290 THE PASTORAL AGE IN AUSTRALASIA 



clear against a dazzling sky ; then, as the sun rises, the 

 softest and rose-coloured and golden tints touch the 

 highest peaks, the shadows deepenmg by the contrast."* 

 Lady Barker's Station Amusements continues, and some- 

 times repeats, the sketches made in the earlier volume. 

 The earhest literature, of course, belonged to New 

 South Wales. Still one of the best books about those 

 early days — the late thirties and the first forties — is 

 Hay garth's Recollections of Bush Life. It is the produc- 

 tion of an educated man of some culture — an old Oxonian 

 who had found his way out to Australia before it had 

 become usual for cadets to seek a career on an AustraHan 

 station. Too late, perhaps, he realised the precious 

 savour of the delightful studies he had forsaken, and 

 the possible learned career or liberal profession he 

 had abandoned, in order to lead a new life in the 

 AustraUan bush. He keenly felt the hardship of the 

 life, its baldness and bareness, its total lack of refine- 

 ment, its mean drudgery and almost degrading toils. As 

 the Sunday came round by dead reckoning, he listened 

 in vain for the clang of the Sabbath bells, and was 

 conscious of a woeful blank when he could no longer 

 hear the consecrated words or witness the sanctified 

 ceremonies of the holy place. He did not know that 

 the sordid occupations and even the very things he felt 

 as a loss and a want would furnish him with an equip- 

 ment and a theme. With careful art and fine per- 

 spective, with completeness and accuracy, and often 

 with animation, he describes the station of the early 

 forties, its homestead and auxihary buildings, its daily 

 and periodic rounds of duty, its occasional striking 

 incidents (such as the prospecting for a new run and 

 the encounters of rival squatters), its occupants, their 

 types and their struggles. The book will live by his 

 delineation of the new and strange life that ho lived and 

 saw others live, while books of his describing far-off 

 countries and other times might have had far less of 

 truth and reaUty. 



* Letter viii. 



