cultivation. There was no fence round the paddock, but he pointed out on
a tree the surveyor's marks, showing the boundary of our ground. It must
have been fine land, the way Dad talked about it! There was very valuable
timber on it, too, so he said; and he showed us a place, among some rocks
on a ridge, where he was sure gold would be found, but we were n't to say
anything about it. Joe and I went back that evening and turned over every
stone on the ridge, but we did n't find any gold.

No mistake, it was a real wilderness--nothing but trees, "goannas," dead
timber, and bears; and the nearest house--Dwyer's--was three miles away.
I often wonder how the women stood it the first few years; and I can
remember how Mother, when she was alone, used to sit on a log, where the
lane is now, and cry for hours. Lonely! It WAS lonely.

Dad soon talked about clearing a couple of acres and putting in corn--all
of us did, in fact--till the work commenced. It was a delightful topic
before we started,; but in two weeks the clusters of fires that illumined
the whooping bush in the night, and the crash upon crash of the big trees
as they fell, had lost all their poetry.

We toiled and toiled clearing those four acres, where the haystacks are
now standing, till every tree and sapling that had grown there was down.
We thought then the worst was over; but how little we knew of clearing
land! Dad was never tired of calculating and telling us how much the crop
would fetch if the ground could only be got ready in time to put it in;
so we laboured the harder.

With our combined male and female forces and the aid of a sapling lever we
rolled the thundering big logs together in the face of Hell's own fires;
and when there were no logs to roll it was tramp, tramp the day through,