9 January 1873 Glenorchy My dear Donald Yours of the 26th December last I received per dear Douglas and was very pleased at the cheerful way you wrote and that the trip allong the East Coast gave you so much satisfaction. I trust the one on the West Coast may lead to the same and that matters there with the refractory natives will be brought to a pieceful settelment without much trouble or anxiety. I was delighted to see the great change the trip did for Douglas. He was quite another person all together and it shews you that he was never constituted for office work. The truth is I dread the keeping him at such work for any length of time. He was born for station work or outdoor work of some kind and never will do with confinement. He has plenty to look after outside that would be more to your advantage and his own than craming his head full of law. I do not see that those gentlemen are any brighter than other people. After all, stock and sheep improvements, when learned young will never be effaced from one and that is what Douglas would shine in in a very short time if allowed to follow it up. Do you think that the name of strangers at Maraekakaho will ever have the weight among the people of Hawkes Bay like the name it belongs to. Let them be ever so good, and I do trust when the new cottage is erected that you will endeavour to spend the most part of your time there and bring him with you so that he will see what is going on and learn to look after your affairs in time as time will come when age and many other things will require that a nearer of kin than strangers should do that work if God spares them. The man that is there now is very good I admit but I am certain he will not stay there very long as he has a strong notion of buying a place of 2 or 300 acres for himself and who can say he is wrong. Young Archy is very good and would do very well among the stock but it wants those that the property belongs to to be in closer conection with the place than they are and spend more of there time in looking after it. I see plenty but the least said the better for a time, but still it is well to keep the matter before you. Doubtless you know that yourself. We have had excessive dry and very hot weather ever since you left. Indeed the hottest three week ever I felt in Hawkes Bay were the last 3 week. The fruit fairly ro[a]sted on the trees and 2 year old blue gums scorched up, but we have a change today and a time of rain. Still notwithstanding the feed is plentiful and it will do good to footrot and the sheep and cattle are looking splendid. I have written a fair and as true a statement in a book of the genealogy as I could for Douglas which you will see when you come up. Will you tell Annabella that I have the timber on the ground to fit up a room for her so that in a few weeks I hope it will be ready and that she will come up for a change. Poor thing I long to see her. Cooper has not sent the plans for the cottage as yet. Tell Douglas to write how he got through the bush. No more at preasant. We are all well. Trusting you are the same. Yours ever Archibald John McLean