The following short narrative was written specially for a small circle of intimate acquaintances, who varied the dulness of village life by meeting once a week to read manuscript essays and selections from favourite authors. The time allowed for reading being limited, and the audience being partly composed of young people, I confined myself mainly to personal experience. As many of the company had previously heard me relate in an off-hand way, the leading incidents, detection would have been sure to follow any attempt at spicing my story with fiction.

The incidents are selections merely from three years’ recollections of the Colony. Some who have never been further from home than in their annual visit to a watering place, have been pleased to call them adventures. The term may appear too strong to those who like the writer have reclined by a bush fire, listening to the stories of old hands, but as there may be much serious living without broken bones, I submit this brief history to those who think so.

James Armour.

Gateshead, April, 1864.

THREE YEARS IN VICTORIA.