We were all pretty good shots. For one reason or other the gun was rarely a day out of our hands. We were therefore in a position to do battle effectively for our homesteads and means of subsistence if these were assailed. Between my abode and the sea was but one other run--a cattle station. Sheep were in the minority in those days. It was occupied by two brothers--the Messrs. Jamieson--Scots also; they seemed to preponderate in the west. Their run rejoiced in the aspiring title of Castle Donnington. It was rather thickly timbered, possessed a good deal of limestone formation, and had a frontage to Darlot's Creek, an ever-flowing true river which there ran into the sea. CHAPTER VII THE CHILDREN OF THE ROCKS Mr. Learmonth had taken up Ettrick and Ellangowan, a few miles higher up on the same creek, about the same time that I "sat down" on the Lower Eumeralla. This gentleman, since an officer of high rank in the volunteer force, had lately come from Tasmania, whence he brought some valuable blood mares, with which he founded a stud in after years. The cattle run comprised a good deal of lava country. It was there that Bradbury, the civilised aboriginal before mentioned, met his death. All the land that lay between Eumeralla proper and the sea, a tract of country of some twenty or thirty miles square, had been probably from time immemorial a great hunting-ground and rendezvous for the surrounding tribes. It was no doubt eminently fitted for such a purpose. It swarmed with game, and in the spring was one immense preserve of every kind of wild fowl and wild animal that the country owned. Among the Rocks there were innumerable caves, depressions, and hiding-places of all kinds, in which the natives had been used to find secure retreat and safe hiding in days gone by. Whether they could not bear to surrender to the white man these cherished solitudes, or whether it was the shortsighted, childish anxiety to possess our goods and chattels, can hardly ever be told. Whatever the motive, it was sufficient, as on all sides at once came tales of wrong-doing and violence, of maimed and slaughtered stock, of homicide or murder.