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I hereby certify that the publisher's lists and other records disclose that the circulation of the “New Zealand Railways Magazine” has not been less than 20,000 copies each issue since July, 1930.
Deputy-Controller and Auditor-General.
As announced by Mr. H. H. Sterling, Chairman of the Government Railways Board, the StratfordOkahukura railway line is likely to be opened for regular traffic on September 3. The line has not yet been finally inspected on behalf of the Railway Department, but a preliminary inspection has been made and it is not expected that any difficulty to prevent the working of the line on the date named will arise.
Special cars for the new service will be attached to the Limited express from Auckland on the nights when the train is being run to New Plymouth. The additional loading will be made possible by the use of the new “K” engines, which have an ample margin of power to haul the heavier load and still maintain the present schedule. The first train under the new time-table will leave Auckland, connected to the Limited express, on Sunday, September 3.
The time-table for passenger trains is as follows:—
The departure time from Auckland will be 7.0 p.m. on Sundays, Tuesdays and Thursdays, and from Taumarunui at 12.45 a.m., to arrive at New Plymouth at 6.1 a.m. on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. From New Plymouth the train will leave at 7.10 p.m. on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, and from Stratford at 8.31 p.m., arriving at Auckland at 7.6 a.m. the next day.
R.D. McC.—Accept, with pleasure. L.C.H.—Sorry, no space. C.W.T.—One good, but too general. The other too hard on the road. W.F.H.—Your Wellington has a refreshing touch. J.C.—Can you blame her? The clouds and the moon and the sun have been done to tears. H.M.G.; J.H.L.; D.C.; M.E.L. (two);—all accepted. Include some really fine lines.
Note.—A large number of contributions, exhibiting much literary talent and excellent in themselves, have been withheld meantime, and owing to space limitations it is doubtful whether we will be able to print them. We would be glad if writers would realise that the nonappearance of such articles in the Magazine is governed entirely by the above consideration. The average quality of the MS. submitted is distinctly good.—Ed.
“Whose roots earth's centre touch, whose heads the skies.” —Walter Harte.
(Photo courtesy Foresty Dept.)
Trees, hundreds of years old, growing in one of the craters on Maungakakaramea (Rainbow Mountain), North Island, New Zealand.
Among the most valuable invisible imports to any country is its tourist traffic. The value of this traffic appears on no national balance-sheet and estimates regarding it have to be worked out on very incomplete data; but every country with anything worth-while to show the visitor, welcomes travellers for what they bring of spending capacity, opinions, ideas and suggestions.
New Zealand—“The Playground of the Pacific” as it has come more recently to be popularly called, is attracting more attention from overseas as its particular charms become better known. The running of an extra line of vessels from San Francisco in the last few months is an indication of this increasing interest, and is helping to swell the returns from this source.
Recent years have seen marked improvements in the facilities and amenities of travel in New Zealand. A notable programme of modernising work has been carried through by the railways in improved timetables and better station facilities and train accommodation for travellers. The hotels of the Dominion have adopted a higher standard of comfort.
The chief complaint from those making a first visit to the Dominion is that they have not allowed themselves sufficient time to “do” New Zealand properly. One observant visitor was of the opinion that New Zealand overseas publicity leaves the impression that the country is smaller than it is, hence the visitor thinks a few days is sufficient to allow for a New Zealand stay. When they reach here and realise that this Dominion is larger than Great Britain, they find the limited time factor works against them, resulting in much of the better parts of New Zealand being missed altogether. This effect of unduly short stays works with particular disadvantage to the South Island, which, although claiming some of the most striking scenery, has no main terminal port for trans-Pacific passenger liners.
This disadvantage, despite the fact that the Wellington-Lyttelton ferry service (between the North and South Islands) is the best of its kind in the world, can only be overcome by an educational campaign amongst prospective visitors which, overcoming the New Zealander's natural tendency to conservatism of statement, will rather emphasise the size and broken nature of the country—its 103,000 square miles of area, its huge mountains, its gorgeous but detached scenic gems, its winding roads, mighty rivers, and deeply indented coasts.
The Railways Tourist Ticket (which, by the way, is estimated to provide the cheapest travel in the world) recognises fairly accurately the time required for seeing New Zealand. It allows four weeks for one Island, seven weeks for both—shorter periods mean undue scurry, or the elimination from itineraries of some outstanding features. But, whether their stay be long or short, the “invisible imports” of tourist traffic are always welcome, and they are of never-failing real value to the country.
A proofed copy of the following article by Mr. Mills was read by Sir Harold Beauchamp, who wrote, in returning the proof of the article: — “This I consider excellent, and I do not propose to suggest any alterations, as that would be tantamount to ‘painting the lily and adorning the rose.’ There is no one in New Zealand better qualified to speak of Kathleen's early efforts to get a footing on the rung of the literary ladder.”
On a plot of land at the top of Fitzherbert Terrace, Wellington, almost opposite the house in which she lived with her folks before she left to begin her now famous literary career in London, a delightful rest-house for tramway sojourners has been erected as a memorial to “Katherine Mansfield” by her father, Sir Harold Beauchamp.
It is rather remarkable, yet in a way nationally characteristic, that the form of the memorial was suggested to the Wellington writer's father by a Japanese, Mr. Hashimoto, during a tour of the Dominion last year.
Mr. Hashimoto visited Wellington with the definite object of getting some personal notes on Katherine Mansfield on the spot, as he is engaged in writing a Life of New Zealand's storyteller, “My Beloved Authoress,” as the Japanese phrased it. He has a Japanese reading cult interested because he has Japanesed some of her short stories.
It must appear strange to New Zealanders, who know less about the Mansfieldian works than literary folks overseas, to learn of the series of pilgrimages to Wellington by writers to gather material for books about the Empire City's very own gifted daughter. Miss Ruth Mantz visited Wellington and London for such a purpose, and this Californian met an Italian lady, from the University of Venice, whose thesis for her doctorate in languages is to be a Life of Katherine Mansfield.
Not only so, but there is a Chinese scholar in Peiping who is translating and publishing the K.M. stories.
“Les Annales,” an illustrated magazine published in Paris, contained in recent issues glowing tributes of the New Zealander's stories and articles, written by a well-known French writer, M. Francis Carco. Her work has had frequent translation into French publications.
I was informed recently by a tourist out of the far fields that even in America they were better informed concerning the works of Katherine Mansfield than are New Zealanders. But that I doubt, for Middleton Murry, London critic, who married Katherine Beauchamp, published even the scrappy notes left by his wife, some of which fragments are apt to do her literary reputation more harm than good. And as all these books came to New Zealand they would be bought and read out here.
