purrumbeet, with a proportion of the bulls. The shorthorns were purchased by the late Mr. Thomas Manifold, who for some years after made Grasmere his residence. In the Spring Valley, a lovely natural meadow, were located a lot of beautiful heifers, the progeny of picked "H over 5" cows (the Hawdon brand), and then the best bred herd in New South Wales.

I was present at the purchase of Minjah from the Messrs. Bolden by Mr. Plummer, of the firm of Plummer and Dent, which took place in 1843. With him came Mr. Richard Sutton, as amicus curiæ, in the interest of Mr. Plummer, who was a newly-arrived Englishman—verdant as to colonial investments. There was a certain amount of argument; but finally Minjah was sold with fifty head of Spring Valley heifers and a young bull, the price, I think, being £5 per head for the heifers, £50 for the bull, and the station given in. This was the origin of the famous Minjah herd. Grasmere and Spring Valley, as also the run of Messrs. Strong and Foster, were subsequently "cut up" and sold. They were too near the town of Warrnambool to escape that fate. Mr. Manifold saved part of his run, but Messrs. Strong and Foster were less fortunate, losing nearly the whole of "St. Mary's." It was not sold, I think, until the gold year, 1851, which accounted for its wholesale annexation. This is the only instance I can recall in that district of the proprietor losing his run in its entirety. The land, however, was exceptionally good, and unmixed with ordinary pastoral country.

The Messrs. Allan Brothers—John, William, and

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iv to the islands of the Pacific, or Great Ocean: its northern limit is at Cape York; and the extremity of the southern Van Diemen's Land, is its opposite boundary.

The various discoveries which had been made upon the coasts of Terra Australis, antecedently to the present voyage, are of dates as widely distant, as are the degrees of confidence to which they are respectively entitled; the accounts, also, lie scattered through various books in different languages; and many are still in manuscript. It has, therefore, been judged, that a succinct history of these discoveries would be acceptable to the public; and would form an appropriate introduction to a voyage, whose principal object was to complete what they had left unfinished. Such a history will not only, it is hoped, be found interesting, but, from the occasions it will furnish to point out what remained to be done at the beginning of, the nineteenth century, will satisfy a question which may be asked: Why it should have been thought necessary to send another expedition to explore the coasts of a country, concerning which it has been said, near thirty years ago,—"It is no longer a doubt, that we have now a full knowledge of the whole circumference of this vast body of land, this fifth part of the world." An expression, which the learned writer could have intended to apply only to the general extent of the new continent, and not to the particular formation of every part of the coasts; since the chart, which accompanies the voyage of which he was writing the introduction, represents much of the south coast, as being totally unknown.

In tracing a historical sketch of the previous discoveries, I shall not dwell upon such as depend upon conjecture and probability, but come speedily to those, for which there are authentic documents. In this latter, and solely important, class, the articles extracted from voyages, which are in the hands of the public, will be abridged to their leading heads; and the reader referred, for the details, to


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 Henry—held Tooram, and the country generally on the east bank of the Hopkins, where that river flows into the sea. It was a picturesque place, having a fine elevated site, and overlooking the broad, beautiful stream not far from its mouth. I thought they should have called it "Allan Water," but apparently it had not so occurred to them. The country was more romantic than profitable, it was said, in those days, being only moderately fattening, and wonder was often expressed that, having the rich western country all before them when they arrived in 1841, or thereabouts, they did not make a better choice. But pioneers and explorers are often contented with country inferior to that which is picked up by those who come after.

The real secret is that explorers are far more interested in the enterprise and adventure than in the promised land which should be the reward of their labours. They delight in the wilderness, and often undervalue Canaan. No spot could have been more suitably situated than the locale the Messrs. Allan selected for ministering to such tastes.

On the south was the coast-line, stretching away to far Cape Otway. On that side they had no neighbours, and Mr. John Allan, who was an intrepid bushman, made hunting and exploring excursions in that direction. I paid them a visit in the early part of 1844. I regarded it as a perfectly lovely place, with all kinds of Robinson Crusoe possibilities. Wrecks, savages, pathless woods, an island solitude—it was on the road to nowhere; nothing was wanting to enable the possessors to enjoy perfect felicity. The romantic solitude has, however, of late

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Rh the original works; but in such articles as have either not appeared before, or but very imperfectly, in an English dress, as also in those extracted from unpublished manuscripts, a wider range will be taken: in these, so far as the documents go, on the one hand, and the limits of an introduction can allow, on the other, no interesting fact will be omitted.

Conformably to this plan, no attempt will be made to investigate the claims of the Chinese to the earliest knowledge of Terra Australis; which some, from the chart of Marco Polo, have thought they possessed. Nor yet will much be said upon the plea advanced by the Abbé, and after him by the President , in favour of Paulmier de Gonneville, a French captain; for whom they claim the honour of having discovered Terra Australis, in 1504. It is evident from the proofs they adduce, that it was not to any part of this country, but to Madagascar, that Gonneville was driven; and from whence he brought his prince Essomeric, to Normandy.

Within these few years, however, two curious manuscript charts have been brought to light; which have favoured an opinion, that Terra Australis had really been visited by Europeans, nearly a century before any authentic accounts speak of its discovery. One of these charts is in French, without date; and from its almost exact similitude, is probably either the original, or a copy of the other, which is in English; and bears, with the date 1542, a dedication to the. In it, an extensive country is marked to the southward of the Moluccas, under the name of ; which agrees nearer with the position and extent of Terra Australis, than with any other land; and the direction given to some parts of


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Cambridge there is a commodious hotel kept by Mr. Gillett. In the big garden behind the house I came upon many old friends—the dear wee modest daisy, sweetwilliam, violets, old-fashioned roses, stocks, primroses, and all the favourites of an English garden—gooseberry bushes of something like the home proportions, and cabbages of giant size, all spoke of a cooler climate than that we had just left. The early mornings, with the heavy dew begemming every leaf and blade, and the fresh breeze scattering the liquid pearls at every puff, are most bracing and refreshing after the hot, languid Sydney summer. Cambridge is a neat, though straggling town. It is fairly in the Maori country, and groups

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 years been invaded by a cheese-factory. No doubt it supports a population, but the charm of the frowning, surf-beaten headland looking over the majestic, limitless ocean—of the broad reaches of the reed-fringed river—of the south-eastern trail leading into "a waste land where no one comes, or hath come since the making of the world"—must be fled for ever.

