GALLOPS AND GOSSIPS

IN THE

BUSH OF AUSTRALIA.

CHAPTER I.

MY BIRTH AND BREEDING.

I was born in a seaport town, in the north of England, the youngest of a large family, and lost both my parents when I was so young that I barely remember them. My paternal grandfather was a farmer, miller, and local contractor, who had made a considerable fortune during the war, but his family was numerous and not harmonious. He survived my parents, and left me, in common with five brothers and sisters, a share in what was considered a good property, but invested in land, houses, ships, mines, and canal shares of such various value that it was difficult to ascertain what we each had to receive, even if my grandfather had not indulged himself in the luxury of making his own will. One of my aunts married a gentleman of noble lineage, as he said, whom she met at Harrogate, unable to leave because he could not pay his hotel bill; another, a most respectable attorney: one of my uncles was on the turf, and another a stock speculator. The con

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sequence was that, instead of inheriting a fortune, we inherited a law-suit, which just came into full bloom when my education became, or ought to have become, expensive. My eldest brother, Rupert, who was fourteen years my senior, inherited a farm of some two hundred acres from my mother's family; my second brother, Charles, was a surgeon in a mining district; my third brother, Thomas, went to sea, and was never heard of again. My sisters, Jane and Maria, were married, and living in London, at the time my adventures commenced.

People talk of the pleasures of childhood-I never knew them. I was a sickly brat, always puling and complaining, constantly sent from house to house, among my relatives, who all very soon and very naturally grew tired of me.

When I was seven or eight years old, I was sent to nurse to the wife of a small farmer, who, to his fifty acres, added the profits of acting as huntsman to a scratch pack of harriers, kept up by the subscriptions of neighbouring graziers, and also dealt a little in horses, for he was a good judge and a capital horseman. I see him now-a little thin man, who never grew older after hale fifty-in his corduroy breeches and gaiters, with one steel spur; a velveteen shooting jacket, much the worse for wear; with a heavy home-manufactured whip in his right hand, riding a long-tailed four-year-old down the bridle-path that led to the open moorland, followed by his pack, of sizes and breeds as various as their colours.

It was the order of the doctor, by whose advice I had been sent to these breezy wolds, that I should not be troubled with learning. I soon found my way to the stable, and passed the first happy hours I can remember, seated on the back of Dobbin, who

THE HUNTSMAN'S FARM.

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weekly carried Dame Clewer to market, as he stood munching his hay in the stall, while red-headed Bob, the herdsman, ploughboy, whipper-in, and man-of-all-work of the establishment, cleaned up the bits and stirrups for a show day, or mended up harness, or carved a wooden bowl. By degrees I was promoted to riding on Smiler's fat back to the pond and home again; and at length a little colour came into my pale cheek, and a little flesh on my drumstick legs. I found favour in the sight of Reuben Clewer-Reuben the Huntsman he was called: he took me as a sort of honorary assistant into the kennel, and gave me the charge of a young fox-hound he had at walk. Soon I knew every hound, from Ardent to Zoilus, as well as he did himself, and they knew me. Bob made me a long-thonged whip, and perched me before him when we took out the hounds in the summer for exercise.

Before the season commenced I was permitted to ride an old brood mare, dam of Lord Harewood's best hunters; before the season ended I could crack my little whip and give a shrill hola without thinking whether I was on horseback or not. Two years I passed with these worthy people, gaining health, strength, and a strong taste for field sports, and imbibing the rudiments of education from a sporting schoolmaster, who, meeting me in the field, obtained leave to increase his small income, as master of an obscure endowed school, by teaching me on such days as hounds did not hunt, and trout would not rise at the fly.

As my life had been condemned by the suffrages of all the family, they did not consider it of any consequence what I did, as long as I grew stronger, cost little money, and gave no trouble.

But when I was about ten years old, one of my aunts, the attorney's wife, came to see me. She was horrified at my accent and my occupation (she found me clearing out the hounds' kennel), but rather pleased with my appearance, so she obtained leave, being childless, to take me with her to London. In less than three months she was as tired of me as I was of a town life. She tried hard, but she could not make me a well-behaved boy. I tore my clothes, hunted the cat, and was always wandering out and making the acquaintance of grooms and ostlers. From that time my unhappiness recommenced. I was sent to a series of schools, but was always in disgrace, and more than once ran away, and set off to walk two hundred miles, to rejoin Reuben the Huntsman. Once, when I was twelve years of age, I had very nearly engaged myself to Lord Bullfinch, to ride his second horse in Leicestershire. I made his acquaintance by stopping Rantipole in a lane, and bringing him back over a double fence, where he had left his lordship on his back, in the middle of that famous. run from Kiddington Barn to Gipsy Gorse. Unfortunately, his lordship's head-groom had been an admirer of my aunt Raby's maid, and recognised me, in spite of uncombed hair and dilapidated costume. So I was sent back to school, with a sovereign tip from his lordship, to be handsomely whipped, and my money taken care of-that is to say, consumed in fines by the schoolmaster.

At length I had the good fortune to fall into the hands of the Reverend Doctor Nicholas Warbler, who kept a school, for the purpose of having his birds and beasts well attended to. His whole soul was in nightingales, golden pheasants, powter pigeons, two Alderney cows, and an Angora goat.

FRENCH AND ENGLISH.

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He employed a classical and mathematical tutor, besides assistants in French and every other tormenting branch of knowledge; but we soon understood each other, and by tacit consent, compromised. On my learning to write a plain hand, and do plain sums, I was allowed to spend the greater part of my time in acting as aide-de-camp in his menagerie.

Unfortunately, this was too pleasant to last. My brother the surgeon took it into his head to examine into my proficiency in Latin, and finding me brought up hard and fast at the second line after "Tityre tu patulæ," had me removed at the end of a year, when I had become as great an adept at raising nightingales as the Doctor himself.

On the recommendation of a patient of my brother's, a wine-merchant, I was next sent to a school, or, as they term it, a college, in France. There I learned French and fencing, to drink gouts of eau de vie, to smoke and exchange French slang, and criticise the eyes and ankles of the girls we met in our walks. Our chief professor had a wife, twenty years younger than himself, who, wishing to learn horsemanship after the English fashion, and English at the same time, chose me, one of the mildest, slimmest, and most rustic of the English boys, as her instructor. We had horses from her uncle, who commanded a regiment of cavalry; he taught me to use a sabre and hit a mark with a pistol, while Madame Epanchment gave me instructions in petits soins, gloves, boots, and cravats, not less useful. I was fifteen, small of my age, and began to read poetry and look at the moon.

It was now time that I should choose a pursuit. I wrote to my guardians, and asked them to procure me a commission in the army. One of my favourite companions was the grandson of a Duke, and the