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moved south from stagnant Kaiapoi. He bought the house which Mayo had built for his boarding school, and began a practice which covered the whole county area and lasted over thirty years. He was also successful in business. In 1871, Thomas Bullock sold his Leeston farm with the intention of buying another near Ashburton. Instead, he went into trade as a general merchant and stock agent. He held his first stock sale in September 1873, and thereafter his yards and horse bazaar were perhaps the main centres of local business life until the end of the decade. He made the bulk of his fortune by dealing in town property.

Hugo Friedlander, the fourth of the arrivals, was undoubtedly the most noteworthy in terms of Ashburton’s future. Jewish, and a native of the one-time Polish provinces of Germany, he had emigrated to escape the hated Prussian government. He first found employment with the firm of Julius Mendleson, general merchants of Temuka, and was a young man of twenty-two when he arrived in Ashburton in 1872 to set up a branch for that firm. He had earlier made business contacts for Mendleson in the district. He took building materials from Temuka and put up the third large store in the town and the first situated at any distance from the banks of the river. Stockily built and aggressive by nature, Friedlander was also intelligent and energetic. His German accent made him hard to understand and this was probably the reason why he was early involved in two cases of assault. He remained an unusual figure but was nevertheless the leading force in the business and social life of the borough for forty years.

One other man living in Ashburton in 1873 must be added to this list. Unlike the previous four, Alfred Saunders was prominent in New Zealand history. Between 1855 and 1867 he had been, by turn, provincial councillor, provincial secretary and Superintendent of Nelson Province, as well as member of Parliament for Waimea. In later years (1878-95) he represented various Canterbury constituencies in Parliament, but he was a man of decided character, too uncompromising in his views to make a successful politician. Indeed, he declined ministerial office twice because the government was not sufficiently of his opinion. Saunders, a flour-miller by trade, returned from a long visit to England in 1872 and, realizing the possibilities of the district, set up the Canterbury Flour Mill in partnership, briefly, with his brother-in-law, Thomas Flower. He obtained permission from the Ashburton Road Board to connect a dry creek bed with the Ashburton River and so secured water