traits
of mothers and dead loves, pictures of fair women, heart-breaking old
letters written long ago by vanished hands, and the pencilled manuscript
of more than one book which will be famous yet.

The weight of the swag varies from the light rouseabout's swag,
containing one blanket and a clean shirt, to the "royal Alfred," with
tent and all complete, and weighing part of a ton. Some old sundowners
have a mania for gathering, from selectors' and shearers' huts, and
dust-heaps, heart-breaking loads of rubbish which can never be of
any possible use to them or anyone else. Here is an inventory of the
contents of the swag of an old tramp who was found dead on the track,
lying on his face on the sand, with his swag on top of him, and his arms
stretched straight out as if he were embracing the mother earth, or
had made, with his last movement, the sign of the cross to the blazing
heavens:

Rotten old tent in rags. Filthy blue blanket, patched with squares of
red and calico. Half of "white blanket" nearly black now, patched with
pieces of various material and sewn to half of red blanket. Three-bushel
sack slit open. Pieces of sacking. Part of a woman's skirt. Two rotten
old pairs of moleskin trousers. One leg of a pair of trousers. Back of
a shirt. Half a waistcoat. Two tweed coats, green, old and rotting, and
patched with calico. Blanket, etc. Large bundle of assorted rags for
patches, all rotten. Leaky billy-can, containing fishing-line, papers,
suet, needles and cotton, etc. Jam-tin, medicine bottles, corks on
strings, to hang to his hat to keep the flies off (a sign of madness in
the bush, for the corks would madden a sane man sooner than the flies
could). Three boots of different sizes, all belonging to the right foot,
and a left slipper. Coffee-pot, without handle or spout, and quart-pot
full of rubbish--broken knives and forks, with the handles burnt off,
spoons, etc., picked up on rubbish-heaps; and many rusty nails, to be
used as buttons, I suppose.

Broken saw blade, hammer, broken crockery, old pannikins, small rusty
frying-pan without a handle, children's old shoes, many bits of old
bootleather and greenhide, part of yellowback novel, mutilated English
dictionary, grammar and arithmetic book, a ready reckoner, a cookery
book, a bulgy anglo-foreign dictionary, part of a Shakespeare, book
in French and book in German, and a book on etiquette and courtship. A
heavy pair of blucher boots, with uppers parched and