Yet, apart from her own writings, very little, really, is known about New Zealand's most notable daughter. How many Wellingtonians know that she attended school in Karori, that she was a clever ‘cellist, that her christened name was Kathleen Mansfield Beauchamp? When she reached years of discretion she changed the “leen” to “erine” because she did not like the other affixette.
My own contact with the gifted girl—for she was then only eighteen years of age—came about in an unusual manner, and I knew of her talents months before I met her.
It was at a cricket match on the Basin Reserve that the subject came up. The members of the Beauchamp family were cricket fans—the father and Kathleen's two elder sisters.
I was in the pavilion reporting the match for the “Post” when Harold Beauchamp (he had not received his title thenadays) sat down by my bench.
During the interval Mr. Beauchamp made a remark about an article I had contributed to a London magazine, and then observed:
“I have a daughter, Mills, who thinks she can write, and her mother thinks so, too.”
“What does Father think?” said I.
“Oh, I don't know anything about poetry and stories.”
“Ah!” I exclaimed. “Has she the double gift?”
“Well—she writes! Would you be good enough to read some of her efforts and pass judgment upon them. She would appreciate a candid opinion, and so should I.”
I agreed to do so, provided she did not fire the MS. of a novel at me for a start.
Months followed.
Then came a telephone message:
“Kathleen Beauchamp speaking,” said the voice.
“You promised my father, Harold Beauchamp, that you would read any manuscript I would submit to you for criticism and tell me your opinion. I have a batch ready for you. I have been at work on them ever since Father told me of his talk with you.”
I discovered in this literary Beauchamp a girl, bright, well read and informed on general topics, obviously a thinker, and not the least bit diffident about her writings. She was quite convinced in herself that she could write—that she had the gift to write.
Then why consult me?
She had to convince her own people that she could write, so as to achieve her life's ambition, which was to create a career for herself in the one place in this wide world that mattered—London.
She gave me a thin packet containing three poems and six very short stories, all of which she said she had specially written, painstakingly, for my judgment.
I read them all at my home that evening with astonished delight. For I had discovered a genius right there in Wellington!
As a reader of MS.S, over a number of years for the “New Zealand Mail,’ the “New Zealand Times,” and the “Evening Post,” as well as being a reviewer of books, I had read very many compositions of all sorts from all parts of both islands.
But Kathleen Beauchamp was different—very emphatically different.
I told her so next day.
The Katherine Mansfield Memorial, Fitzherbert Terrace, Wellington.
She took the judgment as a matter of course, and said: “Do tell Father that!”
Said I: “Besides telling your father, we will proceed to convince him with an £. s. d. verdict.”
I wrote on the top of each MS. the name of a magazine to which she should send it.
The poems were the sweetest child verse—the most rare and difficult of compositions—I had ever read. These were sent to Harper's, in New York.
There was difficulty about placing the six stories, because they were all typically Mansfieldian. The magazine field for such stories was very limited in those days. I recommended only two—one in Australia, the other in London.
In the sequel to the voyage of these argosies Kathleen scored a world record as a writer. For not only were all her first offerings accepted and paid for by cheque in return mail—but the first refusal of her future stories was requested by both magazine editors.
Can any reader of the “Railways Magazine” name any other writer in the whole realm of literature whose first offerings to editors did not have one “returned—unsuitable!”
At our last meeting in Wellington before leaving for London, Kathleen felt so sanguine of success that she said she would dedicate her first book to me.
“Don't do anything so unbusinesslike,” I replied. “You follow the old practice of a dedication to some Londoner whose name on a book is worth an edition.”
Her instant success in London gave her the material for her first book, “In a German Pension,” comprising a series of sketches she wrote for a London weekly journal, which sent her to Europe to write up the most famous and fashionable health resorts.
Did I correspond with her? No. I received only one communication from her. It came on a postcard from the Alps, in Spain. That was the beginning of her breakdown in health, which ended so tragically in France in her 33rd year.
It has been pleasing both to the public and the Railways staff to find from the returns recently published that the Railway net revenue for the year so far is #35,000 higher than for the corresponding four months of last financial year.
These results have been achieved largely by an improvement on the revenue side, and it is hoped that this tendency will be maintained. Careful handling on the expenditure side has also assisted. Whether the revenue improvement will continue cannot be forecast with any degree of certainty, but there are now probably more grounds for confidence in this respect. The efforts of the staff to curtail expenditure and their activities in furthering the development of business for the Department, have contributed to the improvement.
Any true conception of a railwayman's work includes an understanding by him of the importance of his work to the Dominion. In his work he has opportunities for interesting association with various classes of the community. He has opportunities for contacts with businesses and personal friends outside the service, and these contacts furnish him with opportunities to state the case for the Railways in a very effective, though not necessarily an official manner. Members of the service have every reason to have wellfounded confidence in the carrying capacity of the Railways, in their safety, their comfort and their general efficiency. Having such confidence they are able to take opportunities, apart from their daily work, to spread the news and thus secure business for the Railways. This is a part of the effort which those in charge of men in the various sections of the service can use if their work is conducted in such a way as to produce the spirit of co-operation.
General Manager.
Here is a happy passenger—enjoying safety, comfort and economy—gazing at some pleasant scenes of New Zealand, one of the world's best countries. This article gives some of the reasons why the people can use their own railways in full confidence that all will be well with them.
A Story is told of a proud inventor who, after years of patient, intelligent toil, showed a working model of a steam engine to King Richard III. of England. The monarch suspected the “black art” of the devil and he took a short way with that invention. He called in a member of his executioners staff who swung a sledgehammer on the engine and silenced its hissing. Marvellous feats, attributed to Satan and his satellites in the Dark Ages, would be very ordinary affairs in contrast with the modern miracles of practical science.
Any New Zealander who feels that his bump of self-esteem is exceptionally large is advised to visit the big Railway Workshops in the Hutt Valley. Here, if he has an open mind, he will come fairly to the belief that he is a speck in a big field of achievement. In those huge buildings are marshalled in orderly array machines and other equipment showing the whole range of human inventiveness—man's mastery of mysterious forces.
Here Vulcan is mechanised, and he has a prowess beyond the exploits told in ancient mythology. Here Science is King, and his ministers are system and co-ordination. Muddle is in perpetual exile, and Waste is an outlaw. Saving time, saving labour, saving material—that is the impression which is fixed on the spectator in the various sections of the farspread plant. A township has grown around that immense enterprise which employs about 1,200 breadwinners.
One is looking at a locomotive on a siding in one of the shops. Suddenly a wizard touches a switch which introduces a geni known as Mangahao Power. Presto! The whole upper part of the engine has a quick ascent; it is a lift by a 100-ton electric crane. The wheel base remains behind. It is such a swift, silent separation that it suggests the kind of surprise a person would have if he saw a man's body jump up, leaving the legs behind.
Another magic touch—and away speeds that engine's “torso” on an electric traverser which carries it to renovators who are ready to restore its youth.
