Overbading in Australia.

Here, in hospitable old Opononi, let us begin at the beginning. John Webster told me how he was half a sailor already by the time he, at the age of twenty, landed from the ship Portland at Sydney, in the last month of 1838. The “first sight and sound he met on stepping ashore in the new land were the shuffling steps of the convict gangs and their leg chains; they worked on the roads in irons. That convict life and atmosphere filled him with dislike, or something stronger, for Australia. Still, he determined to see something of the great back country and the free adventurous life there. After some adventures—the first was being bailed up by bushrangers and robbed—he joined an expedition at the Murrumbidgee to take a large mob of cattle through the vast all but unknown territory to Adelaide. In August, 1839, the party began their long droving journey, driving a thousand head of cattle. The leader was Mr. Howe. There were innumerable little skirmishes With the natives, and the twenty men of the expedition suffered greatly from thirst. One of the whites was speared and killed by the blackfellows, and three hundred head of cattle were lost, mostly speared. But the expedition got through, a really wonderful exploit in such a country under the most unkindly circumstances. That was young Webster's first great adventure, rough and hard beyond description, but a glorious life to the youngster who had begun his working career in, a merchant's office in Scotland.