Head of Dusky Sound, South Island, New Zealand
Contents
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Deputy-Controller and Auditor-General.
25/3/35.
A Distinguished Visitor to New Zealand.
Mr. J. W. Davidson, C.M.G., M.Inst.T.
Mr. J. W. Davidson, C.M.G., M.Inst.T., Chairman of the State Transport Board and Commissioner for Railways, Queensland, was in New Zealand last month on a semi-official visit. During his brief stay in Wellington, Mr. G. H. Mackley, General Manager of Railways, invited his executive officers to meet Mr. Davidson at a social gathering in the city. The meeting was a very happy one and was particularly interesting to several officers who had previously come into contact officially with Mr. Davidson in Brisbane.
The Queensland Railways cover over 6,000 miles of territory (approximately twice the mileage of the N.Z. Railways), and as the gauge is the same as that in New Zealand and the volume of traffic is very similar, there is much of mutual interest, from a railway viewpoint, between the two countries.
Mr. Davidson proved a most interesting and entertaining guest, with a charming personality. Having already travelled extensively in the South Island he was ready to discuss technical points in railway practice from the angle of a friendly, observant expert, and his comments, punctuated by some excellent stories in Illustration, were keenly appreciated by the officers present.
He was greatly struck by the excellence of the permanent way, and had many nice things to say about the high quality of service experienced during his tour, which was undertaken primarily for health reasons.
Mr. Davidson was looking forward eagerly to his North Island tour as he desired to make personal comparisons between the two Islands, as seen by the tourist. Incidentally, he considered that there was a good opening for increased reciprocal travel between New Zealand and Queensland. The climate of Queensland is at its best in the winter months, and being much warmer than New Zealand, should prove particularly attractive at that time to New Zealanders, whereas the more temperate summer climate of New Zealand would be very acceptable to visiting Queenslanders. The development of tourist traffic along Queensland's “Sunshine Route” has been one of the Important features of Australian travel in recent years.
Departure from Wellington of Their Excellencies Lord and Lady Bledisloe, on 15th March, 1935, upon completion of Lord Bledisloe's five years of office as Governor-General in N.Z.
Tauranga's Place In The Sun: Told By The Camera.
The waterfront at Tauranga, North Island, New Zealand, showing Mt. Maunganui in the background.
(Rly. Publicity photos.)
The Strand, Tauranga's business area.
Mount Maunganui (1,000ft.) guards the entrance to Tauranga Harbour much as Rangitoto guards the entrance to Waltemata, and looks down on ample depth of water. The harbour extends for many miles at varying depths, and the service by railway and road is such that Tauranga is marked out for eminence. It is the stepping stone to or from the Bay of Plenty and the pumice hinterland. Its proximity to the Rotorua and Taupo wonderland, and its own peculiar virtues of climate, kindly to man and plant life, make Tauranga a key point on the holiday map. Historic, sunny, sheltered, fruitful—a fisherman's paradise.
The New Zealand
Railways
Magazine
Railways
Magazine
.”
For Better Service
Published by the
New Zealand Government Railways Department
Service Copy
Vol. X. No. 1.
Wellington, New Zealand
The day may come when mankind will reach the optimum of human advancement. Take the matter of speed. Nature has set the pace for all the major movements that affect us. The earth rolls on at a steady pace, the sun observes time in all his seasons, eclipses come and go with a well-regulated consistency over huge spans of years. Heart-beats, in health and normal conditions, keep to a time schedule with meticulous regularity. The optimum speed appears to have been reached in all these things.
But the question “How fast should a man go?” has not yet been settled. Campbell and his motor-makers spent a year and much money to raise the land speed maximum by 4 miles after waiting for weeks until Nature provided a sandy speedway suitable for the purpose. The British railways push their steam trains to a triumph of a sustained 12 miles at over 100 miles per hour. Airmen, cyclists, swimmers,
All this is helping to give quicker perception to those of the present generation. “Look-out, jump in time or take a toss” is the pedestrian's rule of the road when the wild bull road-hogs are running riot.
And this, with suitable variations, is the rule of life for the speedsters. So present-day man manages to live where his remote ancestor would die a thousand deaths.
Some day, doubtless, it will be possible to work out just what is the optimum speed for man — in each of the means of conveyance — consistent with the dictates of commonsense so admirably summed up in the formula of the New Zealand Railways—“Safety, Comfort, Economy.” And when this is known, either good sense or sumptuary law must make it so. But, as Kipling said,
“Until that day comes round,
Heaven keep you safe and sound.”
The keen interest in railways, the desire for more technical experiment, the activity with which facts relating to railway advancement are received by all classes of the community, young and old alike, the wonderful things that are being done to conserve fuel, increase steaming efficiency, produce smoother and faster running, add to the amenities of train travelling and supplement the facilities for freight handling—all these are signs that the optimum of railway advancement has not yet been reached. And while that interest is there, this Magazine will continue to devote some space to those things which make for the lure of the rail — the romance of locomotives individually and in the mass, and some of the technical details that appeal so much to the machinery-minded boys of to-day.
