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.
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