ter is to a heated, tired body. It
smooths out the creases of the mind, and is wonderfully calming. Yet
it has none of the intimate, heart-stirring kindliness of England's
rural scenery. No untamed land has that. Nature may be grand,
inspiring, bracing, terrifying, what you will. She is never simply
kind and loving--whatever the armchair poets may say. A countryside
must be humanised, and that through many successive generations,
before it can lay hold upon your heart by its loving-kindness, and
draw moisture from your eyes. It is not the emotionless power of
Nature, but man's long-suffering patient toil in Nature's realm that
gives our English country-side this quality.

But my rugged, unkempt bush here is nobly serene and splendidly calm
in the dawn hours. It makes me feel rather like an ant, but a well-doing
and unworried ant. And I enjoy it greatly. As I stride among the
drenching scrub, and over ancient logs which, before I was born, stood
erect and challenged all the winds that blow, I listen for the sound
of his bell, and then call to my friend Punch:

'Choop! Choop! Choop, Punch! Come away, boy! Come away! Choop! Choop!'

But not too loudly, and not at all peremptorily. For I do not really
want him to come, or, at least, not too hurriedly. That would cut my
morning pleasure short. No; I prefer to find Punch half a mile from
home, and I think the rascal knows it. For sometimes I catch glimpses
of him between the tree-trunks--we have myriads of cabbage-tree palms,
tree-ferns, and bangalow palms, among the eucalypti hereabouts--and
always, if we are less than a quarter of a mile or so from home, it is
his rounded haunches that I see, and he is walking slowly away from
me, listening to my call, and doubtless grinning as he chews his
cud--a great ruminator is my Punch.

At other times, when it chances that dawn has found him a full half
mile from home, he does not walk away from me, but stands behind the
bole of a great tree, looking round its side, listening, waiting, and
studiously refraining from the slightest move in my direction, until I
am within twenty paces of him. Then, with a loud whinny, rather like a
child's 'Peep-bo!' in intent, I think, he will walk quickly up to me,
wishing me the top of the morning, and holding out his head for the
halter which I always carry on these occasions.

In the first months of our acquaintance I used to clamber on to his
back forthwith, and ride home. He knows I cannot q