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Scab, a skin parasite which attacked sheep, assumed epidemic proportions. The spread of this disease increased the need for shepherds or fences and often entailed expensive curative measures. The runholders persuaded the Provincial Government to employ sheep inspectors. When the inspectors found a diseased sheep, they declared the whole flock ‘scabby’, and imposed fines which had to be paid if the flock were not clean within six months. The best specific was a wash made of 25lb of tobacco to 100 gallons of warm water, allowing one gallon of dip for every three sheep. One ton of tobacco was needed to dip 25,000 sheep.

One of the largest runholders in Canterbury achieved notoriety by allowing his sheep to remain diseased. George Henry Moore was probably the richest man in the province and one of its unpleasantest characters. With his partners, Kermode and Lillie, he held three properties. North of the Waipara River they owned Glenmark ‘probably the most valuable station in Canterbury.’^[1] In the Ashburton region they held the Wakanui runs which totalled 60,000 acres and until 1862 one of the runs of the later Longbeach. Wakanui was managed by Jonathan Brown, then by W. J. Moffatt. The head shepherd was Malcolm Millar.

Wakanui lay north of the Ashburton River and extended inland for eight miles from the coast. Next up the river lay the Ashburton Station, two runs totalling 27,000 acres and taken up by Henry John Tancred on behalf of himself and his brother, Sir Thomas Tancred. H. J. Tancred had been an officer in an Austrian hussar regiment; his blurred speech and limping walk betrayed injuries he had received as a soldier. With such a background it appeared incongruous that he made a high reputation in Canterbury as a man of caustic wit and as a leader in political and intellectual life. He led five provincial governments, probably served longer than any one else on the council, was virtual founder of Canterbury College and for some ten years before his death in 1884, the first chancellor of the University of New Zealand. Sir Thomas was a less successful idealist who had come to Canterbury in order to set up a special settlement based on a more rigid adherence to the social principles of the Canterbury Association and, of course, had failed. H. J. Tancred eventually transferred his interest in Ashburton Station to the Rev. J. C. Allen, who did not come to New Zealand; Sir Thomas, for his part, chose to live on another property he owned nearer Christchurch. Consequently Ashburton was placed under managers who were often given a lease of the

1. ↑ Acland, p.297