Page:In bad company and other stories.djvu/488

 the meres which here and there divide the river meadows. The fat beeves in the paddock ruminate contemplatively, or recline around some patriarchal tree. All nature is joyous; the animated portion 'rich in spirits and health,' the vegetable contingent spreading forth and burgeoning in unchecked development. As we pass Bungāwannāh, one of the large estates, formerly squattages, which alternate with the farms and smaller pastoral holdings, a fallow doe with her fawn starts up from the long grass, gazing at us with startled but mildly-timid eye. They are outliers from a herd of nearly a hundred, which have increased from a few head placed there by a former proprietor.

In this our Centennial year it must be conceded that Australia is a land of varied products. We pass orchards where the apples are reddening fast, where apricots are turning pink, and the green fig slowly filling its luscious sphere. We note the vivid green of the many-acred vineyards, now in long rows, giving an air of formal regularity to the cultivated portion of the foreground. Then we descry the dark green and gold of an orangery, hard by the river-bank—in this year a most profitable possession to the proprietor.

Amid this abundance we miss one figure sufficiently familiar to the traveller in other lands, or the European resident, viz. 'the poor man.' He may be somewhere about, but we do not encounter him. He does not solicit alms, at any rate. His nearest counterpart is the swagman or pedestrian labourer. He is differentiated from the shearer and the 'rouseabout' (the shearing-shed casual labourer), who travel, the former invariably, the latter occasionally, on horseback. But the humble dependant upon the aristocratic squatter or prosperous farmer is a well-fed, fairly well-dressed personage, who affords himself an unlimited allowance of tobacco. Say that he elects to journey afoot in an equestrian country, he needs pity or charity from no man.

When one thinks of England, with its three hundred souls to the square mile, one cannot but be thankful, in spite of the ignorant, insolent diatribes of the Ben Tillett agitator class, for the condition of the labouring classes in this favoured country. They are at a premium, and will be for years to come, while tens of thousands of acres of arable land are awaiting the hands which shall clear and plant them.