I recollect--how well!--the night I reached Lake Colac. Mr. Hugh Murray had, I think, the only station upon it, and the Messrs. Dennis were a short distance on the hither side. The Messrs. Robertson farther on. The cattle had rather a long day without water. Not quite so bad as the Old Man Plain, but a good stretch. We did not "make" the lake until after dark. How they all rushed in! It was shallow, and sound as to bottom. We concluded to let them alone, not believing that they would wander far through such good feed before day. So we had our supper cheerfully, and turned in. We could hear them splashing about in the water, drinking exhaustively, and finally returning in division. At daylight, the first man up (not the writer) descried them comfortably camped, nearly all down within a few hundred yards. How far is the Parin Yallock? It is many a year since I saw the Stony Rises, as we somewhat unscientifically called the volcanic trap dykes and lava outflows, now riven into boulders and scoria masses, yet clothed with richest grass and herbage, which surround for many miles the craters of Noorat, "The Sisters"--Leura and Porndon. Well, we took it very easily along that pastoral Eden, the garden of Australia, where dwelt pastoral man before the Fall, ere he was driven forth into far sun-scorched drought-accursed wilds to earn his bread by the sweat of his brain, and to bear the heart-sickness that comes of hope long deferred--the deadly despair that is born of long years of waiting for slow remorseless ruin. Ha! how have we skipped over half-a-century, more or less! Bless you, nobody was ruined in those golden days, because there was no credit. Riverina was almost as much a _terra incognita_ as Borneo--much more the Lower Macquarie and the Upper Bogan. But I must get back to Colac, and feel the thick kangaroo grass under my feet, quite as thick as an English meadow (I have been there since, too), as Donald and I led our horses. He had a rein which slipped out at the cheek, contrived on purpose for his horse, and the better sustentation of him, Dumple. We leave Captain Fyans' station on our right. He was the Crown Lands Commissioner in those days, and had the sense to take up a small, but very choice, bit of the "waste lands of the Crown" on his own account. There abide the "FF" cattle to this day, if the Messrs. Robertson have not deposed them in favour of sheep, or the rabbits eaten them out of house and home. We pass the police station, another rich pasture reserved for the mounted police troopers and their chargers. There old Hatsell Garrard dwelt for a season, with his fresh-coloured English yeoman face, his pleasant, racy talk, and unerring judgment in horse-flesh. Did not Cornborough, that grand old son of Tramp, emigrate to Victoria under his auspices? I need say no more. Then we come to Scott and Richardson's, the Parin Yallock station proper. Both good fellows. The latter might aver with Ralph Leigh--