setting sun brings the grand Alpine range into sharp white outline
against the background of dazzling Italian sky. But just here,
where my beloved antipodean home stood, we had no trees whatever,
except those which we had planted ourselves, and whose growth we
watched with eager interest. I dwell a little upon this point, to
try to convey to any one who may glance at these pages, how we all,
--dwellers among tree-less hills as we were,--longed and pined for
the sights and sounds of a "bush."

Quite out of view from the house or garden, and about seven miles
away, lay a mountain pass, or saddle, over a range, which was
densely wooded, and from whose highest peak we could see a wide
extent of timbered country. Often in our evening rides we have gone
round by that saddle, in spite of a break-neck track and quicksands
and bogs, just to satisfy our constant longing for green leaves,
waving branches, and the twitter of birds. Whenever any wood was
wanted for building a stockyard, or slabbing a well, or making a
post-and-rail fence around a new paddock, we were obliged to take
out a Government license to cut wood in this splendid bush. Armed
with the necessary document the next step was to engage "bushmen,"
or woodcutters by profession, who felled and cut the timber into the
proper lengths, and stacked it neatly in a clearing, where it could
get dry and seasoned. These stacks were often placed in such
inaccessible and rocky parts of the steep mountain side, that they
had to be brought down to the flat in rude little sledges, drawn by
a bullock, who required to be trained to the work, and to possess so
steady and equable a disposition as to be indifferent to the
annoyance of great logs of heavy wood dangling and bumping against
his heels as the sledge pursued its uneven way down the bed of a
mountain torrent, in default of a better road.