He makes only one in six months, and he makes it a
favour to let you have it for five pounds. You can take a piece of bark
off a blue gum, big enough for a canoe, with one cut of it. There's a
fine of two pounds for cracking one within a mile of Government House,
they make such a row. A man the other day cracked one of them on the
South Head, and broke the windows in Pitt Street."
"You're improving, master Jim," said Charles Hawker. "You'll soon be as
good a hand at a yarn as Hamlyn's Dick." At the same time he wrote down
a stockwhip, similar to this one, on the tablets of his memory, to be
procured on his projected visit to Sydney.
That evening we all sat listening to Jim's adventures; and pleasantly
enough he told them, with not a little humorous exaggeration. It is
always pleasant to hear a young fellow telling his first impressions of
new things and scenes, which have been so long familiar to ourselves;
but Jim had really a very good power of narration, and he kept us
laughing and amused till long after the usual hour for going to bed.
Next day we had a pleasant ride, all of us, down the banks of the
river.
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