148 TUTIRA 



Ananias, Azarias, and Misael ! that morning our happiness over- 

 flowed the world. "We even loved our landlords after all, they had 

 been heathens until recently ; they had never read Henry George ; 

 they knew no better. We rode along the shallow sandy turf of the 

 Whiranaki Flats and over the Beach Hill to the County Boundary 

 Peak. We were then in the county of Wairoa, one of whose divisions 

 was the Mohaka riding, within which lay Tutira ; it was another step 

 towards our new possession. Farther on we reached the Tangoio Bluff, 

 and turning inland at right angles passed the homestead and wool-shed 

 of the Tangoio run. Tangoio and Tutira marched with one another. 



We followed several miles inland, but parallel to the sea, the 

 switch-back track, the old coastal pack-trail, so lost to common-sense 

 as to think its deplorable grades good going. We struck the First 

 Fence, and saw for the first time the Tutira station mail-box. To 

 ordinary eyes it might have seemed, as indeed it was, a kerosene case 

 nailed to the top of a strainer-post. To us it was much more ; that 

 box, simple and unpretentious to the outward eye, had been the 

 receptacle of communications about Tutira wool, about Tutira stock, 

 about Tutira interests of a dozen sorts. We viewed it with a kind of 

 reverence. 



We turned sharp inland and followed up and down over the hill- 

 tops, the trail faintly marked by the station pack-team. Three miles 



farther on we struck Dolbel's 

 Boundary Gate, and saw in the 

 distance the Delectable Moun- 

 tains of our pilgrimage the 

 ranges of Tutira. Shortly after- 

 wards we looked down upon 

 Blue Duck Waikoau. the Waikoau tumbling along 



amongst its boulders. We led 



our horses over the " shoot," the almost perpendicular drop, down 

 which the pack-team used in muddy weather to slide with stiff legs 

 and unlifted hoofs. We zigzagged down the steep trail of Dolbel's 

 Face, disturbing mobs of wild cattle, each of them raising pleasant 

 anticipations of future huntings. With the delight of Scott crossing 

 his Tweed at Abbotsford, we splashed across the unsung ford of the 

 Waikoau. We trod Tutira soil. We viewed for the first time our 

 own sheep. They were merino ewes, skin and bone, scrags, their 



