It was in a year "before the gold" that I had occasion to ride to Kalangadoo, across the Adelaide border near Mount Gambier. Kalangadoo was a cattle station, then the property of the Messrs. Hunter, Alick, Jemmy, and Frank, who then dwelt there, and led the half-laborious, half-romantic life which to the cattle-station holder of the day was allotted. The "Mount Gambier mob," as in colonial parlance described, was at that time composed of men the majority of whom had attained to social distinction. Not far off, at Compton, lived Evelyn Sturt, to my eyes the veritable _fine fleur_ of the squatter type. In that year, let us say about 1850, he was a very grand-looking fellow--aristocratic, athletic, adventurous; an explorer, a pioneer, a _preux chevalier_ in every sense of the word, a leading colonist, with a strong dash of Bayard about him; popular with the men of his set, and, it is unnecessary to say, a general favourite with the women. He had the features, the bold autocratic regard with which the early romance-writers were wont to depict the Norman Baron, whose part I make no doubt he would have acted creditably had Fate but arranged his existence synchronically. The prejudices of the day being against a younger son's procuring a competence after the simple and masterful plan of his ancestors, he was constrained to betake himself with his brethren and kinsfolk to far countries and unknown seas. And right manfully had he, and they, of whom more than one name shines brightly on the pages of modern history, dared the perils of sea and shore, of waste and wilderness. He had been an explorer, was now a pioneer squatter drawing nearer and yet nearer to the goal of fortune. He had been rich, he had been poor, had driven his own bullocks, and been hardly pressed at times. But whatever the occupation or garb in which he elected to masquerade temporarily, no one ever looked upon Evelyn Sturt without its being strongly borne in upon his mind that he saw a gentleman of high degree. I admired him with a boy's natural feeling of hero-worship. All that I saw and heard of him heightened the idea. Not less stalwart than refined, But in close fight a champion grim, In camps a leader sage. The hero besides of numerous local legends. He had leaped from a bridge into a flooded river and rescued a drowning man. He had offered to suck the poison from the wound of a snake-bitten stock-rider. He had quelled the boldest bushman in a shearing row. He was chief magistrate, universal referee, good at all arms, gallant and gay. The modern exemplar of the good knight and true.