"St. Ruth's" was the name given to a tract of country which joined Squattlesea Mere on the western boundary. I believe the name and the reputation of the district sold the place more than once, which was hard upon the purchasers, for it was one of the worst runs in Australia. It comprised a few decent limestone ridges—with some passable flats, but the "balance" was scrub, fern, swamp, stringy-bark forest, and heath. Considering it lay in a good district, and enjoyed a fine climate, it was astonishing how it contrived to be so bad. If it did not ruin everybody that was ever connected with it, it was because they had no money to lose, or that exceptional amount of acuteness which enabled them to dodge hard fortune by passing it on.

It was taken up, soon after our performance in that line, by Messrs. Cay and Kaye, sometimes called English and Scotch Kay. The former of these gentlemen, Mr. Robert Cay, was "shown" the run by the Yambuk people, when he rode over a very small bit of it, and, going back to his homestead on the Lodden, sent a trustworthy man up with two or three hundred head of cattle, who formally occupied it.

A hut and yard were built—the cattle broken in,

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 more or less—and the occupation was complete. A year or two after Mr. Cay sold out to Mr. Adolphus Goldsmith, of Trawalla, for a reasonable price, the cattle to be taken by book-muster. Mr. Goldsmith had a herd at Trawalla, which was being encroached upon by the sheep. He required room, and bought this curiously unprofitable place to put them on. The Port Fairy district, I should say, had a great reputation; so had the adjoining runs. Mr. Goldsmith could not imagine that a run so near Tarrone, Yambuk, and Dunmore could be so very bad. Buyer and seller rode over it together. At the end of the day Mr. Cay said, "Look here, old fellow! I never saw half as much of the run before. I had no idea it was such an infernal hole, I give you my word. If you like you can throw up your bargain!"

"Oh no!" quoth Dolly, "I'll stick to it. It will answer my purpose."

The end of it was that Mr. Cunningham, as overseer, came down in charge of five or six hundred well-bred cattle, which were turned out at St. Ruth's after a reasonable "tailing," and presently were all over the district. Mr. Cunningham, as I have before stated, was one of the most energetic men possible, but he failed to make St. Ruth's a payable speculation. The cattle never fattened; they became wild; they could never be mustered with certainty; they furnished none of the pleasing results with which cattle in a crack district are generally credited.

Eventually Mr. Goldsmith lost patience, and sold this valuable property to a former manager of his

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VI the coast, approaches too near to the truth, for the whole to have been marked from conjecture alone. But, combining this with the exaggerated extent of Great Java in a southern direction, and the animals and houses painted upon the shores, such as have not been any where seen in Terra Australis, it should appear to have been partly formed from vague information, collected, probably, by the early Portuguese navigators, from the eastern nations; and that conjecture has done the rest. It may, at the same time, be admitted, that a part of the west and north-west coasts, where the coincidence of form is most striking, might have been seen by the Portuguese themselves, before the year 1540, in their voyages to, and from, India.

But quitting those claims to original discovery, in which conjecture bears so large a share, we come to such as are supported by undeniable documents. Before entering upon these, it is proper to premise, that, instead of following precisely the order of time, these discoveries will be classed under the heads of the different coasts upon which they were made: an arrangement which will obviate the confusion that would arise from being carried back from one coast to another, as must, of necessity, be the case, were the chronological order to be strictly followed.

The discoveries made in Terra Australis, prior to the Investigator's voyage, will, therefore, be divided into four Sections, under the following heads: 1. ; 2. ; 5. ; and, 4. with. But the articles in the fourth Section, being numerous and more extensive, will be divided into two parts:. will contain the early discoveries, and such of the later, as were made independently of the British colony in New South Wales; and. those which were made in vessels sent from that colony; and which may be considered as a consequence of its establishment.


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 own—Mr. Hatsell Garrard. This gentleman had accompanied Mr. Goldsmith from England, and, it was said, had chosen for him the celebrated "Cornborough," a son of Tramp, a grandson of Whalebone, and one of the grandest horses that ever looked through a bridle. A good judge of stock, both in England and Australia, how Mr. Garrard came to buy such a place is "one of the mysteries." The terms were easy, probably, and the price tempting; he thought "it couldn't hurt at the price." The homestead, too (Mr. Cunningham was a great improver), was now very comfortable. That and the name together did it.

Mr. Garrard, who was a most genial, jolly, but withal tolerably shrewd old boy, kept the run for a year or two, just selling cattle enough to pay his way, when he dropped on a chance to "unload" and make a sale to Messrs. Moutray and Peyton.

The former, like the seller, had abounding experience, had lived on an adjoining run, was quite capable of managing his own affairs, yet he went into it with his eyes open. His only excuse was, that store cattle were worth £4 and £5 a head "after the gold," and he thought he saw his way. His partner, Mr. Peyton, was a young Englishman of good family, vigorous and ardent, just the man to succeed in Australia, one would have thought. He was told exactly and truly by his friends all the bad points of the run; but it was difficult in that day of high prices to find an investment for two or three thousand pounds, so he, being anxious to start, made the plunge. In a couple of years the partnership was dissolved, Moutray having

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8 slave's willingness to be a slave, so far from lessening the guilt of the "owner," aggravates it. If slavery has so palsied his mind that he looks upon himself as a chattel, and consents to be one, actually to hold him as such, falls in with his delusion, and confirms the impious falsehood. These very feelings and convictions of the slave, (if such were possible) increase a hundred fold the guilt of the master, and call upon him in thunder, immediately to recognize him as a, and thus break the sorcery that cheats him out of his birthright—the consciousness of his worth and destiny.

Many of the foregoing conditions are appendages of slavery. But no one, nor all of them together, constitute its intrinsic unchanging element.

