got a stick, with
which he beat the horse until it rose, keeping the while a hold of the
reins. Then, with his broken thigh, that boy mounted the horse (which
was not much hurt), rode home, and read a book whilst waiting for the
doctor to come and set his limb. Another boy I knew in Australia was
bitten by a snake on the finger; with his blunt pocket-knife he cut the
finger off and walked home. He suffered no ill effects from the
snake-poison.

Endurance of hardship and pain is taught by the life of the Australian
Bush. It is no place for the cowardly or for the tender. You must learn
to face and to subdue Nature.

The games of the Australian child are just the British games, changed a
little to meet local conditions. A very favourite game is that of
"Bushrangers and Bobbies" ("bobbies" meaning policemen). In this the
boys imitate as nearly as they can the old hunting down of the
bushrangers by the mounted police.

The bushranger made a good deal of exciting history in Australia.
Generally he was a scoundrel of the lowest type, an escaped murderer who
took to the Bush to escape hanging, and lived by robbery and violence.
But a few--a very few--were rather of the type of the English Robin Hood
or the Scotch Rob Roy, living a lawless life, but not being needlessly
cruel. It is those few who have given basis to the tradition of the
Australian bushranger as a noble and chivalrous fellow who only robbed
the rich (who, people argue, could well afford to be robbed), and who
atoned for that by all sorts of kindness to the poor. Many books have
been written on this tradition, glorifying the bushranger. But the plain
fact is that most of the bushrangers were infamous wretches for whom
hanging was a quite inadequate punishment.

The bushranger, as a rule, was an escaped convict or a criminal fleeing
from justice. Sometimes he acted singly, sometimes he had a gang of
followers. A cave in some out-of-the-way spot, good horses and guns,
were his necessary equipment. The site of the cave was important. It
needed to be near a coaching-road, so that the bushranger's headquarters
should be near to his place of business, which was to stick-up
mail-coaches and rob them of gold, valuables, weapons, and ammunition.
It also needed to be in a position commanding a good view, and with more
than one point of entrance. Two bushrangers' caves I remember well, one
near to Armidale, on the great northern high-road. It was at the top of
a lofty