ight feet above ground, and are sunk some three
or four into it. Their average thickness will be from nine inches to a
foot. They carry five rails almost as substantial as the posts, both
being of roughly split timber. The rails are fixed into holes, bored and
wedged in the posts. Slip-panels form an entrance. Such was our first
stockyard--a substantial, thoroughly secure, and cattle-proof enclosure.
And it is as good now as it was eight years ago. For a long time it
served all our needs; but, subsequently, we have put up other yards, a
milking-shed with bails, sheep-pens and hog-pens, all constructed of
rough material, cut by ourselves in the bush.

Having now got our habitation and our stockyard completed, and it being
well on in the wet season, with the newly-sown grass springing green
over the charred surface of the clearing, obviously it was time to
introduce stock. Our agent in Auckland bought for us a dozen good, young
cows and a bull, which were despatched to us on a small schooner. She
brought them up the river; and then they were dumped into the water, and
swum ashore. The whole lot cost us about a hundred pounds, freight and
other charges included, the cows being four or five pounds apiece, and
the bull forty, he being a well-bred shorthorn from the Napier herd.

The cows were belled, and the whole little herd turned loose in the
bush. But the cows were tame, some of them being in milk, and we had not
much trouble in keeping them near home. The bull would not wander far
from the cows, and we drove them up and yarded them, with a good feed of
fresh koraka, every now and then. Besides the cattle we introduced some
pigs, fowls, and a dog or two. Before long we were milking daily, and
beginning to turn out butter and cheese; for the cows throve on the
plenteous feed in the bush.

Although the wet season is not the usual time for felling bush, yet we
went to work at that at once. We were anxious to get as much grass as we
could the first year, so that we might get some sheep on it. For, though
cattle find plenty of feed in the bush--leafage, and shoots of
trees--sheep must be provided with grass, and there is no grass suitable
for pasturage indigenous to _Northern_ New Zealand. Accordingly, we
worked steadily at bush-falling right along to the end of the succeeding
summer; and when the next wet season came round again, we were able to
contemplate a hundred and forty acres sown down with grass.

Axe-work was our