Page:Diary of ten years.djvu/70

54 are indispensable. I have not used my cart or plough yet, but they will, I trust, be soon in requisition. My hand-cart is very useful; spades, hatchets, saws, wedges, nails, metal pots for cooking, my canteen and cooking oven, I find very serviceable; but the cooking apparatus I have not yet tried.

5th.—An unpleasant, windy, and rainy day, like some of our rainy days at home; and I think it worse than usual, because I am very cross and fidgetty at having lost my rest last night. You have heard of the man who, when roused from his bed to attend his sick cow, exclaimed, "he's a happy man that has no cow;" I can sympathise with him, and fully understand his feelings, for my cow is sick, and I have been up with her half the night, and have brought her into the next room to sleep.

6th.—James is making a house for the cow; the great difficulty is to find thatch. Heavy showers are frequent, yet my kind neighbour Mr. S. came to dine with me and inquire for my cow, which has eaten nothing these two days but glauber salts and aloes—I fear she will go.

8th.—When I was going to rest last night, a traveller came to beg a night's lodging—granted of course. I had just gone into bed and was very snug, when two drunken men arrived; one of them could not and the other would not go any farther, so I allowed the rascals to lie by the kitchen fire, and then obtained some sleep myself, after having removed the cow to the shed, which we had covered pro tempore with a tent.

11th.—A budget of news by Corporal Doherty (an Irishman to be sure) from Perth, where it appears the natives are exceedingly troublesome, and that a settler has been killed. The Governor and Captain Irwin are gone in pursuit. By one of the letters which I have received, I learn that I have been elected a member of the Institution here, and that we are to have a small detachment of mounted police or cavalry