Just when this dismemberment was occurring, an engine, fresh from hospital treatment, was chuckling near the scene of operations. This fellow, with a clean sheet of fitness, was fussing to be away on the open lines, to build up another big record of thousands of miles. Presently he would weigh out—the final stage—near the exit. In this process the weight on each wheel would be tested and correctly adjusted. Then he would steam proudly past two travel-stained mates awaiting their turn for overhauls. Each would go in on a time schedule carefully planned for quick despatch.
What is happening now to the patient which was taken to pieces? The wheels and all other working parts, now coated with grease and grime, are ready for their bath—a scalding for two hours in a vat which is 30ft. long, 6ft. wide and 6ft. deep. When they emerge they will be thoroughly clean. The top structure of the engine will have appropriate treatment elsewhere.
No queen of ancient or modern romance ever had a more beautiful jewel than that cube of dazzling iron which has just been drawn from an oil-fired furnace and placed on an anvil for the buffets of a two-ton hammer worked by Mr. Mangahao Power. What poor things the world's best rubies and diamonds would look beside that living jewel when it leaves its terrible nest! A little while ago it was a parcel of cold scrap, 1 ½ cwt. —and now it is at a dripping heat—2,200 degrees Fahrenheit.
The electric hammer is throbbing aloft in impatience for its task. Thump! Thump! Thump! After three blows it is pausing again, trembling with eagerness to batter that hot nugget, which will do service as a buffer on a carriage or truck.
That busy hammer is getting the iron ready for a gas-cutter which will give the metal its
Here is a broken rod. In other days the pieces would have been “scrap,” but they have a better fate to-day. The broken ends are pushed together in the right alignment, a lever is pulled and Mr. Mangahao Power is again on active service. What a glow comes into that fracture! The red heat turns to white, 2,200 degrees, and the metal becomes as butter. The two pieces have become one in a few moments. Fragments have turned into a new rod.
Further on one sees more elaborate plastic surgery, with electric current as the operator. Worn metal is saved from the scrap-heap by the electric welding process which does some clever “patching” or “grafting.” It is a kind of magic plaster. This same current is also a cutter and a borer.
In another place hydraulic power performs surgical service. Old fish-plates here receive a new lease of life. They are warmed up to 1,800 degrees in an oil-fired furnace, and then go to press—a hydraulic squeeze of 1,500lbs. to the square inch.
A spectacular thermal region is the casting department. From a coke-fired cupola comes the “devil's brew”—cauldrons of special alloys of molten metal which is poured into moulds of sand and covered up. A strange smell of cooking comes from the steaming and fuming. The starry sparks from the fiery liquid and the wisps of whiteness curling up from the dark sand give this place a diabolical appearance in the late afternoon. The moulds are made from wooden patterns. At rest together in a little office they suggest a toy-shop, which contrasts queerly with the fiery turbulence just outside.
The big K locomotives, which look like black demons of power—and do not belie their looks, are made in these shops. The present programme provides for one engine every six weeks until the K family has a membership of thirty. When the writer paid his visit he saw five K's in various stages of growth, side by side. One was represented by nothing more than one frame—just a flank—to which all sorts of things would be attached. This beginner was at the foot of the class, and at the head stood one which was nearly ready for the road. Yes, it is an ingenious business.
The last of the big surprises is the laboratory, which is a very important two-way watch house, intimately concerned with materials before they come in and before they go out as manufactures. The laboratory is only a little corner of the big estate, but its influence reaches through the whole outfit. One may have a pleasant meditation on the power of a few bottles of acids and salts and other chemicals, a few instruments and other contrivances, which take very little space, to govern the course of affairs in such a huge enterprise. But there it is—the ever-watchful two-way test of the composition of materials and the strength of weldings. It is an insurance policy for a fair deal for the Railway Department and the general public from all viewpoints, particularly safety.
Before this chronicler went out to the shops he asked whether he would be likely to spoil a good suit during a walk through the place. In some doubt he accepted an assurance that his clothing would run no risk—and the prediction was fulfilled. Nowhere did he perceive nuisance in the air, which is kept remarkably clean and comfortable at a temperature of about 55 degrees. Inside and out—where lawns and flower-plots gladden the eyes—the conditions for the big staff are notably good. That is the new order. The old shops were good and faithful servants in their day and in their way—but it is a new day and a new way in the Hutt Valley.
Modern Magic At The Hutt Valley Workshops.
2-ton electro-pneumatic hammer at work, forging scrap. The 200-ton hydraulic press.
In a recent reference to rail travel in Britain, our London Correspondent, Mr. Arthur L. Stead, writes: —
Big passenger business handled by the railways in Britain tells of the continued love of travel and the lure of the country's beauty spots. More than once I have been asked by New Zealand railwaymen to sketch out for them a suitable sightseeing tour of the Old Country, and this, let me say, is an enquiry I am always delighted to handle.
In Britain, as elsewhere, there are places to appeal to every taste. The appeal of London is, of course, universal, and one could spend the whole of a long holiday in London Town alone, combining with a general tour of the metropolis the inspection of some of the more famous railway termini and workshops. For sheer natural beauty alone, however, Devonshire is perhaps the place for the New Zealander. Many of you doubtless have happy memories of beautiful Torquay and the surrounding coast and moorland, as a result of war-time travels. Plymouth, nearby, might be looked upon as the Wellington of Britain.
What is life? Some say that life is how you take it, others that it is all stings to all men, and that to be is to be stung. But life is merely more or less, according to the lights of the liver. To some it means the sun and the rain, to others the sum and the gain. Some back the bank, the swank and the rank, others find riches in poverty, and beauty in the face of Nature rather than in the raddled “restorations” begot of the beauty boosters. One man's moiety is another's misery, one's rapture is another's rupture, one's solace is another's solecism. Some like life in the raw, others like it served with tasty trimmings and condimented accoutrements on platinum plate. But the discerning diner demands the appetite to appreciate the “appetizer,” whether it be tripe or snipe, pullet or pheasant. An appetite finds flavour in divers dishes, and the wish is father to the dish. Life leads the liver who looks for life, and the dishes of destiny await the diner with an appetite accentuated by a sense of smell. Some who think they live should be arrested for false pretences. There was once a man who thought he had lived and discovered, seventy minutes before he died, that he had been dead for seventy years. Life is yearning rather than years, seeing rather than seething, desiring rather than acquiring. Life is real, not realty; life is full not fulsome; propitious for the unambitious, and “the goods” when the goods are not dry-goods.
Slumps, dumps, bumps and “humps” are only an outward indication of inward perturbation—a skin eruption on the derm of Destiny, a result of wrongness in the “righteous,” and of sin in sincerity. The only slump possible is a slump in salubrity, and as long as the world wears whiskers, there is no dearth on the earth. Which reminds me that I met an ass in a paddock.
