The War with Nature. 87 
dainty gentleman is obliged to blacken his own 
boots, tame and harness to the plough his own 
bullocks or horses, kill and cook his own mutton. 
Nothing is here, in fact, but harsh Nature reluctant 
to be subdued; while he, to subdue her and make 
his own conditions, has only a pair of soft weak 
hands. 
To one fresh from the softness and smoothness of 
civilization, unaccustomed to manual labour, how 
hard then is the lot of the settler! Behind him 
physical comfort and beautiful dreams ; before him 
the prospect of long years of unremitting toil, every 
day of which will unfit him more and more for a 
return to the gentle life of the past ; while, for only 
result, he will have food enough to satisfy hunger, 
and a rude shelter from extremes of heat and cold, 
from torrents of winter rain and blinding clouds of 
summer dust. Yetis hehappy. For the vanished 
substantial comforts and airy splendours there is a 
compensation gilding his rough existence with a 
better brightness than that of any hope of future 
prosperity which may yet linger in his mind. It is 
the feeling the settler experiences from the moment 
of his induction into the desert that he is engaged 
in a conflict, and there is no feeling comparable 
with it to put a man on his mettle and inspire him 
with a healthy and enduring interest in life. To 
this feeling is added the charm of novelty caused 
by that endless procession of surprises which nature 
prepares for the pioneer—an experience unknown to. 
the rural life of countries that have long been under 
