150 SETTLING IN QUEENSLAND, ETC. 



peared ; then one must keep in touch with the larger water 

 channels. Lake Walgiers was a small inland sea now, so were 

 others of the depressions hereabouts. It was not necessary to 

 ask what happened to them in time of drought; it was enough 

 to know that at one time Lake George, near Goulburn, had been 

 a grazing ground for the squatters' flocks. Besides, who that 

 had read anything of Captain Sturt's travels and those of many 

 other explorers need ask if the country, over which we travelled 

 in abundance, had ever before been drought-stricken ? At the 

 Walgiers Crossing the river was a banker, and we had to force 

 cattle and horses to swim to the other side. We crossed during 

 the night the wide plain which intervenes between Walgiers on 

 the Lachlan and the Murrumbidgee, which we struck at Hay. 

 Captain Sturt had gone down the river in his boat in 1830 ; the 

 country on either side, right away down to Lake Alexandrina, 

 was until then unknown. It was beautiful now with its luxuri- 

 ant pastures, its small and its giant salt bushes ; and in spite of 

 dry seasons men prospered, for they had no paddocks and not 

 too many stock. Across the sixty-mile plain, past the Black 

 Swamp — haunted, so 'twas said, by a headless human skeleton 

 riding a skeleton horse with hobbles on his feet — through more 

 dry plains and deceptive mirage, until we reached the backwater 

 from the flooded Edward River ; then past Deniliquin and 

 along the road, where the first telegraph line, a private venture, 

 was being constructe.l tetween it and Moama. Here there was 

 a pontoon bridge across the Murray, but the cattle and horses 

 we had to force, as W3 had done at the Murrumbidgee and 

 Edward, to swim the swift stream fed by the melting snow 

 from the Snowy Mountains. Then we travelled along the 

 Campaspie not knowing whither, for we were trying to hang on 

 until we had letters to say whether or not the cattle were sold 

 and what we must do with them. At last the news was received 

 and we had to turn back to the Murray, cross it once more and 

 hand over our charge to jhe purchaser at a station not far from 

 Swan Hill. All along this part of the country, from the Billa- 

 boug in fact, and for the rest of our journey, the pastoralists and 

 their men hunted " the overlanders " and their stock and made 

 their lives a burden to them. So far as I could form an opinion, 

 the chances open for a young fellow who wanted to engage in 

 pastoral pursuits were not tempting in these districts to one 

 whose capital was limited. A friend and I drove to Melbourne in 

 the light spring cart we had used on the overland route. During 



