VIII
Fencing

O'er hill and dale there lies along,
The web they spin at Warring-ton;
A steely web of seven wire
To keep the sheep from their desire.
Their chief desire is still to stra;y
This web estoppeth them alway.

One very important matter in the economy of a new sheep station is the provision of fencing posts. In our first bush there were only two kinds of timber suitable for this purpose, the native laburnum, or kowhai,¹and the beautiful pine-like totara,²and there was hardly enough even of these. There were, however, a good many old logs of one and the other in the river, and these we sawed off into lengths of about six feet and split into posts of suitable size, bursting open the log with powder and finishing work with mall and wedges. These logs were now and then quite under water; so we only tackled them in the hot weather when we could strip and get in. It would have been a curious sight for a chance passer-by two heads page 53solemnly moving backward and forward on the surface of the water with nothing else visible, not even the connecting saw. The first time, however, that we stripped completely to the skin was the last, as the said skin, not to be outdone, soon began its preparation for coming off too, and we had a painful time of it. We had forgotten the sun.

We found some big dead logs also near the top of the range. The posts from these had to be dragged in little one-horse sledges that we made for the purpose, down about mile of so rough a track that we seldom made a trip without an upset or some other disaster. This mile brought us to the top of a cliff overhanging the river and from that cliff, when the thousand or so posts were stacked, we rigged a single wire right across to the opposite bank far away below, and driving two staples into each post started them down one after the other. We had to adjust the amount of belly on the wire so as to slacken the speed of the posts before reaching ground, and so great was the friction on the staples that they were mostly cut through by the time the bottom was reached, and the landing therefore was largely automatic.

Then we had to get them down the river.

First we tried tying them into small rafts with a man on each, but the wood was so waterlogged that they only just floated and drew too much water to get past the rapids, while, in the deeper parts, the unfortunate pilot, run round the little raft as he would, found the side he was on always under water. Then we pitched in all the rest of the posts, and following with poles to keep them from standing in the rapids, managed to get the lot downstream, about three-quarters of a mile to the homestead; but it was slow work. Having floated them safe into a backwater, we held a council of war, and praying that it would not rain, in which case we should lose the lot, we knocked off work for a day and made a punt.

Then we took a long wire, and laying the posts side by side in the shallow water, fastened each by one staple to the wire; and some poling the punt, as if for dear life, towing, and others wading at each rapid, hauling back on the tail, we managed for the most part to keep the long snake of timber from buckling and stranding, and as it was three miles of river bank we were fencing, to take off at intervals so many posts to the chain. At last the whole line was laid, and we were able to get home, weary, but very pleased with ourselves.

On the first night, as we ail straggled in very wet, we found the good mother on the veranda with a sugar basin and a bottle of camphor, and to each was handed a wellsoaked lump. Next day great was the maternal triumph. "Never, boys, will you dare laugh at my camphor again. Not one of you, soaked though you all were, has caught the least cold." One mean wretch who quietly observed that he had omitted to swallow his portion, did not score much, being rated in good set terms as an ungrateful and utterly unworthy son.

Splitting logs is clean and pleasant work. You must, however, first learn to make the great wooden beetle or mall from the right kind of tree, and you must get hold of the knack of putting In Its taper handle, and the way to fit its iron rings, so that when its face wears and burrs they shall not come off, but work back.

Sometimes it is difficult to get started on a log; your blow is dead and unpleasant, and the steel wedge jumps back out and falls. But once in, you feel a comfortable "give" with each stroke as you drive wedge after wedge along the opening crack, and still more when you enter the big wooden chock to keep the gap open while you cut the long slivers with the axe. And as the two

sides fall dear apart, you see the clean red wood and smell the fresh pleasant scent of it.

It was said of the Highland shepherd in New Zealand, that he would rather work his dogs, getting in strayed sheep, every day for a month than get off his horse and mend a fence. But that was in the days before wire fencing had attained its present status, almost that of a fine art. Fences need comparatively little attention now.

The average fence is of seven or eight galvanised steel wires, the top wire being barbed and three foot six inches from the ground. In the best practice it will be in about quarter-mile lengths, the strain being taken by an earth anchor of timber or rock sunk at either end, and the wires tightened, both ways, by a little ratchet gear on each wire in the centre of the strain. The wooden posts are placed in the most exact line, and the tightness of the seven wires is so great when the fence is finished that, where there is a depression of only an inch or two, the post has to be firmly anchored down in one way or another or it will come up level at once. Such a fence (Plate Xa) has to be taken across gullies and up or along the steepest possible slopes, sometimes where every post hole must be sunk with a crowbar, page break

Plate IX
Packing out grass seed

Plate IX
Packing Wooi.

page 57 and it has to be everywhere and at all times perfectly sheep proof,

Fencing is quite highly skilled work. A good man in digging post holes, for instance, will bury his spade up to the handle in a hole the width of Its blade and not much over fifteen inches broad, and go on making such holes all day without apparent effort. Let the reader take a spade and try this.

A most satisfactory proof of good work having been put into a fence occurred one dull day when I was away on a far ridge looking out for wild pigs, which are likely to be about in the open in such weather. It had been reported that a boar was thereabouts, who was suspected of having devoured some new-born lambs. I had had no luck, when suddenly a full-grown, pig started from a thicket close by and went full bang at the fence. Now a New Zealand wild boar has a snout like the nozzle of a fire hose, and confidently expects that where-ever that snout goes, his wedge-shaped head and his two-inch leather-armoured shoulder can. certainly follow; for with his weight and pace the momentum he acquires is very considerable.

But the expected did not happen in this case. The wires, being stapled on two swinging battens, held together and the whole page 58weight of the charging animal being taken by the spring of the eighteen feet of fence, he was thrown back, snout over tail, into the thicket again, where a couple of bullets from my Colt repeating rifle put an end to his evil doings, before he had found out what had happened to him.