Page:The Boy Travellers in Australasia.djvu/398

374 and I might follow them, which we did. Sure enough, they took us right where we wished to go; and when we reached the camp we saw fully five hundred cattle gathered there in charge of the two stockmen from the other side.

"The rest of the party had turned off to the right as soon as our mob of cattle started, and didn't come up to us until we had been fully half an hour on the ground. They were preceded by three or four mobs of cattle that came dashing in with tails in the air, and acting as though they enjoyed the sport.

"The camp was a picturesque sight. The stockmen and the black boys were riding constantly around the herd, to keep the animals from straying or breaking away; the cattle were moving restlessly about, the cows lowing for their missing calves, the bullocks indulging in an occasional fight, in which none of them was hurt, and the whole herd separating occasionally into little groups composed of those that had been accustomed to run together on the pastures. The camp was partially covered with a very thin forest of iron-bark trees, and the white, red, and roan colors of the animals made a very pretty contrast against the black tinge of the wood and the green of the grass.