Category Archives: Announcements

Swan Hill Anglicans have had an exciting few weeks.  As well as the morning service at the Pioneer Settlement there was a 5pm. Eucharist in the IONA (Celtic) tradition.
The following week we celebrated St Francis with the Blessing of the Animals in fin, fur, and feather.
A couple of other pets (as in Teddy bears) were included, and the special sheet of prayers was quite beautiful, reminding us to be thankful for the love shared with God’s creatures and the need to care responsibly for these gifts to us.

Last Sunday Matthew’s gospel  22: 1-14, described  Jesus’ parable of the wedding  feast, and the children had decorated the function centre with streamers and balloons for the celebration.
Jan reminded us that the wedding feast of Jesus and his church is re-lived every time we come to his table in the Holy Communion.

Kim Critchley, site co-ordinator from St Luke’s Anglicare, spoke about her work in this district, thanking the parish for the continuing support through monthly pantry contributions.   She reminded us, from her personal perspective, what a difference we can make to people who are struggling in their lives, by just taking time to listen and care.

And we have more exciting services coming up.  Stay tuned.

Apr. 13  (Sunday in Passion Week). – Heard a very good sermon from the Bishop of Melbourne.

  Apr. 18  (Good Friday). – The terrible drought still continues drying up all the feed for the stock in the neighbourhood of Melbourne, oxen are dropping down in the yoke from starvation. Witnessed a wonderfully beautiful sunset from the Botanical Gardens.

Apr. 24.  – Rode to St.Kilda and then along the beach to Brighton. The day was most translucent ; the bay like a tranquil lake ; and to the westward the mountain called Starion Peak stood out bold and sharp against the clear blue sky. Saw the carcases of bullocks dead of starvation lying about ; and on the banks of the Yarra there are numberless carcases to be seen. Weak with hunger the poor beasts staggered down to the river to drink got bogged in the mud and are unable to disengage themselves and so die lingeringly. And very piteous it is to see them dying by inches all helpless and hungry.

  May 1. – Received a letter from the bishop of Sydney, licensing me to the Edward River district.

  May 15. – Started with my friend into the interior to take possession of my pastoral charge. We lunched first and did not get away till late in the afternoon. I find it is the custom of the settlers here, when undertaking a journey here to make a short spell on the evening of the first day. Two of my companions drove, another and myself rode together on horseback each leading a horse. If a horse is well trained to follow, this leading is pleasant enough, for two horses travel together better than one, but if a led horse jibs or shies he makes himself very troublesome and uncomfortable. After dark we arrived at Keilor, where there is a good inn. These country inns are becoming very valuable property. Five days ago the inn at Semour was sold for 4900 l. The quantity of spirits sold at the bar is great, and an immense profit is made. Somehow by that which is sold.

  May 16.  – Rode to Carlsrule a distance of about forty miles where we arrived nearly be exhausted very tired and very cold. The ride through the Black Forest was wet and dreary.

May 17.  – Rode through a fertile undulating country for thirty miles and slept at Farrel’s inn.

  May 18. – Lunched at Mr. E____’s Station, and by nightfall arrived, after a forty mile ride, at and excellent inn called the Campaspie inn, kept by a most respectable man of the name of Barrow. On the table in the sitting room were a quantity of books, among which I noticed the “Penny Magazine” some of Chambers Works, and Bulwogs. A few yards from the doors were savages sleeping around their watchfires. Strange mixture of barbarism and civilisation!

May 19. – Still continued our course northward over fertile plains devoted to sheep pastures. Lunched at Mr.Sim’s Station and arrived at Hopwoods inn on the Murray at nightfall after a ride of thirty-five miles. Having crossed the Murray, I am no longer in the Port Phillip province but in that of New South Wales the Capital of which is Sydney. I now enter on my clerical duties.

  May 20. – Rested all day, and was hospitably entertained by Mr. S____ who has a boiling down establishment in the immediate neighbourhood. Baptised a child. Held Divine Service in Shed. Twenty persons attended chiefly people employed by Mr. S____, although it was not Sunday, they dressed for the occasion and behaved most decorously, making the responses with an aptitude which would shame the old “Parson-and-Clerk” system of some churches in England. They are a very rough lot though, induced by restless spirits, or perhaps something worse, to come into this remote district. The inn where I slept is nothing but a large weather-board hut, with three or four bed rooms and a sitting-room ; but  it is clean and comfortable, and  has some entertaining books in the sitting room ; such as bulwer’s “Godelphin” the “Penny Magazine,” Chalmbers, and Giffords translation of “Juvenal and Persius”. It is almost entirely supported by the bar business. The Murray just here is about eighty or a hundred yards across, running between high banks. The depth is about fifteen to twenty five feet, never dries up, like most of the Australian Rivers but is navigable save at certain periods of the year, from Albury to the sea. Thus to compare very small things with very great, it may be called the Mississippi of Australia. It must here after act a great part in developing the internal resources of Australia.

May 21. – Although the days are very mild the nights and early mornings are intensly cold so that we were not very much surprised at the horses, which had been out in a paddock all night, look dry much tucked up. Started early, and passed through a dismal tract of country, consisting of ungrassy plains, lugubrious gum trees, and stunted bushes, called salt-bush. I am told that these salt-bushes afford a most succulent nourishment for the sheep, when there is no grass. Lunched from provisions we had with us around a fire which we made. We then left the beaten track, and plunged into a forest of thick brushwood, travelling by the sun. After a long and weary ride in the dark, we arrived at Mr, C____s Station. The horses, after travelling thirty-six miles without baiting, were put into a paddock with no grass in it. I understand, in this country, horses can travel very far on very little nourishment.

May 22. – Baptised the female child of my host, and travelled for sixteen miles through a thickly-wooded country to a small hut, where we slept on the floor. We should have had nothing for supper if we had not killed a poor old hen, who was unconsciously roosting on the roof of the hut.

May 23. – Stated at daybreak, and travelled till long after dark. A most uninteresting country, consisting of grassless plains, studded with the withered-looking salt-bush, and bounded by forests of the gum-tree, with its foliage of faded green. Had no food at all till two in the afternoon. Late in the evening arrived at a township on the Edward River, called Moolamon, wearied out, having ridden forty-six miles at least. This locality, consisting of an inn, a store a courthouse, and two sheep stations, and four other miserable huts, must be considered I suppose, the chief place of my district.

May 24. – Breakfasted with an Australian gentleman, a squatter here, and afterwards rode for twenty-two miles along the banks of the Edward River until I came to a station called Moolpar, which, for the present, I am to make my head-quarters and home. I am very glad to have done with travelling; for I am quite tired, having since the 15^th of this month, ridden 280 miles.

May 25 (Sunday). – Before breakfast read one of the admirable Family Prayers of Bishop Blomfield. At eleven the servants of the home-station were called in, and I read the Litany and preached a sermon. All were very attentive. Before going to bed I read the Evening Prayers and preached a second sermon.

  May 26. – Strolled about the environs of the station, and, by means of a small bit of tobacco, made friends with an intelligent black fellow, named Charley. Tried to get out of him some definite information about a wonderful creature, much talked of here, called the bunyip. Some say it is an amphibious animal, which makes its home at the bottom of deep water-holes in the beds of rivers, and which draws down blacks, whilst bathing, to devour them ; sometimes even pursuing them on the banks. Others assert that it is a beast, like a small hippopatamus, which lives among the reeds in the marshes by the side of rivers, and which causes great harm and loss to the indigenes, by sallying out at night and destroying the apparatus for catching fish : others declare that it is a gigantic, blood-thirsty otter, that eats children when it can catch them. When I asked Charley to portray me one on the dust with the point of my stick, he drew a great bird. I suspect that this creature does not exist now, even if it has once existed. The savages, however, unanimously declare that some voracious animal exists in or about their rivers, and they have a great dread of it. It may be a tradition that they have just as we have dragons.

May 27. – Took a survey of the sheep-station where I live, and its position. It stands on the north bank of the Edward River, which is an offshoot of the Murray, on the verge of an extensive plain, which reaches to the Murrumbidgee River. Close by it is an extensive paddock, in which are kept visitor’s horses, and those horses of the establishment which are required for immediate service. There is also a piece of land laid down with oats, which, for the last three years, have grown up very well, and just when ready to be cut have been blasted by the furnace like north wind. The station itself is a large cottage, partly constructed of weather-board and partly of rough planks, fitting into groves, top and bottom, which are cut in the main timbers. A large apartment, with and immense fire-hearth serves as the living-room, whilst around are constructed five or six little dens, which serve as bedrooms. The out-buildings consist of a store—where are kept the flour and other provisions of the establishment—a stable and a dray-shed. Farther off is a small paddock, called a stock-yard, enclosed by a high, strong rail, into which the horse and cattle stock are driven for inspection or otherwise. The Edward River partakes of the nature of most of the Australian streams. At times it is full to overflowing; at times entirely dried up ; but contains, at intervals, deep ponds or water holes, of fresh, clear water, which seldom or never dry up, and which alone render this country habitable. It is now so empty of all moisture, that I can hardly picture it to myself as what it must be when the great rains commence. Close to the head-station is a camp of the natives, consisting of fifty or sixty men women, and children, and innumerable mongrel mangy dogs. These poor people pick up what they can get and make themselves useful in many ways. But they like their wild life, and cannot be prevailed on to enter into regular service.

  June 1 (Sunday). – Rode into the township of Moolamon to hold Divine Service. It is a distance of about twenty-two miles, and the road lies through forest and plain, by river-side and over sand-hill. These sand-hills are studded over the vast plains of the district, and are thickly planted with pine-trees, which at early morning and at evening send forth a most grateful fragrancy. And most refreshing is it, after traversing in the drought season dreary wastes, barren of all verdure, to enter the domains of a sand-hill, standing like an oasis in the desert, with its green grass and its innumerable shade-giving pines. How they came here no one seems to know; perhaps they were caused by the eddies of a great flood, which might some time have swept over the face of the country. When I arrived at Moolamon I found a congregation of about thirty people, chiefly women and children, waiting for me in a log-building, called the Court-House. After the second lesson I baptized three children, to see which ceremony numbers of blacks crowded the door. My chief supporter here – an Australian gentleman – could not attend, being laid up by that curse of Australia, ophthalmia, or sandy blight. His eyes are bandaged over, and he is suffering excruciating pain. Got back to my station by dusk.

  June 3. – Tried to find out a neighbouring station by compass, but could not. Experienced bushmen say that a compass rather perplexes them than otherwise. They guide themselves in day-time by the sun, and by the Southern Cross at night. Was present at the slaughtering of a beast for home consumption. A large lot of cattle had been driven from the plains into the stock-yard, and there the creatures were huddled all in confusion, and looking very wild, lowing butting one another, and making short runs trying to find a way of exit. The superintendent came with a fowling-piece loaded with ball, picked out a likely beast to kill, and aimed at the centre of his forehead, wishing to kill him at one shot ; but the creature would not stand steady, and shifted his position continually : then he picked out another, but neither would he stand steady ; and then, tired of waiting, and out of temper, he aimed at a steady old cow, great with calf, and shot her dead. In a moment the rails of the entrance to the stock-yard were thrown on the ground, and all the herd rushed furiously out, and galloped towards the plains, – all save the defunct animal, which lay dead. Her throat was then cut, and she was hoisted up with tackling, and skinned and quartered in an incredibly short space of time. Then the blacks, with great glee, gathered round, and carried off the head, the feet, the heart, liver, &c., in immense triumph to their camp ; and, joy of joys to them, the calf was nearly full-grown, and its poor little carcase was trailed along the ground, followed by an infinity of dogs, all licking it. Although it has been said that we are all of us at heart only savages dressed up, I must confess that this was a sufficiently disagreeable sight to me, and I never wish to witness the slaughtering of a beast again.

  June 4. – On horseback from eleven until six, visiting the out-stations. These stations are inhabited by two men, – the one, a shepherd, who takes care of the sheep by day ; the other, a hut-keeper, who cooks for his mate, and is responsible for the sheep by night. The hut is rudely built of logs or planks, has a large chimney also of wood, and contains two stretchers and a few utensils. At the fire is a pannikin of tea always to be found. Far away in the plains, at a distance of perhaps twenty miles from the station, do these poor exiles stupidly vegetate, tending stupid sheep, for sheep are the most stupid of animals. Now and then some blacks pass by. Once a-week they get their rations from the head-station. At times the superintendent rides over to see how the stock is getting on. With these exceptions, their life floats by them like a lazy dream. The sheep here run in flocks of from 1500 to 3000, and if the shepherd is worth anything, he ought to keep them moving gently, so to eat down the run fairly. But very often it happens that he goes to sleep, or leaves them, whilst he idles at the hut, and so the sheep loiter, and do not get well pastured, for a sheep is a most uninstinctive beast, and must not be left to itself : it is, as a young shepherd once remarked to me, “the most spooney of animals, I assure you, sir.”  The shepherds about here are many of them old convicts from the Sydney side, many of them fugitives from the sea-board for some crime, but nearly all of them have brought on a premature old age from early excesses, and are suffering from various chronic diseases. One of the men whom I visited to-day is, I am assured, so accustomed to take corrosive sublimate, that he will lick it up from the palm of his hand ; his name us Mulligan, and he is an excellent shepherd.  At the end of their year’s engagement they go to the home-station to get their wages, which amount to between 18l, and 26l. Then comes a fierce change, from fasting in the desert for a year on salted meat and tea and unleavened bread. They take their wages to the nearest public-house, and begin eating and drinking furiously. I have heard of a man eating two bottles of pickles without stirring from the spot. And as to drinking, it is really frightful. They will drink all sorts of liquors till they get delirium tremens, whilst the whole vicinity of the public-house resounds with drunken imprecations. By and by they awake from the sick lethargy into which they have fallen, and find that all their earnings have melted away in ale and porter, wine and rum. They then sadly and slowly wend their way to their solitary hut in the plains, to resume for another year their deadening life of petrification. I believe that all the liquors sold at the “publics” are terribly adulterated, the rum with tobacco especially : and it is this adulteration which induces delirum tremens. To-day I have seen seven or eight shepherds and hut-keepers, of whom two are old “lags” (so convicts are called), and two from Pentonville, or as they are called here, “Penton-Villains.” They were all very civil and teachable. I tried to impress on them that I took personal interest in their welfare, and that they might look upon me not so much in the light of a paid Minister as of a personal friend. There is no feeling so demoralising to a man as that of being alienated from all surrounding human sympathies. Such a feeling with some produces recklessness (incuria), with others despair. The former, among the lower classes, sometimes leads to terrible results. Their hand is against every man. If a clergyman would bear in mind that great truth propounded by Rochefoucault, that self-love is the spring of all men’s actions and determinations, he would make personal appeals to his flock in private, rather than appeal to them in the mass from his pulpit ; for there is nothing that we like so much as being taken notice of by our superiors : it touches our self love. That which I endeavoured chiefly to persuade these poor men was, that they should not spend their wages in those horrible drinking-bouts, but save them until they could act sufficient to establish themselves in some more lucrative mode of life; but they answered, “ah, sir, if you lived here by yourself a whole twelvemonth, with nothing but salt rations and that raking green tea, you would like a change sometimes.”  And I can believe them, for my food is coarse enough, and I have nothing to drink but coarse green tea, tasting strongly of copper, mixed with coarse brown-black sugar, flavoured with the perambulations of large, strong smelling, red ants. This tea, which for the most part is drunk without milk, owing to their indolence in not breaking in cows for milking, costs only 1s, a pound in Melbourne, and is as near poison as can be : the sugar alone renders it endurable. As for eating, I have salt beef, fatless (for they always slaughter the poorest beast for home consumption), hot for dinner and cold for breakfast. Vegetables are rarely seen in these quarters, and the bread is of coarse flour, and unleavened. I rejoined, that this miserable fare was the very reason why they should get into another mode of life as soon as they could save a little money, and entreated them to consider their responsibilities as Christian men. I told them that their master took as much interest in their spiritual welfare as I did, and that he would willingly keep their money for them. I gave them some books to read, and so went my way, they thanking me very cordially. I said very little to them on religious matters, this being my first interview with them, for there is nothing that the lower orders of English dislike so much as having, as they term it, religion thrust down their throats by a person who is strange to them. Let us, clergymen, show our people that we have their welfare at heart, and they will submit to as much exhortation and reproof as we like to give them. Rode through a forest of short trees, consisting of innumerable stripling trunks springing from one root. This is called Mallee scrub, or Eucalyptus Dunmosa, and is almost impenetrable to man and horse. Passed over vast grassless plains, of a light clayey soil, thickly variegated by sickly-looking prickly bush. In the distance I saw careering a mob of five emu, with the speed of a race-horse. The grass not having sprung up yet, the whole country has a most miserable aspect ; but yet, the sheep are looking admirably, owing to the succulent verdure of the salt-bush which grows on the plains. It is this shrub which makes this hot district, which is called India of Australia, so valuable. The saline succulence of the salt-bush is meat and drink to the sheep during the greatest droughts. Although our horses had been out seven hours in a hot sun, without refreshment of any sort, they showed no fatigue ; owing, I suppose, to the dryness and elasticity of the air.

  June 9. – Heavy rain from morning until night. Find that the blacks construct their shelters so as to be impervious to wet. They have no huts, but support pieces of bark in a sloping position on sticks. As the wind shifts, they shift their bark. They lie with their heads and shoulders inside and their feet towards the entrance, where a fire is kept up. Last night a black woman was delivered of a half-caste child. I sent her some gruel, but found that she shared it with all around her. She talks of killing the child, but I hope by threats and bribery, to dissuade her from so great a sin. I am told that probably she will not do it now, but will let it grow even until it attain the age of four, five or six years, and then it will mysteriously disappear. She will deny that it has been killed, and on being questioned, will coolly remark that it was taken ill and died suddenly. This conduct probably arises from the fear that if the half-caste were permitted to live, they would obtain too great an influence in their respective tribes.

