owe, and their creditors willing to take an equivalent in any imaginable form. For instance, a man went to some persons of our acquaintance living in the bush to ask them for the payment of twenty-three shillings that they owed him—a sum of money which in England he would hardly have thought it necessary to take a cart and horse to bring away, as if he had been carrying bullion to the mint; nevertheless on the occasion of which I am about to speak, a tumbril of some kind or other would have been found extremely convenient.
Arrived at the house, and preferring his request, he was told by the inmates that it was impossible for them to pay him in money, as they possessed none; they therefore looked about for what they could give him instead, and the wealth of a bush lady consisting principally in her poultry, she proposed paying him in eggs, of which at the latter end of winter a prodigious number are laid by the unlimited number of hens which roam around the lonely dwellings, and roost upon the trees or roofs, according to their fancy. To this the man consented, seeing no other probable way of getting paid, and a basket being found which could somehow be fitted on his back, it was forthwith packed with eggs, a dozen for each shilling, which was one more egg than the current shillingsworth at that time, as the debtors were anxious to do the thing handsomely, and it was, no doubt, solely in mercy to their creditor's bones that they were not more generous.
With this freight it might be supposed that he would at once have gone, or rather staggered, to market; but amongst other hindrances to trade, markets have no existence in the colony, and there is no choice but to take
