If it was difficult to thread the way among the stumps and avoid running over the foal in the daylight, I leave the reader to judge what it was after dark; sufficient to say that we jumped and bumped first over one stump and then over another, the horses continually blundering over them as well. However, all's well that ends well, and we reached the journey's end at last for that day. A solitary hostelry it was in the midst of the bush, miles distant from any other habitation, generally little used, but on the present occasion full to overflowing. As we approached the house in the dark, voices as of quarrelling reached our ears, for it so happened that a certain naval officer, who was not usually given to falling out, but who, like many others of his craft, was safer "aloft" than on a horse's back, had just ridden up at a sharp pace to the house, and the landlord, appearing at the door with a light at the same moment, made the horse stop short, which caused the rider to be deposited on the ground, and he, thinking it had been done intentionally, was very wrathful; mine host, also becoming heated, made use of the words that had caught my ears as I drove up, which were, "If the gentleman wants a game of fives, I am his man." After a few minutes, however, peacemakers appeared upon the scene, explanations took place, and harmony was restored. The house was so crowded that none but those who had taken the precaution to bespeak beds beforehand could get them, and, of those, I will not venture to say how many slept in the same one. The rest of us had to deposit our carcases where we could, and I got possession of a sofa, in what I suppose must be called the coffee-room, where I lay down and went to sleep, but only for a very short time, as the bugs, the most voracious I ever met with, nearly pulled me off it. I then tried the floor, but with, if possible, worse results, so, like the man in the song of the "Cork Leg," "I soon got up and was off again." By this time I had had enough of the inside of the house, and therefore betook myself out of it, where I found some natives in their small tents made of bark, and gathering some wood and getting a light from them, I soon had a fire, and lying down by it, with the driving cushion for a pillow, passed the rest of the night in peace and comfort. Probably by this time a railway has been constructed through this country, and for all I know a grand company hotel may have taken the place of the old "Half-way House" in the bush.