In going ahead, the world has gone well past the time when philosophical statements and arguments could hold public interest — “cut it short” is the most constant demand, because understanding is so quick. We may even reach the stage where speech becomes unnecessary (as it already is in some forms of perfected team work), when we all know as much as everyone else, act equally wisely, and naturally think the same way about everything. Meanwhile, however, there is much “going ahead” to be done; and New Zealand, the railways and this Magazine are all busy doing it.
General Manager's Message
I Have been much impressed in recent months by the wide range of subjects upon which users of the railways have written to the Department in expressing thanks for some service rendered. It is good to know that the staff, in general, gives pleasing service, and there is much evidence of a genuinely friendly spirit amongst the public when so many take the trouble to add to their verbal thanks a written acknowledgment upon the subject.
Some of the letters express surprise and pleasure to find that the Department carries out work for the public of a kind which has been ordinary practice for a number of years. Such matters as the comprehensive nature of the Department's through booking system, luggage checking to overseas vessels, special luggage concessions for overseas visitors, and seat and sleeper reservations from any station for principal trains, are not yet fully known to the public despite very extensive publicity. Naturally there have been many extensions of service during the last decade, consistent with the general advance in the amenities of transport, and the Department has been well in the van in providing services and adopting new practices likely to be appreciated by its patrons. Those who have, in the past, perhaps only occasionally come in contact with the railways, would not easily keep abreast of the improvements. In this regard, members of the railway staff and of allied road or steamer services can do much to support the Department's advertising by telling those with whom they come into contact some of the facts regarding railway services.
It has been said that British railways have had a kind of traditional reluctance to make their good deeds known. This may be true, but there need be no reluctance about making the good services which the Department offers to the public as widely known as possible, and I trust that the staff will still further aid the management in this work, which is, after all, the most likely way to increase the traffic upon which the stability of the whole railway system depends.
Palmerston North—the World's Model Country Town.
Palmerston North's Charming Setting for Business.
Top: Railway Centre (left). Ross & Co. and Park (right).
Centre: Portion of Collinson & Cunningham's (left). Kiwi Bacon Factory (right).
Bottom: Beside the Club Hotel (left). H. L. Young Ltd.—printery (right).
ByO. N. .)
Gillespie
Palmerston North, North Island, New Zealand.
“My dear Helen,
“My ankle is all right again, but I shall stay on here till the end of the month. I've seen enough geysers, snow, and scenery and things, and this is the most surprising place. I've been absolutely whirling. The life is amazing and it doesn't seem like a country town at all. The shops are wonderful with all the latest things. My dear, I saw the twin of my mulberry marocain, forests of smart undies and new model hats, the book-shops have the latest books and all the magazines, and there are half a dozen good hotels. Between five and six is as busy as anywhere I have been on the planet and the lounges just as full of bright young things and glasses and trays and everything. Imagine it! I saw ‘Wind and Rain’ and ‘Ten Minutes Alibi’ at the local theatre last week. They go off to London here as if it were next door. Half the people you meet are either just back or going next month … there are two golf links, loads of tennis and croquet lawns and lovely parks, complete with gadgets, as Bill calls them, an enormous racecourse, and several within half an hour. The houses are more modern than ours, and I heard a woman ringing her daughter up in London on her birthday. I haven't been bored a minute … there seems no time… . By the way … .”
This is an authentic document. It reflects the surprise that anyone from older lands feels on finding what sort of place Palmerston North turns out to be when actually visited and examined. The letter, naturally, trails off into personal matters, and I propose to tell in the next few columns what the writer might have said if she had gone into some detail and treated the topic at a little length.
New Zealand, owing partly to its configuration (notably in its possession of many harbours and natural centres) but still more to wise early development policies, has largely escaped the ravening evils of centralisation. This has led to its possession of dozens of country boroughs whose amenities of life are quite equal to those of our large cities. The extent of this phenomenon is unique in the world.
For instance, when a farmer or business man sells out in New South Wales, he naturally gravitates to Sydney. In New Zealand he stays in the district, builds a good home, and proceeds to spend his leisure with the folks he already knows in and about the bowling green, the clubs or whatnot.
There are small towns in the world with the same sort of general standards of material well-being as Palmerston North, but they are holiday resorts or stopping-off places for sight-seers. Even these, however, lack many of the excellences of our town.
I am taking Palmerston North as the finest example of the claim that we have the best country towns in the world, because it is nothing else. It is simply a farming centre, largely living upon the distribution of goods to a large agrarian and pastoral population. It has no hot springs, ski-ing or big game-fishing. Its local industries and its trading organisations are the springs of its existence.
I am not going to weary you with figures about gasworks, abattoirs, electric light and power, drainage, sewerage, and the other highly efficient municipal undertakings. The telephone is almost universal in every house, and Queenstown or Russell can be rung in a matter of minutes. The transport system is by motor buses, a large, modern and imposing fleet covering the whole town area. In the light of modern developments, Palmerston North has been fortunate in avoiding the electric tram installations possessed by many smaller New Zealand towns. The hospitals, public and private, are up-to-date and of world standard efficiency.
These, interesting and marvellous as they may be, are commonplaces of New Zealand's surpassing standard of material comfort. It is as well, though, to remember with pride that many or most of them are lacking in much larger cities in U.S.A., England and elsewhere.