We proceed to state affirmatively that, —making free agents, chattels—converting persons, into things—sinking immortality, into merchandize. A slave is one held in this condition. In law, "he owns nothing, and can acquire nothing." His right to himself is abrogated. If he say my hands, my feet, my body, my mind, self, they are figures of speech. To use himself for his own good, is a. To keep what he earns, is stealing. To take his body into his own keeping, is insurrection. In a word, the profit of his master is made the of his being, and he, a mere means to that end—a mere means to an end into which his interests do not enter, of which they constitute no portion. , sunk to a thing! the intrinsic element, the principle of slavery;, bartered, leased, mortgaged, bequeathed, invoiced, shipped in cargoes, stored as goods, taken on executions, and knocked off at public outcry! Their rights, another's conveniences; their interests, wares on sale; their happiness, a household utensil; their personal inalienable ownership, a serviceable article, or a plaything, as best suits the humor of the hour; their deathless nature,


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Rh

late Hydrographer to the Admiralty,, Esq., in his curious Collection concerning , published with a translation, a paper which furnishes more regular and authentic accounts of the early Dutch discoveries in the East, than any thing with which the public was before acquainted. This interesting paper was procured by the Right Hon. Sir Joseph Banks; and is a copy of the instructions to commodore Author:Abel Tasman, for his second voyage of discovery: It is dated January 29, 1644, from the Castle of Batavia, and signed by the governor-general, and by Vander Lyn, Maatsuyker, Schouten, and Sweers, members of the council. The instructions are prefaced with a recital, in chronological order, of the previous discoveries of the Dutch, whether made from accident or design, in, and the Great ; and from this account, combined with a passage from Saris, it appears, that—

On the 18th of November 1605, the Dutch yacht, the Duyfhen, was dispatched from Bantam to explore the islands of New Guinea;


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 saved some of his money, and Peyton having lost every shilling.

They sold to Mr. Doughty, who had formerly owned a sheep station near Mount Gambier. He was a married man, and preferred, for some reasons, the Port Fairy district to live in. He was economical, active, a famous horseman, and a good manager. He tried "all he knew," but was beaten in a little more than a year, and "gave it best." I heard of other purchasers, but about that time I severed my connection with the district and followed the fortune of St. Ruth's no further. Probably, if cleared, drained, laid down in grasses at the rate of £10 per acre, fenced and subdivided, it might, under the weeping western skies, produce good pasture. But it always was an unlucky spot.

In the strongest contradistinction to St. Ruth's—a regular man-trap, and as pecuniarily fatal as if specially created for Murad the Unlucky—was the station generally known as "Blackfellows' Creek," lying east of Eumeralla. By the way, the original pathfinders of Port Fairy had a pretty fancy in the naming of their watercourses. There were Snaky Creek, Breakfast Creek, and, of course, Deep Creek and Sandy Creek. Now, this Blackfellows' Creek was as exceptionally good a station as St. Ruth's was "t'other way on." It was proverbially and eminently a fattening run; and on the principle "who drives fat oxen should himself be fat," its owner, Mr. William Carmichael, was, and always had been, far and away the fattest man in the district.

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 CONTENTS.


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 SUPERIOR FATTENING COUNTRY

, or "Harton Hills," as the proprietor caused it to be designated when it commenced to acquire fame and reputation, was a striking example of the well-known faith held by experienced pastoralists, that a good run will manage itself, and make lots of money for its owner, whereas no amount of management will cause much difference in the profits or losses of a bad run.

Blackfellows' Creek was proverbially managed "anyhow." There was a large herd of cattle upon it, which certainly enjoyed about the smallest amount of supervision of any cattle in the world, not being Red River bisons, Chillingham wild cattle, or the Bos primigenius. Twice a year they were mustered to brand; a little oftener, perhaps, to get out the fat cattle. Sometimes there was a stock-rider, often none at all for months. The owner enjoyed the inestimable advantage of having been born north of the Tweed, a fact which indisposed him to employ more labour than was absolutely necessary. It also prevented him from wasting his

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 ready money on "improvements." The yards were generally referred to as a proof of how very little expenditure was really necessary on a cattle station.

"I wish I'd been a Scotchman, Rolf," said Fred Burchett to me once, in a contemplative mood. "I should have had a good run and 20,000 sheep by this time." "True—most true, friend of my soul; the same here—and we should not only have had them,—the acquisition is not so difficult,—but have kept them. That's where one division of the empire differs so much from the other." Now, the owner of Blackfellows' Creek, partly by reason of his abnormal girth and a sort of Athelstane-the-Unready kind of nature, never did anything. Yet he prospered exceedingly, and waxed more and more wealthy and rotund. All the stock-riders in the district came cheerfully to his muster, knowing that they would be treated with a certain easy-going liberality, and, moreover, be sure to find quantities of unbranded calves and strayed stock, all in the best possible condition, and never driven off the run or impounded from the richly-abounding and carelessly-ordered pastures of Blackfellows' Creek. I myself secured at a muster, and sold there and then, a whole lot of fat bullocks to Mooney, the cattle-dealer, who was lifting a draft at the time. They were a portion of my Devil's River store lot, which had, with correct taste and calculation, taken up their abode at Blackfellows' Creek on the first winter of their arrival. They had not my station brand, but their own hieroglyph was sufficient to protect them in those Arcadian times. I received Mr. Mooney's perfectly negotiable cheque for a round

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iv


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442 ragged outlines of the great volcanoes, made the naked, brown, lavatic peak of Malinchi appear to shoot upwards thousands of feet higher into the blue heavens, and as it took on the hues of the sea-shell and the rainbow, when lighted up by the rising sun, crowned with a turban of glory the white head of the monarch Orizaba.

Our first halting place was at Amozoc, an old Indian city, now principally famous for the skill of its workers in iron, and the shrewd impertinence of its venders of the articles. The coach had not fairly come to a stop, before the windows were blocked by peddlers of finger-rings, spurs, bridle-bits, toy flat-irons, etc., etc., of blue steel, inlaid with silver and handsomely engraved, which they thrust in our faces, and offered at the most fabulous prices, at the same time inviting a bid of any kind. We got about a quart of toy flat-irons, rings marked "M. L."—Mexico Libre—or Mexico is Free—etc., for a few dollars, and then a youth with a sinister countenance, tossed a pair of Spanish spurs—each of which would weigh fully a pound avordupois—into my lap, and insisted on my purchasing them.

