Somehow the days of my youth seem to have been inextricably mixed up with horses. How I loved them, to be sure!—thought of them by day, dreamed of them by night. Books and girls might temporarily enter into competition as objects of engrossing interest; but the noble animal must have had possession of my thoughts for a large proportion of the waking hours.
From boyhood the proprietor of studs more or less extensive, I was quick to discern excellence in other people\'s favourites. My mind was stored, my imagination fired, besides, with tales of equestrian feats, performed chiefly by Arab chiefs and other heroes of old-world romance. In a chronic state of expectancy, I was always ready to do honour to the legendary steed, so rarely encountered, alas! save in the bounteous realm of fiction.
When, therefore, I did fall across \'the courser of the poets,\' or his simulacrum, I was prepared to secure him at a fancy price; holding that if I could recoup the outlay by selling a pair of average horses of my own breeding, the luxury of possessing a paragon would be cheaply purchased.
And would it not be? Albeit there are multitudes of people to whom one horse, save the mark, is much like another. For them, the highest joy, the transcendent sensation of being carried by \'the sweetest hack in the world,\' exists not. But to him who recognises and appreciates the speed, the spirit, the smoothness, and the safety of the \'wonderful\' hackney, there are few outdoor pleasures possessing similar flavour.
It is more than half a century, sad to relate, since I first 191took bridle in hand. During that time I have ridden races on \'the flat,\' over \'the sticks,\' and have backed for the first time a score or more of wholly-untried colts. I have tested hundreds of saddle-horses, over every variety of road, at all sorts of distances, in all ranges of climate, and after this extended experience I unhesitatingly pronounce Dermot, son of Cornborough, to be in nearly all respects the finest example of the blood hackney which I ever mounted. The \'sweetest,\' etc., he certainly was. Almost too good for this wicked world.
The birth of this unrivalled steed was mainly due to one of the magnates of the earlier Victorian era, himself an example of the strangeness of that destiny which shapes our ends in life. A member of a family of financial aristocrats, domiciled in London and Paris, with which capitals our friend was equally familiar, Mr. Adolphus Goldsmith scarcely dreamed in youth of \'colonial experience.\'
But something went wrong with the finance arrangements of his near relatives. A crisis culminated, and the necessity arose for Goldsmith (fils) applying himself to the stern realities of life. He had previously performed the strictly ornamental duties of a young man about town. But with a cool perception of the situation, characteristic of the man, and a steadfast determination to conquer adverse fate, the whilom élégant of the Bois de Boulogne and the Row looked over the map of the world, picked his colony, giving the pas to Victoria, the then fashionable El Dorado for younger sons and vauriens, converted the remnant of his fortune into letters of credit, and sailed for Port Phillip.
As an Englishman by birth and rearing as well as adoption, Mr. Goldsmith had sported park hacks and ridden to hounds in his day. He possessed the Englishman\'s love for horses. Visions, therefore, arose of improving the breed in the new country which he was about to patronise, and incidentally devoting himself to agricultural pursuits.
Distrusting, however, his suitability for the necessary purchases and arrangements, he sensibly cast about for a coadjutor, fully instructed in bucolic lore, to whom he might confide details.
He was successful beyond expectation, inasmuch as he induced Mr. Hatsell Garrard, a gentleman farmer from the midland counties (whose love of all genuine sport had, 192combined with a run of bad seasons, probably rendered rent-paying temporarily arduous), to accompany him as General Manager to Australia. And whoso recalls his fresh-coloured countenance, his pleasant smile, his shrewd blue eye, his neat rig and bridle-hand, reproduces out of memory\'s storehouse the ideal yeoman from \'Merrie England.\'
Mr. Garrard promptly demonstrated a knowledge of his business by purchasing Cornborough, son of Tramp, a grandson of the immortal Whalebone. For this sole achievement he deserves a statue, and in that Pantheon which future Victorians may rear for the founders of their prosperity and glory, the square-built, genuinely English figure of Mr. Garrard should find a place. What a responsibility was cast upon him when you come to think of it! How easily might he have chosen an equally blue-blooded, but leggy, rickety, pernicious weed, such as has so often been foisted upon unwary breeders.