What I want to stress here is that this profusion of the amenities of life richly endows the provincial centres of New Zealand.
Let us consider the place.
Palmerston North is flat, and its streets are straight and at right angles. Its pioneers, with the splendid vision of their day, left the huge “Square” as a “lung” for the city in the making. For many a year, it was a paddock with four sides of straggling buildings of varying heights and gaps like missing teeth in a boxer's jaw. To-day it is a thing of beauty, with
(Rly. Publicity photo.)
Boys' High School, Palmerston North.
The fortunate folk who dwell here have the remarkable combination of all the advantages of country and urban life.
Let us do the town and imagine spending a month in it with nothing to do but amuse oneself.
A supply of reading matter is assured. Not only is there a good municipal library, but a number of private ones in genuinely up-to-date bookshops, one of which could take its place with the good ones of the larger cities of other lands. All the English magazines, the weeklies of every description, most of the American and many foreign magazines are stocked. The New Zealander, according to A. P. Herbert, is the greatest reader in the world of the more serious literary and topical review type of weekly or monthly.
The general talk in club and home will be good. In this connection, let it be always remembered that such is the wide incidence of travel nowadays that Palmerston North is nearer to London than a town of its size in Shropshire. No day in the year sees less than fifteen thousand New Zealanders in London, and Palmerston North will have more than its proportionate quota.
Its two daily papers are on the full cable service and their readers are fully informed on world affairs. This country newspaper excellence was an everlasting source of wonder to A.P.H. who commented freely to the writer on the fact that whenever the train stopped, “a newspaper came aboard, well written on all topics and all the happenings of the day before in Czechoslovakia or Ireland.”
There will be no sign of provincialism, except the best sort of local pride, and I have flouted this by not describing the place as a city. We live, as it were, at the small end of the telescope, looking out, and are profoundly interested in international doings.
The drapery establishments would adorn any large city. As well as dozens of smaller ones, speciality shops and so forth, there are three palatial emporiums of city dimensions. Many a girl having bought the latest thing in London, finds that it has raced her to Palmerston North by an earlier steamer. What Americans call the “hardware store” is in evidence, modern and capacious and richly stocked. Commercial temples of real grandeur, house establishments devoted to all the recognised lines to fill the buyer's needs.
The petrol station is ubiquitous, the motor depots are as enormous as one would expect from the fact that this town and district has a car to every six and a-half inhabitants, the second highest average in the world, beating some of the States in the Union.
The scale of the businesses enables that no fee is levied for shopping locally. As we say here, the “prices are right.”
The hotels, and there are many, are capacious, modern and comfortable. One is owned by the oldest continuous holder of a license in the British Empire, as far as can be ascertained from the London Council of the L.V.A. In passing, let me say, that a widely travelled American visitor has just stated to the writer that the standard of the country town hotel in New Zealand is definitely the highest in the world. It is time that the bunk about the backwardness of our hotels for tourists should be refuted. I see that Vicki Baum says she had to wait in a queue for her bath in Auckland. I do not know where she dwelt, but another couple of shillings a day would have given her a room with bath in most hostelries anywhere in New Zealand.
As would be expected from a district containing one of the richest growing land areas of the world, the food is perfection. One hotel grows all its food, from pork to parsnips, on its own farm.
There is a plentitude of imposing and beautiful private homes. We have a
(Rly. Publicity photo.)
Aorangi Nursing Home, Palmerston North.
Saddling Paddock, Awapuni Racecourse, Palmerston North.
The rich soil makes gardening easy and every cottage has its blaze of colour.
The public gardens, notably in the Square and the Esplanade, are everlastingly beautiful. Who has not heard of the Cherry Tree Avenue, which is such a Dominion sight in a country of countless garden wonders, that excursion trains are run to it in the flowering season.
The schools, from the noble Massey College to the smaller primary establishments, are artistic, and something must be said of two superb churches. Owing to the rapid growth of ivy and Virginia creeper, and the luxuriance of lawn growth, buildings of this type soon wear an air of age and time-garnered beauty.
The general recreational facilities in Palmerston North are adequate to all tastes and to anyone's need. It is possible for the complete idler to live a fully rounded life of pleasurable activities without leaving the town.
Consider the local Opera House. Here in this farming centre, thousands of miles, and two oceans away from the world's cultural capitals, Pavlova has danced, Kubelik and Heifitz have played, Galli Curci has sung, Sybil Thorndike has given them “St. Joan,” just to take a few recent names at random. A legion of the great names of music and drama have been billed on its walls from Sousa's Band to H. B. Irving's “Hamlet,” from Jean Gerardy to Wilkie Bard.
This is the sort of fact that at one bound lifts Palmerston North into a different world category from any English or American town of its size.
There are two golf links, at least, and one of our pictures shows the ravishing beauty of one of them.
Bowling greens, tennis and croquet lawns, are in profusion. There seems to be one in every second street and many of them are large enough to carry national tournaments.
We show in our illustrations the bath of the free primary public school at Hokowhitu. This lovely scene cannot be matched. It is not the only one, of course, there being many school and public swimming baths in the town.
