his own, and covered with waving corn; this open space seeming to hold at bay the primeval forest that bordered it, and in the hollow where a large pool separated the cornfields from the farm-yard, there rose a steam flour-mill, a late addition to the homestead of which the full value can be appreciated only by those who have known what it is to have to grind the supply of flour for the family day after day in a hand-mill. I have heard early colonists allude to this as being the most irksome of their daily occupations, especially on Saturdays, when a double portion had to be ground to last over the Sunday.
In the days when Barladong was first springing up into a town all the wheat was ground in these hand-mills, and great were the complaints of the labour falling upon settlers' wives in consequence. Two ingenious men, one of whom was a blacksmith, chivalrously endeavoured to remedy this hardship by constructing a steam-engine from such odds and ends as could be picked up in the colony, which probably then afforded a narrower choice of materials than the contents of an ordinary marine-store at home. They manfully hammered a lot of old tire-iron into the form of a boiler, and actually succeeded in making their engine grind corn, but it was so noisy over its work, and devoured such a quantity of fuel, that it soon wore out its own constitution, and became useless. It remained, however, even in our day, standing in the old mill in its cashiered condition, an interesting monument of colonial perseverance and courageous struggle with difficulties.
In spite of all the toil and inconvenience that beset those early days, they were fondly looked back to by
