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Russell had already acquired a larger area than anyone else, they bought an additional 5000 acres during the years 1873-4. A number of speculators were also busy. As a result, therefore, of Grigg’s methods of buying and selling, and of the operations of agents, an unusually large part of the land between the lower Hinds and Ashburton rivers, taken up at this time, passed to the small settlers who arrived in the later 1870s. One exceptional farmer-purchaser may be noted. Andrew Dawson, one of the earliest farmers in the Waterton district, declared years afterwards that he took up land there in 1872. Indeed he may have bought then from John Grigg. But he made purchases from the Crown in November 1873 and March 1874, buying at that time a total of 873 acres.

North of the Ashburton River, and especially around the Wakanui Creek, Moore was still adding to his land, and in 1872 other purchasers included some men who became well known farmers, such as Thomas Clephane, David Wilson and John Cochrane. The last named, if not the others, was still employed by Moore, whom he described as ‘the most excellent master he ever served’.^[1] He bought sixty-five acres from the government and worked it to such good purpose that fourteen years later his 155 acre farm was so well planted in trees—in the corners of the paddocks and on the winding avenue to the house—as to seem to the visitor to be scarcely part of the still relatively treeless Ashburton plain.

In 1872 also several men later prominent as farmers or in local affairs took up land in the Rakaia district. First of these were the Alington brothers, Charles Sydney, William Herbert and George Hildebrand, who established their Talbot Trees farm on the Lavington run, some eight miles inland from the Rakaia township. They were sons of the Rev. C. J. Alington, had been educated under the celebrated Edward Thring at Uppingham School, and were pleasant easy-going men less interested in farming than in the church, local affairs and sport. All three were good cricketers, Herbert having represented Canterbury against Otago in 1869. George was master of the Ashburton Hunt in 1890. Charles for his part was also skilled as a carpenter and inventor of mechanical devices for farm purposes. For all that, they had showed initiative as landowners, being among the first of the large number of farmers who moved south from around Lake Ellesmere and the lower Selwyn River and purchased land direct from the government.

The other men worthy of notice in the Rakaia area were to

1. ↑ Ibid, 8 Oct. 1886, p.8