[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 sat very lightly upon us. Hope! We were all hope; we were hope incarnate! We felt that we were bound to win. It seemed, though, that the beginning must be made in some fashion that was, to say the least of it, unpleasant, now that we were face to face with the reality. Plenty of work offered, but none of it seemed to be of a particularly engaging kind; and, moreover, the wage offered us was extremely paltry, so we considered. For we belonged to that much maligned middle-class, which, in the chrysalis or new-chum stage, is so greatly contemned by colonists. But it happened that, long long ago, a certain schoolfellow of ours had gone forth into the colonial world. He was in the sixth form when we were in the first, or thereabouts; but, as his family and ours were neighbours in the old home, there had been enough intimacy between us. It was owing to his letters home that we had determined on emigration. He had been apprised of our coming, so now we were not surprised to receive a message from him through a resident in Auckland. This was an invitation to join him at a distant settlement called Te Pahi, there to make a beginning at pioneer farm work, and see what might turn up. We found on inquiry that little or nothing was known in Auckland of Te Pahi. It was a new township in the Kaipara district, lying sixty or eighty miles north of Auckland. That was about the sum of what we could learn of our destination, except that there were very few settlers in the Kaipara, and that communication between it and Auckland was not very good. Somewhat later than this date--in fact, to be precise, in 1875--an Auckland newspaper wrote of the Kaipara under the title of Terra Incognita. So that when we decided on going there, we felt that we were about to penetrate an almost unexplored country. But we found out what were the means of transit, and prepared to set out without further delay.