322 SPORTING IN BOTH HEMISPHERES. 



CHAPTER XXIII. 



PORT PHILIP MELBOURNE ANECDOTES OF NEW ARRIVALS OLD SPORTS- 

 MAN SHOOTING IN THE DANDENONG RANGES SNIPE BLACK SWAN 



LYRE-BIRDS FISHING DEPARTURE FOR BALLARAT RIDE TO BALLARAT 



THE DIGGINGS ANECDOTES OF MURDER BUSH- FIRES GAME BIRDS 



AND ANIMALS OF THE NEIGHBOURHOOD FOREST SCENERY CRESWICK's 



CREEK LALLAL WILD TURKEY-SHOOTING AT CHEPSTOW A SQUATTER. 



HAVING given my impressions of Australia in general during 

 the years 1853 to 1855, in a short volume of travels which 

 I published during the early part of this year, I shall con- 

 fine my descriptions of that extraordinary country in the 

 succeeding chapter more particularly to the different kinds 

 of sport that I have myself met with during a three years' 

 residence, and the capabilities it offers for the pursuit of the 

 few varieties of game indigenous to that vast island; or, at 

 least, to the settled parts of it. 



I arrived at Melbourne in the early part of the busy, 

 bustling winter of 1853, when emigration and speculation 

 seemed to have approached their culminating point, and 

 when men's minds were so absorbed in the grand operation 

 of money-making in some way or other, they had neither 

 time nor inclination, with very few exceptions, to think of 

 amusing themselves in any other way, and these exceptions 

 were generally confined to Government officers, a class of 

 men who preferred to vegetate upon their salaries rather than 

 undergo the fatigue, exposure, and risk of gold-digging, and 

 who, generally speaking, had not brains for other specula- 

 tions. However, having been myself an aspirant to the 

 former employment, it would ill become me to say anything 

 in disparagement of my co-officials. 



