Willie Mitchell was a different type--a more recent importation--tall, slight, delicate in frame and constitution--cultured and artistic; he was the nearest approach to the languid swell that in that robust and natural-mannered epoch we had encountered. He had been enticed to Australia by one of the Hunters, who, it appeared to us bush-abiding colonists, were always going "home." They had very properly pointed out to him that he could obtain a high interest for his money by investing it in stock, living like a gentleman the while--a point upon which he was decided. He had recently purchased a small but rich cattle run in the Mount Gambier district, where the water was subterranean, and the cattle had to be supplied by troughs. He afterwards sold this and purchased Langa-willi from Wright and Montgomery, who never did a bit of good after they sold it, the most perfect place and homestead in the West. But this by the way. Why Langa-willi will always be a point of interest in my memory, apart from other reasons, was that Henry Kingsley lived there the chief part of a year as a guest of Mitchell's. It was at Langa-willi that _Geoffrey Hamlyn_, that immortal work, the best Australian novel, and for long the only one, was written. In the well-appointed sitting-room of that most comfortable cottage one can imagine the gifted but somewhat ill-fated author sitting down comfortably after breakfast to his "copy," when his host had ridden forth with the overseer to make believe to inspect the flocks, but in reality to get an appetite for lunch. I like to think of them spending the evening sociably in their own way, both rather silent men--Kingsley writing till he had covered the regulation number of sheets--or finished the chapter, perhaps, where the bushrangers came to Garoopna; Mitchell, reading steadily, or writing up his home correspondence; the old housekeeper coming in with the glasses at ten o'clock, then a tumbler of toddy, a smoke in the verandah, or over the fire if in winter, and so to bed. Peaceful, unexciting days and nights, good for Mitchell, who was not over-strong, and for his talented guest. I suspect that in England, where both abode in later years, they often looked back with regret to the peerless climate, the calm days, the restful evenings, spent so far beyond the southern main at Langa-willi. The surroundings were judiciously utilised by the author as furnishing that flavour of verisimilitude which added so much to the charm of his fiction. Baroona, where the Buckleys lived, is the name of a property not far from Mount Hesse, and Widderin, the name of Sam Buckley's famous horse, is also that of a hill visible from the plains of Skipton.