Two Fat And Well-Tended Pigs Are Worth Half A Dozen Half-Starved Wretches.

Such neglected brutes make a place look very untidy, and their existence will be a burden to themselves, and an eyesore to you.

In a year or two you will find yourself very comfortable. You will get a little fruit from your garden in summer, and will have a prospect of much more. You will have cows, and plenty of butter and milk and eggs; you will have pigs, and, if you choose it, bees, plenty of vegetables, and, in fact, may live upon the fat of the land, with very little trouble, and almost as little expense. If you grudge this, your fare will be rather unvaried, and will consist solely of tea, mutton, bread, and possibly potatoes. For the first year, these are all you must expect; the second will improve matters; and the third should see you surrounded with luxuries.

If you are your own shepherd, which at first is more than probable, you will find that shepherding is one of the most prosaic professions you could have adopted. Sheep will be the one idea in your mind; and as for poetry, nothing will be farther from your thoughts. Your eye will ever be straining after a distant sheep - your ears listening for a bleat - in fact, your whole attention will be directed, the whole day long, to nothing but your flock. Were you to shepherd too long your wits would certainly go wool-gathering, even if you were not tempted to bleat. It is, however, a gloriously healthy employment.

And now, gentle reader, I wish you luck with your run. If you have tolerably good fortune, in a very short time you will be a rich man. Hoping that this may be the case, there remains nothing for me but to wish you heartily farewell.

Crossing the Rangitata

Suppose you were to ask your way from Mr. Phillips's station to mine, I should direct you thus: "Work your way towards yonder mountain; pass underneath it between it and the lake, having the mountain on your right hand and the lake on your left; if you come upon any swamps, go round them or, if you think you can, go through them; if you get stuck up by any creeks - a creek is the colonial term for a stream - you'll very likely see cattle marks, by following the creek up and down; but there is nothing there that ought to stick you up if you keep out of the big swamp at the bottom of the valley; after passing that mountain follow the lake till it ends, keeping well on the hill-side above it, and make the end of the valley, where you will come upon a high terrace above a large gully, with a very strong creek at the bottom of it; get down the terrace, where you'll see a patch of burnt ground, and follow the river- bed till it opens on to a flat; turn to your left and keep down the mountain sides that run along the Rangitata; keep well near them and so avoid the swamps; cross the Rangitata opposite where you see a large river-bed coming into it from the other side, and follow this river-bed till you see my hut some eight miles up it." Perhaps I have thus been better able to describe the nature of the travelling than by any other. If one can get anything that can be manufactured into a feature and be dignified with a name once in five or six miles, one is very lucky.

Well, we had followed these directions for some way, as far in fact as the terrace, when, the river coming into full view, I saw that the Rangitata was very high. Worse than that, I saw Mr. Phillips and a party of men who were taking a dray over to a run just on the other side of the river, and who had been prevented from crossing for ten days by the state of the water. Among them, to my horror, I recognised my cadet, whom I had left behind me with beef which he was to have taken over to my place a week and more back; whereon my mind misgave me that a poor Irishman who had been left alone at my place might be in a sore plight, having been left with no meat and no human being within reach for a period of ten days. I don't think I should have attempted crossing the river but for this. Under the circumstances, however, I determined at once on making a push for it, and accordingly taking my two cadets with me and the unfortunate beef that was already putrescent- -it had lain on the ground in a sack all the time - we started along under the hills and got opposite the place where I intended crossing by about three o'clock. I had climbed the mountain side and surveyed the river from thence before approaching the river itself. At last we were by the water's edge. Of course, I led the way, being as it were patronus of the expedition, and having been out some four months longer than either of my companions; still, having never crossed any of the rivers on horseback in a fresh, having never seen the Rangitata in a fresh, and being utterly unable to guess how deep any stream would take me, it may be imagined that I felt a certain amount of caution to be necessary, and accordingly, folding my watch in my pocket-handkerchief and tying it round my neck in case of having to swim for it unexpectedly, I strictly forbade the other two to stir from the bank until they saw me safely on the other side. Not that I intended to let my horse swim, in fact I had made up my mind to let my old Irishman wait a little longer rather than deliberately swim for it.

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