THE NATURAL MAN 267 



scattered among our downs and lowlands where the 

 crops have been rotated and the turnips grown with 

 little change for six or seven generations past ; they 

 are now odds and ends, so that the oldest villager 

 cannot often tell where they led to, much less recall 

 the days when the herds were driven along them. 

 It is curious that cattle should be even more import- 

 ant to England to-day than it was in our fathers' 

 time, and yet that we should see less of it along the 

 roads and in the heart of the country. 



The droves have gone, but the drovers remain ; 

 they are not so observed, still they are a distinctive 

 figure in many parts of the country. The drovers 

 look the roughest, wildest of men. They seem to 

 dress down to their reputation though perhaps that 

 reputation is largely based on the dress. Anyhow, 

 out of the cattle pen, if not in it, we can find plenty 

 of human sentiment and emotion among these men, 

 though it is expressed in an uncouth form. The 

 cattle drover is a foreigner to most of us, his dress, 

 habit of life, the queer twist of his thought, almost 

 his tongue. Thrown into his company in the market, 

 or on the road, an educated townsman, even a country- 

 man, might find it hard to understand half his talk ; 

 on the surface it has so little likeness to ordinary 

 English life among middle or upper class folk. And 

 why does he never wear the collar of civilisation, even 

 though his business be brisk, and he has silver to 

 spare ? That neckerchief once new, but when ? 



