Colonial memories

My cordial thanks are due—and given—to the Editor of the _Cornhill Magazine_, within whose pages some of these “Memories” have from time to time appeared, for permission to repu...

We had brought all our goods and chattels out with us, and the wooden house was soon turned into a very pretty comfortable little homestead. The great trouble was getting the ga...

I well remember that Monday morning and the strange restlessness which seemed to extend to the sheep, for they must have felt the coming trouble long before we thought of calami...

Some of the incidental difficulties were very absurd. Two men lived in a hut up a lonely and distant river-gorge, who were among my earliest pupils, and they also came regularly...

And yet one is glad of these same rains after the long dry winter, when all vegetation seems to disappear off the baked earth and the cattle become so thin that it is a wonder t...

The last few miles seemed a nightmare of stumbling up and down break-neck places on tired horses in the dark, and the contrast of a charming little house at last, with lights an...

However, a couple of days’ imprisonment was all we suffered that time, and the instant the gale dropped, at sunrise on the second day, the rain ceased and the sun shone out. It...

For instance, one morning I was called into the Governor’s office to look at a tin collar just sent up from the port of Freemantle for the Governor’s inspection. It appeared tha...

Just about this time one of the neighbours imported a special breed of fowls, which Bill forthwith proceeded to torment in his leisure moments. The owner of the unhappy poultry...

Of course, the repast ended with the one toast of the “Health of her Majesty the Queen,” with musical honours and equally, of course, it was cheered and shouted at to the echo,...

Trinidad is a great place for cricket, and boasts a beautiful ground belonging to a private club. First-class teams often go out there to play matches, and I used to see incessa...

Our house steward told me that, when he was superintending the moving of our numerous boxes and packages on the return from our short annual visit to England, he noticed on the...

In spite of our really enormous luncheon, we were bidden to a banquet on our return to Port Mathurin, and that day actually ended with a ball! We had made ourselves independent...

If “Monsieur Jorge” and his myrmidons had appeared in the least tipsy, the situation would have been less perplexing, but except a profound and impenetrable gravity of demeanour...

One terrible night, spent in walking up and down the shore at Rottnest with a distracted lighthouse-keeper, who had just heard that his young wife had been wrecked and lost on h...

I looked at the name, rather a remarkable one, though I have quite forgotten it, turned to the letter-book, and, lo, it was the same as the curate’s! I did not say anything to m...

But he certainly is the most mischievous and destructive of his mischievous species. Nothing is safe from his sudden and unexpected fits of energy. I first put him in a little c...

One day the crow must have persuaded the moriché to help him to roll and drag a reel of coarse white cotton from the corridor of the work-room, across the floor of my sitting-ro...