He who embarks upon an enterprise or commences a course of life involving absolute departure from every early habit and association will invariably be assailed at some stage or period by distrust, even by despondency. It is not in man to complete all the multifarious acts and volitions pertaining to any momentous change without experiencing the strongest reactionary impulses to halt, to doubt, to waver, to retreat.
That Ernest Neuchamp possessed these, among other weaknesses of our nature, we are by no means prepared to deny. But he had one counterbalancing quality which oftentimes stood him in good stead, when on the dangerous declivities of indecision. This compensating element was a habit of reasoning out his proceedings logically before the day of battle. He formed his opinions, arranged his movements, with Prussian deliberation and purpose aforethought. Having decided upon his order of action, he vowed mentally that no infringement upon his plan should be suffered, whatever might be his own ephemeral impulses, even convictions.
Thus he often carried out programmes involving foregone conclusions, with ruthless exactitude against every feeling, taste, and sentiment then and there animating his rebellious mind. ‘No!’ he would repeat to himself. ‘I made my calculations, carried out my reasoning to its legitimate demonstration, when no disturbing element was present. Shall I veer with every shift of wind, consult every sudden instinct or every emotional sensation? No—onward by the true and proved course!’
Steadfastly adhering, therefore, to his sketch-map, on the following morning Mr. Neuchamp accompanied his host on a tour of inspection, and gathered some approximate notion of the character of the stock and station, together with the duties which as an aspirant to the comprehensive study of ‘colonial experience’ he might be expected to perform.
The somewhat extensive property known as Garrandilla was divided by a river, on one side of which natural boundary the stock consisted of sheep—on the other of cattle. The northern subdivision comprised four ‘blocks,’ having each five miles’ frontage to the Wandabyne, a permanent and occasionally turbulently flowing stream. As far back as thirty miles, the lands were held upon the usual lease from the Crown. Through all this great tract of country no man was legally entitled to travel, save on the road which passed along the course of the river, avoiding only the sinuosities of its course. North Garrandilla consisted wholly of saltbush plains, diversified only by ‘belts’ of myall and eucalyptus forest. It was therefore held to be appropriate for sheep, to the highly successful production of which it had always been devoted.
On the south side, the ‘lay of the country,’ as Jack Windsor would have called it, was different. Marshy flats, interspersed with lagoons and reed-beds, extended along, and for several miles back from the river. With this exception the greater part of the area was covered with more or less open forest, while at ‘the back,’ or the extreme limit of the unwatered region away from the river, were ranges of hills precipitous and heavily timbered, among which the cattle roved at will during the winter season, returning to the low grounds as the fierce sun of the Australian waste commenced to dry the interior watercourses.
At a short distance from ‘the house,’ Mr. Jedwood’s cottage, or hut, as the residence of the proprietor was indifferently designated, stood a roomy, roughly finished building known as the ‘barracks.’ Here lived the overseer, a hard-working, hard-riding, weather-beaten personage, who appeared to exist in a chronic state of toil, anxiety, and general lack of repose.
Three of the numerous bedrooms were tenanted by young men, upon the same footing as Mr. Neuchamp, neophytes, who were gradually assimilating the lore of Bushland, and hoping to emulate the successful career of Allan Jedwood, or other pastoral magnates. One of these was a far-off kinsman, Malcolm Grahame by name, a steady, persevering, self-denying Scot; while another, Mr. Fitzgerald Barrington, erst of Castle Barrington, County Clare, sufficiently expressed his nationality and general tendencies by his patronymic and titular designation. Lastly was a brown Australian boy, of eighteen or nineteen, very sparing of his words, and prone to decry the general intelligence of his comrades, from a comparison of their woodcraft with his own, in which competition they were, for the present, let us say, manifestly inferior.
Into this society Mr. Neuchamp voluntarily and contentedly entered, holding that his education would be the sooner completed if he graduated, so to speak, before the mast, than from the captain’s cabin. To the barracks also were relegated those just too exalted for the men’s hut, while not eligible for the possibly distinguished company occasionally entertained at ‘the cottage.’ Such were cattle-dealers, sheep-buyers, overseers of neighbouring stations, and generally unaccredited travellers whose manners or appearance rendered classification hazardous.
Ernest managed to have a preliminary conversation with Mr. Jedwood, in which the latter gentleman, who was extremely plain, not to say blunt, of speech, put his position fairly before him.