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Settlers swarmed in, the railroad platforms were jammed with land-seekers, and between the land-buyers of to-day and the wheat-shippers of to-morrow the owners of the once discredited railway saw their coffers fill to overflowing. In 1879 they divided among themselves the whole fifteen millions of stock issued, floating sixteen millions of bonds for extension and equipment.
Neither Hadfield, Maunsell, nor the printer Colenso were amongst the land-buyers, and the same honourable self-denial was shown by all the Catholic missionaries, and by all the Wesleyans but two. Nor were the lay land-claimants always ravenous. Maning, the Pakeha Maori, had paid £222 for his 200 acres at Hokianga. At Tauranga £50 had been given for a building site fifty feet square, in a pa.
Four hundred Crown grants were lying unissued in the Auckland Land Office because land-buyers could not pay the fee of £1 apiece due on them. But the Colonial Office, now that it at last gave unfortunate New Zealand a capable head, did not do things by halves. It supplied him with sufficient troops and a certain amount of money. The strong hand at the helm at once made itself felt.
The place was literally swarming with people. Prospectors, land-buyers, traders, merchants, and a miscellaneous army of railroad men were everywhere. No time had been afforded in which to build suitable structures for housing the ever-increasing population, and the town presented the appearance of a huge encampment; nearly one-half of the city being composed of canvas tents.
She would always come round like a lamb, and when she was his for keeps he would take a lot of the nonsense out of her! With few exceptions the passengers on board the Revere were strangers, fortune-seekers, rovers, land-buyers and prospectors from the east and south come to this well-heralded region of promise, perhaps to stay, perhaps to pass on.
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