“Good morrow,” says I.
“Chin-chin brother,” says he, “and when I say chin-chin I don't mean just chin.”
“How so?” says I.
“Well, ass-k yourself brother,” says he. “Looking at things as a plain ass, they seem pretty good to me. Take this paddock f'instance! Why, you never seen sich clover, and a stream that's always as cool as a cow's nose; and when it's sunny the sun seems warmer if it's been raining the day before—and there's a thrush with the greatest voice you ever did hear, that sings in the elder-berries every evening. No brother, chin-chin is no exaggeration of the situation.”
“But this dreadful slump!” says I.
“What slump?” says he.
“Why, this awful depression,” says I.
“What depression?” says he. “I've been in this ‘ere paddock nigh fifteen years and I've never heerd tell of no sich animal; what's it like? Does it kick, does it bite?”
“No, it's just a condition,” says I.
“Where is it, then?” says the ass.
“It's all over the world,” says I.
“Well it might be,” says he; “but I've never heerd of it, and when I've never heerd of a thing it naturally don't exist.”
“It's difficult to explain,” says I.
“Well, a thing that's difficult to explain ain't worth explaining,” says the ass. “Does it wither the crops or nip off the grass, or put a cloud over the sun, or kill the trees, or silence the birds, or turn the soil sour, or kill the beasts?”
“Oh, no,” says I; “it doesn't do any of that.”
“Well,” says the ass; “as far as I can judge brother, you've been done in the eye. Believe me, there ain't no sich animal. Look at the turnips, sniff the hay, count the cows, see the sheep, hear the separator a'singing, look at the sun, smell the breeze, and cast your peepers over this ‘ere grass. Hear the birds a-warblin', the wind in the trees, see the fat clouds a-burstin’ to water the earth, and tell me if you see anything wrong with this ‘ere outfit. Brother, this’ were slump is only a gnat under your hat, and your trouble is that your face is too long, your ears are too short, and your nose is too far from the earth. Take my tip, brother, give up trying to be something you're not and be just a plain ass like me.”
So saying, the ass lifted his loudspeaker until he looked just like a real elocutionist, and got it off his bronchials as follows: —
The beauty of being a plain ass is that it is useless to pretend that you are anything else. When you're unused to speeding on the cinder-track of knowledge a sharp collision with learning oft’ causes a compound facture of the intelligence. Thus fundamental facts are more useful than fact-demental funks. Some things are too plain to be noticed and others are too noticeable to be plain, but take it or leave it—there are things worth taking and things better left; for often the “left” is right and the right is left, and it takes an ass to ass-ess the assets.
Let's be asses, for the spring is uncoiling and and the lid is off the box of tricks. Winter has been put on the spot, Jack Frost has been “taken for a ride.” Rain
In the spring a young man's fancy loves to turn and turns to love. But what is love? In the spring it is a spring union although at other periods it might be anything from Cupid's dart to Cupidity's dagger. Love is a kind of confusional inanity, a voluntary conversion, a wages tax, a bit of ring-sparring which usually ends with a knock-out in the last round. Love is a gamble called “double or quits.” But that old spring feeling which makes the blood boil in the binnacle is worth the risk of coming over all matrimonial. That emotion known as the rising of the “sap” is worth the penalty of “flame,” even if it is the extreme penalty of love which some say begins with a finger ring and ends with an ankle chain. But never believe it, Nature made spring to grow spring unions, and Nature knows her unions. Take it from us, it is never too late to unbend, for:
Getting Down To Bedrock.
Electrification of many suburban sections of the main-line railways serving London is likely to be put in hand in the near future. For almost twenty years the desirability for the change from steam to electric haulage in this important area has been recognised, but financial and other obstacles have, until recently, rendered the conversion impracticable. One railway—the Southern—has, since the Great War, tackled the problem of London electrification in earnest. While steam operation is still adhered to in the case of the majority of the main-lines out of the metropolis, on the Southern Railway almost the whole of the residential territory lying to the south of the Thames is now served by fast and frequent schedules of electric trains giving rapid, comfortable and clean movement of a kind much appreciated by the suburbanite.
The big new electrification schemes which are likely to be undertaken concern the London and North Eastern, and the London, Midland and Scottish systems. The work involves the electrification of most of the principal railway routes leading northwards and eastwards from the city, and it will call for the expenditure of immense sums on track and train equipment. In the case of the L. and N.E. Company, the principal termini affected are Liverpool Street, on the old “Great Eastern” section of the group system, and King's Cross, on the “Great Northern” division of the line. Liverpool Street, by an intensive steam train service, handles something like 30 per cent. of London's rail-borne workers. About a thousand trains leave the station daily, and apart from the heavy suburban business, there is an important fast passenger movement between Liverpool Street and Harwich in connection with the regular daily steamship services to and from the Continent. At King's Cross there are handled such world-famed Anglo-Scottish trains as the “Flying Scotsman,” and the “Queen of Scots Pullman,” as well as a heavy suburban business with stations like Finsbury Park, Highgate, Finchley, Edgeware, High Barnet and Welwyn. The L.M. and S. electrification will be centred on the commodious termini of Euston and St. Pancras, both of which stations deal with important main-line and suburban services. At the outset there will be undertaken the electrification of the lines lying within a radius of twenty or thirty miles of the city. Ultimately, it is probable the electrification will be extended further afield.
At the present time a good deal of experimental work is being undertaken with
Mr. Richards estimates that to deal with existing steam conditions in Britain the total oil-electric power required would be approximately 15,000,000 h.p. On an average load factor of 50 per cent. the total brake horse-power of the steam turbines, or other prime movers, needed in electric power stations to supply the hightension transmission system for electrified railways is put at 3,450,000 h.p. The weight required for electric tractors is estimated at 845,000 tons, and for oilelectric tractors 1,307,000 tons. In Mr. Richards’ view, the capital costs of electric and oil-electric traction approximate very closely at a traffic density of 4,000,000 for main-line services, and 2,000,000 for suburban services, but as the traffic density increases electric traction becomes progressively cheaper. Another interesting conclusion is that in the case of electric traction, at traffic densities greater than 2,500,000, a return of from 5 to 12 ½ per cent. would be earned, whereas, in the case of Diesel-electric traction the return would rarely reach 5 per cent.
