Page:An Australian Parsonage.djvu/287

258 two sons who composed the lady's family were both absent and that, with the exception of a convict man-servant who refused to touch the body, there was no one but herself to perform the last offices. This man consented, however, to dig a grave, to which she with her own hands conveyed the lifeless remains of her poor fellow-creature in a wheel-barrow, and, without his further help, laid her in the ground.

The ignorance that we noticed amongst many of the colonists as to the commonest appliances for slight accidental ailments certainly bore testimony to the fineness of the climate, which, by rendering sickness rare, had caused homely remedies to be seldom studied; but, even if the "simples" which every cottage herb-bed at home furnishes had been in vogue, they could have thriven only in such spots as were moistened by underground springs. No doubt there must be native plants which, if their properties were known, might be made serviceable in illness; but beyond the red gum that flows from the tree of that name (Eucalyptus resinifera), which is useful in checking dysentery, I heard of no colonial specific. Neither, with the exception of native tea and native hops, did I ever hear of any plants which had been used for infusions.

The native hop is a little ground-plant, named by botanists Erythrea Australis, with which, on account of its intensely bitter taste, sugar-beer used to be flavoured when English hops could not be procured. As to the native tea, of which I never heard the botanical name, its qualities seem to be chiefly of a negative sort. It certainly did not "inebriate," and the only "cheerfulness" connected with it appeared to arise from the pleasure with which people reflected that they were now no longer