In the early days, apart from gold, wool was one of the chief productions in Victoria, as in New South Wales. During later years, however, it has been surpassed by the combined industries of dairy produce and grain. Still, there are 14,000,000 sheep in the State, mostly merinoes, producing some of the finest wool in the world, particularly the sheep from the bounteous Western district, where the family of Macarthurs—Captain John Macarthur, nearly a hundred years ago, having introduced the first merino sheep from Spain and Great Britain—still flourish, or did flourish when I was last in that part of the world, before the craze for chopping up estates became the vogue. I remember being shown little samples of wool by an old squatter and told the different sort of sheep from which they were cut, then made to shut my eyes, and learn to name the varieties from the feel alone. I would have made a good wool-sorter, he said; and, honestly, I believe it would be a fine trade for women, with their delicate sense of touch. That special station had been magnificently fenced and guarded from the wind by acre upon acre of gum-tree plantations. There had been a great bush fire just before I was last there, which swept for miles across the open country, destroying or injuring many of the old man’s treasured plantations, and even scorching the creepers off the solid, square-built stone homestead. Every man, woman, and child on the place had worked like fury to stamp it out, and just saved the home; but, beside the fencing and younger plantations, any number of sheep were destroyed, and, I believe, the wool-shed also. Then, a year or so later, just as the shearing was finished, there came a sudden late spell of hard frost and killed 10,000 of the sheep. So a station-owner’s life, even in these days, is not all beer and skittles, as the man at the street corner thinks; and who will make fences and plant trees when the country districts are all a patchwork of small holdings, each owner trying to get a fortune out of his own special little lot? It’s a vexed question all round, but somehow it seems there ought to be enough to pay Paul without robbing Peter. What a dry chapter! The _Bulletin_ would say it was written by a “Wowser”—a Wowser being an advocate of everything dry, of temperance and all the virtues, who expresses his opinions in such a manner that the good he advocates appears as offensive as he is himself. The Wowser is quite a common species in Victoria, and has even been known to crop up among the highest dignitaries of the Anglican Church. CHAPTER IV THE WORKING-MAN AND THE WORK-A-DAY WORLD