They Are Not Fed With Corn At Accommodation-Houses, As
Horses Are; When Their Work Is Done, They Are Turned Out To Feed Till
Dark, Or Till Eight Or Nine O'clock.
A bullock fills himself, if on
pretty good feed, in about three or three and a half hours; he
Then lies
down till very early morning, at which time the chances are ten to one
that, awakening refreshed and strengthened, he commences to stray back
along the way he came, or in some other direction; accordingly, it is a
common custom, about eight or nine o'clock, to yard one's team, and turn
them out with the first daylight for another three or four hours' feed.
Yarding bullocks is, however, a bad plan. They do their day's work of
from fifteen to twenty miles, or sometimes more, at one spell, and
travel at the rate of from two and a half to three miles an hour.
The road from Christ Church to Main's is metalled for about four and a
half miles; there are fences and fields on both sides, either laid down
in English grass or sown with grain; the fences are chiefly low ditch
and bank planted with gorse, rarely with quick, the scarcity of which
detracts from the resemblance to English scenery which would otherwise
prevail. The copy, however, is slatternly compared with the original;
the scarcity of timber, the high price of labour, and the pressing
urgency of more important claims upon the time of the small
agriculturist, prevent him, for the most part, from attaining the spick-
and-span neatness of an English homestead.
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