238 TUTIRA 



meditating, we may imagine, on their coming opportunity of service, 

 on their duty of germinating where no grass seed had germinated 

 before. Sowers were engaged, camp sites chosen, and presently ten 

 or a dozen natives were surface-sowing ground which a week before 

 had supported a jungle of fern and scrub. 



An immense interest was attached to the first appearance of the 

 green needles of such fast -growing species as rye and goose-grass. 

 Scarcely behind them came the flat cotyledons of white clover and 

 suckling. Germination was earliest visible about the lines of pack- 

 trails where seed had been spilt from accidental rents in the sacks, 

 on damp localities, and on fertile outcrops of marl. 



The reader knows that English grass did ultimately fail on the 

 central run. At this date, however, the owners of the station were 

 still in ignorance of that tragic future. Happily, yet undisillusioned, 

 they saw in their mind's eye a spreading sward of velvet green. 

 There was excuse for such a belief; in those days there was a whiff 

 of virtue in the soil ; seed germinated during first sowings as it never 

 did again. 



To return, however, to our paddock : each ride revealed a change 

 first, hillsides bristling with numberless needles of green and flat clover 

 cotyledons, then plants in their second leaf, then plants tall enough to 

 offer a bite to stock, then hillsides faintly green in favourable lights, 

 until lastly, a green hue overspread the entire paddock. To persons 

 careless to the reclamation of land, the delight afforded by the bringing 

 in of the wilderness will perhaps appear a species of lunacy. It did not 

 then seem so to us ; our paddock was a long-drawn variety entertain- 

 ment, more enthralling in the development of its plot than any novel. 

 To paraphrase Hamlet, the land's the thing. I was twenty-five then ; I 

 am more than twice that now ; some interests pass with passing years ; 

 one never palls the development of land. 



It is needless to follow the history of this paddock beyond its first 

 autumn and spring, for the contractions and expansions of a typical 

 block have been elsewhere related. Suffice it to say that, within the 

 year, 1500 sheep were carried where not a hoof had trod before. I 

 acknowledge we had not done the work well or properly, but may 

 I again beg the reader to recollect our tenure and our lack of capital. 

 We had cut our coat according to our cloth. We had used cheap 

 wire, we had used cheap seed ; nevertheless, after thirty years' 



