Here Pepper paused, in consideration of my face of horror; for if
there was one thing I dreaded more than another in those early days,
it was a swamp. Steep hill sides, wide creeks, honey-combed flats,
all came in, the day's ride,--but a swamp! Ugh! the horrible
treacherous thing, so green and innocent looking, with here and
there a quicksand or a peaty morass, in which, without a moment's
warning, your horse sank up to his withers! It was dreadful, and
when we came to such a place Helen used to stop dead short, prick
her pretty ears well forward, and, trembling with fear and
excitement, put her nose close to the ground, smelling every inch,
before she would place her fore foot down on it, jumping off it like
a goat if it proved insecure. Generally she crossed a swamp, by a
series of bounds in and out of flax bushes; and hopeless indeed
would a morass be without those green cities of refuge!

Horrible as a large swamp is however to a timid horsewoman, it is
dear to the heart of a cockatoo. He gladly buys a freehold of fifty
acres in the midst of one, burns it, makes a sod fence, sown with
gorse seed a-top, all round his section, drains it in a rough and
ready fashion, and then the splendid fertile soil which has been
waiting for so many thousand years, "brings forth fruit abundantly."
Such enormous fields of wheat and oats and barley as you come upon
sometimes,--with, alas, never a market near enough to enable the
plenteous crop to return sevenfold into its master's bosom!

I shall not inflict upon you a description of all our rides in
search of members for our congregation. Two, in widely differing
directions, will serve as specimens of such excursions. In
consideration of my new-chumishness, F--- selected a comparatively