288 THE PASTORAL AGE IN AUSTRALASIA 



a huge volume on The Genesis of Queensland. There, 

 amid mountains of slag, not a few grains of genuine 

 gold are crushed into a few brightly written chapters 

 on prospecting for runs, merging into exploring for its 

 own sake, the work of a station, its trials and hardships, 

 its many failures and its few triumphs, and (best of all) 

 social life on a station, with glimpses of station amuse- 

 ments, as when bright eyes flashed favour on the 

 gentleman- jockey if he Avon on the racecourse, or (like 

 the princess in Rossetti's poem) whether he won or lost. 

 With no other work describing run-finding and station- 

 making was the late well-informed Ernest Favenc appar- 

 ently acquainted, but the literature of the subject is 

 copious and valuable. 



Some of the best books about station-life have been 

 written by women, who describe a side of it but little 

 known to men. Mrs. Campbell Praed's reminiscences 

 have a charm due to the imaginative style of the auth- 

 oress, who, writing in mature womanhood of the life 

 of her girlhood, clothes all with romance and tinges it 

 with a colouring derived from the mingled pleasure and 

 regret with which we look back on the days of our youth. 

 The book * records station-life as seen and known by 

 a bright and happy girl. It passes lightly over the 

 vicissitudes of her family and leaves the bulk of the 

 practical work on a station untouched. But the exotic 

 environment, often striking and sometimes glorious, is 

 picturesquely filled in. The pleasant relations with the 

 blacks when she was a child, such as many an ex -station 

 girl will still relate, are humorously told ; the relations 

 with the stockmen or the passing swagsmen or tramps ; 

 the intercourse with the poet, the speculative doctor, 

 the practical dean. The doctor's anecdotes are some- 

 times racy, sometimes pathetic. One of the latter class 

 may bear repeating. The doctor was sittmg by the 

 bedside of a woman who was at the critical stage of a 

 severe illness. The atmosphere was oppressive, as it 



* My Aiistralian Girlhood. It is in good part, sometimes 

 verbally, identical with her Sketches of Australian Life. 