  June 11. – Went fishing with Charley the black, but was unsuccessful. He used a spear, and watched motionless until fish should pass, that he might pierce them ; but none came. Charley does not seem to have an idea of a good creative spirit, but has much fear of a bad destructive spirit, whom he calls debil-debil. But the error of devil-worship is not peculiar to the Australian indigenes. Went on the plains to gather mushrooms, which have sprung up in great abundance during the late rain. They have an excellent taste. The blacks, however, prefer a poisonous-looking, disgusting yellow fungus. They are very odd in their tastes. They will not touch salt ; and they think delicious, wild-fowls’ eggs, when the chicks are near ready to be hatched.

  June 13. – During the last two days, and today, the rain has descended in torrents. I have employed a considerable portion of to-day in Examining a map of the country which the Bishop of Sydney has allotted to me for my pastoral labours. I find that between the Adelaide boundary westward, to Albury, eastward, there are six degrees of longitude ; and that from the Murray, at the junction of the Campaspie, south, to the Murrumbidgee, at the junction of the Lachlan, north, there intervenes a degree and a half of latitude. My district, then, is comprised between 144 degrees and 147 degrees east longitude, and between about 34 degrees and 36 degrees south latitude. All of this vast country lies in the interior, at the back of the colony of Port Phillip, or Australia Felix, as it is appropriately called, and has, I believe, been penetrated and taken up by squatters only within the last six or seven years. The Government map characterises it as consisting of “table land,”  “supposed hilly country,” “dense mallee scrub” “low, level, timbered country,”  “forest and scrubby country,”  “barren country,” “open forest country; ” whilst towards the east exist ” granitic ranges.” It is copiously watered, and during a portion of the year flooded, by the rivers Murray, Murrumbidgee, Lachlan, Darling, Edward, Neimur, and Wakool, which three last are nothing more than branches of the Murray, leaving the parent river through the channels of what are called the Gulpha and Tuppal Creeks, meandering in tortuous windings through a hundred miles of country in a westerly direction, and uniting in one common stream called the Logan., through the bed of which the errant waters hasten to rejoin their long-abandoned parent. Two other small water-courses, called creeks,# the Yanko and the Billebong, at one period of the year dry, at another full of water, serve, the one to connect the Murrumbidgee with the Edward, the other to render habitable a large tract of arid country. To the westward is the Golgol Creek, containing backwater from the Murray ; also the Bengallow. Several lakes, too, exist in this vast district, such as Benanee, Paika, Tala, Yanga ; but they get very dry during the droughts. The general characteristics of this country are, I am told, immense plains, bounded by belts of forest land, in which the gum-tree predominates, but which also contain the sheacke and the box, the polygonum scrub, and the tea-tree. Here and there are to be seen sand-hills, covered with innumerable pine-trees. The plains would be unfit for the pasture of sheep during a great portion of the year, if it were not for the salt-bush, prickly bush, and pig-face, which stud them thickly over, and fatten sheep where not a blade of grass is to be seen. Over the country which I have just been endeavouring to describe are distributed eighty to a hundred squatters, who all pasture sheep or cattle, and who rent from the Government large tracts of land, thoroughly useless for any other purpose. Some of these reside on their stations, some are absentees ; some are small stockholders, having their thousand or two thousand sheep, or their four or five hundred head of cattle ; whilst others have their twenty or thirty thousand sheep, or their four thousand head of cattle.

 

* Creek is a term used by the early explorers, to denote the smaller interior streams, either tributary or independent.

 

 

Of these squatters many are educated gentlemen, many are enterprising Scotchmen ; all are intelligent persons, well calculated to cope with the difficulties which surround them. Many of them began life as prodigals, and have now tamed down into wealthy proprietors. This district is thinly populated by innumerable small tribes of blacks, whom some call Malays, others Australian negroes. To those poor savages the arts and sciences are quite unknown. Strongly gifted with the perceptive, entirely wanting in the reflective faculty, they pass their time living on the precarious tenure of the chase, too idle to till the ground, and too careless even to construct huts. The kangaroo, the emu, the wild turkey, the opossum, and the fish afford them food, and these they kill with the spear and the boomerang, for they have not arrived even at the art of making bows and arrows, nor are fish-nets by any means general amongst them. They are divided into small tribes or clans, to which tradition has appropriated a certain district, which is never overpassed with impunity, unless by a friendly tribe. Each clan has a nominal chief, who is expected to head them in their fights ; but he, with the rest, is subject to a senate, which is composed of the old men ; who, in their turn, can only act on the usages established among them from time immemorial. Whether their chieftain-ship is elective or hereditary I cannot learn. I suspect that it is hereditary, with exceptions in certain cases. With regard to religion, they come up to my idea of pure atheism, for they have no idea of a god, no name for him, no worship of any sort – not even idol-worship. They have no definite idea of an evil spirit, nor have they any idea of an after-life ; though, for some time after the death of one of their tribe, they have a perfect horror of the dark, and on no account mention the name of the deceased. This they carry to such an extent, that should the dead person bear the name of any object, animate or inanimate that name is immediately changed. In morals they are Socialists, and Socialists to the most exaggerated extent. I cannot repeat all that I have heard on this subject. With regard to their wives, a man has seldom more than two, and the second is rarely taken until the first is old and worn out. The new wife then acts as handmaid to the other. If a wife is discovered to be unfaithful to her husband, which is not a common occurrence, she receives a good beating from him, and the affair passes. Infidelity, however, with a white, is esteemed an honour to the tribe ; and considering their ugliness and filthy habits, not without reason, one would imagine. The poor creatures have much perceptive intelligence : shoot well, ride well, make excellent mounted police, are very honest, not addicted to pilfering, great news mongers, wonderful mimics, and pick up our language very rapidly :  but they cannot count ;  they can relate no traditions of the past, and seem utterly impervious to all religious teaching : not that they resist it at all ; they are delighted with the honour done to them, especially when the doctrine is accompanied by tobacco ;  but it all passes through their heads and hearts as water through a sieve.  Each tribe has an individual who is set apart to perform the functions of medical man and magician.  Him they call “Doc-doc,” and he is expected to cure diseases ; which he sometimes does by a mesmeric process, to charm down rain, or to curse the unruly members of the tribe.  These things he does at the request of the old men, whose tool he is.  So that, after all, their form of government is nothing new.  Other nations, not calling themselves barbarous, have, and have had in times past, their nominal chief, their oligarchy, and their established church.  The men and women go entirely naked in summer; in winter they wear opossum-skins.  This, then, is my district, and it is my duty to visit from station to station, to hold morning and evening prayers, and to endeavour to impart spiritual knowledge and religious consolation to the white people scattered up and down in this wilderness.  May God grant me power to do it as I should!  I am not sent as missionary to the blacks, but I will study their character closely, and prevent the publicans from giving them fermented and spirituous liquors.

  June 15 (trinity Sunday). – Rode to Poon Boon station, belonging to the Royal Bank Company, where there are no less than 35,000 Sheep. A Mr. M____, a very gentlemanlike young man, is superintendent of this important property. He is evidently anxious to forward views  in every way that he can.  As he was not certain of my coming to-day, he could only get together a congregation of ten.  There are two unbaptised children in the neighbourhood, whose parents defer baptism under various flimsy pretexts.   Returned to my head-quarters to a seven-o’clock dinner, after a fatiguing ride over boggy plains, with difficulty fording the Wakool river, and had evening service before going to bed.

  June 18. – Received letters and newspapers from Melbourne, which last are full of accounts of the discovery of gold in New South Wales.  This discovery is occasioning immeasurable excitement.

  June 19. – Rode to a small station about twenty miles away on the right bank of the Logan. The track lay through extensive plains, rendered soft by the late rains.  The host and hostess were hard working, and in every way respectable Scotch people, of the Presbyterian persuasion, who received us most hospitably.  On the river’s bank near there, a solitary rock of red sandstone seems to have grown up like a plant, and protrudes far into the river’s course.  Before retiring for the night I read the lessons for the evening, expounding as I read, and some of the prayers.  My accommodation for the night was coarse, but the hearty welcome refined everything.

  June 22 (Sunday). –  Had Divine Service at the Court-House, Moolamon.  Thirty-five were present. Baptised two children after the Second Lesson. The blacks, as before, crowded the door; and I understand, on account of the part I take in this ceremony,  they have given me the title of “Maker of children to the white men.”  They also call me “White man’s Doc-doc.”

June 24. – Commenced a visitation in the eastern part of my district. Commenced by having the horses swum over a creek: then saddled them, and proceeded due east on the north bank of the Edward.  Our journey was extremely fatiguing, for the heavy rains which had fallen had saturated the clayey soil, so that at times the horses’ going was a succession of plunges.  In places, too, the river had overflooded its banks, so that we had to wade through water for miles.  It was chiefly low forest-land where the floods were, and the ragged-looking gum-trees, with their withered and broken limbs had a most lugubrious aspect under the threatening sky, surrounded as they were by the seemingly interminable flood.  After thirty-two miles of this wearisome riding I arrived at a large wood hut, which was a public-house kept by a Scotchman. The good landlady gave me an excellent bed.

June 25. – Whilst paying my bill to the landlady she told me that the men, when drunk, use the most horrible language, and she feared her children would become corrupted.  She said (so I understood) that she paid 250 l. a-year rent for this road-side inn; and I suppose that these enormous rents force the innkeepers to adulterate their liquors.  Gave her some advise about keeping her family away from the influence of the tap, and at eve prosecuted my journey.  Found travelling a repetition of yesterday – saturated clayey plains, and flooded forest-land at the river side.  Came to a station where I was warmly received by three ferocious bull-dogs and coolly received by the master, so I rode on through the slush in the midst of a mournful silence, which seems characteristic of the nature here.  Called at a hut where lived a woman with several daughters ;  she was Irish Romanist, and very bigoted.  Came up with the postman, who was riding a Timor pony of thirteen hands, of less ; these little creatures have a peculiar run of about five and a-half miles an hour, which they can keep up, for eighty miles, with scarce a stoppage.  They are highly valued on account of their hardy, indefatigable habits.  Just at sunset we lost our track in the most dismal swamp, from which I thought we never should have emerged.  After much difficulty we arrived at the Sand Hills public-house at Deniliquin, having waded, as it were, our horses for thirty-five miles.

  June 26. – Rested a little. Called on a surgeon who is settled in this district.  He seems a quiet, gentleman-like man and people say that he is clever.  Conversed with a poor fellow suffering from ophthalmia, commonly called sandy blight.  He told me that the pain was intense, especially at night ; and I could well believe him, for his eyes were covered with a purulent discharge.  This painful disease is very prevalent here.  It weakens the organs of sight very much, and the first attack renders them sensitive and more obnoxious to successive visitations.  People are by no means agreed as to how it is caused.  Some say it is the bite of a fly ; others, grains of sand blown by the wind ; others, heat of blood and fever thereupon ensuing.  To this last explanation I am disposed to incline.  The best course to be adopted during an attack is to stay quiet, living very temperately indeed, and taking daily small doses of cooling medicine, not forgetting to bathe the eye with a mild lotion of sulphate of zinc.  This being done, the malady must be patiently allowed to have its course ;  which may occupy one week, or may occupy four, as the case may be.

June 28. – The mornings and evenings are cold, although the weather from ten to four is beyond all expression, elastic and enjoyable. Called on a Sawyer’s wife; and distributed tracts ; baptised three children ; tried an old entire horse, which is to be lent to me for my excursion up the Billibong.  He is a cream-coloured Arab, and is rather stiff in the joints.  My companion, who also wants a fresh horse, cannot get one.  It is the custom here, when horses are not immediately wanted to turn them out on the vast plains.  So long as you do not require their services, you are sure to see them every now and then either hovering about the station or coming into the river to drink.  But if one wants them particularly for some special and urgent service, the perverse animals, as if moved by some special instinct of contrariness, are never to be found ; and perhaps one has to wait a week to catch a glimpse of a horse, which but a few days ago was always in sight.

  June 29 (Sunday). –  Rode to one of Mr. B____’s stations, which is on the Edward. Was most hospitably received by two steady and intelligent young Australians of the name of H____, but in consequence of all hands being employed lambing at the out-stations, could only get together a congregation of seven.  To these I read the prayers and the Litany and preached, and afterwards baptized a child.  Find many Romanist families all about, but they will in no wise avail themselves of my ministry.  Their nearest clergyman is at Kilmore, forty miles from Melbourne.  Rode back to Warbreccan, and read the Evening Service to nine persons.

June 30. – Started on a Journey of fifty or sixty miles, along the banks Billibong Creek, to visit three or four home-stations. The morning was intensely cold, in consequence of the sharp nightfrost ; but when the sun exerted his power, all thawed and the road became a channel of half-solid glue.  The scenery, as usual, grassless plains skirted by belts of timber.  Overtook a Billibong squatter, struggling homewards through the mire with his wife and family, in two carriages, each drawn by three horses.  He was returning from Melbourne.  He told us that he could not lend us horses on to the next station after his ; so we turned back, I resolving to visit this district at a more favourable season.  Returned to B____’s station, after a ride of four-and-twenty miles, dined, and before going to rest had in eight or nine of the servants, to whom I read and expounded to Lessons of the day and afterwards availed myself of the Bishop of London’s Prayers.

  July 2. – My mare came in from the plains dead lame.  This is a most provoking and disappointing country for locomotion.  Horses are numerous as the leaves on the trees, and yet never to hand ;

 

“water, water everywhere

And not a drop to drink”

 

Either they are lame, or in foal, or out of condition, or they have sore backs or they are out on the plains ; there is always some hitch with these indispensable animals.  At last a horse was lent me, and I rode across a vast plain covered with tufts of prickly bush, and admirably adapted for pasturage. Rested the night at a most hospitable station, the lady of which is a Roman Catholic.  Had prayers at eight P.M., and expounded the 15^th chapter of St. Luke to eleven persons including servants.

July. 3 – Had prayers non praeter solitum, before breakfast, and baptized a child immediately after breakfast.  My kind host lent me a strong grey horse, and offered me pasturage for my lame mare, and then I rode twenty-five miles to the station of a Mr. L____, one of the most intelligent and right-thinking men whom I have yet met in this country.  He was busily engaged in painting his hut when I rode up, and did not give me a particularly warm reception at first, which is often the case with downright, sterling people.  But I soon learned to appreciate him. He is very anxious to get up a National School at a Township sixteen miles off, called Maiden’s Punt, where is an important ferry over the Murray.  My friend knows Shakspeare almost by heart ; for often, in times past, when keeping sheep in the wilderness has he sat in a rude log-hut, round which the unreclaimed savage was sleeping and the wild-dog howling, and kept himself awake during the anxious night by reading at the light of a half-extinguished fire the grand philosophy of the “o’erthrown mind” of Hamlet, the eccentricities of Launce and his  “cruel-hearted cur,” Crab, or the inextricable woes of “the gentle lady married to the Moor.”  Before going to bed, I gave prayers and explication to a congregation of ten.

July 4. – After Morning Prayers baptized a child.  Saw a young half-caste, who had none of the Malay features.  Hear that the indigenes here prefer lending their daughters to the white people to marrying them to their black comrades.  If that be the case, the race must soon disappear, for the half-caste children are all eventually put out of the way.

July 5. – Rode to Maiden’s Punt, where an enterprising individual from the Sydney side has arranged a ferry over the Murray, and started a very good inn.  Here is already formed, or will shortly be formed, a Township.  This hamlet now consists of an inn and about eight or ten huts, with a population of about thirty persons, of whom half are children, all very much neglected.

July 6 – (Sunday). Visited the people.  Find only one Romanist family of four children.  About twelve persons attended Divine Service at the inn.  Baptized two children.  The mother of one, a Romanist, made great resistance, but the husband – a staunch Protestant – doggedly insisted on the sacrament taking place.  I did not interfere in the slightest degree, but let them arrange it between themselves.  I hope gradually to do something in this wild district ; but I foresee that all progress will be very gradual.  I shall not see this progress myself, but I pray that my successor may.

July 7. – Rode to the Station belonging to Messrs. H­­­­____ and B____, who are both lately married, and have everything very nice about them.  Had family prayers in the evening.  One of the ladies had been used to attend St. Paul’s, Knightsbridge.

July 9. – Travelled to Mr L____’s, on my return to the Edward.

July 10. – After a ride of twenty-five miles of intricate steering through the bush, arrived at Mr. B____’s, where I found my mare sound.

  July 11. – Arrived at the Edward River.

July 15. – Travelled to M____’s, public house, a distance of thirty five miles.  Was subjected to most disgusting noises all night.  There were dogs barking ; babies crying ; mothers making even more noise by endeavouring to tranquillise them ; drunkards blaspheming ; – all this was going on in a room or rooms contiguous to mine.

July 16. – Rode on in the wet to Moolamon, a distance of forty miles.  The creek there being swollen, my poor mare had to be swum across it before her heavy day’s work was done.  I was kept awake a great part of the night at the public house by the most horrible blasphemies. Uttered by drunken men.   To swear by “the Holy Ghost” seems very much the custom here.  But all my experience in swearing sinks into insignificance in the face of what I heard to-night.

