Page:Our New Zealand Cousins.djvu/182

 CHAPTER XIII.

started from Timaru on a bright sunny day, and passed first through a magnificent farming district. Ploughing was being actively pursued, and myriads of friendly gulls were following the plough, and finding fat delicacies in the upturned furrows. My eye follows the old track, along which I have galloped "many a time and oft," astride "the old chestnut," in the golden days of my youth. At that time there were only two houses between "the head station" and the town. Now, villages, hamlets, and farms stud the countryside as thick as blackberries. The fight was just beginning then, "Sheep v. Settlers," and sheep have lost the day. Settlement here is most complete, and the evidences of rural wealth are everywhere abundant.

At Makikiki, for instance, I find a snug village. A steam threshing-machine is at work in a field close to the railway station, and as far as the eye