Very early in a land peopled by the roving Englishman did sport of one kind or another begin to put forth those shoots which have since so grown and burgeoned. For some years there must have been so few horses, that racing contests were difficult if not impossible. The first cattle were herded without horses, some of the pedestrian stockmen acquiring thereby extraordinary speed of foot. It was customary for early Australians to make longish journeys on foot, and legends are yet rife in colonial families as to the distances performed then by the seniors—tales which strike with astonishment their descendants, who rarely walk, much less run.

We doubt not, however, that as soon as the colts and fillies began to grow up, their young riders, with or without leave, commenced to ascertain their relative speed.

Parramatta has, it is said, the honour of holding the first race meeting in 1810, the example being followed by the officers of the 73rd Regiment, then in Sydney, who utilised the reserve now known as Hyde Park for the purpose. From that time annual races commenced to be held there. The country towns, as they arose, were only too eager to follow the example of the metropolis. Favourites of the turf acquired fame which was trumpeted abroad through the restricted sporting circles of the day.

Sir John Jamison\'s Bennelong—named after a well-known aboriginal—was one of the early racing celebrities. He ran against Mr. Lawson\'s Spring Gun in 1829 for a heavy wager as they went then; and the old-world system of heats finishing up Spring Gun, he won easily. He carried off the principal turf events in Parramatta in 1832. In the same 408year Mr. H. Bayley\'s imported colt, Whisker, won the great races at the Hawkesbury meeting. Trotting was not entirely overlooked. It appears that a Mr. Potter\'s horse trotted twelve miles within the hour for a bet of ￡30, winning by fifteen seconds.

In May 1834 the Sydney Subscription Races were held on the New Course, Botany Road, for the first time. This course was new as compared with Hyde Park, but came to be called \'the old Sandy Course,\' in relation to Homebush, the next established convincing-ground. At this meeting, Mr. C. Smith\'s Chester, a son of Bay Camerton, won the Cup; Whisker the Ladies\' Purse. This grand horse won the Town Plate of ￡50; also the Ladies\' Purse, ￡25, again beating Chester. Whisker, for whom ￡1400 had been offered three days previously, died within the week. I was present at that same old Sandy Course in the autumn of 1835, when Chester beat his half-brother Traveller—the latter fated to belong to my old friend and neighbour, Charles Macknight, at Dunmore, Victoria, in years to come. The well-known Emigrant mare, Lady Godiva, ran at the same meeting, and won her race for the Ladies\' Purse, containing the modest sum of ￡30. The Town Plate was ￡50.

The celebrated horse Jorrocks, \'clarum et venerabile nomen\' in turf annals, belonged to that period. A son of Whisker from Lady Emily (imported), he inherited some of the best racing-blood in the world; the dry air and nutritive pasturage of his native land did the rest. A horse of astonishing speed, stoutness, and courage, his record covers a longer list of victories than that of any other Australian racehorse. In those days of three-mile heats, he might not win the first, but rarely lost the succeeding ones. It used to be said that when the \'native\' lads began to cheer, Jorrocks seemed to comprehend the situation, and would win on the post or die in the attempt. I saw him once, a retired veteran, and can never forget his shape, almost symmetrically perfect. A long forehand, with light, game head and full eye, grand sloping shoulders, cask-like back-rib, muscular quarter and Arab croupe, legs like iron, as indeed they needed to have been; a long, low horse, scarcely exceeding fifteen hands, I should say, in height—such was Jorrocks.

Intercolonial races began in 1849. Without railways there 409was a difficulty in transporting horses; but it was overcome. Petrel, the property of Mr. Colin Campbell, a popular Victorian squatter, ran a great race on the Melbourne Course with Mr. Austin\'s Bessie Bedlam, a beautiful daughter of Cornborough.
Dark brown, with tan muzzle.

