animal, being young and "touchy," immediately exhibited a fair imitation of that well-known Australian gambade known as "buck-jumping." For the honour of Scotia, however, our friend, new chum as he was, stuck to the pigskin, and was justly applauded at the end of the performance.
Live stock were cruelly low about that time—£1 a head for store bullocks, and so on. Fat cattle were never worth more than £3 each, often considerably under that modest price. The expense of stock-management bore hard upon receipts, particularly when the proprietor had not inherited the saving grace of "screwiness." Our host, gallant, generous, warm-hearted William Ryrie, was not in that line; far otherwise. As a matter of fact, Yering was sold to Messrs. de Castella and Co., within a year of our visit, for two or three thousand pounds—some such trifle, at any rate.
So Yering passed into the hands of another good fellow. Though "foreign," and not "to the manor born," he quickly demonstrated his ability to acquire the leading principles of stock-management. Of course, the gold came to his aid, causing the cattle he had purchased at £2 each to be worth £8 or £10, and in other ways making things easy for an enterprising pastoralist. Besides managing the herd satisfactorily, Mr. de Castella saw his way to developing the vineyard, enlarging it twenty or fifty fold, besides building cellars, wine-presses, and all the adjuncts of scientific vine-culture. He imported French or Swiss vignerons, and commenced to acquire that high reputation for "white and red Yering" Hermitage which remains unblemished to this day.
