THE LURE OF IMPROVEMENTS 121 



they were enthusiasts. They worked as young men work when hope is 

 high. The wool-shed to be erected was a vision to dream of; it was a 

 joy to view with the mind's eye vast stretches of green grass ; their 

 hearts leapt up when they beheld the flocks and herds of the future, 

 the larger lambs, the fatter wethers, the heavier-fleeced ewes. In that 

 golden age money was valued as useful only for some new improvement 

 to the station. She was the beloved mistress for whom nothing was 

 too good. She was to be decked with the straightest of fence lines, the 

 woolliest of sheep, the shadiest of willow-groves ; beautified with tall 

 crops, smoothed in green grass, lawned like Arcadia. A settler gives 

 his best love not to his parents, not to his wife, not to his little ones, 

 but to his land. 



In a former chapter I have asked the reader to shed the Decalogue 

 and to strip himself to a Maori mat. In this I could wish that he 

 should brace himself to the agony of perusing three months' entries 

 from T. C. Kiernan's diary. Unlimited diary is a proverbially stodgy 

 diet, and that of '79 is no exception to the rule, yet deliberately I 

 intend to reproduce January, February, and March exactly as they 

 were written, day by day, word for word, with all their repetitions, 

 trivialities, jottings of wages, stores, mutton, tobacco, and pain-killer 

 sold. I have thought it better to show the plain unvarnished tale as 

 a whole than attempt to select sample days. The reader must prepare 

 himself, therefore, for the digestion of a three months' lump of diary. 

 Alas ! that I cannot present to him the grimy original documents ; 

 then, indeed, he might forbear, or, at any rate, condone the offence. 

 Truth to tell, they hardly bear transcription to clean paper and clear 

 type ; I feel a kind of shame in dragging to the light of day jottings 

 pencilled in smoky huts lit by candles guttering in the draughts, the 

 writer, with hard hands and broken nails, rising from time to time to 

 turn the frizzling chops, to prong the simmering joint, or to pile fresh 

 embers on the lid of the camp oven. 



The play opened then in '78 with a dramatis personce of owners 

 and ex-owners : Thomas and Charles Stuart, George and Ben Merritt, 

 a mysterious Mr Doull " from Otago," alone of those mentioned in 

 the fragmentary diary of '78 honoured with the courtesy prefix, 

 shepherds, bushmen, contractors, and natives. 



The station once acquired, improvements were not long withheld ; 

 from the beginning, indeed, they were lavished on the land with both 



