"What! dress clothes, and so on?"
"Of course! People dress much as they do here in all the colonies. If you're asked to dinner here, you wouldn't go in a shooting-coat; neither do they. In the country, in the bush, of course minor allowances are made."
"But guns and pistols surely?"
"Not unless you wish to practise at the sea-birds on the way out, which few of the captains permit nowadays. You will find that you can buy every kind of firearm there at half the price you would pay here—equally good, mostly unused, the property of young men who have been induced to load themselves with unnecessary accommodation for man and beast. Saddlery, harness, agricultural implements, are all included in my list of unnecessaries."
"Then, what am I to take?" inquired Massinger, appalled at this stern dismissal of the accepted emigration formula.
"The clothes on your back, a couple of spare suits, a few books for the voyage, and what other articles may be contained in a Gladstone bag and two trunks; all else is vanity, and most assured vexation of spirit."
"And how about money?"
"There you touch the great essential—leaving it to the last, as we often do. Take, say, fifty sovereigns for the voyage—thirty would be ample, but it is as well to leave a margin. And of course half or a quarter of your available capital in the shape of a bank draft. You will find that it is worth much more, so to speak, than here."
"I mean to invest the greater part of it in land"—with decision.
"All right; as to that, I won't offer an opinion. I know next to nothing about New Zealand. Look out when you do buy. Some fellow told me there was trouble with the native titles; and lawsuits about land are no joke, as we have reason to know."