erected, with some little enclosure for a garden,
fenced in by heaps of the gum-tree
boughs with all their dried leaves upon them.
A few fowls, goats, and a stray cow or two—
these were the sum total of the Melbourne of
that day.

So soon as the party found that the flock was
willing to trudge forward a little, they slowly
ascended the slopes, and as evening drew on
took up their station for the night on the crown
of the hill, which displayed to them beyond
a wide stretch of unknown country, looking
one unbroken mass of forest, with different
mountain ranges showing themselves over it.
As near as we can guess, they camped their
flock for the night on the very spot where
another shepherd now watches his—namely,
the Bishop of Melbourne, whose palace
of solid native trap-stone marks
unintentionally the first pastoral resting-place of
Tom Scott and his sheep.

Here they saw sights which their
successor, the chief shepherd of the Melbourne
of to-day, is too late for. Numbers of the
natives were scattered about over the hill
and on the plains below, where the river
wound along between its deep banks, and
overhung with lofty trees. Each family was
squatted down under a few gum-tree boughs,
which reached their highest idea of domestic
architecture, all except the unmarried young
men, who were located in groups at
bougheries of their own. Fires were burning
in the centre of these sable family groups,
at which they were roasting pieces of the flesh
of the kangaroo or the opossum, and of fish
from the river; and they seemed to have a
particular penchant for meat done rare. Miserable
groups they looked, some with worn and
tattered mantles of opossum-skin, some
clothed only in the bare skins provided by
nature. Lots of little tun-bellied children,
innocent of all wrappings, tumbled about
amongst a tribe of hungry, fire-singed dogs,
and women whom the graces never deigned
to recognise, cowered behind their lords, and
caught, ever and anon, some half raw and
inferior morsel flung to them over their
spouses' shoulders.

As the night approached, throngs of the
natives, men, women, children, and dogs,
were all seen moving to one spot, now the
quarters of a different race—the mounted
police. No sooner fell the darkness, than out
blazed a number of huge fires round this
space, made of the boughs and trunks of
trees. Round one of these, a number of
women took their places, squatting on the
ground. Then came numbers of naked
men, their swarthy bodies hideously painted
with red, and striped in various barbarian
figures and lines of white with pipe-clay.
Everyone carried in each hand a small branch
of the flowering wattle, and anon they ranged
themselves in a wide circle, all with elevated,
outstretched arms, crossing between man and
man their wattle-twigs. At once the women
burst forth with a wild kind of song, beating
time simultaneously with the right arm, and
away went the dance of the men in obedience
to the chant and to the directing motions of
a native band-master, who stood on the
trunk of a huge fallen tree at hand. Wildly
whirled the demon-looking crew—now in
circles, now in crescents, now in squares, and
strangely intersecting lines. Still wilder
quicker, quicker, quicker; shriller, louder
rang their notes—faster, furiously,
frantically waved their arms, and rapidly, rapidly,
wildly, weirdly, madly danced and shrieked
the men. Top!—all was still. Then slow
and low and plaintive awoke once more the
song of the women, and slow and mournfully
moved the now long lines of dancers.
There was something spectral, haunting and
unearthly in the scene. The movements
were as silent and flowing as those of spirits;
and the fluttering of the fire flames, and the
wind in the trees, were the only sounds
which mingled with the faint and mournful
dirge of the women. But once more the
scene changed. The songs of the women
became gradually louder and more agitated;
the grim dancers accelerated their motions
and threw fresh force into their bounds.
Again the dance grew fast and furious, and
the shrieks of men and women, the barking
of dogs, the flashing of fires on blood-red
bodies, wild glaring eyes, and grinning teeth,
the whirl and change of the madly-leaping
and bacchanal route, produced a scene of
appalling wonder that can only be expressed
in the words, savage life.

A day earlier, and our adventurers would
have been arrested in their progress by
having to witness a native battle, where
boomerangs and spears flew in marvellous
confusion, and heavy waddies thumped on
bark shields; and where each contending
army might have reported, in the true
Gortschakoff style—the enemy did us no
harm whatever. This was the feast of
reconciliation.

These did not seem very auspicious
circumstances under which to make a progress up a
wild country; but they were, in truth, the
very best. The natives were drawn to this
one spot from many a score of miles of wild
woodland, and all the securer the little party
drove on their little flock. But in the absence
of natives, there were still many dangers and
difficulties in the way. The wilds were
untracked. They made their way by noting
every day, the quarter in which the sun arose
and set, and where it cast the shortest
shadow at noon. Sometimes they found
themselves obstructed by miles of bogs, and had
to wander round them. Occasionally, at this
early season of the spring, they were
overtaken by several days of heavy, incessant
rain, and, destitute of a hut to flee to, as in
their abandoned home in Tasmania, they
were drenched through and through. Fire