CHAPTER I.

Waikato Times, Volume XXII, Issue 1860, 7 June 1884, Page 5

CHAPTER I.

"I wonder," said I Jack, "if gvOi" we shall meet any oJ' our old mates of the Shotover down in Melbourne. Year*, many jcars, have passed, but ne/er, nerer shall I forget the Merry, careless, lough and tumble clays I spent on the Shot. Happy clays of youth aad freedom up among the grand old spivs and gullies of Mount Eainalaw and Mount Pisa, eh, Lairy?" i-.iv\ Jack sighed hka a sentimental porpoise at the recollection. I smiled, mid lephcd drily, " Just so, of youth, and freedom, and cold, and wet, and hunger, and general wietchedness to boot. Please don"t forget to include that in your list, Master Jack." " Well, it was miserable enough sometimes, and that's a faci, especially V/hen the rivers were up, and we could get neither {/old nor supplies," said Jack, with a hearty laugh. " l)o you remember the time we lived thiee weeks on oatmeal and cheese ?'' "Do you remember the oatmeal plum pudding ? That v/vh a dainty dish, 1 guess." "It was a dainty dish, fit to set befoie a kiag," Jack retorted ; " that is to say, if that king had been a h&if -starved digger. Ah, •well, say what you will about the haidships of that long ago, it was a pleasant time and a happy time, too, for nil that."' And i,o it waa ; there could be no manner of doubt about it. ELe how wia it that our memoiies used occasionally to leveit to that brief period oi oojouioing iv the wilderness with a feeling a3 oi wild regret, and dim and inexpressible longing for the life that could never return. Js it that mankind's natural state is to dwell in the free wood-"! and plains, to breathe the life-giving mountain air, to be lulled to sleep by iao ceaseless song of iuohing rivers, and that tins eily life, thiq civilization, as it is called, is merely an abnormal condition against which the heart and soul and brain ol man is continually and instinctively rebelling ? •Surely so. Take the aboriginal from his tribe ; feed him, clothe him, give him such luxuries aa in his native state he never could even havj dzuanit of let him eat and drink of the best, let him ho suit and warm, and yet, when the fit comes upon him, he will leave all for the wot, and cold, and squalor, and discomfort of his savage life. And after all perhaps we are, if we could bring ourselves to acknowledge it, only savages with the veneer and varnish on. The old Adam i 3 not dead, but blcepeth. I wonder whether the Israelites of old, while revelling in the milk and honey of fruitful Palestine, ever looked back with yearning over the monotonous quails and manna of then" forty yeais wearisome wanderings in the desert. More than likely they did. And now after this piece of speculative philosophy, a word of explanation. Jack, as he was faraihaily called by everybody who knew him, wag Jack Butler, the youngest son of a younger and not over well-to-do branch of the family, of which the Earl of Ormond, and the barons of Gahir and Thurles were the far-away distant heads. So you see, Jack, poor as he was, had &ome, not much perhaps, of the blue blood of Ireland running in his veins, and hence it was, perhaps t that ho owed to thai turbulent and, sometime, rebellious race, the reckless, daring, hot-headed, warm-hearted, and generous disposition for which he was alike wellknown and well-beloved wherever he went. Jack Butler was Jack, therefore, to me and all the world, and I Avas Laurence Smith, his elder, but piebeun English cou&in. In the year 1581 tiie world went mad over the mysterious iiew world of the South, Australia, the land whose sun was ever blight, whose sky was ever blue, whose soil waa teeming with auriferous treasure, and whose fame, like the throb of a mighty earthquake, caused the " shaking of the nations." Who can wonder that I, the son of a poor clergyman who held a pinched benefice in an out-of-the-way village in Cheshire " adown by the gentle Dee," and who had been brought up »b a sort ot out-at-elbows gentleman, dependent on my father, and looking forward to that eomeday vhen " something would fcurn up " through ths influence of my mother's rich lelatives, for she was a Butler, and foolish like, could not forget her aristocratic connexions. Who can wonder, I say, that I, growing tired of a life of enforced idleness, should feel my puli-e quicken, and my heart beat at hearing of the mountains and valleys, the rushing rivera and roiling downs, the thick forest? and swelling plains, where gold waited for brave hands to wrench it from its bed in the yellow earth. Still less wonder that my cousin Jack, who had been at the same school with me, and with whom, in his home in distant Kilkenny, I had constantly corresponded, should have been, as they say, "bitten with the same tick," and that he should, in his impulsive manner, nsver have waited to reply to my last letter, but have come over to England at once, ready to start for the new El Dorado at the other end of the world. There was a reason for this sudden determination on his part, of which I knew nothing at the time, and the knowledge of which never came to me, until " after many days."