Ploughman's Perils.

I had just been reading Sheila Kaye-Smith's latest novel of English country life, “Ploughman's Progress.” Co-incidentally, there comes to me from a friend in the Waikato a note on a relative's pioneering adventures on the Old Frontier, a very different kind of life from rural England's. The old-timer with whom he talked on the subject was a hardy lad of eighty-two, who had just straightened up from a game of bowls. In his young days on the land he was an expert ploughman.

The veteran, then a youngster of barely twenty-one, had taken a contract to plough an area of unbroken land on Grice and Walker's estate at Roto-o-Rangi and Puahue and on towards the Maunga-tautari ranges. Part of this large stock run lay on the Maori side of the Confiscation boundary and was held on leasehold from some of the Maori owners. One day he drove his team afield, to begin his ploughing, when a party of armed natives suddenly appeared from the fern and manuka. They pointed their guns at him; they ordered him to go back. “This is our land,” they told him; “off with you or you will be killed.”

The young ploughman did not argue the point. He turned his team about, and presently reported to the manager of the station. The Maoris, or their leader, had a legitimate grievance; all the owners of the property had not been included or consulted in the deal. The warnings were repeated. Our ploughman did not return to the attack on the disputed soil; but other station hands were sent out on various jobs across the frontier line; and at last the Maoris struck. They shot and tomahawked one Timothy Sullivan, chopped off his head and cut out his heart, and carried those trophies through the King Country like a fiery cross.

It was a fearfully anxious time on the frontier farms. All thought it was the prelude to another war. Settlers and all were armed; but happily it did not go beyond military preparations; in a few months all was quiet again. That was in 1873. “Ah,” said the old-timer, “the farmer on the outskirts had something more to worry about then than a drop in the prices of his produce. His head didn't always feel quite secure on his shoulders.”