There Was A Terrace,
Too, So That We Seldom Arrived With Much More Than Half A Pannikin, And
The Kettle Was An Immense Step In Advance.
The Irishman called it very
"beneficial," as he called everything that pleased him.
He was a great
character: he used to "destroy" his food, not eat it. If I asked him
to have any more bread or meat, he would say, with perfect seriousness,
that he had "destroyed enough this time." He had many other quaint
expressions of this sort, but they did not serve to make the hut water-
tight, and I was half regretfully obliged to send him away a short time
afterwards.
The winter's experience satisfied me that the country that H - and I had
found would not do for sheep, unless worked in connection with more that
was clear of snow throughout the year. As soon, therefore, as I was
convinced that the adjacent country was safe, I bought it, and settled
upon it in good earnest, abandoning the V hut. I did so with some
regret, for we had good fare enough in it, and I rather liked it; we had
only stones for seats, but we made splendid fires, and got fresh and
clean snow-grass to lie on, and dried the floor with wood-ashes. Then
we confined the snow-grass within certain limits by means of a couple of
poles laid upon the ground and fixed into their places with pegs; then
we put up several slings to hang our saddle-bags, tea, sugar, salt,
bundles, etc.; then we made a horse for the saddles - four riding-saddles
and a pack-saddle - and underneath this went our tools at one end and our
culinary utensils, limited but very effective, at the other. Having
made it neat we kept it so, and of a night it wore an aspect of comfort
quite domestic, even to the cat, which would come in through a hole left
in the thatched door for her especial benefit, and purr a regular
hurricane. We blessed her both by day and by night, for we saw no rats
after she came; and great excitement prevailed when, three weeks after
her arrival, she added a litter of kittens to our establishment.
CHAPTER VII
Loading Dray - Bullocks - Want of Roads - Banks Peninsula - Front and Back
Ranges of Mountains - River-beds - Origin of the Plains - Terraces - Tutu -
Fords - Floods - Lost Bullocks - Scarcity of Features on the Plains -
Terraces - Crossing the Ashburton - Change of Weather - Roofless Hut -
Brandy-keg.
I completed the loading of my dray on a Tuesday afternoon in the early
part of October, 1860, and determined on making Main's accommodation-
house that night. Of the contents of the dray I need hardly speak,
though perhaps a full enumeration of them might afford no bad index to
the requirements of a station; they are more numerous than might at
first be supposed - rigidly useful and rarely if ever ornamental.
Flour, tea, sugar, tools, household utensils few and rough, a plough and
harrows, doors, windows, oats and potatoes for seed, and all the usual
denizens of a kitchen garden; these, with a few private effects, formed
the main bulk of the contents, amounting to about a ton and a half in
weight.
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