Which makes thee broad and deep.
Yet the oak is not so common. Slow of growth, he does not seem to assimilate himself to all soils, although in a few localities he may be observed doing no discredit to his British comrades. The lime, the Oriental plane, the ash, the willow, and the sycamore proclaim the generous nature of the soil and climate which they have reached, so far across the foam. Besides these are the noble Paulownia imperialis, majestic with gigantic leaves and purple-scented flowers; the catalpa and even the magnolia, beauteous and fragrant—a botanic miracle. The olive grows rapidly, forgetting oft in eagerness to add branch to branch to mature the fruit, which will one day furnish a valuable export.
All these with others in this last season are spreading their green pennants to the summer breeze—grateful in shade to the traveller wearied and adust; beautiful to the eye of the lover of all plant-life; 'things of beauty and of joy for ever,' even to those whose sense of harmonious landscape-arrangement is rudimentary and undeveloped.
We halt for an instant on the verdant level, hard by the little creek whose waters, this gracious year, run yet with musical monotone, to watch the drivers of these high-piled waggons, who are even now unloosing their teams. There are five waggons, which, with wheels of the adamantine iron-bark eucalyptus, are warranted to carry the heaviest loads procurable; and heavy loads they are. Forty bales of wool in each, or thereabouts. Sixty or seventy horses in the five teams, all 'grade' Clydesdales or Suffolks, and averaging in value from £25 to £35 each. The 200 bales of wool are worth, say at £20 each, £4000; £1500 for the team horses; £300 for the waggons. A not inconsiderable total of values. Stay! In haste we have forgotten the sixty sets of harness and the tarpaulins,—£5000 or £6000 in all. A large property to be in the hands of five young fellows hardly known to the proprietor of the freight. It is fortunate that there are no robber barons at this time of day to demand tribute, or land pirates and buccaneers, except those who collect the intercolonial protective duties.
The hare which runs across the road in front of us is an introduced, imported animal, like the deer we saw a while back. He is becoming numerous, but, unlike his cousin and comrade, 'Brer Rabbit,' has not been disastrously destructive. The settlers eat him at present. 'Brer Rabbit' in some districts has commenced to reverse the process.
Among the manifold natural beauties of the season we must by no means omit the hedgerows; in beauteous blossom these, and though, perhaps, chiefly too wild and luxuriant, yet affording pleasing contrast to the bare utilitarianism of rail and wire fence, and the monotony of the barked, murdered woods. Various are they, ranging from the dark green of the hawthorn, lovely with sweet souvenir bloom of long-past English springs, to the pink flower-masses of the quince, the crimson showers of the rose-hedges, and the yellow hair of the Acacia armata; while high, towering, thorny, impervious, with brightest glittering greenery, grows the Osage orange—a transatlantic importation, which in some respects is the most effective green wall known, being a species of live barbed wire, with an agreeable appearance of leafage, yet exuding a bitter juice, which prevents its mutilation by live stock. All these, interspersed occasionally with the sweetbriar, the scent and wild-rose flower of which almost atone for its predatory habits, its illegal occupation of Crown Lands. In one instance an economical or patriotic farmer had permitted the fast-growing eucalyptus saplings to interlace his 'drop' fence—an effective and not wholly unpicturesque road border.
From time to time amid the larger enclosures we came across a half-forlorn, half-picturesque patch 'where once a garden smiled.' A roofless cottage, a score of elms and poplars, with straggling rose-bushes abloom among the thistles, mark the abandoned homestead. In the 'distressful country' these would be the signs of an eviction. Here, when Michael or Patrick unhouses himself, he does so with a comfortable cheque in his pocket and the wherewithal to 'take up' a larger holding, perhaps six hundred and forty acres, or even in the central district, two thousand five hundred, by the payment in cash to the Crown—of how much does the reader unlearned in the New South Wales land laws believe? Two shillings per acre! The remaining balance of eighteen shillings per acre to be paid in twenty years, with interest at five per cent, or ninepence per acre annually! The neighbouring landholder has bought out honest Pat or Donald, or François or Wilhelm, as the case may be—several nationalities being here represented—giving him a handsome profit in cash for his labour and outlay. The fences are then pulled down, the roof falls in, the elms, the poplars, with a few peach-trees and roses, alone remain to tell the tale of the deserted homestead. As we pass one of these, a grand cloth-of-gold bush, six feet and more in height, hanging over a fence, tempts us with its fragrant clusters. We choose a lovely bud and an opening flower, with its curiously-blended shades of gold and faintest pink, and, much moralising, go our way.
In the good old days, when there was no salvation outside of vast pastoral holdings, when small freeholds were considered not only inexpedient but immoral, this was held to be a waterless region, unfit for the habitation of man, away from the river frontage. Now near every farm appears a dam or other successful method of conserving water. The homesteads, too, are well built, and substantial for the most part, standing in neatly-kept gardens and fruitful orchards. Milch kine graze in the fields or stroll about the grassy roadways, sleek-skinned, well-bred, and profitable-looking.
No indications save those of comfortable living and easy-going rural prosperity present themselves. Buggies or tax-carts with active horses, driven mostly by farmers' wives or daughters, trot briskly along the high-road to the town, going to or returning from their marketing. Occasionally a girl on horseback canters by, sometimes escorted, often without cavalier or attendant. The road-maintenance man jogs by in his covered cart, filling up ruts with metal here and there, or clearing a drain where the storm-water runs too impetuously. In all this savage land which I have described in detail, there are no lions or tigers, no bushrangers, no Indians. In fact, but for a few varieties of vegetation, one might fancy oneself back again in rural England.