But As There Are Few
Positive Pleasures Equal In Intensity To The Negative One Of Release
From Pain, So It Is When At Last A Group Of Six Oblong Objects, Five
Dark And One White, Appears In Remote Distance, Distinct And
Unmistakable.
Yes, they are our bullocks; a sigh of relief follows, and
we drive them sharply home, gloating over their distended tongues and
slobbering mouths.
If there is one thing a bullock hates worse than
another it is being driven too fast. His heavy lumbering carcase is
mated with a no less lumbering soul. He is a good, slow, steady,
patient slave if you let him take his own time about it; but don't hurry
him. He has played a very important part in the advancement of
civilisation and the development of the resources of the world, a part
which the more fiery horse could not have played; let us then bear with
his heavy trailing gait and uncouth movements; only next time we will
keep him tight, even though he starve for it. If bullocks be invariably
driven sharply back to the dray, whenever they have strayed from it,
they will soon learn not to go far off, and will be cured even of the
most inveterate vagrant habits.
Now we follow up one branch of the Ashburton, and commence making
straight for the mountains; still, however, we are on the same
monotonous plains, and crawl our twenty miles with very few objects that
can possibly serve as landmarks.
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