One of the sawyers lent him a miserable half-starved little pony;
and he penetrated to another sawyer's hut, seven miles distant up
the Matukituki river. But no matter whether he turned his steps to
north or south, east or west, he met with the same disheartening
report. There was the ground indeed, but it was perfectly useless.
Not only was there was _no_ pasturage, but if there had been, the
nature of the country would have rendered it valueless, on account
of the way it was overgrown. It would be tedious to explain more
minutely why this was the case. Sufficient must it be to say that
whilst F--- was only too anxious to keep his eyes shut as to the
ground he had alighted on after his leap in the dark, and the
sawyers were equally anxious to induce settlers to come there, and
so bring a market for their labour close to their hand nothing could
make our purchase appear anything except a dead loss. As for the
plans, they were purely imaginary. The blue lake was about the only
part true to nature; and even that should have had a foot-note to
state that it was generally lashed into high, unnavigable waves, by
a chronic nor'-wester.

No: there was nothing for it but to go home again to the little run
which had seemed such a mere paddock in our eyes, whilst we indulged
in castle-building over 100,000 acres of country. It was of no use
lingering amid such disappointment and discomfort; besides which my
listener, the sawyer's wife, had turned her husband and herself out
of their hut, and were sleeping under a red blanket tent. Poor
woman, she was most anxious to get away; and the lovely sylvan
scene, with the tall trees standing like sentinels over their
prostrate brethren, the wealth of beauteous greenery, springing
through fronds of fern and ground creepers, the bright-winged flight
of paroquets and other bush birds, even the vast expanse of the lake