Gordon\'s description might have been written for her. She was, to my thinking, the handsomest mare ever stripped on an Australian course. Petrel won, and Mr. Campbell gave a ball at the Prince of Wales\' Hotel in Melbourne on the strength of his winnings, at which I was a guest—and a very good ball it was. The same year saw Emerald and Tally-ho (from New South Wales), Coronet and Hollyoake (of Tasmania), beaten by the Victorian horse Bunyip, a big powerful bay. He won the Town Plate, Publicans\' Purse, and Ladies\' Purse at the same meeting; and starting for fourteen principal races that season, won them all—a truly phenomenal animal.

By this time the gold \'boom of booms\' had occurred. There were no more ￡50 Town Plates. In 1856 Alice Hawthorn won ￡1000 for Mr. Chirnside, beating Mr. Warby\'s Cardinal Wiseman; in her turn losing the three-mile race with Veno—an intercolonial duel—for ￡2000. In 1859 I saw Flying Buck win the Champion Melbourne Sweepstakes for ￡1000, eighteen starters, and may have heard the late Mr. Goldsborough offer a thousand to thirty against him after the start, and Roger Kelsall call out \'taken.\'

The pageant of Flemington on Cup day was yet a visionary forecast. Mr. Bagot had not appeared above the horizon. First King, Briseis, Archer, and Glencoe—much less Carbine and Trenton—were in the dimmest futurity. I was to see Adam Lindsay Gordon win the steeplechase of \'69 upon Viking, with Babbler half a length behind. Glencoe the same year bore the coveted Cup trophy to New South Wales.

What a wondrous change had taken place in a few short years between the primitive racing and rude surroundings of the old Botany Course and the shaven lawns, the flower-beds, the asphalt walks, the immense grand-stands, the order, comfort, and perfect organisation of Randwick and Flemington—exceeding 410indeed, in these respects, the race-courses of the old country! What a difference in the size and quality of the fields of running horses, in the amount of money wagered, in the multitude that attends, in the facilities of rail and road by which the tens of thousands of spectators are safely, comfortably disposed of in transit!

In these and other astounding developments of the era we cannot but mark the transition stage from a colony to a nation, from a collection of humble towns and hamlets to a cluster of cities commencing to take rank with the world\'s important centres. An Anglo-Saxon dominion unmatched, for the period of its existence, in wealth and culture, population and trade, in progress in all that constitutes true, steadfast, abiding civilisation.

With respect to sport other than horse-racing, the men who had left \'Merrie England\' so far away across the Southern main, conscious that in many cases they had looked their last upon that earthly paradise of the angler, the huntsman, the fowler, and the deer-stalker, began to cast about for substitutes and compromises. Hares and rabbits there were none (did we catch a cheer, or was it a groan?); but the active marsupials which then overspread the land afforded reasonable coursing, and led to the formation of a breed of greyhounds, stronger, fiercer, in some instances hardly less fleet, than those of the old country. Reynard was still absent, but Brer Dingo was fast across the open, and a good stayer, while his insatiable appetite for mutton and poultry rendered him beyond a doubt the fox\'s natural successor. Even as a \'bagman\' he was fairly serviceable.

Thus at an early date in Tasmania, a land of farms and small enclosures, and later on in Sydney, the old-world rural recreation, with pinks and tops, horn and hound, huntsman and whipper-in, \'accoutred proper,\' was welcomed and supported. In Victoria there are now home-grown foxes in abundance, with hares, and, alas, rabbits in still greater proportion for them to subsist upon; while as to the fields, no straighter goers are to be found in Christendom—moi qui parle—than our young Australians, men and maidens, married or single—let the stiff three-railers of Petersham and Ballarat, Geelong and Rooty-hill testify; no better horses—fast, well-bred, clever, and up to weight. It seems hard that 411distance, expense, and long voyage should stand in the way of members of Australian hunt clubs trying their own and their steeds\' mettle in \'the Shires.\'

Now for the gun. Wild-fowling has obtained always on the inland lakes and rivers, on marsh and lagoons, with quail and snipe, more or less, still extant; yet it must be confessed that it has chiefly partaken of the nature of \'pot-hunting.\' In marshy localities sni............