The stakes are the trunks of young trees, either whole or split. They are about four inches diameter at the thickest end, and are set up at three or four inches apart. The stakes are connected by one or more battens nailed along them, or by wires. They are cut eight or nine feet in length, so as to allow of a good six feet above ground when set up. Red, black, and white birch are used, also red and white ti-tree, the last variety being most esteemed, as it is more durable. A stake-fence ought to be proof against both pigs and cattle, and is reckoned to be good for seven years; if of white ti-tree it will last ten or twelve years. It will cost, in labour, from eight shillings a chain and upwards, according to the distance the cut stakes have to be moved. Our work in fencing was as follows. The first clearing we set about enclosing was on the side of a range, and included forty or fifty acres. If this were a square there would be some eighty chains or a mile of fencing required to enclose it. Practically, there were nearer a hundred chains of boundary. Each chain required from a hundred to a hundred and thirty stakes. This is about the number that one of us could cut in the day, and bring out of the adjoining bush on to the line. For we got our material in the standing bush close to the clearing, working along the edge of the woods, and seldom having to go further than five chains away from the edge of the clearing to find suitable trees. Two or three men were engaged in pointing the stakes, and dumping and malleting them into the ground. Sometimes they would put up four or five chains in the day, sometimes only one; it depended on the nature of the ground. When the weather was wet, and the ground soft, the work was naturally lighter. After the stakes were set up we had to batten them together. We bought several boatloads of battens--rough outside boards split up, and the like--for next to nothing, at the Wairoa saw-mills, and got them down to our place. Then we had to hump them up to the ground; no light work, for a load had to be carried often nearly a mile uphill. We purchased a keg or two of nails, and finally fixed up the fence. We were proud of our clearings when they were new, and we are proud of them still. But they would look strange sort of paddocks to an English farmer's eye. The ground is all hills and hollows, lying on the sides of ranges, or stretching across the gullies. Amidst the grass is a dazzling perspective of black and white stumps, looking like a crop of tombstones, seen endways; and round the whole careers, uphill and down dale, the rough, barbarous, uncouth-looking stake fence. Never mind! Off that gaunt and unseemly tract has come many a good bale of wool, many a fair keg of butter, or portly cheese. What have we to do with trim appearances?