sheep-owners with shoes for their men, at so much per pair. His
conversation was about the difficulty a poor man had in providing for his
family. He had once possessed about forty cows, which he had been obliged
to entrust to the care of another man, at 5S. per head. This man
neglected them: they were impounded and sold as unlicensed cattle under
the new regulations.

"So you saw no more of them?"

"Oh, yes, your honour, I saw some of them AFTER THEY HAD BEEN SOLD AT THE
POUND!--I wanted to have had something provided for a small family of
children, and if I had only had a few acres of ground, I could have kept
my cows."

This was merely a passing remark made with a laugh as we walked along,
for he was one of the race--

"Who march to death with military glee."

But the fate of a poor man's family was a serious subject: such was the
hopeless condition of a useful mechanic ready for work even in the
desolate forests skirting the haunts of the savage. So fares it with the
DISJECTA MEMBRA of towns and villages, when such arrangements are left to
the people themselves in a new colony.

18TH DECEMBER.--The party moved off about 7 A.M., and continued along a
tolerable road, crossing what shepherds called Seven Mile Creek, in which
there was some water; and a little further on we quitted the good beaten
road leading to Balderudgery, and followed one to the left, which brought
us to another sheep station on the same chain of ponds, three miles