"Here is something which always stops me," said Mr. Carter. "It is like running into a big spider's web."
A woman coming up the road was driving eight or nine cows, each attached to a long rope, which she held in her hand. It seemed like a maze to an outsider, but she drew in first one rope, and then twisted another, and pulled back another, until she finally got her charges to one side of the road.
The cows are taken out to pasture, where there are no regular fields where they may run loose. So they must be guarded in this manner, and when they have eaten one spot up clean, they are taken on to another.
Farther up the road two children were watching some goats on the side of the road, but in this case each goat's rope was tied to an iron stake which was driven in the ground, so the children could amuse themselves until it was time to move the animals on to a fresh bit of pasturage.
"Your horses wear gay clothes," said Mr. Carter, as they passed a great lumbering wagon, swung between two big wheels, drawn tandem-wise,--that is, one horse in front of the other,--by five heavy-limbed Norman horses.
Around their big clumsy wooden collars, which are usually painted in bright colours, was draped a dark blue sheepskin blanket. On their heads bobbed big tassels of blue and red, or blue, red, and yellow, which so dangled in their eyes that one wonders how they could see at all.
The leader was more finely dressed than the others. His neck-blanket had long stole-like ends, that hung almost to the ground, and an extra high collar with more tassels. All this may not be comfortable for the horses, but they looked so very picturesque, one hopes that they did not mind it.
The automobile now whizzed by a team of slow-moving cream-coloured oxen,--beautiful beasts with yokes twisted around their horns instead of around their necks. They never so much as lifted their sleepy eyes to look at our party.
"This is another frequent obstacle in the way of the automobilist," said Mr. Carter, as they came in sight of a flock of sheep with their shepherd, which completely blocked up the road. "But I do not object to stopping in this case, for it is worth one's while to watch the sheep-dogs do their work."