296 THE PASTORAL AGE IN AUSTRALASIA 



scattered through the prose as well as the verse of 

 Australian literature. Rolf Boldrewood paints in 

 water-colours a picture of Mustering in Stormy Weather. 

 On a darkening winter's day a drove of heavy bullocks 

 lumbered over the sands or along the beach, the stock- 

 men riding behind them. One squatter-stockman 

 noted " the sad-toned, far-stretching shore — the angry 

 storm-voices of the terrible deep — the little band of 

 horsemen — the lowing, half-\^dld drove — the red-lit 

 cloud prison, wherein the sun lay dying." The Night 

 Ride to Portland was an Arabian night. The gaUop 

 along the shore, on the hardened milk-white beach, 

 by the side of the star-bright, illimitable ocean, the 

 lengthening silver pathway made on the sea by the 

 moon, and the flood of radiance it cast on the land, are 

 all as vivid as a painting.* 



The first of great station-novels, in both time and 



rank, is Henry Kingsley's masterpiece, Geoffry Hamlyn. 



Though the earliest of all, it is considered the cro^^ning 



glory of Australian fiction, and it deservedly takes this 



position by the value and beauty of its kernel. Save 



by its substance and subject, however, it belongs rather 



to English than to Australian literature. Legend 



relates that, and how, it was written on a Victorian 



station, where the WTiter utilised the materials he was 



in daily conversance with to paint a faithful picture 



of station-life. This seems not to be the fact. The 



scenes described in it are apparently drawn from 



station-life in New South Wales of the fifties, though 



towards the conclusion of the book the background 



shifts to the mountain solitudes of Victorian Gippsland. 



The book itself, it is authoritatively stated, was 



composed by its gifted, but somewhat ill-fated, author 



at the now-famous village of Eversley after he had 



returned to England. The work has high merits. A 



limpid style and pellucid simplicity of presentment 



make of it a transparency through which the then 



novel and strange life of the bush shines with a bright, 



• Old Melbourne Memories^ eh. xxii. 



