Page:Artabanzanus (Ferrar, 1896).djvu/18

10 air about winning glorious victories and achieving immortal renown?

'So I, Oliver Ubertus, of Tasmania, wool-grower (my friends smile at me, and tell me that I am a boy still, though over sixty years of age), while laughing to scorn the idea of glorious victories and immortal renown, have often built castles, which gradually dwindled into a snug little estate in the country; and a pleasant house, with trees and a garden around it; and a diminutive park, with a horse or two and a few simple-minded cows in it; and a cosy library indoors, and an outside run for a few hundred sheep, all my own. And now, when I have all these in reality, it must be acknowledged that my airy castle has become a substantial one of timber and stone, albeit one of very humble dimensions.'

My soliloquy ended, I rose up and continued my journey, stepping boldly into the wild Bush. Some idea of writing and publishing a book about these wonderful Tasmanian lakes, that would astonish the world and shake it up to the very centre of its cold, selfish heart, entered into my mind, and became a dreamy fascination which I could not shake off. It recurred again and again as I pursued my way. But it must be no ordinary book. If it should be nothing but a dry description of land and water, or even a kind of half and-half history of another Paris and Helen, or of some forlorn Angelina or Virginia pining on an island, or a story of the romantic love of a local Tom Smith and his Betsy Jane Stubbs, the mighty world would scarcely condescend to touch it at all.

I am travelling now through a very thick, dark forest, along a snake-like track which winds round the northern shore, and I find myself booked for a weary, solitary tramp of at least twenty miles. I thought I should never get out of that forest, and began to imagine myself a veritable Babe in the Wood. There was no fear of my being lost, for the