The bushranger made a good deal of exciting history in Australia. Generally he was a scoundrel of the lowest type, an escaped murderer who took to the Bush to escape hanging, and lived by robbery and violence. But a few--a very few--were rather of the type of the English Robin Hood or the Scotch Rob Roy, living a lawless life, but not being needlessly cruel. It is those few who have given basis to the tradition of the Australian bushranger as a noble and chivalrous fellow who only robbed the rich (who, people argue, could well afford to be robbed), and who atoned for that by all sorts of kindness to the poor. Many books have been written on this tradition, glorifying the bushranger. But the plain fact is that most of the bushrangers were infamous wretches for whom hanging was a quite inadequate punishment. The bushranger, as a rule, was an escaped convict or a criminal fleeing from justice. Sometimes he acted singly, sometimes he had a gang of followers. A cave in some out-of-the-way spot, good horses and guns, were his necessary equipment. The site of the cave was important. It needed to be near a coaching-road, so that the bushranger's headquarters should be near to his place of business, which was to stick-up mail-coaches and rob them of gold, valuables, weapons, and ammunition. It also needed to be in a position commanding a good view, and with more than one point of entrance. Two bushrangers' caves I remember well, one near to Armidale, on the great northern high-road. It was at the top of a lofty hill, commanding a wide view of the country. There was no outward sign of a cave even to the close observer. A great granite hill seemed to be crowned with just loose boulders. But in between those boulders was a winding passage which gave entrance to a big cave with a little fresh-water stream. A man and his horse could take shelter there. Another famous bushranger's cave was near Medlow, on the Blue Mountains (N.S.W.), in a position to command the Great Western Road, along which the gold from Lambing Flat and Sofala had to go to Sydney. This was quite a perfect cave for its purpose. Climbing down a mountain gully, you came to its end, apparently, in a stream of water gushing from out a wall of rock. But behind that rock was a narrow passage leading to a cave which opened out into a little valley with another stream, and some good grass-land. To this valley the only means of access was the secret passage through the cave, which allowed a man and his horse to pass through. A gang of bushrangers kept this eyrie for many years undiscovered.