his body was swayed to and fro in his struggles to rescue the kangaroo's tail from the ravenous mouths of the hounds, and he was on the point of being dragged headlong into the water when I arrived to the rescue. On seeing me, he implored me to catch hold of his coat-tails; and, thanks to the good "braidclaith," as Bailie Nicol Jarvie says, I dragged friend, kangaroo, and two couple of hounds to dry land.

I must now say something about the emu. This is a task I undertake very unwillingly, as I always set my face against such hunting, and have never followed hounds when running an emu, unless in ignorance of such game being "a-foot." The truth is, that in drawing the side of a cover, it sometimes happens that an emu, unseen, will "steal away," and the hounds, hitting the scent, will eagerly run him. The absurd manner in which an emu straddles along at first starting would set any man against seriously hunting it; for the creature's tail is set on somewhat in the fashion of a lady's bustle, and as it toddles away, this part of it waggles up and down, and from side to side, like the before-named article of female apparel when the wearer is dancing that new-fangled affair called the polka.

I was once out when we were drawing a very dense scrub near the sea-coast; the hounds "opened" on a scent, and carried it at a rattling pace through the cover. I was riding a young and awkward horse, and had much trouble in keeping him clear of the timber, so that I was thrown out, and had to run the tracks of the field for seven miles, which I did at a gallop, before I could join the first-flight men. The hounds, when I came up, were puzzled in a swamp; but after a slight check they got cleverly away at a tearing pace, which they kept up for five miles further, when we heard from some farmers that an immense emu had just passed them. The hounds were therefore whipped off, and we were spared the disgrace of killing him; but he had given us a very pretty twelve-mile burst. I once followed hounds for twenty-one miles, without a check, after an emu; but I dislike the practice, and here record my disapprobation of it.

It is possible that some persons may wish to know if hunting in South Australia can be enjoyed with as much zest as hunting in England; and whether the former bears any comparison to the latter. I can only say, that when a man of moderate means arrives at the cover side in England, he sees so many dukes of this, and earls of that, and lords of t'other, that he is quite ashamed of his own insignificance; but he thinks that when the hounds get away, the run, like the grave, will level all distinctions.

Here he is mistaken; for the dukes, earls, and lords, on their thoroughbreds, only bespatter him with mud as they take the lead of him, and keep it; and then, just as his hunter begins to show distress, they mount their second horses, and leave him in the lurch entirely; and so he goes home, without having lived to the "finish," wishing himself a jolly nobleman, and quite discontented with his present lot; possibly he may pack up his traps and come out to South Australia, and then, when he appears at the cover side on this side of the world, he finds himself quite a swell among us; and during the run he can keep with the first flight, and live well with the hounds to the finish.

It is true, he does not ride over so many fences, damage so much

wheat land, break so many hurdles, or do so much mischief of any kind, as he would in England, but then he does not get into any "squire traps," or have so many falls or actions at law, so that the account is nearly balanced.

If he likes to see hounds work well, and does not hunt merely for the excitement of the gallop, he will enjoy the sport in South Australia very much; but if he wants an ox-fence, or a bulfinch, or a flight of rails, to break his neck over, he must not come out here for them; although he may occasionally, when the hounds meet near Adelaide, fall in with a dog-leg, or a kangaroo, or a cockatoo fence, or, probably, with a post and rail; and it will require all his nerve to put his untrained horse at any of these, for the first is formed of logs of wood placed together in the form of an X, thus X, to clear which requires a flying jump.

I was once out with a very correct field of well-appointed and wellmounted men, when one of these kind of fences, like a nobleman's carriage at the opera-house, "stopped the way;" my horse, not flying his jump, landed on the top of it, staking himself in many places, and sending me into the road.

The kangaroo fences are composed of logs of wood placed close together in an upright position, and ugly-looking customers they are to manage; there is no compromise with them, and, when facing them, you must make up your mind for a clean jump or a regular "burster."

The cockatoo fence is of a more accommodating nature than either of the foregoing, and is made of forked sticks, stuck into the ground as posts, and saplings thrown across them for rails. The height of all these is from four to five feet, as is also that of the post-and-rail fences.

