CHAPTER XV. 



A QUICK TRIP THROUGH '' THE BUSH. 



HE bush" is the Australian term for the native 

 jungle ; and after landing at Melbourne, and 

 admiring the wonderful progress of this com- 

 paratively new country and its flourishing capital, we 

 took a fortnight's hard riding to reach it. At the end 

 of that time I found myself installed at the hut of an 

 Australian squatter, on '"the run "of a hospitable friend 

 whom I was to visit. 



The curious country round us, called, as I have said, 

 "the bush," is a mixture of forest and underbrush, not 

 at all unlike the virgin solitudes of North America or 

 the jungles of India, but without the savage grandeur 

 of the former, or the picturesqueness of the latter, with its 

 interminable network of vines and bamboos, — the haunt 

 of the tiger, the panther, the elephant, and the deadly 

 serpent. But the Australian bush is varied with charm- 

 ing meadows filled with bright flowers and clumps of 

 lofty trees, and this variety extends uninterruptedly as 

 far as your horse can carry you ; always the same prairie 

 with its gigantic trees, the same flowers, the same peace- 

 ful silence, broken occasionally by the haj'sh note of a 



