144 TUTIRA 



so had " offered his clip at 5d. for the next six years, and couldn't 

 get a taker, mind you " ; the usual squeeze began of those least 

 able to bear pressure. Among them were the brothers Stuart and 

 Kiernan. There is indeed something almost pathetic in the naive sur- 

 prise evinced in Kiernan's diary entries of this fatal April of 1879. That 

 the price of wool could possibly fall, that bankers could conceivably 

 tighten their purse-strings, seems never to have entered the heads of 

 our pioneers. The necessary knowledge had, I suppose, to be paid 

 for, and although the considerable number of thousands of pounds 

 lost in its acquisition may not as Miss Wirt, in ' Vanity Fair,' was 

 wont to tell of her father's financial transactions have convulsed 

 the exchanges of Europe, these sums were all their owners possessed. 

 The hole in their resources, though neither as deep as a well nor 

 as wide as a church door, was sufficient. Twas enough, at any rate, 

 'twould serve. 



After this ill-starred month of April there appear few further 

 references to finance. Immediate difficulties seem to have been tided 

 over. Improvements, moreover, proceeded, although work done now 

 was doubtless the completion of work already begun, which could not 

 have been stayed even from the point of view of an uneasy banker. 

 Nearly 200 bags of good ryegrass and cocksfoot were sown ; delivery 

 of pit-sawn timber, begun in happier times, was proceeded with, and 

 wool-shed built. From April of 78, however, owners worked with the 

 sword of Damocles suspended over their heads. With anxious eyes 

 they scanned that fatal barometer of hopes and fears the wool market. 

 I find, for instance, this entry : " No good news wool market showing 

 no signs of improvement" Kiernan's diary is, nevertheless, as ample 

 and careful as ever. Details are given of the first station garden, of the 

 planting of eucalypt, willow, and pine. I think no fact could more 

 clearly prove how its owners must have cared for their station than its 

 adornment under these tragic conditions the adornment of a bride 

 about to be ravished from their arms. These eucalypts, willows, and 

 insignis, planted on a promontory jutting into the lake, have now been 

 for forty years an ornament to the station. I never look at them on the 

 fine headland Taupunga without thinking of the sad circumstances of 

 their planting, how in the joy of labour chilling thoughts of the future 

 must have obtruded themselves, thoughts that take half the energy out 

 of the settler's arms. The days, weeks, and months of the year passed 



