It was too late in the year for fruit, but Salter's currant, raspberry, and gooseberry bushes gave us a good idea of how well he must have fared in the summer.

The fowls were just devouring the last of the green-pea shoots, and the potatoes had been blackened by our first frosts.
It was all very nice and trim and comfortable, except the loneliness; that must have been simply awful.

It is difficult to realise how completely cut off from the society of his kind a New Zealand up-country shepherd is, especially at an out-station like this.

Once in every three months he goes down to the homestead, borrows the pack horse, and leads it up to his hut, with a quarter's rations of flour, tea, sugar and salt; of course he provides himself with mutton and firewood, and his simple wants are thus supplied.

After shearing, about January, his wages are paid, varying from 75 pounds to 100 pounds a year, according to the locality, and then he gets a week's leave to go down to the nearest town.