<< Previous Page  .....  Now what’s their little game? Have they got a tame rhinoceros they want to can up to scare off trespassers? The chain grows tauter and tauter: the tree rocks and cracks; our attention is riveted, and we watch that tree with a sporting eye. Watch out, trespassers! Bully for the Rhino! The tree bends to it, then recovers a little. We feel sympathy with the rhinoceros; we like its pluck; we put our money on “Rhino” and cheer him on. Hooray! We win! The tree is rooted clean out, and our champion is towing it off. We rush to cheer him, to congratulate him, and - well! it it isn’t that precocious engine again!

And now the land is cleared of trees. Great patches of rich red or chocolate earth show clean to the sun for the first time since time began; rich and sweet smelling. We look for the sweating teams that have done all this, and hie away to the stables. The horses are fresh as paint, with no sign of the mighty struggle the new earth tells us must have taken place; and - Oh well! we’re about tired of that blessed engine, but there it is, chucking up ten furrows at a time.

We turn away towards the new-made road; but this time it is alive with happy voices of men, women and children; whips crack, horses gallop, and vehicles of all kinds roll into the new settlement - Winchester! The name Winchester, we ought to add, has been given to the first settlement because the Company’s London office is in Winchester House. The families are bundled off to their own particular homes, and as evening falls the smoke from a hundred chimneys floats upwards; lights from a hundred windows shine out brightly; the humming and singing of three hundred voices - treble, soprano, and bass, and the tinkling of banjos filter through the air. Lowing cattle, neighing horses, barking dogs, cackling poultry; all these sounds and sights unite to proclaim that a new town is born. Winchester! All hail, Winchester!! Even Nature joins in the hail, and great Mother Earth softly crooning murmurs contentedly:-

“I am the Plain, barren since time began;
Throbbing with thoughts of Motherhood when man
In his good time discovers all my charms
And gives me Towns as babies in my arms.”     Next Page >>