Freight marshalling yard mechanisation is much to the fore these days. In Britain, the installation some four years ago of Froelich hydraulic brakes at the March “Up” yard of the L. and N.E. Railway created something of a sensation. Now there is to be recorded another interesting development, in the introduction at the “Down” section of the same yard of two Eddy Current rail brakes. The “Down” sidings of the March hump yard accommodate 6,000 wagons, and the operation of the electro-magnetic rail brakes is controlled from a central tower
The retarders are very simply operated from the control tower, the retarder control handles and the hump signal control, together with indication lamps, being mounted on a sloping panel, placed at such a height that the operator may sit before it with an unobstructed view. Fortynine quick-acting electric point machines operate all the points. Green indication lamps on the panel shew the position of the points, a red indication shewing when the track over the points is occupied. Thumb switches for the control of signals and route indicators are also mounted on the control panel. To minimise the work of the signalman controlling the points, the first seven sets of points leading into the sorting sidings are automatically set by the wagons as they pass over them.
Interesting relics of the nineteenth century railway operation abound in England. The Railway Museum at York is full of such exhibits, while the Science Museum at South Kensington, London, is also packed tight with early railway pieces. Recently there has been placed on show at the Derby works of the L.M. and S. Railway a most historic exhibit in the shape of Queen Victoria's special saloon car, which she always used in her journeys between London, Windsor, and Scotland.
Queen Victoria was no lover of fast travel, but the saloon on show at Derby shews she appreciated homely comfort. The saloon is divided into two sections for day and night use respectively, the sleeping section being in the centre of the car with a dressing-room adjoining. Crimson figured chintz upholstery is employed in the sleeping saloon, with a rooflining of white watered-silk. The day section is upholstered in royal blue watered-silk, with walls matching the furniture. An interesting feature is the provision of both oil lamps and electric lights. The L.M. and S. Railway always has taken immense pride in its Royal trains, and one may be sure this relic of Queen Victoria will ever be cherished by the railway authorities.
Railwayman: “Wonderful smoke this National Tobacco. I believe it is the healthiest tobacco on the market.“
Man behind the Counter: “Yes, I smoke it myself. Apart from the fact that the tobacco is one hundred per cent. in quality, it is produced by a company that is one hundred per cent. New Zealand. I believe that company pays hundreds of thousands to the Government in freight and taxes and employs over a thousand workers. Why, dash it all, the more we smoke the better for the country; and the loyal way the company sticks to the Railways in fares and freight, helps to keep the railwaymen in their jobs.”
Oyster dredge boats at the wharf at Bluff, Southland, New Zealand.
The port of Bluff, at the southern extremity of the South Island of New Zealand has a natural asset which is of extreme value locally, and also to the South Island generally. Reference is made to the prolific and inexhaustible oyster “beds” of Foveaux Straits. This product of the sea is more largely known as emanating from Stewart Island. That is a mistake. In reality, the beds are many miles nearer to Bluff than to the Island. The first oysters were found in the vicinity of Stewart Island over 70 years ago, but larger and more easily worked deposits were discovered close to Bluff, consequently the Island beds have not been worked for the past fifty or sixty years.
The discovery of oysters in Foveaux Straits was made by a man named Charley Brett, who arrived from Geelong in a small cutter with a man, by name, Roderiques, who had his small family with him as passengers. Brett left Roderiques and secured a schooner in Dunedin —the “Redcliff”; Brett was a fisherman by occupation and he considered that Foveaux Straits was ideal for trawling for fish. In this he was mistaken; although fairly successful in the pursuit, the trawl was continually being damaged by the rough bottom, and every time it was hove up, masses of oysters were enmeshed in the net. Previous to this, rock oysters had been found at Port Pegasus, and mud oysters at Port Adventure. Both varieties were delicious and eagerly sought after, but to prevent extinction, the Government in the seventies placed an embargo on exploitation.
The “beds” in Foveaux Straits are situated in depths of water ranging from 14 to 30 fathoms and extending from east to west in a known length of 60 miles; the beds vary in area with blank spaces between. The first attempts to secure this harvest of the sea were made with hand dredges which were dragged along the sea bed; later, hand winches came into use, then oil power and finally steam, which is in use to-day by the oyster fleet both for propelling and hoisting purposes. One man only—the late Mr. W. Vears, a professional diver—has viewed the deposits on the ocean bed; he descended in 14 fathoms of water off Ruapuke Island and gave a most graphic description of the conditions under which the shell fish thrives. Equipped with a garden fork he traversed some hundreds of yards of the sea floor and wherever he used the fork he found oysters to a depth of 8 to 10 inches; visibility was excellent owing to a countless mantle of white shells which covered the deposits and diffused a reflected luminosity from the sun's rays through the water.
Whilst there was a regular service between Bluff and Melbourne thousands of dozens of oysters were sent to the latter port weekly. Successful transport in New Zealand depends largely upon the railway service. Christchurch citizens can indulge in oysters for breakfast, eighteen hours after they have been brought to the surface. Every Sunday evening during the season, which lasts from February to September, a special train of insulated wagons leaves Bluff for Invercargill at 5 p.m.; here the wagons are connected to the night express which arrives at Christchurch in the early hours of Monday. If there were a connecting boat service with Wellington, the population of that city could regale upon oysters for supper.
Seven powerful steamboats are engaged in the industry and apart from distribution in the fresh state, the succulent bivalve can be procured in a canned condition which compares more than favourably with the imported article. The industry at Bluff is responsible for the employment of fully one hundred persons engaged in dredging, bag filling, etc. When it is taken into consideration the hundreds who are employed in restaurants, the value of the oyster beds in Foveaux Straits, as an asset to the Dominion, cannot be overestimated.
When the sunset was painting miraculous colours on the Macquarie River, No. 56, which is the Coonamble Mail, east-bound, pulled into Dubbo, forty minutes late.
But Jonah, waiting for the train on engine No. 703, nicknamed “The Whale,” was not looking at the sunset. He was thinking of those forty minutes the other man had lost along the Castlereagh.
It would be hard to pick them up with only 138 miles to go between Dubbo and Bathurst. Of course, no traffic regulations compelled him to pick them up. It was just Jonah's passion for punctuality, and nothing else, that drove him to desperate efforts to arrive always on time. This was the biggest task he had ever tackled, and he meant to take it on.
Waiting for No. 56 had worked Jonah to a fever. And when he backed down to the train, he hit it rather hard—so hard that a stout old lady who got the brunt of the shock thought it was a real collision and screamed and fainted.
It took the night-officer and two porters all their time to carry her out, and by the time she had been fanned back to life and replaced in her carriage, the train was fifty minutes late. With anyone but Jonah driving, the night-officer would have given up all hope and sent word east for them to remodel the night's time-table. But everybody knew Jonah.
With steam blowing from her popvalve, “The Whale” laid her shoulders to the collar, and whipped No. 56 out of Dubbo so fast you almost expected to hear the tail-lights crack. Up the gradeto Eulomogo and Wongarbon she fled with her fireman working like a maniac Jonah was too old a hand to try to make up time downhill. He did it Uphill. And if his fireman looked like fainting or dying in his tracks, Jonah stepped across and did his share, while his mate leaned out and gasped like a fish from the driver's window.
