THE ROUTE OF THE PASTORALIST 89 



transported for life, but granted a ticket-of-leave. He 

 was " as good a servant as ever a man had " — so de- 

 voted, indeed, that, at a critical point, when danger 

 threatened, he declared, in answer to a question, that 

 he " would go to Hell with " Leslie. The migrating 

 squatter was bound for warmer quarters certamly than 

 the highlands of New England, but still to comparatively 

 cool uplands. A month afterwards he travelled over 

 the Darling Downs from end to end. That was only a 

 preliminary trip, however, but it was enough and more 

 than enough. As soon as Leslie realised that here was 

 the place he sought, the grass, the soil, the skies, he 

 returned to the neighbourhood of a station at Collaroi, 

 near Cassilis, in New England, and prepared to remove 

 his whole stock. Driving before him 4,000 breeding 

 ewes in lamb, 100 ewe hoggets, 1,000 wedder hoggets, 

 100 rams, and 500 old wedders, with teams of horses 

 and bullocks, and 10 saddle horses, and accompanied 

 by 22 ticket-of-leave men, of whom he could hardly 

 speak too highly ("as good and game a lot of men 

 as ever existed "), the heroic pioneer, little conscious 

 of being a hero, migrated from the cold heights of 

 New England to the plateaux of Southern Queensland. 

 It was like the migration of Abraham from the plains 

 of Mamre to the land flowing with milk and honey 

 beyond the Jordan, and the call was doubtless as 

 " divine " in the one case as in the other. Marking 

 trees and blazing his track, he at length arrived at the 

 Condamine river. There he formed his head station 

 and his out-stations, and distributed his sheep among 

 them. Finding afterwards that he had taken up too 

 great an extent of country, LesUe sold parts of his 

 gigantic " run " to various individuals and a company. 

 He had successfully founded the pastoral industry of 

 Queensland. 



The first squatter in a new province may be such by 

 accident. Patrick Leslie is commonly spoken of as the 

 first pioneer squatter in Queensland, but he had a pre- 

 decessor. In January, 1840, John Campbell set out 



