CHAPTER VIII.

A "Country Inu"-Breakfast-Contrasts-A Bush Ramble and digression about Ants-Mountain Scenery-Cattle-skeletons-" Weather-board" Inn -Supper and Night at "Blind Paddy's"-Mountains and the Surveyor's Roads-Mount Victoria-Convict-gangs and Bush-rangers-Inn at the "Rivulet" and its Inhabitants-The ruling Vice.

AFTER driving for some miles nearly all up-hill, we stayed to breakfast at a small way-side public-house, where the slovenly slipshod women, dirty floors, and a powerful odour of stale tobacco-smoke, gave me no very favourable expectations of cleanliness or comfort. On the smoke-stained walls hung some very highly coloured and showily framed prints, representing young gentlemen with red cheeks and very blue coats trying to look very hard at young ladies in pink gowns with very large sleeves; and severally inscribed, "The Faithful Lovers;" "The Betrothed;"" The False One," &c.; ingenious distinctions of character, which it would have been extremely difficult to discover from the portraits alone.

In many places you find some particular dish more generally in vogue than others, but in New South Wales one universal reply follows the query of "What can you give us to eat?" and this is, "Am an' eggs, Sir;" "mutton-chops" forming the usual accompaniment, if required. So ham and eggs we had, and mutton-chops too; but from their being fried all together, in the same dark-complexioned fat, the taste of these viands was curiously similar, and both of impenetrable hardness. Unless great care is taken, meat spoils so soon in this climate, that the custom among most persons is to cook it almost as soon as killed, which of course precludes the possibility of its being tender. Tea, with black sugar, but no milk, and bread without butter, completed the repast, with the addition of "damper," a composition respecting which there are divers opinions, some persons preferring it to bread, whilst I think it the worst way of spoil

ing flour. The etymology is perhaps "Dampier," this indigestible food (an excellent damper of a good appetite) being supposed by some persons to have been invented by the great circumnavigator, and the manufacture is this:-A stiff dough is made of flour, water, and salt, and kneaded into a large flat cake, two or three inches thick, and from twelve to eighteen broad. The wood-ashes are then partially raked from the hot hearth, and the cake being laid on it, is heaped over with the remaining hot ashes, and thus bakes. When cut into, it exceeds in closeness and hard heaviness the worst bread or pudding I ever tasted, and the outside looks dirty, if it is not so: still, I have heard many persons, conversant with every comfort and luxury, praise the " damper;" so I can only consider my dislike a matter of taste. In "the bush," where brewer's yeast cannot be procured, and people are too idle or ignorant to manufacture a substitute for it (which is easily done), this indurated dough is the only kind of bread used, and those who eat it constantly must have an ostrich's digestion to combat its injurious effects.

At the period of which I am writing, wheat in Sydney had reached the exorbitant price of 10l. 16s. per quarter, to which every mile of distance from thence added cost, and this naturally induced every one to economize flour as much as possible; accordingly ground maize, boiled rice, and other things were added to the bread for this purpose, making it hot, bitter, or unpleasantly moist, as the case might be, but I do not remember seeing one instance of the flour being used unsifted, as it is in so many families at home, from motives of health or preference, although it might have been so used at such a time of dearth with manifest advantage.

Adjoining to this comfortless habitation (called an inn) was a small plot of potato-ground, but no attempt at neatness or improvement was visible; all was slovenly and neglected. The dirt and indescribable combination of ill smells within, was but a type of the state of things without. In the rear of the house one vast undistinguished rubbish-heap spread around, bounded only by some wretchedly dilapidated outhouses and stables, and reeking with foul exhalations, on which, and its more tangible delicacies, a large conversazione of pigs seemed to luxuriate most satisfactorily. Several children were lying or lounging about in

close companionship with the pigs, equally dirty, but apparently less lively. Miserable creatures! I thought of the contrast between them and children in a similar station at home, for this wretched place would rank with the "Lion" or "Traveller's Rest" of a country village in England, with its couple of clean white-draped spare chambers, and its gay best parlour as neat and bright as a new pin. The landlady, a rosy comely dame with a cap of driven snow and smart flowered gown; the landlord, in cords and blue stockings, velveteen coat, and sturdy figure, a beau ideal of an English yeoman; and the children-most of them are at school, but the rest, what clean, shiny, red, laughing, frolicsome young rogues they are! Look on this picture and on that! No-not again; so whilst my companions enjoyed their cigars in the cobwebbed veranda, I crossed the road, and was at once in the wild bush, where I rambled for some time, interested by everything around me, though careful to keep tolerably near the house. Strange birds were fluttering and whistling in the trees; thousands of grasshoppers, large and small, leaped up wherever I went, tumbling down again in their helpless way, with all their legs abroad, and taking a few seconds to gather themselves into place again for a fresh jump; myriads of ants, of various sizes and species, were as busy as ants always are, running hither and thither, up and down the smooth-barked gum-trees, in long lines reaching from the ground far beyond my sight into the tall branches; and here and there, near some old or fallen tree, a swift little lizard would dart into his hole, giving me barely time enough to see that he was not a snake, of which fearful creatures I have a just and most intense terror.