Even to-day the night-officers tell how No. 56 tore through their sections that night. Like the very incarnation of speed she swept up the hills from Wellington, with her passengers full of hard-boiled eggs—all the refreshment rooms had had time to cook, when a surprised nightofficer sent word that “56” would be in seven minutes earlier than expected.
The hilltops threw back the glare of “The Whale's” furnace as she tackled the
“Fifty-six passed 9.28, thirty late.”
And Jonah hadn't really warmed up!
It was said of this driver that he carried a pinch bar behind his ear and a spanner in his teeth. At any rate, his “ditty-box” was an armoury of tools. And when they swooped into Orange and the passengers, who had all been sitting up and taking notice, rushed to the bar and refreshment room, Jonah worked on 703 as though he loved the old “fly-by-night.”
They took care to have everyone well inside the train, and the guard himself stood handy to his brake before they gave Jonah the starting signal. Men swear that Jonah left the shadow of his train wandering about the yards like a lost soul. They clocked her out twenty-five minutes late, and the night-officers on the western line found it fascinating, in the brief lulls of their hectic work, to trace the progress of No. 56.
The supply of hills for Jonah and his mate to make time on hadn't given out. Firing in turns, they kept the old kettle boiling her head off, thundering and roaring and racing—and she wasn't such an old kettle, either, but one of the fliers of the west. At Wombiana, at the crest of a climb, “The Whale” blew very boastfully, ere she tore through the station and split the darkness in her howling rush for Blayney, only thirty-one miles from Bathurst. “The Whale” was fighting for her head. Every bit of her was running as sweetly as 100 tons of pounding, leaping, whirling steel can run with 200lb. of steam to drive it. At Blayney she was ten minutes late. The old lady who had upset Jonah was sleeping peacefully. But if she had known how she was preying on Jonah's mind she would have sat up and tried to think about him. It seems almost like a missed romance.
The people in Bathurst heard “The Whale” whistling as she swept down the Tumullah Bank. They looked at their watches, and she was on time.
Next day the shed foreman sent for Jonah.
“What's wrong with you, Jonah?” he asked, roughly. “You shook fifty minutes off the time-table last night, didn't you?”
“I did,” Jonah agreed.
“And you were here on time?”
“I was; thanks to Billy Goode, the best boy I ever had.”
“Then what did you book in five minutes late for?” the foreman demanded.
Jonah hesitated, then blurted out: “Well, I hit the train a bit hard at Dubbo, and upset an old lady. And, man, I had to show her a certain amount of respect.”
History was made in our North Island by the long wars between the Maoris and the British and Colonial forces. In the South Island the story of adventure was provided chiefly by the early explorers and surveyors who penetrated the great unknown land and blazed the way for settlement, and by the golddiggers who thronged to the wonderfully rich alluvial fields. In this sketch of pathfinding enterprise the writer describes the difficulties encountered and the tasks accomplished by three notable pioneers of Nelson and the West Coast.
The record of pioneering exploration in New Zealand differs in one special feature from that of similar enterprise in Australia. The want of water was the greatest obstacle to the progress of discovery in the interior of the Australian continent. Here the trail-breaker found conditions exactly the reverse of that. There was no need to carry a water supply here; on the contrary, the explorer and surveyor found the rivers, especially in the South Island, were their chief hindrances. The bush and the mountains were formidable enough to the men who blazed the way, but they were a known quantity. But the snow and rain-fed torrents of the South, and particularly the wild West Coast, subject to sudden floods, were a continual source of anxiety and peril. Drowning came to be regarded as a natural death on the Coast in the days of the pioneer map-makers and golddiggers. The rivers, and the forests that masked most of the West, made the task of the early explorers slow and difficult. To a few men of stubborn courage and great powers of endurance the young colony was indebted for lifting the veil of mystery that lay over the Wai-Pounamu, and revealing its mineral treasures that brought so much wealth to the country.
In the first two decades of British settlement in the South Island three great names are associated with the record of exploration and of the opening of Maori territory to Pakeha settlement—Thomas Brunner, Charles Heaphy, and James Mackay. Contemporary with Mackay was John Rochfort (the discoverer of the Buller goldfields), and others followed, each surveyor or prospector adding something to the outside world's knowledge of the unknown land. Cold and hunger and almost daily risk of death or accident were the lot of those foreloopers of the Pakeha race in the sparsely peopled or quite uninhabited land; loaded with heavy swags, sometimes ill and lame, fording rushing torrents, climbing precipices, and when their scanty stores gave out, living precariously on birds and eels and other food of the bush.
Thomas Brunner carried out the most arduous exploring expedition in the history of New Zealand. He was a member of the Nelson survey staff, and he had made several reconnaissances of the South Nelson and West Coast country before his great journey of 1846–48. With Charles Heaphy and William Fox (afterwards Sir William Fox), both of whom were in the service of the New Zealand Company at
Heaphy entered survey work in the Auckland district in after years, and it was when he was serving as Captain in the Auckland Rifle Volunteers in the Waikato War that he performed the deed of bravery for which he was awarded the first Victoria Cross won by a colonial officer. This was in a skirmish at Waiari, on the Mangapiko River (a tributary of the Waipa) in the early part of 1864. A British soldier was wounded and was lying helpless, exposed to the Maori fire, when Heaphy ran to his assistance and carried him into a safe spot, and afterwards attended to other wounded men. He did useful service as military surveyor in the war and was promoted to the rank of Major. Heaphy was a gifted man, a clever artist, and many of his drawings of Maori life, fortifications, war episodes and scenery are preserved. He was a pioneer of a very fine type, associated with the development of the country from the foundation of British settlement, and particularly with the opening up of the interior of Nelson province.
When Thomas Brunner set out from Nelson on his greatest journey (Dec. 3, 1846), his object was to explore the Buller River downward to the sea from its headwaters, to go down the West Coast as far as practicable, and to seek an opening to the east—the then unpeopled Canterbury district—across the unknown mountains. He did not find it possible to fulfil the last mentioned mission, but he made known a great deal of the terra incognita of what is now Westland, and produced a report, the fruit of dogged perseverance and courage in the face of almost incredible difficulties, which won him fame and the gold medal of the Royal Geographical Society for a great work of exploration. He had only Maoris for companions; two of these, Kehu and his wife, stuck faithfully to him through all his travels, and shared his privations; indeed he would have perished in the wilds but for them. His equipment was simple in the extreme; he lived mostly on bush fare, the products of the wilderness.
