The boy turned to see his father mounted on his chestnut, and with a stock whip in his hand.
“Which way are you going?”
“I want to try and find my way to the edge of the precipice, father, and look down from the Bluff into the great gully.”
“Very well. Straight away for a mile—north-west. Shoot any snakes you see. They alarm your mother and sisters, and they are dangerous to the dogs.”
The doctor pressed his horse’s sides, turned his head, and went off at a canter, looking as if he had grown to its back, and Nic watched him in admiration for a few minutes.
“I wish I could ride like that,” he said to himself as he strode off taking great breaths of the elastic air. “Well, father was a boy once, and could not ride any better than I can. I shall try hard.”
“Hah! how beautiful it all is!” he said softly, as he paused at the end of a few minutes, to gaze right away; for he had reached an eminence in the park-like land from which he could see, fold upon fold, wave upon wave, the far stretching range of the Blue Mountains.
“And they are blue,” he cried aloud, “and blue and lavender and amethyst; but I suppose when one got up to them they would look green and grey and gravelly red. It’s the distance, I suppose.”
He was quite right: the lovely hues came from seeing the mountains in the distance through the layers of pure air; and after satiating himself for the moment, he strode on, keeping a sharp look-out for snakes and for the animals he was most anxious to see—kangaroos.
But he could only see sheep dotted about in plenty, and farther afield ruddy-looking oxen grazing on the rich grass, and after a time he began to feel a little disappointed, for, let alone wild animals, he did not see so much as a bird.