234 THE PASTORAL AGE IN AUSTRALASIA 



realised on the securities it possessed promptly and 

 ■without respect of persons. It accordingly called on 

 the squatter to extinguish his liabihties \\ithout delay. 

 Or it would at once realise on these securities for the 

 moneys advanced through a long series of years, and it 

 threatened to sell up without mercy, in the middle of a 

 grass-famine and a money-famine, the pastoralist who 

 had been led to imagine that he would be allowed time, 

 accommodation, and reasonable assistance in order to 

 repay.* 



To the despairing squatter a letter comes from his 

 banker formally requesting him to reduce his overdraft. 

 If he could not meet this demand, it seemed that he was 

 to be sold up (as Rolf Boldrewood graphically puts it) 

 in the very vortex of the panic, in the worst month of 

 the year, in the most depressed period of the worst 

 drought. He goes to tovm and calls at the bank. There, 

 in the ante-chambers, sit other squatters who have been 

 called to account. One of them is a pioneer squatter 

 who, by long years of toil, risk, and privation, had built 

 up a modest property. He had incurred debt by com- 

 pulsion in order to buy a few thousand acres around his 

 homestead when free-selectors came swarming over the 

 flats he had discovered and ridden over as his own for 

 twenty years. " If they sell me up," he said, " I shall 

 have to go out a beggar." He is summoned to the 

 manager's rooms. Soon he comes out with clenched 

 teeth and ghastly features of hopeless woe, and eyes 

 that are awful in their despair. His own turn comes. 

 The bank-manager suavely names an indispensable 

 measure — the formal execution of a mortgage over the 

 station — as a matter in the ordinary routine of business, 

 which is requisite " for the support of our advances to 

 you, past and future." In fact, the deed is already 

 prepared and is now submitted for his signature. 



Tlie signature involves the actual sale of the station, 

 and, very shortly afterwards, the bank reaUses on its 

 investment, and sends a new owner to take possession. 

 * BoLDBEWOOD, Squatter'a Dream, clis. vi. xvi. 



