SHEEP HUSBANDRY IN THE SOUTH. 65 



of other animals, or the expense of guarding against them, would be light 

 compared with that in some of the wool-growing regions of the Old World. 



In Australia, the sheep are exposed to the attack of wolves, dogs, and 

 convicts, and are constantly attended by a shepherd, and nightly folded, 

 and guarded by a watchman with dogs and a fire.* 



At the Cape of Good Hope, the shepherd and folding system is also fol 

 lowed. In addition to wolves, and wild dogs which hunt in packs, and 

 from their superior sagacity are much more formidable than wolves,t the 

 Cape sheep are preyed upon by a variety of animals, and when they pass 

 the mountains to glean the herbage which springs on the banks of the 

 streams on the vast and lonely Karoos, they are exposed to the attack of 

 the lion, the panther, the leopard, and the whole Feline family, so abund- 

 ant and so particularly formidable in Southern Africa.^ And they have 

 had, and probably yet have, an enemy more destructive than all of these, 

 in the Bushmen, more wild, irreclaimable, and predatory than their con- 

 geners, the Bedouins of the Arabian desert. || 



I have seen it proposed to teach young cattle to protect sheep from 

 dogs, in the following manner : Turn a few steers into the pasture with 

 the sheep, and with them a cow or two, having young calves at their sides. 

 Send a dog into the field, and immediately the cows, followed by the 

 steers, will commence a furious onset on the dog, and gore him or drive 

 him from the field. After this is repeated a few times, it is said the steers 

 will suffer no dog to enter the inclosure. 



This might do very well under some circumstances, but I should prefei 

 to rely on the remedy proposed by Mr. Simpson : the dog and the rifle. 

 There are no " shepherd dogs " large and powerful enough to encounter 

 and kill wolves and vagrant dogs, excepting the great sheep-dog of Spain ; 

 and he is so irreclaimably ferocious to all excepting his charge, that he 

 might frequently bring his owner into difficulty, and even endanger human 

 life. My impression is that a shepherd dog or two, to be on the alert, 

 and a brace of mastiffs to capture and, if need be, slay wolf or cur, would 

 be adequate protection for the sheep on a considerable range, and the 

 expense of maintaining them would be trifling. 



* Cunningham's. "Two Years in New South Wales," vol. i. p. 251. 

 \ Missionary Labors and Scenes in Southern Africa, by Rev. Robert Moffat, pp. 23-4. 

 tThe following stanza from the spirited lines of Freiligrath " The Lion's Ilide " will occur to you , 

 " And the vulture scenting a coming carouse, 

 Snails, hoarsely screaming, down the sky ; 

 The bloody hyena, be sure, is nigh, 

 Fierce pillager he of the charnel-house ! 

 The panther, too, who strangles the Cape-Town eheep 



As they lie asleep, 



Athirst for his share in the slaughter, follows ; 



While the gore of their victim spreads like a pool in the sandy hollows ! " 



S To these may be added the savage Kaffirs, who, in their recent struggle with the Colonial Government, 

 destroyed and drove off immense numbers of cattle and sheep. In 1834, ' the natives,'' says Youatt, "drovt 

 off or destroyed 80,000 cattle and sheep almost innumerable." 

 By a writer in the American Agriculturist. 



