THE SHEEP-DROVER 213 



ignominy of its convict origin. Most of the early shep- 

 herds had been convicts. 



Lady Barker paints a more attractive picture. Her 

 shepherd, Hving alone at an out-station, with his dogs 

 for his sole companions, was, in comparison, a superior 

 being. His chief duty consisted in daily riding a 

 boundary down the gorge of the river, which had many 

 times to be crossed and recrossed. His it was, too, to 

 supply the home station with mutton, killing four or 

 five sheep a week for the purpose. All day he was em- 

 ployed out of doors, but he had the evening to himself, 

 and he spent it in reading. He was well-informed and 

 intelhgent, and expressed himself clearly and forcibly. 

 He was a bit of an artist besides, and had covered the 

 walls of his hut with sketches.* In the awful solitude 

 it has often happened that the shepherd, brought up as 

 a Calvinist, has gone mad while he brooded over the 

 doctrines of election and redemption. 



In later days the shepherd and the boundary-rider 

 have disappeared with the erection of fences. Yet 

 Mr. De Satge, writing recentlj^ and at a time when there 

 was " a profusion of paddocks of small area," says 

 scornfully that " your boundary-rider " now requires a 

 paddock for his hort^es and a verai.dahed cottage. | He 

 has evidently risen in the world. 



A variety of the shepherd is the boundary-keeper, 

 as he is called in New Zealand, where the runs are com- 

 paratively small, or the boundary-rider, as he is named 

 in Australia, where they are often of far greater extent. 

 He belongs to the pre-fencing days, and his business 

 is to act as a human fence. He and his dog (for the 

 well-bred sheep-dog, with hereditary instincts, is as 

 essential as the man) are stationed on the boundaries 

 of a run to keep the sheep from wandering away. He 

 makes reconnaissances ; he catches sight of a stray 

 flock and sets off in pursuit of them ; he stops them by 

 means of his dog, which places itself in front of them, 



* Station Life in New Zealand, Letter xii. 



t Pages from the Journal of a Queensland Squatter, p. 165. 



