arper's hut, for the temporary accommodation of us visitors. We slept
like tops till roused at daybreak to breakfast, after which the forenoon
was spent in being shown over the station and in a climb to the forests,
where we saw the pine trees being felled, and split up into posts and
rails. After the midday meal a pig hunt was organised, and a few animals
were accounted for, falling chiefly to Harper's rifle. (Pig hunting I
will specially refer to later on.) We passed a pleasant and instructive
week at Malvern Station, taking a hand in all the routine work, riding
after the stock, working in the bush, and occasionally taking a
cross-country ride of fifteen or twenty miles to visit a neighbouring
station.

CHAPTER IV.

A PERIOD OF UNCERTAINTY AS TO OCCUPATION.--EVENTUALLY LEAVE FOR
NELSON AS CADETS ON A SHEEP RUN.

On our return to Christchurch we were beset with a diversity of advice
not calculated to bring us to a speedy decision. Some advised us to go
on a sheep run for a year or two as cadets to learn the routine, with a
view to obtaining thereafter an overseership, and in time a possible
partnership. Others advised our setting up as carters between the Port
and Christchurch, while, again, others recommended us to invest what
money we possessed in land and take employment up country until we had
saved enough to farm it. All advice was excellent, and had we decided on
one line it would have been well, or if we had had fewer advisers
perhaps it would have been better. We were waiting and talking about
work instead of going at it, living at some expense, and keeping up
appearances without means to support them. But it was not easy under the
circumstances to decide. To go upon a sheep station and work as a
labourer or overseer was very obnoxious to C----. With his home
experience of farming he expected too much all at once, and naturally I
was guided by him. Farming on a small scale, even if we had sufficient
money to buy and work a farm, would not pay. There was not then a large
enough home market for the crops produced. Land-holders held on, hoping
that as the wealth of the Colony increased and the town extended and
peopled, land would proportionately increase in value, and market for
their produce would be found at home or abroad. But the Colony was then
very young, and the staple produce of the country upon which everything
depended was wool, which was only partially developed. The country was
n