SOCIAL LIFE, SPORTS, AND RECREATIONS 257 



deputed the same duties largely to their convict servants. 

 The leisure thus left to them was in both partly devoted 

 to the strenuous pursuit of the chase. The cattle-drovers 

 of every age have been celebrated as " bold and skilful 

 riders." The horsemanship of the Gauchos, who are 

 real centaurs, is sho'WTi in amazing feats ; and the 

 Australian stockrider can keep his seat on the unbroken- 

 in Brumby or ride down declivities that are steeper than 

 the roof of a house. They confidently ford streams and 

 swim rivers in flood. 



Hunting, once the sole pursuit of a people, when it 

 rose above trapping or fishing, and acquired the means 

 of capturing large game, became half a necessity to our 

 Australian squatters and half a recreation, as an inter- 

 mediate stage towards its being a sport. As with the 

 Vedic Indians and many another people, it was a means 

 of importing a wholesome variety into the monotony of 

 the daily fare, consisting largely of beef or of mutton 

 alone. In the early pioneering days, when both animals 

 abounded, kangaroo-hunting provided kangaroo-tail soup 

 in abundance, and the stockmen often rode down emus 

 for food. Almost every day the gun was in their hands. 

 In the forties there were to be seen large flocks of bustard, 

 numbering from ten to thirty or forty or more ; and 

 quails Avere plentiful. In the early fifties, reports an old 

 Crown Lands Commissioner, " there is nothing in the 

 shape of sport, except in the season a few snipe and 

 quail ; then it ends till the next September. For an 

 idler or a sportsman this country affords nothing, 

 and for a military officer " like himself, " it is the 

 most damnable quarter in the world. Now, in the 

 early fifties, the kangaroo and the emu are nearly 

 extinct in the district ; the country is almost devoid of 

 game." 



In those early days — the forties, namely, in Victoria, 

 Rolf Boldrewood recalls " glorious times," when they 

 wandered about, gun in hand, or with their three famous 

 kangaroo-dogs, slew the swift marsupial. 



X7 



