Sometimes, after tracking the forest for many a weary mile, the stockman will have to return without finding the mob he wanted. Occasionally he will have to camp out, not because of losing himself—that seldom happens to us now—but because of the distance he is from home. So a stockman rarely goes out without three requisites about him—food, matches, and tobacco. Except in wet weather, camping out is no particular hardship to us. One can always make oneself comfortable enough in the bush, if one has those three articles, that are the bushman's "never-be-withouts."
When the cattle are found, belonging to a mob that the stockman thinks proper to drive home, comes some very heavy and exciting work. We call our beasts tame, and so they are in a sense; still, compared to the gentle creatures one sees on English meadows, they are scarcely to be so characterized.
At one time a mob will head for home, and go straight and quietly enough, needing only the dogs at their heels to keep them in the right direction. At another time the mob will scatter, and the members of it prove very unruly. They will charge and rush in every direction but the right one, and the very devil seems to be in the beasts. Scrambling up steep ranges, dashing down precipitous ravines, and always forcing a passage through dense undergrowth and jungle, plunging through marsh and bog, chasing to right and to left, it is a wonder how dogs and men get through the work they do. And often there are miles and miles of this before the welcome clearing comes in view.
What is the condition of a stockman after he has brought up his mob and yarded it for the night? He has walked and run and scrambled, perhaps, twenty or thirty miles during the day, and that not over a plain road, but through the rough and hilly forest. He is totally tired out and exhausted. He is dripping with sweat, caked with mud from head to foot, his shirt torn to rags, his skin scratched all over, and very likely some nasty bruises from tumbles. He has hardly energy enough left to wash himself. Supper does not revive him, though he stows away an appallingly large one. And then he stretches himself in his bunk and is happy. Only, when morning comes again, he awakes stiff and sore. But, no matter for that, inexorable duty claims him for the same toil. And so wags our daily life—hard, unremitting, unromantic labour, day after day, year after year. Still we say it is a glorious life, and we believe what we say. Anyhow, it is better than being chained to a desk, or growing purblind "poring over miserable books."
If you can only realize what cattle-hunting means, the shouting and roaring after them and the dogs, the loss of temper that fatigue induces, and the consequent aggravation when beasts are unruly, perhaps you will forgive the Saint for his "exuberant verbosity" in relation to cattle. Even a real saint might swear under the circumstances, and be held excused by his peers in the celestial hierarchy.
Our four-year-old steers do not show very large, considered from English farmers' points of view. Fifteen or sixteen hundred lbs. is about the maximum of our fat beasts. But the beef is of first-rate quality; and as bush-fed beasts are in good condition at the end of the dry season, when pasture-raised cattle are poor, we do as well by them as could be desired. The bush is always cool and fresh and moist, even when all the grass is withered and brown on the pastures; and this is one of the reasons why we prefer bush-land to open-land for pioneer farming.
There is a standing controversy waged among settlers, as to whether it is better to take up such land as ours or to go in for a tract of open fern-land. On open lands you can easily clear the ground, and, though it will not, as a rule, yield grass for mere surface-sowing, yet the plough can be put into it within a year or two. But the cost of fencing it is much higher; and the open-land farmer must wait longer for returns such as will keep him. He has no bush-feed for cattle as we have, and it is cattle that the pioneer relies on for his support at first. It is eight or twelve years before the bush-farmer gets a chance of ploughing; but then his cattle keep him going from the outset. Also, our burnt clearings will yield us good grass for surface-sowing, which will feed sheep until the stumps have rotted and the plough can be used. The sum of it is that open-lands will pay a man with good capital quicker, while bush-lands are the only possible thing for such poorer folk as ourselves.
We send steers to Auckland market two or three times a year. Once or twice we have driven them overland, a distance of eighty miles or so by the map. This is not so far, certainly; but then there are no proper roads, and most of the way lies through thick bush. There is a faint apology for a bridle-track through the forest, not very easy to find, which strikes the Great North Road about twenty miles from here. And this same Great North Road, in spite of a pretentious title, and also in spite of being marked in the maps with a heavy black line, as though it were a highway of the Watling Street description, is just a mere bridle-track, too, hardly discoverable at all for the greater portion of its length.
Two or three of us ride along these tracks with the cattle. One or two have to be most of the time on foot, while the third leads their horses. They are plunging through the otherwise impenetrable scrub after dogs and cattle, which last will not keep the line. The whole journey takes about a week. We camp down at night, and half the next day is taken up with hunting for some of the beasts that have strayed. Usually one or two are lost altogether before Auckland is reached.
This sort of thing hardly pays, unless a considerable number of beasts have to be sent at once; and then the steers have lost condition before they can be got to market. I have had some experience of this cattle-driving work; and of all the aggravating jobs I know, it certainly is the very worst.