The travellers considered themselves in luck when they found a place where weka or woodhen were plentiful. “The weka,” Brunner wrote in his diary, “is the most useful and valuable bird for a bushranger.” Sometimes they got grey duck, paradise duck and dabchicks in the streams. But the inhospitable black beech bush in the interior was sparsely inhabited by such birds as pigeon and kaka; there was no food for them there. Eels were the great standby in the bush commissariat, and the little fish upokororo was caught in fine-meshed flax nets in the streams. Out at the small settlements of the Maoris on the Coast there were potatoes, in limited quantities.
In the heart of the back country, such as the Matakitaki, on the Buller, Brunner and his Maoris were on occasion reduced to eating the pith of the korau or mamaku fern-tree, and in the clearings they got fernroot. Brunner mentioned in his diary having 30lbs. of fernroot as portion of his swag; that was in the Matakitaki district, Buller Valley. When they were restricted to this diet he and his Maoris suffered what he described as “excruciating pains,” and the illness sometimes compelled them to lie up in camp. That was in the mountain beech country; when they reached the lower and more level lands, where there were kahikatea and miro pines they obtained a better diet, the rich levels were full of birds, which Brunner
Brunner spent several weeks at Taramakau and the Grey River mouth (Mawhera), recuperating and waiting for the spring of 1847. In October of that year he continued his journey southward along the coast, mapping the country, sketching, and noting all the features of the land. On October 21, the day before he reached Okarito (100 miles south of Hokitika) he wrote in his diary:
“I believe I may now assert that I have overcome the two greatest difficulties to be met with by bushmen in New Zealand, viz., the capability of walking barefoot, and subsisting on fernroot. The first, the want of shoes, had been a dread to me for some time, often fearing I should be left a barefooted cripple in some desolate black-birch forest on this deserted coast; but now I can trudge along barefoot, or with a pair of native sandals, called paraerae, made of leaves of flax, and what is more durable, the leaves of the ti or flax-tree (cabbagetree). I can make a sure footing in crossing rivers, ascending or descending precipices; in fact I feel I am just commencing to make exploring easy work. A good pair of sandals will last about two days’ hard work. They take about twenty minutes to make.”
After a rest of a few days at the Okarito village—there were only six Maoris living there at the time—the explorer continued southward. There was, he noted, the remains of a very large pa at Okarito, which was resorted to for fishing in the large lagoon and for bird-catching. “That it abounds in eels,” he noted, “I had full proof during my visit here, our diet being nothing else; it was served out in liberal quantities, to dogs as well as Christians, three times a day.”
Brunner trudged down the great desert coast, fording the small streams and making rafts of flax-stalks to cross the larger ones, until he and his Maoris reached Paringa. There he was delayed by an accident which lamed him, and in December he slowly retraced his steps northward to Hokitika and the Mawhera. On December 31, he noted in his diary, that the whole of 1847 he had spent among the Maoris and had never heard a word of English during the year.
On January 20, 1848, Brunner began his return journey through the great wilderness of
Leaving the Maori eel-fishing party, Brunner and his companions explored the Upper Grey and trudged on through the forest and the ranges to the Buller, and gradually worked homeward to Nelson.
The weather became very wet and cold, and the explorer was ill. It was the middle of June when he and the two Maoris who remained with him—Kehu and his wife—at last reached a sheep settler's out-station near Lake Rotoiti and once more tasted food other than the products of the bush.
It was a period of 560 days since he had last seen a pakeha face or spoken to a man of his own race. “I felt rather astonished,” was his last note in his diary, “to find that I could both understand and speak English as well as ever,
Quite the equal of Thomas Brunner as a bushman, and his superior in knowledge of the Maori people and their life, was the stalwart James Mackay, who in his old age in Auckland was well known to the writer of this article. Mackay was the perfect type of frontiersman—of powerful physique, indomitable courage and tenacity of purpose. From his boyhood—he came to Nelson from Scotland with his parents at the age of thirteen—he was inured to rough backblocks life. He was sheepfarmer, goldseeker, goldfields warden, explorer, and Government agent in Maori affairs. His exploring work began in 1855, and between that year and 1862 he traversed most of the north-west part of the South Island, tracing the rivers to their sources. In 1857 he travelled down the West Coast with two Maoris as far as the Grey River. There, and also at the Buller, he took soundings, and discovered the entrances to be navigable. He canoed up the Grey, where he had some trouble with his Maoris. One of them he threw into the river, and he knocked another down in the canoe. Mackay was a man of abundant tact when occasion called, but he had a Highland temper, and he was handy with his fists. Returning to Nelson, he carried in his swag the first sample of Grey River coal.
In 1858, 1859 and 1860 James Mackay, his cousin Alexander Mackay (afterwards Judge of the Native Land Court), and John Rochfort had many perilous adventures in the torrentsplit South Nelson and Westland country. James once just managed to save Rochfort from drowning by clutching at him as the furious current of the Taramakau swirled him past. He was now in the employ of the Government, and was entrusted with the task of purchasing South Island Maori lands. He first bought for the Government two and a half million acres of land on the East Coast, from Cape Campbell to the Hurunui River, and then he was instructed to negotiate for the purchase of the vast West Coast region, from Kahurangi Point, on the Nelson coast, southward to Milford Sound.
This was a task of great difficulty, not so far as the Maoris were concerned, but because of the enormously rough territory to be traversed searching out all the Maoris of the Coast, right down to the remote Mahitahi (near Bruce Bay). He and a companion, Mackley, set out from Nelson and visited every little settlement where a signature was to be obtained to the document of purchase. Mackay carried 400 sovereigns in his swag, and when he had concluded his negotiations he had 100 surplus sovereigns to carry back to Nelson. He bought seven and a half million acres for £300. Certain native reserves, including part of the present site of Greymouth town, were marked off on the map for the Maori owners; the rest of the Coast passed to the Crown.
Rough travelling, rough living it was, that greatest of all pioneer land-buying expeditions. Canoe capsizes and narrow escapes in the icy rivers were all in the day's work. When Mackay and Mackley reached the Mahitahi settlement, nearly two hundred miles south of Hokitika, they were a source of great curiosity to two or three very old Maori women who had not up to that time (1860) seen any white men. The strange coats of the Pakeha were described by the ancient wahines as “whare o te tinana” (“houses for the body”), their waistcoats “pakitua” (a kind of small mat), and their trousers “whare kuwha” (“houses for the thighs”). As for Mackay's footgear he was a thorough Maori; he had no boots, but wore flax sandals (paraerae), as his predecessor, Brunner, had been compelled to do in his explorings.
The Maoris at the various far-scattered villages having been assembled, the payment for the Coast was made at the Mawhera. The Ngai-Tahu people, from whom the great purchase was made, numbered a hundred and ten. So passed to the State a vast territory which in a few years was to produce enormous treasure in gold, and attract tens of thousands of eager diggers from all parts of the world.
