cattle and satisfied himself that none of the leaders were away, then, and not till then, he lighted a fire, made his tea, and settled to his breakfast with a good appetite and a clear conscience. He came with me from Campbell's farm, in order to point out Squattlesea Mere, then unoccupied, somewhere about May 1843. We stayed at Dunmore for lunch. The members of the firm were absent, but good, kind Mrs. Teviot provided me with such a meal of corned-beef, home-baked bread, fresh butter, short-cake and cream, that, as I told my guide, I was provisioned for twenty-four hours if needful. As it happened, by some mischance, we were very nearly that precise time before we had the next meal.
'Jemmy' White, Mr. John Cox's stock-rider at Werongurt, and Joe Twist, his assistant, a native-born Tasmanian, had both followed Mr. Cox's fortunes from Clarendon in the lovely island. 'Jemmy' was a solid, elderly man of considerable experience, and under his management the Werongurt Herefords were kept in admirable order. He, like his fellow-servant Buckley, was assisted by Mr. Cox in the purchase of a run adjoining his master's station, where, with a flock of sheep to start with, he became independent and comparatively rich. After marrying and settling down, he built himself a comfortable brick house at Louth, and died the possessor of beeves and pastures, horses and sheep, in patriarchal plenty.
Joe Twist—now, doubtless, 'old Mr. Twist,' and a substantial burgess of Macarthur—was a boy when I first came to the district, but growing up in the fulness of time, was promoted to be head stock-rider, vice White retired. He had by that time developed into one of the smartest hands in a yard that ever handled drafting-stick, as well as a superb horseman in connection with cattle-work. He would stand in a stockyard among the excited, angry cattle (and those that came out of the Mount Napier lava country were playful enough) as if horns were so many reeds, even waiting until the charging beast was almost upon him before stepping out of the way, with the cool precision of a Spanish toreador.
With all due respect for the ancestral Briton, whom every good Australian should reverence, I hold that the native-born artist, while equal in staying power, far surpasses him in dexterity. What Britisher could ever shear as many sheep—ay, and shear them well—as the 'big blow' men of the
