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 tumuli, from Anabanco to
the waters of the Murray. Between the two points there is neither a
hill nor a stone. All is the vast monotonous sea of plain--at this
season a prairie-meadow exuberant with vegetation; in the late summer,
or in the occasional and dreaded phenomenon of a DRY WINTER, dusty, and
herbless as a brickfield, for hundreds of miles.