232 TUTIRA 



In one particularly dry summer Stuart managed to run a fire 

 through the largest of them Kahikanui swamp. The great blaze 

 consumed everything dry ; only the two or three latest crops of leaf 

 lay on the ground or drooped from the crown of the plant, brown, 

 flaccid, and parboiled. This jungle of dead and dying leaves was 

 later trampled into fibre by sheep attracted by the huge succulent 

 sow-thistles which germinated after the fire. During the summer 

 succeeding the first conflagration a second fire was run through 

 large tracts of this shredded flax, completely cleaning the land and 

 destroying the crowns of such plants as had again begun to sprout. 

 In thinner areas, where fire could not obtain a hold, the dead crowns 

 were chipped with spade and adze, heaped up in piles, and burnt. 

 The ground was then ploughed and harrowed, and the season proving 

 propitious, the soil responded as virgin land does at its first working. 

 There was no turnip-fly, save sow-thistles there were no weeds ; the 

 turnip seed, hand-sown by myself with great care, germinated evenly. 

 We used to ride over and grovel in search of the earliest coty- 

 ledons. Returning from long days of labour, we refreshed ourselves 

 with the sight of the growing crop the development of the third leaf, 

 the rise of the deep green shaws, the preliminary thickening of the 

 roots, the bloom as of nectarine or plum on the bulbs, the immense 

 leaves, the giant globes of these purple-top Aberdeens, each change 

 in the crop was a fresh delight. It was a sacrilege to ruffle their 

 green luxuriance, a liberty to pull one or two for human use, a 

 festival to think of them. Except to readers who care for the 

 brown earth and all matters that appertain thereto, I despair of 

 picturing our satisfaction at the success of this our first agricultural 

 work. Our crop was the healthiest and heaviest I have ever known 

 anywhere at any time. A second fine crop was grown the following 

 season, a third was mediocre, a fourth no crop at all ; weeds, chiefly 

 docks, had taken possession of the soil. 



Up to this date all improvements had been put on to the 

 eastern corner of the station. Over it all fencing had been run, over 

 it all grass-seed sown. On the other hand, nothing had been done 

 to the great residue of the property the fifteen or sixteen thousand 

 acres then known as the " back " country. It remained still as it 

 had been a hundred years before. 



Our new step in development was the utilisation of this desert, 



