e had accepted a most kind invitation from him to
go to his run for a month or two at any rate, before deciding finally to
take up the rough and uncertain business we had proposed for ourselves.
The Judge so strongly advised this course for us both, that C---- could
not refuse, although he was by no means keen about it. The judge
explained that the opportunity was an excellent one, and would in all
probability lead to his (C----'s) being offered the overseership, if he
decided to take up the life after a fair trial. I did not know then, as
I did soon after, that C---- had serious intentions of abandoning the
country before giving it a fair trial; everything he saw was obnoxious
to him, and he evidently yearned for his home in Ireland and his little
farm again.

I purchased for my own use a small but powerful bay mare, C---- obtained
a mount from Mr. Lee, and in the course of a few days we started in
company with Mr. and Mrs. Lee, all on horseback, for their station of
Highfield.

Highfield was, as well as I recollect, nearly three hundred miles from
Christchurch, and we accomplished the distance in a little over a week,
Mrs. Lee riding with us all the way. Indeed, there was no other means of
travelling over that wild track, and she was, like most squatters' wives
in those days, an experienced horsewoman.

Our luggage was carried on three pack horses, which we drove before us,
and in this manner we accomplished from thirty to forty miles each day.

At night we rested, either at a rough accommodation house (a kind of
private hotel) or a squatter's station, and during the day's ride we
sometimes halted for lunch at any convenient locality where we could
find water to make tea and firewood to boil it with. Then the packs and
saddles were removed from the horses, which were allowed to roll and
feed on the native grass while we refreshed the inner man with the usual
bush fare, of which a sufficient supply was carried with us.

After crossing the Hurunui river, the boundary between Canterbury and
Nelson, we soon left the plains behind and entered a fine undulating
country watered by abundant streams and some large rivers, which latter
could be forded only with considerable care and judgment, being
sometimes full of quicksands, and always rapid.

On approaching our destination, which, as its name implies, stood on an
elevated situation, the gorges and river-bed flats, along which our
track ran, narrowed and became more wo