The Bush

“ Perhaps you forget you were six months ago In Queensland a-humping your swag. But who’d think to see you now dining in state With a lord and the devil knows who, You were flashing your dover, six short months ago, In a lambing camp on the Barcoo. When’s my time coming? Perhaps never, I think, And it’s likely enough your old mate Will be humping his drum on the Hughenden-road To the end of the chapter of fate. THE BUSHMAN (Air: “Wearing of the Green.”) When the merchant lies down, he can scarce go to sleep For thinking of his merchandise upon the fatal deep ”

“ Because a Bush you know is exposed to manifold wilderness tryals, and storms—there hardly a wind blows but the Bush in the wilderness feels it Just so is it with the Church of Christ Hence saith the Lord, “O thou afflicted and tossed with tempests and not comforted.’ In these words the Lord speaks to his Bush ”

“ The pathless Bush lay before him, thousands of miles in one direction,—the wide, deserted Indian Ocean in the other. He might eke out a precarious existence for a while in the Bush, living a life lower than that of the lowest savage, whose wood-craft could procure Mm a living ”

“ I am addressing these gentlemen from the Bush. You're too beastly dirty and lazy to be a Bushman," said Claud, adjusting his eyeglass and surveying the squat figure of the M.P. as if he were examining a maggot. ”

“ That harvest was the happiest we ever spent in the bush. We had enough of the common necessaries of life. A spirit of peace and harmony pervaded our little dwelling, for the most affectionate attachment existed among its members. We were not troubled with servants, for the good old Jenny we regarded as an humble friend, and were freed, by that circumstance, from many of the cares and vexations of a bush life. Our evening excursions on the lake were doubly enjoyed after the labours of the day, and night brought us calm and healthful repose. ”

“ I noticed something like a hint of a hard smile on Ross’s face; he moved the hand on the desk and tightened it.
“Yes,” said Peter, as if in answer to Ross’s expression and the movement of his hand, “there is beauty in this life here. After a good season, and when the bush is tall and dry, when the bush-fires threaten a man’s crop of ripened wheat, there are tired men who run and ride from miles round to help that man, and who fight the fire all night to save his wheat—and some of them may have been wrangling with him for years. ”

“ Until recently, Australian city artists and editors—who knew as much about the bush as Downing Street knows about the British colonies in general—seemed to think the horse-collar swag was still in existence; and some artists gave the swagman a stick, as if he were a tramp of civilization with an eye on the backyard and a fear of the dog. English artists, by the way, seem firmly convinced that the Australian bushman is born in Wellington boots with a polish on ’em you could shave yourself by. ”

“ When blood has once been tasted, so to speak, in savage earnest, “civilization” peels off like nose-skin in the tropics, and “Christian” men, and even boys, are ready—eager—to shed blood like water. They are not eager to talk about what they have done when they get back from the Bush amongst their mothers, sisters, wives, and sweethearts ”

“ The huge store-trough conveniently is placed,
And he, to gather sap, begins in haste.
With pail upon each arm he moves along,
O'er the soft snow, the noble trees among.
If tunable, perhaps a song he sings
Of "Auld lang syne," or some more serious things,
Which tends to make his work more easy seem,
Or drive away some foolish, waking dream.
The Bush, if large, will need another band
To tend the fire ”

“ Resources of civilization get handed on to the Bush tribes, but that can’t be what it was started for. However, recently the tribes have begun to run cunning, and they hide themselves and all their goods when they have reason to expect a friendly visit. This was what they had done the day we landed. But, while we were jawing with the interpreter, we heard a yell to make your hair stand on end. The Bush tribe came down on the village all in their war paint,—white clay; an arrangement, as you say, in black and white. ”

“ Collyer, the Dublin desperado, was not transported.
20 A term given by the Bush-rangers to a dreary flat, called “Murderer’s Plains.” The following statement, sworn before A. W. H. Humphrey, Esq., Justice of Peace in New Norfolk, Van Diemen’s Land, mentions this; and as the statement shows very strongly the daring spirit of the Bush-rangers, I copy it.—It is from a daily journal, called “The Bengal Hurkaru.” ”

