To complete the "wild sports of the West" flavour with which my fancy had invested Kilfera, entered to us that night, travelling with horses, one Mr. Crowe, evidently of kin to the "three Mr. Trenches of Tallybash," popularly known as "mad Crowe." Slightly eccentric to an unprejudiced observer he appeared to be. He was a tall, fair-haired, athletic fellow, and he had not been half an hour in the house before, after gifting all his horses with impossible qualities and improbable pedigrees, he offered to row, wrestle, ride, drink, or fight any one of the company for a liberal wager. He finished off the evening's entertainment by volunteering and going outside to execute an imitation of an Irish "keen" at a wake, a performance which was likely to have cost him dear, as it offended the sensibilities of several of the station hands, who were strongly minded to arise and "hammer" him (Crowe) for belittling their native land. "How happily the days of Thalaba went by" at Kilfera; indeed, I regarded with complacency the somewhat protracted muster of the Strathbogie herd. However, one fine day they were mustered and counted out to me, mixed with the Devil's River contingent; blacks and brindles, yellows and strawberries, snaileys and poleys, old and young, they were "a mixed herd" in every sense. But cattle were cattle in those days. So I bade farewell to my kind friend and pleasant acquaintances, and took the road for Port Fairy—four hundred miles or so. But an odd hundred leagues of a journey was nothing then. How the country must have altered since those days. No Beechworth diggings—Castlemaine, Sandhurst, and
