Jehu was fast getting exhausted. ‘The mails are on board, and what shall I do?’ said he, wiping his forehead.
‘Turn the leader adrift, and let him run loose in front. Two horses can surely drag us two and an empty coach,’ I suggested.
This was done, and away we went splendidly, the leader running about fifty or a hundred yards ahead, and the two in the coach trying to overtake him. At last we came to cottages on the outskirts of the village of Penrhyn. The people seeing a horse running free, turned out in force to stop him. This stopped the coach, and we had to explain our troubles before the leader was turned loose and we could proceed. The inhabitants of Penrhyn appeared to be highly amused at the device. Some two or three miles farther on, the leader had gone ahead so far that it was out of sight, and then to our horror the two horses refused to move. Whip, coax, pull, lead—it was all in vain. There we were with the bush on one side, a cliff and the sea on the other side, and no house within miles—‘stuck up.’ I pitied poor Jehu. He almost wept.
‘It can’t be helped; we shall miss the train at Latrobe, and the mails will be a day late.’
The chief thing he thought about was the mails. The chief thing I thought about was myself. He would walk on to the next station for assistance, if I would look after the coach. After he had gone, I tried to coax the horses by holding a bunch of grass before them. All that they would do was to stretch out their necks and get the grass, but they would not move a foot. As they seemed to have become petrified, I got inside the coach, and lighted a pipe.
While I was devising means to induce the horses to move, a farmer came along the road with a cart and a team of three big cart-horses. Of course he stopped to have a conversation, and at the end of it suggested that if the pole of the coach were tied to the tail of his cart, my two horses would have to move. The idea was splendid, and in less than ten minutes I was sitting on the box steering the mail-coach behind the farmer’s cart. How far we went I do not know, but we were travelling along slowly when we were met by Jehu and an ostler with a fresh team of horses. I expect the towing of the mail-coach will be a joke for some time to come.
We reached Latrobe at about two p.m. The last part of the journey was over ground which was flat and swampy. Of course we were too late for the coach which drives to catch the train at Deloraine, and I made up my mind for a quiet afternoon and a night’s rest at Latrobe. Latrobe is a small country town of one street. Its usual dulness was somewhat increased by all the shops having their shutters partially closed, the reason being that a woman had died. A tobacconist told me that he didn’t know who she was, but the shutters would be kept up until she was buried. At one time you might see two persons and a dog in the street. The quiet melancholy of a country town in the old country pervaded not only the street, but even the interior of the hotel. In one shop I saw penny whistles, apples, cakes, peg-tops, and articles of ‘sterling silver,’ all together. I had plenty of opportunity to study my hotel. If I remember rightly, sanded floors, gaudy pictures representing hunting scenes and the seasons, a lot of advertisements and leather-covered seats, formed the chief feature in the room where I spent the evening. In a vase there was a bunch of artificial flowers. These are invariably of the same kind, and if you give a leaf a knock, the whole plant whirls round in the flower-pot, at once destroying any impression it may have made on you as to its reality. The pictures which you see in small hotels are reproductions of what you see in small hotels at home. Among the favourites were fox-hunting scenes, which usually included a man in a red coat holding up a fox, while a lot of dogs were yelping around him; one or two steeplechases; a picture of the Derby; a soldier on horseback while sticking a man through the throat was carrying off a standard; one or two scenes from farmyards; the village Maypole; a few pictures of racehorses, all of which to the uninitiated looked pretty much alike; dignity and impudence looking out of a barrel; the death of Nelson; and a large collection of the worst type of German lithographs, amongst which were the royal family sitting in a semi-circle, and the Prince and Princess of Wales, a ball of wool and a puppy-dog.
Speaking generally, every picture was a reproduction of what you see in the old country, and I do not remember seeing a single picture of anything colonial.
In the evening I listened to a discussion as to the relative merits of loo, euchre and poker. A local paper, referring to the ship which had brought me to Tasmania, remarked that ‘Tasmanians interested in sheep-farming will be glad to learn that the steamship Flinders has safely landed 250 fine stud sheep; there were also some Tasmanian officials on board.’ Not being able to make out the connection between the sheep and the officials, I went to bed.
The ride back to Launceston was more pleasant than the ride up had been. We started before seven a.m. At eight a.m. the sun appeared above the hills, and the hoar-frost began to disappear as clouds of mist. Every tree and flower and haystack smoked as if it was on fire. As far as Deloraine the country on either hand was chiefly an impenetrable bush; beyond that we were again back amongst the ferns and yellow furze.