those which were supplied by the colonial stores soon ceasing to "go," and subsiding with such rapidity into their secondary purpose of chimney ornaments, that I sometimes doubted whether the clockmakers had not regarded it as the primary one. Thus it came about that on Sundays those people in the bush who lived beyond hearing of the depôt bell, not unfrequently found themselves either half an hour too late or too early for church, as the case might be, and for a child to "know the clock" was rather a mark of superior intelligence.
A grown-up girl once called at our door to ask the time; I referred her to our clock for her own satisfaction, at which she cast a glance as hopeless as that with which she might have regarded some mysterious mathematical instrument, and professed herself in no way the better informed. The inconvenience that resulted from the dearth or the decrepitude of timepieces appeared to have been taken into consideration by the cocks, for they crowed vociferously precisely one hour before midnight, and again at two in the morning; on the last occasion without any reference to dawn in the sky, for the sun did not rise till nearly five o'clock upon the longest day. This peculiarity of the domestic fowl is mentioned in most descriptions of Australia, but in none that I have ever read has any notice been taken of the extreme regularity with which the crowing occurs at certain fixed hours.
I must now beg the reader to suppose us comfortably settled in our new home, or at least as comfortably as it was possible for us to make ourselves in a district where so many of the minor conveniences of life were unprocurable. We had erected three wooden buildings, to serve
