in the occupation of Messrs. Griffith and Greene, reared its granite mass a few miles to the south. As Sir Thomas Mitchell stood there, gazing over the illimitable prairie, rich with giant herbage and interspersed but with belts and copses of timber, planted by Nature's hand, the veteran explorer ex- claimed with a burst of enthusiasm, 'Australia Felix! This is indeed Australia Felix!'
Steady stocking and an occasional dry season had somewhat modified the standard of the nutritive grasses and salsolaceous plants, at this point advantageously mingled. But that the country was superlative in a pastoral point of view may be gathered from the fact that, upon my first visit to the homestead a few weeks afterwards, I saw five thousand weaners—the whole crop of lambs for the previous year—shepherded in one flock. Very fine young sheep they were, and in excellent condition. Of course it was on a plain, but, unless the pasturage had been exceptional, no shepherd could have kept such a number together.
Later in the afternoon my Teutonic conductor, who had been going for the last twenty miles like the dark horseman in Burger's ballad, pulled up at Reedy Lake Head Station. There dwelt the resident partner and autocrat of his district, Mr. Theophilus Keene.
I saw a slight, fair man with an aquiline nose, a steady grey eye, and an abundant beard, who came out of a neat two-roomed slab hut and greeted me with polished courtesy. 'He was extremely glad to see me. He had looked forward to my coming this week in terms of a letter he had received from Messrs. Ryan and Hammond, but, indeed, had hardly expected that I would trust myself to their mail.'
Mr. Keene, whom I saw then for the first time, was probably verging on middle age, though active and youthful in appearance, above the middle height, yet not tall—of a figure inclined indeed to spareness. He impressed me with the idea that he was no commonplace individual.
He carried nothing of the bushman about his appearance, at home or in town, being careful and soigné as to his apparel, formal and somewhat courtly in his address. He scarcely gave one the idea of a dweller in the waste; yet the roughest experiences of overlanding squatter-life, of a leader of the rude station and road hands, had been his. He looked
