“You have been long enough in Australia,” he continued, “to learn the full value of water, and we are obliged to be careful in the use of it and in selecting a location for our house. In the great drought, when we had no rain for two years, we suffered exceedingly and a great many of my cattle perished for thirst. Since then I have built a reservoir for storing water, and if another drought should come, I don’t think my herds will suffer as much as they did.”
Dr. Whitney and our young friends were shown to the rooms they were expected to occupy during their stay. Dr. Whitney was assigned to a good-sized bedroom, while the youths were placed in another bedroom close to it and equipped with two beds. They made a brief survey of the room and concluded that they would be very comfortable. Harry remarked that it was quite as good as any room they had thus far occupied in Australian hotels. They devoted a short time to removing the dust of travel and putting themselves in a condition of cleanliness, and shortly after they appeared on the veranda, where their host was awaiting them, and dinner was announced.
The size of the dining-room indicated that the place was an hospitable one, as the table was capable of accommodating not fewer than twenty people without crowding. Harry took note of the menu which comprised their meal, and according to his memorandum it was as follows:—
“Soup of kangaroo tail, mutton pie, roast beef, potatoes, cauliflower and parsnips, hot and cold bread, plum pudding and tea. There were also some canned apricots of home production. Altogether it was a very substantial meal, excellent in quality, liberal in quantity, and well cooked throughout.”
The evening was passed in front of a big fire in the large sitting-room. As the night was chilly and somewhat damp, the fire was very welcome. The time was passed in conversation concerning the cattle business, interspersed with stories of Australian life. Harry and Ned asked the permission of their host to make use of their notebooks, and their request was readily granted. Accordingly, they kept their pencils in their hands, and placed on paper anything which seemed to them particularly interesting.
Harry made note of a statement of their host concerning the cattle business and its ups and downs. One of his notes reads as follows:—
“To go into the cattle business, one ought to have a capital of not less than fifty thousand dollars, and he could use one hundred thousand to advantage. His first step is to secure a tract of land, and this he does by getting a grant from the government allowing him to occupy an area of ground several miles square at a rental of ten or twenty shillings annually for each square mile. His next step is to secure location, and to do this he travels a great deal through the interior, visiting ground that has not been taken up, and exercising his judgment as to the choice of ground. He must take care to find a place where there is good grass and good water; he wants a certain amount of timber on his land, but not too much, and the water holes must be at suitable distances apart. Many a man has come to grief in the cattle business owing to his bad selection of a location.
“A man who takes a large area of ground in this way is called a ‘squatter.’ You can put this down in your notebooks, young men, that a squatter in Australia is just the reverse of the same individual in America. In your country, the squatter is a man who lives upon a small tract of land which he cultivates himself, while here he is a man, as I said before, who takes a large area of ground for pastoral purposes. The equivalent of the American squatter is here called a ‘selector,’ and between the selectors and the squatters there is a perpetual warfare, as the selector is allowed by law to select a location for a farm on any government land, whether occupied by a squatter or not. The selectors give the squatters a great deal of trouble, and many of us think that the colonial governments have treated us very badly.
“Well, after getting our ground we proceed to stock it, and with fifty thousand dollars we can buy about twenty-five hundred head of cattle. Then we put up our buildings, employ our stockmen, and set to work. If we have good luck we can pay our expenses, almost from the beginning, by sending fat cattle to market. For the first five years we sell only fat cattle; at the end of that time we have doubled our original stock, and then we begin to sell ordinary cattle as well as fat ones. From that time on, if no mishap befalls us, we can sell twelve or fifteen thousand dollars’ worth of cattle every year, including all kinds. At this rate the profits are satisfactory, and in fifteen or twenty years, a man who has started out with fifty thousand dollars can retire on eight or ten times that amount.”
Harry asked what were the drawbacks to the cattle business; that is, what were the kinds of bad luck that could happen to a man who engaged in it.