The count de Beauvoir, in describing a hunt of several days, speaks with enthusiasm of the flocks of wild-turkeys and blue cranes, but bewails his ill-success in running down the huge emus that stalked before the hunters faster than their horses could gallop.  He describes also a kangaroo-hunt, and a single combat with an old kangaroo, grizzled and gray, that in a hand-to-hand fight for a long time parried all the hunter’s efforts to take him, either living or dead.  He was brought down at last by a revolver, and his skin was carried off as a trophy of victory.  The cattle-hunt was even more exciting, in the wild flight of four or five thousand terrified beeves, rushing pell-mell through the tall grass or over sandy plains, stopping occasionally to hide their terrified faces from the dangers that beset them, but one occasionally succumbing to the trusty weapons of the count and his comrades.  The hunters were certainly not encumbered with superfluous garments, several of the boys being clothed only in a pair of boots, and none with more than a single garment.  The immense droves of cattle and sheep herded together in Australia cannot fail to awaken the surprise of the visitor on his first arrival in the country, an Australian herdsman reckoning his flocks by hundreds, and even a thousand or two heads of cattle owned by one man being no unusual occurrence.  Indeed, everything seems on a mammoth scale in Australia—­forests of timber trees that outlive generation after generation of men, and yet have no thought of dying; ferns like those near Hobart Town, that lift their graceful fringes high over men’s heads or serve as shade trees to their dwellings; gigantic emus flying like the fabled Mazeppa over plains the extent of which the eye cannot measure; and those fathomless mines of inexhaustible wealth that seem to promise gold enough for all the world for the centuries yet unborn.

[Illustration:  LIBRARY OF MELBOURNE.]

Aristocracy is a queer thing in Australia.  Many of those now claiming “respectability” and holding themselves aloof from the members of the settlements did not have their expenses paid out by government, because they were born on the island—­not convicts, but only the offspring of those who were.  In the race for wealth educated and refined gentlemen are generally outstripped by those who with less mind have greater physical strength, more practical knowledge of the world and more tact in overcoming difficulties; so that one meets wealthy miners who cannot write their own names, and learned bootblacks and cooks who have taken their degrees in mathematics and the languages.  One millionaire who had a fancy to be thought literary sent regular contributions to the English magazines, every line of which was written by his footman, to whom he paid an enormous salary, not so much for writing as for keeping his secret, and it was years before it leaked out.  In the struggle for position the man of gold gains the day, and not unfrequently brute force or unscrupulous trickery is called in to keep that which wealth has purchased.