The Ground Was Very Stony, And Covered With Burnt Irishman Scrub, Against Which (The Irishman Being Black And Charred, And Consequently Invisible In The Dark) I Was Continually Stumbling And Spilling Half The Water.

There was a terrace, too, so that we seldom arrived with much more than half a pannikin, and the kettle was an immense step in advance.

The Irishman called it very "beneficial," as he called everything that pleased him. He was a great character: he used to "destroy" his food, not eat it. If I asked him to have any more bread or meat, he would say, with perfect seriousness, that he had "destroyed enough this time." He had many other quaint expressions of this sort, but they did not serve to make the hut water- tight, and I was half regretfully obliged to send him away a short time afterwards.

The winter's experience satisfied me that the country that H - and I had found would not do for sheep, unless worked in connection with more that was clear of snow throughout the year. As soon, therefore, as I was convinced that the adjacent country was safe, I bought it, and settled upon it in good earnest, abandoning the V hut. I did so with some regret, for we had good fare enough in it, and I rather liked it; we had only stones for seats, but we made splendid fires, and got fresh and clean snow-grass to lie on, and dried the floor with wood-ashes. Then we confined the snow-grass within certain limits by means of a couple of poles laid upon the ground and fixed into their places with pegs; then we put up several slings to hang our saddle-bags, tea, sugar, salt, bundles, etc.; then we made a horse for the saddles - four riding-saddles and a pack-saddle - and underneath this went our tools at one end and our culinary utensils, limited but very effective, at the other. Having made it neat we kept it so, and of a night it wore an aspect of comfort quite domestic, even to the cat, which would come in through a hole left in the thatched door for her especial benefit, and purr a regular hurricane. We blessed her both by day and by night, for we saw no rats after she came; and great excitement prevailed when, three weeks after her arrival, she added a litter of kittens to our establishment.

CHAPTER VII

Loading Dray - Bullocks - Want of Roads - Banks Peninsula - Front and Back Ranges of Mountains - River-beds - Origin of the Plains - Terraces - Tutu - Fords - Floods - Lost Bullocks - Scarcity of Features on the Plains - Terraces - Crossing the Ashburton - Change of Weather - Roofless Hut - Brandy-keg.

I completed the loading of my dray on a Tuesday afternoon in the early part of October, 1860, and determined on making Main's accommodation- house that night. Of the contents of the dray I need hardly speak, though perhaps a full enumeration of them might afford no bad index to the requirements of a station; they are more numerous than might at first be supposed - rigidly useful and rarely if ever ornamental.

Flour, tea, sugar, tools, household utensils few and rough, a plough and harrows, doors, windows, oats and potatoes for seed, and all the usual denizens of a kitchen garden; these, with a few private effects, formed the main bulk of the contents, amounting to about a ton and a half in weight. I had only six bullocks, but these were good ones, and worth many a team of eight; a team of eight will draw from two to three tons along a pretty good road. Bullocks are very scarce here; none are to be got under twenty pounds, while thirty pounds is no unusual price for a good harness bullock. They can do much more in harness than in bows and yokes, but the expense of harness and the constant disorder into which it gets, render it cheaper to use more bullocks in the simpler tackle. Each bullock has its name, and knows it as well as a dog does his. There is generally a tinge of the comic in the names given to them. Many stations have a small mob of cattle from whence to draw their working bullocks, so that a few more or a few less makes little or no difference. They are not fed with corn at accommodation-houses, as horses are; when their work is done, they are turned out to feed till dark, or till eight or nine o'clock. A bullock fills himself, if on pretty good feed, in about three or three and a half hours; he then lies down till very early morning, at which time the chances are ten to one that, awakening refreshed and strengthened, he commences to stray back along the way he came, or in some other direction; accordingly, it is a common custom, about eight or nine o'clock, to yard one's team, and turn them out with the first daylight for another three or four hours' feed. Yarding bullocks is, however, a bad plan. They do their day's work of from fifteen to twenty miles, or sometimes more, at one spell, and travel at the rate of from two and a half to three miles an hour.

The road from Christ Church to Main's is metalled for about four and a half miles; there are fences and fields on both sides, either laid down in English grass or sown with grain; the fences are chiefly low ditch and bank planted with gorse, rarely with quick, the scarcity of which detracts from the resemblance to English scenery which would otherwise prevail. The copy, however, is slatternly compared with the original; the scarcity of timber, the high price of labour, and the pressing urgency of more important claims upon the time of the small agriculturist, prevent him, for the most part, from attaining the spick- and-span neatness of an English homestead.

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