saved some of his money, and Peyton having lost every shilling.
They sold to Mr. Doughty, who had formerly owned a sheep station near Mount Gambier. He was a married man, and preferred, for some reasons, the Port Fairy district to live in. He was economical, active, a famous horseman, and a good manager. He tried "all he knew," but was beaten in a little more than a year, and "gave it best." I heard of other purchasers, but about that time I severed my connection with the district and followed the fortune of St. Ruth's no further. Probably, if cleared, drained, laid down in grasses at the rate of £10 per acre, fenced and subdivided, it might, under the weeping western skies, produce good pasture. But it always was an unlucky spot.
In the strongest contradistinction to St. Ruth's—a regular man-trap, and as pecuniarily fatal as if specially created for Murad the Unlucky—was the station generally known as "Blackfellows' Creek," lying east of Eumeralla. By the way, the original pathfinders of Port Fairy had a pretty fancy in the naming of their watercourses. There were Snaky Creek, Breakfast Creek, and, of course, Deep Creek and Sandy Creek. Now, this Blackfellows' Creek was as exceptionally good a station as St. Ruth's was "t'other way on." It was proverbially and eminently a fattening run; and on the principle "who drives fat oxen should himself be fat," its owner, Mr. William Carmichael, was, and always had been, far and away the fattest man in the district.
