Nature all around
is life. The landscape is superb. It reminded me 'della Bella Cara
Itallia'. The bush around was crammed with parrots, crows, and other
chattering birds of the south. They were not prevented from singing
praises each in its own language to the Creator, and all was joy and
happiness with them. Unfortunately those lands lay uncultivated by the
hand of man; but were not left idle by nature. Lively, pretty little
flowers of the finest blue, teemed here, there, and everywhere, through
the splendid grass, wafed to and fro by a gentle wind.
Look now at the foot of the picture.
There were thirteen of us all healthy, honest, able-bodied men, chained
together on three carts. A dozen of dragoons, strong, sound-looking men,
were riding on horseback as sharp-shooters, in all directions, before our
carts in the bush. Their horses were really splendid animals. A score
of troopers of the accursed stamp we had then on Ballaarat, sword
unsheathed, carbines cocked, kept so close to our carts that one of these
Vandemonians was half jammed on riding by a large gum-tree; was thrown
from his horse, and disabled, but not killed. We are at last in Ballan,
for change of horses. Captain Thomas and a stout healthy-looking man,
with a pair of the finest black whiskers I ever saw, in the garb of a
digger, who gave such orders to the coachman, as were always attended to,
with the usual colonial oaths as a matter of course, were regaling
themselves with bottled porter on a stump of a tree outside the
public-house.
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