"How much?"

"Nine dollars, Señor, and they are very cheap!"

"I will give you three dollars."

"Oh no, your Excellency, but you shall have them for eight."

"Not if the court knows herself; I will give you three."

"You shall have the spurs—and the silver is genuine, Señor—and this magnificent bridle-bit for seven dollars?"

"Do you want three for the spurs? I don't want


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Rh the bit as a gift; it is a thousand years out of date, and must have been stolen by your ancestors from Hernando Cortez or Alvarado!"

"Five dollars, Señor?"

"No!"

"Four?"

"No!"

"Well, here take them!" and I did take them, and found next day that he had offered them to Col. Green a few hours previous for two dollars, and asked him what he would give—indicating a willingness to accommodate by going lower. I shall never wear those spurs with any degree of satisfaction.

The iron is produced near the railway, some twenty miles from Puebla, and is converted into steel and wrought up with much skill by the native citizens, with the very rudest appliances.

The people in the vicinity have a reputation for eccentricity. When the first telegraph line was erected along the road from Orizaba to Puebla, miles of the wire disappeared from the poles in the vicinity of Amazoc every night, in the most mysterious manner. At length the company offered to compromise with the iron-workers by giving them, as a free present, a given quantity of wire annually, provided they would ensure the line remaining intact. The proposition was rejected with scorn, as an insinuation of a doubt upon the honesty and fair fame of the iron- workers; but the wire continued to go off, until the company adopted a different material which could not be made useful by the skillful workers in blue steel and silver, and now everything is lovely, and the line hangs high and undisturbed.


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444 When the railway company, at the collapse of the Empire, found it necessary to suspend work a few months, more or less, on account of the condition of the country, it is said that they sent an English sub-superintendent down to Amozoc, to take charge of the material on hand in that vicinity. With perfectly Anglican simplicity, he housed all the iron rails, and left the chairs and spikes out-of-doors. It is hardly necessary to say that on the resumption of work not a chair or spike was to be found, and I may add that the price of steel goods manufactured at Amozoc had mean time fallen to exactly the cost of the workmanship, no charge for material being reckoned by the enterprising Amozocians in their estimates of the expenses of carrying on the business.

The leaving of the chairs and spikes out of doors was of course an absurdity, but that it was quite necessary to house the rails is demonstrated by the fact that they used to disappear every night, when left out of doors and not fastened down. One day an officer of the company was riding some twelve miles distant from the track, when he saw a countryman driving an ox team, with one of the full length T rails, weighing sixty pounds to the foot, dragging on the ground behind them. Demanding to know what he was doing with the rail the fellow replied, with a shrug of the shoulders:

"Oh, just going to build a puntacita" (i. e., a little bridge.)

"But that rail belongs to the railway company; don't you know that?"

"Oh, no, Señor, I did not know who it belonged to. Do you represent the company?"


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Rh "Of course I do, and I want that rail?"

"Very well; if the rail belongs to you, I don't want it. Take it and welcome, Señor. Buenos tarde Señor!" and coolly unhitching the oxen from the rail, he politely lifted his hat and walked off with his animals, leaving the rail lying there, twelve miles from the track, for the owners to get it back as best they could; it did not appear to worry him a bit.

There are no silver mines in the vicinity, but the diligences were formerly stopped pretty regularly, and the supply of silver for ornamenting the steel work, appears to be still sufficient to meet the demand of the trade.

His Excellency, Governor Romero, and staff, accompanied us in his private coach from Puebla as far as Tepeaca, an old Aztec city nine leagues from Puebla. Here we stopped for breakfast, and parted with the Governor and his aids with mutual expressions of regret. The Governor had done all that any man could possibly do, to show Mr. Seward attention and respect, and made the stay of the party in the State of Puebla a pleasant one, and he will long be remembered with gratitude.

Tepeaca has a history, if we had had time to stop and look it up. We breakfasted in a fonda opposite the grand plaza. In this plaza, in front of the church, stands a tall, square tower of brick or adobe, painted white, with a red tile roof, arched port-hole-like openings near the top, and a sun-dial painted on the side perpendicularly, according to the Aztec custom, instead of horizontally as ours used to be. On the dial is an inscription to this effect: "Here I am, and there is no mistake about me." This was a fortress of the Aztecs, and being very curious, the Spaniards did not destroy


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446 it, but preserved it as it now stands in perfection; thank them for so much at any rate! It was doubtless a good thing in the days of bows and arrows, but a common six-pounder field-piece would have knocked it into a cocked hat in no time.

The Spaniards, in advancing up into the country from Vera Cruz, had a mare which they valued highly. Near Tepeaca the mare got loose, and ran away to the Aztec camp. The Indians determined to catch her alive, regarding her as the next thing to the God of the Spaniards, and one of the greatest contributors to their success. So they chased her on foot until many of them—so tradition says—dropped down dead from heat and fatigue, but their efforts were unavailing, for the Spaniards corralled her after all.

In the late war between France and Mexico, the noted guerrilla chieftain, General Caravajal—who accompanied us from Mexico to Puebla, Tlaxcala and Cholula—fought many minor battles along the road with the invaders, and always cleaned out his opponents. He is the very impersonation of the quick, adroit, brave, and withal patriotic guerrilla commander, and for such warfare has probably no equal on the continent. When the French were encamped at Tepeaca, he made a bet of five hundred dollars a side with Rojas, that he would with his small band of guerrillas, cut his way into the plaza and kill some of the French, before he (Rojas) could do the same with his force. The first party to kill a Frenchman in the plaza was to take the money. General Caravajal actually rode at full gallop directly into the plaza at day-break, killed several French officers in front of the commander's quarters, and rode off again unscathed, winning the


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Rh money. He looks like a good, plain, honest American farmer of forty-five years of age, and is the last man in the world you would take for the hero of so many daring and recklessly brave exploits.

