I Had Brought Up A Tin Kettle With Me.

This was a great comfort and acquisition, for before we had nothing larger than pint pannikins to fetch up

Water in from the creek; this was all very well by daylight, but in the dark the hundred yards from the hut to the creek were no easy travelling with a pannikin in each hand. The ground was very stony, and covered with burnt Irishman scrub, against which (the Irishman being black and charred, and consequently invisible in the dark) I was continually stumbling and spilling half the water. There was a terrace, too, so that we seldom arrived with much more than half a pannikin, and the kettle was an immense step in advance. The Irishman called it very "beneficial," as he called everything that pleased him. He was a great character: he used to "destroy" his food, not eat it. If I asked him to have any more bread or meat, he would say, with perfect seriousness, that he had "destroyed enough this time." He had many other quaint expressions of this sort, but they did not serve to make the hut water- tight, and I was half regretfully obliged to send him away a short time afterwards.

The winter's experience satisfied me that the country that H - and I had found would not do for sheep, unless worked in connection with more that was clear of snow throughout the year. As soon, therefore, as I was convinced that the adjacent country was safe, I bought it, and settled upon it in good earnest, abandoning the V hut.

Enter page number Go  Previous Next
Page 87 of 167
Words from 23280 to 23547 of 45285