"KINGS OF THE EARTH."

Marlborough Express, Volume XLIV, Issue 216, 19 September 1910, Page 3

"KINGS OF THE EARTH."

Mr Claude Dickson, known as ' bossdrover of the Gulf," was lying last week in a private hospital m Melbourne, "longing," as an Age reporter put it, "with a cruel longing for the free air and the sunshine of the wide waste spaces of the North.. It is explained' that a "boss drover is a man who takes contracts for driving herds of cattle from one part of the continent to another. They ax& said to be able to reckon on making: a thousand a year if they a.re successful, but to achieve they mast have capacity far above the average, and must know the routes to be followed across hundreds of miles of trackless land! Their calling requires of them a knowledge of rivers and lakes and waterholes. They must know the long stock routes as the town dwellers know their own streets. Miscalculation spells ruin, because they are allowed only fivo per cent, of losses, and must make good any further lessening of the value of the herd in their charge from their own pockets. So it follows that an incapable or inexperienced man is quickly ruined and disgraced; the mouths of the drovers are full of tales* of such failures. Mr Dickson spoke of the difficulties of distance, and the war that must be waged always against the climate and the elementsif the stock is # to be yarded safely. But the most important part of the "boss drover's" work, he says, is the engagement of men. A poor class of drover means ruin. In the Northern Territory and the Gulf there are thousands of drovers, most of whom are kno^ra to the cattle. men, each commanding a wfeige according to bis reputation. A few, of the best get]£Z per week, and their rations. The lowest 'pay is £3; but only an experienced man can get even that. The ("bos?; drover of the Gulf" told the? journalist that ;they : were "the finest? class of man," but in most eases their ■past lives have been forgotten. They form the real legion of the lost. Their very names change from year to year. "There ?was one man—a dare-devil "fellow and 'a king amongst cattle— swho used to carry in his pocket a dirty little copy of J>e Musset's poems in the original French. He was reputed to have engaged under 22 different names." The drovers seldom yisit the towns, and their only holidays are hiatuses that occur after visits to roadside, shianties. So far they have not been done into a book., and in a decade or two they may have* vanished, for the drovers and the railways .cannot exist side by side. On© is inclined to ho^e that an authorworthy of them may arise before they have /all gone. Their life is the real romance—they are whlatWill Ogilivi© as - "The Kings of the !Earth."