There were never lacking men ready for the enterprise and hardship of pioneering when there was such a field of profitable work open before them, work that was for those trained in bush experience, hardy and acclimatised as they were. The life, in spite of hardships, was not without attraction and satisfaction to many who took part in it. There was a kind of fascination to many bushmen in the idea of being the first to enter upon new and unknown scenes; to note the surprise of native game beholding for the first time the presence of the stranger, and to observe the terrified astonishment of the aborigines when first they saw the white intruders; all this tended to add to the romance and interest of helping to open a new district. But outside pioneer life in early days had a reverse side; there was little or nothing of comfort or relaxation; there was always hardship and exposure; there was no Sunday for rest, no holiday, no Eight Hour Day, nothing but constant movement and watching. The duties were shared by all alike; each had to take a turn at anything and everything, cooking one time, driving a team another, shepherding sheep occasionally, herding cattle sometimes, cutting timber, making bough-yards for sheep, lambing down a flock of ewes, shifting hurdles, and poisoning dingoes, killing and salting beef, ear-marking, washing and shearing sheep, looking for stragglers, yoking bullocks, building huts, tracking and hunting stock, all little duties that made up the routine life of the outside grazier. They all took their turn, and generally there was one dish and one table. Where the ways and customs consequent on the life brought all on a partial level, the man who could turn his hand to anything from shoeing a horse to weighing out a dose of quinine or driving a bullock team, was the most valuable. THE STOCKMAN, OR STOCKRIDER. He was native to the soil and bred, Merely a cowboy he; A nomad's life was what he led. And all he wished to be.