THE QUACK AND THE LAND. 45 



where it would take up perhaps the whole water 

 frontage of a pastoral lease of many thousands 

 of acres ? The pastoralist, faced with the pros- 

 pect of ruin, saved his skin in many cases by 

 paying out blackmail. The free selector re- 

 mained on his " farm " to fulfil the conditions 

 of settlement ; but the farm was really the 

 property of the pastoralist, who paid large sums 

 — sometimes thousands of pounds — to the 

 selector, who was his " dummy." 



It was not long before, in one aspect, "free 

 selecting " settled down to a regular and highly 

 profitable branch of criminality, which put 

 burglary in the shade, and eclipsed also the 

 profits of robbery under arms. A wise pas- 

 toralist did not wait until a selector came to 

 ' pick the eyes out of his run." He engaged 

 his own free selectors — " dummies," they were 

 called — who selected farms on his run, remained 

 on them sufficiently long to observe the condi- 

 tions, and then sold them as freeholds to him. 

 Chicanery, conspiracy, perjury, murder even, 

 can be found in the veracious records of those 

 days, which the official recorder I have quoted 

 summarizes as " considerable mischief." The 



