80 THE PASTORAL AGE IN AUSTRALASIA 



of Augustenburg once squatted in Western Victoria, 

 and a German baron married the daughter of a 

 station-OT;^Tier. 



All the historians unite in lauding " the splendid type 

 of men " who were the pioneer squatters of Queensland. 

 They were " a brave, reckless band," says Mrs. Campbell 

 Praed.* " Quick to love, quick to hate, full of pluck 

 and endurance, dauntless before danger, iron in phy- 

 sique and nerve, and ready for any difficult or dare-devil 

 feat — their adventures, escapes, and jokes would 

 have furnished rich material for an Australian Lever 

 or Fenimore Cooper." Here is a pen-and-ink portrait 

 of one of them, and he one of the best, thovigh not 

 the most successful — Colonel Murray-Prior, dra^^'n by 

 the hand of his accomplished daughter, Mrs. Campbell 

 Praed. He was full-bearded (a new thing in the fifties 

 and sixties), a wild man of the woods, and wore a 

 bushman's dress — a blue shirt and blue-and-white 

 guernsey, a pair of trowsers of his daughter's making, 

 and enormous leggings. Yet this " bushman," not long 

 after, was a cabinet minister and figured at Government 

 House balls. Patrick Leslie was a lion-hearted man. 



The squatter of North Australia, on a cattle-station 

 in the tropics, as sketched by Mrs. Dominic Daly, who 

 knew him well, wore the ordinarj^ toilette of the bush- 

 man — a flannel shirt, a broad leather belt, knee- 

 breeches and long boots, and sombrero. On the 

 Esplanade at Palmerston the same man appeared in a 

 white linen suit and a starched collar. 



Such men are scattered all over the Australian bush. 

 David Carnegie found in the sandy desert of Western 

 Australia two individuals owning a cattle station. In 

 such an out-of-the-world place these men must have 

 been coarse and uncouth, if not savage ? Not at all. 

 One of them was the brother of a bishop, and the other 

 had an equally creditable origin, with both talent and 

 culture. 



* My Australian Oirlhood, and also in Sketches of Australian 

 Life, pp. 3-4. 



