Hack Hurdles, over a mile and a half course and six flights of hurdles. Five started, and winner received five pounds.
Maori Race, over a mile and a half course. Only three horses started, and winner received five pounds.
Matakohe Cup Handicap. Two miles. Seven started. Winner received thirteen pounds ten shillings, and second horse one pound ten shillings.
A Trotting Race, Pony Race, and Consolation Handicap, the winners carrying off between them twelve pounds, completed the events of the day.
Order was sustained by half the police force in the whole district, consisting of one constable of portly dimensions, backed by an imposing uniform and a shako. The money for the prizes was supplied by the takings at the gates, the nomination and acceptance fees, and the subscriptions of the members of the Club. There was no betting beyond a few shilling sweepstakes got up in the old Etonian's hat. No drunkenness disturbed the harmony of the day, or the equanimity of our stalwart protector. Legitimate sport, and nothing else, called us together, and legitimate sport we enjoyed to our hearts' content.
I am confident that great good results from such gatherings as the two I have described—the Pahi Regatta and the Matakohe Races. In the former, several of the competing cutters and boats, and all the punts, are locally built, and wholesome rivalry is excited among the builders, tending to improve the class of boat turned out by them. In the case of the races, the tendency is to improve the breed of horses, and to study more closely the most important animal in the colony.
These social gatherings also do good in another way, by bringing about a general hand-shaking and wiping out for a time of the petty jealousies and the miserable little bickerings and quarrels that too often exist among a certain class in these little settlements. Among such people the slightest thing is sufficient to cause a break in friendship. If Jones does not vote the same way as Brown, smash goes their acquaintance; if Robinson afterwards asks the discarded Jones to spend the evening, he is cut dead by Brown immediately; and if Mrs. Robinson appears in chapel with a more gaudy bonnet than Mrs. Jones possesses, the demon jealousy is at once aroused, and a coolness takes place between the two families.
The most active agent, however, in producing discord among the settlers is the law relating to straying cattle. As it at present stands, no compensation can be obtained for damage done by straying cattle unless the land trespassed on is enclosed by what is termed "a legal fence," which must be of a certain height and of certain forms of construction. A summons may certainly be taken out for trespass, and the owner of the cattle fined one shilling per head, but to do this involves a great loss of time, and is very little satisfaction.
The result of this law is that the man who has good feed on his land has to erect fences unnecessarily strong for the restraint of his own cattle, in order to keep out his neighbour's wandering animals. It certainly causes cattle to be very cheap, but at the same time does great injury to the legitimate farmer, who will not take advantage of this miserable piece of legislation, and who keeps his paddocks in good grass, and his beasts in proper restraint. Many settlers systematically breed calves, which, when about three months old, they brand with their initials, and turn out on the roads to get their living as best they may, knowing that if they do break into a neighbour's paddock, the chances are that they can show he has not a legal fence.