At this infant settlement they received every hospitality, and were soon restored to their former health and vigour. The intrepid count immediately published a report of this perilous journey, and of the discoveries he had made. He described the new country he had found as "ready to reward the toil and the perseverance of the unwearied and thriving settlers of Australia. Scarcely any spot I know, either within or without the boundaries of New South Wales, can boast such advantages as Gipps Land." He then speaks in terms of rapture of its "3,600 square miles of forest, and its valleys, which in richness of soil, pasturage, and situation could not be surpassed."
The publication of this report was speedily followed by the settlement of Gipps Land, but only to a comparatively limited extent, for the difficulty of conquering the country deterred all save the hardiest and most resolute of pioneers. Its fierce, wild, black men, its dense forests, its huge mountain ranges, and its swiftly-rushing, almost uncrossable rivers, frightened away many who would have dearly loved a slice of its splendid soil, if they could achieve it without undergoing such a fearful preliminary penance. But the liberal provisions of Sir Charles Gavan Duffy's Land Act induced hundreds to stifle their fears and to settle in Gipps Land, and though at first they had a very hard fight with the forces of nature, most of them have now completely subdued the forest and are well-to-do farmers and graziers. It was of one of these successful settlers that Sir Charles once related this pleasing little incident: "I was in the house of a yeoman proprietor at Briagolong, who brought me to see a cheese factory established by a joint-stock company of farmers in his neighbourhood, where the milk of twenty farms is taken daily at a fixed price and manufac-
