140 ANTIPODES. 



if death results from his faulty work. It would be a happy thing 

 for the horse and his purchaser if his breaker were subjected to 

 the same penalty. 



302. — As we got a few hundred miles further on towards 

 Adelaide we were fortunate enough to hear of another horse 

 muster that was to come off at the head station of another 

 great horse breeding squatter, and we stayed to see the result, in 

 the hope that we might see some better method of catching and 

 handling such horses. 



It was past mid-day before a herd of horses came in sight of 

 the station, and just before they reached the narrowing way a 

 stray pig unfortunately trotted across their path. The whole 

 herd turned back and dividing into two or three lots, were soon 

 past all recovery. The stockmen came in some hours after this, 

 with exhausted horses, and it was evident that there woUld be no 

 horses fit to try again for at least a week. 



NEW ZEALAND 



303. — Is the antipodes of England, yet there is no country 

 in which an Englishman could so readily fancy himself at home, with 

 its green fields, its hawthorn hedges, its comfortable looking dairy 

 cows, its Hansom cabs, its toiling horses, its well fed saucy children, 

 scolding women, and gambling men. It is within 1,200 miles of 

 Australia, yet very widely differing from it. Rivers, swamps, 

 snow clad mountains, water falls, and precipices, arrest the 

 traveller's progress at very short intervals. 



804. — Half a century ago an Englishman travelled in New 

 Zealand with an abiding sense that he might any day or any 

 night, constitute the principal dish at a Maori feast, and nine- 

 tenths of the inhabitants of the country had never seen a horse. 

 Now, mutton is so cheap that a Maori would not think a white 

 man worth cooking, and horses are so abundant that shepherds 

 and even stone breakers, ride to their work, and the Maories 

 own more horses than they use. 



305. — Even twenty years ago the inland traveller was 

 oppressed and awed by an absence of animal life, and a dreary 

 silence of the air ; now his ears are everywhere dinned fi'om 



