nearly nine weeks in beating up the coast to the scene of their labours in Auckland.  But the delight with which the coming of steamships in the fifties was hailed was not so much a rejoicing over more regular coastal communication, as joy because the English Mail would come sooner and oftener.  How they did wait and watch for the letters and newspapers from Home, those exiles of the early days!  Lucky did they count themselves if they had news ten times a year, and not more than four months old.  One of the best of their stories is of a certain lover whose gallant grace was not unworthy a courtier of Queen Elizabeth.  One evening this swain, after securing at the post-office his treasured mail budget, was escorting his lady-love home through the muddy, ill-lighted streets of little Christchurch.  A light of some sort was needed at an especially miry crossing.  The devoted squire did not spread out his cloak, as did Sir Walter Raleigh.  He had no cloak to spread.  But he deftly made a torch of his unread English letters, and, bending down, lighted the way across the mud.  His sacrifice, it is believed, did not go wholly unrewarded.

[Illustration:  THE CURVING COAST

Photo by HENRY WRIGHT]

One first-rate boon New Zealand colonists had—­good health.  Out of four thousand people in Canterbury in 1854 but twenty-one were returned as sick or infirm.  It almost seemed that but for drink and drowning there need be no deaths.  In Taranaki, in the North Island, among three thousand people in 1858-59 there was not a funeral for sixteen months.  Crime, too, was pleasantly rare in the settlements.  When Governor Grey, in 1850, appointed Mr. Justice Stephen to administer law in Otago, that zealous judge had nothing to do for eighteen months, except to fine defaulting jurors who had been summoned to try cases which did not exist and who neglected to attend to try them.  Naturally the settlers complained that he did not earn his L800 a year of salary.  His office was abolished, and for seven years the southern colonists did very well without a judge.  Great was the shock to the public mind when in March, 1855, a certain Mackenzie, a riever by inheritance doubtless, “lifted” a thousand sheep in a night from the run of a Mr. Rhodes near Timaru, in South Canterbury, and disappeared with them among the Southern Alps.  When he was followed and captured, it was found that he had taken refuge in a bleak but useful upland plain, a discovery of his which bears his name to this day.  He was set on horseback, with his hands tied, and driven to Christchurch, 150 miles, by captors armed with loaded pistols.  That he was a fellow who needed such precautions was shown by three bold dashes for freedom, which he afterwards made when serving a five years’ sentence.  At the third of these attempts he was shot at and badly wounded.  Ultimately, he was allowed to leave the country.

A sheep-stealer might easily have fallen into temptation in Canterbury at that time.  In three years the settlers owned 100,000 sheep; in four more half a million.  Somewhat slower, the Otago progress was to 223,000 in ten years.