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About Google Book Search Google's mission is to organize the world's information and to make it universally accessible and useful. Google Book Search helps readers discover the world's books while helping authors and publishers reach new audiences. You can search through the full text of this book on the web at http : //books . google . com/ LAWRENCE STRUILBY; OR, TWENTY-FIVE YEARS OF BUSH-LIFE IN AUSTRALIA. LAWRENCE STRUILBY; OB, OBSERVATIONS AND EXPERIENCES DTJBING TWENTY-FIVE YEABJ3 OF BUSH-LIFE IN* AUSTRALIA. BDITKD BT THS EEV. JOHN GKAHAM. LONDON: LONGMAN, GREEN, LONGMAN, BOBEBTS, AND GBEEN. 1863. t* CV/.H. PSIVTBD BT WARBZir HAM, AKD CO., CAXDXH BOAD. ».•. PREFACE. THE editor's design in publishing this book is to illustrate the formation of character in new and strange scenes; and, if he has not failed in handling the materials, it will set, in a strong light, before its readers the fundamental life-lesson that," honesty is the best policy " everywhere. The Christian will trace in it the hand of Him, without whom " a sparrow cannot fall to the ground." And yet it is not intended to be a preaching book on any of these subjects ; but the true and simple narrative of an emigrant from Ulster to Australia. Lawrence Struilby was by no means a model of pre­ cocious wisdom, or of all the juvenile proprieties, when in the family cabinet council it was resolved that he should emigrate to Australia under the auspices of, and in company with, the grave and shrewd Jerrold Lock. Some are yet alive who peeped in at the gathering of uncles, aunts, and parents, who resolved on his " going abroad to pitch his fortune." Some time before, the agent of the N— estate, who was a blustering militia captain, had cudgelled a distant and feeble relative of the Struilbys for going to market VI PREFACE. by a private road, where the public had long been al­ lowed right of way. This agent was a great enemy to unlicensed netting of salmon on the river, which the tenantry thought their own, so far as it flowed through their lands. He had, on one dark night, come on a com­ pany of young men noisily—but only in pretence—pre­ paring to fish, and, running into an old net on the bank purposely spread for him, a strong arm caught him and slung him into the river, while the game-keeper ran for his life, although the captain cried—we omit oaths— "Halloo, Springtrap, shoot them, shoot them!" He was an expert swimmer, and after his involuntary immer­ sion he scrambled up the bank and fled. On the next parade - day of the yeomanry, the captain looked thunder and lightning in Larry's face, as he inspected him in the ranks. He suspected, but others knew that it was the young yeoman's brawny arm had given the cold bath to the cowardly cudgeller of poor Steward Struilby. Vengeance was seething in high places for Larry. Besides, he had gone even beyond the anti-game morality of his neighbourhood, which taught that a "salmon spawned in the river and fattened in the ocean, a bird of the air, or a hare that feeds at large, is only the property of the Creator; and catch them who can." His musket had levelled antlered game that made lairs in his father's corn, or being at large, might have done so. All these, and many more such facts, came out freely at the grave and confidential tea-party that re- PEEFACB. vii suited in the decision for his emigration. Uncle Jemmy, who opened his mind in dark sayings, affirmed that, " a small farm in Ireland would never give root-room to such a plant; that the spirit of Nimrod was in him; that he should he sent where he would have license from nature to hunt ; and that voluntary was better than compulsory emigration." Even his mother con­ sented ; for she feared he was getting into card-playing, ungodly company, and had too much leisure to fre­ quent it. This, then, is the young man whose progress we shall trace in this biography. And such are thousands in Ulster and elsewhere still. He was not perfected for the voyage of life before launching; but he weathered all storms, and brought back a noble freight; and we shall try to show HOW. The narrative will show his progress, from the condition of a hand of all-work, to that of an overseer, and then to that of a wealthy stockowner. "We shall trace the discipline through which the young man of strong passions learnt to curb them; how the young man of good sense and powerful muscles turned them to good account; how he got loose principles and powers compacted by self- knowledge, experience, wisdom, and trust in God. He was naturally observant; and will tell us what he saw at the antipodes, in the forest and on the gold fields. He was very fond of nature in all her forms, and will be sure to notice striking aspects of vege- viii PREFACE. tation, scenery, and animal life, where most of us can never see them. He was thrown into an Australian prison, and will draw prison portraits and show us the recklessness and downwardness of men who have sold themselves to evil; and yet the germs that may, withal, he budding in such unpromising soil. He does not gather plants into gardens, or animals into menageries by separate chapters of description, they run as freely through his narrative as they did through their native haunts. For nearly twenty years he lived on the farthest outpost of Austra­ lian semi-civilization; indeed, for that period and more, he lived among the aboriginal savages. His life was often endangered and sometimes saved by them; for weeks his wife lived alone among them, while he was on journeys. He hunted, tailed cattle, tracked, travelled, in fact lived with them, more than perhaps any other white man ever did in the colony, except the escaped convict Buckley, whom a tribe adopted as their chief. He will speak much, therefore, of them, and give life-pictures of their lives and manners. His feelings to the friendly tribes around him were most kindly, and they never betrayed his trust. He highly admired their wonderful skill in the arts peculiar to their own narrow existence, and lamented the gradual process of aboriginal extinction. From Mrs. Struilby's account of the native boy they adopted, as well as from the success of the native schools PBBFAGE. IX at Poonindie, Ebenezer, and elsewhere, it is quite clear the Australian aborigines are not incapable of civiliza­ tion, that they need not cease as a variety of our species, and that their labour might be yet most useful in tropical Australia. His wife, too, will help by sketches from her graphic pen.