The Tracks We Tread
Chapter I
Round the New Zealand coast-lines lie the towns, where men talk with their kind from over-seas, and put their fingers, eagerly and very ignorantly, on the throb of the great world’s pulse. Up the New Zealand mid-line—sheer into her vivid young heart—lie the townships where draw together the men she breeds and holds; men whom the Salvation Army lassies pray for on the dusty street corners, and who go away many times to endings unchronicled; men who love, who conquer and serve, on the downs, the harsh mountains, the unhandled plains, until they make touch with the Men of To-Morrow upon her shores.
Here they too feel the world’s pulse for a week, a year. Then the flutter and the drum-beat sicken them, and their feet ache for the spring of the tussock again. So the saddle takes them back, and the pick, and the call of the sheep, and the tin-roofed townships, whither all roads set as wheel-spokes set to the hub.
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