The moment she begins to speak of her world she becomes eloquent; it is I who feel an ignoramus. For this girl is a true child of Nature, who understands her mother perfectly. She speaks to me of insects of which I know nothing more than any book of natural history can tell me. But she can teach the professors of natural history a few things. There is not a bird, not a beast, nor an insect of the bush but she knows thoroughly. She can trace the white ant from the larva to the carpenter which bores out with its teeth the interior of table and wardrobe. She knows every note of that eternal humming with which the forest and the glade resound. She can name every bird that flies within fifty miles of her home. She knows the habitat and the habits of all winged and walking and crawling creatures. Nobody has taught her; all has come through persistent observation.

With difficulty I get her to speak of certain adventures of which the rumours had already reached me. At last, with diffidence, she relates them. She tells how she started a rabbit, raced it, doubled back when it doubled, and finally caught it, killing it with a blow from her hand—a soft blow delivered in a vital spot. She speaks of an adventure with “the naughty, wicked dingo,” which worried the sheep. She and a younger sister mounted each a horse, and proceeded to enclose the dingo, chasing it from place to place, until at last it was brought to bay, and forthwith dispatched with a blow from a stick. This little, frail-looking girl did this. She does not boast of it; she merely recounts the deed at my request. And her eyes blaze at the recital. She can speak with wondrous eloquence about that world of Nature, whose secrets she has so well learned.

This is the squatter’s daughter. It is the first time I have encountered her like. The remembrance will live with me. She represents a type quite distinct on the earth. She comes into city life with a breeze from the bush, a vision of glory from afar. And now she is back in the wild, taming horses, running races, or playing on the piano the airs she learned in the city.

CHAPTER XVII
THE HARDSHIPS OF THE BUSH

He was the first of a large number of young fellows who came to me asking for an introduction to some employer or other in the city—an Englishman, of course, newly arrived from the Old Country and in search of work. Unable to find a suitable billet at home, he had converted all his available possessions into cash and had set out for Australia, that El Dorado in which men were reputed to pick up gold and to rise, with incredible swiftness, to fortune. He was a young fellow of excellent education and of good address, a typical member of the clerk class. But he had never received any technical education, and he had no “trade” to fall back upon. Alas! he found that men of that class have as great a difficulty in obtaining billets here as they have in the Old Country. He arrived in the slack season, when employees are not in demand. Not an office, not a warehouse open to him. He advertised in vain, and day after day knocked at numerous office doors, always to be met with the same reply, “Sorry; no vacancy.” There were plenty of openings on the land, but he exposed his fine hands, saying, as he did so, “These were not made for that kind of work.” The weeks ran on, and no opening occurred. The stock of money he had brought out was becoming smaller every day. It was evident that something must be done. And then came the opportunity. It was an opportunity he would have scorned had his capital been larger. But hunger was beginning to threaten him, and he seized the first chance that came his way. This fine young Englishman, with the fair hands and the semi-aristocratic drawl, was invited to go north, a few degrees nearer the equator than Melbourne, and try his fortune on a newly established “station.” The promises made were not over-attractive from the point of view of comfort. Of dainties none might be expected. Even starched linen might be banished from the young man’s life. The railway was more than two hundred miles away from the “station,” and the nearest neighbour resided at a distance of six miles. Each man must be his own servant. And, in fine, the life promised was altogether of a rough type.

