as a whole, I never saw anything like it,
before or since.

From a detached kitchen, on the side of
the original hut, with a monstrous chimney,
came a delicious smell and flare of wood-fire,
accounting clearly for the excessive warmth
of the fat woman cook—a rare and blessed
sight—who, surrounded by male and female
assistants, was at that moment engaged in
fanning herself with an old cabbage-tree hat.

A twinge of mortification shot through me
as I looked down on my patched fustians, and
regretted too late the snow-white ducks and
sky-blue plaid shooting-jacket which lay neg-
lected at the bottom of a sea-chest.

The shearing was concluded. The wool of
twenty thousand head had been washed,
clipped, sorted and packed, and the Clan
Gabriel were gathered together with all friends
and neighbours within seventy miles, who
could spare time to celebrate a feast at the
house with the best garden on that side the
Blue Mountains. Father Gabriel towered
even among the tall Australians, but one could
distinguish at a glance the British from the
Colonial born of his family; slight, fair, and
small-featured were the younger brood as
compared with the elder. Father Gabriel had
one of those faces and forms you often see in
the wolds of Yorkshire; powerful, large
limbed, broad chested, with rather high cheek
bones, a ruddy complexion, which the Australian
sun had not been able to burn out; a
bold hooked nose, eyes grey, and rather larger
and less cunning in expression than most men of
the same stamp; hair, whiskers, and eyebrows
almost grey; a bold, capacious forehead gave
benevolence to a countenance which would
otherwise have been chiefly distinguished, like
his fellow countrymen, by acuteness. Hard
work and the climate seemed to have melted
every ounce of fat out of a frame that, at his
age, we commonly find full and fleshy, if not
unwieldy. His wife was delightful; little,
plump, active, of middle age, perfectly fair,
without wrinkle, and with smooth, auburn
hair without a touch of grey, that kind of hair
that never gets grey, and a mouth full of un-
specked teeth, an advantage which several of
her married daughters could not boast. A
better looking lot I never saw. The women
were all clustering round a stranger cousin
from England; the men, I grieve to own, just as
they do in England, were gathered all together
discussing stock, the merits of their horses, and
the price of wool Two little boys, the eldest
not ten years of age, who had been tailing
cattle all day, gallopped up after us, Bushmen
in miniature.

As dusk came on, the room, which went
clear up to the roof, rough and unfinished, was
lighted with home-made dips, stuck in bottles
and bark sconces.

Presently the tuning I had heard on arrival
recommenced from a corner. Mr. Budge,
blacksmith and clerk, the universal genius of
the settlement, took up his beloved bass, which
unglued and flat, had travelled all the way
from " the North Countrie," and recommenced
the concert our presence had interrupted.
Polly Gabriel, his god-child and favourite, a
sweet little thing in the bloom of fifteen,
tucked a violin under her chin. Bob Grundy,
bootmaker and shepherd, blew away on the
flageolet, while Jack Rackrow, an evergreen
veteran pensioner of engineers, farmer and
joiner, drew shrill notes from a home-made
tin instrument, a cross between a penny-
whistle and piccolo flute.

One, two, three, four, reels were formed,
and off we went in double quick time, for by
instinct I soon joined, as by degrees did a
good many, without distinction of age or
station; Mother Gabriel, as active as any;
Dora O'Grady, the red-headed maiden, in a
red and yellow gown without shoes or stockings.
Famously we jigged, thumped the
floor, and snapped our fingers, and wonderful
were the steps in toe-and-heel, and weave-the-
blanket, there and then performed, amid due
shouting, while at door and window, with
large admiring eyes, the shepherds and other
Bush servants looked on approvingly, as may
be seen when polka is performed in some
English manor-house; the balance of surprise
and admiration being however with our Bush-
men. Then we changed to country dances;
up the middle and down again; and all the
company, but two or three elders, including a
little, lame, old man, with a crutch-handled
stick, got in motion, and it did strike me that
one or two of the outsiders joined in a sort of
voluntary accompaniment at the door end of the
room. When I pulled up in my turn, red and
breathless, I was close to the musicians, rare
birds in the Bush, and this lot right-down
enthusiasts. Little Polly, her eyes sparkling,
her cheeks glowing, her brown curls hanging
all manner of ways, cuddled her fiddle as if
she loved it, and ran up and down the strings
with the taperest, if not the whitest fingers
that ever patted butter,—lost to dances and
admirers, everything but her own music,—but,
while Budge sawed away as solemnly and
earnestly as if he had been blowing his own
bellows, and Grundy blew as if his life
depended on his exertions, Jack Rackrow
found time to admire his own performance
and give directions as to the figures, to which
no one paid the least attention. " I 'me
blessed," I heard one of the Stockmen say, " if
I b'lieve the governor and the bishop have
got such music." And all the bye-standers
seemed of the same opinion, in which, indeed,
I fully agreed.

All things must have an end, so did the
dancing, from sheer exhaustion; then came
supper: the table, sheets of bark laid on bushes,
on which, ranged in glorious profusion, were
mutton chops, boiled beef, honey, potatoes,
melons, grapes, pumpkin pie, eels, parrot pie,
figs, roast piglings, and dampers a yard in
diameter, serving often for bread and plates
too. Jorums of tea, strong and sweet; bowls