After that we had our first stockyard to set up. It is a simple enclosure, measuring a chain or two square; but had to be made of great strength, in view of the contingency of unruly mobs of charging cattle. To procure material we went six or eight miles off, to a creek that ran through heavy bush. There we felled certain giant puriri trees, cut them into lengths, and split them up with wedges into posts and rails. Puriri timber is terribly tough stuff to work. It is harder than oak, and very heavy, too, so that transporting it is serious toil. We groaned over this job, and spoilt numerous axes; but we did it.
Terrible work it was getting this material on to the ground. After we had finished cutting, and had split out all the posts and rails we wanted, it was comparatively easy work to punt the stuff into our own water. But then the carrying up from the landing-place, a quarter-mile or so, to the spot selected for the stockyard, was a labour indeed. It took six of us to lift one of the posts, so solid were they, and so heavy the timber. Old Colonial said—
"We are giving over work, and taking to humping."
This is a bit of pleasantry that only those who have tried it can understand, for humping timber is one of the most undesirable occupations possible; as many a galled shoulder and aching back could testify.
Puriri timber is the strongest and most durable of any in the country. We knew that kauri would give us less work, but the result would not be so lasting or satisfactory. Therefore, we elected to go in for puriri.
The posts stand about eight feet above ground, and are sunk some three or four into it. Their average thickness will be from nine inches to a foot. They carry five rails almost as substantial as the posts, both being of roughly split timber. The rails are fixed into holes, bored and wedged in the posts. Slip-panels form an entrance. Such was our first stockyard—a substantial, thoroughly secure, and cattle-proof enclosure. And it is as good now as it was eight years ago. For a long time it served all our needs; but, subsequently, we have put up other yards, a milking-shed with bails, sheep-pens and hog-pens, all constructed of rough material, cut by ourselves in the bush.
Having now got our habitation and our stockyard completed, and it being well on in the wet season, with the newly-sown grass springing green over the charred surface of the clearing, obviously it was time to introduce stock. Our agent in Auckland bought for us a dozen good, young cows and a bull, which were despatched to us on a small schooner. She brought them up the river; and then they were dumped into the water, and swum ashore. The whole lot cost us about a hundred pounds, freight and other charges included, the cows being four or five pounds apiece, and the bull forty, he being a well-bred shorthorn from the Napier herd.
The cows were belled, and the whole little herd turned loose in the bush. But the cows were tame, some of them being in milk, and we had not much trouble in keeping them near home. The bull would not wander far from the cows, and we drove them up and yarded them, with a good feed of fresh koraka, every now and then. Besides the cattle we introduced some pigs, fowls, and a dog or two. Before long we were milking daily, and beginning to turn out butter and cheese; for the cows throve on the plenteous feed in the bush.
Although the wet season is not the usual time for felling bush, yet we went to work at that at once. We were anxious to get as much grass as we could the first year, so that we might get some sheep on it. For, though cattle find plenty of feed in the bush—leafage, and shoots of trees—sheep must be provided with grass, and there is no grass suitable for pasturage indigenous to Northern New Zealand. Accordingly, we worked steadily at bush-falling right along to the end of the succeeding summer; and when the next wet season came round again, we were able to contemplate a hundred and forty acres sown down with grass.
Axe-work was our principal daily toil, and it is a somewhat different thing as practised here, to what the English woodman has to do. A bushman's work is severe and energetic, altogether in contrast with the lazy stop-and-rest methods of too many labourers at home. It is a fierce but steady and continuous onslaught upon the woods. Everything must fall before the axe, and everything does fall. Once I was watching the prostration of a Worcestershire oak. It was a tree that might have had some twelve feet of girth. Three men and a boy were employed at it, armed with ropes and pulleys, wedges, saws, and all sorts of implements, besides axes; and it was two days and a half before they got the tree to earth. If a single bushman could not have knocked that tree over before dinner-time, he would not have been worth wages in this country; I am sure of that.