t, however,
they are not fools enough to cut down quotations and spoil the market;
they lie in support of each other, and make all other bushmen feel mean
and pitiful and inexperienced.

Sometimes a youngster would timidly ask Greenhide Billy about the
'terra incognita': "What sort of a place is it, Billy--how big are the
properties? How many acres had you in the place you were on?"

"Acres be d----d!" Billy would scornfully reply; "hear him talking
about acres! D'ye think we were blanked cockatoo selectors! Out there we
reckon country by the hundred miles. You orter say, 'How many thousand
miles of country?' and then I'd understand you."

Furthermore, according to Billy, they reckoned the rainfall in the
Territory by yards, not inches. He had seen blackfellows who could
jump at least three inches higher than anyone else had ever seen a
blackfellow jump, and every bushman has seen or personally known
a blackfellow who could jump over six feet. Billy had seen bigger
droughts, better country, fatter cattle, faster horses, and cleverer
dogs, than any other man on the Clarence River. But one night when the
rain was on the roof, and the river was rising with a moaning sound, and
the men were gathered round the fire in the hut smoking and staring at
the coals, Billy turned himself loose and gave us his masterpiece.

"I was drovin' with cattle from Mungrybanbone to old Corlett's station
on the Buckadowntown River" (Billy always started his stories with some
paralysing bush names). "We had a thousand head of store-cattle, wild,
mountain-bred wretches that'd charge you on sight; they were that handy
with their horns they could skewer a mosquito. There was one or two
one-eyed cattle among 'em--and you know how a one-eyed beast always
keeps movin' away from the mob, pokin' away out to the edge of them so
as they won't git on his blind side, so that by stirrin' about he keeps
the others restless.

"They had been scared once or twice, and stampeded and gave us all we
could do to keep them together; and it was wet and dark and thundering,
and it looked like a real bad night for us. It was my watch. I was on
one side of the cattle, like it might be here, with a small bit of a
fire; and my mate, Barcoo Jim, he was right opposite on the other side
of the cattle, and had gone to sleep under a log. The rest of the men
were in the camp fast asleep. Every now and again I'd get on my horse
and prowl round the cattle quiet like, and they