Later, we are rowing back home with the tide. But we carry with us renewed hope and energy for our daily toil; for we have had, as it were, a foretaste of what is to be ours, some day, not so very far hence. We, too, shall have a home like that, as a reward for years of toil and hardship. And, God willing, it shall be graced for each of us with a wife like—her.
CHAPTER XII.
A PIG-HUNT.
It is a beautiful morning in March, when an unusually large party assembles at "our shanty." The sun is just rising, and is not yet visible above the sheltering ranges which hem in the central flat that forms the farm. The sky is cloudless, the air still and fragrant with the odours of the awakening woods.
Day-dawn is always the most beautiful time in New Zealand. It is especially so on this occasion, for a few showers had refreshed the thirsty earth on the previous day; and to us, as we emerge from our blankets eager with expectation, all Nature seems to wear a fresher and more blooming aspect.
Half a mile below the shanty rolls the river, broad and blue, while the wooded shore opposite seems scarcely a stone's throw distant. The smoke curls lazily up from the fire within the shanty, where men are breakfasting and girding themselves for the fray.
Outside on the clearings the hum of the crickets is as yet scarcely perceptible, but a party of turkeys can be seen advancing across the grass in line of battle, commencing their day's onslaught on the insect tribes. Cattle and sheep, pigs and poultry, have withdrawn from the immediate neighbourhood of the shanty, and are assembled in groups at a respectful distance, wondering and frightened at the unusual gathering of the human species.
For with the sun come settlers and Maoris from all sides, some brought by boats and canoes upon the river, some galloping on horseback along the beach, others on foot struggling through the woods and across the ranges on either hand, all converging upon the shanty with shouting salutations, that are responded to with loudly demonstrated welcome.
A rough and wild-looking assemblage we are, I make no doubt, yet fitting well into the foreground of the scene, with its rude and incipient civilization insulting the dominant wildness of Nature all around. Long before the sun has had time to climb above the ranges our muster is complete, and a larger party assembled than a stranger would imagine it possible to gather from so sparsely populated a district. Some thirty, settlers and their workmen, are there, together with about twice as many natives.