such a halt, and losing our supper in consequence. No doubt we made up for it at breakfast.
Now we had come to the end of the genuine Colac country. What we were approaching was a good land, richly grassed, and, agriculturally speaking, perhaps superior to the other. But I shall always consider the sub-district that I have just described, including Messrs. Black's, Robertson's, Manifold's, and one or two other properties, having regard to soil, climate, pasture, and distance from a metropolis, as the very choicest area to be found in the whole Australian continent.
A few more days' easy travelling took us nearly to our journey's end. We reached the bank of the Merai, at Grasmere, the head station of the Messrs. Bolden, and there, not many miles from the site of the flourishing township of Warrnambool, we drafted our respective cattle, and went different ways—Mr. Ryrie's to his run, not far from Tower Hill, and mine to appropriate some unused country between the Merai and the sea.
Here I camped for about six months, and a right joyous time it was in that "kingdom by the sea." I remember riding down to the shore one bright day, just below where Warrnambool now stands. No trace of man or habitation was there, "nor roof nor latched door." As I rode over the sand hummock which bordered the beach, a draft of out-lying cattle, basking in the sun on the farther side, rose and galloped off. All else was silent and tenantless as before the days of Cook.
I took up my abode provisionally upon the bank of the Merai, which, near the mouth, was a broad
