You Saw A Mob Of Cattle Feeding Quietly About Madingley On The Preceding Evening, And They May Have Joined In With These; Or Were They Attracted By The Fine Feed In The Neighbourhood Of Cherryhinton?

Where shall you go to look for them?

Matters in reality, however, are not so bad as this. A bullock cannot walk without leaving a track, if the ground he travels on is capable of receiving one. Again, if he does not know the country in advance of him, the chances are strong that he has gone back the way he came; he will travel in a track if he happens to light on one; he finds it easier going. Animals are cautious in proceeding onwards when they don't know the ground. They have ever a lion in their path until they know it, and have found it free from beasts of prey. If, however, they have been seen heading decidedly in any direction over-night, in that direction they will most likely be found sooner or later. Bullocks cannot go long without water. They will travel to a river, then they will eat, drink, and be merry, and during that period of fatal security they will be caught.

Ours had gone back ten miles, to the Waikitty; we soon obtained clues as to their whereabouts, and had them back again in time to proceed on our journey. The river being very low, we did not unload the dray and put the contents across in the boat, but drove the bullocks straight through. Eighteen weary monotonous miles over the same plains, covered with the same tussock grass, and dotted with the same cabbage-trees. The mountains, however, grew gradually nearer, and Banks Peninsula dwindled perceptibly. That night we made Mr. M-'s station, and were thankful.

Again we did not yard the bullocks, and again we lost them. They were only five miles off, but we did not find them till afternoon, and lost a day. As they had travelled in all nearly forty miles, I had had mercy upon them, intending that they should fill themselves well during the night, and be ready for a long pull next day. Even the merciful man himself, however, would except a working bullock from the beasts who have any claim upon his good feeling. Let him go straining his eyes examining every dark spot in a circumference many long miles in extent. Let him gallop a couple of miles in this direction and the other, and discover that he has only been lessening the distance between himself and a group of cabbage-trees; let him feel the word "bullock" eating itself in indelible characters into his heart, and he will refrain from mercy to working bullocks as long as he lives. But as there are few positive pleasures equal in intensity to the negative one of release from pain, so it is when at last a group of six oblong objects, five dark and one white, appears in remote distance, distinct and unmistakable. Yes, they are our bullocks; a sigh of relief follows, and we drive them sharply home, gloating over their distended tongues and slobbering mouths. If there is one thing a bullock hates worse than another it is being driven too fast. His heavy lumbering carcase is mated with a no less lumbering soul. He is a good, slow, steady, patient slave if you let him take his own time about it; but don't hurry him. He has played a very important part in the advancement of civilisation and the development of the resources of the world, a part which the more fiery horse could not have played; let us then bear with his heavy trailing gait and uncouth movements; only next time we will keep him tight, even though he starve for it. If bullocks be invariably driven sharply back to the dray, whenever they have strayed from it, they will soon learn not to go far off, and will be cured even of the most inveterate vagrant habits.

Now we follow up one branch of the Ashburton, and commence making straight for the mountains; still, however, we are on the same monotonous plains, and crawl our twenty miles with very few objects that can possibly serve as landmarks. It is wonderful how small an object gets a name in the great dearth of features. Cabbage-tree hill, half- way between Main's and the Waikitty, is an almost imperceptible rise some ten yards across and two or three feet high: the cabbage-trees have disappeared. Between the Rakaia and Mr. M-'s station is a place they call the half-way gully, but it is neither a gully nor half-way, being only a grip in the earth, causing no perceptible difference in the level of the track, and extending but a few yards on either side of it. So between Mr. M-'s and the next halting-place (save two sheep-stations) I remember nothing but a rather curiously shaped gowai-tree, and a dead bullock, that can form milestones, as it were, to mark progress. Each person, however, for himself makes innumerable ones, such as where one peak in the mountain range goes behind another, and so on.

In the small River Ashburton, or rather in one of its most trivial branches, we had a little misunderstanding with the bullocks; the leaders, for some reason best known to themselves, slewed sharply round, and tied themselves into an inextricable knot with the polars, while the body bullocks, by a manoeuvre not unfrequent, shifted, or as it is technically termed slipped, the yoke under their necks, and the bows over; the off bullock turning upon the near side and the near bullock upon the off. By what means they do this I cannot explain, but believe it would make a conjuror's fortune in England. How they got the chains between their legs and how they kicked to liberate themselves, how we abused them, and, finally, unchaining them, set them right, I need not here particularise; we finally triumphed, but this delay caused us not to reach our destination till after dark.

Enter page number Go  Previous Next
Page 28 of 45
Words from 27389 to 28415 of 45285