Leaving Morris's huts, I made for another Boyd station, in the famous far west Eumerella district. There were many beauties around, for I had entered Mitchell's "Australia Felix"—its extreme borders, to be sure, but the most beautiful of it all. My nag was more than ever "in clover," and we wandered on through marvels upon marvels of remarkable and richly fertile country. The country was all but empty as I now coursed through it, but no amount of colonization could much alter its most striking scenery, geological and general. I had some sense of awe and mystery as I gazed down into a sort of "Dead Sea" depths at the southern end of salt, salt Korangamite, and then up at the abruptly towering "Stony Rises," capped by volcanic Porndon in my near vicinity. I passed the Manifolds', where a sprinkling of fat cattle left hardly an impression on the superabounding grass.
Eumerella, or rather the Boyd fragment of that large, rich, and varied cattle area, was in charge of a versatile youth of the name of Craufurd, of a good Scotch family, whom, to the great amusement of my friend Fennell, I re-christened as Squire Hopeless, owing to his utter nonconformability to the monotonies of civilized life. I was sufficiently versed in geology to be aware of the wonders around me, so we were soon off over the Stony Rises to Mount Eeles, only a few miles away, which, like another Porndon, raised its not lofty but mysterious-looking head to arouse our curiosity. We were guided latterly by a well-beaten native track, for this seemed a favourite walk of the aborigines. Our trip was not without danger, for the aboriginal relations had been anything but of that peacefulness which characterized the Melbourne vicinities; but we made up a station detachment under a remarkably fine strong young fellow called Wells, of Tasmanian birth, and equal, in an emergency, to six or a dozen natives for his own share. We saw nothing of natives, however, and were rewarded with wonders of geology. The little Mount Eeles cone surmounted, we looked far down into a vast crater of miles in circuit, whose sharp-ridged, angry, unsettled-looking sides could barely convince us that we looked upon an extinct volcano. Hardly did its aspect reach the solid quiet of the Vesuvian interior, as described by some scanty classic records, prior to the grand, sudden, entirely unexpected outburst of the Pompeiian eruption. Let the crowds of the future Pompeiis and Herculaneums of Victoria look out, for their Vesuvius may some day play havoc, with similar treachery.
We were introduced early to old Gorrie and his nephew McGregor, two doughty Scots, famous—and too famous—in the native hostilities of the last year or two—indeed, ever since these fine runs were taken up. The aboriginal of so fine a country was, at any rate, a primus inter pares of his race, and no way to be despised. The white invaders suffered heavily, in property at least, if not much in their own lives, at the hands of the invaded. Which side was in fault would have been a hard knot to unravel, and probably few on either side troubled themselves much to undo it. Old Gorrie was ever in the thick of war, and duty and inclination went cordially together. He was a cool and terrible shot, and had a terribly long and forcibly arguing rifle. The story goes that, when a couple of pursued marauders had escaped from one covert, and in wild terror were making for another, he quietly waited till they chanced to come in line, and then sent one bullet through both. But he had his cautious and adroit way of telling his doings, as he described to us how, in the turmoil of pursuit, "the gun gaed aff" and "some puir craturs fell." He had good need, for the authorities had been thoroughly aroused by the occasional atrocities that were sure to arise out of the strong mutual antipathies of the case; and on one occasion, for what seemed a signal case of this kind, involving the massacre of unresisting women as well as men, five colonists were arrested and brought to trial, and would certainly have "swung for it" had there not been some inadequacy of direct evidence.
The next station, Dunmore, was already quite famed for its pattern homestead. I entered its hospitable doorway with a sense of comfort and of the climax of possible squatting attainments such as had never been approached before. "Campbell, McKnight, and Irvine," "brither Scots" all, and all of them at home at the time, were of the best company, classic or otherwise, alike to one another and to all visitors. Janet, from the kitchen, too, sent us the best oatcakes and other Scotch fare. I always fancy now that such cooks must be called Janet, from lively remembrance of the savoury hotch-potch and sheeps' head of another Janet at old Robert Sutherland's, at Egham.
Thence I reached "Burchetts', of the Emus," less finished, indeed, but hardly less attractive. They were business clients of my pleasant old friend Charles Barnes, whose name I gave as my pass, with, however, but little need in those open-door days. This was a sheep station, as it was a drier locality, the other stations having been more suited for cattle. We sat joyously chatting in the bright midwinter sunshine. The air was redolent of humour, for which the Burchetts had a name. One of them was rather deaf—indeed very deaf, but when he did pick up the current subject, he seldom failed to contribute good sauce. With regret I remounted next morning, for with business finished in this direction, I was resolved to push on to the Glenelg, as I wished to see through Victoria westwards while I had the opportunity. So I turned my steed north for the Wannon.
