The Sun.
London, England, 1862-07-14 00:00:00

LIFE IN THE BUM

I passed the first night after leaving the river Goulbourn
by myself in the bush. The weather was unusually hot,
and the mosquitos were terribly annoying. As a protec-.
tion against their attacks, I was obliged to cover myself,
before trying to go to sleep, from head to foot in a thick
horse rug. I was nearly suffocated, for I could not leave
even my nose bare with impunity, and I was in a fever
from the heat. My enemies were legion ; the very air
seemed made of them ; and I could not make furtive at-
tempts to get a draught of fresher air than was to be had
beneath the horse rug without inhaling them. Whenever
I turned for relief from lying in one position, I could hear
them buzzing in myriads from whore they had settled on
my rug, and in spite of all my precautions they would fre-
quently find some undefended point d'appui, forcing me to
throw the rug off in despair, and shake it franctically at
them that they might not close in upon me before I had
time to wrap myself up afresh. Thanks to the mosquitos
I did not feel in the least conscious of my lonely situation
in the bush that night—a night I shall never forget—it
seemed so long, like five or six rolled into one ; and I cer-
tainly never descried the first signs of the morning with
greater pleasure than when the mosquitos hied away, like
evil spirits of the dark, and left me to slumber undisturbed.
When I awoke the sun was high, and I felt almost done
up ; however, I put on a good face on matters, and was re-
joiced to find about half a mile further on, a creek of de-
liciously cool, clear water, where I performed my ablu-
tions, and breakfasted on "devils on the coals" and bacon.
I had heardly commenced my day's journey before I nearly
stumbled over a guana, an animal of the lizard kind, about
two feet long. Presently I came upon a strange-looking
object, which at a little distance I took for a stump of a
small tree, capped with an inverted tin dish, such as
diggers use to wash out their gold in; but it turned out to
be a man, who greeted me, after the fashion of the bush,
with a " Good day, mate I" and, without further ceremony,
rose and walked along with me. Like me, he had, accord-
ing to his own account, left his party, and had picked up
the tin dish on the road, intending to return to work on
the Bendigo; between which and the Goulbourn I saw
articles of various kinds that had been cast away on the
road by overburdened diggers—enough to stock a small
store. I was not much prepossessed with my companion's
appearance—he was not unlike a monkey, his face almost
entirely covered with hair, and he did not look so clean as
he might even under the circumstances. He stuck to me
all day, and all my efforts to get quietly rid of him were
futile ; but in time I began to be reconciled to his company,
especially as he saved me a great deal of trouble in finding
water, in which he was an adept ; and at last, when we
camped for the night, and got sociable over our tobacco
and tea, we agreed to work on the Bendigo together. This
same evening I found an enormous red ant, more than an
inch long, and armed with a most formidable pair of nip-
pers, walking over me. I feared the nest might be near,
and looked carefully for it, as it would have been no plea-
sant neighbourhood, but there were no other signs of one.
There are a great many different species of ant in Austra-
lia, amongst others the pis-ant, very diminutive—as its
name implies—but troublesome in an inverse proportion to
its size, spoiling all eatables by the peculiarly disagreeable
smell and taste imparted by its body. There is also the
sugar-ant,so named from its particular weakness for sweets.
I have noticed likewise a winged ant, its wings being ap-
parently mere ornamental appendages ; no use whatever,
that I could perceive, being made of them. It disengaged
its body from them on the slightest provocation, and with
little or no effort. I have sometimes caught one of these
ants by the wings, when it invariably left them behind,
proceeding on its way with seeming unconcern. The en-
trances to their nests, for which they select decayed or
fallen trees, are always scattered with countless wings.
One of the most vindictive insects possible is a small black
ant. I remember once sitting down unwittingly near a
nest of these ants, and soon became aware of their proxi-
mity by quickly repeated nips all over my body, instantly
followed by an intolerable though transient pain when the
sting was inserted in the wound caused by the nippers. I
literally tore off my clothes to get rid of my assailants.
With his companion he once more tried his hand at
gold-digging. "Our manner of living," he says,
was of the roughest,..as we had determined to be
at as little expense as possible till we had hit upon
gold. Our meat we toasted in slices on forked
sticks, or threw it on the ashes to cook itself—black
fellow fashion—but afterwards we manufactured a
gridiron out of a piece of old hoop iron. Plates
we had none, nor forks." But from overwork and
sameness of diet he got out of health, was forced
to give up gold-digging, and started for Melbourne,
to look out for some kind of light employment,
having on his arrival there exactly one shilling in
his pocket. But the only occupation to be had was
road-making, for which the wages were
10a. a day.-
The monotony of the employment, however, togs
then with the heat and dust, soon sickened him of
it, and he returned to Melbourne to try his hand at
house painting, from which he was dismissed after
a day's trial, and he next got employment fora few
weeks at a stone quarry. Once more out of work,
he took to wood-cutting, and thus gives his expe-
rience of

SOLITUDE.
s7iDven to unlimited rum, I
Finding that my
rid of him, and wentm taotewwork alone on my own account,g°t
another spot ; and led the life
removing the tent to
worked hard. I carried my own of a
I
upon my back, from a Bush store,pro-
hermit, though
cooked my own food, washed my own
visions, fortnightly,o.
clothes. If ever a man felt
about tanwodmrialeensdffd, my
.own
shirts,
independent, I did at this period, during which I had a
pretty extensive experience of the conveniences and incon-
veniences of a Robinson Crusoe kind of life. Till the
novelty wore off I liked it, and should have liked it better
if I had had a Man Friday. After all, the liberty thats
purchased by cutting off so many social ties will not do for
any length of time. It is only fit for gorillas or madmen.
A man must have a tolerably unburdened—or a superna-
turally hardened—conscience, to endure, much less to en-
joy, a solitude prolonged for any length of time; at least,
such solitude as may be found in the Australian Bush. It
is true that he is there surrounded by Nature in her 'sun-
niest aspect, perennial foliage, and bright skies; but it is
in the silence of such scenes as this that the "
till, small
voice" is most eloquent. Such solitude is a sort of holy
ground, where I should imagine none that are greatly bur-
dened with sin dare remain alone for long; where man and
his Maker speak as it were face to face, more than any-
where else, with Nature as one of the chief mediums of
communication ; where, in a manner, "the invisible things
of Him from the creation of the world are clearly seen,
being understood by the things that are made, even His
eternal power and Godhead." (Rom. i. 20.)
Never till I thus began to live by myself in the Bush did
I experience the vastness of solitude—that shrinking up of
oneself into such infinitesimal smallness that one began to
realize that half-mad state of mind, which some men are
said to have undergone, of disbelieving in one's own
identity. I can readily believe that those great religious
impostors, who have from time to time sprung up, have
actually, after a prolonged solitude, believed in some of the
visions and apparitions which they professed to have seen ;
and indeed we see by the Scriptures that bona
fide inspired men, and our Lord Himself, practi-
cally owned the desirableness of not unfrequent
retirement. Possibly it was a necessity for the
Prophets to live much alone, in order to keep up that
highly-wrought, intensified state of mind in which most
of the Scripture prophecies appear to have been composed._
o
And for myself, though I have never been in the habit .t
seeing visions, yet during my few weeks' comparative soli-
tude there were moments when I felt as it were on the con-
fines of two worlds,—when everything around me seemed
unreal and weird-liker—a condition to which I was occa-