72 NEW ENGLAND (n.S.W.), ETC., 



country was comparatively uninteresting ; the road was unmade 

 and dusty, and very few settlers bad attempted to make homes 

 within sight of it. So we plodded along until about noon we 

 arrived at a house of refreshment ! We were served with bread, 

 salt beef, and tea ; our horses found some indifferent hay in 

 the stables. After an hour or so had been spent here, we 

 jogged along again, and before sunset arrived at the prettily 

 situated township called Stroud, which is part of the freehold 

 estate of the Australian Agricultural Company. This Company 

 is a rich one. It had a capital of £1,000,000 to start with in 

 1825, and the Government granted it, in fee-simple, an acre of 

 land for each £1 of its capital. A number of the Company's 

 principal officials lived at Stroud, and there were a few other 

 residents there. But it was not a populous place by any means, 

 and our evening was quiet and uneventful. A glance at the 

 map of New South Wales will show that Stroud is not a very 

 great distance from Port Stephens. 



My companion was Mr. Frederic Morton, the managing 

 partner in Waterloo Station, recently purchased from Captain 

 Thornton. He was a capital fellow, and the spring mornings 

 were lovely. We brought up our horses from the dewy pad- 

 dock, saddled up, and after a modest breakfast, got away for 

 Gloucester, about 30 miles distant. The signs of settlement 

 were fewer this day than the previous one, but the country 

 was more interesting, and not quite so flat. The birds, too, 

 were more numerous and cheerful. Bell-birds and coach-whips 

 whistled to us from the brushy-banked creeks, and a number 

 of others greeted us pleasantly as our presence became known 

 to them. We rested this day for lunch at a point where the 

 Stroud-Gloucester and the Dungog-Gloucester roads unite, 

 and were supplied with a very good meal of very homely fare, 

 all of which, to a youngster just from school like myself, was 

 delightful. That Dungog road I travelled several times in 

 after years, and rough enough it was ; and the Williams Eiver, 

 on which Dungog is situated, I have found more than disagree- 

 able when it has been in flood ; but this is a digression. After 

 the pangs of hunger had been appeased, we started again on our 

 journey, arriving at Gloucester before sunset. In the Art Gal- 

 lery at Sydney, there is a fine picture in water-colours, by Conrad 

 Martens, of what I think he calls " The Crags." These pic- 

 turesque rock-crowned mountains are a mile or so from Lavers' 

 accommodation house, the Gloucester River, and an open 



