g for his
family. He had once possessed about forty cows, which he had been obliged
to entrust to the care of another man, at 5S. per head. This man
neglected them: they were impounded and sold as unlicensed cattle under
the new regulations.

"So you saw no more of them?"

"Oh, yes, your honour, I saw some of them AFTER THEY HAD BEEN SOLD AT THE
POUND!--I wanted to have had something provided for a small family of
children, and if I had only had a few acres of ground, I could have kept
my cows."

This was merely a passing remark made with a laugh as we walked along,
for he was one of the race--

"Who march to death with military glee."

But the fate of a poor man's family was a serious subject: such was the
hopeless condition of a useful mechanic ready for work even in the
desolate forests skirting the haunts of the savage. So fares it with the
DISJECTA MEMBRA of towns and villages, when such arrangements are left to
the people themselves in a new colony.

18TH DECEMBER.--The party moved off about 7 A.M., and continued along a
tolerable road, crossing what shepherds called Seven Mile Creek, in which
there was some water; and a little further on we quitted the good beaten
road leading to Balderudgery, and followed one to the left, which brought
us to another sheep station on the same chain of ponds, three miles
higher up than Balderudgery. Having directed the party to encamp here, I
pursued the road south-westward along the chain of ponds, anxious to
ascertain whether I could in that direction pass easily to the westward
of Hervey's Range, and so fall into my former line of route to the Bogan.
At about five miles I found an excellent opening through which the road
passed on ground almost level. Having ascended a small eminence on the
right, I fell in with some natives with spears, who seemed to recognise
me, by pointing to my old line of route, and saying, "Majy Majy" (Major
Mitchell). I little thought then that this was already an outlying
picquet of the Bogan Blacks, sent forward to observe my party. The day
was hot, therm. 97 deg. in the shade. The chain of ponds, there called "the
Little River," contained water in abundance, and was said to flow into
the Macquarie, in which case the Bogan can have but few sources in
Hervey's Range.

The station beside which we had encamped, comprised a stock yard, and had
been formerly a cattle station belonging to Mr. Kite. It was now a sheep
station of Dr. Ramsay's, and th