North-country settlement, cut off by barren
land and rocky ranges, from near contact with
smaller stations, until they pushed on beyond
them. He and his friends had built a stone
chapel, from which on Sundays the powerful
voice of Father Gabriel might be heard
expounding the Scriptures, something in the
manner of a Presbyterian of Cromwell's day.
He discontinued this practice when a
dissenting minister reached the district a few
years after my arrival. This chapel was very
like a barn, roofed with wood slabs or shingles;
being the only stone building in the district,
it used to be very much admired. During
service there were sometimes fifteen or twenty
horses, with a fair share of side-saddles, tied
up in waiting, belonging to families who had
ridden ten and even twenty miles, to service.
But they were seldom allowed to return any
great distance without sharing the hospitality
of the elders.

I made the acquaintance of one of the sons,
(the old man had twelve children, and twice
that number of grandchildren) at a Kangaroo
hunt, and we became intimate, as he was
always asking questions about England,
English farming, English sports, and I was
glad to learn Bushmanship, in which Kit
Gabriel was a perfect master. One day he
asked me over to a shearing feast. We had
to cross a country, which I will describe,
because it is a fair specimen of the grand but
monotonous scenery of Australia. I love
Australia; there I spent my happiest days,
triumphing over the ill-fortune that drove
me from England; there I found friends of
the warmest and truest; there I quaffed deep
the cup of hospitality, and found no dregs.
With that bright land are associated the
memory of cheerful days of toil and nights of
harmless revelling, of delicious gallops over far
rolling plains, of slow-pacing rides through
miles of silent forest, of thought-inspiring
reveries, within sight and sound of the broad
calm waters of the Pacific. But although I
can recal scenes of horrid grandeur, worthy
of the pencil of Salvator, and of wild joyous
beauty, to which even the imagination of a
Turner or Danby could scarcely do justice,
I must own that the sameness of the scenery
for hundreds of miles, and, still more, the
sameness of the evergreen foliage, except in
the tropical zones, and the absence of perfect
cultivation, renders the greater part of
Australia inferior in natural beauty, and the
power of calling up pleasing associations, to
the districts of England, where wild scenery
and high cultivation may be viewed at one
glance beneath a summer or autumnal sun.
As, for instance, in Derbyshire, with its rose-
covered cottages and wood-crowned hills; in
Nottinghamshire, with its trim farms and
forests of old oak; in Gloucestershire, with
its green valleys streaked with silver streams,
where even the fulling mill and the factory,
become picturesque. And then, again,
Australia has no Past :—but she has a future,
and it should be the endeavour of every
colonist to make that Future read well.

But to return to my ride. Our way lay
over a hard sand-track; on one side, a river, or
rather chain of pools; on the other, steep hills
(Colonially, ridges), covered with Australian
Pine—a beautiful tree, with excellent qualities
for working freely, with a colour and smell
like sandal-wood, but useless for house use, as
it breeds vermin. After an hour, we turned
up stony ridges, thinly sprinkled with iron-
barktrees for three miles, until the range
broke off short, in sight of a broad creek,
which we forded, and, leaving the river, rode
over undulating ground, timbered with box
and iron-bark; then over a thickly-wooded,
sandy, scrubby ridge, at the end of which our
course lay for a mile through an open box
forest, beautifully grassed, like an English
meadow, which opened upon a splendid
plain, as thinly dotted with trees as a nobleman's
park, which extended almost as far as
the eye could reach, until, just on the horizon
before us, appeared a dark boundary line,
formed by a dense forest. But after riding
several miles, during which we were
constantly, but almost imperceptibly, descending,
we came to a river never known to fail.

It was in a valley, intersected by this river,
that Father Gabriel's settlement lay. Soon
we could hear the lowing of the heifers,
answered by their calves in the home-station
pens; the swash-swashing of an oxen-driven
threshing-machine, a recent investment of the
patriarch's; and presently, amid other
farmyard sounds, the shrill moaning of a fiddle.
I don't know which was most pleasant and
homelike. A lot of horses, still hot, with
saddle-marks, in a paddock; two young
fellows and a girl in a nankin habit, cantering
in front of us; and a lot of men, washed,
shaved, and in holiday costume, gave notice of
the gathering.

A young Bushman, in his broad-leaved hat,
with two yards of taffeta flying; his brown,
intelligent face, hair, beard, and moustachios
neatly trimmed; blue or red woollen shirt,
loose trousers, broad belt; seated like a
centaur on his half-bred Arab; is, perhaps, as
picturesque a figure as you may see anywhere
in a voyage round the world. On this afternoon,
not one, but some dozen such, were at
the gathering.

We passed the chapel, and came in sight of
the house, planted on a declivity, in sight of
the river, but out of reach of winter's floods:
a composite building, which first consisted of
a mere hut and garden; then grew, by
addition, to a good, six-roomed, one-storied
cottage, of sawn boards, with glazed windows,
a verandah all round, covered with beauitiful
creepers, eventually increased by a large
double room of stone, the work of the stone-
mason colonist, who, having easy-working
material within reach, thus paid off a debt to
Father Gabriel. It was most comfortable,
convenient, and capacious as a barrack; but,