AN EXPLORING ADVENTURE.

The Litany of a Bushman on the Borders might well run, “From native dogs, from scabby sheep, from blacks, from droughts, from governors’ proclamations, good Lord, deliver us.”

The droughts come in their appointed season, and the day will be, when wells and tanks and aqueducts will redeem many a part from the curse of periodical barrenness: the blacks soon tame or fade before the white man’s face; unfortunately the seat of the native dogs, and home-bred or town-bred governing crotchets are more plentiful in long settled than new found countries. At any rate, I have experienced them all, and now give the following passage of my life for the benefit of the gentlemen “who live at home at ease,” hatching theories for our good—Heaven help their silliness!

I had been two years comfortably settled with a nice lot of cattle and sheep, part my own, part on “thirds,” when the people south of me began to complain of drought. I had enough feed and water; the question was, whether it would last.

I called my bullock-driver, Bald-faced Dick, into consultation. He was laid up at the time with a broken leg. Dick strongly advised looking for a new station “to the nor’ard.”

The sheep would do for months, but he thought we were overstocked with cattle. I had a good deal of confidence in Dick’s judgment; for he was a “first fleeter,” that is, came over with Governor Phillips in the first fleet; had seen everything in the colony, both good and bad; had, it was whispered, in early years fled from a flogging master, and lived, some said, with the blacks; others averred with a party of Gully-rakers (cattle-stealers); he swore horridly, was dangerous when he had drunk too much rum, but was a thorough Bushman; by the stars, or by sun, and the fall of the land, could find his way anywhere by day or night, understood all kinds of stock, and could make bullocks understand him. He knew every roving character in the colony, the quality of every station, and more about the far interior than he chose to tell to every one. With all his coarseness, he was generous and good-natured, and when well paid, and fairly and strictly treated, stood upon “Bush honour,” and could be thoroughly depended on.

Having had an opportunity of serving him in a rather serious matter previous to his entering my service, I was pretty sure of his best advice.

The end of it was, for a promise of five pounds he obtained from a friend of his a description of a country hitherto unsettled, and first-rate for cattle. These men, who can neither read nor write, have often a talent for description, which is astonishing.

Having heard a minute detail of the “pack,” and studied a sort of map drawn on the lid of a tea-chest with a burned stick, I decided on exploring with my overseer, Jem Carden, and, if successful, returning for the cattle and drags, all loaded for founding a station.

We only took our guns and tomahawks, with tea, sugar, a salt tongue, and small damper ready baked, being determined to make long marches, starting early, camping at mid-day, and marching again in the evening as long as it was light.

Our first stage was only twenty-five miles to young Marson’s cattle-station. Marson was a cadet, of a noble family, and having been too fast at home and in India as a cavalry subaltern, had been sent out with a fair capital to Australia, under the idea that a fortune was to be had for asking, and no means of expense open in the Bush. What money he did not leave in the bars and billiard rooms of Sydney, he invested in a herd of six hundred cattle; to look after these, he had four men, whom he engaged, one because he could fight, another because he could sing, and all because they flattered him. With these fellows he lived upon terms of perfect equality, with a 419keg of rum continually on the tap. Then, for want of better society, he made his hut the rendezvous of a tribe of tame blacks.

We found him sitting on the floor in a pair of trowsers and ragged shirt, unwashed, uncombed, pale-faced and red-eyed, surrounded by half-a-dozen black gins (his sultanas), a lot of dogs, poultry, a tame kangaroo, and two of his men. The floor was littered with quart pots, lumps of fat, and damper outside the hut; the relations of the black ladies had made a fire, and were cooking a piece of a fine young heifer. What with the jabbering of the gins, the singing and swearing of the men, and the yelping of the dogs, it was no place for a quiet meal, so we only stayed long enough to drink a pot of tea, so as not to offend, and passed on to camp an hour under the shade of a thicket near the river.

Marson having, with the assistance of his black friends, consumed all his stock, has returned home; and, I hear, asserts everywhere that Australia is not a country a gentleman can live in.

Our course next, after crossing the dividing range, lay over a very flat country, all burned up as far as the eye could reach,—a perfect desert of sand. The chain of pools which formed the river after rain, were nearly choked up by the putrifying carcases of cattle, smothered in fighting for water. The air was poisonous; the horses sank fetlock-deep at every stride; the blazing sun was reflected back from the hot sand with an intensity that almost blinded our half-shut eyes. After three hours of this misery, we struck into a better country, and soon after came up to the camp of a squatter, who had been forced forward by the drought. He had marked out about twenty miles along the river for his run,—a pretty good slice, I thought, when, before turning back, he said, “That is all I want.” It was no business of ours, as we had views further a-field. For three days we pushed on, making from thirty to forty miles a day, without seeing anything exactly to our mind. We rode over arid plains, dotted with scrubby brushwood, then up precipitous hills; now leaping, now clambering down and up, and now riding round to avoid dry gullies and ravines; passing occasionally breaks of green pasture, but insufficiently watered for my purpose. Sometimes our way lay along mountain sides, sometimes in the dry bed of a torrent. Sometimes huge boulders interrupted our course, sometimes the gigantic trunks of fallen trees. More than once we had to steer through a forest of the monotonous, shadeless gum, with its lofty, dazzlingly white trunks festooned with the brown, curly bark of the previous year, and its parasol-like but shadeless branches, where crimson, green, and snowy parrot tribes shrieked and whistled among the evergreen leaves. It is impossible to conceive anything more gorgeous than these birds as they fluttered in the sun; but I confess that, “on serious thoughts intent,” during this journey, they were more often associated with my ideas of supper than anything else.

