Below, around, even to the far, misty sky-line, was a grey, green ocean, the billows of which, through the branches of mighty forest trees, were reduced by distance to a level and uniform contour. Tremendous glens, under which ran clear cold mountain streams, tinkling and rippling ever, mimic waterfalls and flashing rivulets, the long dry summer through diversified the landscape.
Silver streams crossed these plains and downs of solemn leafage, distinguishable only when the sun flashed on their hurrying waters. These were rivers – not inconsiderable either – while companies of snow-crowned Alps stood ranged between, tier upon tier above them and the outlined rim, where earth and sky met, vast, regal, awful, as Kings of the Over-world! On guard since the birth of time, rank upon rank they stood – silent, immovable, scornful – defying the puny trespassers on their immemorial demesne. “What a land! what a vast expanse!” thought the Englishman, “rugged, untamed, but not more so than ‘Caledonia stern and wild,’ more fertile and productive, and as to extent – boundless. I see before me,” he mused, “a country larger than Sweden, capable in time of carrying a dense population; and what a breed of men it should give birth to, athletic, hardy, brave! Horsemen too, in the words of Australia’s forest poet, whom I read but of late. ‘For the horse was never saddled that the Jebungs couldn’t ride.’ Good rifle shots! What sons of the Empire should these Australian highlands rear, to do battle for Old England in the wars of the giants yet to come!”
This soliloquy, and its utterance in thought came simultaneously to a halt of a decisive nature, by reason of the conduct of Mr. Blount’s horse. This animal had been gradually acquiring a fixed distrust of the highway – all too literally – on which he was required to travel. Looking first on one side, then on the other, and apparently realising the dreadful alternative of a slip or stumble, he became unnerved and demoralised. Mr. Blount had ridden a mule over many a mauvais pas in Switzerland, when the sagacious animal, for reasons known to himself, had insisted on walking on the outer edge of the roadway, over-hanging the gulf, where a crumbling ledge might cause the fall into immeasurable, glacial depths. In that situation his nerve had not faltered. “Trust to old ‘Pilatus,’” said the guide; “do not interfere with him, I beseech you; he is under the immediate protection of the saints, and the holy St. Bernard.” He had in such a position been cool and composed. The old mule’s wise, experienced air, his sure and cautious mode of progression, had been calculated to reassure a nervous novice. But here, the case was different. His cob was evidently not under the protection of the saints. St. Bernard was absent, or indifferent. With the recklessness of fear, he was likely to back – to lose his balance – to hurl himself and rider over the perpendicular drop, where he would not have touched ground at a thousand feet. At this moment Jack Carter looked round. “Keep him quiet, for God’s sake! till I get to you – don’t stir!” As he spoke he slid from his horse, though so small was the vacant space on the ledge, that as he leaned against the shoulder of his well-trained mount, there seemed barely room for his feet. Buckling a strap to the snaffle rein, which held it in front of the saddle, and throwing the stirrup iron over, he passed to the head of the other horse, whose rein he took in a firm grasp. “Steady,” he said in a voice of command, which, strangely, the shaking creature seemed to obey. “Now, Boss! you get off, and slip behind him – there’s just room.” Blount did as directed, and with care and steadiness, effected a movement to the rear, while Jack Carter fastened rein and stirrup as before.
Then giving the cob a sounding slap on the quarter, he uttered a peculiar cry, and the leading horse stepped along the track at a fast amble, followed by the cob at a slow trot, in which he seemed to have recovered confidence.
“That’s a quick way out of the difficulty,” said Blount, with an air of relief. “I really didn’t know what was going to happen. But won’t they bolt when they get to the other side of this natural bridge over the bottomless pit?”
“When they get to the end of this ‘race,’ as you may call it, there’s a trap yard that we put up years back for wild horses – many a hundred’s been there before my time. Some of us mountain chaps keep it mended up. It comes in useful now and again.”
“I should think it did,” assented his companion, with decision. “But how will they get in? Will your clever horse take down the slip-rails, and put them up again?”
“Not quite that!” said the bushman smiling – “but near enough; we’ll find ’em both there, I’ll go bail!”
“How far is it?” asked Blount, with a natural desire to get clear of this picturesque, but too exciting part of the country, and to exchange it for more commonplace scenery, with better foothold.
“Only a couple of mile – so we might as well step out, as I’ve filled my pipe. Won’t you have a draw for company?”
“Not just yet, I’ll wait till we’re mounted again.” For though the invariable, inexhaustible tobacco pipe is the steadfast friend of the Australian under all and every condition of life, Blount did not feel in the humour for it just after he had escaped, as he now began to believe, from a sudden and violent death.
“A well-trained horse! I should think he was,” he told himself; “and yet, before I left England, I was always being warned against the half-broken horses of Australia. What a hackney to be sure! – fast, easy, sure-footed, intelligent – and what sort of breaking in has he had? Mostly ridden by people whom no living horse can throw; but that is a disadvantage – as he instinctively recognises the rider he can throw. Well! every country has its own way of doing things; and though we Englishmen are unchangeably fixed in our own methods, we may have something to learn yet from our kinsmen in this new land.”
“I suppose there have been accidents on this peculiar track of yours?” he said, after they had walked in silence for a hundred yards or more.
“Accidents!” he replied, “I should jolly well think there have. You see, horses are like men and women, though people don’t hardly believe it. Some’s born one way, and some another; teaching don’t make much difference to ’em, nor beltin’ either. Some of ’em, like some men, are born cowards, and when they get into a narrer track with a big drop both sides of ’em, they’re that queer in the head – though it’s the heart that’s wrong with ’em – that they feel like pitching theirselves over, just to get shut of the tremblin’ on the brink feelin’. Your horse was in a blue funk; he’d have slipped or backed over in another minute or two. That was the matter with him. When he seen old Keewah skip along by himself, it put confidence like, into him.”
“You’ve known of accidents, then?”
“My word! I mind when poor Paddy Farrell went down. He and his horse both. He was leadin’ a packer, as it might be one of us now. Well, his moke was a nervous sort of brute, and just as he got to the Needle Rock, it’s a bit farther on before the road widens out, but it’s terrible narrer there, and poor Paddy was walking ahead leadin’ the brute with a green hide halter, when a hawk flies out from behind a rock and frightened the packer. He draws back with a jerk, and his hind leg goes over the edge. Paddy had the end of the halter round his wrist, and it got jammed somehow, and down goes the lot, horse and pack, and him atop of ’em. Three or four of us were out all day looking for him at the foot of the range. We knew where we’d likely find him, and sure enough there they were, he and his horse, stone dead and smashed to pieces. We took him back to Bunjil, and buried him decent in the little graveyard. We managed to fish up a prayer-book, and got ‘Gentleman Jack’ to read the service over him. My word! he could read no end. They said he was college taught. He could drink too, more’s the pity.”
“Does every one drink that lives in these parts?”
“Well, a good few. Us young ones not so bad, but if a man stays here, after a few years he always drinks, partickler if he’s seen better days.”
“Now why is that? It’s a free healthy life, with riding, shooting, and a chance of a golden hole, as you call it. There are worse places to live in.”
“Nobody knows why, but they all do; they’ll work hard and keep sober for months. Then they get tired of having no one to talk to – nobody like theirselves,