‘Can we realise thousands of lowly homes where the mother sits enfeebled and spectral beside her perishing babes, whose eyes ask for the food which she cannot grant; where the frenzied peasant rushes, in the agony of despair, from his cabin that he may not hear the hunger cries, the death groans of his wife and babes; where the dead lie unburied; where the beast of prey alone roams satiated and lordly; where nature mourns like a maniac mother with tears of blood for her murdered offspring? ‘Such is not, may never be, the fate of this wide, rich, peaceful land, vast and wondrous in its capabilities in spite of temporary disasters. Let us take heart. Our losses, our woes, are trifling in comparison with the world’s great miseries. We are, in comparison, but as children who lose their holiday gifts of coin or cakes. Our lives, our health and strength, are all untouched. We have hope still for our unbartered heritage, the stronger for past dangers of storm and tide. The world is yet before us. There are other seas, untried and slumbering oceans, where our bark may yet ride with joyous outspread sail. Let us still labour and endure, until Fate, compelled by our steadfastness, shall be once more propitious. ‘Si fractus illabitur orbis Impavidum ferient ruinæ. I hardly expected to be quoting Horace at Rainbar, but the old boy probably had some experience of untoward seasons, sunshiny desolation, like this of ours. I don’t know whether “Impavidum” applies strictly to any one but Levison. I am afraid that the “fractus orbis” pertains to our cosmos of credit, which, shattered to its core, will strike us all soon and put us to the proof of our philosophy.‘ A trifling distraction was created about this time, much to Ernest’s relief, by the arrival of Mr. Cottonbush, who had received instructions from Mr. Levison to muster, brand, and take delivery of the small herd of cattle, the single flock of sheep, and the lot of horses which that far-seeing speculator had purchased from the brothers Freeman. This pastoral plenipotentiary, a wiry, reticent individual, utterly impervious to every wile and stratagem which the art of man in Australia had hitherto evolved from the very complicated industry of stock-raising, first informed the Freemans of his mission, producing a written authority with the awe-striking signature of Abstinens Levison, and then reported himself to Mr. Neuchamp. ‘It _is_ a bad season, sir,’ he said, in answer to that gentleman’s greeting, which of course comprehended the disastrous state of the weather, ‘and many a one wouldn’t bother mustering these three or four hundred crawling cattle. They might be all dead in three months for all we can see. But Mr. Levison isn’t like any one else. He sends me a line to do this, or go there, and I always do it without troubling about the reasons. _He_ finds them for the lot of us, and pretty fair ones they generally are when time brings ’em out.’