that I could easily reach home the next day.

Having watered my horse, I turned him loose for a graze, and, making
such a dinner as was possible under the circumstances, I lit a pipe and
lay down on the long grass, under the flowering wattle-trees, smoking
and watching the manoeuvres of a little tortoise, who was disporting
himself in the waterhole before me. Getting tired of that I lay back on
the grass, and watched the green leaves waving and shivering against
the clear blue sky, given up entirely to the greatest of human
enjoyments--the after dinner pipe, the pipe of peace.

Which is the pleasantest pipe in the day? We used to say at home that a
man should smoke but four pipes a-day: the matutinal, another I don't
specify, the post-prandial, and the symposial or convivial, which last
may be infinitely subdivided, according to the quantity of drink taken.
But in Australia this division won't obtain, particularly when you are
on the tramp. Just when you wake from a dreamless sleep beneath the
forest boughs, as the east begins to blaze, and the magpie gets
musical, you dash to the embers of last night's fire, and after blowing
many fire-sticks find one which is alight, and proceed to send abroad
on the morning breeze the scent of last night's dottle. Then, when
breakfast is over and the horses are caught up and saddled, and you are
jogging across the plain, with the friend of your heart beside you, the
burnt incense once more goes up, and conversation is unnecessary. At
ten o'clock when you cross the creek (you always cross a creek about
ten if you are in a good country), you halt and smoke. So after dinner
in the lazy noon-tide, one or perhaps two pipes are necessary, with,
perhaps, another about four in the afternoon, and last, and perhaps
best of all, are the three or four you smoke before the fire at night,
when the day is dying and the opossums are beginning to chatter in the
twilight. So that you find that a fig of Barret's twist, seventeen to
the pound, is gone in the mere hours of day-light without counting such
a casualty as waking up cold in the night, and going at it again.

So I lay on my back dreaming, wondering why a locust who was in full
screech close by, took the trouble to make that terrible row when it
was so hot, and hoping that his sides might be sore with the exertion,
when to my great astonishment I heard the sound of feet brushing
through the grass towards me. "Black fellow," I said to myself;