everything, having as much tea and sugar, bread and mutton, as they
can consume, and a cook entirely to themselves; they work at least
fourteen hours out of the twenty-four, and with such a large flock
as this--about 50,000--must make a good deal.

We next inspected the wool tables, to which two boys were
incessantly bringing armfuls of rolled-up fleeces; these were laid
on the tables before the wool-sorters, who opened them out, and
pronounced in a moment to which _bin_ they belonged; two or three
men standing behind rolled them up again rapidly, and put them on a
sort of shelf divided into compartments, which were each labelled,
so that the quality and kind of wool could be told at a glance.
There was a constant emptying of these bins into trucks to be
carried off to the press, where we followed to see the bales packed.
The fleeces are tumbled in, and a heavy screw-press forces them down
till the bale--which is kept open in a large square frame--is as
full as it can hold. The top of canvas is then put on, tightly
sewn, four iron pins are removed and the sides of the frame fall
away, disclosing a most symmetrical bale ready to be hoisted by a
crane into the loft above, where it has the brand of the sheep
painted on it, its weight, and to what class the wool belongs. Of
course everything has to be done with great speed and system.

I was much impressed by the silence in the shed; not a sound was to
be heard except the click of the shears, and the wool-sorter's
decision as he flings the fleece behind him, given in one, or at
most two words. I was reminded how touchingly true is that phrase,
"Like as a sheep before her shearers is dumb." All the noise is
_outside_; there the hubbub, and dust, and apparent confusion are
great,--a constant succession of woolly sheep being brought up to