Page:Old Melbourne Memories.djvu/191

 While at Kalangadoo I was suddenly knocked over by a feverish attack—an exceptional case with me—then, as now, tolerably tough; but an hour or two of that kind of thing takes the conceit out of the best of us. Shivering and burning by turns, with throbbing headache and nausea, I had to lie down to it, and was very bad all one night. Charles Mackinnon watched over me in the most patient manner the while. We were new acquaintances, too. I remember distinctly his appearance next morning with a bowl of beef-tea, with which I broke a twenty-four hours' fast.

Finding that I anxiously desired to become possessed of a black boy, he procured me a small imp, so young and callow that he fell off the quiet old horse (which Mackinnon also lent me for him to ride home on), and, sprawling in the midst of the dust, cried piteously. Poor Charlie Gambier! as I named him—he had the honour of being christened by his lordship the late Bishop Perry of Melbourne. He was also taught, with great pains and perseverance, his catechism. He could read his Bible well. He turned out much the sort of Christian that might have been expected, deteriorating rapidly after the age of fifteen, and learning to drink spirits and copy the undesirable white man with painful accuracy.

John Meredith, a scion of a well-known Tasmanian family, was another resident within hail of the Mount. A stalwart Australian in good sooth, 6 feet 4 inches, or thereabouts, in his stocking-soles; blue-eyed, fair-bearded, and about twice as tall as any old-style Cambrian, I should say, in the somewhat "rangey"