sang Scotland's bard, in the lament for the fortunes of the field which sealed his country's fate. May not the modern Briton make the application, and in mingled wrath and despair regret the lost leader, who trod firmly, if warily, who drifted not, irresolutely weak, from peril to disasters, and delayed not the call to arms until the foe was at the gate of the citadel?[[2]]
[2]. Written in 1884.
But this savours of the digressive. Where are we? Whither is this plaguey, many-sided, chiefly unnecessary, or wholly superfluous, mental apparatus, as some hold (being rarely serviceable in the muck-rake or money-storing business), leading us? To fairyland but yesternight; anon to Albion, Germany, Rome, amid Liberal Ministers even, to their Austral countrymen all too illiberal, stepfatherly, stern, repressive. Prose and the present to the rescue! So we fare on, the trooper and I, along the course of the Macdonald, in the fresh purity of this New England summer morn. How blithe and gladsome are all things! Hard is it to believe that disease, death, and unforeseen disaster can exist in so fair a world! The river ripples merrily onward, or sleeps in deep pools under o'erhanging oaks, whence the shy wild-duck floats out with dusky brood, or the heron rises from the reedy marge and sweeps along the winding stream. Masses of granite overhang the water. The everlasting hills rear themselves, scarped and terraced, at dizzy altitudes on either side. The late rains have lent a velvet, emerald tinge to the thick-growing matted sward. Marguerites, dandelions, white and yellow immortelles, the crimson bunches of hakea, fringed violets, with bright purple masses of swainsonia, diversify mead and upland. Tiny rills and springheads show a well-watered country—'a land that drinks the rain of Heaven at will.' Ever and anon the willow, with foliage of vivid tender green, contrasts with the sombre filaments of the river oak.
My companion is an active, intelligent young fellow—a native-born Australian, whose fair hair and steadfast grey-blue eyes show that the Anglo-Saxon type is not likely to alter materially in Southern Britain.
He and his horse are well suited—the latter a well-bred bay, fast at a finish, and ready to stay for ever. He has done a hundred miles on end before now, and been ridden twenty hours out of the twenty-four. In more than one skirmish, when revolvers were out, he has proved steady under fire, and is the very model, in appearance, in condition, and pace, of what a charger should be in a troop of Irregular Horse. As he stretches along with smooth, fast, easy stride, he looks as quiet as a lamb, and what superficial critics call 'properly broken in.' None the less will he refuse to let a stranger bridle, much less ride him; he would in such case snort and plunge like an unbacked colt.
I have had no experience of the metropolitan police, against whom it is occasionally the wont of a section of the press to say hard things. These may be true or false, for what I know, though I am disposed to believe the latter. But for the last twenty years I have had much knowledge of the mounted portion of the New South Wales force in the towns and districts of the interior, and I willingly record my testimony—not being in official relations with them at present—that a more efficient, well-disciplined, well-behaved body of men—smart, serviceable, and self-respecting—does not exist in any part of the world. In old days they were sometimes at a disadvantage against outlaws, who could ride and track like Comanchee Indians, the police being chiefly of British birth and rearing. But the mounted troopers are now largely recruited from natives of the colony, or men who have lived here from their youth. In one of these, as in my guide of to-day, the cattle-thief or other criminal has a pursuer to contend with as well mounted as himself, and fully his match in all the arcana of bushcraft.
But good as the white Australian may be at following a track, his sable compatriot is a degree better. A tamed preadamite, either borrowed for the occasion from a squatter, or attached by pay and cast-off uniform to a police-barrack, makes a matchless sleuth-hound. Such a one, I am told, helped to run down a notorious party of horse-thieves in these very mountains, following with astonishing accuracy the marauders, who travelled only by night, using every artifice as well to blind tracks and divert pursuers.
We cross the river once more, and note an island, upon which in floodtime a leading pastoral proprietor was washed down and nearly drowned. Another mile discovers a picturesquely-situated homestead, overlooking the river, where, winding round a granite promontory, it turns westward on its way to the great plain beyond the 'divide.' The roses proclaim their vicinity to the famed Bendemeer, the decomposed granite having a special chemical affinity; while the violets, large of leaf and profuse of bloom, seem as if prepared to found a new variety, so widely do they differ from the ordinary floweret.
For half a century or more has the venerable pioneer dwelt hard by the river-brim, where now, handsomely lodged, garden-surrounded, he dispenses hospitality, with all the concomitants of successful pastoral life around him, save and excepting only the wife and bairns, the stalwart sons and bright-eyed daughters, with which so worthy and energetic a colonist should have strengthened the State. But 'non cuivis contingit adire Corinthum'; it is not every man's lot thus to wind up life's tale. And it may be conceded that he who at an advanced age, retaining every faculty unimpaired, is permitted to view the work of his hands, conducted from the stage of the untamed wild to smiling prosperity, who can look forward cheerfully to end his days among a population entirely composed of friends and well-wishers, has secured a large proportion of the good which is permissible to mortal man.
Onward, still onward, ride we, for many a mile must be passed ere sunset. Onward through rugged defiles and rock-strewn passes, over which the sure-footed steeds are constrained to clamber like chamois. Indeed we are nearly blocked in consequence of adopting one very tempting 'cut,'—by the way, in bush parlance, the old English predicate has been eliminated, and with reason; one does not speak of a 'long cut,'—for we find ourselves in the centre of a rock labyrinth locally termed a 'gaol.' The path, however, amid the huge boulders eventually conducts us to a grand granite-floored terrace, apparently constructed by one of the Kings of Bashan. Here we have a wide, extended view of the varied landscape, 'valley and mountain and woodland,' but it does not otherwise serve our purpose.