phraseology. Several devices have been tried, such as taking away
their swags (_i.e._, their red blankets rolled tightly into a sort
of pack, which they carry on their backs, and derive their name
from), and locking them up until they had chopped a small quantity
of wood, or performed some other trifling domestic duty. But the
swagger will be led, though not driven, and what he often did of his
own accord for the sake of a nod or a smile of thanks from my pretty
maid-servants, he would not do for the hardest words which ever came
out of a boss's mouth. There are also strict rules of honesty
observed among these men, and if one swagger were to purloin the
smallest article from a station which had fed and sheltered him,
every other swagger in all the country side would immediately become
an amateur detective to make the thief give up his spoil. A pair of
old boots was once missing from a neighbouring station, and
suspicion fell upon a swagger. Justice was perhaps somewhat tardy
in this instance, as it rested entirely in the hands of every tramp
who passed that way; but at the end of some months the boots were
found at home, and the innocence of the swaggers, individually and
collectively, triumphantly established.

The only instance of harshness to a swagger which came under my
notice during three years residence in New Zealand, is the one I
have alluded to above, and contains so much dramatic interest in its
details, that it may not be out of place here.

Although I have naturally dwelt in these papers more upon our bright
sunny weather, our clear, bracing winter days, and our balmy spring
and autumn evenings, let no intending traveller think that he will
not meet with bad weather at the Antipodes! I can only repeat what
I have said with pen and voice a hundred times before. New Zealand