HARD TIMES 133 



arrange matters connected with run." 1 1th April : " Returned from town 

 owing to not being able to do business till Thursday next." 12th April : 

 " Trying to kill time" 17th April : " In town waiting to see Miller" 



Thrice fortunate those who have not passed through the dreary 

 stages of having "no heart to do anything," of "trying to kill time," 

 of " waiting to see Miller" 



Trusting that these entries from Kiernan's diary will prepare the 

 reader for the sad sequel, we can go back many months to the date, in 

 fact, of the partnership of Stuart and Kiernan. The reader has, in fact, 

 seen but one side of the operation of breaking in a run. If, however, 

 he has been in any degree deceived, it has only been as Messrs Stuart 

 and Kiernan were themselves deceived. He has intentionally been 

 allowed to look at things as they themselves viewed their own affairs. 

 The truth is, that from the beginning these pioneers were doomed they 

 were predestined to failure. Conditions in the interior were in those 

 days quite unknown ; knowledge of local conditions the most im- 

 portant knowledge of all had to be purchased. Settlers in the fertile 

 districts of southern Hawke's Bay may have been but little wiser or more 

 careful, they always had this in their favour that their soils were suffici- 

 ently rich to redeem the owner's faults, even making full allowance for the 

 fact that in those days fern was fern, that none could tell in the 'seventies 

 that a plant, easily destroyed in a dry climate and on warm rich soils, 

 would prove almost ineradicable on porous land in a wet district. 



The master and main difficulty was lack of sheep-feed. Eliminating 

 the leaves of tutu (Coriaria ruscifolia), edible only to salted stock, 

 and the growth of fern fronds, which ceased altogether for six months of 

 the year, there were not 100 acres of sheep-feed on Tutira, there were 

 not 100 acres of grass on Tutira when Newton stocked the run with 4000 

 sheep. In early times, not only on that station but on every property 

 in Hawke's Bay, the sheep had to create his own pasture, himself to grow 

 his own keep. Now, to understock is the secret of all successful sheep- 

 farming, but action on the lines of this axiom was denied to the run. 

 Irreconcilable contrarieties in nature had to be reconciled. The pioneers 

 of Tutira had at one and the same time to " make " their country and to 

 consider the welfare of their stock ; it was to solder impossibilities and 

 make them kiss. 



In an earlier chapter a general description of the indigenous vegeta- 

 tion of the run bracken, forest, woodland, and marsh has been given. 



