THE GERM GROWERS. THE GERM GROWERS. An Australian Story of Adventure and Mystery. BY ROBERT EASTERLEY and JOHN WILBRAHAM. “His ... Prosequitur dictis portaque emittit eburna.” MELBOURNE: MELVILLE, MULLEN, & SLADE. LONDON: HUTCHINSON & CO. 1892. [_All rights reserved._] TABLE OF CONTENTS. PAGE Preliminary 1 CHAPTER I. Disappearances 6 CHAPTER II. The Red Sickness 13 CHAPTER III. At Sea 26 CHAPTER IV. Overland 36 CHAPTER V. Among the Blacks 58 CHAPTER VI. Left Alone 86 CHAPTER VII. The Cars 97 CHAPTER VIII. Signor Davelli 131 CHAPTER IX. The Seed Beds 167 CHAPTER X. Leäfar 202 CHAPTER XI. Escape 233 Conclusion 267 THE GERM GROWERS. PRELIMINARY. When I first heard the name of Kimberley[1] it did not remind me of the strange things which I have here to record, and which I had witnessed somewhere in its neighbourhood years before. But one day, in the end of last summer, I overheard a conversation about its geography which led me to recognise it as a place that I had formerly visited under very extraordinary circumstances. The recognition was in this wise. Jack Wilbraham and I were spending a little while at a hotel in Gippsland, partly on a tour of pleasure and partly, so at least we persuaded ourselves, on business. The fact was, however, that for some days past, the business had quite retreated into the background, or, to speak more correctly, we had left it behind at Bairnsdale, and had come in search of pleasure a little farther south. [Footnote 1: In North-west Australia.] It was delicious weather, warm enough for light silk coats in the daytime, and cold enough for two pairs of blankets at night. We had riding and sea-bathing to our hearts’ content, and even a rough kind of yachting and fishing. The ocean was before us—we heard its thunder night and day; and the lakes were behind us, stretching away to the promontory which the Mitchell cuts in two, and thence to the mouth of the Latrobe, which is the highway to Sale. Three times a week a coach passed our door, bound for the Snowy River and the more savage regions beyond. Any day for a few shillings we could be driven to Lake Tyers, to spend a day amidst scenery almost comparable with the incomparable Hawkesbury. Last of all, if we grew tired of the bell-birds and the gum-trees and the roar of the ocean, we were within a day’s journey of Melbourne by lake and river and rail.