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They rode hard for the point, some miles down, where the treacherous offshoot re-entered the Warroo. It sometimes happens that, owing to the sinuosities of the watercourses of the interior, horsemen at speed can outstrip the advancing flood-wave, and give timely notice to the dwellers on the banks. Such faint hope had they. By cutting across long detours or bends, and riding harder than was at all consistent with safety to their clover-fed horses, they reached the outlet. Joy of joys, it was as dry

as a bone.'

6

"Now,' said M'Nab, driving his horse recklessly down into the hardbaked channel, 'if we can only find most of the sheep in this end of the paddock we may beat bad luck and the water yet. Did the dog come, I wonder? The Lord send he did. I saw him with us the first time we pulled up.'

"I'm afraid not," said Jack; 'we've ridden too hard for any mortal dog to keep up with us, though Help will come on our tracks if he thinks he's wanted.'

"Bide a bit bide a bit,' implored M'Nab, forgetting his English, and going back to an earlier vernacular in the depth of his earnestness. 'The dog's worth an hour of time and a dozen men to us. Help! Help! here, boy, here!'

"He gave out the canine summons in the long-drawn cry peculiar to drovers when seeking to signal their whereabouts to their faithful allies. Jack put his fingers to his mouth and emitted a whistle of such remarkable volume and shrillness that M'Nab confessed his admiration.

"That will fetch him, sir, if he's anywhere within a mile. Dash'd if that isn't him coming now. See him following our tracks. Here, boy!'

"As he spoke a magnificent black and tan colley raised his head from the trail and dashed up to Jack's side, with every expression of delight and proud success.

"In the hour of sore need this was the friend and ally, most appropriately named, who appeared on the scene. With a wave of the hand from Jack, he started off, skirting the nearest body of sheep. The well-trained animal, racing round the timid creatures, turned them towards the outlet, and followed the master for further orders. This process was repeated, aided by M'Ñab, until they had gone as far from the outlet of the creek as they dared to do, with any chance of crossing before the flood came down.

"We must rattle them in now,' said M'Nab. I'm afraid there is a large lot higher up, but there's five or six thousand of these, and we must make the best of it.'

"As the lots of sheep coalesced on their homeward route, the difficulty of driving and the value of the dog grew more apparent. Large mobs or flocks of sheep are, like all

crowds, difficult to move and conduct. By themselves it would have been a slow process; but the dog, gathering from the words and actions of his superiors that something out of the common was being transacted, flew round the great flock, barking, biting, rushing, worrying-driving, in fact, like ten dogs in one. By dint of the wildest exertion on the part of the men, and the tireless efforts of the dog, the great flock of sheep, nearly six thousand, was forced up to the anabranch. Here the leaders unhesitatingly took the as yet dry, unmoistened channel, and in a long string commenced to pour up the opposite bank.

Give it them at the tail, sir,' shouted M'Nab, who was at the lead, go it, Help, good dog-there is not a moment to lose. By George, there comes the flood. Eat 'em up, old man!—give it 'em, good dog!

"There was fortunately one more bend for the flood water to follow round before it reached the outlet. During the short respite Jack and M'Nab worked at their task till the perspiration poured down their faces till their voices became hoarse with shouting, and well-nigh failed. Horses and men, dog and sheep, were all in a state of exhaustion and despair when the last mob was ascending the clay bank.

"Two minutes more, and we should have been too late,' said M'Nab, in a hoarse whisper; 'look there!'

"As he spoke, a wall of water several feet in height, and the full breadth of the widest part of the channel, came foaming down, bearing logs, trees, portions of huts and hay stacks-every kind of debris upon its eddying tide. The tired dog crawled up the bank and lay down in the grass. A few of the last sheep turned and stared stolidly at the close wild water.

There was a hungry, surging rush, and in another minute the creek was level with the river, and the place where the six thousand sheep had crossed dryshod (and sheep resemble cats very closely in their indisposition to wet their feet) was ten feet under water, and would have floated a river steamer."

Drought, that other terrible feature of Australian climate, is a more depressing form of excitement. It can scarcely be pleasant when men and cattle alike are starved; when the weak sheep tumble into the water holes, and have to be pulled out again; when the starved cows stand in the nearly dry ponds eating the remains of the water lilies. A season like this compelled the hero of "Ups and Downs" to sell his sheep run. In describing the sale to the new purchaser, Mr. Bagemall, some notion is given of the quick intelligence necessary for such business :

"The next morning the counting began in earnest. A couple of thousand four-tooth wethers had been put in the drafting yard, for some reason or other, and with this lot they made a commencement. Now, except to be initiated, this counting of sheep is a bewildering, all but impossible matter. The hurdle or gate, as the case may be, is partially opened and egress permitted in a degree proportioned to the supposed talent of the enumerator. If he be slow, inexperienced, and therefore diffident, a small opening suffices through which only a couple of sheep can run at a time. Then he begins-two, four, six, eight, and so on, up to twenty. After he gets well into his tens he probably makes some slight miscalculation, and while he is mentally debating whether forty-two or fifty-two be right, three sheep rush out together, the additional one in wild eagerness jumping on to the back of one of the others, and then

sprawling, feet up, in front of the gate. The unhappy wight says sixty to himself, and looking doubtfully at the continuous stream of animals, falls hopelessly in arrear and gives up. In such a case the sheep have to be re-yarded, or he has to trust implicitly to the honour of the person in charge, who widens the gate, lets the sheep rush out higgledy-piggledy, as it seems to the tyro, and keeps calling out 'hundred' 'hundred' with wonderful and almost suspicious rapidity. Yet, in such a there will rarely be one sheep wrong, more or less, in five thousand. Thus, when arrived at the yard, M'Nab looked inquiringly at the stranger, and took hold of one end of the hurdle.

case,

"Throw it down and let 'em rip,' said Mr. Bagemall. 'You and I will count, and Mr. Redgrave will perhaps keep tally."

