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PURCHASE OF LAND.

Furnishing a Bush Hut.

293

The following are what a bachelor shepherd has to make shift with:

Bedding, which he must find himself. A hide stretched loosely over four posts driven in the ground makes an excellent bed, or couch.

Iron pots for meat.

Tin quart pots for tea.
Fryingpan.

Tin dishes.

Knives-pocket are generally used.

Flour or wheat.

Cask for salting meat.

Tables and stools, home made.

Buckets, at least a couple.

Matches, or tinder-box, flint, and
steel.

Stores for Farm.

The wheat involves a steel mill and sieves.

Meat, either salted and conveyed to the farm, or purchased standing and slaughtered.

men.

Tea.
Coffee.

Sugar.
Salt.

Tobacco.
Soap.

All these are indispensable, and required for the weekly rations of Each settler must adapt his further stock of stores to his circumstances. Large settlers will require slop clothing for their men ; little settlers will not. As a rule, do not ask the shopkeeper himself what goods you ought to give him an order for.

CHAPTER XXI.

HOW TO BUY OR LEASE LAND FROM THE CROWN-SHEEP RUNS THE SHEPHERD'S LIFE-HUT KEEPER-LAMBING-SHEEP WASHING-SHEARING-PURCHASE OF SHEEP-DISEASES OF SHEEP-CATTLE AND BULLOCK TEAMS-DAIRY-STOCKMEN-BRANDING CATTLE-HORSE BREEDING-RIDING IN AUSTRALIA.

LA

AND in New South Wales and Victoria (Port Phillip), and South Australia, is divided into town, suburban, and country lots, and sold by auction. Country land is put up at a minimum price of £1 an acre, and, after having been once submitted to competition, may be sold by private contract at the minimum price. The lots of country land were formerly large-seldom less than 640 acres, except in South Australia, where they were 80 acres ; but in 1851 instructions were sent out from the Colonial Office to survey and sell small lots of 30 and 50 acres in New South Wales. This order, so contrary to the previous policy of the home government, was brought about by the

almost total cessation of country sales, and the necessity of making some attempt to fix the colonists to the soil.

In New South Wales, and in Victoria, special surveys of twenty thousand acres may be obtained, at the fixed price of £20,000, without competition; and such an investment gives the purchaser a pre-emptive right and the privileges of pasture over 40,000 acres more. This system of special surveys, which is in every respect most mischievous, has been abolished in South Australia ever since the discovery of the Burra copper-mine, and it may be expected that the gold discoveries will lead to its suspension in the elder colonies.

In New South Wales and Victoria there is also a system of government reserves, which are a fruitful source of jobbery and discontent.

The intending land purchaser is continually told after selecting an eligible location-"that is, a government reserve;" and a government reserve it continues, until some favoured purchaser, well recommended from the home government, or otherwise, appears.

For instance, for many years, within ten miles of Melbourne, in the midst of land sold there remained two very eligible lots of fine agricultural land, of about 1,300 acres.

In 1849 the King of Prussia sent out two parties of German emigrants, well recommended to the governor, Mr. Latrobe; the representative of the King of Prussia, armed with a letter from Earl Grey, was permitted to search the archives of the surveyor-general's office, and select, at the minimum price of £1 an acre, the two reserves which had been improved in value by the labour of unpatronized colonists. In the very same year applications from associations of English mechanics to buy land in Port Phillip in block were contemptuously rejected.

But the whole system of land sales will no doubt shortly come under the revision of the representative assemblies of Australia, and important alterations may be anticipated, as colonists take a very different view of the question of colonial land from colonial ministers, who are also English landlords, owning land which has been cultivated for nigh one thousand years.

Squatters' runs beyond the proclaimed districts may be leased for fourteen years; within those districts they are held from year to year.

Sheep Runs.

The original rent for a run estimated to feed 4,000 sheep, or 640 cattle, is not less than £10, and £2 10s. per annum for every additional 1,000 sheep it will carry over 4,000, and also an annual poll-tax of ld. for every lamb, 3d. for every beast, and 6d. for every horse: calves,

SHEEP AND SHEPHERDS.

295

foals, and lambs not counted until six months old. The value of a run is fixed by arbitration between the crown and the lessee.

During the continuance of the lease no part of the run can be sold to any other than the lessee, and he may purchase during its continuance any portion not less than 160 acres, at £1 an acre.

This is the law; but technical difficulties of detail have prevented any considerable number of leases from being granted. With such a lease of a good run, including some good agricultural land, a settler might build a comfortable house, fence in the alluvial flats for grain and gardens, improve and feed stock for thirteen years and ten months, and at the end of that time purchase one or more of the choicest lots, which may, by improvements and advance of population, be worth double the fixed price, while the capital laid out on live stock for that period will have paid much better than if originally invested on land.

