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ment, so Austrian-like, and therefore unworthy of a British officer, did not frighten us, and I cried, loud enough, "God save the Queen!"
Inspector Foster sprang up to me with his hopping leg, put on roe tighter darbies, and together with the mulatto-rebel put us in front of the cart, giving strict orders to shoot us both down if we attempted to turn our heads. Veritatem dico, non mentior; and so Messrs. Haynau, Jellachcich, and Co., from that morning my hatred for you is on the decline.
They rode us through the main road as fast as it was safe for the preservation of our necks——the only thing they wanted to preserve inviolate for head-quarters.
Though it was clear daylight, yet I did see only one digger on the whole of the main road.
On passing through the Eureka, I got a glance of my snug little tent, where I had passed so many happy hours, and was sacred to me on a Sunday. There it lay deserted, uncared for! My eyes were choked with tears, and at forty years of age a man does not cry for little.
LXXIV.
DELLA VITA LO SPELLO DAL MONDO SCIOLTO
AL MONDO VIVO PERCHE NON SON SEPOLTO.
We were soon in Ballan. Good reader, please enter now within my mind. The lesson, if read, learned, and inwardly digested, will be of good use for the future. The troubles of this colony have begun.
It is eight o'clock of a fine morning: the spring season is in its full: the sun in his splendour is all there on the blue sky. Nature all around is life. The landscape is superb. It reminded me della Bella Cara Itallia. The bush around was crammed with parrots, crows, and other chattering birds of the south. They were not prevented from singing praises each in its own language to the Creator, and all was joy and happiness with them. Unfortunately those lands lay uncultivated by the hand of man; but were not left idl by nature. Lively, pretty little flowers of the finest blue, teemed here, there, and everywhere, through the splendid grass, wafted to and fro by a gentle wind.
Look now at the foot of the picture.
