labours in mustering and watching the yet unshorn mobs on the vallies.
Although our run was as well grassed and watered as any in the province,
still it could not possibly carry more than a certain number of sheep,
and to that total our returns showed that we were rapidly approaching.
The most careful calculations warned us that by next shearing we should
hardly know what to do with our sheep. It is always better to be under
than overstocked, for the merino gets out of condition immediately, and
even the staple of the wool deteriorates if its wearer be at all crowded
on his feeding-grounds.

"You must take up more country directly," was the invariable formula of
the advice we, comparatively "new chums," received on all sides. This
was easier to say than to do. Turn which ever way we would, far back
beyond our own lovely vallies and green hills, back up to the bleak
region of glaciers, where miles of bush and hundreds of acres of steep
hill-side, formed the _back-est_ of "back country," every inch of land
was taken up. No fear had those distant Squatters of "cockatoos," or
even of miners; for no one came their way who could possibly help it.
Still we should have been comparatively glad to buy such a run fifty or
sixty miles further back,--at the foot, in fact of the great Southern
Alps,--just as a summer feeding-ground for the least valuable portion
of our flock. But no one was inclined to part with a single acre, and we
were forced to turn our eyes in a totally different direction.

If my readers will refer to the accompanying map of New Zealand, and
look at the Middle or South Island, they will notice a long seaboard
on the eastern side of the island, stretching SS.W. for many hundred
leagues. It extends beyond the Province of Canterbury to that of
Otago, and embraces some of the most magnificent pastoral land in the
settlement. Not only is the soil rich and productive, but the climate
is rather less windy than with us in the northern portion of the island;
and the capital of Otago (Dunedin) had risen into comparative position
and importance before Christchurch,--was in short an elder sister of
that pretty little town. Most of the settlers in Otago were Scotchmen,
and as there are no better colonists anywhere, its prosperity had
attained to a very flourishing height. Gold-digging had also broken out
at the foot of the Dunstan range, so that Otago held her head quite as
high, if not higher, than her neighbour Canterbu