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 climate is rather less windy than with us in the northern portion of the island; and the capital of Otago (Dunedin) had risen into comparative position and importance before Christchurch,--was in short an elder sister of that pretty little town.

Most of the settlers in Otago were Scotchmen, and as there are no better colonists anywhere, its prosperity had attained to a very flourishing height.