64 Voyage of the Novara. 



ravages of the wild dogs, the rearing of sheep would be 

 attended with hardly any expense. These are pastured on 

 the crown lands, for the use of which each squatter pays £10 

 per annum for every 4000 sheep, or 800 head of cattle. In 

 the north, " Darling Downs" are considered the best, con- 

 sisting of an open undulating table-land, broken here and 

 there by occasional clumps of trees, and much resembling 

 the States of Minnesota and Iowa, north and west of the 

 Mississippi. On these Downs from 3000 to 4000 sheep can 

 easily be kept by a single shepherd, whereas in Bathurst 

 800 would call into play all the watchfulness of a single 

 individual. On Darling Downs the annual increase of a 

 flock of 100 ewes is 96 per cent. ; in Bathm^st it is only 80. 

 The value of a sheep is about lo^. to 20^., and the shearing 

 usually begins in October and lasts till December, the 

 average weight being 2J lbs. to the fleece. Innumerable 

 teams of oxen carry the wool in bales of 200 or 300 lbs. 

 from hundreds of miles in the interior down to the sea- 

 ports, where the oxen and carts are usually sold, as, owing 

 to the low price of cattle, it would not be remunerative to 

 take them back without a freight. While we were in 

 Australia an attempt had been made, at much cost of time, 

 trouble, and expense, to import from their native Cordilleras 

 a large number of Llamas or Alpacas, with the view of in- 

 creasing the value of Australian wool by a cross with the 

 Peruvian. An enterprising English merchant of Valparaiso, 

 named Joshua Waddington, who had been 40 years resident 