Be reminded that all these playing grounds, including the golf links, are within easy walking distance of the town and I want to emphasize the word “walking.” Fees are so low as to make the visitor gasp, and being of Scotch extraction, I want to point out that this low cost of recreation is one of the manifest advantages of life in our provincial centres.
Palmerston North is a railway centre (twenty-five leave it every day).
As is so seldom stressed in this country, transport is most convenient, serviceable and efficient. You can lunch at Palmerston North and breakfast in Christchurch next day. Half a day's journey takes one from Palmerston North to Wellington, Napier, New Plymouth or Te Kuiti. You can get a telegram on the train from Auckland, and change your destination from Dunedin to New Plymouth with only a delay of an hour or so.
As the roads are paved in every direction, motor travelling is luxurious and easy.
The Awapuni racecourse is a surprise. Commodious grandstands, fine gardens, and an array of old and noble English trees, make it a racegoers' paradise.
Its classic races have attracted horses whose names are known the world over. The track is oval and well turfed and the lawns superb.
Within a few miles each way from Palmerston North, too, are the splendid Feilding and Woodville courses, and Marton, where we had the felicity of watching a Royal horseman taking his place in a Bracelet field. Within half an hour, there are also the good little courses of Ashhurst, Bulls, Foxton and Levin.
(Rly. Publicity photo.)
Swimming bath at the free Primary Public School, Hokowhitu, Palmerston North.
No. 1 Green at the Golf-links, Palmerston North.
(Railway Publicity photos.)
Two pleasing private homes at Palmerston North.
It would be unforgiveable to omit the palatial grounds and buildings of the Manawatu A. and P. Association, one of the great institutions of the Dominion. The Manawatu Show, in its entry figures, its standard of exhibits, its contribution to the progress of farming science and general knowledge is of world importance. In the classes of sheep and cattle suitable to the Dominion, it is safe to assert that nowhere on earth are ever gathered for show purposes, the number of quality exhibits ranged here.
This short article cannot pretend to be an encyclopedia of the town of Palmerston North. Local enthusiasts are welcome to point out the very important items I have missed, including the aerodrome.
I simply repeat that Palmerston North has no peer as a country town, in the civilised world. This large statement is made soberly, and with only the one proviso; if Palmerston North has any rival peers, they exist only in New Zealand.
There is, after all, nothing miraculous about the statement.
The achievement of New Zealand is manifestly only the logical result of the original colonisation system of this “Britain of the South.” It was unique in history. It was planned from the beginning, carefully, thoroughly and systematically.
The settlers were hand-picked. They came here voluntarily to seek their fortunes in a new land offering opportunity to the adventurous and the dreamer of high dreams. There should have been no one among them who did not come from the boldest and best spirits of his particular locality. At any rate, scientific methods of selection, organised supervision, and every device of the best brains in England were employed to ensure that end.
There were sporadic infusions of other nationalities, but they confined themselves happily to Nordic races, particularly the fine array of pioneers from Norway, Sweden, and notably Denmark.
These select folk had a land on which to work their will and realise their dreams, which, of all the earth's surface, was the nearest in configuration, climate, and the nature of its soil, to the Britain they had left.
In the warmer and more plentiful sunshine and the milder air, everything grew a little bigger and better, that was all.
Palmerston North, then, is simply one facet of a British task, faithfully carried out on the best lines of the splendid visions of the founders of New Zealand.
Air conditioned passenger carriage, L.M. and S. Railway.
The present year sees Germany celebrating the one-hundredth anniversary of the opening of her first railway. In addition, 1935 marks the hundredth birthday of one of England's leading systems—the Great Western Railway, which forms the third largest of the Home transportation groups. The anniversary of the Paddington undertaking occurs on 31st August and already special plans are being devised for the suitable celebration of the event.
The Great Western was originally incorporated in 1835 for a railway from London to Bristol. By amalgamations and new construction the system gradually grew in extent, until, at the time of the introduction of grouping, it actually possessed the longest mileage of any Home line. Originally built to a gauge of seven feet, the Great Western incorporates such historic systems as the Bristol and Exeter, the South Wales, the West Midland, the South Devon, and the Cornwall Railways. The throughout conversion of the broad gauge tracks to the standard 4ft. 8 1/2in. gauge took place in May, 1892.
Practically the whole of Britain from London to Land's End is served by Great Western trains. The “Cornish Riviera Express” runs over the full length of the system, while other notable main-line services are those between London and South Wales, London and Birmingham, and London and Birkenhead. Known to tourists as the “Shakespeare route,” the Great Western also operates through expresses between London and Stratford-on-Avon. Headquarters of the system are at Paddington Station, London. This terminal has a greater total length of platforms than that of any other station in Britain, except Victoria (Southern Railway). They measure 15,939 feet, or nearly two and three-quarter miles. In addition, there are two platforms, used mainly for parcels business, which measure a further 1,511 feet. The three main departure platforms are each over 1,100 feet in length, while two arrival platforms each have a length of 1,200 feet.
A most interesting feature of operation on the Great Western line is the working of slip coaches on passenger trains. The Great Western is the only railway in Britain to employ this system to any extent, and the practice actually dates back to 1858. The advantage of the slip coach arrangement lies in the fact that it enables long-distance expresses to serve intermediate towns without the necessity for interrupting long non-stop runs. Also, it renders possible the detaching of coaches at junction points to form the nucleus of trains serving lines not traversed by the main train.