I struck a little southern tributary of that pretty grass-banked river, and saw a noteworthy as well as a quite Australian sight. Some recent slight rains had just set the tiny creek in motion, and it was now in the act of filling up a previously quite dry waterhole. I watched the tiny stream till it filled up this hole, and then saw it duly into the next, only a couple of hundred yards off. There was a long succession of these holes before it, generally so precisely rounded and scooped out as to give the idea of human intervention, only that the human beings were nowhere visible there as yet. Then I came down upon the Wannon, in continuous admiration of the rolling hills on either side, grass-covered to the very tops. One part of the Wannon vale here is remarkable for the deep, almost blood-redness of its rich soil, a hue which seemed to come from the similarly coloured stone and rock all about. Here I suddenly came upon a grand spectacle—the falls of the Wannon, which Chevalier's highly artistic brush has immortalized, along with almost countless other Australian beauty. The river plunges over a far-projecting floor direct into a volcanic crater, which, although very much less in its dimensions, was as unmistakable in its character as that of Mount Eeles. The only thing I had to regret as absent from the scene, but a most important factor, was water, for, as far as I recollect, not one drop was visible over the edge. At flood seasons the spectacle must be grand indeed.
As evening drew on, causing me to be on the alert for quarters, I espied a rather pretentious homestead, cosily placed in a natural shelter half-way up the hillside. This proved to be Mr. Edward Henty's. He was not at home, but Mrs. Henty happily was. Young, ladylike, beautiful, she received me with that high courtesy which sets one at once at ease by the flattering impression that in these squatting solitudes it is rather the visited than the visitors who are the obliged parties. Ten years later I, with my wife, called upon her in Melbourne to renew this early acquaintance. She was then, of course, ten years older, but hardly less charming. Thirty-four more years have since elapsed, and yet I must still hope to meet her once more in that country which has become so great, and which is, in so special a sense, her own.
I reached the Glenelg, which, however, I found to be, at or near the Wannon junction, hardly better than a big, irregular, ugly ditch. How curious!—for not far off, above or below, I might have found great deep waterholes and picturesque water stretches as sketched by Mitchell. I took all for granted, and turned back homewards.
I struck a little north towards Victoria Range, and passed one of my nights with a solitary shepherd in an out-hut, so far and away from all companionable life but that of his sheep that I could well realize, in this extreme case, the dolorous side of squatting. My breakfast was a tin of tea without milk, and a hunch of damper of my host's own baking—not altogether rejectable in the keen fresh air when one had nothing else. A sheep could not be killed for two, even if the business could afford it. On I went, merrily withal, for it was the heyday of youth and strength, making steadily eastwards for the southern extremity of the Grampians, which rose in grand outline before me, forty miles away. Neither station nor human being came in my road afterwards till I reached and was rounding Mount Sturgeon, upon whose rocky summit the setting sun already glinted. I was now upon a good, broad bush track, which must lead to some station. But when? This small side-track to the left looks as though a hut at least were nearer, and so I diverged into it. Mile after mile I trotted, as well as the rough track would permit, and when night fell, and for long after, I still pegged away. A dozen miles right up, within the outer sierra, towards Mount William, brought me at last to an open glade, where some small piles of "split stuff" showed me at once my mistake. Dodging about till day, thus giving rest to my horse, I soon regained my road, and after an hour's further ride, reached Dr. Martin's sheep station, where a pleasant young fellow, Byass by name, who had lost an arm in wars of some kind, and was then in charge, ministered to my wants, and allowed me to take well-nigh the largest breakfast on record in those parts.
I must not continue in such detail with the rest of my western tours' incidents, especially as the second was mostly over the same ground as the first. I dilly reached my last Boyd station, in the pretty and varied Pyrenees district—a sheep station, then under charge of my friend James M. Hamilton. Here the hospitalities were equal, but all the rest sadly below The Gums, and an infinity underneath Dunmore. But Hamilton promised us compensation in a visit to the more comfortable residence of a squatting neighbour, Mr. John Allen. The master was not at home, but the mistress received us with squatting welcome. She was a young South Australian wife, charming alike in person and manners, and surrounded by a little troop of children, some with the stamp of her own beauty. She died not long afterwards, prematurely cut down, alas! like many another bright flower in the world's great garden.