July 17. – Summoned the landlord, and asked him how he could permit such language as I heard last night, and at so late an hour.  He apologised, and assured me that the man who was the chief offender in the disgusting scene of the previous evening was a shepherd in the employ of a neighbouring squatter, and that he had the reputation of being a steady respectable man when sober, but that, when drunk, he was outrageous.  I told him that it was impossible that the utterer of such language could ever be respectable.  Two reflections crossed my mind : one is, that rum adulterated with tobacco is the most infernal brewage that can be, for it makes men demons when under its influence, and brings on delirium tremens in a very short space of time ; the other is, that if we are not directly responsible for our words and actions during the temporary madness of intoxication, we are equally responsible indirectly for all this by departing from the strict line of sobriety.  Every man know the peculiar influence that liquor has on him, and therefore, at the first departure from sobriety, he becomes responsible for all the moral phenomena which may become apparent during sequent ebriety.  The wretched sinner last night is as amenable to the punishment of God for his dreadful blasphemies as if he had uttered them when perfectly sober, because he was well aware that excess of liquor had always that peculiar effect on him.  Often had he been drunk before, and as often had he uttered this frightful language.

July 20 (Sunday). – Had Morning Service at the Court-House ; thirty were present.  Exhorted them against the sin of drunkenness.  The Evening Service I held at the house of the magistrate of the district.  Twenty- seven persons, nearly all men attended, and behaved most decorously. A very satisfactory day altogether.

July 23. – Rode to my headquarters on the Edward river, having finished my first progress.  I feel convinced that it is absurd for any clergyman to undertake the pastoral charge of this district, unless he be possessed of an iron constitution and great patience ; and be cheered by religious enthusiasm.  He must combine physical strength with moral determination, and above all, he must look for approval to a higher Power than his fellow-men.  I am not aware that my motives for living among the wild population of these parts are as much appreciated as one would imagine they would be.

July 24. – A part of to-day has been employed in entering my Baptisms into the book.  Received a very interesting letter from a young Australian, who is a superintendent of a neighbouring important station.  It runs thus :-

 

“Rev. and dear Sir,  –  Your request, that I would read parts of the Scripture and a short sermon to my household on each returning Sabbath, is highly becoming in one of your sacred calling, and I hope I shall never live to doubt the excellent effect of spending the Sabbath in the manner you point out ; although many trivial causes, the whole of which put together would not amount to anything like a reason, have  hitherto prevented me from doing so.  The subject has often had my serious consideration, and I once commenced to read prayers on Sunday, but failed to carry it through, in what I thought an acceptable manner, and so I dropped it altogether.  But I purpose, God willing, in accordance with your request, to commence the practice again. – I have the honour to be,” &c. & c.

 

When I consider this young man has not had the advantages of an early education, but has fairly worked himself into his present position by his industry and steady good sense, with but little time to improve his mind, I am the more struck at the simple good taste, and something more also, which dictated this letter.

July 25. – In the evening I witnessed a very striking ceremonial among the blacks.  A neighbouring tribe has been, and is, in great trouble for two of them named Billy Button and London, had killed a black boy, called Aladdin.  For this, another black had remonstrated with them, and they actually killed him too, but not before London had been pierced from behind with a jagged-headed spear through the reins and groin.  All this occasioned immense scandal, as occurring among people of the same tribe.  I was visiting London, examining his wound, which was mortal, when all of a sudden some children rushed into the camp, saying that some strange blacks were approaching.  In a moment all was bustle.  The men put on their opossum-cloaks, seized their spears, and went out to meet the strangers.  These consisted of five of a friendly tribe, who came to give them counsel and condolence.  They had their heads plastered over with white clay, and their faces smeared with the same ; they wore white blankets, carried spears, and looked most hideously.  On  arriving within sight of the camp, the group separated into two bands ; and one band commenced an ululation, or wild howl of woe, whilst the other took it up and prolonged it.  At an eminence within an arrow’s flight of the camp they stood still and waited until some fire should be brought them, for it is a most important and indispensable custom among the Australian indigenes, that an encampment should not be approached by a visitor until he shall have made a fire from fire brought out of the encampment.  He must then wait by the side of it, until the people come out to him.  If they will not bring fire, it is a sign of enmity.  On this occasion the hot embers were brought out, the fire was kindled, and they sat, or rather crouched, around it and about it for a full half hour, motionless and in absolute silence, with their heads buried between their knees.  It was an impressive sight to see these crouching men, all besmeared with mud, sitting motionless as corpses, in the midst of entire silence  –  a silence which was responded to by all the tribe in the camp.  For thirty minutes at least, not a child cried, not a dog barked.  I could not prevent my mind from reverting to the following verse or two in Job : “Now when Job’s three friends heard of all this evil that was come upon him, they came every one from his own place ; Eliphaz the Temanite, and Bildad the Shuhite, and Zophar the Naamathite. For they had made an appointment together to come to mourn with him and to comfort him.  And when they lifted up their eyes afar off, and knew him not, they lifted up their voices and wept ; and they rent every one his mantle, and sprinkled dust upon their heads towards heaven.  So they sat down with him upon the ground seven days and seven nights, and none spake a word unto him : for they saw that his grief was very great.”   By and By the visitors broke through this dead silence, and raise a long, plaintive and not inharmonious wail, which, after a momentary pause, was responded to and prolonged by the blacks in the encampment.  This was interspersed with sobs and cries on the part of the women.  During the whole of the night, with short intervals, did this wild ululation fill the glades of the surrounding primeval forest ; and some of the mourners made gashes on their foreheads and backs with burning sticks, sharply pointed.

July 26. – Visited the blacks’ camp.  The visitors of yesterday were gone.  Not seeing London, the wounded black, I was going to ask for him, and had pronounced his name as far as Lon–, when a naked old crone springing up from the ground, put her hand on my mouth and shook her head.  This was an intimation that he was dead, and that his name must no more be spoken ; for they believe, that a dead man’s spirit hovering about will highly resent the mention of his name.   Thus the word, whatever other idea it may represent, must never more be spoken.  As is often the case in civilised countries, these poor savages substitute unmeaning superstitions for the rational worship of the living God.  And yet, before we condemn all superstition in toto, we must recollect that it is the sole restraining power to which many savage natures can be subjected.

July 27 (Sunday). – Had two services.  The servants of the station attended.  Walked out for four miles on the plains in the afternoon, when I saw a very great thunder-storm approaching.  I made up my mind to get very wet, when, by a fortunate chance, I saw my mare, which had been turned out on the plains, grazing within fifty yards of me.  I went up to her, jumped on her back, and galloped home in an incredibly short space of time, thus avoiding my wetting.  But I made the experience, that when a horse is out of condition, as mine is, it is better to ride him with a saddle than without.

July 30. – Am completely imprisoned, for my mare is too thin for work, and I cannot walk, on account of the country being saturated with wet.

Aug. 6. – Started to visit some of the western portions of my district.  Slept at the hut of a small squatter, a Scotchman, who is so much esteemed by his neighbours, that he is called “Honest John.”

Aug. 7. – Rode on further fourteen miles, to the hut of another small settler, who has been a prisoner of the Crown, but who, by hard work and good conduct, has amassed a little property.  I was received very cordially, as I always have been by persons of his class, and I promised to call again.  Then I rode on to Messrs. P____ and C____’s important station on the Murrumbidgee, where Mr. P____ received me most courteously and kindly. Mr. P____ is a very well educated man (I believe he is a graduate of Trinity College, Dublin), and has the best poets and prose-writers in his book-cases.  In the evening, before retiring to rest, I pursued my usual course of reading, and expounding as I read, the Lessons of the day, and then offering up bishop Blomfield’s Prayers.

  Aug. 8. – Made a pastoral visit to some of the people about, and employed the rest of the day in reading Cary’s translation of Dante.  Mr. Cary has, with such marvellous accuracy, transfused into his work both the letter and spirit of the man who “had seen hell” ; his versification is so harmonious, his language so original and inconceivably majestic, that if we must not rank him with the great Florentine himself, and the greatest poets of the past, I know not in what circle of poets he may be ranked.  While I read the translation with the original at my side, I seem not to be reading a translation but I fancy to myself that, by the process of metempsychosis, the soul of Dante has passed into the body of an English clergyman, and that the Italian has rewritten his “Divina Commedia” in the widely spread language of a more puissant nation, of a people more capable of appreciating his divine excellency.

Aug.  9. – Rode to Kieta, a large station on the Murrumbidgee, belonging to Mr. Wentworth of Sydney, and managed by a shrewd, active, and good-natured Scotchman.  In the evening I expounded to twenty persons, whose behaviour was most exemplary.  There are no less than ten huts about the chief hut, three of which are occupied by married people.               A large tribe of blacks, too, are permanently encamped in the immediate neighbourhood.

Aug. 10. – Held Divine Service at Kieta, consisting of the two Lessons, Litany, and a sermon : about twenty five persons attended.  Churched a woman and baptized a child after the second lesson.  I then rode to Banranald, a township, in which there are two inns, a court-house, and five or six huts.  I there read the full Evening Service to twenty persons : baptized a child there also.  People very decorous.  Distributed some tracts among them before I left, and addressed the eight or ten children whom I found there.  Then I rode back to Mr. P____’s and had another Service, at which ten or twelve attended.  The group of places which I have visited to-day musters for me about fifty persons.

Aug. 11. –  Strolled along the banks of the muddy and rapid Murrumbidgee.  Could not help reflecting, how that the world is near 6000 years old, and that this river, and even the sea into which it rolls, has only been known to civilised man for comparatively a few years.  This river is now rolling a few yards from a hut containing the intellectual emanations of ancient and modern authors, who nearly all have thought and written totally unconscious that such a river existed, or even the vast continent which it helps to water.  How gradual, and yet never ceasing are the developments of providence!

  Aug. 15. – Rode to a station called Poon Boon.  Visited the blacks’ camp there, and endeavoured to explain who I was, but experienced great difficulty ; for I find that the language of the tribe twenty of thirty miles off, of which I know something, is, in the great measure, unknown here.  As, when a black dies, his name must no more be uttered, and as many blacks are named after surrounding objects, such as tree, sun, moon, stars, water, it follows that these objects are continually changing their names.  It is this which will always render difficult missionary enterprises among these poor people.  And then it is sad to see how quickly a tribe melts away after contact with civilisation.  Before the whites came they were always unclothed ; now they are clothed in our cast-off clothes half their time, and unclothed the other half:  so then they catch cold, and die of consumption.  And I find that they cease to reproduce.  I have as yet scarce seen any babies or very young children.  I believe that they have a sort of mysterious feeling that their time is come, and that a superior race has fixed its dominion over the ruins of theirs.  With regard to the difficulties which the anomalous state of their language, combined with their transitory existence, has placed in the way of religious teaching, I have heard recounted an anecdote concerning a worthy minister of religion, on the Sydney side, who, that he might humanise and christianise a large tribe of indigenes in his neighbourhood, began compiling a dictionary and grammar in their language ; but, unfortunately, either on account of the worthy old gentleman’s tardiness, or unusual mortality among the poor blacks, it came to pass, that by the time the ponderous dictionary and grammar had gone to press, every individual of the tribe had died off, save one very very old woman, and she was blind and deaf.  The few words of the blacks’ language with which I have made myself acquainted, belong to a tribe on the Edward River, and are the following.

 

Nawhingee – Sun	Ouranu – Mouth	Nia-Bourbu –Hair
Willangee – Rain	Yanna – To go	Munnanu – Hand
Buckudo – Moon	Wimpulu – Ears	Trattu – Arm
Outungee – Man	Kunpa – To sleep	Okiana – To give
Naraugee – Small	Liantuk – Teeth	Garru – Leg
Kantinee – Water	Wirana – To swim	Gournanu – Foot
Murramen – Old Man	Bourbu – Head	Bano – Little
Kallou – Old Woman	Dalgo – Good	Budgeree – Beautiful
Bupu – Child	Mirmu – Eyes	Tanga – To eat
Guraniantu – Big	Kokiana – To come	Kopa -To drink
Outu – Body	Gintu – Nose	Wiripia – Good day
Warrou – Bad	Kanta – To call	Warrigal – Wild dog

 

But I cannot guarantee the exact correctness of these words.  In this camp at Poon boon I saw a case of leprosy on the hips and back of a black girl : the natives call it “debil-debil.”  The part affected was covered with hard pustules and scales, of a very dingy white colour ; she walked lame, and was scratching herself in a way painful to see.  She told me that the only cure was the kidney fat of a black of a hostile tribe.  This she said, because she considered herself the victim of enchantment on the part of a “doe-doe,” or magician of a hostile tribe.  Her brothers are now looking out for some one on whom to bring deliverance for their sister.

Aug. 16. –    An intensely hot day, with the mosquitoes very troublesome. Rode to Mr, P____’s station at Swan Hill, on the Murray.  The nearest way was twenty miles, but we went ten miles out of our way to look at a large lake eight miles round.  All the plains on our right were inundated by the overflowing waters of the Murray.  The station is on a low sand-hill, rising out of the plains, and has a most desolate appearance, there being no timber near.  The Murray is quite close, though scarcely visible, winding as it does through an extensive reedy flat : it has now overflowed its banks, so that its exact course is not to be distinguished.  I understand that these unfertile, reedy flats, extend for thirty miles above and thirty miles below Swan Hill.  One of the routes from this part of the country to Melbourne passes by here : the distance is 210 miles.

This Murray is a much more important river than I imagined.  The sources of some of its tributaries are within 200 miles of Moreton Bay, on the east coast of the continent.  At Albury it becomes an important stream, and is styled the Murray, having before borne the name of the Hume.  From Albury it flows in a westerly direction, bearing slightly northward, forming the northern boundary of the province of Port Phillip, and falls into Lake Alexandrina, on the south coast, in the province of S. Australia, which lake is connected by a narrow channel with the ocean at Encounter Bay.  Taking its very numerous windings into consideration, the course of the Murray from Albury cannot, I hear, be less than 2000 miles.  But it is only at certain periods of the year that the Murray can be called a fine river, and be made available for navigation.  At the junction of the Darling, between 100 and 200 miles lower down than this place, its rise usually commences in June, and it ordinarily attains its highest level in October, after which it begins falling, and descends to its lowest point about April, at which epoch it may, in numerous places, be crossed on horseback. Thus, when the Murray is full to overflowing, it is a magnificent stream ; but when low, comparatively insignificant : for, indeed, at the entrance of lake Alexandrina, it cannot be less than 200 yards wide and 10 fathoms deep ; thence to the junction of the Darling, the width averages from 100 to 150 yards, though, during great floods or droughts, this average cannot of course be permitted to hold good.  The Murray I conceive, may be considered navigable up to the Darling for eight months of the year, and as far as Swan Hill for six months.   As I was retiring to rest for the night I perceived a large hole in the flooring of my room ; for this hut, unlike the generality of the head station hut in my district, had a wooden flooring.  “Do not be alarmed,” said the servant who showed me to my bedchamber, “if you should see a large black snake come out of that hole in early morning.  He is very quiet if he is not disturbed, and merely takes a turn round the room to pick up anything he can get ; that done, he retires to his hole.”  I asked it these reptiles were considered venomous, and was answered that their bites caused certain death in about eight or ten hours.  I saw nothing of him, however.  And this puts me in mind of a woman somewhere near here, who was bitten in the ankle by a death adder at eight o’clock in the evening.  Being far from  medical assistance, she resigned herself to inevitable death.  She called her husband to her, recounted to him all the business transactions which had taken place in his absence (he was just returned from a journey), gave advice as to his future management of his family and stock, and after vainly attempting to shake off the drowsiness which oppressed her, tranquilly yielded up her spirit in a deep sleep at night.

Aug. 17  (Sunday). – Had service at Swan Hill – the Lessons, Litany, and Sermon.  Six only were present.  Afterwards rode back to Poon Boon, and read the Evening Service.  I am sorry I have no surplice with me, for I think that people have a right to expect that the priestly functions should be exercised in priestly robes ; but it is impossible to carry a large starched vestment in a horse valise.

Aug. 25. – Visited a poor shepherd, who is lying in a miserable, helpless plight, suffering from the effects of having caught cold on mercury.  The country is so healthy that with the exception of such a malady as this and ophthalmia, illness is unknown.  Found the following valuable specimen of French fine writing in Michelet’s “History of France,” which I took from the bookshelf of the hut.  “Wool and flesh are the primitive foundations of England and the English race.  Ere becoming the world’s manufactory of hardware and tissue, England was a victualling shop. From time immemorial they were a breeding and pastoral people – a race fatted on beef and mutton.  Hence that freshness of tint, that beauty and strength.  Their greatest man, Shakspeare, was originally a butcher.”

Aug. 29. – Started alone for a station thirty-five miles off.  Owing to the track being faint I missed my way to the public-house where I wished to pass the night, and got at nightfall, after riding fifty miles, into the middle of a forest-swamp.  In my confusion I forgot the direction by which I had come, and felt very forlorn indeed, for the water was up to my horse’s shoulders.  Darkness came on rapidly ; and then I discovered a dull, red light, on an eminence at a great distance.  Spurred my floundering beast towards it, and found, to my great joy, that the light was a pine-tree on a sand hill, burning itself out.  The fire was devouring its interior, and burst through the bark at intervals, and blazed up through the top.  Thus, when I had given myself up for lost, He who feeds the ravens gave me a dry soil and a good fire, not the less acceptable from my having been wet through several times during the day.  Soon after a shepherd, who had lost his way, came up, also attracted by the light, so that we sat upon a trunk of a tree together all the night, as near the burning tree as we could get, whilst my wearied horse carefully hobbled, grazed near.  As to any supper, it was out of the question.  Good bushmen never think it necessary to take any food in their pockets in the shape of lunch ; and I,  who am not at all a good bushman, had foolishly followed their example.  And the shepherd related to me his past life, and told me how silly he had been, and how bitterly he repented of his folly – which I have no doubt was quite true, for be seemed miserable enough ; and how, if he had to live his life over again, he would live it over in quite a different way – which, I dare say, was not quite true, though he believed it all at the time.  And then I exhorted him to make good resolves for the future, instead of regretting the past ; and he said he would try.  But my exhortations were continually sliding down to mere worldly advice.  Yet this is the wrong course of action.  I have often found myself giving mere moral and worldly advice to worldly people, instead of purely spiritual exhortation, forgetting that these same persons are themselves as capable, perhaps, of doing that as I am.  It is in practice where the generality of people fail, not in theory ; and it is only religions considerations that will touch that.

