But ere noon is high he once more hears the brawling river beneath his feet, and Garoopna is before him on the opposite bank.
The river, as it left Major Buckley's at Baroona, made a sudden bend to the west, a great arc, including with its minor windings nearly twenty-five miles, over the chord of which arc Sam had now been riding, making, from point to point, ten miles, or thereabouts.

The Mayfords' station, also, lay to the left of him, being on the curved side of the arc, about five miles from Baroona.

The reader may, if he please, remember this.
Garoopna was an exceedingly pretty station; in fact, one of the most beautiful I have ever seen.

It stood at a point where the vast forests which surround the mountains in a belt, from ten to twenty miles broad, run down into the plains and touch the river.

As at Baroona, the stream runs in through a deep cleft in the table land, which here, though precipitous on the eastern bank, on the western breaks away into a small natural amphitheatre bordered by fine hanging woods just in advance of which, about two hundred yards from the river, stood the house, a long, low building densely covered with creepers of all sorts, and fronted by a beautiful garden.