596 Terra Incognita. [JUNE, 



proper management, he could make firo eat into the trunk of a tree, and 

 throw it down in a very short time. When down, he placed dry sticks on 

 fire, in notches at certain distances, and so i'airly cut the trunk into lengths. 

 After his day's work was done, just for amusement, he rolled the logs into' 

 heaps, hy the help of handspikes, and putting fire to them, kept it alive 

 night and day till they were all consumed. 



There is a great variety of snakes in New South Wales ; the largest of 

 which, the black snake, seldom exceeds nine or ten feet in length, and 

 indeed is not often so long as that. All are deadly poisonous ; but it is not- 

 often that accidents occur from them and when they do, it is generally to 

 the poor men who are employed at felling and burning off, and to the 

 carters of wood into the towns for fuel. Sometimes, indeed, a snake has 

 quietly emerged from a log of wood after it had been laid on a kitchen 

 lire; and they have been found comfortably coiled up in a bed; but still 

 accidents from them are infrequent. 



When the dispute about the hill was decided, off went the surveyor as 

 fast as he could run ; and off we all went after him. Strangely it puzzled 

 me to know how it was that a little fat man could run so much faster than 

 anybody else. Few men were better known throughout the colony than 



Jemmy M ; but he is almost forgotten now; for the generation of 



those who had their farms measured by him is passing fast away, and another 

 has already sprung up of those who know not.Jemray. The places, though 

 they change as fast as the scenes of a pantomime, do not change so fast 

 as the persons who occupy them. I hardly remember one of any stand- 

 ing in the colony, whose head is not among the clods of the valley. Old 

 Macgregor, the sexton at Sydney, whose name I at one time thought syno- 

 nimous w T ith that of his office, is fixed at last where I have so often seen him. 

 The old man who tolled the bell on the green before the church at Parra- 

 matta, has been indebted to another for sounding his knell : from the grave- 

 digger to the governor, all are changed. My earliest friends and playfel- 

 lows where are they? Some are already patriarchs, and some are gone 

 down to the silent tomb. He who first taught me the sports of the Austra- 

 lian forest with whom I have wandered through them by night and by 

 day who was to me as an elder brother, and with whom I took sweet 

 counsel with whom, indeed. I made the bush-ranging excursion referred 

 to in these pages a blight fell on his youth ; and he is now, in the prime 

 of life, with a broken constitution ; he, who could " turn and wind a 

 fiery Pegasus," is now too weak to bestride even a lady's palfrey ! 



I have never attended a farm-measuring since : that day so completely 

 tired me, that I afterwards avoided every occasion of the kind. Even the 

 measuring of my own " Sabine farm " (though very many years after), 

 was not a sufficient temptation to me " renovare doloretn." 



w- 



