to visit their friends and repay themselves for their toils by
a tolerably liberal allowance of rest and recreation.

Old Ben and a few choice specimens of the olden time get no further
than the nearest public house. Their cheques are handed to the landlord
and a "stupendous and terrible spree" sets in. At the end of a week he
informs them that they have received liquor to the amount of their
cheques--something over a hundred pounds--save the mark! They meekly
acquiesce, as is their custom. The landlord generously presents them
with a glass of grog each, and they take the road for the next
woolshed.

The shearers being despatched, the sheep-washers, a smaller and less
regarded force, file up. They number some forty men. Nothing more than
fair bodily strength, willingness and obedience being required in their
case, they are more easy to get and to replace than shearers. They are
a varied and motley lot. That powerful and rather handsome man is a New
Yorker, of Irish parentage. Next to him is a slight, neat, quiet
individual. He was a lieutenant in a line regiment. The lad in the rear
was a Sandhurst cadet. Then came two navvies and a New Zealander,
five Chinamen, a Frenchman, two Germans, Tin Pot, Jerry, and
Wallaby--three aboriginal blacks. There are no invidious distinctions
as to caste, colour, or nationality. Every one is a man and a brother
at sheep-washing. Wage, one pound per week; wood, water, tents and food
"A LA DISCRETION." Their accounts are simple: so many weeks, so many
pounds; store account, so much; hospital? well, five shillings; cheque,
good-morning.

The wool-pressers, the fleece-rollers, the fleece-pickers, the
yardsmen, the washers' cooks, the hut cooks, the spare shepherds; all
these and a few other supernumeraries inevitable at shearing-time,
having been paid off, the snowstorm of cheques which has been
fluttering all day comes to an end. Mr Gordon and the remaining
"sous-officiers" go to rest that night with much of the mental strain
removed which has been telling on every waking moment for the last two
months.

The long train of drays and wagons, with loads varying from twenty to
forty-five bales, has been moving off in detachments since the
commencement. In a day or two the last of them will have rolled heavily
away. The 1400 bales, averaging three and a half hundredweight, are
distributed, slow journeying, along the road, which they mark from
afar, standing huge and columnar like guide tum