Mackay was a pathfinder in the literal sense of the word. He penetrated the most forbidding regions, sometimes alone, usually with two or three Maoris. In 1860 he blazed the track through the bush down the Buller Valley along which the present motor route goes, and on to the Grey River. This alone was a tremendous task. Mackay told me about this experience, at Auckland in 1906. He and his three Maoris were once forty-eight hours with only one weka to eat between the four of them.
That was one momentous phase of James Mackay's adventures and services in the vast untrimmed places of the land. He was transferred to the North Island when the Waikato War began, for special Government duty, and his life there, from 1863 to the middle Seventies, was full of incident, a record that would fill a book.
“I once had the experience,” he told me, “of sitting waiting for ten minutes while the Maoris debated whether they would shoot me or not.” Whenever there was trouble in the Maori districts, in the nervous years following on the wars, the Government sent Mackay to deal with it. Sir Donald Maclean, the greatest of our Native Ministers, had the greatest faith in “Hemi Maki,” as the Maoris called him; he was a man after Maclean's own heart.
Facsimile Of A Letter Of The Olden Times.
Prompted by the article, “The Royal Mail,” in the May issue of the “N. Z. Railways Magazine,” Mr. H. McArtney (of the H. M. Sauce Co.) sent in specimens of letters received in New Zealand in 1844 and 1848, before adhesive stamps were in use. The handwriting is so fine that it averages about a dozen lines to the inch. The script of one of the letters would fill about eight columns of a daily newspaper.
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When Tamora, Queen of the Goths, was heard to say in Titus Andronicus, “O wondrous thing! How easily murder is discovered!” she certainly did not have in her mind the ready means of identification now available when murderers leave behind them their unforgeable signatures. To-day, however, the signatures, in the form of finger prints left on a window pane, on a revolver, or on any other surface that will retain the impressions, may well be the piece of evidence which will remove the case from the category of uncertainty to absolute certainty.
In American journals there is to be found the statement that the discovery of finger prints as a means of identification goes back to the days long before the birth of Christ. The Japanese claim that this is so, and also that the discovery lies to the credit of the Chinese. It is all the more strange, therefore, that this means of establishing the identity of a person with a crime was never invoked in any police system, save in India, until Sir Edward Henry brought it from that country and, in 1901, established it in Great Britain. It is now the most exact method known in the identification of a criminal. There are, to-day, 250,000 finger prints classified in Scotland Yard. These finger prints are available for the detection of crime if the criminal incautiously leaves behind him an impression of any of his fingers. In New Zealand the system is used extensively, and has proved of incalculable value not only in the detection of crime, but in post mortem identification.
The police have now large powers to take prints of any person convicted of an offence, except comparatively venial misdemeanours. During the Great War the evading of the requirements of military service was an offence punishable by law, and for such an offence finger prints of the offenders were taken.
When Dennis Gunn decided that it was preferable to evade military service, even if it meant that his finger prints would be known to the police, he had not in his mind the possibility that those very prints would be used to connect him with one of the foulest murders in the criminal history of New Zealand.
On Saturday, 13th March, 1920, the dead body of Augustus Edward Braithwaite, the Postmaster of Ponsonby, one of the post offices in Auckland, was found, in his own house. He had left home in the early morning, taking the day off. With a cheerful good-bye to his wife he left his home. In the afternoon Mrs. Braithwaite went out and, on returning at about 9 p.m., found her husband lying within a few feet of the back door. He did not move as she cried to him. She bent low so that her face nearly touched his. She felt him. His body was warm. She rushed to the telephone and called up her doctor.
Within half an hour Dr. Ussher came and examined the body of the unfortunate postmaster. He was dead. Two wounds were found, apparently
The next night this police officer, Detective Sergeant R. J. Issell, was despatched with the clues to Wellington, where the finger print experts were. He took with him a list of some twenty-four or twenty-five names of criminals known to be in Auckland and who might perhaps have been associated with the crime. The name of Dennis Gunn was not on that list. The boxes and the list were handed to Detective Sergeant Dinnie, the finger print expert, on the 15th March, and at once these marks were photographed and the examination of the two dozen odd “possibles” was proceeded with. The finger prints which they had left behind them when they were last in gaol were taken out of their places in the cabinet and comparisons were made. The next day, at about 11 a.m., two more names to be added to the list came by telegram to Detective Sergeant Dinnie. He placed them at the bottom of the list and then slowly and methodically the list was exammed.
It was proved that none of the men whose names were on the original list had left their finger prints on the cash boxes. Then the finger prints of the two men whose names were added to the list were examined, and those of Dennis Gunn were seen at once to be the finger prints that had been left so clearly on the boxes. An urgent wire was sent to Auckland, and the next day Detective Sergeant James Cummings, a brilliant detective officer, accosted Gunn in the public street. With the detective was a brother detective, Detective Young. “We want to see you at the station, Gunn. We are two detectives.” Thus spoke Mr. Cummings. Gunn turned a whitish colour, then a yellowish colour, but he answered: “Very well.” The rest of the story may best be told as it was told when Gunn stood his trial for the murder of Mr. Braithwaite, at the Supreme Court at Auckland.
His Honour Mr. Justice F. R. Chapman (now Sir Frederick Chapman) presided. The Crown was represented by the Hon. J. A. Tole, K. C., and Mr. J. C. Martin. Mr. Tole was the Crown Prosecutor for Auckland, and Mr. Martin, who years before had, for a very brief period, been a Judge of the Supreme Court, was a very brilliant barrister. His addition to the counsel added much strength to it. The defence was in the hands of Mr. J. R. Reed, K. C., and Mr. E. J. Prendergast. It was regarded as particularly fortunate for Gunn that he had been able to secure such an eminent bar in his defence. The trial began on the 24th May, 1920, and continued until the verdict was given at 8.25 p.m. on the 28th May.
Mr. Martin opened the case with an address in which he made the customary exhortation to the jury to forget what they may have heard before they became jurors. He detailed the facts he was about to prove for establishing guilt. In discussing the all important presence of Gunn's finger prints on the cash boxes he said that no two finger prints were alike. Mr. Reed sprang to his feet expostulating that such a statement should not have been made, as it was impossible to prove it. Mr. Martin modified the observation by saying that, so far as was known from experience, and in the literature on the subject, no two finger prints coincided.
The first witness called was Mrs. Braithwaite, and the effect of that pathetic figure must have hardened the jury almost to a determination to find a victim. She told how her husband had gone away for the day in the early morning, and how, in the afternoon, she had gone out. Then, as she returned about 9 p.m., she found the side gate open which led to the house. That was unusual. Then she found the back door open and there, within a few feet of it, lay her husband. He was lying on his face, fully dressed. She knelt by him. She did not know what had happened. She called up the doctor, who arrived within half an hour. Just before the doctor arrived she examined her husband's clothes, and discovered that the keys of the post office were missing. She said that her husband was of a