Page:The Present State and Prospects of the Port Phillip District of New South Wales.djvu/65

 somewhat similar to what we see in Australia. Abraham and Lot's shepherds quarrelling about the water; their dividing the country in which they were each to seek a run; Jacob taking Laban's sheep on terms,—translated thus into ordinary language are nothing more than the every-day occurrences of Australian life.

There are few persons in England who can have formed a notion of an Australian squatter's mode of existence at all, in accordance with the real state of facts. I have never met with a work on the country which even professes to supply this want; so that all the information which exists must have been derived from private sources. And when I consider how very vague and inaccurate all my own notions were on the subject, previous to leaving home, although I had endeavoured to gain as much information as I could, I almost despair of being able to convey any thing of accurate knowledge, while I am at the same time furnished with ail additional motive to make the attempt. I recollect what gave me the most definite notion of an Australian habitation was a print published as a frontispiece to a sixpenny blue paper pamphlet, which represented a young gentleman in a short fur jacket, eyeing intently a hut in the distance, where a number of cocks and hens, of colossal size, were disporting round the door, or perching on the roof. I will try, however, what a faithful description of minute details will do in giving something of just notions on this subject.

The reader is prepared from what I have said of the country to find the dwelling of the squatter surrounded by picturesque scenery. Suppose, for instance, a valley