One successful well or dam, therefore, converted a block of country hitherto useless for nine months out of the twelve into a run capable of carrying ten thousand sheep all the year round. Of course, any portion of the Crown estate the conditional purchaser might ‘take up,’ or, without notice, occupy. But where was he to procure his water from? He had not often five hundred pounds, or if so, did not ‘believe’ in such solemn disbursement for ‘mere improvements.’ Therefore he still haunted, cormorant-like, the rivers and creeks—the ‘permanent water’ of the colonist. To the younger sons of ancient houses, scions of Howards, Somersets, and of the untitled nobility of Britain, he conceded the right to live like hermits in the Thebaid, upon their artificially and expensively watered back blocks. A special peculiarity of the ocean-like plains of inmost Australia is the miraculous growth of vegetation after the profuse irrigation which invariably succeeds a drought. In the warm dry earth, now converted into a bed of red or black mud, saturated to its lowest inch, and rich for procreation of every green thing, lies a hoard of seeds of wondrous number and variety of species. Broad and green, in a few days, as the vivid growth from the aged, still fruitful bosom of mysterious Nile, along with the ordinary pasture appear the seed leaves of unknown, half-forgotten grasses, reeds, plants, flowers, never noticed except in an abnormally wet season. In cycles of ordinary moisture, the true degree of saturation not having been reached, they lie death-like year after year, until, aroused by Nature’s unerring signal, they arise and burst forth into full vitality. In such a time an astonishing variety of herbs, plants, and flowers is to be seen mingling with gigantic grasses, such as Charley Banks described to Mr. Neuchamp when he prophesied, after forty-eight hours of steady rain had fallen, that on the Back Lake Plains this year he would be able to tie the grass tops together before him, _as he sat on horseback_. Mr. Neuchamp had never before discovered his lieutenant in a wilful exaggeration; but on this occasion he felt mortified that he should still be supposed a fit subject upon which to foist humorous fabrications. ‘I see you don’t believe me,’ said Charley, rather put out in turn at not being credited. ‘Let’s call Jack. You ask him the height of the tallest grass he ever saw in this part of the country in a real wet season. There he goes. Here, Jack, Mr. Neuchamp wants to ask you a question.’ ‘I wish to know,’ said Ernest gravely, ‘to what height you have ever known the grass grow up here in a firstrate season?’ ‘Well, I don’t know about measurement,’ said Jack, ‘but I remember at Wardree one year we had to muster up all the old screws on the run to give the shepherds to ride.’ ‘Why was that?’