We were now in the maguey or aloe district of Mexico. This plant does not thrive well in the tierre caliente, but at the elevation of six to ten thousand feet above the sea, in this latitude is seen in its greatest perfection. Its home is the great valley and central plains of Mexico, though it is found as far north as Arizona. The whole country is covered with it in this vicinity. The houses are thatched with its leaves; ropes, matting, and cloth of a coarse texture are made from it; in fact, the common people are born, live, and get drunk and die on it in some form. Along here it is less used for making pulque than between Mexico and Puebla, and we saw thousands on thousands of plants with the center or flower stalk shooting up ready to burst into blossom. Each stalk is about the size of a common telegraph pole—perhaps three or four feet less in average height—and resembles—before the blossoms, have put forth—a gigantic asparagus shoot, in color and form.

The palm, of the stumpy, worthless variety known in Texas and Arizona as the "Spanish bayonet," is found here, covering all the hill-sides, and scattered along the roads. The mountains begin to lose their appearance of utter barrenness, and are clothed in dense chaparal or fair-sized juniper, cedar, oak, pine, and cypress trees; we were coming within the influence of the moist air of the Gulf of Mexico.

John Butler, Mr. Seward's dark servant, never had any patience with the Mexican servants with whom


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448 he came in contact, and each day's experience in the country confirmed his prejudices and deepened his convictions. As a rule he insisted that they were bound to understand English, and did understand it in spite of all their protestations. "Here blast you, set this trunk right down there I tell you, and I want you to understand it!" he would exclaim. The servants would of course comprehend from his gestures what he desired to have done, and comply with his command; whereupon he would turn to some of the party and remark triumphantly:

"There, cuss their yellow hides, didn't I tell you they could understand English if they only had a mind to?"

But occasionally he would get hold of a customer who would persist in not understanding him, and after a little trifling his Christian meekness would give way, and his wrath find vent in words, forcible and to the point. At a little village where we stopped to lunch, Mr. Seward told him to go and buy a hundred cigars for the guard. He started off and soon after, hearing high words going on in a wayside shop, I looked in to learn the cause of the row.


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Rh "Here Colonel, come in here please, and tell this stupid thing that I want 'em all!" he exclaimed as he caught sight of me.

"Todos Señor? Todos?" replied the woman at the counter, with an expression of anxiety and doubt on her face, as she turned appealingly to me.

"No, cuss you no! I said all, didn't I? Don't try to run no todos on me; I want 'em all!" shouted John, seizing the box and pulling it from her reluctant hand. "Blast her, she is trying to retail them to me by the todos, when I told her more than forty times over, that I wanted 'em all!"

I explained to the irate descendant of Ham, that todos and all, were synonymous terms in the two languages.

"Then why did'nt she say so at once, and not keep me here fooling all day?" was his emphatic rejoinder as he threw down the two dollars demanded and left the shop, shaking his head wrathfully, and evidently more disgusted with the country and everything in it than ever before.

We staid over night at Palmar, an old Indian town twenty leagues from Puebla, and lodged at a fonda. There is nothing at Palmar worth describing—at least I saw nothing.

The splendidly uniformed commander of the Rural Guard of Puebla, mounted on a fleet little bay horse, all life and fire, with saddle, bridle, stirrups, holsters, etc., etc., one mass of beautifully wrought silver, accompanied us from Puebla to Orizaba. At intervals of about twenty miles, the guard of twenty-five to fifty men, all similarly mounted and presenting a magnificent appearance as they dashed along at full speed by


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450 the side of the coach, were changed; but this officer rode with us all the way, his fiery, little steed never flagging or halting to rest for a moment from morning to night. The road was fearfully dusty, and the coach mules, coach-wheels, and the horses of the guard, kept us in such a cloud of the sacred soil all the way, that no single individual was recognizable after we had gone a mile or two.

I wish I could present my readers with a picture of that peculiar and characteristic cortege, as we swept along the road from Puebla to Orizaba. Every color of the rainbow flashed in the costumes of the guard or the trappings of the horses. The men were wrapped to the eyes in scarfs and serapes to guard their faces and throats from the—to them—extreme cold, though we found it too warm to wear overcoats when sitting still, in the open coach. All the natives of this country thus protect themselves against the air, even in the warmest seasons, and the women you meet on the road have their faces, in most cases, all covered except the eyes, with their blue or black rebosas.

We left Palmar at 8, December 24th, for Orizaba, having only sixteen Spanish leagues to go. For the first six leagues the country was dusty, dry as the Californias during the dry season, and uninteresting. Then all in an instant the scene changed as if by magic. At a sharp turn in the road we came upon the brink of a great cañon, like that of the American River above Colfax on the Central Pacific Railway in California. The sides of the cañon were wooded and green, and very precipitous. Down at the bottom of this cañon, from twelve hundred to eighteen hundred feet below us, we could see many great cotton-laden wagons drawn by twenty to thirty mules each, coming up from Vera


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Rh Cruz, the weary animals straining every nerve to pull the heavy loads up the zigzag road which winds like a serpent up the almost perpendicular face of the mountain.

We stood at last, at the dividing line between the great Central Plateau or elevated Table Land of Mexico, and the Tierra Caliente of the Gulf coast. The gay cavalcade of horsemen who formed our escort, dashed down the steep declivity at a gallop, and the coach, with breaks hard set, went down with a speed like that of a railway train, turning the sharp angles of the road without an instant's slackening up, and rocking and swaying like a ship in a storm until we were at the bottom. We congratulated ourselves on the experience, and all agreed that we had never seen anything finer, or enjoyed a more exhilarating ride in our lives.

A few minute's pause to rest our panting animals, and then we ascended a little hill, and instead of finding ourselves in an open plain as we had anticipated, looked down on another and greater cañon, which by its size made the first seem a mere bagatelle, dwarfed the great Barranca of Beltran by comparison, and would even challenge and win admiration, side by side with the Great Yosemite, the wonder of the world in our day and generation.

Slope back the walls of rock which form the sides; of the Yosemite, so as to make them a little less than perpendicular, clothe them with low, green chaparral to hide the blue-grey stone, plant a little village with an old white church like that in the "Heart of the Andes," in the center of the narrow, green valley where Hutchings' house stands, and look down on the picture from Inspiration Point, and you have the greater


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452 of Las Cumbres, as we looked down into it on that bright, sunny afternoon of the 24th of December, 1869. By Heaven! it was a sight worth coming all these thousands of miles by sea and land, to look upon!