“ Leaving the colonel's hospitable house on our left, we again plunged into the woods, and after a few minutes' brisk walking, found ourselves upon the brow of a steep bank that overlooked the beaver-meadow, containing within its area several hundred acres.
There is no scenery in the bush that presents such a novel appearance as those meadows, or openings, surrounded as they invariably are, by dark, intricate forests; their high, rugged banks covered with the light, airy tamarack and silver birch. ”

“ I needn't have worried either, for several of the blokes out there left their own pressing work and bogged into my scrub, doing it under regulation price, so that I wouldn't have to find any cash over what the bank had advanced. I don't know about the towns, but in the Bush you'll always find them willing to help a lame dog over a stile like that. You've only got to be sick to find out how some, perhaps intolerably bad tempered, hitherto unfriendly neighbour will turn-to and do his bit for you with a will. ”

“ The year of the Canadian rebellion came, and brought with it sorrow into many a bush dwelling. Old Jenny and I were left alone with the little children, in the depths of the dark forest, to help ourselves in the best way we could. Men could not be procured in that thinly-settled spot for love nor money, and I now fully realised the extent of Jenny's usefulness. Daily she yoked the oxen, and brought down from the bush fuel to maintain our fires, which she felled and chopped up with her own hands. She fed the cattle, and kept all things snug about the doors ”

“ Bush claimed to have been born about 1791 in what is now Missouri, but was then the French Colony of Louisiana, and in the extreme Far West, and only reached by the most daring hunters. His early manhood was spent in the employ of the great trading companies who reached out into the Rock Mountains each season and [Pg 108] gathered furs from the Indians and the occasional white trappers. ”

“ Strange to say, however, none of the squatters from the Bush, none of the speculating men, nor anybody else apparently, were very much inclined to be lectured about their own country, and the right and wrong way of doing things, by a Squire from the old country, who had never been here before. ”

“ I know that you are all ready to help, that you are all thirsting to wipe out old scores with the blacks; but at the same time I would point out to you that it is likely enough that the bush rangers, who certainly work with the blacks, will follow up this stroke. ”

“ The conspicuous mark upon the distant belt of dingy low-sized forest—the object that glitters in the strong sunlight, so that it can be seen across miles and miles of plain—is merely the galvanised-iron roof of a log-hut, the hut that has been the lodging of the boundary-rider of the Yelkin Paddock ever since the Yelkin Paddock was fenced.
A boundary-rider is not a 'boss' in the Bush, but he is an important personage, in his way. ”

“ Besides, improvements are taking place every day even in Bush-life. However, in the free-and-easy life one leads in the Bush one soon learns to feel quite independent of the finer arts of the upholsterer. ”

“ May the blessing of God rest upon Canada and the Canadian people!
Susanna Moodie
Belleville, 1871
APPENDIX C JEANIE BURNS
(This chapter was originally intended by Mrs. Moodie for inclusion in the first edition of Roughing it in the Bush but was instead published in the periodical Bentley's Miscellany, in August 1852. It was later revised and included in the book Life in the Clearings versus the Bush by the same author.)
“Ah, human hearts are strangely cast, Time softens grief and pain; Like reeds that shiver in the blast, They bend to rise again. ”

“ Bush′-cat, the serval.—adj. Bushed, lost in the bush.—ns. Bush′-harr′ow, a light kind of harrow used for covering grass-seeds, formed of a barred frame interwoven with bushes or branches; Bush′iness; Bush′man, a settler in the uncleared land of America or the Colonies, a woodsman: one of a native race in South Africa (Dut. boschjesman) ; Bush′-rang′er, in Australia, a lawless fellow, often an escaped criminal, who takes to the bush and lives by robbery ”

“ How the people without shoes bore it, I cannot imagine. Never shall I forget the extraordinary spectacle that met our sight the moment we passed the low range of bushes which formed a screen in front of the river. A crowd of many hundred Irish emigrants had been landed during the present and former day; and all this motley crew—men, women, and children, who were not confined by sickness to the sheds (which greatly resembled cattle-pens) were employed in washing clothes, or spreading them out on the rocks and bushes to dry. ”