Aug. 29. – When day dawned I found the right road, and after twelve miles’ riding, heard the crowing of cocks, and soon after the baying of dogs ; and then saw white buildings shining among the trees in the early sun-beams ; and then I entered the little room in the roadside hostelry, and broke my twenty-four hours’ fast. The crow of the cock in this country warned many a lost traveller, faint with hunger, that he was near human habitations. In the course of the morning I baptised a baby, and then examined my hostess’s children in Scripture, writing and arithmetic.  They came off very well. I can hardly see ; for last night I rode up in the dark against a branch of a tree, with such force, striking myself just under the eye, that I was knocked off my horse.  I am, nearly blind with the swelling.  My landlady did her utmost to give me a good dinner, and she succeeded, for she cooked admirably a wild goose.

Aug. 31. – Celebrated Morning and Afternoon Service at the Court-House in Moolamon.  As rain descended in torrents all day, and the tracks are in a frightfully boggy state few attended.

Sept. 2. – Could not catch my mare, which is in the Government paddock, in bad, loose, unsteady company.  Horses, like men, learn bad ways more quickly than good ones.  Called at the Moolamon Court-House, where petty sessions are held today.  Publicans’ licenses are also renewed now.  If a publican’s license is refused it is a very serious affair for him, and the fear of such a loss alone keeps them in order.  Owing to the inebriety of the working population, these people get rich too fast.  Visited a poor, wretched old fellow, who is at the last stage of life, from general decomposition of blood, the fruit of past errors.  He is very poor, and seems very penitent.  From the side of his pallet I went to the inn, which, owing to so much business going on in the place, was full of people.  I represented the pitiful case to them, and begged them to do something for the poor creature.  They responded in the affirmative very cheerfully.  This occurred at two in the afternoon ; and to my pleasurable surprise I learned, at five, that 16l. 16s 6d had been collected for him.

Sept. 5. – Went to a wool-shed to see the sheep shearing.  The shearers finish off the sheep with incredible alacrity ; others fold the fleeces and arrange them.  The proprietor sits in the middle to keep the men up to their work, and preserve order.  Some of the shearers earn very much in the day, and drink their earnings as fast as they make them.  Hear that yesterday, at the washing, one of the washers was bitten on the foot by a venomous water-snake, and that he suffered intense agony for several hours.  But it was not a water-snake ; it was a land-snake swimming about in the river for his amusement, as the snakes here are wont to do.  The man is well, I believe, to-day though weak ; but he cannot be prevailed to go again into the water.

Sept. 7.  (Sunday). – Had service twice.  The shearers were very attentive.  I exhorted them not to dissipate their hardly-earned wages.  Looking accidentally into some of the books that the station possesses, I alighted on two admirable translations, one by Williams, of that portion of Moschus’ “Lament for Bion,” Which begins with –

 

“Ah! mallows in the garden die,

Parsley, and blooming dill ;

Yet, wakened by the vernal sky,

Again their course fulfil.

 

Whilst we, the wise, the strong, the brave,

Have no fresh spring in store ;

But silent in the hollow grave

Sleep on for evermore.”

 

The other is :

 

“Alas! Alas! When in a garden fair,

Mallows, crisp dill, or parsley yield to fate ;

These, with another year, regenerate :

But when a mortal life the bloom and crown,

The wise, the good, the valiant and the great,

Succumb to death, in hollow earth shut down,

We sleep, for ever sleep – for ever lie unknown.”

 

The old pagans, with all their exquisite susceptibilities and melodious thoughts, needed indeed great many chaplets of “late” roses and myrtle ; great many goblets of grief-dispelling wine, to smother such uncomfortable thoughts about the dark future.  Why ! it must have been like a phantom at all their banquets.  What an entirely different tone of mind does our Christian notion of the eternity of the soul engender!  How much more healthy, fresh, and anti-morbid is our moral atmosphere than theirs !

Equally beautiful with the above lines, and for more cheering, is the “Elegy on Lycedas,” by him who “soared with no middle flight above the Aonian Mount:”

 

Weep no more, woeful shepherds, weep no more,

For Lycidas your sorrow is not dead,

Sunk though he be beneath the watery floor:

So sinks the day-star in the ocean-bed,

And yet anon repairs his drooping head,

And tricks his beams, and with new-spangled ore

Flames in the forehead of the morning sky :

So Lycidas sunk low, but mounted high

Through the dear might of Him that walked the waves;

And hears the unexpressive nuptial-song

In the blest kingdoms meek of joy and love.

There entertain him all the saints above,

In solemn troops and sweet societies,

That sing, and singing in their glory move,

And wipe the tears for ever from his eyes.

Now, Lycidas, the shepherds weep no more,”

 

   Sept.  8, 9,10. – Hunting for my mare, which has been hovering about close to the hut for the last month.  Now that she is wanted, the aggravating animal has galloped off to the back plains, and cannot be found.

Sept. 11. – Having found my horse, I rode to Moolamon, the chief place of the district.  Find that the Edward is rising very rapidly, and that all the tributary creeks are full to overflowing.   This is very bad news for me, as all my district is full of creeks and rivers.  Formed innumerable plains for proceeding.

Sept. 12. –  Charley, the black fellow, came to me, humbly petitioning that I would persuade a young girl to give herself up to him as his wife.  Lucy, it seems (for that was the girl’s name), had taken refuge in a hut belonging to a station close by, and would not come out to Charley, although by the laws of the blacks she justly belonged to him, her brother having taken Charley’s sister.  Her reason for so acting I discovered, was, that she abhorred submitting herself to some impure rites which accompany the nuptials of the savages.  I therefore reminded Charley, that he had a wife (Polly) already, and that he had better give up all thoughts of Lucy.  Then he became excited, and said, that if she did not come out to him he would kill her ; but if she would, that what she feared would not happen to her.  I told him, that it was not within his power to prevent it ; advised him to be content with Polly, who was already, I heard, furiously jealous of the girl, and threatened, that if harm came of his threat it should be the worse for him.  He was very dissatisfied, and looked into the hut with the savage gaze of a panther at the poor girl, who was crouching near the fire like a timid fawn.  He dared not enter, but he could watch until she should come out ; and I left him, watching and looking, as if he meant mischief. *

 

* I am grieved to add, that after staying in her refuge two or three days she darted out of the hut in the middle of the night, during a terrible tempest, and plunged into the Edward, which flowed close by, with the intention of getting to her own tribe, ten miles off, unseen by Charley ; and that subsequently her body was discovered in an adjoining forest.  Her skull had been cleft or battered by a waddy (Tomahawk).  Inquiry was made as to who was the murderer ; but the natives have mysterious ways with them, and baffled all our endeavours to obtain sufficient, even circumstantial, evidence of anybody’s guilt.  For my own part I have little doubt that Charley, after my visit, never left entirely the neighbourhood of the hut, but remained watching near, day and night, and that he, too, detecting her flight, plunged into the dark waters of the rushing river, and following the poor girl fleetly running, brained her with his deadly weapon.  When I saw him some time afterwards he looked very foolish and guilty ; but when I asked him who killed Lucy, declared that he had not the slightest idea.  I am not aware that, according to his laws, he had committed a crime.  Lucy had broken her laws by refusing to live with a man whose property she legally was.  He punished her, as we might punish a refractory animal.  Although Charley was a decent fellow, and could make himself useful about a station, I never could look on him with pleasure again, nor did I ever give him any more clothes.

 

  Sept. 13. – Started up the river from Moolamon towards Deniliquin. Had the advantage of society ; for the chief constable is escorting some prisoners towards Goulburn, where they are to be tried, and I was glad to go with the party for society’s sake.  We were seven in number : the head constable and two aides, the clerk of the bench, a clever and worthy man, and two prisoners.  One of these is a Penton-Villian, accused of forgery, a pet crime of the rascals which Pentonville turns out.  The other is a very athletic, gloomy-browed black savage, called Billy the Bull, who is accused of murdering a white man.  This wretched creature was conducted on horseback, carefully handcuffed, for the blacks have such small hands and wrists that few handcuffs are to be found which they will not slip ; and the bones of the murdered man were hanging in a bag down one side of the saddle dangling against his leg.  He has escaped once, and I have little doubt will escape again before he gets to Goulburn. He looks very uncomfortable on the horse, and being naked, with the exception of some rug thrown over his shoulders, has already galled himself very badly.  On leaving Moolamon, we found that the river had overflowed its banks, consequently we had to wade through a mile of water.  After this we progressed favourably, until we arrived at the Deep Creek which we found much swollen.  We tried one of our horses over it, and found that he was forced to swim.  At this juncture the clouds seemed to burst over our heads and let down, not rain, so much as volumes of water.  This effectually cooled our travelling ardour ; we turned our horses’ heads all of us, and came back drenched and dispirited, as fast as our horses could bring us, Billy the Bull swaying about in his saddle, and bruising his shin against the murdered man’s bones, looking the picture of misery.  I have little doubt that the murder was fully avenged by his miserable feelings on that morning.  Thus ends my second attempt at a progress in this difficult country.

Sept. 18. – A bridge which has been thrown over the Edward at the head-station, where I reside, has been swept away by the force of the floods.  We hear, too, that there are great inundations up the Murray.

Sept. 26. – Made a third attempt to get eastward.  Accompanied by a barman of the inn at Moolamon, I crossed the Billibong in a canoe or rather a little bark raft.  It would only hold one at a time, together with a black girl, who managed the frail skiff.  I had to kneel and keep myself motionless, or there would have been an inevitable upset.  Every now and then the water came trickling through the little clay barricade, which alone rendered the raft tenable.  I was then necessitated to lean forward with great caution, and patch up the barricade.  As it was, my knees were quite wet with the encroaching water.  We then had a toilsome ride of forty miles across the plains, scorched by the sun, and bitten very badly indeed by mosquitoes.  My companion related wonderful things of the customs and rites of the blacks, connected with their arrival at the age of puberty and their marriages.  According to him, and I have reason to believe that he was not far wrong, their impurity is something frightful, and cannot here be described – not even veiled under another language.

Sept. 27. – Had another ride of forty miles, to get to Deniliquin.  The river was so flooded that we had to keep out six miles in the black plains.  At nightfall I arrived at my place of destination, baked with the sun, my face seamed with mosquito bites, and with a large swelling behind each ear from the same cause.  Had Prayer and Exposition in the public room at the inn before retiring for the night.

Sept. 28. – Had Divine Service at the inn at Deniliquin.  Seven or eight persons attended.  A forge was at work near, but I stopped it.  The people here are very careless about religious observances.  This is chiefly owing to the irreligion of a person who is superintendent of the Royal Bank sheep-station here.  I went to this station in the afternoon to hold Afternoon Service : this person saw me coming, ordered his horse, and galloped away from the back-door.  But I was very nicely received by his subalterns, who welcomed me most courteously, and mustered sixteen well-behaved people for my congregation in the wool-shed.

Sept. 29. – As the height of the Murray and Edward prevents the ferries from working, I determined to visit two stations on the Billibong, one belonging to two nephews of a late Lord Chancellor, the other to a Mr. K____.  My guide was a handsome black, called Simon.  He swaggered up to me with a jaunty air at an early hour, all prepared and equipped for his journey.  This preparation and equipment consisted  – and consisted alone  – in somebody’s cast-off old black hat, without either crown or brim.  For the rest he was entirely naked.  He was rather surprised when I hinted to him that I considered his toilet defective.  I at last got something for him to put on, and we started.  For thirty-five miles we kept on and off the Billibong Creek, or rather river.  This Billibong resolves itself into water-holes in the summer.  It is now running bank high.  After passing through the usual succession of gum-tree and box forest, and seemingly interminable plain, my sable guide and I arrived at the Messrs. B____’s station, called Kurrabungamum, where I was cordially receive by the proprietors.

Oct. 1. – Rode twenty miles to Jareeldree, the station of Mr. K____, who, I am told, has lost 10,000 sheep by catarrh this year.  I was most kindly and hospitably receive by the gentlemen and Mrs. K____ and her daughters.  Their style of living is superior to anything I have yet seen in this country, and their house has an excellent flower-garden, and also a kitchen-garden, attached to it.

Oct. 2. – Rested to-day.  The heat and mosquitoes are insupportable.  Walked to see an Irishwoman, and at her request baptized her child, although she professes Romanism.  She told me that no Romanist clergyman had ever been in that district.  At his station there are two half-caste young people, who talk of making a marriage between them.  Conversed with Selina, the young woman, about religious matters, for I should object to marry them until they had been baptized.

Oct. 3. – Rode back to Mr. B____’s.  The plains are entirely covered with a thick, coarse herbage, which is in full flower, and my horse had to wade for miles and miles through beautiful wild-flowers, yellow, white, crimson, lilac, and purple, with yellow predominating.  From an eminence to behold the interminable plains thus veiled with this wondrous mosaic was a sight never to be forgotten.  At Mr. B____’s a quantity of bottles of water, covered with wet flannel, are kept constantly hung out in the sun.  Thus they have always deliciously cool water ready.

Oct. 4. – Returned to Deniliquin, quite scarred from mosquito bites.

Oct. 5 (Sunday). – Married a man and woman at the inn.  I only had notice of it last Sunday, and I wished the marriage to be delayed for a week or two ; but the mother, with tears in her eyes, implored me, now that the man was in a humour for the marriage, not to delay enabling him to make an honest woman of her daughter.  I then catechised some children.  After that I rode over to the wool shed of the Company’s station.  Found that the chief superintendent had left in the morning, hearing that I was coming, and had advised his people to bring up a large flock of weaning ewes close to the wool-shed as soon as I should begin the Service, so that their bleating might prevent my being heard.  This is the man who is appointed chief manager of by far the most important station in my district.  Close by the wool-shed I found all the washers and shearers amusing themselves with horse-racing, and I had to wait until two or three heats were over before they would come in to Prayers.  After the Service was over I rode back to the inn, and found a mob of men savagely drunk.  On seeing me they dispersed, and I gave a second Service to a few steady people.  This unsatisfactory state of things entirely arises from the great man of the place being an immoral irreligious character.  At my friend’s station on the Edward, the washers and shearers behaved in the most orderly manner.

Oct. 6. – Crossed the Edward with my two horses ; but first I had to swim them across the creek close to the inn.  A black rode one, leading the other.  As soon as the mare got out of her depth she reared up in the water and threw the man off, who, after swimming a stroke or two, adroitly caught hold of her tail and so was towed ashore, But the black would not undertake to guide them across the river, and the consequence was that one of them was carried too low down by the force of the current, and with the greatest difficulty, exhausted as it was, could crawl up the precipitous banks.  I gave him up as certainly lost. I crossed over on a frail bit of bark in a kneeling posture, ferried over by a black girl. When I considered how wide and deep the river was, and how strong the current ran, I considered I had great cause for thankfulness in getting safely over.  Continued my journey to Ward’s Inn on the Gulpha Creek, where, previous to retiring, I had Prayers and Exposition.

  Oct. 7. –  Rode to Maiden’s Inn on the Murray, where I received letters which will cause me to ride down to Melbourne directly.

 Oct. 8. – Swam my horse over the swollen Murray.  Owing to the inundations, the punt, as the great ferry-boat is called, has ceased to work for five or six weeks.  My horse was towed behind a boat, and in the middle of the river, getting entangled with the branches of an uprooted floating tree, was very nearly drowned.  I went round in another boat a distance of two miles.  On the Melbourne side saw a great number of drays camped, awaiting the resumption of the ferry.  Rode to Barrow’s Inn over thirty five miles of well-grassed plains.  My horse is an old Sydney horse, with a great deal of Arab blood in him, and very much addicted to stumbling.  In fact, he fell with me once in the journey.

Oct. 9. – Accompanied by a friend, who was going to Kilmore, I rode to the Mac Ivor inn, a distance of forty miles, through a rich and picturesque country.

  Oct. 10. – Starting early, I rode to Kilmore, a distance of twenty-six miles, to breakfast, through a most beautiful country, combining granitic ranges, conical, volcanic, well wooded hills, smiling valleys, and park-like tracts of country.  Found that a party of twenty-five had left this place yesterday for the diggings at Ballarat.  The land about Kilmore, is of black loam, and is considered eminently fertile.  At one in the afternoon I started from Kilmore, and by dint of persevering and steady riding reached Melbourne, a distance of over forty miles, by eight in the evening. Thus I accomplished about seventy miles with one horse, on the third day of a journey of a hundred and fifty miles.  To-day, as it was a long way, I stopped to rest and bait for two hours.  The other days I adopted the custom here, and did not stop at all during the journey.  But I allowed the horse, hot as he might be, to drink as often as he liked.  Horses can drink when warm in this country, without rendering themselves liable to inflammation.  The great secret of riding horses long journeys is to ride them steadily, and not to keep them too long at the same pace.  My journeys average a pace of six miles an hour.

Oct. 11. – Walked about Melbourne, which, owing to the auri sacra fames, has quite a deserted appearance.  Many of the shops are shut, the occupants having given up sure and profitable trades that they may have a chance of getting rich suddenly.

