When There Was Neither Bridge Nor Punt, Those Who Wished To Cross Were Obliged To Ford It; And So Strong Has Been The Current, That Horses Have Been Carried Down One Or Two Hundred Yards Before They Could Effect A Landing.

Keilor is a pretty little village with a good inn, several nice cottages, and a store or two.

The country round is hilly and barren - scarcely any herbage and that little is rank and coarse; the timber is very scarce. This road to the diggings is not much used.

But to return to ourselves. The rain and bad roads made travelling so very wearisome, that before we had proceeded far it was unanimously agreed that we should halt and pitch our first encampment. "Pitch our first encampment! how charming!" exclaims some romantic reader, as though it were an easily accomplished undertaking. Fixing a gipsy-tent at a FETE CHAMPETRE, with a smiling sky above, and all requisites ready to hand, is one thing, and attempting to sink poles and erect tents out of blankets and rugs in a high wind and pelting rain, is (if I may be allowed the colonialism) "a horse of quite another colour." Some sort of sheltering-places were at length completed; the horses were taken from the dray and tethered to some trees within sight, and then we made preparations for satisfying the unromantic cravings of hunger - symptoms of which we all, more or less, began to feel. With some difficulty a fire was kindled and kept alight in the hollow trunk of an old gum tree.

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