258 THE PASTORAL AGE IN AUSTRALASIA 



There were no foxes then in AustraUa, but a tolerable 

 substitute was readily found. The native dog was game 

 enough to be hunted and fast enough to be chased on 

 horseback. The gentlemen squatters in Western Victoria 

 kept a noble pack of hounds and hunted twice or thrice 

 a week. " Noble sport. They met at one another's 

 houses, and sometimes as many as thirty gentlemen 

 would sit do^vn at table. At daybreak the squatter 

 master of the hounds sounded his bugle ; his second was 

 soon after sounded for breakfast ; and his third, in half 

 an hour, for mounting. A fine pack of dogs appeared, 

 led by the master of the hounds, and followed by thirty 

 well-mounted gentlemen-squatters." After passing over 

 sixteen miles of ground without one check, twenty riders 

 were in at the death. The pack, the sport, and the 

 sportsmen, in the opinion of Captain Forster Fyans, were 

 worthy of Leicestersliire {V.P., 119 — 20). 



The life of often-ungenial, but seldom unremitting, 

 toil on a station has from the first been frequently varied 

 by bouts of indolence or recreation. "While the grass is 

 growing in the earth, and the wool growing on the sheep's 

 backs, and the cattle are fattening, the masters of these 

 sheep and cattle and the broad acres on which they 

 graze, may disport Avith a freedom the agriculturist 

 hardly knows and the industrialist finds hopelessly out 

 of reach. Their amusements are evidently limited by 

 the lack of numbers ; they cannot, in the pioneer stage 

 anyway, play at cricket or football or any of the games 

 for which a score or more of players are required. But 

 all have horses, and all can ride, and one of the most 

 exultant sensations a man or a woman can know is theirs 

 in prodigality. They are the horsemen of the Empire, 

 and when a new form of soldier is devised — the mounted 

 infantry-man — in a country where a new form of warfare 

 is necessarily waged, the young squatter or stockman 

 fights at an advantage. 



One, at least, of the old recreations was practised in 

 two portions of an Australasian colony. In the bleak 