I have seen, when we have met at Glenelg, on the sea-coast, and right in the heart of the fenced country, a field of about twenty wellmounted men, most of them in scarlet coats, and all turned out in the true old English fashion. I have seen this field taking these fences in a style that would do no discredit to any provincial hunt at home; for, although, in my foregoing description of days with the Adelaide, I have stated that the field was a heterogeneous collection of stock-keepers, &c., it must be remembered that I date back as far as 1843, when the hunt was first established. Since that time the real sportsmen have taken up the thing, and we now show at the cover side as correct "turns out" as could be wished.

THINGS IN GENERAL.

AN EPILOGUE TO THE PRESENT NUMBER.

To take a comprehensive survey of the affairs of this world-by which we understand those matters only that concern ourselves-it is not necessary to soar very high; the altitude of our desk is sufficiently elevated for the purpose.

From this "empyrean height" we proceed to take another bird's-eye view of what has been going on in a general way during the last few weeks.

We are in duty bound, we suppose, to begin with Parliament-that wonderful mountain which has produced so many mice.

It would be difficult, generally speaking, for the best-intentioned miracle-workers who ever filled a House of Commons, to satisfy the melo-dramatic expectations of the public when once they have been raised-as during the recess they are always sure to be-by rumour,

Upon whose tongue continual slanders ride;

and for the first three weeks of the session the universal rule of expecting very much from the deliberations of parliament, and realising very little, was not departed from.

But he only is wisely expectant who, instead of calculating probabilities, is always prepared for a surprise. Political events bear a very close resemblance to the tricks in a pantomime. Some change is, from the nature of the case, inevitable, but that assuredly will not happen which you have every reason to anticipate. Now, all the world were, last week, looking anxiously for the result of Lord Naas's motion, which wore an aspect so menacing to the existence of the administration; but the blow was delivered, fell short of its aim, and "the inevitable government," as Mr. Fox Maule called it, rode out the storm in triumph. A short-lived one, however, as the next four-and-twenty hours only too clearly showed. But before we speak of that which, though a week old, is still the subject of conversation, we must, in sporting phrase, “hark back" to the anticipations which heralded the session of 1852.

It was said, for instance, only a week before parliament met, and while the latest of the thousand-and-one cabinet councils was being held, that the "happy family" had become so seriously disunited, that all the owls and rats, and other noxious vermin, were to be turned out of the cage, and nothing left but respectable animals, whose steadiness of character offered a certain guarantee for the propriety of their conduct. But what was the fact? A monkey and a sloth were turned adrift, and the owls and rats still kept their places! A good deal of mischief, and some stupidity, were carted away; but quite enough of both was left to excite the apprehensions of the wise, and provoke the anger of the impatient. The substitutions were not so much amiss, but in only one instance did the "happy family," or the public, derive any advantage from the change. For the rest, it was all hocus-pocus; you looked for the pea under one thimble, and it turned up under another! So much for the expected cabinet changes.

Slight as they, however, were, they gave rise not only to the amusing episode which enlivened the first night's debate in the House of Commons,

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but to the catastrophe which has brought the Whig epic so suddenly to an end.

In the recriminatory "explanations" which took place between the then premier and his ex-foreign secretary, it was broadly laid down by the former, that a properly-organised cabinet resembled nothing so much as Mr. Albany Brown's new Marionette Theatre, in which the actors—no matter how smart and independent they seemed-were utterly incapable of performing a single function till set in motion by a power over their heads, and that any puppet venturing to act upon its own responsibility, was doomed to an ineviable fiasco and its attendant disgrace. It was argued, on the other hand, by the ejected minister, that so far from being, as people supposed, a universal firebrand, he had clearly established his incontestible right to the title of a wet-blanket,-no brisk lucifer-match, but a quiet, sedate extinguisher; and he showed, in the most convincing manner, that—like the famous Monsieur Jourdain-he had, after all, the right to say: "Par ma foi, il y a plus de quarante ans que je fais du brouhaha sans que j'en susse; et je vous suis le plus obligé du monde de m'avoir appris cela."