Away we went again, down, down, down, as the eagle fixes his wings and glides swiftly from his airy height in the mountains into the valley below. In half an hour more all had changed around us, and we stood again amid the scenes and surrounded by the rankly luxuriant vegetation of the tropics. We had descended six thousand feet within ten miles, and the land of the aloe and maize was behind us. Around us was the banana, the orange, sugar-cane and coffee, and the thousand glorious flowers of the tropics, high mountains—green-clad and glorious—on either hand, and before us, Orizaba in all his unspeakable majesty.

Through the green valley, skirted with Indian villages of low cone-thatched and open-sided huts, we drove at full speed for an hour, and then halted at a village a league only from the quaint old city of Orizaba, where we found carriages in waiting, and the authorities standing ready to receive Mr. Seward and escort him to our lodgings in the town, as the guest of the State of Vera Cruz within whose boundaries we had just entered.


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RIZABA is one of the most curious old towns which we visited in Mexico. It more resembles Colima in its surroundings than any other, but the growth of tropical vegetation in the immediate vicinity, is not to be compared with that which gives such an air of oriental luxuriance and magnificence to the City of the Sun, out by the Western Ocean, through which we made our entrance into Mexico. The heavy, flat or arched stone roofs of the central table lands and elevated plains of Mexico, disappear at the Cumbres, and at Orizaba we saw only low-walled buildings, for the most part but one story in height, with wide projecting eaves, and pitching roofs covered with the same old fashioned red tiles which the Spaniards placed there three hundred and forty years ago.

Mr. Seward's party were quartered in the most comfortable manner, in one of the few two-story houses in the city, which was owned by a young physician, Dr. Talivera, and from our windows we looked down upon the streets of the greater portion of the town. The streets are wide, and tolerably straight, and paved with lava. The gutters are in the middle of the street, and the sidewalks are mere banquettes, about three feet—rarely four feet—in width, hardly wide enough for two persons to walk abreast. Grass fresh and green—


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454 though not tall I must admit—grows, more or less, in all the streets, and water-cresses are found along the margins of the little streams of fresh water which flow through the gutters in the center.

Off the main street, through which the diligencia passes twice or thrice a day, plying between the railway station at Paso del Macho, the present western terminus of the Eastern section, and Puebla, the present eastern terminus of the Western section which comes down from Mexico, one hardly ever sees a carriage of any kind, unless it be a heavy mule wagon, loaded with cotton, or a wooden-wheeled oxcart lumbering slowly and painfully along. We found one street which appeared to be considerably traveled, so much so that Mr. Frederick Seward started off in an enthusiastic manner, to see where it led to, and ascertain the cause of its unusually lively character: it led to the cemetery, and nowhere else, as I am an honest and conscientious man.

The prospect of the railway being finished from Vera Cruz to Orizaba—the name of the city is always pronounced as if spelled Orizava, (i. e. O-re-zah-vah) with the accent on the last syllable but one—during the Empire, infused a little life into the town, and a very good sized "Hotel de la Diligencias" was erected and opened; but the work was suspended when the Empire went down, and for a long time all life appeared to be dying out. The work has been resumed with some energy, and the grading of the sixteen leagues between Orizaba and Paso del Macho, and up the mountain side around the Cumbres to the great plain above on which Puebla is situated, was so well advanced as to ensure its completion at an early day, and


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Rh the people were again looking forward with hope to the future. Nevertheless, we found the town as quiet as a well-regulated cemetery, and saw no sign of life, such as would be found in an American city.

The mists from the Gulf of Mexico come up here almost daily, and it rains, more or less, nearly every week in the year. The atmosphere is of course very damp, and fevers are quite prevalent and severe.

Most of the freight between the end of the two sections of the railway, is packed through the Cumbres, and over the dusty plains to Puebla, or vice versa, upon mule backs; but all the vegetables, charcoal, country produce, earthenware, etc., etc., is still packed into this, as other towns, on the backs of stalwart male and female Indians.

It is wonderful how much these Indians will carry on their backs at a dog-trot, and how cheaply they will carry it. If they have to transport a given amount of freight for twenty miles, even right alongside the railway all the way, they never think of putting it upon the cars, but divide it up into three or four hundred pound packages, get it upon their backs, and go off at a pace equal to the average speed of a fast-walking horse.

If they start for a town, with a load of fruit or vegetables to be sold in the market, they will not dispose of it on the way, even if offered double the price at which they propose to sell it on the plaza. Like the negro, who when fishing for catfish, was seen to catch a fine, large pickerel, deliberately take him off the hook, and throw him out into the stream as far as his strength would enable him to hurl him, and who, in answer to an inquiry as to his reason for so doing, replied:


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456 "I'se fishin' for cattish I is, an' when I fishes for cats I wants cats, an' dont want no pickerel to come foolin' aroun' my hook!" they will do just what they started out for, or die on the way. They are in no hurry to get back, any way; and the scene in the plaza varies, not unpleasantly for them, the dull monotony of the daily round of their quiet, uneventful lives.

Jokes are played off by travelers, on the habits and customs of all people, and all countries. I had often heard an assertion made in regard to these Indian packers returning from market, which I regarded as one of these traveler's jokes; but an American citizen, who has been engaged in Mexico as a railway builder, and has brought all the energies of a giant mind to bear upon the subject, told me at Orizaba that it is an absolute fact, that they are so accustomed to carrying heavy loads, that the moment the weight is off their shoulders they lose their traction, so to speak, cannot get a good hold upon the ground with their toes, and are as thoroughly "at sea," as a sailor on horseback. If they cannot find anything in the city to pack back to their homes, they will put a few chunks of lava, or boulders into their baskets, to ballast them and give them a traction, and start off, dissatisfied, but proudly conscious of having done the best that could be done under the disadvantageous circumstances of the case. A less speculative and more matter-of-fact people I never saw in my life.

