The Bushman | Page 5

cost us many hundred pounds. Being most darkly ignorant
of every thing relating to the country to which we were going, but
having a notion that it was very much of the same character with that so
long inhabited by Robinson Crusoe, we had prudently provided
ourselves with all the necessaries and even non-necessaries of life in
such a region. Our tool chests would have suited an army of pioneers;
several distinguished ironmongers of the city of London had cleared
their warehouses in our favour of all the rubbish which had lain on
hand during the last quarter of a century; we had hinges, bolts, screws,
door-latches, staples, nails of all dimensions -- from the tenpenny,
downwards -- and every other requisite to have completely built a
modern village of reasonable extent. We had tents, Macintosh bags,
swimming-belts, several sets of sauce-pans in graduated scale, (we had
here a distant eye to kangaroo and cockatoo stews,) cleavers,
meat-saws, iron skewers, and a general apparatus of kitchen utensils
that would have satisfied the desires of Monsieur Soyer himself. Then
we had double and single-barrelled guns, rifles, pistols, six barrels of
Pigou and Wilkes' gunpowder; an immense assortment of shot, and two
hundred weight of lead for bullets.
Besides the several articles already enumerated, we had provided

ourselves with eighteen months' provisions, in pork and flour,
calculating that by the time this quantity was consumed, we should
have raised enough to support our establishment out of the soil by the
sweat of our brows. And thus from sheer ignorance of colonial life, we
had laid out a considerable portion of our capital in the purchase of
useless articles, and of things which might have been procured more
cheaply in the colony itself. Nor were we the only green-horns that
have gone out as colonists: on the contrary, nine-tenths of those who
emigrate, do so in perfect ignorance of the country they are about to
visit and the life they are destined to lead. The fact is, Englishmen, as a
body know nothing and care nothing about colonies. My own was
merely the national ignorance. An Englishman's idea of a colony (he
classes them altogether) is, that it is some miserable place -- the
Black-hole of the British empire -- where no one would live if he were
allowed a choice; and where the exiled spirits of the nation are
incessantly sighing for a glimpse of the white cliffs of Albion, and a
taste of the old familiar green-and-yellow fog of the capital of the
world. Experience alone can convince him that there are in other
regions of the world climes as delightful, suns as beneficent, and
creditors as confiding, as those of Old England.
The voyage, of course, was tedious enough; but some portion of it was
spent very pleasantly in calculating the annual profits which our flocks
were likely to produce.
The four noble rams, with their curly horns, grew daily more valuable
in our estimation. By the sailors, no doubt, they were rated no higher
than the miserable tenants of the long-boat, that formed part of the
cuddy provisions. But with us it was very different. As we looked,
every bright and balmy morning, into the pen which they occupied, we
were enabled to picture more vividly those Arcadian prospects which
seemed now brought almost within reach. In these grave and
respectable animals we recognised the patriarchs of a vast and
invaluable progeny; and it was impossible to help feeling a kind of
veneration for the sires of that fleecy multitude which was to prove the
means of justifying our modest expectations of happiness and wealth.

Our dogs also afforded us the most pleasing subjects for speculation.
With the blood-hound we were to track the footsteps of the midnight
marauder, who should invade the sanctity of our fold. The spaniel was
to aid in procuring a supply of game for the table; and I bestowed so
much pains upon his education during the voyage, that before we
landed he was perfectly au fait in the article of "down-charge!" and
used to flush the cat in the steward's pantry with the greatest certainty
and satisfaction.
Jezebel, the mastiff-birch, was expected to assist in guarding our castle,
-- an honourable duty which her courage and fidelity amply warranted
us in confiding to her. Of the former quality, I shall mention an
instance that occurred during the voyage. We had one day caught a
shark, twelve feet long; and no sooner was he hauled on deck than
Jezebel, wild with fury, rushed through the circle of eager sailors and
spectators, and flew directly at the nose of the struggling monster. It
was with difficulty that she was dragged away by the admiring seamen,
who were compelled to admit that there was a creature on board