Man Plain, but a good stretch. We did not "make" the lake until after dark. How they all rushed in! It was shallow, and sound as to bottom. We concluded to let them alone, not believing that they would wander far through such good feed before day. So we had our supper cheerfully, and turned in. We could hear them splashing about in the water, drinking exhaustively, and finally returning in division. At daylight, the first man up (not the writer) descried them comfortably camped, nearly all down within a few hundred yards.
How far is the Parin Yallock? It is many a year since I saw the Stony Rises, as we somewhat unscientifically called the volcanic trap dykes and lava outflows, now riven into boulders and scoria masses, yet clothed with richest grass and herbage, which surround for many miles the craters of Noorat, "The Sisters"—Leura and Porndon. Well, we took it very easily along that pastoral Eden, the garden of Australia, where dwelt pastoral man before the Fall, ere he was driven forth into far sun-scorched drought-accursed wilds to earn his bread by the sweat of his brain, and to bear the heart-sickness that comes of hope long deferred—the deadly despair that is born of long years of waiting for slow remorseless ruin. Ha! how have we skipped over half-a-century, more or less! Bless you, nobody was ruined in those golden days, because there was no credit. Riverina was almost as much a terra incognita as Borneo—much more the Lower Macquarie and the Upper Bogan. But I must get back to Colac, and feel the thick kangaroo grass under my feet, quite as thick as an English meadow
