BY THE HON. A. NORTON, M.L.C. 79 



this time. The payment of £600 compensation did not put 

 an end to the proceedings in the Criminal Court ; but Judge 

 and jury were considerate, and as Jamieson had been paid full 

 value for his flock, and no malicious motives could be attributed 

 to the breakers of the law, they were acquitted. It was this 

 incident which soon afterwards led to the passing of laws 

 which specially dealt with the disease in sheep commonly called 

 "scab." But Morton and his companions always declared 

 they would, in future, leave experiments of that sort to any 

 other fellows who liked to break the monotony of bush life 

 by administering the law according to their own ideas of right 

 and wrong. 



A number of pastoralists were settled within a few miles 

 of each other in this part of the New England district. South- 

 wards from Walcha, Herbert Salwey occupied St. Leonards. 

 He was the first to lay down clover in paddocks in that district. 

 Near him was John Fletcher, at Branga. Then Morrison, 

 the Mclvors, Wilson, and Girard. A little more westerly and 

 northerly, old John Scott and his hospitable helpmate, at 

 Surveyor's Creek, not far from Bendemeer, on the Macdonald 

 River. Bendemeer station was occupied by Perry. Buchanan 

 was settled a few miles up stream. At Carlile's Gully there 

 was a roadside hotel, on the main road to Armidale. The Bells 

 lived at Bergen -op- Zoom, close to Walcha. Not far from them, 

 the Eliotts, at Emu Creek ; the Crawfords, at Moona Plain ; Mrs. 

 Richards (afterward Wenner), at Winterbourne ; Star, at Mihi 

 Creek, near Armidale. Then there were, not far from Armidale, 

 Gostwych, owned by the Dangars (Arthur Hunter Palmer, 

 manager) ; Salisbury Court, owned by Matthew Henry Marsh ; 

 Terrible Vale, by Taylor. The roid from Armidale to Salisbury 

 struck the Great Northern Road from Maitland at Uralla town- 

 ship. So gradual was the decline from tho summit of the 

 Dividing Range just here, that by a drain a few feet deep, the 

 water of a swamp on the eastern side was led through into the 

 Rocky River, on the western side. This was cut through by the 

 goldminers at a later date than 1858. 



I do not propose to describe the stations and their occu- 

 pants with whom I came less in contact. Of thosa I have 

 named, my friend Morton came to Queensland, and settled the 

 Prairie run, west of Gladstone. In 1853, William Miles, who 

 had been overseer at Bergen-op-Zoom, for Boulton and Bell, 

 moved north, and settled at Dulacca. He afterwards became a 



