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The only persons present in the last and most serious affair with the Aborigines, which took place in December of last year, were Frances, a person named Downes, and a stock-keeper in Melbourne. No other admissible evidence of the death of these poor people can be obtained than what Frances's written statement conveys.
Yer knockin' yerself bad, an' you don't know it. Wills was a pore harmless weed, so he kin pass; but look'ere there ain't a drover, nor yet a bullock driver, nor yet a stock-keeper, from 'ere to 'ell that could n't 'a' bossed that expegition straight through to the Gulf, an' back agen, an' never turned a hair with sich a season as Burke had. Don't sicken a man with yer Burke.
"I must apologise, Mr Gilpin, for not hearing you; but I was overcome, I believe, by the heat," he added, as he took the horse from which Arthur had just dismounted. As the stock-keeper unsaddled the animal, Arthur's eye fell on the open page of the book from which he had been reading. It was a superior edition of Horace, well used.
He had hired four men a stock-keeper named Lopez, who was called the capitaz or head man, a tall, swarthy fellow, whose father was a Spaniard, and his mother a native woman; two laborers, the one a German, called Hans, who had been some time in the colony, the other an Irishman, Terence Kelly, whose face the boys remembered at once, as having come out in the same ship with themselves.
The next expedient employed was to carry all the lambs over, hoping the mothers would be drawn after them, moved by their cries. But the lambs might bleat as pitifully as they liked, the mothers never stirred. Sometimes this state of affairs would last a whole month, and the stock-keeper would be driven to his wits' end by his bleating, bellowing, neighing army.
His having forty or fifty cows brought home every evening to milk, would not only make their calves quiet and tractable, but would also compel the stock-keeper to be more active, would keep him at his duty, and, I feel satisfied, would save the proprietor a great deal in the course of the year. Many a fine cattle-run is rendered useless in dry seasons, by want of water.
Sundry details, added by the stock-keeper, completed the history of this expedition, worthy of being written, if not commended by Xenophon himself. As long as the troop marched over the plains it was well enough, there was little difficulty or fatigue.
When it was done, the Squire first addressed a few scathing words to the pair of park-keepers, who smoked imperturbably through them, and then transferred a pound-note to the ready palm of Gregson, who was, it seemed, on the point of accepting work as a stock-keeper from another of the Squire's farmers a brother culprit, only less 'hustled' than himself by the formidable County Committee, which was rapidly putting the fear of God into every bad husbandman throughout Brookshire.
Glenarvan advanced toward him, and friendly relations were speedily established between them. The leader, or to give him his proper designation, the stock-keeper, was part owner of the drove. His name was Sam Machell, and he was on his way from the eastern provinces to Portland Bay. The drove numbered 12,075 head in all, or l,000 bullocks, 11,000 sheep, and 75 horses.
Away back in the procuratorship of Latrobe, two angels, in wreaths of asphodel, had almost simultaneously deposited Charley and myself on the same station; respectively, in the hut of a stock-keeper, and in the hut of a petty overseer. Together, as the seasons passed, we had looked forward to the shearing, the foot-rotting, and the lambing; and together we had watched the lagoon for the bunyip.
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