THE SHEEP-DROVER 211 



primeval, its difficulties formidable — a true via dolorosa. 

 It may pass through a swamp that stretches in a deep 

 depression right across the track. The getting of the 

 sheep through this bog is a labour of Hercules. Run- 

 ning and rushing and yelling, boss and man vainly strive 

 to drive the sheep through the slough of despond. The 

 " man " has to take one across, dragged by his horns, 

 struggHng tremendously ; perhaps on his back, kick- 

 ing through the water. Thrice through the flood he 

 struggles, and ties the ram to a tree. After two hours* 

 racing and chasing, the foremost of the mob follows, 

 and the whole flock starts after him. Their chief 

 trouble is at an end, and they have no more adventures 

 on this Journey. But ever}'- expedition has its tale of 

 vicissitudes, and in facing and overcoming them there 

 is as much room for heroism as in more historical ex- 

 ploits. The sheep-drover, too, was and is one of " the 

 makers of Australasia." 



The Australian shepherd but partial^ resembles his 

 congeners in distant England or Scotland, and he must 

 be still more unlike his brethren of the craft on the 

 banks of the Tigris or Euphrates. Literature and 

 biography have made us familiar most with the shepherd 

 in the country which, most of all, has moulded itself 

 upon the ideal of the patriarchal Hebrews. John 

 Brown, of Haddington, taught himself Latin, Greek, and 

 Hebrew while he, a " herd-laddie," fed sheep on the 

 hillsides, and he has been the ancestor of at least two 

 generations of famous Browns, among whom we must 

 include the best or best-known of them all, the finely 

 cultivated and humane Dr. John Brown, of Edinburgh. 

 John Cairns, too, a favourite pupil of Sir W. Hamilton, 

 and a successor of Chalmers as a pulpit orator, was a 

 rustic figure who looked like a shepherd even in the 

 pulpit. Of the same rare and high type were such 

 men as figure in George MacDonald's Scottish novels. 

 They figure also in Carlyle's Reminiscences. Many a 

 time he walked, barefoot, on his way to Edinburgh, 

 through the " Peebles-Mofiat moor country " — a " region 