Coaches in the rear of Great Western trains are slipped in this manner:—The slip coach is equipped with a special coupling hook hinged on a pin and retained in its normal position by a sliding bar fitting over the point of the book. At the other end, the bar is connected to a lever in the slip-guard's compartment, situated in the front of the leading coach of the portion of the train to be detached. As the train approaches the point where slipping is to be undertaken, the slip-guard pulls the lever, removing the sliding bar from the point of the hinged hook and permitting it to fall and release the slip portion from the main train. The action of the lever causes the vacuum brakes to be partially applied on the slip portion, and speed is thus reduced. The main portion of the train speeds away on its journey, and the slip section is gradually brought to rest alongside the platform by the slip-guard operating his hand-brake.
There are at present twenty-two slip services in operation on the Great Western. Among these are two slip coaches detached daily off the “Cornish Riviera Express” at Westbury (for Weymouth), and at Taunton (for Minehead and Ilfracombe).
Passenger travel at Home is being immensely popularised by the utilisation of air-conditioning plant in the main-line passenger coaches. The first air-conditioning experiments date back to 1906. Three years later there was introduced the “Thermotank” system of pressure ventilation and heating, a system which is now largely used on both day and night expresses.
On the L. & N.E. line, a new air-conditioning apparatus, known as the “Stone” system, has recently been introduced. The apparatus is accommodated in a box on the underframe, and air is drawn into the coach through oil filters by means of an electric fan. After leaving the fan, the air is heated
The “Flying Scotsman” speeding northwards from London.
The operation of the equipment is entirely automatic, as the fan motor is switched on by a thermostat as soon as steam is applied to the train. The power supply is derived from the lighting batteries, and the equipment continues to function until the steam supply is cut off. The new system not only provides a supply of clean fresh air to passengers, but as the air is introduced only under a very slight pressure, it also ensures an absence of objectionable draughts.
Railway passenger travel at Home is now cheaper and easier than ever, thanks to the introduction of a new fares programme, embodying wider facilities and important fare reductions. Public support has justified the railways' policy of lower return fares to such an extent that it has been found possible to make the third-class penny-a-mile, return-within-a-month facility a permanent feature. Hitherto known as the “Summer Ticket,” this facility is now named the “Monthly Return Ticket,” and its advantages have been still further increased.
First and third-class monthly tickets are now available for use on the outward and return journeys any day within one calendar month from date of issue. They also admit of break of journey in either direction, and in many cases, where two or more railways operate in the same territory, the tickets are available on the return journey by alternative routes. Minimum fares for these tickets are 3s. 9d. first-class and 2s. 6d. third-class, except on the Southern line where the minima are 7s. 6d. and 5s. respectively.
As an experiment Home railway first-class cheap fares have been cut by ten per cent., and their basis is now fifty per cent. over the corresponding third-class cheap fares. This applies to monthly return, cheap day, excursion, and other reduced fares. Tourist tickets issued between 1st May and 31st October will be reduced by 26 per cent. first-class and 18 per cent. third-class. These tickets will have an availability of three months, and will be subject to minima of 22s. 6d. first-class and 15s. third-class.
The Home railways cannot claim to offer the cheapest travel in Europe. This distinction falls to the State Railways of Finland, where a thousand-mile journey may be undertaken for approximately 34s. second-class, and only 23s. third-class.
Finland is one of the most interesting of countries, and her State Railway system covers a length of 4,000 miles. The first railway was opened between Helsingfors and Hameenlina in 1862.
Remarkable speed records set up on the London & North Eastern Railway a short time ago, by a steam-operated train between London and Leeds, promise to mark the opening of a new era in high-speed main-line passenger operation. For some years, the L. & N.E. Railway has had in mind the necessity for speeding-up train working on its main-lines out of London, and had it not been for the Great War it is probable many of this Company's trunk routes would have been converted to electric traction.
Recently the rapid strides made in the development of the internal combustion Diesel engine, using heavy oil, have diverted attention in fresh directions. Germany and Russia have been particularly successful with high-speed Diesel engines, and in the United States, too, there is now a feeling that Diesel-electric traction may quite conceivably render main-line electrification as we know it to-day quite obsolescent. The recent speed tests on the L. & N.E. line were undertaken with the idea of ascertaining the possibilities of the operation of high-speed units like the “Flying Hamburger” at Home.
The steam locomotive concerned in the test was No. 4472, named “The Flying Scotsman,” with a load of 147 tons. The 186 miles between King's Cross Station, London, and Leeds were covered in 151 minutes 55 seconds, an average speed of 73.4 miles per hour. Two hours exactly were occupied in the first 155 1/2 miles of the run, giving an average speed for this distance of nearly 77 miles per hour. On the return journey from Leeds to London, the throughout average speed worked out at 70.8 m.p.h., with 205 tons behind the locomotive. At one point, a speed of 100 m.p.h. was actually reached, while for forty miles a speed of 90 m.p.h. was maintained. Since these speed tests were made, another typical express locomotive of the L. & N.E. line—the “Cock o' the North”—has been despatched to France for special tests at the Vitry Testing Plant, this being presumably another move in the plans now under review for the acceleration of main-line services generally between London and the north.
