The Roman Emperor, after a voyage every incident of which interested him deeply, arrived outside Port Lyttelton.  The captain shouted to the pilot who came to take them in: 

“Has the Robert Small arrived?”

“No,” replied the pilot, “nor yet the Burmah.”

And Butler, writing home to his people, adds the comment:  “You may imagine what I felt.”

The Burmah was never heard of again.

He spent some time looking round, considering what to do and how to employ the money with which his father was ready to supply him, and determined upon sheep-farming.  He made several excursions looking for country, and ultimately took up a run which is still called Mesopotamia, the name he gave it because it is situated among the head-waters of the Rangitata.

It was necessary to have a horse, and he bought one for 55 pounds, which was not considered dear.  He wrote home that the horse’s name was “Doctor”:  “I hope he is a Homoeopathist.”  From this, and from the fact that he had already contemplated becoming a homoeopathic doctor himself, I conclude that he had made the acquaintance of Dr. Robert Ellis Dudgeon, the eminent homoeopathist, while he was doing parish work in London.  After his return to England Dr. Dudgeon was his medical adviser, and remained one of his most intimate friends until the end of his life.  Doctor, the horse, is introduced into Erewhon Revisited; the shepherd in Chapter XXVI tells John Higgs that Doctor “would pick fords better than that gentleman could, I know, and if the gentleman fell off him he would just stay stock still.”

Butler carried on his run for about four and a half years, and the open-air life agreed with him; he ascribed to this the good health he afterwards enjoyed.  The following, taken from a notebook he kept in the colony and destroyed, gives a glimpse of one side of his life there; he preserved the note because it recalled New Zealand so vividly.

April, 1861.  It is Sunday.  We rose later than usual.  There are five of us sleeping in the hut.  I sleep in a bunk on one side of the fire; Mr. Haast, {22} a German who is making a geological survey of the province, sleeps upon the opposite one; my bullock-driver and hut-keeper have two bunks at the far end of the hut, along the wall, while my shepherd lies in the loft among the tea and sugar and flour.  It was a fine morning, and we turned out about seven o’clock.

The usual mutton and bread for breakfast with a pudding made of flour and water baked in the camp oven after a joint of meat—­ Yorkshire pudding, but without eggs.  While we were at breakfast a robin perched on the table and sat there a good while pecking at the sugar.  We went on breakfasting with little heed to the robin, and the robin went on pecking with little heed to us.  After breakfast Pey, my bullock-driver, went to fetch the horses up from a spot about two miles down the river, where they often run; we wanted to go pig-hunting.