And yet there is a charm about the bush—­the perfect peace in the “free air of God”—­that so takes hold of some men that they can never be happy anywhere else.  Civilisation is a fine thing in its way, but the petty worries and annoyances, the bustle and excitement, the crowds of people, the “you can’t do this,” and “you must do that,” the necessity for dressing in most uncomfortable garments to be like other people, and a thousand other such matters, so distress a bushman, who, like a caged beast in a menagerie, wanders from corner to corner and cannot find where to rest, that he longs for the day that he will again be on the track, with all his worldly goods with him and the wide world before him.  Such a man in the bush and in the town is as different as a fish in and out of water.

Some of the finest fellows “outside the tracks” are the least respectable in civilised places, where before long they can find no better occupation than drinking, which, owing to months of teetotalism in the bush, they are less able to stand than the ordinary individual who takes his beer or spirits daily.  And thus it is that bushmen very often get the name of being loafers and drunkards, though on the aggregate they consume far less liquor than our most respected citizens in the towns.  The sudden change in surroundings, good food, and the number of fellow-creatures, the noise of traffic, and want of exercise—­all these combined are apt to affect a man’s head, even when unaided by the constant flow of liquor with which a popular bushman is deluged—­a deluge hard to resist in a country where to refuse a drink amounts to an insult.  A plan recommended by some is to “please ’em all by one jolly good spree, and then knock off and drink with nobody.”  A man only gives offence who discriminates in his entertainers.

I fear I have wandered far from the subject of our journey, for Luck and I had some time yet before us until the joys and troubles of civilised life should be ours.  The daily routine of travel was varied occasionally by incidents of no great moment; for instance, when riding through the scrub, Omerod, a rather clumsy old camel, tripped and fell, pinning me beneath him, without injury to either of us; for a water bag acted as a buffer between my leg and the saddle, and by the time all the water was squeezed out of it, Luck had the saddle off, and I was extricated.  Certainly some camels are hard to put out or fluster; such a one was Omerod, who lay without a kick until relieved of his saddle, when he rose and at once proceeded to feed on the scrub.

Later, we had another instance of his stolidity; that was when crossing a salt lake.  Jenny was light and escaped bogging; not so Omerod, who sank as far as his legs would allow, and there waited calmly until we had unpacked the loads, carried them across the lake, and returned to help Shimsha, who struggled violently in the sticky clay.  When he was safely taken across to an island on which we sought refuge,