ntess? Give him up,
ye villain, this minute, or I'll hit ye!'"

These were the sort of stories Desborough delighted in, making them up,
he often confessed, as he went on. On this occasion, when he had done
his story, they all rode up and joined us, and we stood admiring the
river, stretching westward in pools of gold between black cliffs,
toward the setting sun; then we turned homeward.

That evening Alice said, "Now do tell me, Captain Desborough, was that
a true story about Lady Covetown's dog?"

"True!" said he. "What story worth hearing ever was true? The old lady
lost her dog certainly, and claimed him of a dogstealer in Sackville
Street; but all the rest, my dear young lady, is historic romance."

"Mr. Hamlyn knows a good story," said Charley Hawker, "about Bougong
Jack. Do tell it to us, Uncle Jeff."

"I don't think," I said, "that it has so much foundation in fact as
Captain Desborough's. But there must be some sort of truth in it, for
it comes from the old hands, and shows a little more signs of
imagination than you would expect from them. It is a very stupid story
too."

"Do tell it," they all said. So I complied, much in the same language
as I tell it now:--

You know that these great snow-ranges which tower up to the west of us
are, farther south, of great breadth, and that none have yet forced
their way from the country of the Ovens and the Mitta Mitta through
here to Gipp's-land.

The settlers who have just taken up that country, trying to penetrate
to the eastward here towards us, find themselves stopped by a mighty
granite wall. Any adventurous men, who may top that barrier, see
nothing before them but range beyond range of snow Alps, intersected by
precipitous cliffs, and frightful chasms.

This westward range is called the Bougongs. The blacks during summer
are in the habit of coming thus far to collect and feed on the great
grey moths (Bougongs) which are found on the rocks. They used to report
that a fine available country lies to the east embosomed in mountains,
rendered fertile by perpetual snow-fed streams. This is the more
credible, as it is evident that between the Bougong range on the west
and the Warragong range on the extreme east, towards us, there is a
breadth of at least eighty miles.

There lived a few years ago, not very far from the Ovens-river, a
curious character, by name John Sampson. He had been educated at one of
the great English universities, and was a good scholar,