Oct. 23. – People mad about the Mount Alexander Diggings.  Four hundred Van-Diemonians have just arrived from Tasmania, on their way to them.  Dined with Mr. B____, one of the first merchants here.  He is a well-disposed, charitable man, and a great supporter of the Bishop of Melbourne.  He takes a great interest in the religious and social progress of my district, and highly approved of my scheme of making every important head sheep-station a nucleus from which religious knowledge might be diffused.

Nov. 1. – On my way back to my district rode through the Black Forrest to Kyneton, where the large inn is full of people going to and returning from the diggings, eighteen miles off.  People drinking and making a noise all night.  No talk but of gold, and of the great yield of the mines.  The maid-servant, an Irish girl, as savage as the surrounding aborigines, pulled out of her dirty pocket three or four nuggets of gold to show me, worth, at least, 12/., which a digger had given her.

Nov. 3. – Visited the Mount Alexander Diggings, accompanied by a mounted policeman.  Rode along a mountainous road until we came to the locality where the gold was found.  In a narrow valley between two ranges of lofty volcanic-looking hills were assembled, on the borders of a nearly exhausted stream, about three thousand men, some digging earth from pits eight feet square ; others washing this earth in what are called “cradles;” and others washing the bottoms of the contents of the cradles in tin dishes.  In the back-ground, away from the stream, were an infinite number of tents and shelters of every description.  Looking by chance into one of the numerous pits I recognised a friend of mine, a young gentleman from Tasmania, who, with five others, were come here, hoping to make their fortune.  After digging through four feet of gravel they had come to a stratum of decomposed slate, which they were washing to great advantage.  I saw my friend pick with his penknife into a tin box from the sides of the pit a great number of small bits of very pure gold, about four times as large as a pin’s head.  On Friday last they got two ounces ; on Saturday, three; and to-day they had already got five, when I was there.  It is a very exciting occupation.  The sight of a quantity of rich virgin gold just taken from the surrounding mould agitates the nerves strangely.

November 8. – Arrived in my district across the Murray.  Found a mob of drunken men and a conjurer in the public room at Maiden’s Inn.  This vice of drunkenness prevails to a frightful extent everywhere here.  And thus it comes to pass.  It is rarely the custom to keep wines, or beer, or spirits at the sheep-stations. So people when at home, whether masters at the chief hut, or shepherds at the remote outstanding hut, drink nothing but raking green tea, which I believe would be poisonous, if the effects of the copperas were not neutralised by an enormous quantity of sugar.  Drinking several times in the day of this liquid, they get their stomachs into such a nervous, sensitive state, that when they have occasion to visit a public-house, requiring some tonic, they drink madly of spiritous and fermented liquors. And to drink moderately of wholesome drink would be advantageous to them, but as the rum is strongly tinctured with tobacco, the beer embittered with strychnia, and the wine is some odious fabrication into which juice of the grape enters not, those who drink with comparative sobriety earn a headache, those who drink to excess subject themselves to delirium tremens.

Nov. 12. – After a solitary ride of fifty-two miles, churching a woman on the way, I arrived at Moolamon, the township nearest to my headquarters.  These long journeys ridden companionless are very disagreeable to me.  For the people, by not entering into sufficiently minute details with regard to my route, often mislead me, although unintentionally.  And not having confidence in their directions, I am often in a state of great uncertainty for six or seven hours as to whether I am going right or not ; whether my road may take me into some inundated tract of country, or may turn out to be a mere cattle-track, leading nowhere.  In spring-time, when the verdure is abundant it is difficult to trace out a comparatively frequented road, whilst all vestiges of secondary tracks are grown over with grass ; and to lose one’s self in this district is a serious matter.  About three weeks ago a shepherd, having occasion to go about forty miles on horseback, lost his way from the floods having covered the usual track ; he left his master’s station on Monday morning after breakfast, and he obtained no food or shelter of any description until Wednesday night late.  He managed to lose his horse, too.  I hear of many accidents and disasters which have occurred in my district during my short absence in Melbourne.  At Maiden’s Punt a child had been drowned.  Also a man fell on to the fire in a state of drunkenness, and burned himself very severely ; and then. After he had been put to bed and his wounds had been dressed, he tore off the dressings from irritation, and then the flies got at him, and he became fly-flown, and so died.  At Deniliquin a sawyer’s wife has been drowned ; and at the Yarra Creek, the chief superintendent of the royal Bank stations, to whom I have before alluded, has lost his life.  Although this creek much swollen, Mr. _____, who was in a dog-cart drawn by two fine horses, one in the shafts, the other as outrigger, rashly drove into it at the usual place of crossing, although warned against such a step.  And I believe that he might have crossed it, if the horses had not become entangled in the limbs of a tree lying under the water.  It is supposed that he got out to disengage the horses, and received a kick on the forehead which stunned him, so that he fell senseless under water and was drowned.  The horses, which were noble animals, unfortunately perished with him.

Nov. 13. – To-day, has been held at Moolamon a Government sale of allotments in the townships of Moama (Maiden’s Punt) and of Moolamon.  The latter sold miserably ; the former remarkably well.  Maiden himself was a great buyer.

Nov. 27. –  A black speared a platypus as it was swimming in the river close to where I was. It requires great cunning and dexterity to do this.

  Dec. 1. – A sirocco, which caused the thermometer in the sitting-room to stand at 85 degrees all day.  Caught enough fish for our dinner.  We have what is called cod, which is sometimes found from sixty to eighty pounds weight, and black fish from one to two pounds, and a fish about as large as a herring.  They are all so soft and pappy, that unless they are boiled with a little vinegar in the water, they are disagreeable.  With every care in cooking, they are not very appetising.

  Dec. 6. – Thermometer in the shade 95 degrees.  Rode to a neighbouring station, the superintendent of which recounted to me how he once saved a man who was lost on the plains.  My informant related, that he was some years ago managing a sheep-and-cattle station on the Sydney side, which comprised some vast plains.  He was one evening returning tired to his hut, after a long fruitless search after stray cattle, when by the last gleams of daylight he saw at a great distance some birds circling in the air over a certain spot.  His first impulse was to go on without taking notice of this, but afterwards he reflected that probably it might be the carcase of one of the lost cattle, over which carrion crows were hovering.  He accordingly urged his horse towards the spot, and to his great surprise saw a man reeling along, every now and then tumbling down, and faintly endeavouring with his arms to ward off the strokes which the carrion crows, wheeling around him, were giving him on the head with their wings.  He at first thought he must be intoxicated, and called to him, but received no answer.  He rode close up to him, and saw a miserable sight.  It was a man delirious through hunger and thirst, on the point of dropping on the ground, and becoming, ere quite dead, the prey of the voracious crows.  He was frightfully attenuated ; his eyes were glazed, a black foam was oozing from his livid lips.  Sounds, not human, were gurgled up from his parched throat.  My informant, a most estimable young man, lifted him up across his horse somehow, and thus conducted him to his hut.  Then he had a difficulty in opening his teeth, for they were fast clenched; and then he could not, at first, get some tea down his parched throat.  These difficulties surmounted, the poor fellow took some nourishment, and was left to sleep through the night.  In the morning he was sufficiently recovered to recount to him that he was one of the Pentonville people, and that he was proceeding direct from the coast to take a place as shepherd at some neighbouring sheep station; that having to cross on foot a forty-mile plain, he had been advised at the public-house to wait for some one to go with him, as he was quite a fresh hand ; that, anxious to get to his work as soon as possible, he set off by himself: that night came on, and there being no track, he had taken the precaution as he thought, to lie down to rest, with his feet pointing in the direction in which, at the morning’s dawn, he was to continue his course ; that in his sleep he must have shifted his body, so that when he awoke he pursued his journey in a wrong direction.  And thus he lost himself, and continued, as persons do, when they lose themselves, travelling in a circle.  For six days was this young man wandering about without food and (I think I understood my informant) without water.  He said, that he bore up very well for three days: then he got weak; then a swimming of he head came on ; then supervened delirium and total unconsciousness, until my friend was providentially sent to his deliverance.

Dec. 8. – Hear that Melbourne is gold-mad.  Half-a-ton has been taken down there in one week.  A man and his wife came to the station as servants at the wages of 50/- per annum.  These wages are, of course, exclusive of a most generous system of rations.  The gold-fury has so seized on the minds of the working classes, that the master thinks himself very lucky in getting these people.  The thermometer to-day is 94 degrees in the sitting-room.

Dec. 16. – Arrived at Deniliquin, having employed yesterday and to-day in travelling on horseback from Moolamon, a distance of seventy miles.  Found all in confusion at the inn : the landlord and landlady are in bed ill ; the ostler is tipsy ; the whole population seems to be on the point of leaving for the diggings.  And it is not to be wondered at ; for I know to a certainty, that a labouring man, one of a party at the diggings, has gained for his share twenty ounces of gold in eight days.  Baptized a child of a shepherd.  He wanted to pay me a fee.  I thanked him, but told him that our Church did not sell the Sacraments, and that I should be liable to severe Ecclesiastical censure if I took anything from him. He seemed much surprised and disappointed.  Perhaps he thought, that that which is cheaply obtained is worth little.  After many pourparlers I consented to take something from him on behalf of the Church fund ; whereupon he gave me nine and sixpence.  Received a letter from Dr. Broughton, the bishop of Sydney, saying that he was travelling rapidly towards the Edward River to meet me.

Dec. 18. –  As a large drinking-party is expected at the inn at Deniliquin, I went over to the neighbouring Royal Bank Station to sleep.  A Mr ____ is acting as storekeeper.  He is in very bad health, having broken a blood-vessel when in California, and has an incessant hard cough, nearly as painful to those about him as to himself.  His history, as he recounted it to me, is singularly interesting, and full of warning.  He told me that he was the son of a Scotch Clergyman, and was entered at the Glasgow University, preparatory to following his father’s profession: but having taken to extravagant courses and habits of dissipation, which his parents neither could nor would suffer, he had to take his name off the books, and give up all thoughts of entering the Ministry. He then obtained a commission in the Cape Rifles, and remained some time in active service at the Cape : but he had not sufficient moral courage to shake off his evil genius ; his vicious ways still stuck by him.  So he sold his commission, and embarked for the diggings in California.  When there he worked beyond his strength, and drank beyond his strength, and ultimately broke one of the vessels of the lungs, which laid him up for two months.  On his partial recovery he came to Sydney, and the doctors there advised him to come to the Edward River district, for the sake of its very dry atmosphere.  He then got the situation of storekeeper at one of the Royal Bank stations, where I found him.  He claims against the climate as being too dry for his malady, and as causing his chest infinite irritation.  He is peevish, despairing, has a presentiment that he shall die soon, and utters as his sole consolation the not very consolatory Italian “Che sara sara.”  I felt great sympathy for him : for he is evidently an educated person, and of acute sensibility, and now, owing to his recklessness, he has brought himself down to be a storekeeper in this miserable country.  I expressed myself so to him : but his only answer between his fits of coughing was, “Che sara sara.”  I told him that, if it pleased God to save his life, so as to enable him to get a situation near the sea-coast (where he wished to go, the air being moister), I prayed that the grace of god would enable him to form healthy resolves for the future.  His answer, and his only answer, was: “My dear sir, the half of man’s life is spent in making good resolves, the other half in breaking them – Che sara sara.

N.B. – About a year after the above was written I heard of the death of  Mr.____,  under very lamentable circumstances.  He got away from the Edward, and obtained a capital situation in one of the banks at Geelong, one of the healthiest cities in the world.  But he could not resist addicting himself to stimulants.  At last he consumed daily two bottles of port wine, which was far too much for a person of his frail nature.  He then took to drinking brandy and water in addition to this, and soon died thoroughly worn out with past fatigues and excesses.

Dec. 19. – The Bishop of Sydney has decided not to come down to the Edward River, but to give me a meeting at Jareeldree, Mr. K____’s station on the Billibong, sixty miles from here (Deniliquin) ; so this evening, at six, I started on horseback for my first stage, thirty-five miles. Rode it in five hours.  My companion was an Australian gentleman, accustomed to night-riding through timber.  As I am not well versed in this art, and as our pace was by no means slow, considering the darkness of the night, I ran some risk of being knocked off my horse by some withered limb of a gum-tree, the branches of which grow remarkably near the ground.  After, however, two very narrow escapes, I arrived at Mr. B____’s station at eleven o’clock.

Dec. 20. –  A most intensely suffocating day.  I could neither stand, sit, nor lie ; but I roamed restlessly about within the narrow limits of the hut.  I found it cooler, when on horseback in the sun, riding to Mr. K____’s.  On my arrival at Jareeldree I was I was announced to Dr. Broughton, bishop of Sydney. This most excellent and worthy prelate has travelled from Sydney – a distance of six hundred miles, I should think – in an old caleche, drawn by two lean horses. On Wednesday night he was out in the bush.  For a fortnight past his nourishment has been defective, and at this station he has got some milk, for the first time for a week.  I strongly advised him not to come on any further, but to turn his horses’ heads’ homewards, during these frightful heats.  We conversed on many points, and I received some admirable advice from this truly Christian bishop.  I mentioned to him a plan on which I had often meditated for extending the Church in the colonies, and which he did me the honour entirely to approve.  It was, that young clergymen of distinguished talents, of wealth, or of family, should, after leaving the University, instead of settling down in curacies at home, until the college living, or the purchased living, or the family living, should become vacant, place their services entirely at the disposal of some Colonial Bishop, with a promise to remain unmarried and serve the Church in his diocese for a certain number of years – Three, four, five, as the case might be.  At the expiration of that period they would return to their sphere of labour in the mother-country, laden with experience, divested of their prejudices, possessing the satisfaction of having laboured in a distant vineyard, where labour was more wanted than at home, and of having contributed to the Church abroad services which the Church at home can well spare.  This is a much more practical mode of serving a clerical apprenticeship than striving to become a popular preacher, or engaging in ecclesiastical polemics.

Dec. 21 (Sunday). – I read Prayers, and the Bishop preached.

Dec. 22. – Took leave at daybreak of the Bishop of Sydney, who started towards Albury on his return to Sydney.  I then bathed in the Billibong.  Whilst in the water I felt an unusual irritation on the skin, which I could not then account for.  At the end of ten minutes, emerging from the mud-coloured stream, I found all my body festooned with lively, vigorous leeches, all sucking away with great appetite : I think I must have had two dozen on me.  Of course, dressing immediately was out of the question, for these ministers of health had left on me sanguinary trace of their presence.  Their intentions, no doubt, were excellent : but as I wished to start directly, their visitation was ill-timed. Slept at Mr.B____’s.

Postscript. – I subsequently learned that, owing to the floods being on, the Bishop lost his way two or three days after we parted ; that he was out on the burning plains, without food or water for two days and a night ; and that when he got to a station his tongue was so dry he could scarce  articulate.  Of two dozen little paroquets that he was taking home with him, twenty died from thirst.

Dec. 23. – During my thirty-five miles to the banks of the Edward River, I experienced greater inconvenience from heat and fatigue than I had ever done before.  My horse panted and sobbed, although proceeding at only a foot pace.  On the burning plains no water could be had.  A universal stillness reigned around.  Twice I was forced to get off to rest under a bush.  On the way I met three drays, and the oxen were panting, with their tongues lolling out of their mouths.  With a very parched throat I arrived at the inn, and could hardly stand when I dismounted.  The thermometer had stood all day at 106 degrees in the shade.  Received a letter from the superintendent of the neighbouring station, begging me not to sleep there, as the men were all furiously drunk : so, in the cool of the evening, I went on three or four miles farther to a sheep station called Warbreccan.

Christmas Day. – Held Service at the Moira station, with the thermometer at 95 degrees in doors.  Few attended, for all are gone or going to the diggings,  Everything is turned upside down.  A shepherd has come up from Mount Alexander with 107l. the fruit of nine days labour.  He is now drinking it away at the public-house.

Dec. 31. – Having suffered from inflammation of the eyes for some days, I applied to a medical man for advice, who tells me that I am attacked by ophthalmia, vulgarly called the “gravelly blight.”  The feeling is as if two burning coals were throbbing about in my eye-sockets ; an incessant purulent discharge has supervened, and the slightest light occasions me agonies.  I believe I brought it on by my ride on the 23^rd.  As I cannot lay up where I am, I thought it advisable to go to a quiet inn, ten miles off, for that purpose; so having previously bandaged my eyes carefully, and placed a green veil over all, I mounted on horseback, and was conducted to where I wished to go, by my good friend the doctor.  The pain, as night sets in, is exceedingly racking, but I am cheered by hearing that these attacks are rarely followed by loss of sight.

  Jan. 4, 1852. –   I have been sitting these three days in the arm-chair of the inn blind and solitary.  The window has been carefully darkened.  Being very anxious to know if my sight were seriously impaired, I groped about for a book, opened it at random, withdrew a little the green baize that covered the window, lifted up the coloured handkerchiefs with which I was veiled, and took a nervous, hurried glance at the book, to see if I could distinguish the print. The book chanced to be Gifford’s “Translation of Juvenal and Persius ;” the two lines which I had previously singled out, and, to my great joy, could read, were these :-

 

“His blear eyes ran in gutters to his chin;

His beard was stubble , and his cheeks were thin.”

Overjoyed as I was at thus proving that I was not blind, I could hardly but consider the allusion personal.  Hear that the landlord is laid up by ophthalmia.  A poor fellow has been brought here to-day from one of the neighbouring out-stations, more afflicted even than I am by this most painful malady.

Jan. 5. – A neighbouring squatter kindly drove me to his station, about thirty-five miles from here.  My eyes are very sensitive to light, but I trust that the force of the disease is past.  The mosquitoes, towards night, were very troublesome.  I was constrained to leave my bed and walk in the garden during the greater part of the night.

