Page:An Australian Parsonage.djvu/296

Rh We once spent the night out of doors, when on our way to visit a friend whose house we had expected to reach early in the evening. Being ill acquainted with the road thither, we were unfortunate enough to alight upon a young misanthrope, keeping cows in a grassy place a few miles from what ought to have been the end of our journey, who, in answer to our question, "Were we on the road for Egoline?" gave a very confident though erroneous affirmative. The views were so picturesque that for a mile or two farther we passed our time in admiring them; but at last we began to think that, if we were on the right track, our friend's house was much farther off than we had been led to expect, and we looked out for it rather anxiously as the sun disappeared behind the woods. Once we fancied that we were near the place, and were sure that we could see upper windows with lights within them; but these soon resolved themselves into little patches of the red sunset latticed with the boughs of intervening trees.

Not long afterwards it became quite dark, and we found our wheels running on very different levels while descending, through the ruts, on a hill so steep and stony that, having reached the bottom without an overturn, we thought it was best to leave well alone and to make up our minds to go no farther. We therefore came to a stand, and determined, in colonial phrase, to "bush it"; so we unharnessed our horse, for whom we had luckily brought a bag of corn, and, having seen him begin to eat it, we collected pieces of "blackboy" and lighted a fire, piling it up to a great size with dead wood. We took the carriage cushions for our pillows, and spreading out our cloaks and rugs lay down with our feet towards the blaze like the natives. It would