\'This is the place; stand still, my steed, let me review the scene!\' Quite correct, this is the place, though so changed that I hardly recognise the homestead which I built when I \'took up the Run\' still known as \'Squattlesea Mere,\' so many a year ago. Can it be possible that half a century should have passed—fleeted by like a dream—as a tale that is told—and that I should again stand here, looking at the work of my hands in that old time, whereof the memory is so fresh? The huts, the stock-yards, the cottage wherein we dwelt in peaceful contentment, nearly all are there, though much decayed and showing manifest signs of old Time—edax rerum—with his slow but sure attrition. The fruit trees in the garden, planted with my own hands, are of great age and size, and still bearing abundantly in a soil and climate so favourable to their growth. I find it almost impossible to realise that in June 1844, being then a stripling of eighteen, I should have established this \'lodge in the wilderness,\' now developed into a fair-sized freehold, besides supporting a number of families in comfort and respectability on the selected portions.
Well do I remember the dark night when I reached this very spot, on a tired horse, having ridden from Grasmere on the Merrai that day, nearly fifty miles, without food for man or beast. The black marauders of the period held revel on a cape of the lava-bestrewn land which jutted out upon the marsh, near the Native Dog\'s Well. I had stumbled on to their camp, not seeing it until I was amid their dimly-burning fires. Relations were strained between us, and as they were then engaged in banqueting upon one of my milch cows (name Matilda), there is no saying what might have happened 336to the chronicler if my colt, a great-grandson of Skeleton (own brother to Drone), had not responded to the spur.
The overseer and I, arming ourselves, rode to the scene of the entertainment next morning, which presented an appearance much resembling the locality in Robinson Crusoe\'s island after the savages had finished their repast. Portions of the murdered milker were visible, also her orphaned calf, lowing in lament after his kind. But our sable neighbours had vanished.
I drove over the identical spot last week. How different its aspect! Drained and fenced—the black soil of the fen showing by depth and colour what crops it is destined to grow—a wire fence, a dog-leg ditto, all sorts of queer enclosures. Only the volcanic trap ridges remain unchanged, and the \'Blue Alsatian Mountains,\' as typified by Mount Eeles and Mount Napier, which seem to \'watch and wait alway.\'
Yes. The landscape has an altered appearance. What we used to call \'the smooth side\' of the Eumeralla—as differentiated from the \'stones\' of Mount Eeles, then, as now, rough enough in all conscience—has since our day been almost wholly denuded of timber. The handsome, umbrageous, blackwood trees (Acacia melanoxylon), which marked and shaded the \'islands\' in the great mere, are dead and gone.
The marsh lands, then divided into islands, flats, and reed-beds, now present one apparently dead level, less picturesque, but more profitable, as fields of oats and barley are now to be seen where the \'wild drake quacked and the bittern boomed.\'
Yon broad arterial drain is responsible for this transformation. More complete reticulation will in time turn the ancient fen, I doubt not, into one of the most productive agricultural areas in the Port Fairy district.
Still, with the increase of population and the onward march of civilisation, one natural enemy of the grazier comes forward as another is displaced. The dingo and kangaroo, with our poor relations, the aborigines, have mostly disappeared. But the rabbit in countless multitudes has arrived and come to stay; while the hero of our nursery tales and I wot not of what medi?val legends, Master Reynard, 337the fox, has found the climate suit his constitution. He raids the good-wife\'s turkeys, not wholly neglecting lambs, much as he might have done in the midland counties of England. Charles Kingsley\'s father (he tells us) took him into the garden one night to hear a fox bark, believing that the breed would soon be extinct in England; but he has held his own so far in the old country, and as I was told of a vixen with six cubs discovered in a log at Snaky Creek last week, I doubt whether we should not be able to re-export him, like the hares and rabbits, if a demand sprang up for the Australian Reynard.
Squattlesea Mere was certainly a good place for game. Snipe were plentiful, and might be shot, so to speak, from the parlour window. Wild ducks, geese, turkeys, quail, and the beautiful bronze-wing pigeon also. The kangaroo was then in the land, and helped our larder (notably with his tail, which made excellent soup), and an occasional dish of steak or hashed wallaby. The flesh tasted something between lean beef and veal, not at all a bad substitute for salt junk, when well cooked. A couple of hundred rabbits at least must have crossed the road, running eastward, in two or three miles, as we drove along this morning.
How such a sight would have astonished us formerly! Hares, too, from time to time. Our kangaroo dogs were then nearly as fast as the pure greyhounds now so plentiful on every estate, and what good sport we should have had! Driving by coach between the towns of Hamilton and Macarthur, I observed with satisfaction that the old stations survived in the form of respectable, though not overgrown, freehold estates. And although the owners are no longer the same, they still bear their old names, and are thus distinguished from the smaller-sized arable and grazing farms which have occupied the remaining areas.
\'Monivae\' (the first in order along the Macarthur road), from which I have more than once seen Acheson Ffrench driving his four-in-hand, now boasts a mansion and excellent fencing. The old cottage, however, yet stands, surrounded by the station buildings, where the merry girls and boys grew up, and where we used to be glad to be asked to stop for a night in the \'dear dead days beyond recall.\' Werongurt too, where John Cox held sway, where the first orchard was 338planted, where the choice Herefords roamed at will, where The Caliph and ............