Tuesday comes “big with fate.”  As the sun tinges the far skyline, the shearers are taking a slight refection of coffee and currant buns to enable them to withstand the exhausting interval between six and eight o’clock, when the serious breakfast occurs.  Shearers always diet themselves on the principle that the more they eat the stronger they must be.  Digestion, as preliminary to muscular development, is left to take its chance.  They certainly do get through a tremendous amount of work.  The whole frame is at its utmost tension, early and late.  But the preservation of health is due to their natural strength of constitution rather than to their profuse and unscientific diet.  Half-an-hour after sunrise Mr Gordon walks quietly into the vast building which contains the sheep and their shearers—­called “the shed,” par excellence.  Everything is in perfect cleanliness and order—­the floor swept and smooth, with its carefully planed boards of pale yellow aromatic pine.  Small tramways, with baskets for the fleeces, run the wool up to the wool tables, superseding the more general plan of hand picking.  At each side of the shed floor are certain small areas, four or five feet square, such space being found by experience to be sufficient for the postures and gymnastics practised during the shearing of a sheep.  Opposite to each square is an aperture, communicating with a long narrow paled yard, outside of the shed.  Through this each man pops his sheep when shorn, where he remains in company with the others shorn by the same hand, until counted out.  This being done by the overseer or manager supplies a check upon hasty or unskilful work.  The body of the woolshed, floored with battens placed half an inch apart, is filled with the woolly victims.  This enclosure is subdivided into minor pens, of which each fronts the place of two shearers, who catch from it until the pen is empty.  When this takes place, a man for the purpose refills its.  As there are local advantages, an equitable distribution of places for shearing has to be made by lot.

On every subdivision stands a shearer, as Mr Gordon walks, with an air of calm authority, down the long aisle.  Seventy men, chiefly in their prime, the flower of the working-men of the colony, they are variously gathered.  England, Ireland, and Scotland are represented in the proportion of one half of the number; the other half is composed of native-born Australians.

Among these last—­of pure Anglo-Saxon or Anglo-Celtic descent—­are to be seen some of the finest men, physically considered, the race is capable of producing.  Taller than their British-born brethren, with softer voices and more regular features, they inherit the powerful frames and unequalled muscular development of the breed.  Leading lives chiefly devoted to agricultural labour, they enjoy larger intervals of leisure than is permissible to the labouring classes of Europe.  The climate is mild, and favourable to health.  They have been accustomed from childhood to abundance of the best food; opportunities of intercolonial travel are frequent and common.  Hence the Anglo-Australian labourer without, on the one hand, the sharpened eagerness which marks his Transatlantic cousin, has yet an air of independence and intelligence, combined with a natural grace of movement, unknown to the peasantry of Britain.