VICISSITUDES 393 



native ideal, taihoct by-and-by, plenty of time, wait and see, is 

 right after all, and our British strenuousness a vain and mistaken 

 waste of energy. Perhaps, after all, the old fellows who used in 

 the 'eighties to threaten Cuningham and myself with prosecution 

 for grass-seed sowing and drainage of marsh-land were the wise men 

 and we the fools. At any rate the case was settled a case only 

 mentioned at all to show the financial scrape into which it nearly 

 precipitated the station, and to emphasise the resilience of affairs 

 in a country where everybody believes that in the past all has been 

 done for the best, and that everything in the future is certain to 

 succeed. 



I had now to count the cost : one-quarter of the flock had been 

 snipped off by the loss of Maungaharuru and Tutira lands reverting 

 to the natives ; my rents had been quadrupled. To make ends meet 

 in station management was impossible with the low prices ruling for 

 wool and meat. It was necessary, therefore, that the five thousand 

 sheep gone should be at once replaced, that feed where there had been 

 no feed should be created. It was my task as superpatriot to make 

 five thousand blades of grass grow where none had grown before. 



So huge a proportionate increase on soil such as that of the trough 

 of the run would have been impossible, except that of late years the 

 run had shrunk in feeding area, especially in its westermost portion. 

 This had occurred partly because the lease of the Opouahi Educational 

 Reserve, now also happily renewed, was about to expire, partly on account 

 of wet years, partly because during the few dry spells available we had 

 purposely abstained from burning the country. Further subdivision, the 

 felling of manuka, and ploughing, were each expected to do their re- 

 spective parts towards replenishment of the flock. 



With wool phenomenally low, with bankers quite capable at any 

 moment of quoting the man who had offered his clip at 5d. for the next 

 six years, and "been refused, mind you," borrowing is never a cheerful 

 job. I am a bad borrower, too ; I know I do it with a countenance dismal 

 enough to damn a Rothschild. Somehow or another, nevertheless, many 

 thousand pounds had to be found for grass-seed sowing, ploughing, drain- 

 ing, bush-felling, scrub-cutting, and fencing. This book will have been 

 read in vain if it has not been made clear that a return from " improve- 

 ments " is not immediate. Threading miles upon miles of wire across 

 deserts of bracken is but a means to an end ; so also are the processes of 