The young fellow showed me the invitation, and I advised him to accept it. And then, one afternoon, he left Melbourne on the steamer and went up north-west. I hardly expected to see him again. But it happened that, a year later, I paid a visit to Adelaide, and lo! there was my friend, newly returned from the bush. The life in the north had proved too much for him, and he had come down to Adelaide, where at last he obtained an excellent situation. The young man I saw in Adelaide, however, was a very different young man from the one I saw in Melbourne. Those few months had wrought a marvellous change in him. The old hauteur had disappeared; the face and neck were bronzed, and even burned; the fair white hands had grown slightly larger, and they were rough and scarred with many a cut and bruise. Ten months in the bush had wrought an extraordinary transformation in his life, and he was grateful to be back again in civilisation. The bush life, he declares, was his salvation. It destroyed his old ideas of labour, and opened up to him a new vista. It made him more human, and distinctly more grateful. Yet he wishes to leave it in his mind as the memory of a nightmare through which he had passed. It was a remarkable and touching story that he told me. When he quitted the train at the point nearest to his destination, he was compelled to bid farewell to that atmosphere of comfort and civilisation in which he had been reared. The road soon ended, and he was trundled off in a primitive conveyance through the bush. A river had to be crossed, hills had to be mounted. He found himself in the midst of an immense solitude. For several days he pushed on with his two companions. At night they lay on the ground, covered with a kind of sacking. Not a human sound broke the awful stillness. In the early morning a chorus of laughing jackasses woke the sleepers, who, after a modest meal, resumed their journey. Everywhere overhead was the eternal gum-tree, and underneath the “scrub.” Parrots flew around them screaming and fighting; strange birds looked down upon them, and strange animals fled at their approach. And then, one day, the station came in view. It was managed by a company of men. Not a woman lived there. The quarters were rough and primitive. Not a luxury anywhere. Food was consumed at a rough table. Ablutions were performed at a rough lavatory. The beds, or stretchers, were simplicity itself. Guns were in evidence for the shooting of birds. The larder contained a stock of tinned stuffs and tea—always tea, that everlasting drink of the Australians. And outside the house stood the “billy,” nearly always in use for the brewing of the beverage. There was a cook, who did his work very well, and of provisions there was a sufficiency. And into this rough spot came the Englishman with the white hands and the gentle ways.

The first night he never slept. He sent “his soul into the invisible” but well-known land he had left. And there came to his mind the fair picture of an English summer, then on the wane. He trod again the streets he knew so well, and saluted in vision the friends with whom he had formerly companied. In the old town he had left there was the electric car in which he rode to business (while there was a business to go to) every day. He saw the sea, on whose border he had lived. He went home again that night. And then, when the day broke, he rose to face this new and hard life in the midst of which he felt himself to be an exile, an outcast.

There were trees to be cut down, wood to be sawn, roots to be grubbed up, loads to be hauled, water to be drawn, earth to be ploughed, and food to be gathered. The white hands soon became brown; the face and neck were scorched through exposure to a sun which every day became hotter; and in a few days great blisters appeared on the soft hands, now rapidly becoming harder. For a time work had to be suspended on account of the sores, which caused great pain. Added to this a multitude of mosquitoes and flies began to be troublesome, stinging the sensitive flesh and causing great irritation and swelling. And all the time the heat was growing more intense. One day, in the midst of summer, the thermometer reached the abnormal height of 120 degrees Fahrenheit. And in that sweltering atmosphere work went on as usual, until at last Nature rebelled, and the young fellow fell sick for a few days. When well the work was resumed from early morning until sunset. No eight hours’ day there. It was all work, save on the day reserved for washing and rest, the washing being regarded as somewhat of a recreation.

There came a day when the cry of “Fire!” was raised. A volume of smoke in the distance announced the commencement of a dreaded bush fire. The fierce heat of the sun had kindled the dry brushwood and the scrub, and the flame burst forth. Never, to his dying day, will that Englishman forget the terrible scene. The whole country seemed to be a sea of fire. With incredible swiftness the tongues of fire leaped from bush to bush, licking up everything they encountered, and scarring the giant gum-trees in their fiery embrace. The business of the men on the station was to prevent the fire from attacking their homestead and consuming in an hour the work of months. Part of the scrub was deliberately fired, and thus a portion of land was cleared around the house. When the flames reached the fences they were beaten down with sticks and bags, and thus the fire swept by, leaving the house untouched. It was a thrilling moment, and every man sang his Te Deum when the danger was past. For a long time, at least, they were secure from a bush fire. The scrub would be some time in growing again, and so long as the fire spared homestead and life of man and beast, it proved to be, ultimately, a friend rather than an enemy, for it accomplished in a few hours a work of clearance which it would have taken men many months to perform.