When our dreamy summer-time was o'er, a truly Arcadian season, with "blue and golden days" and purple-shadowed eves, wild wrathful gales hurtled over the ocean waste, rioting southward to the Pole. Mustering in stormy weather was a special experience. Gathering amid the sea-woods, the winter's day darkening fast, a drove of heavy bullocks, perhaps, lumbering over the sands before us, amid the flying spume, their hoofs in the surf ever and anon,--it was a season study, worth riding many a mile to see. No cove or bay restrained the angry waters. A misty cloud-rack formed the horizon, to which stretched the boundless ocean-plain of the Pacific, while giant billows, rank on rank, foamed fiercely landward, to meet in wrath and impotently rage on the lonely shore below us. How often has that picture been recalled to me in later years amid the arid plains of Australia Deserta! The sad-toned, far-stretching shore--the angry storm-voices of the terrible deep--the little band of horsemen--the lowing, half-wild drove--the red-litten cloud prison, wherein the sun lay dying! Pleasant exceedingly, in contrast, when the cattle were yarded and rails securely pegged, to unsaddle and walk into the house, where lights and glowing fires, with a well-appointed table, awaited us, presided over by a Chatelaine whose soft voice and ever-varied converse, mirthful or mournful, serious or satirical, practical or poetic, never failed to soothe and interest. Stock-riding in those days, half real business, half sport, as we youngsters held it to be, was certainly not one of those games into which, as Lindsay Gordon sings--"No harm could possibly find its way." Part of the "Yambuk" run was distinctly dangerous riding. Where the wombats dug their treacherous shafts and galleries, how many a good steed and horseman have I seen o'erthrown! These peculiar night-feeding animals, akin to the badger of the old country, burrowed much among the coast hummocks. Their open shafts, though not particularly nice to ride among at speed, with your horse's head close behind the hard-pressed steer, were trifling drawbacks compared to the horizontal "drives" into which, when mined too near the surface, your horse's feet often broke. The solid turf would disappear, and letting your horse into a concealed pitfall up to the shoulder, gave a shock that often told tales in a strained joint or a broken collar-bone. We fell lightly in those days, however, and, even when our nags rolled over us, scorned to complain of the trifling occurrence. The limestone country, too, held cavities and sudden appearing fissures of alarming depth, which caused the fiery steed to tremble and the ardent rider to pale temporarily when suddenly confronted. At the south-eastern boundary of the run the forests were dense, the marshes deeper, the country generally more difficult, than on the coast-line. The ruder portion of the herd "made out" that way, and many a hard gallop they cost us at muster-time.