In the course of this and the following day's journey we passed many of the gigantic ant-hills common in some parts of New South Wales. They are great conical heaps of finely worked earth cemented into a hard mass, and from six to ten feet high, with no visible orifice outside, nor did I see a single ant about them, though I closely examined several. I have been told they are the work of a white ant, and, from their magnitude, should suppose them the habitation of a species of termite. When cut open, they display numerous small cells, but on our journey I had neither time nor inclination to destroy and investigate their domestic arrangements myself. The earth of which these ant

hills are formed, is so finely prepared by the little architects that it is used by the settlers in the neighbourhood as plaster, and frequently as cement for floors. Many various kinds of ants inhabit New South Wales and Van Diemen's Land; I know about a dozen species myself. One is a very formidable-looking personage, full an inch long, with a shiny coat of mail gleaming purple and blue, and a threatening sting, which I am told inflicts a most painful wound, as severe as that of the hornet. Besides these are several other large kinds, some entirely black, others with red heads, bodies, or legs. One, with black body and yellow forceps, not only acts on the defensive, but openly attacks any one passing too near him, by jumping at them, and stinging or biting severely; I have often been surprised to observe the distance they can spring when irritated or disturbed. Of the smaller kinds the numbers "are as the sands upon the seashore." They swarm in every part of the bush, and infest houses to an intolerable degree. In our house near Sydney, and also our present residence in Van Diemen's Land, I have been excessively annoyed by them; not an atom of anything sweet can be hidden from their attacks: sideboard, pantry, storeroom, cellar, and kitchen, are all alike besieged by the industrious little torments. They bury themselves in sugar, and drown in jam, cream, custards, or tarts; and their odour and taste are so indescribably nauseous, that their repeated visitations become rather expensive. Setting the forbidden viands in vessels of water seemed a perfect remedy, but still the ants gained access to them, and to my amazement I saw whole squadrons of the tiny black army deliberately marching across the water, and climbing the dishes within. Some particles of dust had no doubt fallen on the surface, and enabled them to step over dry. Ants are certainly most interesting creatures (always providing they preserve a respectful distance from one's grocery and sweetmeets), and in the bush I often watch them with great pleasure and without an idea of disturbing them. One day I observed a bright yellow circle on the ground, and on stooping to see what it might be, discovered a quantity of the golden-coloured petals of a small kind of cistus which grew near, neatly cut up into little bits (about the sixteenth of an inch wide), heaped all round an anthole, and crowds of my tiny household foes or their relatives busy

in various ways. Some were running about the low branches of the cistus bushes, carrying fragments of the petals towards the heap; others, busy "getting in" the harvest, would come up the hole, seize on a bit of the treasure, and, with the aid of four or five more, pull it down below. Sometimes two parties would bring their burden just to the opening at the same moment, and as the passage was only wide enough for one set at a time, a furious and determined struggle took place as to which should first succeed, which, like many disputes among larger animals, seemed to make up in violence what it wanted in magnitude. I watched the indefatigable little creatures for some time, until I became quite cramped from my crouching position, and still the same routine of business went on with unabated activity.

"Mais revenons à nos moutons !"- We continued our journey through a wild and barren country, utterly destitute of herbage; the inhospitable Blue Mountains were before, behind, and on either side of us, rising in grand and dreary monotony of form and colour. Forests of tall gum-trees covered them from base to peak, but instead of a beauty in the landscape, these were a deformity. All bore the marks of fire far up their branchless, blackened stems, and in many places the burning had been so recent, that for miles the very earth seemed charred, and not even a stunted shrub had sprung up again. The trees, huge masses of charcoal to all appearance, had no branches till very near the summit, and these bore only a few scattered tufts of rusty leaves, scarcely casting a visible shadow, and affording no shade. The steepest ravines had not the semblance of water in their dry dreary depths, and but for the fearful quagmires and deep holes in the road (which made the utmost care in driving requisite to avoid an upset over the precipice), one would not have thought that rain or dew ever visited this desert region.

The main portion of the road is bad beyond an English comprehension; sometimes it consists of natural step-like rocks protruding from the dust or sand one, two, or three feet above each other, in huge slabs the width of the track, and over these "jumpers," as they are pleasantly termed, we had to jolt and bump along as we best might. How our springs stood such unwonted exercise is an enigma still; but as a vehicle of the ba