The Saint is the most elaborate swearer I ever heard. That is, when he is driving cattle. At other times he most conscientiously refrains from everything but abstract rectitude of speech. He says that you cannot drive cattle without swearing; that they understand you so far, and never think you are in earnest till they hear an oath. Whip and dogs and roaring will not do without some good hearty swearing, too. The Saint says so, and he ought to know. He declares that he could never bring up cattle unless he swore at them. I think I have heard something similar from other drovers. Perhaps some naturalist will be good enough to explain this extraordinary characteristic of cattle.
The cattle associate themselves into mobs. Each such mob is headed by an old bell-cow, sometimes by two or three. Bulls, of which we have now two, are sometimes with one mob and sometimes with another. Individual beasts, belonging to neighbours of ours, are to be found running with certain mobs belonging to us, and the reverse is also the case. We have to look after the strange beasts with our own, and our neighbours do the same by us. At musters, or when drafting for market, we make the necessary exchanges. But we have only two neighbours on this side the river who run cattle in the bush; one lives six miles off, and the other fifteen.
We keep a stock-book, in which every beast is entered. Each cow receives a name when she becomes a mother, and her offspring are known by numbers. Steers are never named. They have only four years of it, being sent off to market at the end of that time. Then a line is drawn through the "Beauty's third," or "Rosebud's fourth," which has designated their individuality in the stock-book; and the price they have fetched is entered opposite. The various mobs are known by the names of the old cows that lead them. Thus, we speak of "White Star's mob," or "Redspot's mob."
It is the stockman's duty to know each individual beast, and also to know the members that compose each mob. He has to go out with the dogs almost every day to hunt up some mob or other. Our bush is much too dense to admit of riding, except along certain narrow tracks, partly natural and partly cut with the axe, which serve as bridle-roads, and keep open communication with distant settlements or settlers' places. So the member of our fraternity who happens to be stockman has to go cattle-hunting afoot.