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CHAPTER XXXVI. 



DOMESTIC ANIMALS "WILD." 



BEFORE Tutira had been taken up pig were very plentiful ; small numbers 

 of horses, cattle, and probably sheep also were already running on the 

 station in a " wild " state. 



Of horses and cattle there is little to tell ; of the former a score or 

 so had strayed from the derelict kainga Waipopopo. During winter they 

 were compelled, in search of food, to wade like cattle into the scrub ; 

 like cattle, too, they broke down and devoured the branches of shrubs 

 and small trees. From time to time a few were run into extemporised 

 stock-yards, roped and broken in, the last survivor of the herd being a 

 grey ridden for many years by myself. 



Concerning wild cattle there is hardly more to say. They were 

 never numerous ; cliffs, under-runners, and boggy creeks exacted too 

 heavy a toll. There were never more than enough to provide us with 

 meat and amusement ; indeed, in early times most of our beef was shot 

 on Kaiwaka. 



Pig, descended from stock landed originally by Captain Cook, had 

 been distributed over the colony as I have imagined pot-herbs to have 

 been at a later date passed, that is, as gifts from village to village. 

 Conditions were favourable to their spread ; as ample a food-supply 

 existed without as within the bounds of the native villages. It is likely, 

 indeed, that pigs, as their number increased, may have been purposely 

 allowed to become half wild, that they may have been hunted out 

 of the cultivation-grounds owing to their inveterate habits of trespass. 

 At any rate, both in the north and south island swine increased and 

 multiplied in the early 'eighties, indeed, there were in the centre and 

 west of Tutira more pig than sheep ; there, beyond rooting and 

 re-rooting the few sheep-camps scattered far apart, no damage could 



