Brighter Britain! (Volume 2 of 2): or Settler and Maori in Northern New ZealandHay, W. Delisle (William Delisle)
History
Brighter Britain! (Volume 2 of 2): or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand
Hay, W. Delisle (William Delisle)
Ethnology -- New Zealand; Māori (New Zealand people); New Zealand -- Description and travel
"When morning came I found that the dream still weighed heavily on
Karl's spirits. He seemed to be possessed of the idea that it 'meant
something,' though precisely what he could not say. He was downhearted
and anxious, and his thoughts naturally turned to the sheep. They
meant so much to him, poor fellow! He proposed that we should both make
a thorough tour of the run, and asked me to catch a couple of horses
that we might the better do so. For we had a few 'scrubbers' about the
place, finding them necessary as economizing our time and strength in
getting about the extensive farm.
"We set off after breakfast, Karl riding along the top of the range and
I along the bottom, with the dogs following us as of course. The first
gully, the same in which the shanty stood, had nothing to show us. The
sheep on the clearings in it were feeding about as usual. But when we
crossed over the range, and came in view of the wide basin on the other
side, where was nearly five hundred acres of grass, we were surprised
to find no sheep at all visible. We traversed it in all directions,
sending the dogs round all the standing bush, and then we crossed the
further range into a gully where a narrow strip of pasture extended
for some two miles. As we came out of a piece of bush into this, we
perceived the sheep. They were not feeding about in scattered groups,
as was usual, but were collected in one flock, huddled up together.
Some were lying down, panting, and all looked distressed and scared. It
was easy to see they had been driven, and that quite recently.
"Karl galloped down the slope immediately, but I reined in for a
moment, looking to see if anything was visible to account for this.
Then a shout from Karl made me hasten to join him. He had dismounted,
and was kneeling beside a ewe that lay prostrate on the hill-side. As
I came up he looked at me with a terrible despair in his eyes, and,
pointing to the sheep, said quietly—
"'That is what my dream meant. Look!'
"I jumped down and examined the ewe. It was dead; and the mangled
throat and torn wool plainly told the cause.
"'Wild dogs!' I ejaculated with a bitter curse.
"We remounted and rode slowly about the clearings, narrowly observing
the condition of the flocks. We found seven-and-thirty sheep dead or
dying, the work of the dog or dogs on the previous night. A good many
more were apparently injured from the driving. We made every possible
search for the beasts that had done this, but not a trace of them was
discoverable.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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