Samuel Butler, Type of the

Educated Settler

THE career of the writer, Samuel Butler, is typical of early Canterbury squatting. He did not come out till 1860, when, as he thought, all the land in the province had already been taken up. But he was still in time to enjoy the freshness and hope of the young settlement and to write vigorous letters home. He decided almost as soon as he landed, evidently quoting the opinions of others, that farming ‘ as we do in England’ did not pay. This seems a surprising judgment when we re­member the later development of New Zealand. Yet it is shrewder than it at first appears, when we think of the conditions of the time, the re­stricted market for anything but wool, and the high wages paid in the most distant of all British colonies. Still he was not disheartened and rode away from Christchurch to look for his own sheep country.

Christchurch was so small in those days that the early residents told stories of new arrivals who rode right through the scattered houses without realising they had seen a new-born city. In spite of its small size, it had the atmosphere of an English cathedral town from the first, an atmos­phere Butler had come to New Zealand to avoid. He had already visited Italy and Switzerland. With a taste for mountain scenery and the task of looking for sheep country, Samuel’ Butler had plenty of excuse for exploration pure and simple. He even penetrated to the glaciers at the heads of many of the great Canterbury river valleys. These valleys are wide shingle plains across which the water wanders in many branches, each a diffi­cult obstacle to cross. There was little grass on the red and purple screes of their sides, and only an occasional river flat where sheep might run.

Samuel Butler spent a good part of his first year in these rides. He even looked down on the Mackenzie Plains and admired the soaring majesty of Mount Cook. He also found time in his five years in the country to acquire and work a sheep-station and re-sell it at a profit. He had the luck, as he admitted himself, to buy his land and sheep on a rising market. He doubled his capital and was able to do what so many of the early squatters only dreamed of, returning to England to live happily ever afterwards. The land he chose up the Rangitata River still bears the name he gave it— ‘ Mesopotamia.’ He had an exciting race to the Land Office in Christchurch to secure definite ownership of a hut built by an obstinate neighbour on Butler’s allotment. The neighbour won, but lost the hut site, as he foolishly forged an entry in the application register to make doubly sure.

Samuel Butler’s Mesopotamia consisted of two sod huts with leaky thatched snow-grass for roof. The roof at times blew in. The run had the advantages of being remote and having river boundaries. From one point of view these were disadvantages. It took a fortnight to bring stores to the station by bullock waggon from Christchurch, and the Rangitata was very dangerous to cross in the slightest flood. But the run was free from contact with other sheep, which might have been infected with scab. This was a stock disease that swept away thousands of Canterbury sheep. It traveled along much-used stock routes from the older settlement of Nelson. Besides the advantage of preserving the sheep from infection, river boun­daries made mustering easier and prevented the flocks straggling.