236 THE PASTORAL AGE IN AUSTRALASIA 



for many years embarrassed by their liabilities, often 

 incurred at high rates of interest, succeeded in freeing 

 themselves only after long struggle. The new men, on 

 the other hand, who purchased the surrendered runs, 

 escaped the anxieties and privations of the pioneers, 

 and became rich. Forgetting what they owed to these 

 (the older settlers complain), the younger men look down 

 on them as " fossils, when they do not treat them as 

 incumbrances." * 



One old squatter sadly sums up the " salient points " 

 of his experience as a squatter. " I have lost my capital. 

 I have lost my health. I have lost fifteen of the best 

 years of my life. I have undergone many hardships, 

 exposed myself to many dangers, and am now a poorer 

 man than I was when I became a squatter." f 



Edgar Quinet considers that the record in the Book 

 of Genesis is shown to be less ancient than the picture 

 given in the Indian Vedas, because it mentions the use 

 of money ; Abraham weighs out 400 shekels of silver, 

 current money, to Ephron the Hittite, for the purchase 

 of a burying ground in the cave of Macpelah. In the 

 Book of Job, which is popularly supposed to be of greater 

 antiquity than Genesis, it is sardonically related that, 

 when prosperity had returned to the patriarch, his rela- 

 tives and acquaintances brought him presents of money. 

 In these old books both man and nature, the imaginative 

 Frenchman believes, appear to be of inferior antiquity 

 to the men and life of the Vedas ; yet, if one remembers 

 rightly, there is, even in these world-old narratives, some 

 mention of money. Tried by this test, the Australian 

 pastoralist regime is, in one sense, older than the most 

 ancient records and, in another, younger than some of 

 the most civilised European countries. Money in the 

 form of coins of the realm is, on a station, almost un- 

 known. All payments are made by means of cheques 

 on a distant bank. W. C. Wentworth himself, an old 

 bank-clerk relates, ''used to come into my little sanc- 

 tum and pore over the array of orders and cheques that 

 ♦ Victorian Pioneers, pp. 18-4-5. f Ibid., 188. 



