Station Amusements in New Zealand, Lady Mary Anne Barker [fiction novels to read .TXT] 📗

we could see a group of palm-trees, ten feet high, with their topmost leaves gnawed to the stump by starving sheep, that must have been standing on at least seven feet of snow to reach them; and there was scarcely a creek on the run whose banks were not strewn, for many a long day, by bare and bleaching bones.


Chapter VI: Buying a run.

Like many other people in the world, I have occasionally built castles in the air, and equally of course they have invariably tumbled down in due time with a crash This particular castle however, not only attained to a great elevation in the visionary builder's eyes, but it covered so vast an area of land, that the story of its rise and fall deserves to be placed on record, as a warning to aerial architects and also as a beacon-light to young colonists.

This was exactly the way it all happened. The new year of 186-found us living very quietly and happily on a small compact sheep-farm, at the foot of the Malvern Hills, in the province of Canterbury, New Zealand. As runs went, its dimensions were small indeed; for we only measured it at 12,000 acres, all told. The great tidal wave of prosperity, which sets once in a while towards the shores of all colonies, had that year swelled and risen to its full force; but this we did not know. Borne aloft upon its unsubstantial crest we could not, from that giddy height, discern any water-valleys of adversity or clouds of change and storm along the shining horizon of the new world around us. All our calculations were based on the assumption that the existing prices for sheep, wool, cattle, and all farm-produce, would rule for many a long day; and the delightful part of this royal road to wealth was, that its travellers need not exert themselves in any way: they had only to sit still with folded hands whilst their sheep increased, and it was well known that a flock doubled itself in three short years. The obvious deduction from this agreeable numerical fact was, that in an equally short period your agent's payments to your bank account would also be doubled. In the meantime the drays were busy carting the wool to the seaports as fast as they could be loaded, whilst speculative drovers rode all about the country buying up the fat cattle and wethers from every run. These were wanted to supply the West Coast Diggings which had just "broken out" (as the curious phrase goes there), and so was every description of grain and dairy produce.

We squatters were not the only inhabitants of this fool's paradise. The local Government began planning extensive works: railways were laid out in every direction, bridges planned across rivers, which proved the despair of engineers; whilst a tunnel, the wonder of the Southern Hemisphere, was commenced through a range of hills lying between Port Lyttleton and Christchurch. All this work was undertaken on a scale of pay which made the poor immigrants who thronged to the place by every ship, rub their eyes and believe they must be dreaming, and that they would presently wake up and find themselves back again in the old country, at the old starvation rate of wages. Small capitalists, with perhaps only one or two hundred pounds in the world, bid against each other as purchasers of quarter-acre sections in the fast-springing townships, or of fifty-acre lots of arable land in the projected suburbs. Subscriptions were raised for building a Cathedral in Christchurch; but so dear was both labour and material, that 7,000 pounds barely sufficed to lay its foundations.

The paramount anxiety in men's minds seemed to be to secure land. Sheep-runs in sheltered accessible parts of the country commanded enormous prices, and were bought in the most complicated way. The first comers had taken up vast tracts of land in all directions from the Government, at an almost nominal rental. This had happened quite in the dark and remote ages of the history of the colony, at least ten or twelve years before the date of which I write. As speculators with plenty of hard cash came down from Australia, these original tenants sold, as it were, the good-will and stock of their run at enormous prices; but what always seemed to me so hard was, that after you had paid any number of thousand pounds for your run, you might have to buy it all, or at any rate, some portion of it, over again. Land could only be purchased freehold from the Government, for 2 pounds an acre; and if a "cockatoo" (i.e., a small farmer), or a speculator in mines, fancied any part of your property, he had only to go to the land office, and challenge your pre-emptive rights. The officials gave you notice of the challenge, and six weeks' grace in which to raise the money, and buy it freehold yourself; but few sheep-farmers could afford to pay a good many hundred pounds unexpectedly to secure even their best "flats" or vallies. Hence it often happened that large runs in the most favourable situations were cut up by small investors, "free selectors" as they are called in Australia, and it used to be rather absurd the way one grew to distrust any stranger who was descried riding about the run. The poor man might be looking for a stray horse, or have lost his way, but we always fancied he must be "prospecting" for either gold or coals, or else be a "cockatoo" disguised as a traveller.