There is a fine, large cotton mill with two thousand spindles, and a large paper mill with American machinery—brought out and erected by Mr. Richard G. Ashby, from Massachusetts—located near the city. The water-power is abundant, and labor cheap, but the


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Rh high price of raw cotton, the depressed state of trade, and an overstocked market, render all hope of profit from the working of the cotton factory out of the question, at present. The cotton mill was not running, but it was proposed to start it up again as an experiment, soon, and run it for a short time at least. The paper mill is kept running at a moderate profit.

The city stands in a narrow, but beautiful and very fertile valley, with towering, green, forest-clad mountains all around, and Orizaba, snow-crowned and glorious, looks down upon it. There may be eighteen thousand to twenty thousand people in the city, all told, of whom a large number are engaged in trade or in waiting for trade to come to them; I saw plenty of shops and stores, but few buyers for the wares exposed.

On the hill above the city, the French and Mexicans had a fight by night, the latter being surprised, panic-stricken, and routed, almost in a moment; they did better later in the war. My window faced a fine old church, in the front wall of which I counted a dozen cannon balls, and the tower appeared to have been occupied by sharp-shooters who were receiving like attentions from the opposing party, as it was pitted all over with marks of musket-balls, as if it had the small pox. I asked a man who stood in front of it, when and how the ball and bullet marks came there. He said, with a grim humor, that he did not remember; it was el costumbre del pais, (the custom of the country) and might have been done at any time within the last fifty years. God grant that it may be the custom of the country no longer, and that Orizaba and all Mexico may have seen the last of such scenes!

The French and mercenary troops in the employ of


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458 Maximilian, committed the most terrible outrages in the State of Vera Cruz in the vicinity of Orizaba. Whole villages were depopulated, or nearly so, and peaceable, unoffending citizens, shot down in cold blood from mere devilishness, by the Turcos and other troops. One Colonel Dupin was among the worst of the leaders who were concerned in the perpetration of these wholesale massacres. His motto was, "kill every man who wears leather breeches." As four-fifths of the common people of Mexico, wear leather breeches, when they wear any at all, it is evident that the proclamation of such a policy was equivalent to inaugurating a reign of terror, and a war of utter extermination.

No man was safe who attempted to pass over the roads of the state, unless he was in the uniform of the imperial army, and the residents of the most retired hamlets knew not at what moment a force of the imported cut-throats might be turned loose upon them, to kill, ravish, burn, and destroy at will. In the city of Orizaba, women were brought into the French camp and so maltreated by the Turcos that they died on the spot. Language is powerless to depict the horrors of that time. Dupin was, with all his infernal brutality, a man of courage, and repeatedly cut his way through the enemy when surrounded by a numerically superior force; but he was corralled and killed at last.

A similar character, a French colonel, met his fate in Durango during the occupation of that State. His troops caught a Mexican officer, and by his direction, shot him down in front of his own door, before the eyes of his young and lovely wife. To his astonishment the bereaved wife made no outcry, and did not reproach him for the murder. A few days later he


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Rh met the beautiful woman at a party and was introduced. She took the matter so coolly that he inquired how it could be, and she replied that her husband was a brute; that she had never loved nor cared for him, and that she was glad when justice overtook him at last. An intimacy sprang up between them, and after some weeks the French colonel who had made her a widow, obtained her reluctant consent to visit her on a certain evening at her own apartments.

The meeting was tender and affectionate on both sides, and the Frenchman was delighted beyond words. The lady urged him to join with her in a glass of wine, and he, nothing loth, consented. After he had drank she stepped out of the room, and closing the heavy door between them, locked it in an instant and then called out to him:

"Colonel: you murdered my husband before my eyes! Your time has come now. That wine was poisoned, and in five minutes you will be a dead man! I have waited long for this; how do you like it?"

He fell, striving vainly to escape from the room, and expired in horrible agony. But her words had been overheard by a servant, who betrayed her, and she was condemned to death for the murder. She went to her execution with a smile of satisfaction on her face, and died glorying in what she had done.

It was Christmas Eve when we entered Orizaba, and all the bells were ringing, and they rung nearly all the time we were there. I rather liked it after I got used to it, but it was a little rough at first. The Christmas festivities are kept up in Orizaba for something like a month, and are mainly of two kinds. Those within the churches should take precedence of course.


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460 A part of our party attended the midnight mass on the "Buena Noche," or night before Christmas, and saw the procession of the wise men of the East enter in search of the new-born Christ, while kneeling thousands looked on in admiration, and repeated the prayers for the occasion. The music was fine, the singing good, and the spectacle altogether a beautiful and imposing one.

On Sunday I went to the cathedral with two lady friends, one who went to pray with a simple, child-like faith, for the loved parents, sisters, brothers and friends she was leaving behind her in the home of her youth; and one of another faith, a happy young wife, who went with her, only to watch over her as is the custom of the country. I stopped at the door while they went in. My married friend wore a fashionable hat upon her head, and did not conform to the usages of the place, but stood erect, by the wall. These facts drew the attention of some of the worshipers, and one of them approaching her said reproachfully, but not exactly threateningly, and apparently more in sorrow than in anger, "I see that you are a devil!" whereupon, she came out at once, and waited by the door, until the young girl, with a face radiant with the pleasure which comes from the consciousness of duty well performed, arose from her knees and came forth to meet us.

A few years since it would not have been safe for a Protestant woman, with her head covered with a hat, to have been seen in that place, but now the case is different. There is some trace of the old bigotry to be seen among the lower classes still, but its fire is fast dying out in every part of Mexico.

On Sunday night we went to the theater, where


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Rh a grand sacred drama was being performed by a native company. The subject was the birth of Our Savior, and the scenes were laid in Heaven, on Earth, and in Hell. The play opened with a vivid representation of the commotion in the latter place, on the announcement being made that the Savior of mankind was about to be born. They could not raise the devil in better shape in the City Hall in New York, and they played hell, throughout, with a very strong caste. The scenes on earth were not so well done, and Heaven did not strike me as particularly attractive. It was all worth seeing once in a life-time. They have been some twenty years building a new theatre here opposite the cathedral, and the walls and roof are now nearly completed. The Dutch custom of giving presents to children and friends on Christmas, now so general in the United States, appears to be but little observed in any part of Mexico.

