142 TUTIRA 



realm. Thus it came about that an immediate debt was run up for 

 improvements which could not at once bear full fruition. 



Properties in the transition stage, their improvements paid for, but 

 the financial results of these improvements not yet apparent, are the 

 first to feel the pinch of bad times ; for what is a line of fencing to a 

 banker, or a drain or a bag of grass seed ? Simply damnable items on 

 the debit side of a balance-sheet. From enthusiasm then, from inexperi- 

 ence, from want of good advice there was nobody to administer the 

 last, for no man had worked the light lands of northern Hawke's Bay 

 at that time, the obvious dangers to themselves do not seem to have 

 troubled the brothers Stuart and Kiernan. 



There could at any rate have been but little forethought in the 

 financing of the run ; indeed it is to be feared that a diary entry of a 

 very early date was typical of the financial methods then in vogue : 

 " Bought from William Villers, one team of eight bullocks, waggon and 

 all complete, for the sum of 135. Terms, to pay when able.'' 

 In the diaries, entered amongst shearing tallies, lists of washing sent to 

 Napier, inventories of chattels, as the pots and pans of the station are 

 rather grandiloquently termed, appear also from time to time financial 

 calculations, figures enow in all conscience, but often lacking items to 

 which they can be attached. These reckonings have apparently been 

 jotted down hot from the writer's brain and then left high and dry, 

 stranded and never retouched a second time. There is yet extant also 

 a little note-book whose perusal will raise a sympathetic sigh in the 

 bosom of every Hawke's Bay pioneer. Lined in columns for the months 

 and weeks and days of the year, it is nothing less than an attempt at the 

 daily registration of lost sheep, cattle, and horses. This melancholy 

 volume, however, like other New Year resolutions, made only to be 

 broken, seems to have been discontinued after the deaths of 31 sheep, a 

 drowned horse, and a bogged bullock. 



More carefully kept and deliberate calculations do nevertheless exist. 

 For instance, though in the diary of 78 there is no mention of shear- 

 ing probably the flock, consisting wholly of dry sheep, was clipped at 

 Taugoio on the coast, there exists the catalogue of the earliest Tutira 

 clip, 218 pockets, which, at the rate of 18 or 20 fleeces to the pocket, 

 would roughly correspond with the following figures carefully written 

 out and repeated on another page : 



