the Home
Government, and was not chary of using it on behalf of those who
truckled to him, if he so inclined; and, indeed, both Major Trenton and
Dr Parsons said that he was a man with many good points, and could be,
to those who pleased him, a good friend, as well as a bitter enemy to
those who in any way crossed him. But they asserted that he should never
have been appointed a magistrate in a colony where the penal laws gave
such latitude to his violent temper and arbitrary disposition.

Early one morning in December, and three months after the drawing of
the picture by Lieutenant Moore, my two brothers and myself set off on
a fishing excursion to a tidal lagoon whose waters debouched into the
Pacific, about fifteen miles southward from the little township. Behind
us followed a young man named Walter Trenfield, who was one of my
father's assigned servants, and an aboriginal named 'King Billy';
these two carried our provisions, cooking utensils and blankets, for we
intended to camp out for two or three days.

A half-an-hour's walk over the slopes of the bluff brought us to the
fringe of the dense coastal forest, through which our track lay for
another two or three miles before we again came to open country. There
was, however, a very good road, made by convict labour, through the
scrub as far as it went; it ran almost along the very verge of the
steep-to coast, and as we tramped over the rich red soil we had the
bright blue sea beneath us on our left, and the dark and almost silent
bush on our right. I say 'almost,' for although in these moist and
sunless seaboard tracts of what we Australian-born people call bush, and
English people would call wood or forest, there was no sound of human
life, there was yet always to be heard the _thump, thump_ of the
frightened scrub wallaby, and now and again the harsh, shrieking note of
the great white cockatoo, or the quick rush of a long-tailed iguana over
the thick bed of leaves, as the timid reptile fled to the nearest tree,
up whose rugged bole it crawled for security.

We had come some three or four miles upon our way, when we suddenly
emerged from the darkness and stillness of the scrub out into the light
of day and the bright sunshine, and heard the low murmur of the surf
beating upon the rocks below. Here we sat down to rest awhile and feast
our boyish eyes on the beauties of sea and shore and sky around us.
A few hundred yards away from where we sat was a round, verdure