as they help to keep down
the flies, and they do no harm, though not pretty to look at. There is
said to be a poisonous spider in the country, but no one in the North
seems to know anything about it. We regard it as a myth. Other insects
we have in profusion, but none that affect us like those I have
specially spoken of.

After all, we have no great cause for complaint. Some trivial annoyance
is the worst we have to suffer in this way. We have no scorpions,
snakes, poisonous centipedes, or any other vile thing of that sort. I
have told the worst of our indoor plagues. Rats and mice we have, of
course, as they swarm in the bush; but our dogs, and a cat or two, keep
the shanty fairly clear of them.

Our commissariat is plentiful and varied enough. With slight exception
we are our own providers, living almost entirely on our own produce, as
farmers should. Sometimes the pressure of work leads to carelessness in
catering and cooking, and we are consequently reduced to short commons,
for which there is no sort of need. In the worst times of poverty we
should not starve. The river is always full of fish; and things must be
more than bad if one could not get credit for a sack of flour or
potatoes with the Mayor, or with some other storekeeper on the rivers.
And, after the first year, the garden ought to produce enough
vegetables, potatoes, kumera, taro, pumpkins, and maize, to keep the
family going, even if everything else failed them.

Pig-meat, in its various forms, is our staple article of food. We breed
and fatten a large number of pigs on the clearings round the shanty.
These we butcher in batches of six or eight, as required, and turn into
salt pork, bacon, and ham. We have occasionally sent a cask or two of
pork, some flitches or hams, to market; but as a rule we consume our
pigs on the farm. Pig-meat is most reliable as a staple. One does not
tire of it so utterly as one does of either mutton or beef, if one of
these be the invariable daily food.

Beef we rarely see in our shanty. The steers we breed are too valuable
to be used by ourselves; they have to go to market. Only occasionally we
find it necessary to slaughter some unmanageable rusher, a cow, or
bullock, and then we have beef, fresh and salted down. Mutton was just
as scarce for several years, as we could not afford to kill out of our
small flock; and mutton is not good to salt down. Now, we kill a sheep
every week, sometimes a couple, as the township will