r others' comfort and careless of his own through all. His
interest in, and enthusiasm for, his Company know no bounds. Get him to
hold forth, and he will tell you how, in the early days of the Company,
matters were quite different from what they are to-day. The shares stood
then at five shillings each, and the bankers refused to allow an
overdraft of L2,000, and when it became absolutely necessary to have
money he actually made advances out of his own pocket to supply the
requisite funds.

Shortly afterwards matters began to improve, and when he visited the
property in 1900 he was able to send this reassuring message to the
General Meeting:--"I honestly believe the worst is past, and that in
future we shall progress."

He always appraises the work of others whether the result of their
operations is successful or not, and he will appreciate the mental and
manual exertions expended on the undertaking by the employees of the
Company at their true worth. All he asks of his colleagues and
subordinates is that each one shall "play the game" in every sense of
the word to the best of his ability. He never paints the prospects of a
beginner in rosy hues; in fact, he has been known to speak of the
hardships and privations which a young man must be prepared to go
through on first joining the Company as being comparable to "the life of
a dog." To-day the men who have been through those first years of
necessary self-denial and hard work are grateful for the training they
have received and anxious to work their best for the Company.

For a long while the party sat talking of their experiences on this
trip, and of the Company and its prospects. The travelling over this
comparatively unknown land had been a revelation to most; the dormant
wealth lying in the camp must be enormous, but men, money, and brains
are needed to exploit it. Unfortunately, it is still difficult to get
colonists for these more northern districts, but when the railway which
is contemplated becomes an accomplished fact, as it assuredly must,
people will be attracted further north, colonisation will be easier, the
land will yield its hundredfold, and some one will, in time, have
performed the great deed of "making two blades of grass grow where only
one grew before." It may seem to those accustomed to the narrower life
of towns, a lonely, empty life to spend one's years and energies
improving these wild lands; but assuredly the man who labours here with
the bes