tumbled down in due time with a crash This particular castle
however, not only attained to a great elevation in the visionary
builder's eyes, but it covered so vast an area of land, that the
story of its rise and fall deserves to be placed on record, as a
warning to aerial architects and also as a beacon-light to young
colonists.

This was exactly the way it all happened. The new year of 186-
found us living very quietly and happily on a small compact
sheep-farm, at the foot of the Malvern Hills, in the province of
Canterbury, New Zealand. As runs went, its dimensions were small
indeed; for we only measured it at 12,000 acres, all told. The
great tidal wave of prosperity, which sets once in a while towards
the shores of all colonies, had that year swelled and risen to its
full force; but this we did not know. Borne aloft upon its
unsubstantial crest we could not, from that giddy height, discern
any water-valleys of adversity or clouds of change and storm along
the shining horizon of the new world around us. All our
calculations were based on the assumption that the existing prices
for sheep, wool, cattle, and all farm-produce, would rule for many a
long day; and the delightful part of this royal road to wealth was,
that its travellers need not exert themselves in any way: they had
only to sit still with folded hands whilst their sheep increased,
and it was well known that a flock doubled itself in three short
years. The obvious deduction from this agreeable numerical fact
was, that in an equally short period your agent's payments to your
bank account would also be doubled. In the meantime the drays were
busy carting the wool to the seaports as fast as they could be
loaded, whilst speculative drovers rode all about the country buying
up the fat cattle and wethers from every run. These were wanted to