"Well, the district being what it is in this year of grace eighteen hundred and seventy, you may easily suppose that, sixteen years ago, it was quite like coming into an undiscovered world to come up here. At that time I believe that Karl was really the only settler in the entire tract of country; and as that comprises between two and three thousand square miles, and as there were no more Maoris then than there are now, probably not more than a total of a thousand altogether in all the little kainga round, it could scarcely be called a populous part of New Zealand.
"I don't know what had tempted Karl to select up this way. Probably accident led him into the Kaipara, and when here he saw his way to something. There is no doubt that if things had gone straight he might now have been one of the richest men in the province. However, things did not go straight, and why they didn't is the subject of my tale.
"I first happened upon Karl in Auckland, sixteen years ago it is now, as I have just told you. He was a German by race, but English by education, and seemed to have knocked about the world a good bit. He was a tall, powerful man, quiet and composed in general demeanour, rather pleasant to get on with, well-informed and gentlemanly, but with a decidedly rough and wild side to his character, which only appeared now and then. I agreed to hire with him for a spell, and accompanied him on his return to this district.
"A year or so previously Karl had purchased Hapuakohe on the Arapaoa river—that is the place we went to help with the cattle at the other day, and the best farm in the district it is now. Karl had got about six thousand acres dirt cheap, as land goes to-day, and had settled on it at once. Being the first purchaser from the tribe, the Maoris of the district held him in high esteem, and a lot of the young men gave him their labour at the start, as part of the bargain. They helped him to get timber and build a shanty and sheds, to enclose a bit of ground for potatoes, and so on, and to put up a stockyard. Then Karl chartered a small vessel from the Manukau, and brought up his various necessaries—a few head of cattle, some pigs, fowls, a dog or two, and so forth.
"Of course he was going to commence with running cattle in the bush, as we do at present, but a happy chance saved him from the necessity of this, and all its attendant hard work. Some part of his place had been in Maori occupation comparatively recently, and was only covered with fern and ti-tree bush. The season was a very dry one, unusually so, and Karl was able to burn off all this stuff tolerably clean. He still had some capital left, and with that was able to buy grass seed, though at a ruinous price in those times, and sow down his burns. By this means he got something like a thousand acres of pasture after the rains came—a thundering good lift, you will say, for a settler in his second year only.
"But Karl's grass was not to be compared with what we get on our clearings. In the first place, the land was poor, and the seed did not take so well; then, he had sown rather scantily, so that a good deal of fern and flax and ti-tree came up with the young grass, and made it patchy and poor. Still, it was a great thing for these parts, where there is no native grass, for it enabled Karl to run sheep at once.
"Of course the grass was not all in one piece. It ran in and out among the standing bush, occupying the lower levels of ranges and the rising grounds at the bottom of gullies, spreading altogether over a good stretch of country. Karl got up sheep to stock it, but his capital was exhausted; and he ran into debt both for the sheep themselves, and with the shipper who brought them up. Not that this seemed of much consequence, for a year or two's increase of wool and lambs would pay off the debt and leave something in hand. But the Maori help he had didn't last very long; and as his creditors, being poor men, pressed him a good deal, Karl had to come into Auckland and raise money on mortgage.
"Land was low enough in value all over the colony, at that time, and a block up this way was not thought much of, you may be sure, so that Karl only got enough, by mortgaging his whole six thousand acres, to pay off his two creditors and leave him a very small balance. Well, the prospect was good enough, as any one but a new-chum can see, but all hung upon the sheep. There did not seem a great risk, but still there always is a certain amount of that with sheep. Disease did not trouble Karl much; there need be no great fear on that account in this country, if a little care be taken. Drought, too, was no matter for anxiety, as the land was sufficiently well-watered. But it was out of the question to fence in the grass, so we had to take what chance there was of the sheep straying, or of the damage wild pigs might do to the young turf, or of dingoes.
"Ah! you may laugh, but dingoes were what we feared most then. It has been proved by this time that if ever dingoes or runaway curs did exist, they are practically a myth, as far as this part of the island is concerned. Still, that was not so sure in those days, and the suspicion that they were in the bush was always a source of trouble to sheep farmers. The pigs' ravages we could check by a thorough hunt once or twice a year; and there was not much to fear from the sheep's straying, as, except one or two particular breeds, they will not go far into the bush or away from the grass. But the wild dogs were a different matter, if they came, and no one could be quite sure that any night might not find them among the flock.