grassed and watered as any in the province, still it could not
possibly carry more than a certain number of sheep, and to that
total our returns showed that we were rapidly approaching. The most
careful calculations warned us that by next shearing we should
hardly know what to do with our sheep. It is always better to be
under than overstocked, for the merino gets out of condition
immediately, and even the staple of the wool deteriorates if its
wearer be at all crowded on his feeding-grounds.

"You must take up more country directly," was the invariable formula
of the advice we, comparatively "new chums," received on all sides.
This was easier to say than to do. Turn which ever way we would,
far back beyond our own lovely vallies and green hills, back up to
the bleak region of glaciers, where miles of bush and hundreds of
acres of steep hill-side, formed the _back-est_ of "back country,"
every inch of land was taken up. No fear had those distant
Squatters of "cockatoos," or even of miners; for no one came their
way who could possibly help it. Still we should have been
comparatively glad to buy such a run fifty or sixty miles further
back,--at the foot, in fact of the great Southern Alps,--just as a
summer feeding-ground for the least valuable portion of our flock.
But no one was inclined to part with a single acre, and we were
forced to turn our eyes in a totally different direction.

If my readers will refer to the accompanying map of New Zealand, and
look at the Middle or South Island, they will notice a long seaboard
on the eastern side of the island, stretching SS.W. for many hundred
leagues. It extends beyond the Province of Canterbury to that of
Otago, and embraces some of the most magnificent pastoral land in
the settlement. Not only is the soil rich and productive, but the