s--about
50,000--must make a good deal.

We next inspected the wool tables, to which two boys were incessantly
bringing armfuls of rolled-up fleeces; these were laid on the tables
before the wool-sorters, who opened them out, and pronounced in a moment
to which _bin_ they belonged; two or three men standing behind rolled
them up again rapidly, and put them on a sort of shelf divided into
compartments, which were each labelled, so that the quality and kind of
wool could be told at a glance. There was a constant emptying of these
bins into trucks to be carried off to the press, where we followed
to see the bales packed. The fleeces are tumbled in, and a heavy
screw-press forces them down till the bale--which is kept open in a
large square frame--is as full as it can hold. The top of canvas is then
put on, tightly sewn, four iron pins are removed and the sides of the
frame fall away, disclosing a most symmetrical bale ready to be hoisted
by a crane into the loft above, where it has the brand of the sheep
painted on it, its weight, and to what class the wool belongs. Of course
everything has to be done with great speed and system.

I was much impressed by the silence in the shed; not a sound was to be
heard except the click of the shears, and the wool-sorter's decision as
he flings the fleece behind him, given in one, or at most two words. I
was reminded how touchingly true is that phrase, "Like as a sheep before
her shearers is dumb." All the noise is _outside_; there the hubbub, and
dust, and apparent confusion are great,--a constant succession of woolly
sheep being brought up to fill the "skillions" (from whence the shearers
take them as they want them), and the newly-shorn ones, white, clean,
and bewildered-looking, being turned out after they have passed through
a narrow passage, called a "race," where each sheep is branded, and has
its mouth examined in order to tell its age, which is marked in a book.
It was a comfort to think all their troubles were over, for a year. You
can hear nothing but barking and bleating, and this goes on from early
morning till dark. We peeped in at the men's huts--a long, low wooden
building, with two rows of "bunks" (berths, I should call their) in one
compartment, and a table with forms round it in the other, and piles of
tin plates and pannikins all about. The kitchen was near, and we were
just in time to see an enormous batch of bread withdrawn from a huge
brick oven: the other commis