Jan. 9 (Sunday). – With the blessing of God my eyes took me through the Service.  They ached, however, towards the end, and the print seems dim to me.  On the whole, the attack has lasted sixteen days.  I was obliged to sleep in my boots, and partially dressed, to avoid the ferocious attacks of the mosquitoes.

Jan. 14. –  The servant of the house has in former days been a convict, one of the old-fashioned sort, – men who were whipped into usefulness and discipline long before false notions of humanity, or sentimental sympathies with crime, completely altered for the worse the convict system.  He repays his master’s confidence with fidelity, and can turn his hand to everything. He can cut hair and shave, break in horses to ride and drive, bleed and physic them.  He can cook, make very good pastry, garden, thatch, cut posts and rails, and put them up ; and, moreover, acts as a very good clerk on Sundays.  But there is one important thing that he cannot do – that is, abstain from drink ; he condemns his own failing, and told his master when he was engaged that one of his reasons for entering the service was, that the station was so far from a public-house.  “I will be a good servant to you, sir, as long as you keep me from drink; but if I once get to a ‘public’ I can’t answer for the consequences.”  He is so attentive to me that I feel a great interest in him.

Postscript. – I am sorry to say, that about two months after this was written his master, being short of hands, sent him to the public-house for his letters.  He began drinking with a mob of men on their way to the diggings, and in a moment of inebriety consented to make one of the party.  Thus and excellent master lost an excellent servant.

Jan. 15. – To-day I asked a black fellow, called Peacock, if he had ever eaten “black fellow?”  As I said it laughingly, he was thrown off his guard, and acknowledged that he had ; and from his look, the reminiscences of the fact seemed to be rather pleasurable to him than otherwise.  “What is the taste like?” I asked.  “Like pig,” he unhesitatingly replied.  Then I changed my manner, and asked him how he could dare do so horrible a thing?  On this he declared that what he had said was in jest, and that he had never eaten man.  This is the first time I could ever get a confession of cannibalism out of a native.  I have been told that the blacks cannot endure a white man’s flesh.  They say that it tastes very salt, and is highly flavoured with tobacco.

Jan. 20. – Having been recommended by my doctor to go to the sea-side for a change of air, I started three days ago, and am now hospitably entertained by Mr. M____, a wealthy squatter, about sixty miles from Melbourne.  To-day I have been watching the operation on sheeps’ feet for foot-rot.  It must be very disgusting work for the operator, for he has to hold the sheep between his knees, and cut off the putrified parts of the hoof, which emit a terrible stench.  As it is safer to cut too deep than not deep enough, deep cutting is inflicted, and the blood flows in abundance from the poor suffering animal.  After the unsound part has been well cut away, the sheep is turned into a trough full of water, strongly impregnated with corrosive sublimate, and then made to stand for half an hour.  This, I believe, effects a perfect cure.  Many sheep-owners dress the diseased part with mercurial ointment, but the mode I have been describing is considered equally effective, and more expeditious, easy, and economical.  In the evening we burnt a belt of herbage all round the head-station ; for the heat of the weather and dryness of the atmosphere is so great that the proprietor is afraid of that terrible visitation, a bush-fire.  We set fire to the grass, and as the fire came roaring on towards the premises, the whole strength of the establishment, white and black, man and master, were ready at a given signal to extinguish it with huge boughs, and with trampling on it.  The chasm thus made is about fifty yards.

Jan. 21. – Rode through the Black Forest. The road resembled one of the great thoroughfares out of London, so full was it of waggons, drays, carts, gigs, equestrians and pedestrians, proceeding to the diggings.  And no wonder; for a very common-looking person, who begged leave to ride by my side, thinking, perhaps, that my calling might be a protection to him, told me that he and three others had dug up sixteen hundred pounds worth of gold in nine weeks.  He had a hundred and fifty pounds worth about his person then.  He told me, that previous to leaving England he had been a helper in a stable in Yorkshire.  There was immense confusion and drunkenness at the Bush Inn at Gisbourne, where I slept.  At night the chambermaid advised me to lock and barricade the door of my bed-room, otherwise she thought I may be intruded upon by drunken people ; and it was well I did so, for during the night two men practised upon the panels of the door for at least an hour, and though they split them, they could not get in.

Jan. 22. – Stopping to bait at a roadside inn near Melbourne, I spoke with a common labouring man, who had just dug up 800 l. of gold.

Jan. 25. – Went to the church at Richmond, near Melbourne.  The preacher styled angels “the aboriginal inhabitants of heaven.”

Jan. 26. – The gold excitement is fast increasing.  Seeing a crowd of people around a shop-door, I found that there was on show inside a lump of solid, purest gold, weighing twenty-seven pounds eleven ounces.  The men who found it -four ill-looking persons – were in attendance, waiting to be paid for it.  I heard that they had sold it for 1200 l.  The mass of gold had a very bizarre form, looking something like a Hindoo god.

Jan. 29. – The chief bookseller here complains much of his not being able to make a living in Melbourne.

Feb. 1 (Sunday). – Heard the Archdeacon of Melbourne preach.

Feb. 3. – Rode to Brighton, and enjoyed the balmy breeze of the sea.  Find that, owing to the gold discovery, land here has already risen to the price of 50l. per acre.

Feb. 7. – Diggers are returning into Melbourne in some numbers; many very discontented.  It is said that there are, at least 40,000 at the diggings.

  Feb. 24. (Shrove Tuesday). – A strong sirocco in Melbourne. The thermometer is 113 degrees in the shade; and yet so dry and elastic is the atmosphere, that this heat does not affect one so much as during a hot August day in London.

Feb. 26. – To have my horse shod has cost me 25s.  This is one of the primiteae of the gold discovery.

Feb. 29. (Sunday) – Attended St. James’s Church, and heard the Bishop preach an excellent sermon on the vices of the people here.  The chief moral failings of the population are drunkenness, swearing, and most intense selfishness.  All this exists in the mother-country, but there the counterbalancing elements exist to a greater extent than here.

March 11. – Gold is selling in Melborne at 3l. the ounce.

March 18. – Took my first stage out of Melbourne towards my district.  At night the landlord and his wife, both very drunk, fought so furiously, that I was obliged to separate them by force.  During the fray, all the little children came clustering round the mother, taking her part. One sturdy urchin boldly attacked his father, by kicking his shins and the calves of his legs.

March 19. – Gave some serious advice to the landlord about the scene last night, and afterwards rode to Kilmore to breakfast.  Slept at the      Mac Ivor Inn, where I heard from one of the Bendigo diggers that the goings on there are lamentably immoral.

March 21 (Sunday). – Arrived at Maiden’s Punt on the Murray, after a ride of thirty-two miles, in four hours and a half.  Held Service immediately, and then rode on ten miles farther to another inn, lower down the Murray, and held a second service.

March 23. – Had a thirty-four miles’ journey to ride, and discovered at the last moment that my new horse, bought in Melbourne, obstinately refused to lead.  Time wore away in vainly endeavouring to conquer his obstinacy.  The end was that I had to mount the obstinate one, and lead my other.  I rode eighteen miles, under a hot sun, in one hour and a half.  Stopped half an hour, and then rode the remaining sixteen miles in one hour and twenty minutes.  The repugnance that I have of losing my way in this country would cause me to make any sacrifice to avoid being out after dark at night.

March 24. – Employed myself the greater part of the day in teaching my obstinate animal of yesterday to lead.

April 10. – Went with two magistrates and the head constable of the district to examine the corpse of a man, which has just been discovered on the banks of the Edward River.  As we approached the spot, we came upon a dog, who, on seeing us slunk into some bushes, frightened.  Immediately afterwards we saw the body lying prone, with the head partially submerged in a little pool of water.  As it had been dragged from a place some yards off, where two or three people had been camping, I suggested that it was possible there might have been foul play, although the corpse was so placed as to give a first impression that the man had, in the last state of exhaustion from want of food, dragged himself down to the water-side to drink, and there had died.  On closely examining the body, we found that part had been devoured – probably by his glare-eyed, guilty-looking dog; and on turning round the head, which was resting on the arm, we discovered a tremendous fracture of the right parietal bone of the skull.  Thus it is certain that a murder has been enacted here.

April 12. – Rode with a magistrate into Moolamon, to hold an inquiry with regard to the murdered man.  We elicited the fact that, about ten days ago, three men from the diggings had passed the night here, and talked about having a quantity of gold about them.  In the morning they went away together, accompanied by a dog, in the direction in which the body was found.  We likewise were informed that the second day afterwards two men on horseback, leading a third horse, and having no dog with them, were seen going at full speed across the spacious plain, which extends to the Murrumbidgee.  Thus it is pretty evident that the three must have camped by the side of the Edward ; and, during the night, that the two murdered the one for his share of the gold.  They then arranged his body in a studied attitude, to make it appear that he had died of exhaustion; and placed his head to rest on his arm, so as to conceal the fracture.  And this deceit would have succeeded, if I had not particularly requested that the head should be lifted up.  The murderers have however, got clean off; and in such a wild, unsettled country as this, all researches will be useless.

April 20. – Hear that a hut-keeper, going from one hut to another on this run, has lost his way, and not been heard of.  He started the day before yesterday in the morning.

April 22. – As I was mounting a horse, lately bought, he suddenly put his head between his legs, so as almost to meet his tail, and bucked his back up, so that I was shot off like an arrow from a bow.  Luckily, I broke no bones. I believe that an inveterate buckjumper can be cured by slinging up one of the four legs, and lunging him about severely in heavy ground on the three legs.  The action they must needs make use of on such an occasion somewhat resembles the action of bucking; and after some severe trials of that sort, they take a dislike to the whole style of thing.  An Irishman on the Murrumbidgee is very clever at this schooling.  It is called here “turning a horse inside out.”   No treatment can be too severe for a horse addicted to this abominable and incomprehensible vice.  And nearly all buckjumpers are good horses in other respects, which makes the whole thing the more provoking.  Not long ago I witnessed a professed jockey mount a very fine horse.  He mounted with great care, for many horses do their best to throw their riders before they can put the right leg over the saddle.  The horse allowed him to get on, and then set off at a furious gallop, stopping short every now and then to buck.  The man sat beautifully for some minutes.   But at length the furious beast made the extraordinary movement of turning short round to the left, bucking fearfully as he turned. The consequence was, that the man had a most tremendous throw ; and we all ran up, thinking that he must be killed.  To our surprise he got up, and began, though reeling a little, to look stedfastly for something on the ground.  To our questions, as to whether he was hurt, and what he wanted, he coolly replied that he was looking about for his pipe, which he had dropped in the fall.  The longer a rider sits a horse when he bucks, the worse it is for him when he comes off.

April 26. – Went out with my friend to poison his run.  It is thus done.  When a beast is killed, a quantity of small bits are cut off the carcase.   By means of a sharp penknife little holes are cut in these morsels, and into these little holes pinches of strychnia are introduced. These bits are put into a small bag and taken out on the run.  The acting person then, as he rides or drives along, throws to the right and left this meat.  At night the wild dogs come, eat it all up greedily, and ere long die.  But the strychnia has not yet done its work.  Wild dogs eat one another, and begin their repast with the entrails of their brothers.  Now the entrails of the dead dogs contain the strychnia, which is so strong, that after passing into the second dog it will kill him too, and, as I have been informed, even a third.  Thus the poor sheep call poison to their aid against their terrible enemies.

May 19. – The rain has fallen in torrents all day, and my condition is wretched enough in such a country, for there is no pastoral duty to attend to, and study and privacy in a poor little wood hut is next to impossible.

May 20. – Rode to Mr. L____’s Station, and there I heard of a shocking murder which has quite lately taken place in this neighbourhood.  The actors in this horrible tragedy were Edward River blacks ; the victim a man of colour from the United States, settled for some years as a pastry cook in Sydney.  This poor fellow gave up a remunerative business that he might go to the Port Phillip gold diggings. And was travelling this way in company with a white comrade.  He was unfortunately seen by some members of a tribe of blacks belonging to this neighbourhood, who followed him, chased him, and drove several spears jagged with bits of glass through his back. Working them up and down in his body as he lay on the ground.  His comrade, insane with terror, Ran, or rather flew, to the nearest station, the blacks at first following him with his bundle which he had dropped, and begging him to take it, as they did not wish to hurt nim.  They then cut up the corpse of their victim into three or four pieces, buried them, and taking up his bundle, as well as the bundle of his comrade, walked very unconcernedly into the store at the Company’s station, and gave them up to the storekeeper, saying that they had found them on the road.  Now this dreadful crime has arisen from a most lamentable blunder.  As I believe I have said before, all the tribes or families of the indigenes which are scattered over the whole face of the country, are in a state of natural warfare with one another.  Sometimes alliances are concluded between them ; but without such an alliance, every black who ventures into another territory is liable to be assassinated.  Now these stupid blacks mistook this poor American Black for one of themselves, and thus considered his life lawfully forfeited.  They disdained to touch his property.  A black expressed to me to-day great indignation at their stupidity, saying, that they ought to have known the difference between “black fellow” and “white man’s black fellow.”   It may be supposed that the whole country is much excited about this occurrence.   The mounted police have been galloping about shooting the wrong people, and letting the guilty authors of the outrage escape.  They have shot a lame old woman, I believe.

May 23. – Held Divine Service at the Doctor’s hut at Maiden’s Punt.  Ten adults and fifteen children attended – quite a refreshing number in comparison with the very few which usually attend my ministrations.

May 27. – After three or four days of heavy travelling over boggy ground, the horses having scarce anything to eat, I arrived at a station on the Barratta Creek, where I had a fine black swan served up for dinner, stewed.  It ate very like rather tough fricasseed rabbit.

May 28. – After crossing the Edward River in a frail canoe of bark, and swimming my horse over two or three deep creeks, I arrived at the hospitable and superior head-station of Mr. G____.

June 1. – My horses have strayed away, so that I am doomed to remain here in a state of inactivity.  In the evening I attended a native corrobery ; of what would be called by the whites, a soiree dansante.  The old men sat and smoked, the women drummed on skins, and the young men enacted pantomimic dances.  These ballets were of diverse character : some were joyous, others warlike, others licentious, whilst one was funereal.  According to their character, so the women chanted.  Naked and painted as the dancers were, they looked like demons as they flitted to and fro among the watchfires.  These ballets are not improvised, I find.   They are carefully concocted in some other district on the Australian continent, and passed from tribe to tribe until the popular taste gets tired of them; just as performances of a like description pass from one European nation to another.  I found that all the dances I saw to-night had come from the coast of South Australia.

June 10. – Still detained at Mr. G____’s station by the loss of my horses, studying the “memorable Relations” of that strange writer of fiction, Count Swedenborg.  A black fellow told me that a carcase of that wonderful beast the bunyip is lying rotting on a sand-hill nine miles off.  On further inquires I find that the tremendous floods now prevailing would render it impossible for me to get there without much peril and difficulty; but if I were quite sure that the statement were true I would go, nevertheless.  I also hear of a savage, voracious reptile, called the “mindei,” which is said to haunt the Billibong plains.  It is, so they say about twenty feet long, three feet in circumference, and has short legs.

June 15. – My horses came back of their own accord, so that I was able to get on ; but the weather is atrocious, and the roads of melted caoutchouc.  The longer I stay in this country, the more hopeless does my position seem.  The floods in winter and the droughts in summer render the life of a clergyman one of great difficulty and self-denial.  It must be recollected, that riding a horse and leading another over boggy ground for twenty-five miles, is quite as fatiguing as walking ten.  And the sole refreshment after such a day’s exercise consists of poisonous green tea without milk, lean beef without vegetables, and heavy damper.

June 17. – Arrived at my head-quarters on the Edward.  Hear of three men being drowned at Deniliquin, and of the stock-keeper at Kieta being drowned ; and of a woman with her three children, who were bushed for three days and three nights.  I also hear that the blacks on the Darling, where I hope to go as soon as I can, have become very insolent lately, and have murdered some white shepherds.  The expression used by my informant was, that they had become very “jolly” of late.  I see by the journals that an immense immigration is expected from England.

June 20. – Hear of some bushrangers on the Sydney side who robbed a gentleman, stripped him naked, and tied him across a nest of huge black ants, which ate all the flesh off his bones.  He was their old master, who, by his severity, had caused them to take to the bush.

June 21. – It is having been always the object of my wishes to visit the confluence of the Darling and the Murray, not only from being informed that the visit of a Minister would be very acceptable to the people of that district, but also on account of various objects of interest to be seen there, I started this morning at half-past nine from my headquarters on the Edward River for the sheep-station of Cannally, on the Murrumbidgee.  Yet at the outset some difficulties occurred which might have affected a sensitive mind.  My stipend is paid by a certain number of subscribers, among whom the names of the Darling squatters do not figure.  My people then seem not altogether well pleased that I should venture a hundred miles away from the limits of the subscription list, although they know that there must be people to be married, children to be baptized, women to be churched, and, above all, a population growing up in a most far-off district, totally destitute of clerical visiting or of religious ministrations.  But as I know that my health will not allow me to remain much longer in this extraordinary country, and that after me no one probably will dare to come for a long time, I have thought fit to set at defiance the half-smothered remonstrances of the subscription list, and to do the best I can for my neglected fellow-Christians during the remainder of my stay here.  Arriving at the Lake Yanga, we turned to the left, and found the road intricate and swampy.  A cold wind blew too, bringing with it showers of rain ; and although we rode hard, we at one time almost despaired of arriving at our hospitable resting-place before nightfall.  If we had not done so, we should have had to bush it.  Providentially we regained the track which we had lost for a short time, and leaving the “howling wilderness,” with its bleak plains and ragged forests of stunted timber, arrived at six to receive a hearty welcome from the kind-hearted and intelligent proprietor of the run.

