There was a laugh at this, Fred’s tendency to comfort being proverbial; though, to do him justice, he was capable of considerable exertion when roused and set going.
‘Is this Eldorado of yours near the coast, Warleigh?’ inquired Forbes. ‘If so, there will be sure to be good agricultural land, and some kind of a township will spring up.’
‘I believe there’s a passage from the lakes to the sea, near which would be a grand site for a township. I hadn’t time to look it out. It gave me all I knew to get back.’
‘What does any one want a town for?’ growled Argyll. ‘Next thing, people will be talking about farms. Enough to make one ill. Are we going to risk our lives and shed our blood, possibly, for the benefit of storekeepers and farmers, to spoil the runs after we have won them?’
‘Don’t be so insanely conservative, Argyll,’ said Forbes. ‘Even a farmer is a man and a brother. We shall want some one to buy our raw products and import stores. We might as well give Rockley the office if we found a settlement. He would do us no harm.’
Here there was a chorus of approbation.
‘Of course I except Rockley—as good a fellow as ever lived. But he holds peculiar views upon the land question, and might induce others to come over on that confounded farming pretence, which is the ruin of Australia.’
‘The country I can show you, if we reach it, is large enough to hold all your stock and their increase for the next twenty years, with half-a-dozen towns as big as Yass.’
‘If this be the case, the sooner we get there the better,’ said Hamilton. ‘You start in earnest to-morrow, and we shall follow the day after. I shall keep nearly parallel with you. Ardmillan comes next, then Churbett, lastly the D’Oyleys. We shall be the largest party, as to stock, men, and horses, that has gone out for many a day.’
‘All the more reason why we should make our mark,’ said O’More. ‘I wouldn’t have missed it for five hundred pounds. I might have stayed in Ireland for a century without anything of the kind happening. I feel like Raymond of Antioch, or Godfrey of Bouillon. I suppose we shan’t meet to drink success to the undertaking every night.’