Explore "The Call of the Southern Cross, A Romance of Australia" by John Sandes on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
If that energetic young ensign, Tom Brisbane, of His Majesty's 38th Regiment of Foot, had not been quartered in Galway in 1790, and had not shouted a ringing 'hooray' when a long-nosed young officer on a raking bay mare flew over a formidable stone wall that had pounded most of the field, Sydney Verner would not have been born at Parramatta a good many years later and this veracious chronicle of his strange experiences would never have been written. That is at least as certain as anything can be in this uncertain world.
The long-nosed young officer, who happened to be a lieutenant in the 12th Light Dragoons, and who was passionately fond of hunting, turned in his saddle to see who it was that had shouted 'hooray' with such obvious sincerity. Making inquiry of a local squireen, Mr. Cornelius Blake by name, the lieutenant was curtly informed that the acclaimer of his horsemanship was "a d--d Scotchman be the name of Brisbane." Whereupon, after transfixing Mr. Blake with a most haughty stare from his cold, blue eyes, the long-nosed young officer rode off as hard as he could in the wake of the flying hounds, and at the first check found himself alongside Tom Brisbane, to whom he courteously offered his hunting flask. The young ensign took a drink from the flask with a smile of thanks, and there and then inaugurated a life-long friendship with the long-nosed young officer, whose name was Arthur Wellesley, and who many eventful years afterwards procured for Major-General Brisbane, K.C.B., the governorship of the colony of New South Wales in succession to Macquarie.