  June 23. – It has rained without intermission from morning to night. The superintendent has promised to obtain for me against my return the upper jaw of some extraordinary animal, which the blacks describe as a sort bear or sloth.  Towards nightfall we swam out horses over the Murrumbidgee, that we might be ready to start early to-morrow morning.

June 24. – Raining in torrents, without intermission, the whole of the day.  Journey deferred until to-morrow.

  June 25. – I started form Cannally at half-past eight, and arrived at Mr. R____’s station on the Murray at three.  The country we traversed is very bad for stock, with the exception of some small plains.  Passed on my left a pretty lake of about six miles in circumference, which is fed by the Murrumbidgee.  Although it has never been known to be dry since the discovery of the country, fragments of salt-bush exist at its bottom.  The Murray here is at present 200 yards in width, and rolls at a majestic pace.

June 27 (Sunday). – Rode twenty-two miles to Euston, a township consisting of four or five huts and a pubic-house, situated on a pretty plain, bounded on the north by forest land and on the south by the Murray.  We passed on our left the Lakes Proa and Benanee, the latter very extensive, with bold banks all round.  As we rode rapidly along an excellent track, a flight of black cockatoos flew past – precursors of rain.  Saw several shrubs unknown on the Edward River, and indicative of a very hot climate.  At Euston I held Divine Service immediately on my arrival, and had a very well-behaved congregation of twenty persons.  Three children of the publican were baptized during the service.  I was hospitably entertained by Mr. Cole, the Government Commissioner of Crown Lands for the district, who has fixed his head-quarters at Euston, and who has become justly renowned over the Australian world for his frank hospitality and his excellent salads, in the fabrication of which he seems to have attained a rare skill.  And what renders these salads objects of wonder as well as good taste is, that no one can discover where the vegetable portion of the ingredients comes from ; for Euston is a country which I should conceive would only produce salt-bush and coarse grass one portion of the year, and sirrocco and dust the other.  It is well not to pry into harmless mysteries.  There lay the salad on his hospitable board, in all its exquisite proportions of much oil, little vinegar, hard eggs, anchovy sauce, pepper, salt, &c.  What grass or herb would not pass current with such condiments?  Our dinner-party consisted not only of myself and my two friends, squatters, who have accompanied me thus far, but also of Mr. L____, who is on his way to take his Commissionership of the Lower Darling, to which he is just appointed, and a clever young German, a medical man, who is on his way from South Australia to the diggings.  The conversation at table was animated and instructive, and turned on many subjects.  They discoursed on a remarkable bird found in district, called the Looa, four  of which, Gibbs, the publican, is brining up, and which I subsequently saw.  These birds are every way like a mixture of the pheasant and partridge, and are very fair eating.  But they do not hatch their young in the ordinary way.  They lay their eggs, carefully arranged in a pyramidal form, placing leaves and herbage between each layer.  Then comes rain, and afterwards sun, which causes decomposition of the vegetable matter.  The young birds, then are hatched by the intense heat that ensues.  It is a great boon for the blacks and whites to find an egg magazine.  One heap will be composed of many hundreds, in all stages of advancement.  As the indigenes prefer eggs with chicks in them, and the whites without, a whole pyramid is soon devoured, and all parties but the parent proprietors, satisfied.  I heard also evidence which goes far to prove that the bunyip is but a large and voracious otter.

June 30. –  At Mid-day started westward, in company with the new Commissioner for the Lower Darling, another gentleman, and two mounted troopers.  We thought to strike a sheep station called Tapaulen before sundown, but somehow, after passing Mount Dispersion, we missed our way, and travelled onward, onward, until eight at night, without being able to find our desired haven.  The wind blew coolly, showers of rain fell, and we would have been content with a fire and some hot tea.  But that was not to be.  We became entangled in a huge bend of the Murray, and were perfectly non-plussed as to our whereabouts. By and by we smelt fire, which was great joy ; and after ten minutes’ riding in the direction of the smell, we saw, by the light of the moon, smoke rising among the forest trees.  A few minutes then brought us into a blacks camp, close to which was a large flock of sheep put up  for the night.  We soon discovered that we had long passed the track leading to the sheep-station ; that if we decided to go there, we should have to ride back six miles, three miles of which would be deeply covered with water, the Murray flood being out ; and moreover, that as all the adult males of the camp were away fishing, we should not be able to obtain a guide.  Nothing, then, was left for us but to unsaddle our horses, hobble them, let them loose into the surrounding forest, arrange the saddles for our pillows, and compose ourselves to sleep supperless by the watch-fires of the blacks.  We might have killed a sheep from the flock, for they all belonged to our friend at the station ; but the trouble would have been great, the fresh meat would have been tough, and there was no bread to eat with it : so we soon gave up that design, and composed ourselves to rest as we best could.  This blacks’ camp was arranged more regularly than any I had yet seen.  For fifty yards extended in a straight direction large pieces of bark, propped slantwise on poles, in such a position that the whole of a human body, except the feet, could find shelter under them.  Close to where the feet of the inmates would protrude was a row of watch-fires.  At either end of the row were placed, at right angles, large huts (if such could be called huts), tenanted by the old men of the tribe, who from their position could survey all that passed in the row.  This tribe, it seemed, were not so savage but that they were trusted to take care of a flock of sheep, now that white labour, in consequence of the diggings, was so very scarce.  But our difficulty was to find a spot where we could place ourselves among the forty or fifty sleeping women and children.  Among them we must go, for to sleep in the long wet grass was not to be thought of. But the women themselves did not seem particularly anxious for an increase to their society.  They had composed themselves to sleep, and did not wish to be disturbed.  After walking down the whole file, looking out for gaps where we could niche ourselves, we espied here and there crevices between the sleeping people.  In these crevices we ensconced ourselves, bribing our unwilling entertainers with tobacco.  The rest of the night was one of torment to me.  Pangs of hunger, the gnawings of innumerable fleas, the passionate outpourings of the youthful blacks, the distant howl of the wild dog, the consequent uneasiness of the two or three thousand sheep, their occasional bleating too, the hissing of the fires as the rain fell upon them, the noise inseparable from seventy or eighty human creatures many of them children, congregated together, prevented my slumbers from being anything but very transitory.  And every now and then the grim, dirty old woman, who was snatching a few uneasy slumbers near me, would jump up, throw off her only covering, an opossum, rug, and trim the fire, or throw a flaming brand with a shrill cry among the uneasy and rushing sheep.  And then she would come to my side, and previous to lying sown, address a few grunts to me, kindly intimating that she hoped I was comfortable.  Thus grimly articulating, she laid down, wrapped her rug about her, and consigned herself to slumber; alas! Soon to be disturbed.  During one of the pauses in the old creature’s activity, a younger woman, who had a most diminutive baby, inquired by signs if I were hungry.  I replied in the same language that I assuredly was.  she then took from under her head a netted bag, which served her for a pillow, sat up, and began taking out the contents.  What these were, I cannot say; rags and dirt, and small morsels of things, seemed the chief component parts.  But at the bottom there was a piece of flesh, black and charred from the effects of too-rapid cookery.  It had a peculiar smell  – not that of decay  – to which I took and instant repugnance.  With the kindest expression and the most good-natured smile she took it up, gave it to me and pressed me to eat it.  I took it to the fire ; looked at it ; smelt it ; could make nothing of it ; returned to her and asked her, what manner of flesh it was.  Was it sheep? No ; was it ox?  No ; was it kangaroo? No. In fact, I named, or rather imitated all the animals of the country, save one, and it was not their flesh.  So I returned it with many grateful  acknowledgements.  But she seemed so hurt that I would not touch it and used so many amiable entreaties, that I thought of the touching language of Mungo Park, and saw a fresh illustration of the beautiful verses of our great novelist, that woman is in our time of need a ministering angel.  The tribe were half starved ; the return of the men was looked for with impatience ; this poor creature was half famished, and yet she frankly and freely offered me, a stranger, her mite  –  all that she had, whatever it was, and was very chagrined that I took it not.

  July 1. –  Arose at sunrise from most uncomfortable slumbers, and proceeded to find and saddle my horses.  Regaining the beaten track we travelled on as fast as we could, every now and then catching glimpses of the Murray majestically rolling along.  Sometimes we came to fertile flats which the river, in times of great floods, covers ; sometimes the road took us over the brow of cliffs 150 feet high, overhanging the waters.  From these eminences we could see the impervious Mallee scrub stretching away on our right, into an unexplored country, as far as the eye could reach.  No signs of human beings met our eye, no hut, no blacks’ camp, no traces of sheep or cattle.  Once or twice, through an opening in the glade, we saw large ponds fed by the Murray, round which flocks of pelican were disporting and washing themselves, with their snow-white plumage glistering in the morning sun.  Seeing a black fishing in the river ; we rode up to him, hoping to change some tobacco against his fish : but the poor fellow had caught none, and looked as hungry as we did.  After passing the Golgol creek, which is twenty- two miles from the junction of the Darling, and having on our right the Golgol mountains, which seemed to me no more mountains than the Surrey hills are, we turned to our left into an extensive bend of the Murray, and arrived at four in the afternoon opposite the head-station of Mr. J____.   But it was not yet given to us to enjoy the hospitality of our worthy friend.  The inmates of the hut had to be summoned, blacks had to be shouted for, and a canoe had to be procured and launched upon the intervening water.  We were then passed over the Murray one by one, the saddles, bridles, and baggage last.  So we sat down to some green tea, bacon, and damper (nothing else of any sort was at hand), four-and-twenty hours after our time, having ridden eighteen hours since last breaking our fast. I should have felt the inconvenience of this journey much more if one of my  companions, who had been an officer in the Austrian army, had not recited to me at intervals the wondrous ballads of Schiller, with his own translations.

July 2. –  I found the hut full of interesting books, among which was Sismondi’s “History of European Literature,” which I was delighted to get.  One of my companions is laid up with dysentery, brought on by his being unaccustomed to such severe exercise.  Sent to a station on the Darling, twenty-five miles off, for some calomel and chalk for him.

July 4 (Sunday). – Rode with my kind host to a neighbouring station, where I held Divine Service, and baptized no less than eight children. Four married women were there, with numerous families. The service consisted of Lessons, Litany, the Communion Service, and a Sermon.  The reason of my finding so large a congregation in this secluded district is, that many people are passing by this route overland from South Australia to the Port Phillip diggings, and many of my attendants to-day were composed of these searchers for gold.  Among the children whom I baptized were two belonging to an actor from Adelaide, who was on his way to fulfil an engagement at the Geelong theatre.  By an unaccountable fatuity, this poor fellow chose to travel overland, although his wife was near her confinement, instead of making the voyage by sea.  He has been already seven weeks on the way; his wife had brought forth a child ; his mates had basely deserted him, taking away the two horses ; and, as he assured me with tears in his eyes, for many days he had yoked himself to his tilted cart, and staggered along over the miry track, drawing after him his sick, helpless wife, and his three little children.  His wife, too, had little or nothing to give the baby, for she had scarce tasted farinaceous food for a month, and was, consequently, in poor health.  Giving him as much as I could afford to relieve his wants, I told him to ask the mistress of the station, in my name, to spare him a little flour at her own price.  No one would sell him any on the road, for every one feared great scarcity, owing to the disorganisation of all carrier communication.  In a subsequent conversation he told me that he, his wife, and eldest girl, were to receive 7l. a-week from the manager of the Geelong Theatre, and that he was very anxious to get there.  I asked him what his forte was, and he answered, brightening up, “Why, sir, my forte, I may say, is high tragedy.  I am great in Richard the Third, in Iago, and Shylock.  I have also drawn very good houses in genteel comedy ; and sometimes, on particular occasions, when hands are short, I play clown.”  As he hesitated a little about giving this last proof of the versatility of his talents, I re-assured him by observing that I had heard that Edmund Kean had played at Swansea, on the same night, Richard 111., Paul in “Paul and Virginia,” and Harlequin in the pantomime.  So, after a little serious conversation, he promising me that his theatrical engagements should not prevent him from accompanying his family to church on Sundays, we parted.

  July 6 . – My friend measured the Murray, and found it 160 yards across.  Five mounted policemen arrived.  They are to be stationed here, by order of the Victorian Government.

July 7. – Having procured a black guide, named Mickey, I proceeded across fertile plains, intersected by belts of timber, to Dr. F____’s station, twenty-five miles off, and then, to my great joy found myself on the banks of that Darling, which I had so long desired to see.  I found it a muddy, stream of the colour of milk, fifty to seventy yards wide, floating sluggishly between high clay banks – about as unpicturesque an object as possible.  It is here fifteen miles from the Murray, and I hear that its present characteristics are maintained for 150 miles upwards.  I saw four Darling pigeons, which belong to the young ladies of the house.  These Darling pigeons are extremely pretty doves, with lavender, purple, and gold feathers.  I saw, too, a proof that the blacks here are wilder than on the Edward.  Visiting the blacks’ camp near the hut, without clothing of any description.  On the Edward, married women go entirely nude, but not girls.  Saw also some wild tobacco growing.

July 8. – Had much conversation with the Doctor, who is a clever, intelligent man.  He tells me that the blacks are very wild and troublesome 150 miles up the river, and also that about that distance, or perhaps ten miles further, mountain ranges form about the river.  I am also assured, that in these parts there is found an owl which barks like a dog; also a carnivorous kangaroo.  I hear, too, tales of the mindei, or great snake with legs, which, as the blacks declare, eats the sheep ; although I suspect it is a stalwart black biped that kills and eats them.  The aborigines here, too, obstinately persist in their belief of the existence of the monstrous bunyip.  I was also shown what was called the blossom of the mistletoe, a delicate crimson flower like a very attenuated fuchsia.  In the course of the day, two gentlemen arrived from an expedition 200 miles up the Darling.  The blacks have become so saucy of late in those parts that they went armed, but found no difficulty.  They tell me that fort Bourke is 500miles up.  No one from these parts has yet gone further, I believe.  At night I read the Church Prayers and gave an Exposition to a large society.  We slept four in the room, for the hut was crowded with casual visitors.  There was some interesting conversation among my room-fellows, sturdy young bushmen, before going to sleep.  They talked of tribes of indigenes in the interior, of different characteristics from any blacks which we know.  They are poor, wretched creatures, of dwarfish proportions and ill habit of body, who inhabit the dense recesses of the Mallee scrub in the far interior, and who live, or rather starve, upon dead bodies or vermin ; or, in fact, anything they can chew.  They have scarce any arms, and whatever they do catch, they catch by means of springes.  When they are hard-pressed by hunger they devour their children ; and as for water, they find it at the roots of the Mallee.  The other blacks have the greatest abhorrence of them, and kill them whenever they find them ; so the poor creatures retire into their friendly impenetrable Mallee, and live there.  They are of the same race with their neighbours, but have physically degenerated from persecution and starvation.  None of my informants had seen any of these unfortunate beings, but they had conversed with blacks who had.  They also told me of a bushman, who from the Adelaide side, striking the Darling about 300 miles up, had come upon a beautiful valley, surrounded by lofty cliffs, and watered by many streams, where the blacks told him was plenty of the bright yellow metal of which his watch-chain and seals were composed.  But he was so anxious to get on, that he stayed not to search.  And they told me that 150 miles up the Darling there is a tree, something like the ash, which has an extraordinary spotted bark to it.  Thus discoursing we fell asleep.

July 9. – Put in my valise two bulbs of the beautiful Darling lily, and after bidding farewell to my amiable and clever host and his wife and sister, two sons and two daughters, who had all treated me with so much kindness, I crossed the Darling, and rode about fourteen miles to Mr. W____’s station, a settler on the ana-branch of the Darling.  This is a part of the stream, which abandons its parent ninety miles away and joins it again near here.  I found the poor man in great grief, for he has lately lost his wife, and is left with five young children.  I scarcely know how he will be enabled to get on at all now, isolated as he is.  I baptised the two youngest children.  He told me that the Ana-branch of the Darling has water six months in the year : also that the blacks in his neighbourhood are very wild and troublesome, killing the sheep and spearing the cattle of the squatters.  In the afternoon I arrived, after a two-hours’ ride, at the Junction Inn, a comfortable public-house, situated just below the junction of the Darling with the Murray, and here I slept.  I have now arrived at the western confine of my journey, and to-morrow must turn my horses’ heads eastward.  Not that I have arrived at the Adelaide frontier : from that I am still sixty miles away; but great floods, which they say are rapidly coming down the Murray, warn me to get to my head-quarters as soon as possible.  I am now 321 miles from Maiden’s Punt, the south-eastern point of my district, according to the following distances : From Maiden’s Punt (Moama) on the Murray, to Deniliquin on the Edward River, it is fifty miles; from Deniliquin to Moolamon is seventy miles ; from Moolamon to Canally station, on the Murrumbidgee, is sixty-two miles ; from Canally to Euston, on the Murray, is fifty-seven miles ; and from Euston to the junction of the Darling with the Murray, eighty two miles.  During the fatigues and anxieties inseparable from so long a journey, I have been cheered and encouraged by the good-natured respect which has been paid to me, especially by the lower classes.

