"

"What! Mr. Tyers, the commissioner? Sure I didn't know you from
Adam. So ye never went to Gippsland at all?"

"Our horses got at the provisions and spoiled them; so we had to come
back, and we have had nothing to eat for three days. There is one
man somewhere behind yet; I am afraid he will lie down and die. Do
you think you could find him?"

"For the love of mercy, I'll try, anyway. Norah, dear, take care of
the poor fellows while I go and look for the other man; and mind,
only to give 'em a little food and drink at a time, or they'll kill
their wake stomachs with greediness; and see you all do just as Norah
tells you while I'm away, for you are no better than childer."

Mat galloped away to look for the last man, while his wife watched
over the welfare of her guests. She said:

"The Lord save us, and be betune us and harm, but when I seen you in
the garden I thought ye were bushrangers, and I took up the ould gun
to shoot ye."

Mat soon found the last man, put him on his horse, and brought him to
the hut. Next morning he yoked his bullocks, put all his guests into
the dray, and started for Dandenong. On December 23rd, 1843, Mr.
Tyers and his men arrived in Melbourne, and he reported to Mr.
Latrobe the failure of his second attempt to reach Gippsland.

While the commissioner and his men were vainly endeavouring to reach
the new country, seven other men were suffering famine and extreme
hardships to get away from it. They had arrived at the Old Port by
sea, having been engaged to strip bark by Mr. P. W. Walsh, usually
known in Melbourne as Paddy Walsh. He had been chief constable in
Launceston. Many years before Batman or Fawkner landed in Port
Philip, parties of whalers were sent each year to strip wattle bark
at Western Port. Griffiths and Co. had found the business
profitable, and Paddy Walsh came to the conclusion that there was
money to be made out of bark in Gippsland. He therefore engaged
seven men and shipped them by schooner, writing to a storekeeper at
the Old Port to receive the bark, ship it to Melbourne, and supply
the strippers with the requisite stores.

The seven men landed at the Old Port and talked to the pioneers.
They listened to their dismal accounts of starvation on roast
flathead and mutton-birds' eggs, of the ferocity of the blacks, of
the murder of Macalister, of the misfortunes of Glengarry. The
nine-pounder gun still stood at the corner of the company's store,
poin