best to mete out justice he is always appreciated and supported by the
majority. These few instances will serve as a description of the whole
process of settling with the shearers. The horses have all been got in.
Great catching and saddling-up has taken place all the morning. By the
afternoon the whole party are dispersed to the four winds; some, like
Abraham Lawson and his friends, to sheds "higher up," in a colder
climate, where shearing necessarily commences later. From these they
will pass to others, until the last sheep in the mountain runs are
shorn. Then those who have not farms of their own betake themselves to
reaping. Billy May and Jack Windsor are quite as ready to back
themselves against time in the wheat-field as on the shearing-floor.
Harvest over, they find their pockets inconveniently full, so they
commence 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