are?"

Pisistratus.--"In the grog depot? You had better ask him!"

Uncle Jack.--"What! you pretend to be aristocratic in the Bush? Too
good. Ha, ha--they're calling to me; we must be off."

Pisistratus.--"I will ride with you a few miles. What say you, Vivian?
and you, Guy?" (As the whole party now joined us.)

Guy prefers basking in the sun and reading the "Lives of the Poets."
Vivian assents; we accompany the party till sunset. Major MacBlarney
prodigalizes his offers of service in every conceivable department of
life, and winds up with an assurance that if we want anything in those
departments connected with engineering,--such as mining, mapping,
surveying, etc.,--he will serve us, bedad, for nothing, or next to it.
We suspect Major MacBlarney to be a civil engineer suffering under the
innocent hallucination that he has been in the army.

Mr. Speck lets out to me, in a confidential whisper, that Mr. Bullion is
monstrous rich, and has made his fortune from small beginnings, by never
letting a good thing go. I think of Uncle Jack's pickled onion and Mr.
Speck's meerschaum, and perceive, with respectful admiration, that Mr.
Bullion acts uniformly on one grand system. Ten minutes afterwards, Mr.
Bullion observes, in a tone equally confidential, that Mr. Speck, though
so smiling and civil, is as sharp as a needle, and that if I want any
shares in the new speculation, or indeed in any other, I had better
come at once to Bullion, who would not deceive me for my weight in gold.
"Not," added Bullion, "that I have anything to say against Speck. He
is well enough to do in the world,--a warm man, sir; and when a man is
really warm, I am the last person to think of his little faults and turn
on him the cold shoulder."

"Adieu!" said Uncle Jack, pulling out once more his pocket-handkerchief;
"my love to all at home." And sinking his voice into a whisper: "If ever
you think better of the Grog and Store Depot, nephew, you'll find an
uncle's heart in this bosom!"

(1) A damper is a cake of flour baked without yeast, in the ashes

CHAPTER II.

It was night as Vivian and myself rode slowly home. Night in Australia!
How impossible to describe its beauty Heaven seems, in that new world,
so much nearer to earth! Every star stands out so bright and particular
as if fresh from the time when the Maker willed it. And the moon like a
large silvery sun,--the least object on which it shines so distinct and
so still. (1) Now and t