Instead of which, he enriched us with the noble, whole-coloured, brown horse, choke-full of the best blood in England, of medium height, but perfect in symmetry, soundness, faultless in wind and limb, temper and courage, fated to be the long-remembered sire of racers, hacks, and harness horses of the highest class—to be honoured in life, regretted, ay, sincerely mourned, in death. For on his unexpected demise, his disconsolate owner was discovered in such a state of prostration and grief that every one thought his wife must be dead, or, at any rate, some relative near and dear.
Truly, the squatter of the \'forties\' was from one reason or another a man sui generis, with whom the present pastoral era furnishes few parallels. Mr. Goldsmith, in addition to other accomplishments (did he not challenge Charles Macknight to a bout at single-stick, duly fought out within the precincts of the Melbourne Club?) was a musical connoisseur and no mean performer. When the comfortable cottage at Trawalla was completed, albeit stone-paved and bark-roofed, the drawing-room contained a handsome piano, to which, after dinner, the proprietor mostly betook himself. There, in operatic reminiscences and compositions of impromptu merit, he was wont to wander from the realms of reality to a dreamworld of sweet sounds and brighter souvenirs. How one envied him the delicious distraction!
193So the Trawalla estate had birth and beginning. It was a first-class \'run\' in those simpler times; well watered, with picturesque alternations of hill and dale, plain and forest. The \'shepherded\' sheep had unfailing pasture and ample range. There were no fences in those days, excepting around the horse-paddock.
Temptations to over-stocking were fewer, and chiefly—in default of boundary—took the form of an invasion of some neighbour\'s territory, a trespass which his shepherds were prompt to resent. Thus, the natural grasses were but moderately fed down, and, with the autumn rains unfailing in that district, assumed a richly verdurous garb, scarcely so frequent in the wire-fenced decades. I do not recall the name of the deserving but less fortunate pioneer, the first or second occupant of this desirable holding, from whom Mr. Goldsmith purchased the \'right-of-run,\' with probably a mere handful of stock. With cash in hand, he was doubtless enabled to make an advantageous purchase, and thus enter upon his predecessor\'s labours; once more, as it turned out, to place his foot on fortune\'s ladder.
Far from London and Paris, Ascot and Goodwood, as he found himself, the erstwhile man about town was not wholly debarred from congenial society. William Gottreaux, another musical enthusiast, was at Lilaree; Hastings Cunningham at Mount Emu; Donald and Hamilton, Philip Russell, and other gentleman pioneers within an easy ride. He became a member of the Melbourne Club, then in Collins Street, upon the site of the Bank of Victoria. The late Sir Redmond Barry was his early and intimate friend. (I took charge of a small package of tobacco, on my homeward voyage, from the Judge, as it seems that particular brand was not procurable in Paris.) When things were settled at Trawalla and the stock manifestly improving, with Cornborough in a snug loose-box, and the sheep increasing fast, the owner of Trawalla found a reasonable amount of recreation, as comprised in frequent sojourns at the Melbourne Club, and the enjoyment of the metropolitan society of the day, quite compatible with the effective supervision of the station.
Thus, on the advancing tide of Victorian prosperity, then steadily sweeping onward, unknown to us all, Trawalla and its owner were floated on to fortune—a gently gliding, agreeable, 194and satisfactory process. The sheep multiplied, the fleece acquired name and repute—one couldn\'t grow bad wool in that country, however hard you might try. Cornborough became a peer of the Godolphin Arabian in all men\'s eyes, and the A.G. brand, on beeve-or horse-hide, an accredited symbol of excellence. A purchase of waste land at St. Kilda, made solely, as he informed me, in order to qualify as a legislator, turned out a most profitable investment.
Swiftly the golden period arrived when, after the first years of doubt and uncertainty, it became apparent to holders of station property that nothing prevented t............