July 10. – Before starting on my return, I visited the confluence of the Darling with the Murray.  The former does not run into the latter at right angles, but flows side by side with its potent friend for a short space, as if wishing to prove him before entering into his society.  At the confluence the Darling has now a width of 160 yards, and the Murray 300 yards.  This latter is very grand and majestic, and capable, I should think, of floating the largest ship in the world.  It is strange, that the only boats which plough its waters should be ferry-boats and the frail bark-canoe of the savage.  Contemplating this grand sight, the object of my wishes for so many years, I came upon a blacks’ camp.  They asked me to buy some delicate fishes, which were most artistically arranged in leaves, and bound together with osier twigs.  These blacks seem an intelligent, and fine race, and calculate acutely the value of everything of which they have to dispose.  One of them, named Moses, exactly resembles the type of the Assyrian, as portrayed in the Nineveh sculptures.  In a few years these sons of the Australian desert will have faded away, and the grand-children of their successors will perhaps curiously search into the habits and customs of those who held the soil before them.  After crossing my horses in the ferry-boat over the Darling, I arrived at nightfall at Mr. J____’s station.

July 11 (Sunday). – Had Morning Service.  Among others were present three black police, with a corporal and sergeant.  These poor heathens went through the dispositions of posture required by our Service with military precision, although they understand nothing of English, save the words of command, and the few expressions mingled up with the lingua franca which forms our only means of verbal communication with them.  The police service seems to be the only channel, by which the natives can be made serviceable to the social system which now surrounds them.  They make most excellent mounted police, although it is necessary to restrain their ferocity towards delinquents of their own people.  To missionary enterprises, I fear, they are completely impervious, on account of their having no reflective capacities.  They, however, possess a sort of conscience, which places them in some moral relations above the level of many baptized Christians.  They do not every now and then endeavour to subvert the form of government which (however rude) is established amongst them ; they do not steal ; they make an equal division of whatever they have amongst one another, so that there are none poorer than their neighbours – no pariahs of society among them ; and most of them, ragged or naked as they may be, have a certain rude dignity of carriage, which entitles them to every benevolent feeling on our part.

July 12. – Started for Euston, being a company of four persons with nine horses.  After travelling till nightfall, we made up our minds to camp out ; but we luckily came upon a shepherd’s hut, where we obtained shelter for the night.  The shepherd told us, that the Murray floods were coming down so fast that by to-morrow night the hut will be surrounded by the waters, consequently this is his last night.

July 13. – Rode to Euston, having camped and rested and lunched in the middle of the day; a thing I had never seen done before.

  July 14. – A number of persons are crossing their drays over the Murray.  They tie empty casks to them, to float them, and then, tow them to the opposite bank.  The bullocks, of course, swim.

July 17. – Turning over a box of worm-eaten books, which I found in a hut on the bank of the river, I discovered among others a translation of Plato’s “Timaeus.”  I also found the second part of the “Faust,” translated by Reid – a most phantasmagoric sort of drama, in parts quite incomprehensible.

July 18. – Held Divine service at the Inn a Euston, and baptized three children.  A worthy squatter from the south bank of the Murray attended Service.  He has a most excellent kitchen-garden, the produce of which is sure.  But on this side, nothing in the shape of garden vegetation is sure.  Just when everything looks in the best order and ready for eating, the north wind will come on, and, like the simoom of the desert, blast and wither all before it.  This is what, I fear, will prevent a large population from ever settling on the northern bank of the Murray.  What the soil will luxuriantly produce, the hot wind will destroy.  I heard to-day of the immense fatigue and danger which the surveyors underwent who, some years ago, surveyed and marked out the boundary between the Adelaide and Victoria territory.  They drew a line from the Murray to the sea at the mouth of the river Glenelg, following the 141^st degree of east longitude.  A great portion of the country surveyed, consists of dense Mallee scrub.  Through that, these intrepid engineers had to cut their way, and many times were on the point of perishing for want of water.

July 21. –  Rode to Canally on the Murrumbidgee, in company with the proprietor of the station.  The floods are coming down in such a volume, that my friend was forced to get a black to guide him to his own place.  The last two miles lay through flooded ground in the midst of huge bulrushes, which far overtopped my head as I sat on horseback.

July 28. – After much fatigue I returned to my head-quarters, having been absent on my Darling expedition since the 21^st of June.  Found a letter from the Bishop of Sydney, in which he appoints me to the district of the Surrey Hills in Sydney.

July 31. – This morning, water was found frozen an inch thick on the plains.

August 1. – Gave some clothes to a poor fellow who has lately been lost on the plains, without food, as he says, for eleven days.  He is, as may be supposed, in a most miserable state, with a corpse-like complexion.  His toes, too, are dropping off from exposure to the frost and wet.  For one to lose his way in this county, who is not a good bushman, is very perilous.  Not long ago, the bones of a man and dog were found near here, who had both perished from starvation.  The skeleton of the poor faithful dog was found nestling close to that of his master.  The man’s Prayer-book was found in his pocket, with his name written on it.

August 3. – Heard a story of a young colonial lady, who could ‘talk bullock’ so well, that she could do anything with the animals.  But subsequently her parents had got rich, and she had become refined and pretentious.  One day walking with her lover, a young gentleman just arrived from England, and unacquainted with colonial ways, both in great toilet, she spied one of her father’s bullocks in a dray, which had lain down sulky, and absolutely refused to move.  The driver, too, was a new hand, and could do nothing with the obstinate beast.  The young lady, carried away by the exigencies of the moment, took the whip as in days of old, struck the animal a sharp blow, and cried, “Devil burst you, Ginger! Get up!”   This delicate langue de boeuf had a most magical effect.  The recreant Ginger immediately arose, and walked away vigorously with his load.   Whether the lover walked away without his, I was not able to learn.

August 10. – Began my journey towards Sydney.  My route will lie by Melbourne, and then on by sea.  The rainy season is now at its worst ; and if I do not make haste, the heavy floods that are coming down the Murray will keep me a prisoner perhaps for months.

August 13. – I was on horseback ten hours, travelling up the Edward.  The floods were out, so for hours the water was up to the horses’ breasts.  I arrived at a public-house in the pitchy darkness, illuminated at intervals by flashes of lightning.

August 14. – On horseback for nine hours.  The plains are in a fearful state of swamp.  We were obliged to walk the horses for miles through deep water, uncertain too of the exact position of the banks of the river.  I never suffered so much from fatigue as I did to-day.

Aug. 15 (Sunday). – Rode on about two hours to a public-house between the Edward and the Murray.  The flood being out, the journey was dangerous.  Held divine Service, at which twelve attended, and behaved most decorously.  At his earnest request, I administered a pledge of abstinence to a man named Charles Brown, who is going to the diggings.  He promised to confine himself to three half noggins of spirits per diem for the next six months, and that only as a matter of necessity.  I made him write out and sign his promise on paper, and then exhorted him to trust in a higher Power for grace to carry out his good intentions.  At first, this half-and-half temperance vow seemed ridiculous to me, but on farther consideration I reflected that I had no right to repel any one coming to me with good intentions, that half-temperance is better than no temperance at all, and that the Church should never refuse to meet people half way.  The man was please at having signed the contract, showed it to his mates, declared he would keep to it religiously, and ended by pressing me to accept a bottle of wine of him for my trouble.  I think he will keep the pledge.  He could have had none but honest intentions in coming to me, as he did, to administer it.  As to his proviso of the three half-noggins, I like him the better for it ; it shows candour on his part.  Besides, it is impossible to work at the diggings in this inclement weather, up to one’s knees in water, without some stimulant.

Aug. 23. – Rode to Maiden’s Punt, hoping to cross my horses; but the proprietor of the ferry absolutely refuses to attempt it.  I baptized three children belonging to a man who is just starting for the diggings.  He insisted on paying me.  I said that our Church did not sell the Sacraments.  He said that the clerk must be paid.  I answered, that there was no clerk.  He then said, roughly, that he did not wish anything from anybody, not even the Church, without payment.  I told him that, in the present case, there was no other alternative.  He then went away in a rude manner.

Aug. 25. – Find that the man, whose children I baptized yesterday, has gone away at daybreak, and left a packet for me.  On opening a very dirty bit of white-brown paper, tightly twisted, I found at least three ounces of small nuggets of pure gold in it.  So he gained his point after all.  Visited the camp of a remarkably fine tribe of blacks. Who are temporarily located here.  They have twenty-five canoes with them, and about a hundred lean, mangy, barking, wolf-like curs.

  Aug. 28. – Incessant rains and tremendous floods.  Hear that many squatters in my district are thinking of leaving their head-stations on the banks of creeks and rivers, and of retiring into the back plains. I conceive that, if ever there should be great simultaneous floods in the Murray and Murrumbidgee, nothing can save the settlers and stock of the intervening plains from being swept away.

  Sep. 9. – After waiting sixteen days on the banks of the Murray, I am able to cross the swollen river, my horses having been swum over yesterday.  Getting into a small boat, two men pulled me up the river some way.  We then entered a creek ; then punted over a lagoon, until we came to the spot where my two horses were grazing, hobbled.  Thus I leave the district where I have but very unsatisfactorily performed my clerical duties during the space of sixteen months;  *   for, during that time, I have been not unseldom confined by the weather or state of the roads to some solitary hut in thorough inaction.  For instance, during the 243 days which elapsed between May 20, 1851, to Jan, 18, 1852, 159 only were spent in ministerial work, while 84 were passed doing nothing.  And then the huts are so small and inconvenient, that retirement and quiet study are out of the question.  My calculation with regard to the weather in this country, according to my experience, is as follows : Incessant rains, resolving the tracks into glutinous swamps, prevail from about June 8 to Sept. 23 = 109 days ; droughts and heats of summer -extreme heats, I mean, such as to render travelling disagreeable, and almost impossible – prevail from December to the end of March ; heavy floods – rendering travelling intricate and very dangerous, the more so, as the watercourses are very numerous – prevail from September to November, at least sixty-six days.  Then, it must be recollected that the various paddocks are short of good feed for seven or eight months in the year.  In short, unexceptionable good travelling in the Edward district, so far as climate, feed, and absence of floods are concerned, I found to exist only from Nov. 20 to about Dec. 10, a period of twenty days. * For the cure to which the Bishop has transferred me.

All the rest of the year is chequered by some difficulty or other.  Whoever my successor may be, I hope he may be gifted with excellent health, great capacity for enduring fatigue on insufficient nourishment, and, above all, a patient, meek disposition.  And he must not expect a very high appreciation of the sacrifices he makes in coming into such a country.  Many of the squatters are not gentlemen, but rather people who will broadly hint that, having paid a certain sum towards a clergyman’s support, they expect to get something for their money in the   shape of so many visits a-year, be the weather what it might.  I imagine that the best mode of extending clerical ministrations to this district would be to send an express itinerant minister, with a surrogate’s license, twice or thrice a-year over the whole country, from Albury as far as the Adelaide frontier.  A permanent residence would be found very unsatisfactory to any clergyman, on account of the inaction to which, at all times, he would be subjected from the state of the weather, of the roads, and of the floods.  If I were asked, if any of the vast tract of country which composed my district were capable of any other use than the pasturing of sheep and cattle, for which it is admirably adapted, I should be inclined to answer in the negative.  For colonisation I should consider it unsuited, because I do not think that grain could be raised to support such a population.  The soil is by no means unfertile ; but the hot wind from the desert, blasts and withers everything.  Crops might be raised in the alluvial soil, which lies in the close proximity of the rivers ; but then care must be taken that the grain be cut and carried before the floods come down, because this alluvial soil to which I allude is, in fact, the bed of the numerous lagoons which border the water-courses.  The climate is particularly healthy ; and under the influence of the dry, pure, transparent atmosphere, men and horses are capable of undergoing great fatigue.  Kangaroo, and emu, and bustards, called wild turkeys, abound on the plains ; wild fowl and cray-fish about the lagoons, and fine fish in the rivers ; but the squatters are too indolent to take advantage of so much fine game, and prefer eating salt beef and smoking strong tobacco at their fire-side, in the midst of anticipations of bouts of intemperance during the next wool season, at the hotels of Sydney, Melbourne, or Adelaide.  Having mounted my horse, I rode southward.

As many feel interested in perusing thermometrical observations, I produce two series, the first taken in December, 1851, the second in August, 1852, both of them taken from a thermometer placed in a bedroom in a head-station not far from the Murray, in S. lat. 36 degrees and E. long. 145 degrees.

 

Dec.            20^th  ranging from 78 to 86

21^st      ”           ”    79  ”  88

22^nd     ”           ”    80  ”  84

23^rd      ”          ”    86  ”  106

24^th     ”           ”    80   ”  90

25^th     ”           ”    82   ”  94

26^th     ”           ”    85   ”  102

27^th     ”           ”    80   ”  85

28^th     ”           ”    70   ”  80

29^th     ”           ”    70   ”  88

30^th     ”           ”    76   ”  90

31^st      ”           ”    59   ”  73

 

Aug.             12^th     ”           ”    45   ”  50

13^th     ”           ”    41   ”  45

14^th     ”           ”    39   ”  45

15^th     ”           ”    38   ”  44

16^th     ”           ”    37   ”  49

17^th     ”           ”    39   ”  52

18^th     ”           ”    41   ”  54

 

  Sept. 13. – On my road I met a vast number of persons going to the diggings, in every description of vehicle, and with cattle completely used up by the bogginess of the roads.

  Sept. 18. – After sleeping at the inn called Vinges’, and paying a pound sterling for a night’s lodging for my two horses, I started for Melbourne, a distance of twelve miles.  To describe the state of the road accurately would be impossible.  Let us imagine four feet of pitch half cooled, and we should arrive at some idea of this dozen miles of black loam trampled into a deep mud by the hooves of innumerable beasts.  Woe to the rider who lets his horse stand still a moment with his forelegs together in this glutinous mass.  It would be difficult to get him out, even with dismounting.  And what dismounting !  I met twenty-four bullocks drawing a dray, and with difficulty they slowly progressed. And quite pitiable it was to see poor families on their way to the diggings in a cart drawn by one horse.  There were the children extended on the bedding, screaming, while the lean horse stood still in the mud, motionless as a statue, and the father and mother, bogged up to the knees themselves, were vainly pushing behind.  Every now and then came showers of rain to damp the little remaining ardour of these searchers for gold.  At times suspicious-looking characters passed me, armed to the teeth, who looked with a covetous eye on the quantity of baggage I had on my spare horse.  This colony was the most desirable of all which the Crown possesses.  How changed now !  No more tranquillity and good-fellowship between the grades of society.  All is confusion, selfishness, license, and subversion of all respect for worth, talent, and education.  Brawn and muscle are now the aristocracy, and insolently bear their newly-assumed honours.  In fact, we have here the French Revolution without the guillotine.  When I arrived in Melbourne, I found the streets full of a dirty, disorderly mob of people, many of them tipsy, who seemed to take a delight in setting the laws of decent behaviour at defiance.  At the hotel where I dined, the waiter was a young gentleman who had passed his “little go” at Trinity College, Cambridge.  He told me that the quantity of English sauces which the people consumed with their beef and mutton was something stupendous ; that he had remonstrated ; that they had answered him impertinently ; that he had kicked two men down-stairs ; and that his master, unmindful of his own true interests, had given him warning on this very account.  I told him that I thought his family would be more satisfied at his undertaking some other employment than that of a waiter at a Melbourne restaurant.  I believe it was a former proprietor of this inn who assumed a lion as his crest, with the motto of “Noli irritare leonem.”  His name was Lyons, a Hebrew by birth.

Oct. 2. – Met in Collins Street a coarse-looking young woman, very gaily dressed, with a fine baby in her arms, who, to my surprise, recognised me with a loud voice, as the Minister who had baptized her child in the bush.  She wore a French bonnet of a delicate lemon colour, with a white lace veil ; a common cotton coloured handkerchief tied round her red neck; a new green silk dress, sufficiently short to show coarse, puffy legs and ankles, clothed with dirty socks, and thick winter boots laced up in front.  She had a short and stocky figure, and from the redness of her complexion seemed to have just risen from dinner.

This morning we worshipped in the little church at the Pioneer Settlement with the old prayers and the King James translation of the Bible, and hymns written before 1850.  We celebrated the life of the Reverend John Davies Mereweather who served in the area for 16 months during 1851-2.  I used information from the Merewether website and a copy of part of his Diary of a Working Clergyman in Australia and Tasmania, kept during the years 1850-1853 (London, 1859), that my sister sent me in the sermon. Click here if you would like to read this portion.

The church was full, and waistcoats, shawls and shady hats added to the fun.  People travelling through Swan Hill who had read about the service came along, and some visitors to the Pioneer Settlement dropped in part way through.  After the service we ajourned to the Pioneer Settlement tea rooms for refreshment, and found the Happy Wanderer’s Jazz band were there on the opposite veranda to entertain us.  There was dancing in the street.

On Sunday August 31^st about 50 parishioners gathered in the Seniors’ Rooms at Nyah West  for a Eucharist,

We welcomed the return of our ministry team, priest in charge Rev. Jan Harper, also Rev. Robyn Davis from her ‘Walkabout ‘ministry, and Rev. Denis Gell.

Next followed  a Fashion Parade from the local Opp Shop and a shared lunch.

This was a repeat of a wildly successful event last year, and the spirit of spring again  made itself felt, with much

laughter and applause.

Models ranged from a pre-schooler through teenagers, to representatives of the next couple of decades.

All were surprised and delighted at the amazing range of garments for sale, and several were purchased on the spot.

The highlight of the wonderful feast at midday was the birthday cake produced for Leone and Norm who share the same birth date.

Hopefully the parade will inspire some extra volunteers to assist Sylvia and team in maintaining this excellent community service.

More exciting outfits can be found in our gallery.

Today at Chirst Church we celebrated father’s and loving communities.  The children chose presents for these father figures, a crown, a billy to go camping with, tools to fix things.  A bible to know our heavenly father more, and a hose water timer to keep the garden well watered and growing.  Very wise choices for our fathers and our community.