THE PIONEER SQUATTER 73 



few squatters' huts." Either because such squatters 

 were among the earHcst unauthorised settlers, or because 

 some of the new, but still unauthorised, pastoralists 

 belonged to a similar class, the name was gradually 

 appropriated to the new pastoralists. 



Mr. H. S. Russell asserts that the term, ' squatter,' 

 (for runholder), was not in use till 1842. There is 

 evidence to show that this is an error. Writing to Lord 

 John Russell in December, 1840, Governor Sir George 

 Gipps remarked that the licensed occupiers or squatters 

 must not be confounded with persons assuming the 

 same name in the United States. Among them, he 

 stated, were young men belonging to the wealthiest 

 families in England, not a few of them graduates of the 

 older universities. 



The famous traveller, Dr. Leichhardt, who was well 

 acquainted with the squatters of the Darling Downs, 

 describes the class as " principally composed of young 

 men of good education, gentlemanly habits, and high 

 principles." 



Squatters and overlanders, in those years, were 

 almost convertible terms ; the overlander was a mi- 

 gratory squatter, as the squatter was an overlander 

 who had settled down. Well, of the overlanders Sir 

 George Grey wrote in similar terms. They were young 

 men of good family and were often Etonians or Oxonians. 

 Lady Barker describes a young squatter, fresh from his 

 university, of refined tastes and culture, who had bought 

 at Mount Ida, for £1,000, "the worst and bleakest bit 

 of the worst and bleakest run " in Canterbury, New 

 Zealand. There he led the life of a boor. He had not 

 even the reward of success. He went out of it three 

 years afterwards with the loss of half his capital.* 



We have only to trace the routes of the pioneer 

 squatters on the maps to realise that their toils, diffi- 

 culties, and dangers were, in sum, not fewer or smaller 

 than those of explorers. Their path was through 

 untrodden wastes, and the terrors that environed the 

 * Station Life, ch. iv. 



