It is a country full of dead volcanoes, whose craters have been
turned into salt lakes, and their rolling floods of lava have been
stiffened into barriers of black rocks; where the ashes belched forth
in fiery blasts from the deep furnaces of a burning world have
covered the hills and plains with perennial fertility.
Baldy had been entrusted with a fattening flock, and Nosey had in his
care a lambing flock. From time to time the sheep were counted, and
it was found that the fattening flock was decreasing in numbers. The
squatter wanted to know what had become of his missing sheep, but
Baldy could give no account of them. His suspicions, however, soon
fell on Nosey. The latter was his nearest neighbour, and although he
had only the same wages--viz., thirty pounds a year and rations--
he seemed to be unaccountably prosperous, and was the owner of a wife
and two horses. He had been transported for larceny when he was only
fifteen years of age, and at twenty-eight he was suspected of being
still a thief. Girls of the same age were sent from Great Britain to
Botany Bay and Van Diemen's Land for stealing one bit of finery,
worth a shilling, and became the consorts of criminals of the deepest
dye. You may read their names in the Indents to this day, together
with their height, age, complexion, birthplace, and other important
particulars.
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