L. and N.E. Express Locomotive, ‘Cock o’ the North.”
Written for the “New Zealand Railways Magazine” by)
James Cowan
Lord Bledisloe, in his capacity of Governor-General, untiringly urged the people of New Zealand to make a study of their stirring history, and he reminded his listeners that the Dominion had possessed heroes and heroines whom posterity at any rate would honour as having illuminated the country's national story. His advice cannot be repeated too often, for the young generation especially is apt to imagine, from its popular reading and the cinema, that one must go abroad for great stories of adventure, of frontier life and of heroic endurance and endeavour. The fine things of our past are too little known; the teaching of New Zealand history is insufficiently attended to in our schools. If ever there was a country that developed the spirit of the frontier and the life on the edge of peril and romance it is New Zealand. The episodes here narrated are selected as examples of the brave and self-sacrificing character of many New Zealand women who played a truly heroic part in the face of death on land and sea.
Aliumai te Paerata, the heroine of Orakau.
(From a drawing by T. Ryan, at Taupo.)
The courage and devotion of our New Zealand women, both Pakeha and Maori, in the pioneer era of this Colony, have perhaps not been recognised adequately by those who followed after them in the days of peace when the rough places had been made smooth and the frontiers of settlement obliterated. Those whose memories carry them back to the times when there was a “furthest out,” when work on the land and travel through the back country were accompanied by hazard, can appreciate thoroughly the trials and dangers to which many frontier women were exposed. But the new generation cannot know of these things at first hand; the times have changed, and New Zealanders, present and future, must rely on printed records, and these are all too few so far as the adventurous phases of Colonial life are touched upon. The real history of New Zealand was not made in the towns or in Parliament but on the farms and the long, irregular border lines where Maori and Pakeha touched each other, sometimes with friendly hands, sometimes at short rifle range or the point of the bayonet, or the swing of a tomahawk.
The wives and daughters of the outback farmers had their anxious days and nervous nights, in the period of raids and alarms. Many a frontiers-woman had cause to dread the bush or the high fern that grew close up to their homes, and masked the movements of Maori hostiles.
I was once asked by a correspondent whether a woman had ever won the Victoria Cross or the New Zealand Cross in New Zealand. He was under the impression that one of the women in the Poverty Bay massacre had been awarded the Cross for her services, the wife of an officer who was killed on that red morning. This, of course, was not so; the War regulations did not recognise women as combatants or even as nurses, in the Maori Wars; at any rate they received no service decorations. That is not to say that the women did not earn a medal then, as our nurses did many a year later in the Great War. Many of them fully earned the Victoria Cross or its equivalent. But there were no decorations and no mention in despatches for the brave women of the frontier.
Many a Maori woman deserved a war medal for deeds of courage, even in the firing line. The white woman did not take the fighting trail, but Maori wives and sisters and even grey-haired mothers often accompanied their men in the field, carrying ammunition and food and attending to the cooking, and sometimes using a gun. Some of, those who served in the last Hauhau wars in their young days are still living. The lately dead Heni Pore, the heroine of the Gate Pa in 1864, who fought in 1865 on the Government side, used her rifle and also played a man's part with a spade in one of the Arawa saps before the Hauhau Pa at Te Teko. She fully earned a medal and a war pension, if such rewards had been for the women. When Te Kooti, in 1870, attacked the Government camp at Tapapa—close to the present motor road from Matamata over the Mamaku hills to Rotorua—the wife of Pehimana, a Nga - Rauru chief, turned imminent defeat into victory by her inspiring example. Her tribe were serving on the Government side. She climbed up on a whata, a high food platform, and waving her shawl she shouted her rallying cries, calling on her people to turn and charge. They did so, and Te Kooti's men were
But the shining example of woman's heroism in my mind just now is Ahu-mai te Paerata, whose deeds of noble courage were twofold; she fought for her national cause and she saved a pakeha's life when no other arm was stretched out to defend him. Ahumai of Orakau—she is one of those whose names will never die in our country's story.
Ahumai and her brother Hitiri te Paerata were the only survivors of their family at Orakau. Her father, brother and uncle fell on the battlefield. Her husband was killed soon after she had delivered her reply to the British request that the women and children should be sent out of the beleagured redoubt so that they would not meet the fate of the men. Major Mair (who was a young officer in the Cavalry Defence Force at Orakau) gave me the actual words of his request, as interpreter, when the warriors of the Pa had refused to surrender. He called out to the garrison, from the head of the sap:
“E pai ana tera mo koutou tangata; engari kaore e pai kia mate ai nga wahine me nga tamariki. Tukuna mai era.”
(“That is well for you men; but it is not right that the women and children should die. Send them out to us.”)
A young woman of noble and fearless bearing stood up on the firing-step inside the earth parapet and cried to Mair:
“Ki te mate nga tane, me mate ano nga wahine me nga tamariki!”
(“If the men are to die, the women and children will die also!”)