Practically there are no runs to be obtained on these terms by a newly-arrived colonist; all the available land in the three colonies has been occupied, except in districts so distant from a seaport that it will not pay to bring down wool from them. Therefore the intending squatter must buy a run with his sheep or cattle; that is, pay a sum of money for tenant right. This proceeding is not recognised by the law of the colony, but it is permitted. It is arranged by an enhanced price for the stock on the run.

Squatters venture to erect buildings and make improvements to the extent of many thousand pounds, as well as give large sums for leave to occupy tracts of country under the crown, as tenants at will, at an annual rent.

The Shepherd.

Any man can make a shepherd who can be content with a life in a desert far from towns and shops, and with no other companions than his wife, his children, his fellow-shepherd, and his family, for two flocks are hurdled near together every night, although they are driven in opposite directions in the day. A flock numbers from five hundred to eight hundred, according as the country is more or less open.

The shepherd should have quick eyes and sharp hearing: he rises just before sunrise, puts his quart pot on the fire, or his wife does, fries some beef or mutton, and makes a breakfast that would be a capital dinner for most agricultural labourers, and after lighting his pipe sallies forth with his dog to let the sheep out of the fold.

He follows the sheep all day, just keeping them in sight and no more, letting them go wherever they please, except into thick scrubs. When they try to go into these places, he heads them back by walking

round them; or if they are old sheep he whistles shrilly, and they face round like soldiers, but if they are lambs he has to send his dog, who very soon rounds them all up on the open ground.

About noon time he heads them toward water, where the sheep, for nearly nine months in the year after drinking, camp; that is to say, lie still in the shade, with their heads turned toward one another, chewing the cud. As evening closes in he turns his flock toward home, so as to arrive at the hut just as the sun dips the horizon. Many sheep turn home of themselves at the proper hour. He will generally have one of his children with him, if any are old enough; the rest will run out to meet him, and he will see from afar off the light and smoke of the fire cooking his supper,- —a welcome sight.

If the weather is fine and dry the sheep are put within hurdles, which should be shifted to a clean dry spot every other day; if it is wet weather they are generally camped out, and watched on the slope of a hill, with a fire above them, toward which they will all draw.

As soon as sheep get into the fold they lie down and chew the cud, never getting up till morning unless disturbed.

If the shepherd has a hutkeeper, or a son, or son-in-law, able to watch the sheep, his work is done for the day, and he can look after his garden, or otherwise amuse himself.

His supper should be a good roast leg of mutton, with a Yorkshire pudding under it, tea, damper, pumpkins, potatoes, onions, cucumbers, and water melons, which every shepherd will have in his own garden if he is not a lazy fellow. If the night is fine, and the dogs good, no special watching will be needed until near midnight, when a watchman must take his seat in his box beside the sheep, where he often falls asleep with his pipe in his mouth. But if it be a windy, rainy night he must keep walking round with a wooden mallet in his hand, to see that the hurdles are firm and not blown down, and to set the dogs on any rascally dingoe that may be prowling about.

Every other morning the hurdles should be shifted, which takes about two hours: any country girl could do it.

The shepherd generally counts his flock once a week, not oftener, if he has confidence that they are all right, as the operation knocks them about and disturbs them. As long as the shepherd does not count them he is answerable for all losses, unless he reports them, and shows (before a magistrate) that the loss was unavoidable-as that it arose from native dogs rustling them, &c.

Married shepherds whose wives act as hutkeepers will generally contrive to take a long sleep at noon, and have the sheep watched by

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some part of their family, so as to be able to do the nightwork in turns with the other shepherd. By such arrangement a wife gets wages and rations for cooking for her own husband.

The curse of flockowners and shepherds is the native dog, an animal in form and colour much resembling a gigantic fox, but partaking more of the wolfish development. This creature, although so cowardly that it flies even from the sheep when first they are driven into a new district untrodden by white men, inflicts fearful ravages on flocks, as well as the young of cattle and horses.

It will rush through a flock while the shepherd has neglectfully fallen asleep, or wandered from his duty, biting right and left, inflict fatal wounds, and drive others into thickets from which many are never recovered.

If the folds round which these creatures constantly prowl are not carefully watched by men or dogs, they will endeavour to penetrate or gnaw through the hurdles: fortunately they rarely attempt to overleap them.

It is the business of a hutkeeper to watch the sheep at night; but, where one of the wives acts as the hutkeeper, the shepherds must arrange for the watching between them.

While following the sheep the shepherd can amuse himself with

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