Our first business was to provide a habitation for ourselves in the forest, as we required to stay there a month or two while cutting the necessary timber.  We laid out a space 10 feet by 12 feet, drove in posts at the corners, and nailed a strong rail on top, then we felled and split up into slabs a number of white pine trees, and set them upwards all round with their edges overlapping and nailed them at the top to the rail, or, more properly, wall plate, the feet of the slabs being set a few inches in the ground.  Over this enclosure we made a sloping framework of wickers (fine saplings) and covered it with an old tent which Metcalfe possessed.  At one end of the hut we constructed a wide fireplace and chimney in the same manner, and hung up an old blanket over the space left for a doorway.  The inside of the slab walls and chimney we wattled with mud and laths, which we split up, and plastered over with mud and chopped grass.  We made rough cots with wickers and slabs, raised a foot above the ground, so as to form seats as well as beds, and covered them with a thick layer of minuka branches, which made capital springy mattresses, and over all we laid our blankets.  For a table we split and dressed fairly smooth a pine slab a foot wide in which we bored four holes and inserted therein wicker legs.  Our mansion was now complete and it had not occupied two days to build.

We rose at daybreak, boiled a kettle of tea, which with cold baked mutton and damper formed our breakfast, then to work till 12 o’clock, when we took an hour for dinner, and again to work till dark, when we adjourned to the hut, and after a visit to the creek for ablutions, and seeing that our horses were watered and put on fresh pasture for the night, we sat down to supper by a rousing fire, then lit pipes and chatted or read till it was time to turn in, when the fire was raked over, and the damper of bread inserted under the hot ashes to be ready for the morning.  During the evening also one of us made the bread; the camp oven would be put on the fire with sufficient mutton to last us for two or three days.  It was a grand life for healthy, strong fellows as we were, living and working alone in a virgin forest, with no sound around us but the rippling of the brook and the whisper of the wind through the foliage of the tall pines, or the ringing of our axes, with every now and then the crashing fall of a huge tree.

I should remark here that the black and white pine (so called) of New Zealand is not by any means similar to that which grows in Europe.  They grow straight and tall, it is true, but for fully half their height throw out heavy and numerous branches thickly covered all the year round with very small evergreen leaves.  The trees are easily cut up and split into posts and rails, or sawn into boards.  At the time I refer to the forests were free to all settlers for their home needs on the payment of a nominal fee to the Provincial Government.