The discussion was, on the whole, not so much a question of principles as of politeness, for both sides seemed bent upon proving that they had repudiated all their antecedents; and the only fact of any consequence elicited by it was, that statemanship and courtesy do not always go hand-in-hand:

"Non bene conveniunt, nec in unâ sede morantur."

After the men came the measures.

We will take the most notable amongst them-the new Reform Billa réchauffé of the old hash, converted into an olla podrida.

It was brought smoking to the table by the chief cook, and the wondering guests, who had somehow got an inkling that there was something in the dish to suit every palate, began to lick their lips, like Sancho at the wedding-feast of Camacho the Rich; but, though each got something, they also-like the hungry squire-were doomed to disappointment. The chef, after saying grace, took off the lid of the olla, and poured forth the contents.

First came the five-pound franchise, into which the Manchester men incontinently thrust their forks, as they no less eagerly did into the occupation franchise, and the forty-shilling tax-payer; but there was nothing else to their taste, and in vain they looked for universal suffrage

and the ballot.

Then followed a bevy of newly-conglomerated boroughs, that came rolling out like dumplings, for which both Whigs and Tories immediately began to scramble; some burnt their mouths, others complained that what they got was cold; and the Conservatives found that their dumplings had nothing in them, and that all the plums were in the Cabinet pudding.

The majority of the Irish, and a few of the English gentlemen, whose appetites were keener than their tastes were delicate, made a rush at the "no-property qualification;" the friends of the Jews congratulated themselves on the oath-abolishing clause; Mr. Hume, and the out-and-out Reformers, with maws capacious enough to swallow anything, bolted the little borough of St. Alban's, and "ope'd their ponderous jaws" to take in

Harwich, Ipswich, and heaven knows how many more of the disfranchised by anticipation; but instead of crunching this agreeable food, they got nothing but the refuse of the olla, the warmed-up legs, wings, livers, and gizzards of all the obscene birds that were strangled by Schedule A, and tossed into the caldron of 1832, to be again fished out in the present year of grace, just twenty years afterwards.

And all the while the little man-cook kept rubbing his chin, and smiling as complacently as if he had turned out a dinner, irreproachable in every particular.

Such as it was, however, the various guests prepared to discuss the viands, when, like Ariel in the Enchanted Island, "enter Palmerston, like a harpy; claps his wings upon the table, and, with a quaint device, the banquet vanishes;" that is to say, the little man-cook disappears, with all his marmitons, leaving to others the task of ministering to the feast.

But before we let them go, let us give a God-speed to one of the party, with the earnest hope that he, at least, may never come back to have a finger in the Ministerial pie.

It was said of an eminent statesman that he possessed the art of so softening the pain of a refusal, as to make the disappointed applicant feel, when he withdrew, that he had received a boon. No man living, we will venture to say, ever fell into such a mistake who was a suitor at tke Colonial-office while its destinies were swayed by the mild and conciliating nobleman, whom nothing but sheer force could ever remove from that department. The rule with him was, to confer a favour as if he were giving physic; you took it because you wanted it: but the way the dose was made up deprived the patient of all the benefit he might have derived from the medicine. The only wonder was, how, under such circumstances, men could be reduced to such a strait of misery as to seek for colonial appointments. What was your fate when you were nominated? Hampered with a load of instructions, as heavy and multifarious as the contents of the basket carried by Amine's porter in the Arabian Nights -you staggered under your burden, and damaged everybody who came in contact with them.

First you snubbed your colonists, and, having done so, found you had "exceeded your authority;" then you administered soft-sawder, and were told, in the next despatch, that "the dignity of her Majesty's government was compromised by inappropriate concessions;" then you took "a medium course," and were reproached with "indecision;" till, like the unlucky drummer in the story, qui avait la main malheureuse, you got bewildered altogether, struck right and left, now hard, now soft, without method or consideration, and then, perchance, you earned the approval of your chief -a fool's Paradise, which you enjoyed till your dream was broken by an ignominious recal.

This was the fate of the civil

governor.

If you chanced to be a military man, trained in the best school of arms, and wearing the well-earned laurels of half a century of honourable and distinguished service, you were belaboured with military criticism by one

That never set a squadron in the field,

Nor the division of a battle knows
More than a spinster.

And worse than this-though the cudgelling of "plumed ignorance" is