"Of course he was going to commence with running cattle in the bush, as we do at present, but a happy chance saved him from the necessity of this, and all its attendant hard work. Some part of his place had been in Maori occupation comparatively recently, and was only covered with fern and ti-tree bush. The season was a very dry one, unusually so, and Karl was able to burn off all this stuff tolerably clean. He still had some capital left, and with that was able to buy grass seed, though at a ruinous price in those times, and sow down his burns. By this means he got something like a thousand acres of pasture after the rains came—a thundering good lift, you will say, for a settler in his second year only. "But Karl's grass was not to be compared with what we get on our clearings. In the first place, the land was poor, and the seed did not take so well; then, he had sown rather scantily, so that a good deal of fern and flax and ti-tree came up with the young grass, and made it patchy and poor. Still, it was a great thing for these parts, where there is no native grass, for it enabled Karl to run sheep at once. "Of course the grass was not all in one piece. It ran in and out among the standing bush, occupying the lower levels of ranges and the rising grounds at the bottom of gullies, spreading altogether over a good stretch of country. Karl got up sheep to stock it, but his capital was exhausted; and he ran into debt both for the sheep themselves, and with the shipper who brought them up. Not that this seemed of much consequence, for a year or two's increase of wool and lambs would pay off the debt and leave something in hand. But the Maori help he had didn't last very long; and as his creditors, being poor men, pressed him a good deal, Karl had to come into Auckland and raise money on mortgage. "Land was low enough in value all over the colony, at that time, and a block up this way was not thought much of, you may be sure, so that Karl only got enough, by mortgaging his whole six thousand acres, to pay off his two creditors and leave him a very small balance. Well, the prospect was good enough, as any one but a new-chum can see, but all hung upon the sheep. There did not seem a great risk, but still there always is a certain amount of that with sheep. Disease did not trouble Karl much; there need be no great fear on that account in this country, if a little care be taken. Drought, too, was no matter for anxiety, as the land was sufficiently well-watered. But it was out of the question to fence in the grass, so we had to take what chance there was of the sheep straying, or of the damage wild pigs might do to the young turf, or of dingoes.