Page:In bad company and other stories.djvu/422

 —exceeding indeed, in these respects, the race-courses of the old country! What a difference in the size and quality of the fields of running horses, in the amount of money wagered, in the multitude that attends, in the facilities of rail and road by which the tens of thousands of spectators are safely, comfortably disposed of in transit!

In these and other astounding developments of the era we cannot but mark the transition stage from a colony to a nation, from a collection of humble towns and hamlets to a cluster of cities commencing to take rank with the world's important centres. An Anglo-Saxon dominion unmatched, for the period of its existence, in wealth and culture, population and trade, in progress in all that constitutes true, steadfast, abiding civilisation.

With respect to sport other than horse-racing, the men who had left 'Merrie England' so far away across the Southern main, conscious that in many cases they had looked their last upon that earthly paradise of the angler, the huntsman, the fowler, and the deer-stalker, began to cast about for substitutes and compromises. Hares and rabbits there were none (did we catch a cheer, or was it a groan?); but the active marsupials which then overspread the land afforded reasonable coursing, and led to the formation of a breed of greyhounds, stronger, fiercer, in some instances hardly less fleet, than those of the old country. Reynard was still absent, but Brer Dingo was fast across the open, and a good stayer, while his insatiable appetite for mutton and poultry rendered him beyond a doubt the fox's natural successor. Even as a 'bagman' he was fairly serviceable.

Thus at an early date in Tasmania, a land of farms and small enclosures, and later on in Sydney, the old-world rural recreation, with pinks and tops, horn and hound, huntsman and whipper—in, 'accoutred proper,' was welcomed and supported. In Victoria there are now home-grown foxes in abundance, with hares, and, alas, rabbits in still greater proportion for them to subsist upon; while as to the fields, no straighter goers are to be found in Christendom—moi qui parle—than our young Australians, men and maidens, married or single—let the stiff three-railers of Petersham and Ballarat, Geelong and Rooty-hill testify; no better horses—fast, well-bred, clever, and up to weight. It seems hard that