"Keeping tally, it may be explained, is the notation of the hundreds, by pencil or notched stick, the counter being supposed only to concern himself with the units and tens.

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M'Nab, who was an unrivalled counter, relaxed his features, as recognising a kindred spirit, and, as the sheep came tearing and tumbling out, after the fashion of strong, hearty, paddocked wethers, he placed his hands in his pockets and reeled off the hundreds, as did Mr. Bagemall, in no time. The operation was soon over. They agreed in the odd number to a sheep. And M'Nab further remarked that Mr. Bagemall was one of those gifted persons who, by a successive motion of the fingers of both hands, was enabled (quite as a matter of form) to check the tally-keeper as well. Paddock after paddock was duly mustered, driven through their respective gates, and counted back. In a couple of days the operation, com

bined with the inspection of the whole run, was concluded."

Etna. A History of the Mountain and of its Eruptions. By G. F. Rodwell. C. Kegan Paul and Co. London.

In Edgar Allan Poe's clever sketch which he calls "The Thousand-and-Second Tale of Scheherazade" the lady in question relates to her lord the king the full conclusion of the history of Sindbad. The king finds it easy to believe in a continent upheld by a sky blue cow, having been taught that the earth is supported in that fashion. But the description of various realities, either natural wonders or the results of man's invention, prove quite too much for his credulity. Among other things he greets with scorn an account of an eruption of Hecla. The facts are too monstrous for him to accept; and to those of us who have not, like Mr. Gladstone (who seems bent upon doing everything), found time and opportunity to ascend a volcano, the description of one must ever read delightfully like a romance. Pindar -the first ancient writer who describes Etna-conceives it to be the prison-house of the giant Enceladus or Typhon; and his language brings before us a vivid picture of the outward form of this terrible dungeon.

"He (Typhon) is fast bound by a pillar of sky, even by snowy Etna, nursing the whole year's length her dazzling snow, whereout pure springs of unapproachable fire are vomited from the inmost depths. In the daytime the lavastreams pour forth a lurid rush of smoke; but in the darkness a red rolling flame sweepeth rocks with uproar to the wide sea. That dragon-thing (Typhon) it is that maketh issue from beneath the terrible fiery flood." Eschylus, too, pictures Typhon lying prone

and bound beneath the roots of ancient Etna. Virgil's fine description is well known. Many other early writers speak of the mountain, and, while the poets "invested it with supernatural attributes and made it the prison-house of a chained giant and the workshop of a swart god," Lucretius endeavoured to show that the phenomena were obedient to natural laws. But it is small wonder that, before the days of science, of investigation, and accurate observation, the mountain should indeed have been supposed the dwelling of some monstrous supernatural being. Its conduct is that of a capricious monarch. So generous is it of benefits, so lavish of gifts, that the people crowd around it to take the luxury it offers; but they do so at the risk of destruction

at

any moment. Like a very autocrat, the demon of the mountain will grow angry on a sudden; and, turning upon the crowds who live upon his bounty, will command that they shall die; and, sending forth his fiery vomit to fulfil his decree, his kingdom is laid desolate before he can repent. Yet his life is so full and generous that, his anger once cooled, he scatters gifts again, and soon his kingdom is re-populated. Perhaps the most picturesque myth is that in which Etna is associated with the Cyclops. Mr. Symonds considers that the one-eyed giant Polyphemus was Etna itself with its one great crater, while the Cyclops were the many minor cones. picture appeals strangely to the imagination-the fierce eye, full of fire, gazing eternally and defiantly

into the vault of heaven.

The

Mr. Rodwell will please most readers, as he has gathered together the legendary history of Etna, and placed beside that a detailed picture of its actual appear

42

ance and surroundings; he has made a careful record of the eruptions, according to such different accounts as have been published since 525 B.C. up to 1874; and he has devoted a chapter to the geology and mineralogy of the mountain. His volume is the first work in the English language devoted to the history of the famous volcano; and the author has endeavoured, certainly, to make his history complete, for he commences with the abode of the Cyclops, and ends with a notice of two maps of the mountain which were exhibited in the Paris Exhibition.

This terrible mountain which will yawn suddenly beneath your feet, and in which a fissure of twelve miles long, emitting a bright light, has been known to open, has yet taken care of some of its favourite offspring. It bears upon its side some of the largest and oldest trees in the world; one of these monarchs of the mountain being 25 feet in diameter and probably more than 1000 years old. It is small wonder that the toil and danger of the ascent of Etna is not sufficient to deter travellers from endeavouring to reach the summit. In the night the vault of heaven seems near and flat, filled with innumerable stars, some of which appear to hang down from the sky, while the Milky-way is as a path of fire. Then comes the marvel of sunrise, which baffles the descriptive powers of all who have seen it; and then, possibly, by good fortune, may be seen the shadow of the mountain, apparently suspended in space above the island a hundred miles away. As the sun rises this shadow sinks upon the island and gradually retires to the base of the mountain.

Altogether, Mr. Rodwell has produced a very pleasant and readable book.