flocks and herds before him, he moved out into the wilderness looking for a place to settle or “squat.” It was the experience of the “Swiss Family Robinson” made real. The little community, with its waggons and tents, its horses, oxen, sheep, dogs, perhaps also with a few poultry in one of the waggons, would have to live for many months an absolutely self-contained life. The family and its servants would provide wheelwrights, blacksmiths, carpenters, veterinary surgeons, cattle-herds, milkers, shearers, cooks, bridge-builders, and the like. The children brought up under those conditions won not only fine healthy frames, but an alertness of mind, a wideness of resource which made them, and their children after them, fine nation-builders.

I am tempted, in illustration of this, to quote from a larger work of mine, “Australia,” an instance of my own observation of the “resourceful Australian”:

“Without touch of cap, or sign of servility, the swagman came up.

“‘Gotter a job, boss?’

“‘No chance; but you can go round and get rations.’

“‘I wanter job pretty bad. Times have been hard. Perhaps you recollect me—Jim Stone. You had me once working on the Paroo.’

“It was a blazing hot day in Central Queensland on one of the big cattle stations out from the railway line, a station which had not yet reached the dignity of fencing. The boss remembered that Jim Stone ‘was a good sort,’ and that it was forty miles to the next chance of a job. And there was always something to be done on a station.

“‘All right, Stone. I think I can put you on to something for a month or two.’

“‘Thanks. Start now?’

“‘Look. I have got a few men on digging tanks, about thirty miles out. It’s north-north-east. You can pick up their camp?’

“‘Yes.’

“‘Well, I want you to take a bullock-dray out, with stores, and bring back anything they want sent back.’

“‘Yes. Where are the bullocks?’

“‘I haven’t got a team broken in. But there’s old Scarlet-Eye and two others broken in. You’ll pick them up along that little creek there, six miles out’; he pointed indefinitely into the heat haze on the plain, where there seemed to be some trees on the horizon. ‘Collar them, and then you’ll find the milkers’ herd right back of the homestead, only a few miles. Punch out seven of the biggest and make up your team.’

“‘Yes. Where’s ther dray?’

“‘Behind the blacksmith’s shed there. By the way, there are no yokes, but you’ll find some bar-iron and some timber at the blacksmith’s shed. Knock out some yokes. I think there’s one chain. You can make up another with some fencing wire.’

“‘Right-oh.’

“And this Australian casual worker (at 30s. a week and rations) went his way cheerfully. He had to find some odd bullocks six miles out, in the flat, grey, illimitable plain; then find the herd of milkers somewhere else in that vague vastness, and break seven of them to harness; fix up a dray and make cattle yokes; and then go out into the depths to find a camp thirty miles out, without a fence or a track, and hardly a tree, to guide him.

“He did it all, because to him it was quite ordinary. The freshly-broken-in cattle had to be kept in the yokes for a week, night and day, else they would have cleared out. That was the only real hardship, in his opinion, and the cattle had to suffer that. He was content to be surveyor, waggon-builder, blacksmith, subduer of beasts, man of infinite pluck, resource, and energy, for 30s. a week and rations! And he was a typical sample of the ‘back-country Australian.’”

In the Australian Bush most children can milk a cow, ride a horse, or harness him into a cart, snare or shoot game, kill a snake, find their way through the trackless forest by the sun or the stars, and cook a meal. In the cities, too, they are, though less skilled in such things, used to do far more for themselves than the average European child.

After the squatters in Australia came the gold-diggers. Gold was discovered in Victoria and in New South Wales. At first, strangely enough, an effort was made to prevent the fact being known that gold was to be found in Australia. Some of the rulers of the colony feared that the gold would ruin and not help the country. And certainly in the very early days of the gold-digging rushes, much harm was done to the settled industries of the land through everybody rushing away to the diggings. Farms were abandoned, workshops deserted, the sailors left their ships, the shepherds their sheep, the shop-keepers their shops—all with the gold fever. But that early madness soon passed away, and Australia got the benefit of the gold discoverers in a great increase of population. Most of those who came to dig gold remained to dig potatoes and other more certain wealth out of the land.

Do you remember the tale of the ancient wise man whose two sons were lazy fellows? He could not get them by any means to work in the vineyard. As long as his own hands could toil he tended the vineyard, and maintained his idle sons. But on his death-bed he feared for their future. So he made them the victims of a pious fraud. “There is a great sum in gold buried in the vineyard,” he told them with his dying breath. “But I cannot tell you where. You must find that for yourselves.”

Tempted by the promise of quick fortune, the idle sons dug everywhere in the vineyard to find the buried treasure. They never came across any actual gold, but the good effect of their digging was such that the vineyard prospered wonderfully and they grew rich from its fine crops.

So it was, in a way, with Australia. The gold discoverers did much good by attracting people to the country in search of gold who, though they found no gold, developed the other resources of a great country.

When the yields from the alluvial goldfields decreased there was a great demand from the out-of-work diggers and others for land for farming, and the agricultural era began in Australia. Since then the growth of the country has been sound, and, if a little slow, sure. It has been slow because the ideal of the people has always been a sound and a general well-being rather than a too-quick growth. “Slow and steady” is a good motto for a nation as well as an individual.

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CHAPTER II

AUSTRALIA OF TO-DAY

If, by good luck, you were to have a trip to Australia now, you would find, probably, the sea voyage, which takes up five weeks as a rule, a little irksome. But fancy that over, and imagine yourself safely into Australia of to-day. Fremantle will be the first place of call. It is the port of Perth, which is the capital of West Australia. That great State occupies nearly a quarter of the continent; but its population is as yet the least important of the continental States, and not very much ahead of the little island of Tasmania. Still, West Australia is advancing very quickly. On the north it has great pearl fisheries; inland it has goldfields, which take second rank in the world’s list, and it is fast developing its agricultural and pastoral riches.

Very soon it will be possible to leave the steamer at Fremantle and go by train right across the continent to the Eastern cities. Now you must