developed in that respect as fully as when a year's success had made gold as common as shells on the seashore. Then, indeed, by no rate of wages could you ensure the effective discharge of the indispensable duties of the road. When every passing traveller who spoke to your stock-riders, or requested a light for a pipe, had nuggets of gold in his pocket, 'or knowed a party as bottomed last week to the tune of £1200 a man,' it was small wonder that, valuable as their services were conceded to be, they should themselves deem them to be invaluable. Independent, insolent, and ridiculously sensitive as drovers became, it became an undertaking perilous and uncertain in the extreme to drive stock to market.
I have seen the only man (beside the proprietor) in charge of three hundred head of fat cattle confronting that sorely-tried squatter, with vinous gravity and sarcastic defiance, as thus—'You s'pose I'm a-goin' to stay out and watch these cattle while you're a-sittin' in the public-house eatin' your arrowroot? No. I ain't the cattle dorg. I'm a man! as good as ever you was, and you can go and drive your bloomin' cattle yerself.'
This fellow was in receipt of one pound per diem; his allegations were totally unfounded, as his master had done nearly all the work, and would have done the remainder had the instincts of a large drove of wild cattle permitted. I saw my friend's grey eyes glitter dangerously for a moment as he looked the provoking ruffian full in the face, and advanced a step; then the helplessness of his position smote him, and he made a degradingly civil answer.
I was fortunate in not being likely to be reduced to such destitution. Besides Ben, the black boy Charley Bamber was at exactly the right age to be useful. Of him I felt secure. He was a small imp whom I had once brought away from his tribe in a distant part of the country and essayed to educate and civilise. The education had progressed as far as tolerable reading and writing, a perfect mastery of that 'vulgar tongue' so extensively heard in the waste places of the earth, joined with a ready acquaintance with the Bible and the Church Catechism. He would have taken honours in any Sunday School in Britain. The civilisation, I am bound to admit, was imperfect and problematical.
