A TYPICAL FARMER.

Otago Witness, Issue 2209, 2 July 1896, Page 50

A TYPICAL FARMER.

By E. S. G.

It is a sheep farm that he owns, of course. The house is not a goodly substantial building of the last century or of far remoter times, standing among pleasant fields of corn, with garden and orchard, granaries and well-kept poultry yards ; its household furniture is not of golid oak; its owner is a man of very different stamp from the traditional English farmer. The bills are close around it, and the still waters of the fiord, are \n front. Many days the ruin, mists/ and fogs hang over tbe summits without sweeping down here, though often they .come like an atmospheric spectre devobriDg all tbe landscape. Great winds reign over those peaks ; now and then they come rushing down tbe gullies. Bare hills, bleak bills, with their battlefields of dead trees, their rocks throwing huge shadows on tbe rough herbage, their countless sheep tracks where the sheep are grazing : these are the farmer's heritage— his "farm." Miles and miles of this wild country are hi?, from the Eteep bluff overhanging the bay to tbe stony peak in the back country. Four or five times at lsast in the year he is out on horseback murteriog his widely-scattered flock. Hia horso and he know the rough country equally well ; neither dream of a etumble over stone or fallen log or a slip over precipitous paths. Iq the wildest parts— the " back country " — be may go on foot ; but that is not usual. He has been over theße hills all his life, sweating under the summer heat, nipped by the bitter cold of winter. He is, for a New Zsalander, a careful and conscientious farmer, and in bad mid-wiators thinks it not too great trouble and risk to wade through falls of snow to drive tbe sheep into the fold The drifts were deep ia some places but, with a dumb, stoical sense of duty, he went his way. Day after day you may watch this farmer on horseback among bis. hills— a rougi*, unkempt' figure in the coarsest of clothing, no way distinguishable -from- hia men at first sight. Sometimes he is alone ; more often tbe cheep dogs follow' at tbe horse's heels, and two or three lads or grown men go with him. Their shout?, with the barking of the dega and tbe bleating of the sheep ring, musically among the gullies and the hilUides — a warwhoop might almost be musical here ;' but I thiok -labouring mountaineers do gat a fuller and a deeper utterance than tbe frequenters of tbe coucter and the pavement. Yon might not guess it, but thiß man was a gentleman's son. He has relations now — though he never thinks of them — among the peers of England ; his wife now end then recalls tham when *hz turr.s over old photographs, or recognises the grandfather's portrait in her bc3t room. But the fanner's eons" and their sons will begin their pedigree with him, and he has good stuff in him for the making of a race. If you watch him closely you will ccc a difference between him and his men ; in fact, it is only his coat that resembles theirs. It is not merely that he speaks better grammar than they, it is that he ventures the most, works the most, knows the most, and cares the most. If anyone loungos about or dura overwork it is not the master. Here amor g«t barely half a dcz?n free men, mere occasional hands, Maoris perhaps, ox unattached shearer?, you may find a born ruler, resolute, cool, and • concentrated ; a man Irom earliest childhood trained to daily endurance and toil, rough perhaps in manner or speech—the may swear as loud as any of the men at his shearing shed — but with a curious unconscious heroism, about him. The finer strain in hii nature shows itself chit /lv by his superior intellect, his senoe of authority, and the faculty he has for gleaning information upon {joints that interest Mm. There is an 'element one would hardly expect of cosmopolitanism about these dwellers in lonely places. They have seen many visitors, have conversed with scores of travellers from all regions— wandering Poles, Italian fishers, old Maoris, Finn sailors from the far nor'tb, Chinese from the far east; their memories not overcrowded with the multifarious details of civilised life, receive firmer and more lasting impressions. So it comes abiut that our farmer's outlook is cosmopolitan, although ! the centre of his -nature is intensely patriotic. As he sits and emckes by bis blazing fire at night he likes nothing better than stories of "Indian temples, of Obinese mandarins, of coral islands, of remote Russia, and of English villages; but he no more wishes to be a part of these scenes than he wishes to ba the hero of " Robbery Under Arms." He is rooted to his own plot of ground— could no more live as a globe-trotter than a plant could thrive on the winds. His old comrade, however, was in his way a wanderer, much as Ulysses might have been, for mere sporfc— a traveller round unexplored sea-coast, nntenanted rocky peaks, and silent mountain paths. To our friend this craziness entirely explains Jack's unproapexous circumstances. Such a man as this would just have . suited Oarlyle, and were be bat given a larger sphere, might even have been Tennyson's ' Still strong man in a blatant land. A cultured person, however, may judge him harshly— may find something akin in. him to inanimate nature; may find bis silence a rocky insensibility. He is not chivalrous, perhaps. Natures different from hia own may be to him naturoa manifestly inferior. His methods maybe those of physical force*

' yet he has his tenderer moments— ho does not forget horse or dog ; he has a strong, ' mute sentiment for these beautiful hills and waters, and for all young things he has a. half-ashamed fondness, like Bret Hart's traditional digger. If you find my farmer at all in literature it will be American; England as. yet knowß him not, and even America only gets near . him. He Is, In short, a distinct indigenous growth. Take him in all and all, even a mild socialist is inclined to hope land nationalisation may not improve him off the face of the earth. That the type will be permanent Is hardly to be expected.