VICISSITUDES 399 



earthquake to swallow Tutira he could always get a billet from Sir 

 Bruce Bruce Porter. Then it was he found salvation ; then it was that 

 he had leisure to meditate on his sins as a citizen, one of which was 

 perhaps only perhaps occupancy of too large a tract of land. To this 

 repentance, certainly somewhat of the leisurely eleventh hour or death- 

 bed order, he was moved furthermore by many prosaic mundane reasons. 

 He desired a greater portion of time for the pursuit of his own particular 

 hobbies ; lastly, he did not deem it wisdom to slave and save for the 

 ravening wolves who determine the gradations of a New Zealand land 

 and income tax ; in short, like the lady in " Don Juan," who, swearing 

 she would ne'er consent, consented, he decided to subdivide the larger 

 remaining portion of the station into farms. This has been done ; his 

 interests in Maungaharuru had already lapsed, Putorino had been already 

 sold ; now, together with the Opouahi block, thirteen thousand acres of 

 Tutira proper have passed out of his hands, and with the new era of 

 settlement our history of the station may cease. 



It but remains for the writer to advise any youthfulfreaders who 

 may have struggled through his book to go forth also into the wilds 

 and to possess lands and flocks of their own, to become citizens of a 

 country where content and moderate riches are within the reach of every 

 man, where, without being quite aware of how the golden age has dawned, 

 wealth has become something of a superfluity, and where, therefore, 

 excessive toil in its pursuit is futile. Heredity and environment alike 

 have conjoined to serve New Zealand ; she has had no bad past 

 painfully to live down. Her pioneers, gentle and simple, whether from 

 north or south of Tweed, have come of the soundest stock ; for eighty 

 years, too, as like draws like, kinsfolk and friends of similar breeding, 

 tastes, and aptitudes have been attracted to her shores. In the sowing 

 of the nations other emigrants have sought homes in lands of easier 

 attainment, the heaviest grain has been the furthest flung. New 

 Zealand, if unlikely to produce a world poet or a world musician, 

 brains do not emigrate, no intellect of the highest order has yet arisen 

 anywhere outside Europe, can lay claim, in her founders, to courage and 

 character ; in her present population, to the saving virtue of simplicity. 

 Her children arise and call their little country blessed in its [absence of 

 great cities, in its riches absorbed by none but shared bylfall, in its 

 ideal of life measured in happiness rather than in wealth, in its climate 

 of sunshine and rain though never of fog and gloom, in its sturdy 



