296 THE PASTORAL AGE IN AUSTRALASIA 



scattered through the prose as well as the verse of 

 AustraHan 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-wild drove — the red-lit 

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

 Ride to Portland was an Arabian night. The gallop 

 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 crowning 

 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 writer utilised the materials he was 

 in daily conversance with to paint a faithful picture 

 of station-hfe. 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. 