That was the final word of the defenders. Mair did not know then who the woman was, but soon after the war he discovered she was Ahumai. Indeed she was not a woman to be forgotten. She bore to her last days the marks of Orakau. On that fatal second of April, 1864, she suffered terrible wounds. She was shot in the right side, the bullet going through her body and coming out on her left side. She was shot through the right shoulder; the bullet went out at her back. She was also hit in the wrist, hand and arm. Yet wounded almost unto death as she was, she struggled through the swamp of death that lay between the Orakau ridge and the Puniu River, the line of retreat on which scores of her comrades were killed. She survived, she reached her distant home at Wai-papa, near Lake Taupo, with her gallant brother Hitiri te Paerata and the
Huria Matenga, of Whakapuaka.
In the year after Orakau Ahumai's tribe had become Hauhaus and were desperately eager to obtain revenge for their losses at Orakau. She was with them at a small village on the bush edge near Oruanui (on the present road from Atiamuri to Taupo) when an adventurous white man rode in to the settlement. He was Lieutenant Meade, of H.M.S. Curacoa; he had been escorted to Taupo by Major Mair, and was returning to Rotorua with a Maori guide. The fierce old Chief and priest of the tribe, Te Ao Katoa (a big name—“The Whole World”) was leading the people in the ritual of the fanatic war-faith Pai-Marire, the chanting and processions round the Niu, the sacred flag-pole of worship. The tohunga seized the occasion to demand the sacrifice of the pakeha to the Hauhau war gods. A Maori stood behind the white man with a ready tomahawk, awaiting the word to strike. Meade, who sat on a log with his guide, was ready, for his part, to fire his hidden revolver through his coat if the executioner raised his tomahawk. But this would have availed him little in the midst of, those armed men. The wild service ended; a council of war began; it looked dark indeed for the white man in the midst of his enemies.
But at the height of the barbarous council, a woman wrapped in a shawl rose from the seated crowd. She walked slowly across the marae. Without a word she sat down at the young Naval officer's feet. She was Ahumai; her wounds at Orakau scarcely yet healed. She had abundant reason for bitterness of soul. Yet she was generous enough to forgive all that, and risk the anger of her tribe, to champion the friendless pakeha when the grave was opening for him.
Her silent act of succour and her high tribal rank saved Meade's life. He and his guide were allowed to leave the village, they rode off with thankful hearts from the nest of Hauhaus where they had all but resigned themselves to death.
Europeans at Taupo long years afterwards sometimes saw the tattooed white-haired dame as she hobbled into the township for her old-age pension. The stray traveller perchance would see in her just a decrepit old wahine, without any story to speak of. But in Ahumai I recognised a truly heroic spirit who could face death without flinching, and defy her people to save a friendless man of her enemies from the tomahawk. Ahumai died at Mokai, near Taupo, in 1908. Her warrior brother Hitiri, whom I knew very well and from whom I heard much of the history of Orakau, was not long in following her to the Reinga.
Lieutenant Meade wrote a book narrating his adventures in New Zealand and the South Seas (“A Ride Through the Disturbed Districts of New Zealand”), and illustrated it with some of his sketches. There is a small drawing of the scene in the bush village where he so nearly fell a sacrifice to the Hauhau spirit of war.
The second subject in this sketch of courageous women is Huria (Julia) Matenga, the young chieftainess of Whakapuaka, on the Nelson coast, whose bravery and humanity at the wreck of the Delaware in 1863 earned her the admiration and praise of both races. She came to be called “New Zealand's Grace Darling.” She was foremost in saving a distressed crew at the risk of her life, in a stormy sea, and her deed of bravery even excelled that of the plucky English girl who rowed off to a wreck with her father, braving the gale to save the perishing.
Julia Matenga, whose Maori name is the native form of both Marsden and Martin, was the wife of a young half-caste chief named Hemi Matenga (James Martin), who had been named after Sir William Martin, one-time Chief Justice of the Colony. They were each about twenty-eight years of age, a handsome couple, tall and stalwart, and they were both strong swimmers. I have never seen a more admirable specimen of the athletic pakeha-Maori blend than Hemi Matenga, erect and straight-backed and powerful even in his seventies. His beautiful wife was the granddaughter of a renowned warrior, Te Puoho, of the Ngati-Toa, the great Rauparaha's tribe (His amazing march from the Nelson country down the West Coast and into Otago and Southland is narrated in the book “Tales of the Maori Bush”). Hemi and Huria lived on their farm at Whakapuaka, near where the cable-station was afterwards established.
Early on the morning of September 4, 1863, the Maoris saw a vessel lying wrecked on the rocks off Whakapuaka. This was the Delaware, an English bri-gantine of 241 tons, a new vessel recently out from London; she had sailed from Nelson the previous day for Napier. A strong gale was blowing, and in endeavouring to beat out against it the vessel was driven on the rocks, about 100 yards from the cliffs, where she lay with the seas sweeping over her. The mate made ready to swim ashore with a line, but a sea caught him and dashed him on a rock, and he was hauled back badly injured. The natives on shore saw the wrecked craft, and several of them hurried along the beach until they reached the nearest point to the Delaware, eager to succour those in distress; some of them lit a fire on the shore and prepared for the reception of the imperilled mariners.
