natural impression that to be so near "the settlement" must be an
advantage. They soon found it otherwise for more than one reason. The
constant tramp of sheep passing over their "run" to go beyond them
exposed their ground to infection, especially from scab. And they were
exposed in another way hardly less costly and far more annoying; for
every "traveller," whether bond fide or not, claimed quarters at the
Jacksons', and made the sheep disappear of a hungry morning with
marvellous rapidity, and at a time when, with the demand for live stock
to fill up the empty country, their value had risen to 40 shillings each
and upwards. "The General" had mainly to sustain this attack, as his
brother was generally in Melbourne practising professionally as an
architect, and was engaged at that very time in building the Scots'
Church in Collins-street. Naturally enough, he would fain have turned
somewhat the flank of this invading host; but, without being successful,
his efforts only got him the name of "Hungry Jackson."

Later on, I met further variety of early squatting life in a trip to the
Werribee Plains, where some friends, the Pinkertons from Glasgow, and
Mr. James Sceales, late merchant and Chief Magistrate of Leith, had
their respective stations. On those vast plains, extending westwards 30
to 40 miles, from Melbourne to the Anakies, or Station Peak, the slight
and scattered squatting invasion had hardly disturbed anywhere the
indigenous features. Thus over a vast solitude we revelled in much of
specially Australian scenery, particularly that of tortuous and deeply
excavated "creeks," with their chains of ponds or waterholes, the
running stream mostly dried up--indeed sometimes for whole years
together--but all characterized, more or less, by irresistible rushes
after heavy rains, sweeping all before them, including not seldom the
sheep, and even the homestead, of the incautious or inexperienced
settler. I have a striking contrast in store when I revisit those