But Minnie only smiles sadly in reply, and Joshua asks Rough-and-Ready if there is any thing they can give him to enable him to bear them in remembrance.
"Nothing is needed," replies Rough-and-Ready. "We have not been together for a very long time, but our acquaintanceship has been sufficiently eventful to cause us never to be able to forget each other. Yet I should like one thing," with a tender glance at Minnie.
"What?" she asks, learning by his look that it is something in her power to give.
"A piece of your hair, Minnie," he says.
Minnie desires Joshua to cut off a lock with his knife, and he cuts a thick tress and gives it to Rough-and-Ready, who winds it round his finger and puts it into his pocket.
"Now," says he, "for a little sensible talk. Your sole aim must be to endeavor to work your way near to the settled districts, where you may have the chance of falling in with white people. Southward lies your chance of being rescued. Every day the squatters are coming farther inland in search of new ground for cattle-stations, and every day this fresh opening up of the country adds to the chances of escape. Whosesoever lot it is to first fall in with our countrymen must tell them that there are two white people living with one of the native tribes who are desirous of getting into civilized company again. That will make them look out for us perhaps. You will find that stockmen and bushmen are as fine and manly a set of fellows as you would desire to meet. I think you have the best chance of first hearing the crack of a stockman's whip, for your tribe is more of a southern one than ours." Then Rough-and-Ready told them, as much for the purpose of diverting Minnie's attention from the sad parting near at hand as for any other, of the wonderful enterprise of the Australian pioneers of progress, of the dangers they cheerfully encounter, of the unknown country they bravely plunge into, of the hardships they bear and make light of, and of the grand future that awaits the beautiful Australian continent.
"To my thinking," he says with enthusiasm, "there is no life that contains so much pure enjoyment as the life of a backwoodsman. I would not change it for any other--only I would prefer, for occasional mates and companions, white people instead of savages. I don't believe man was intended to live in close cities."
"But even such a life as you describe," says Joshua, "leads to the making of great cities. The pioneers go first, and the masses follow."
"That's the worst of it," says Rough-and-Ready; "they follow, and are not content to live naturally. They make streets and cramp them up with just room enough for a score of men to walk abreast in. Down in Sydney there are streets, as you know, where not a half a dozen men could walk abreast through; but that's the way of all cities, large or small. Directly new land is opened up, in troop the masses, as you call them, who make their streets and build their houses as if there wasn't an inch of ground to spare; while all around them are thousands and thousands of miles of lovely country, with trees and flowers, and fruit, and fish, and game, inviting them to come and enjoy life as it ought to be enjoyed!"
"Well," says Joshua, "'tis the way of the world. You were never intended to live in cities, that's clear."