instances,
merely tracks formed by the drays following the course of a predecessor;
but still, no attempt even is made to improve the means of conveyance.
The settlers content themselves with the existence of things that be,
and are satisfied with the progressive rate of from fifteen to twenty
miles a day; at which speed a team of ten bullocks, in fine weather,
will draw a dray with thirty to forty hundred-weight; while during wet,
they may not perform the same distance in a week.

The individuals who manage the guidance of these machines, and who are
generally accompanied by an assistant, are too often some of the most
reprobate members of the family of man. Their sole accomplishments are
the management of their drays; the forcible appeals to their bullocks,
made by the application of their long whips (upon the expertness in the
use of which they pride themselves); the facile utterance of their
blaspheming interjections; and their ability to plunder without
detection. The _acme_ of their human felicity is perpetual intoxication;
and to gratify this propensity, they have no scruples in assisting
themselves to any liquor which they may be entrusted to carry;
frequently adopting ingenious plans to abstract it from the bulk, and
replace it by water in such a way as to defy detection. They are
ignorant in the extreme, and though assumed to be civilised and sentient
beings, their vices render them, in the scale of humanity, on a par with
the aboriginal blacks; individuals of whom, frequently follow in their
train, and, until debased by their vile influence, by far their
superiors in an ethical point of view.

In stimulating the propulsion of his team, the bullock-driver addresses
each of his beasts by name; such as, "eh, Smiler;" "come up,
Strawberry;" "Cap-tain," etc.; accompanying every admonition with a
profusion of oaths, and a wholesale application of the lash. If
remonstrated with for his use of so ungenteel a vocabulary, he will
endeavour, with considerable earnestness, to convince you that the
bullocks perfectly understand what is said to them; and that they are so
wayward in their disposition, that nothing short of such determined and
forcible language is of any avail. He will support his arguments with
many stories of the wonderful instinct and percipiency displayed by his
animals; all of which stories, though exceedingly marvellous, obtain
implicit credence in the mind of the narrator; and only come short, in
po