But the 'werry important and particlar' exception to this comfortable doctrine has been the rabbit. Alack! and alack! What evil genius, hostile to the good South Land, prompted the importation of that fiend in a fur-jacket? 'Brer Rabbit' has amply revenged upon us the sufferings of his kind in bygone ages, and left a balance yet unpaid. What have we spent on him? What tens of thousands of pounds sterling are yet to be disbursed by suffering squatters, o'erburdened tax-payers, even by the humble 'retrenched' civil servant, against whom appears to be the hand of every man in the hour of financial need!
But the subject is too painful. Far removed from any description of sport. Sport? Ha! ha! Death, indeed, is the closer designation. However we may have been deceived as to certain results 'on this behalf,' let us not forget that our enemy is, like most of his congeners, excellent eating—good alike on the table of the poor man and the rich. In time, as population advances and smaller enclosures become necessary, his doom of extermination will be fulfilled, while the more harmless ministers of sport will be protected and encouraged.
About cricket it seems unnecessary to dilate. It has been taught sedulously to the Australian boy, by precept and example. No denominational bias has hindered that lesson being learned thoroughly—a fair argument, by the way, supposing the national reputation and existence to depend solely upon cricket, in favour of the secular system. How all our boys love it! Did I not see a youngster, of say seven or eight, yesterday, leading two small brothers, with one cry of 'Cricket match!' dash up to the engraving of the Gentlemen of England and 'Our Boys' in London, on the cricket-ground, now on view in a bookseller's window in George Street? How they gloated over it!
Many a good match have I seen in the old Hyde Park, when the Sydney College boys had a right of occupation there for a special purpose. His Honour Judge Forbes, then a crack bowler at one wicket, with Mr. William Roberts senior performing the part of the historic veteran of Dingley Dell with the bat. William Still looking out for a catch, George Hill or Geoffrey Eager, or Moule or Hovenden Hely, alert at cover-point or slip, mid-wicket or long-stop.
Ah me! those days have gone, and how many of those who then ran and shouted in all the glee of youthful spirits and health! Those who remain are growing old, if not in the 'serious and yellow' stage, and the young ones are coming on, doubtless to fill their places, 'in arms, in arts, in song.' When Hugh Hamon Massie made that 206 score for the Australian team against Oxford, our British cousins were probably of the same opinion. His triumph on that occasion was by no means a solitary one, and successive teams have demonstrated that in Australians our kin beyond sea will always find foemen worthy of their steel. Long may the friendly rivalry last; and in the deadlier contests to come—as surely they must come—may they always stand, like Highlanders, 'shouther to shouther.'[[3]]
[3]. Written in 1885. A prophecy fulfilled in February 1900.
Next to the outside of a horse—even, perhaps, as regards the coast towns, before that instinctively natural position—your true Australian is most at home in a boat. Those who watch the appearance of Sydney Harbour on a holiday must come to the conclusion that as a nursery for seamen it is excelled by few sea-boards in the world. Gay is the sea-lake with every kind of sailing craft, from the fifty-ton yacht, brand new and not launched under a cost of £2000 or £3000, to the canvas dingy flying along, bows under, with a big sail, and the youthful crew perched like seagulls on the weather gunwale. When a capsize occurs, which with these craft is a matter 'quite frequent,' they dive like a brood of wild-ducks, as they right their frail craft, and are soon bowling along as reckless as ever.
With such aquatic habits, small wonder if we have bred or trained the men who have beaten with the sculls not only old England but the world—ay, the world!—at this particular sport. Not only is it now demonstrated that we possess equal skill in all the manlier exercises—the boast of the island Briton, and at which he was long held to be unrivalled—but that in strength, stature, and the desperate courage which prolongs the contest to the last dangerous degree of exhaustion and afterwards, our men, Australian-born or reared, are equal to the best Briton that ever trod a plank, or to the best transatlantic colonist, himself superior in that special section of sport to his British kinsmen.
All Sydney boys, of whatever degree, take naturally to the boat. And when I saw a young friend but the other day, in a Masaniello rig, expand his broad chest and glide into stroke with one stretch of his bronzed muscular arms, I hummed instinctively as I watched the retreating skiff, 'Rule Britannia, Britannia rules the waves.'
The 'incomplete angler' necessarily commenced by deep-line fishing in Botany Bay, where he discovered the highly-edible schnapper, that moderately-boned fish of comfortable size and toothsome flavour. To him all honour therefor. Also the rock and other cod-fish, whiting, bream, mullet, trumpeter, flounder, sole, and many others (not forgetting yellow-tail for bait)—all these for sea-fish are not to be surpassed. It was some years before the lordly Murray Cod was handled with the help of rod and line, by reason of the Murray, our Australian Mississippi, not being then discovered.