ime that we should begin to
follow the plan we have conceived for ourselves.

Parting with shipmates, with the faces that have been so long familiar
to us, seems to have severed the last link that bound us to the old
country, the old home, and the old ways. We shall meet with many of them
again, no doubt, but then the old "Englishness" will have disappeared,
and we shall be at one with those who now are strangers to us, we too
shall be New Zealanders. Henceforth all before us and around us is
strange and new, an untried, unknown world. We are about to enter on a
life totally different to that we have hitherto led, and it is a life
that we have got to make ours for the time to come; for there is no
thought in our minds of retreat, even if we find the unknown more
distasteful than we think. But, courage! "Hope points before to guide us
on our way," and, as yet, there is nothing in the prospect but what is
bright and inspiriting, surely; nothing to diminish our youthful energy,
nothing to daunt our British pluck! The past lies behind us, with its
sweet and tender recollections, and with a softened sense of
remembrance of those failures and sadnesses and bitternesses that are
linked with them. Now our cry must be "Forward!" for a page in the book
of our lives is completely turned down, and we may imagine there is
endorsed upon it, "Sacred to the memory of auld lang syne!"

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 1: 1882. The railway now runs northward to Helensville,
connecting Auckland with the Kaipara; and is being pushed on to
Whangarei. To the south, it penetrates far into the Waikato country, and
it is only a question of a few years before Auckland, New Plymouth,
Wellington, and Napier will be joined by rail.]

[Footnote 2: 1882. During the last year or two, there has been some
depression in New Zealand, and, for the first time in her history, many
labourers have had difficulty in getting work. But that crisis is now
past, and things are rapidly returning--as they were bound to do--to
former conditions, such as I have described.]

CHAPTER III.

GOING UP COUNTRY.

I and my last remaining shipmate certainly came out here without any
very clear idea of what we were going to do. We came to make our
fortunes, of course, after the manner of all new-chums, but as to how we
were to set about it, and what were to be the first steps we should
take, we had the very vaguest notion.

However, our condition of existence as new-chums