The evening of the third day, we found ourselves obliged to camp down with a scanty supply of brackish water, and no signs of any living thing. The next day was worse; a land of silence and desolation, where it seemed as if mountains had been crumbled up and scattered about in hills and lumps. The dry earth cracked and yawned in all directions. Failing to find water, we camped down, parched, weary, silent, but not despairing.

The next morning the horses were gone.

I cannot find words to describe what we suffered in the subsequent twelve hours. I had walked until my feet were one mass of blisters, and was ready to lie down and die ten times in the day; but somehow I found strength to walk, always chewing a bullet. At length, at nightfall, we found our horses; and, nearly at the same time, to crown our delight—water. At the sight of this, we both involuntarily sank down on our knees to return thanks for life saved.

The next morning, after a scanty breakfast, we set to work, and by dint of cutting away with axe and jack-knife, at the expense of clothes and skin, through a brigalow scrub for half a mile, found our way into a gap through which our track lay, and which we had missed. It led straight to the dividing range.

After crossing five miles from the foot of the range, through a barren tract, our eyes and hearts were suddenly rejoiced by the sight of the wished-for land.

A plain, covered with fine green barley-grass, as high as our horses’ heads, and sprinkled over with the myal shrub, which cattle and sheep will eat and thrive on, even without grass. Such was the delicious prospect before us. A flood had evidently but lately subsided, for lagoons full of water were scattered all about; a river running at the rate of five miles an hour, serpentined as far as the eye could see, from which the water-fowl fluttered up as we passed; the eagle hawks were sweeping along after flocks of quail, and mobs of kangaroos hopping about like huge rabbits. There was not a sign of horn or hoof anywhere, but it was evident the aborigines were numerous, for there were paths worn down where they had been in the habit of travelling, from one angle of the river to another; we could trace their footmarks and of all sizes, and thereupon we unslung our guns and looked at the priming. Altogether I thought I had discovered the finest place for a cattle-station in the colony; I found out afterwards that the first appearance of a new country before it has been stocked is not to be depended on.

We formed a camp in an angle of the river, so as to have protection on three sides, ventured, in spite of the danger, to light a fire and cook some game. Oh, how delicious was that meal! As I lay near the river’s 420edge, peeping through the tall grass, I saw the horrid emus, that rare and soon to be extinct bird, come down the slopes on the opposite side to drink in numbers; a sure sign that white men were as yet strangers to these plains.

We spent some days in examination, and during the exploration met with adventures with the aborigines, I will not now relate. Having marked a station with my initials, and in returning made out a route practicable for drays, by which I afterwards made my way with a large herd of cattle, although not without enduring more than I could tell in a few lines.

Our horses having picked up their flesh in a fortnight’s spell on the green plains, we got back at a rattling pace, but, before arriving home, met with an adventure I shall not soon forget. It was at the first station we reached after crossing the “barrens” that divided our newly discovered country. A hut had just been built for the Stockman, a big strong Irishman, more than six feet high, a regular specimen of a Tipperary chicken. He had been entertaining us with characteristic hospitality; and we were smoking our pipes round the fire, when the hut-keeper rushed in without his hat, crying—

“Tom! Tom! the blacks are coming down on us, all armed, as hard as they can run. Shut the door! for Heaven’s sake shut the door!” Tom banged it to, and put his shoulder against it, while the keeper was pulling up the bar, and Carden and I were getting the lock-cases off our fire-arms. Unfortunately the door was made roughly of green wood, and had shrunk, leaving gaps between the slabs.

In the mean time about thirty blacks hurled a volley of spears that made the walls ring again; and then advancing boldly up, one of them thrust a double-jagged spear through the door, slap into Tom’s throat. My back was turned towards him, being busy putting a fresh cap on my carbine. I heard his cry, and, turning, saw him fall into the arms of the hut-keeper. I thrust the barrel of my piece through a hole against a black devil, and fired at the same moment that my man did. The two dropped; the rest retreated, but turned back, and caught up their dead friends. Carden flung open the door again, and gave them the contents of his other barrel. My black put the hut-keeper’s musket into my hand; I gave them a charge of buckshot. Three more fell, and the rest, dropping their friends, disappeared across the river. All this was the work of a moment. We then turned our attention to the stock-keeper. The spear had entered at the chin, and come out on the other side three or four inches. There was not a great flow of blood, but he was evidently bleeding inwardly. He was perfectly collected, and said he was quite sure he should die.

We cut the end of the spear short off, but did not dare to take it out. The hut-keeper got on a horse, leading another, and rode for a doctor who lived one hundred and fifty miles off; he never stopped except to give the horses a feed two or three times in the whole distance, but when he reached his journey’s end, the doctor was out. In the mean time poor Tom made his will, disposing of a few head of cattle, mare and foal, and also signed a sort of dying testament to the effect that he had never wronged any of the blacks in any way. The weather was very hot, mortification came on, and he died in agony two days after receiving his wound.

The outrage was reported to the Commissioner, but no notice was taken of it although we were paying a tax for Border Police at the time.

Not many years have elapsed since we fought for our lives—since I read the burial service over the poor murdered Stockman. A handsome verandah’d villa now stands in the place of the slab hut; yellow corn waves over the Irishman’s grave, and while cattle and sheep abound, as well white men, women, and children, there is not a wild black within two hundred miles.