“ Although we did not destroy the gang on this campaign, we were the means of hanging four of the Bush-rangers. On the third day’s march after we started, we were close to a place called the Tea-tree Brush, and were poking our way through a thick and wide bed of briers and brushwood, in order to get over to an open and green space shaded with trees, where we proposed cooking a quarter of mutton, when we spied a smoke rising from the very trees we were approaching. ”

“ A black sheep may now and then be found in every flock, and it is undeniable that the very isolation of each settler on his own clearing, and the utter absence of all conventional restraint, engenders something of lawlessness, of contempt for public opinion, and occasionally of brutality to animals, but only I am bound to say in the ungenial and depraved natures of those whose conduct out of the Bush would be equally reprehensible. ”

“ Leo Hunter. How interesting! I suppose you must have become almost savage!
Mr. W. Frequently, when I couldn't get a 'bus or a cab.
Mrs. L. H. (utterly astonished) . A 'bus or a cab! in the bush!!
Mr. W. (pleasantly) . Ah, yes; I was talking of "Shepherd's Bush." Good morning.
[Exit chuckling.
⁂ Note by the Bird in the Bush.—In future this little jest of Waggy's will be impossible, as it is proposed to re-name Shepherd's Bush, and call it Pastoral Park, or All-Askew Park, or something of the sort.]
"Sortes Shaksperianæ."—On the new Postmaster-General:—
"Friend post the Duke of Norfolk." ”

“ This was, indeed, sound divinity out of the mouth of Satan He had a mind to give holy Job, a fruitful branch of his Bush, a heavy blow: and he argues with his owner anent i. As if he had said, I cannot reach that branch of the Bush a blow he is so well guarded and hedged about. Shall I get a hit of him? I despair of getting it to eternity, in regard he is so well fenced and hedged about. This are the people of Christ well guarded and protected. The Lord himself is their fence and hedge ”

“ Tell Master Jim to coo-ee when lunch is ready.”
“Plenty,” said Billy intelligently.
Norah turned from the creek and entered the scrub. She loved the bush, and was never happier than when exploring its recesses. A born bushmaid, she had never any difficulty about finding her way in the scrub, or of retracing her steps. The faculty of bushmanship must be born in you; if you have it not naturally, training very rarely gives it. ”

“ In this country it is a numerous one, and the Bush is both our refuge and our cemetery. As we wish to know nobody, so we desire that nobody shall ever know us; and being beyond the reach of pride or shame, we live entirely in memories of the past, through which we enjoy a keener torture than any creed or sect can promise us hereafter. If you have the understanding, you might write the book of our misery, and, believe me, you'd have an inexhaustible reservoir upon which to draw.
"Before you came out you had a different notion of Australia? ”

“ That was his last visit to Wonga-Wonga. A short time afterwards he was found dead in the Bush, with his dogs standing over him, and his tame snakes wriggling about him. He had died of old age merely, and was buried in the Bush in which he had spent the greater part of his life. Old Cranky had been the “oldest inhabitant” in that part of the colony; and when he was gone, people began to rake up old stories of the old convict times in which he had figured. One day a settler, to whose father Old Cranky had been assigned, was dining at Wonga-Wonga, and telling us what he remembered of the old lag. ”

“ There could have been no better cabin for 'a life awry' (not even in the Bush, the living sepulchre of so many such) than the Yelkin hut. But it was not the place to forget in. There are, however, strong natures that can never forget, and still live on. There are still stronger natures that do not seek to forget, yet retain some of the joy of living side by side with the full sorrow of remembrance. The boundary-rider's was one of these. ”

“ Anyway, he saw this valley, and it seemed to strike him that he could make a ranch in it.”
“Why should he fix on this particular valley?”
“The thing’s plain enough. How many years does a man usually spend chopping a clearing out of the Bush? ”