Such was the state of things when my story opens. Shearing was just over, and we knew to a lamb how rapidly our flocks and herds were increasing. A succession of mild winters and early genial springs had got the flock into capital order. The wool had all been sent off to Christchurch by drays, the sheep were turned out on the beautiful green hills for ten months of perfect rest and peace; whilst the dogs, who had barked themselves quite hoarse, were enabled to desist from their labours in mustering and watching the yet unshorn mobs on the vallies. Although our run was as well grassed and watered as any in the province, still it could not possibly carry more than a certain number of sheep, and to that total our returns showed that we were rapidly approaching. The most careful calculations warned us that by next shearing we should hardly know what to do with our sheep. It is always better to be under than overstocked, for the merino gets out of condition immediately, and even the staple of the wool deteriorates if its wearer be at all crowded on his feeding-grounds.

"You must take up more country directly," was the invariable formula of the advice we, comparatively "new chums," received on all sides. This was easier to say than to do. Turn which ever way we would, far back beyond our own lovely vallies and green hills, back up to the bleak region of glaciers, where miles of bush and hundreds of acres of steep hill-side, formed the _back-est_ of "back country," every inch of land was taken up. No fear had those distant Squatters of "cockatoos," or even of miners; for no one came their way who could possibly help it. Still we should have been comparatively glad to buy such a run fifty or sixty miles further back,--at the foot, in fact of the great Southern Alps,--just as a summer feeding-ground for the least valuable portion of our flock. But no one was inclined to part with a single acre, and we were forced to turn our eyes in a totally different direction.

If my readers will refer to the accompanying map of New Zealand, and look at the Middle or South Island, they will notice a long seaboard on the eastern side of the island, stretching SS.W. for many hundred leagues. It extends beyond the Province of Canterbury to that of Otago, and embraces some of the most magnificent pastoral land in the settlement. Not only is the soil rich and productive, but the climate is rather less windy than with us in the northern portion of the island; and the capital of Otago (Dunedin) had risen into comparative position and importance before Christchurch,--was in short an elder sister of that pretty little town. Most of the settlers in Otago were Scotchmen, and as there are no better colonists anywhere, its prosperity had attained to a very flourishing height. Gold-digging had also broken out at the foot of the Dunstan range, so that Otago held her head quite as high, if not higher, than her neighbour Canterbury. Of course all the first-class pasture-land "down south," as it was called, had been taken up long before; but we heard rumours of splendid sheep country, yet unappropriated, far back towards the west coast of Otago, just where its boundary joined Canterbury.

With our minds in this state of desire for what poor Mazzini used to denounce as "territorial aggrandisement," we paid our usual post-shearing visit to Christchurch. F---- had his agent's accounts to examine, a nice little surplus of wool-money to receive, and many other squatting interests to attend to; whilst I had to lay in chests of tea, barrels of sugar and rice, hundreds of yards of candle-wick, flower-seeds, reels of cotton, and many other miscellaneous articles. But through all our pleasant, happy little bustle ran the constant thought: "What shall we do for more country?" A day or two before the expiration of the week's leave of absence which we always gave ourselves, F---- came into my sitting-room at the hotel, flung down his hat on the table with an air of triumph, and cried, "I've heard of such a splendid run! One hundred thousand acres of beautiful sheep-country, and going for a mere song!" Now I had lived long enough in the world to discover that one sometimes danced on the wrong foot to the tune of these "mere songs," so I cautiously inquired, "Where is it?" F---- seemed a little dashed that the only question which he could not answer favourably should be the first I asked, and he replied vaguely, "Well, it is rather a long way off, but I am sure we can manage it." A little more sifting elicited the fact that this "desirable investment" stretched along the shores of Lake Wanaka, famous for its beautiful scenery, and was to be had for what certainly seemed a ridiculously small sum;--only a few hundred pounds. "Of course it has no sheep on it," added F----; "but that is all the better. I'll burn it this year, and then turn some cattle on it, and after next shearing we'll have a good mob of sheep to draft out and stock it." He further added, that he had invited his man of business and the individual who owned this magnificent property to dine with us that evening, and that then I should hear all about it And I may truly say that I _did_ hear about it, for my brain reeled with figures and calculations. By bedtime I was wondering if we could possibly spend the enormous fortune which would be quite certain to accrue to us in a few years if only we could make up our minds to invest the modest balance at our bankers in this tempting bargain. I remember well that I found myself wishing we were not going to be _quite_ so rich; half our promised income would have been ample, I thought. My anxieties on that score turned out to have been, to say the least, premature.

Not to make my story too long, I may briefly say that after making due allowance for the natural exaggeration of the owner, the run on Lake Wanaka's shores