Page:Australian Emigrant 1854.djvu/216

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190
THE AUSTRALIAN EMIGRANT.

docks and the horses and cattle spread over that boundless plain. Come on, we must not loiter now. That peaceful group of cottages, so English in their aspect in all but the luxuriant creepers with which they are netted together, contain within their walls two prosperous and happy families. The garden, common to both, is full of the most lovely flowers such as money could scarcely purchase in England, though here they are in themselves mere weeds. It is the tasteful arrangement of colors which give them all their value. Do you not feel at the first glance that garden was ordered and arranged by woman's hand; that it is to her delicate sensibilities you are indebted for the perfume and the home associations called up by the English honeysuckle creeping round and almost hiding the burly stem of its Australian namesake? The old country is not forgotten. No: no. The tendrils of that fragile plant just strong enough to resist the sea breezes which sweep up the valley, yet form a link in an enduring chain which binds the memory of the exiles to the land of their birth. Let us make for the nearest dwelling. The old kangaroo dog sunning herself on the threshold is quite harmless. Poor Lady's course is well nigh run: grown stiff with scars and age she will dream away the brief existence which remains to her, tended kindly by the hand of the master she has served so long and faithfully. Even her antipathies are forgotten, and alongside her nestles a joey,[1] one of the pets of the family. "Shoot her!" said Dodge, warmly, to a humane individual who counseled him to kill Lady on the plea that she was quite useless; "Shoot her! I'd sooner stockwhip you."

And has the bushman's life no peculiar attractions to offer? Let us inquire of the parents of that happy group of sunburnt

  1. An infant kangaroo. When taken young from the mother they are readily tamed.