Page:Old Melbourne Memories.djvu/39

 THE DEATH OF VIOLET

kangaroo were plentiful, they were not so overwhelming in number as they have since become. Joe Burge and I had many a day's good sport together on foot. Like Mr. Sawyer and other sensible people, we often saved our horses by using our own legs. For the dogs, Chase was a rough-haired Scotch deerhound, not quite pure, yet had she great speed and courage. Nothing daunted her. I saw her once jump off a dray, where she was in hospital with a broken leg (it had been smashed by the kick of an emu), and hobble off after a sudden-appearing kangaroo. She was said to have killed a dingo at ten months old—no trifling feat.

Nero and Violet were brother and sister. They were smooth-haired greyhounds—the ordinary kangaroo dog of the colonist—very fast; and from a distant cross of "bull" had inherited an utter fearlessness of disposition, which was rather against them, as the sequel will show.

Violet was so fast that she could catch the brush kangaroo (the wallaby) within sight. We rarely had