n especially miry crossing.
The devoted squire did not spread out his cloak, as did Sir Walter
Raleigh. He had no cloak to spread. But he deftly made a torch of his
unread English letters, and, bending down, lighted the way across the
mud. His sacrifice, it is believed, did not go wholly unrewarded.

[Illustration: THE CURVING COAST

Photo by HENRY WRIGHT]

One first-rate boon New Zealand colonists had--good health. Out
of four thousand people in Canterbury in 1854 but twenty-one were
returned as sick or infirm. It almost seemed that but for drink and
drowning there need be no deaths. In Taranaki, in the North Island,
among three thousand people in 1858-59 there was not a funeral for
sixteen months. Crime, too, was pleasantly rare in the settlements.
When Governor Grey, in 1850, appointed Mr. Justice Stephen to
administer law in Otago, that zealous judge had nothing to do for
eighteen months, except to fine defaulting jurors who had been
summoned to try cases which did not exist and who neglected to attend
to try them. Naturally the settlers complained that he did not earn
his L800 a year of salary. His office was abolished, and for seven
years the southern colonists did very well without a judge. Great was
the shock to the public mind when in March, 1855, a certain Mackenzie,
a riever by inheritance doubtless, "lifted" a thousand sheep in a
night from the run of a Mr. Rhodes near Timaru, in South Canterbury,
and disappeared with them among the Southern Alps. When he was
followed and captured, it was found that he had taken refuge in a
bleak but useful upland plain, a discovery of his which bears his name
to this day. He was set on horseback, with his hands tied, and driven
to Christchurch, 150 miles, by captors armed with loaded pistols. That
he was a fellow who needed such precautions was shown by three bold
dashes for freedom, which he afterwards made when serving a five
years' sentence. At the third of these attempts he was shot at and
badly wounded. Ultimately, he was allowed to leave the country.

A sheep-stealer might easily have fallen into temptation in Canterbury
at that time. In three years the settlers owned 100,000 sheep; in
four more half a million. Somewhat slower, the Otago progress was to
223,000 in ten years.

Neither in Canterbury nor Otago were the plough and the spade found to
be the instruments of speediest advance. They were soon eclipsed by
the stockwhip, the shears, the sheep-dog, and the