HARD TIMES 137 



stock. The result of this restlessness was by no means, moreover, 

 covered by loss in stragglers and drowning. In a dozen ways besides, 

 death gathered the wretched beasts with both hands. I find in Kier- 

 nan's diary the following item : "30 per cent loss in stock between 

 1st April 1877 and 31st March 1878." It was an entry that must 

 have given pause even to our pioneers. 



The reader will recollect the first draft of 4000 sheep planted on 

 the station by the intrepid Newton, and almost at once removed in 

 consequence of Te Kuiti's raid. It was the earliest mob delivered on 

 the run, but my own experience of similar occurrences has been so pro- 

 longed that this first mob may be taken as a text to illustrate the 

 melancholy processes of a " 30 per cent loss in stock between 1st April 

 1877 and 31st March 1878." The preliminary leakage in droving would 

 be small ; a few sheep, however, would probably have been drowned at the 

 crossing of the broad estuary of the great rivers, Tutae Kuri and Ngara- 

 roro. There was no bridge then ; the sheep crossed in punts, the drovers 

 swimming their horses behind with the offchance of an attack by sharks. 

 I find in an early diary that on one occasion when the punt was filled 

 with rams, its plug was kicked out and sheep and shepherds alike had to 

 reach shore as best they could by swimming. The Petane river, too, 

 would possibly claim a few victims ; the " wash-out " that dangerous 

 break in the beach through which, under certain conditions, the tides 

 passed to and fro a few more ; a handful or so might have managed to 

 drink salt water ; a few poison themselves on tutu, a shrub exceedingly 

 dangerous to unsalted stock ; a few drop out from lameness, or be lost 

 in under-runners and pitfalls. It would not, however, be until the 4000 

 already depleted perhaps 2 per cent or 3 per cent reached their 

 destination that losses on a serious scale would begin. After that 

 would commence the long conflict between sheep determined to return 

 to their own pastures and owners determined to hold them on the 

 station. The most careful collies will be rash at times ; their shepherd 

 masters had to walk by faith at least as much as by sight. The doings of 

 their dogs were hidden by dips of the rugged land, by patches of inter- 

 vening scrub, by belts of woodland offering harbourage to the leg- weary 

 sheep, by deep bands of low charred tutu stems, by alternate tongues of 

 dense bracken and of open ground, the whole countryside in addition 

 pitted with under-runners and seamed with narrow gorges. The 

 decencies of high-class shepherding were impossible in such broken 



