Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 20, 1909.djvu/189

Rh to Heidelberg for the education of their children, and remained about two years in Germany. Afterwards Alfred studied at University College, London. In June, 1852, Mr. Howitt, accompanied by his two sons, Alfred and Charlton, sailed for Australia, ostensibly to visit his brother, Dr. Godfrey Howitt, then settled as a medical man in Melbourne, but perhaps also to see for themselves the new Land of Gold and to partake of its fabulous riches. They reached Melbourne after a three months' voyage, and purchasing a cart and horses journeyed up country to the Ovens gold diggings. After about two years of toilsome digging and wandering in what was then a wild country, William Howitt, with his son Charlton, returned to England in 1854, leaving his other son, Alfred, then twenty-four years of age, behind him at Melbourne. Young Howitt was now not merely an accomplished bush-man, but had begun to turn his keen powers of observation to higher account by studying nature. At first he farmed land at Caulfield, near Melbourne, which belonged to his uncle, Dr. Godfrey Howitt. But the humdrum life of a farmer was not to his taste, and he betook himself to the more adventurous pursuit of cattle-droving. On one of the journeys which he made to the Murray River for the purpose of bringing down herds of cattle to Melbourne, he chanced to fall in with Lorimer Fison. They met and parted, little thinking how closely associated they were to be in after life.

This was the great era of exploration in Australia. The vast unknown regions of the continent stirred the imagination and raised the hopes of the colonists. Explorer after explorer set out and vanished into the far interior, some of them to return no more. Young Howitt bore his share in these arduous enterprises. It chanced that the explorer Warburton had visited the dreary region of Central Australia about Lake Eyre in an unusually fine season, when water and grass abounded, and