would have the care and influence of his friends to support him, but there is no chance for him in the Colonies.  Such a man will under pressure abstain for months, but the moment that pressure is removed he will make for the nearest place where his propensity can be indulged, and give himself up to the devil body and soul, so long as he has the means to do so, or can obtain what he desires by fair means or foul.  He knows no shame; all honourable and manly feeling has become callous within him; and it is a happy release indeed for all connected with him when his pitiable life is ended.

It was a custom of Mr. Lee’s to send yearly to Christchurch a flock of fat wethers for sale, and as I wished to proceed there on the business I referred to, I was to be entrusted with the charge of them, in company with a Scottish shepherd, by name Campbell, who was a new arrival in the country.

The sheep numbered four hundred, and we had to drive them nearly three hundred miles, and deliver them in as good condition as when they left.  We started early in December, the hottest time of the year, carrying what we needed for camping out on one pack horse.  It was by no means a pleasure journey to drive, or rather feed, sheep along for three hundred miles at ten to fifteen miles a day, over dry and hot plains with not a tree to shelter one, and to stay awake turn about night after night to watch them.  Mr. Lee accompanied us as far as the Waiou river, over which it occupied the best part of a day to cross the sheep, then he left us to proceed to Christchurch to seek and bring back the Government Scab Inspector to meet us at the Hurunui river, the boundary, and there to pass the sheep, otherwise they would not be permitted to enter the Canterbury province.

It may appear strange that it would occupy a day to cross 400 sheep over a river, but it is a very difficult thing to induce sheep to take to the water; indeed, by merely driving them it is impossible.  Where the water is at all fordable, several men wade in, each carrying a sheep, and when half-way across the animals are loosed and sent swimming to the other side, but not infrequently this plan fails, by reason of the sheep turning and swimming back to the mob, and the operation may have to be repeated many times before it is successful.  The object is to give the mob a lead, and when sheep get a lead they will follow it blindly, no matter where it will lead them to.  When the river is too deep for wading, men on horseback ford or swim over, carrying sheep on their saddles, and drop them in midstream till the required lead is obtained.  As soon as the mob understand they have to go, a panic seems to take them, and they make such frantic efforts to rush on that to prevent them hurting each other is sometimes impossible.  An unfortunate instance of this occurred while I was at Highfield.  We were driving a large mob of sheep to the yards to be dipped, and had to pass them over one side of the rocky gorge leading to the Highfield