summer weather, and this was quite
good enough for a beginning. From step to step, that is the way to
progress, so we said. First the tent or whare, temporarily for a few
weeks; then the shanty, for a year or two; then, as things got well with
us, a well-finished frame-house; finally, a palace, a castle in the air,
or anything you like.

There are shanties and shanties. It is necessary to explain. Primarily,
in its Canadian and original sense, the term means a log-house--a hut
made of rough squared logs, built up upon each other. Such log-huts are
not common in this country, though they may be seen here and there. The
mild climate does not require such a style of building. The labour of
cutting and squaring logs for the purpose is great. The native whare of
thatch is quickly and easily raised, serves all requirements, and lasts
for years. In most parts hitherto settled, water-communication places
the settler within reach of a saw-mill, where he can obtain boards and
so on at very moderate cost. A shanty here, is a name applied to almost
any kind of nondescript erection, which would not come under the
designation of whare, or be honoured by the ambitious title of house.
Rough edifices of planking are the common form.

We went up to Tokatoka on the Wairoa, and there we purchased enough sawn
timber for our purpose, for about twelve or fifteen pounds. We hired a
big punt, and fetched this stuff down to our place, a distance of some
forty miles or so by water. Then we set to work at building.

The site we selected was an ambitious one; too much so, as we were
afterwards to discover. From the first Old Colonial objected to it. It
was too far from the river, he said, and would necessitate such an
amount of "humping." Bosh about humping! returned the majority. It was
only a temporary affair; in a year or two we should be having a regular
frame-house. Old Colonial gave way, for he perceived that, as our
acknowledged boss, he would have but little of the humping to do
himself. And the chosen site was central for the first proposed
clearings of our future farm.

The selected spot was a rising ground in the centre of a broad basin,
nearly a mile across. Steep ranges surround this basin, and the whole
was then covered with light bush. Half a mile in front is a mangrove
swamp, beyond which flows the river--the mangroves filling up a space
that without them would have been an open bay. The prospect in this
direction is bounded by