ile
uphill. We purchased a keg or two of nails, and finally fixed up the
fence.

We were proud of our clearings when they were new, and we are proud of
them still. But they would look strange sort of paddocks to an English
farmer's eye. The ground is all hills and hollows, lying on the sides of
ranges, or stretching across the gullies. Amidst the grass is a dazzling
perspective of black and white stumps, looking like a crop of
tombstones, seen endways; and round the whole careers, uphill and down
dale, the rough, barbarous, uncouth-looking stake fence. Never mind! Off
that gaunt and unseemly tract has come many a good bale of wool, many a
fair keg of butter, or portly cheese. What have we to do with trim
appearances?

In the course of fencing operations, the Little'un developed a wonderful
aptitude for the manufacture of gates. Whether he had learnt the whole
art of carpentry from his practice upon a certain chair, elsewhere
described, I do not know; but his gates are a marvel of ingenuity, and
really very capital contrivances. Only, he is so vain of his
performance, that he wishes to put a gate about every hundred yards. A
constant warfare is waged upon this point, between him and Old Colonial,
who does not seem to approve of gates at all.

In subsequent years we have done something towards making live-fences.
We have dug ditches and banks within some of the fences, planting them
with thorn, acacia, Vermont damson, Osage orange, and other hedge
material. We have now some very good and sightly hedges. Luckily, we
never tried whins, or furze, as here called. This is a vile thing. It
makes a splendid hedge, but it spreads across the clearing and ruins the
grass; and it is the worst of weeds to eradicate.

Whins and thistles are the only bad things that Bonnie Scotland has sent
out here. They, and sweetbriar, are given to spreading wherever they go.
In some localities in the North there are clearings submerged under
whins or sweetbriar, and there are forests of thistles, which march
onward and devour all before them. Whins you cannot clear, unless by
toil inadequate to the present value of land. But thistles can be
effectually burnt, I believe. At any rate, they die out after a term of
years, and, it is said, leave the land sweet and clean. So they are,
perhaps, not an unmixed curse.

We think that thorn makes the best hedge. But there are objections to
it. It is not easily or quickly reared, and it straggles on ligh