But the great feature of the Christmas festivities in Orizaba is the gambling. The whole plaza in front of the Cathedral is given up to it, and all who desire to open business, are licensed by the city. Thitherward the greatest crowds were tending on Christmas Eve, and I went with the majority. Along one entire side of the plaza is a row of booths devoted to roulette, played with French machines, and, apparently, "on the square." Crowds of all ages, colors, and conditions, were around the tables, and business appeared to be brisk. The banks generally had a goodly sum in silver dollars, halves, quarters, rials and medios in sight, but no gold. The bets were mostly small—few exceeding a dollar—and many being but one rial or a medio each. When I placed a dollar on the red as an


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462, won, and doubled it and won again, the crowd in front fell back respectfully, and I had the game all to myself until I was a dozen dollars ahead, and concluding the game too uncertain, bid the dealer good-night, received a courteous good-night in turn, and moved on. The poor people appear to play right on, as long as they have a dime left, and of course the bank comes out ahead in the long run.

Farther up there is a large booth in which quino is played, for fancy articles, china ware, etc., etc., the cost of a card being six and one-fourth cents, or four for twenty-five cents. I did not know the game, but Col. Green acted as my padrino, and in half an hour I was the happy possessor of seven sets of fancy china cups and saucers, with two servers to match, all at an outlay of only one dollar and a quarter. I regret to be compelled to add that I offered them for one dollar—they were valued at seven—and got no bidder among my companions; but I made a family of little children happy with them, and felt that I had got more than the worth of my money, after all.

Chuck-a-luck games ran down the center of the plaza; monte, faro, etc., etc., were scattered about—in the minority, and not well patronized—and the side opposite the roulette booths, is covered with a great shed capable of seating one thousand or fifteen hundred people, which is devoted exclusively to quino, played for money. The cards or tickets, are pasted down upon the tables and must number at least one thousand all told. Each player is provided with a handful of corn with which to keep the game as the numbers, drawn out by the dealer are called, and as fast as one game is, finished—it takes about three minutes—the


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Rh collectors go around and collect in the rials for a new one. Each game costs each player a rial, or two rials if it is a "double up," and the bank gets nothing but a percentage on the amount paid in, for doing the business. This place is filled every night, and much of the day, by people of all classes; ladies and gentlemen of the best families making little parties at the tables, and enjoying the sport as heartily as anybody. I went there with a party of ladies and gentlemen, played half a dozen games without winning one, then went to a roulette table, bet twice on the red and twice on the black, won all four bets, and quit gambling. It is not a first-rate business to follow, even in Mexico, where it is regarded, generally, as quite legitimate, and in a very different light from that in which we see it in the United States.

The most singular thing about this wholesale gambling is the perfect good order which prevails in the crowd. I did not see a drunken man, nor hear an angry word or an oath among all the thousands of players. When you remember, that to four-fifths of these players the loss of a single dollar is of greater moment than the loss of one hundred to the average American patron of the gaming table, you can readily understand what an event it is in their lives. Yet courtesy and forbearance are displayed upon all sides, and the losers never give vent to audible grumbling, while the winners—what there are of them—pocket their gains without a sign of exultation. Men who have lost their last medio will sit down by your side, and keep the account of the game for you, condoling with you when you lose, and congratulating you when you win, with as much earnestness as if they had known you for years


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464 In many cities of Mexico gambling is now prohibited, and, as with us, can only be carried on by stealth; but in the smaller towns throughout the country, it is not exactly the vice but the prevailing misfortune of the people.

Procuring saddle-horses in Orizaba, a number of our party with several gentlemen from the city, rode out through fine fields of sugar-cane and orange and banana plantations, a distance of three miles to the Falls of the Rincon Grande. The Rio de Agua Blanco, a deep, swift-running, pure, fresh-water stream, comes rushing, like the Truckee in Nevada, down from the mountains on the eastward of the city, running most of the distance through a deep and very picturesque cañon.

At the point where the falls commence, the stream divides, one half running on down the cañon, and the other running out on the top of the mesa, or table-rock of lava, which forms one side of the ravine, then turning, and falling in many smaller streams over the precipitous face of the cliff into the bottom of the cañon, and in a cloud of spray, mingling with the waters of the main stream below.

The perpendicular fall, itself, cannot exceed fifty feet at this point, but in outline it is a miniature Niagara, and the wealth of tropical verdure and flowers which surround it, as the gold and enamel surround the diamond when it leaves the cunning hand of the jeweler, makes it a gem of exquisite beauty, such as can never be seen in colder climes than this. The trees all around are covered with long, grey moss, and numberless parasites, all of which bear gorgeous-colored flowers. Some of these flowers are in shape like an ear of corn, six to


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Rh eight inches in length, of the most brilliant scarlet, and set in a cup of bright green leaves, the whole looking more like skillful wax-work, than the work of nature.

All around the falls the foliage and shrubbery is so dense as to preclude walking, except in narrow footpaths cut for the purpose, and at the end of the year, when everything in the far North is buried in the snows of winter, all is as green, and red, and gay-colored and beautiful as in midsummer. In this tropical paradise, only man and his works pass away; the glory of Nature is eternal and unchanging: "In Summer and in Winter shall it be."

The rushing waters come down to the edge of the precipice through a rank growth of great canes, which swing and sway with the pressure of the current, like willows by our northern rivers when swept by the winds of summer. Clinging to the jagged lava rocks which divide the stream above the falls, wherever there is a handful of earth to nourish them, are great banana trees, with broad leaves like the banners of an army of giants, waving in the soft breeze of the South. All the face of the rock between the streams of falling water is covered with clinging plants and flowering shrubs, and one rock, shaped like a cross, which projected from the center out into the falling spray, was enwreathed with flowers like an artificial garland, as if they had been hung there by some dear woman's hand, to mark the last resting place of the loved and lost.

We went down by a winding pathway to the bottoms of the cañon, opposite the fall, and sitting beneath the broad-spreading trees, gazed upon the scene until its beauty was indelibly impressed upon our minds, to be treasured up in memory forever; then gathered some