The three who came to the help of the crew were Julia Matenga, her husband and a man named Hohapeta Kahupuku. One of the crew threw a light rope, a lead-line, overboard, and Julia and the two men threw off their clothes and swam out, in spite of the great seas. They had no canoe or boat, but no small craft could have lived in that boiling surf. A terrifying sea was rolling in before the N.E. gale and breaking over the brigantine.
The three Maoris had a desperate struggle; it seemed half-an-hour before they were near enough to get the line which the sailor had thrown out. A rope was bent on to the ship's end of this line, and the Maoris hauled it ashore; the ship's end was made fast to one of the masts and the Maoris secured the other to a boulder on the narrow beach at the foot of the cliffs. Julia was the foremost of the swimmers and was the first to grasp the lead-line which the sailor threw. The swimmers dived under the great rollers that came roaring in
The line between ship and shore having been hauled taut, all but one of the crew struggled to the land holding to the rope, assisted by the three Maoris. This was a task of great difficulty. As each man neared the beach the Matengas and their companions rushed out, sometimes up to their necks in the surf, sometimes swimming, and helped him to the beach. All this time the line was being chafed through by the sharp rocks and it parted just as the last man to leave the wreck, the captain (Robert Baldwin), reached the land.
One life only was lost. The mate, a young Englishman named Henry Squirrell, had made a gallant attempt to swim to the beach with a line soon after the vessel struck, but he was badly hurt and was laid in a bunk apparently dead. But after all the others were safe on shore, they were amazed and greatly distressed to see him climb into the fore-rigging and wave for help. Hemi Matenga asked the captain, “Why did you not tell me there was still one of your men on board?” The Maoris would have brought him on shore had they known but now it was quite impossible, the tide was rising, and the seas were thundering right over the brigantine. The poor mate was washed off and drowned.
So all hands but one were rescued, thanks to the fearless and powerful Maori swimmers. Julia and her men were very much cut and bruised by the rocks, in their efforts to get the sailors to the shore, and Hemi Matenga related afterwards that when he rode the twenty miles into Nelson town to report the wreck he was scarcely able to sit his horse.
The Nelson townspeople were greatly excited by the news of the Delaware wreck and the rescue by the Maoris. A fund was immediately raised, and a public presentation was made to the three swimmers. Julia and her husband each received an inscribed gold watch, and their companion, a youth, and the helpers on the shore each were given a silver watch. Sums of money were also presented to them. Julia's portrait hangs in the Nelson Art Gallery, and under it is this inscription:
“In Public Recognition of the Brave Deeds of Huria Matenga, Chieftainess of the Ngati-Awa, Ngati-Tama and Ngati-Toa Tribes, who, in company with her husband, Hemi Matenga, at risk of life swam for a rope through a stormy sea, thereby saving the lives of the crew of the Delaware, wrecked at Whakapuaka, September 3, 1863.”
The portrait of Julia Matenga which illustrates this article is from the painting by G. F. Lindauer in the Partridge collection of notable Maoris, in the Auckland Municipal Art Gallery. The brave woman of Whakapuaka died at her home there in 1909. Her stalwart husband followed her in 1912, at the age of seventy-seven. Hemi, who was half-brother of Wi Parata Kaka-kura, the chief of Waikanae, was a fine figure of a man to the last, lean and erect. When I last talked with him in Wellington he was on his way, notwithstanding his three score and fifteen years, to Matata, in the Bay of Plenty, duck-shooting, a sportsman to the end. Only a little while previous to our meeting he had rescued a Nelson man from drowning, near the very same place where he and his wife had saved the despairing crew of the Delaware forty-six years before.
New Zealand Verse
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When The Lake Trout Come Inshore: Told By The Camera.
Lake Rotoiti, North Island, New Zealand.
Lake Rotorua, North Island, New Zealand. (Rly. Publicity photos.)
Both on Rotorua, and in the companion lake, Rotoiti, rod-fishing for rainbow trout by wading anglers is an alluring pastime. In places the lake bottom shelves so gradually that the angler may walk out for distances, and good catches are made when the trout come inshore to feed in the evening. But fishing has other charms than fish. Note the forested beauty of the lake coast-line, and the willingness of vegetation to accommodate itself picturesquely to detached fragments. Lakeland is conquerable by water or by road. A natural playground, highly organised by man for the use of man, is at our door. And at moderate cost.
By
Margaret Macpherson
Fleet Street, the highway of fame, is actually one of the narrowest and drabest of London thoroughfares. In the days when it was built, such traffic as now throngs it was undreamed of. Traffic! An endless fivefold belt of buses, taxis, lorries, ambulances, motor cycles, vans, floods down the canyon of the printers' paradise (or should I call it the poets' purgatory?) at all hours of the day and night. Every building bears the name of some famous newspaper. Here all the world's best-known journals are housed. Those that are not actually printed there have an agency office there. Small indeed is the newspaper that is not represented in Fleet Street.
Many a fortune has been made and lost here. It is the most romantic street in the world; paved with gold for some, washed with tears for others. Many New Zealanders have tried their luck here, and a large proportion of them have distinguished themselves and us by their gifts and their tenacity.
First and foremost, of course, comes David Low, the famous cartoonist. Low, who was born at Rangiora, is the highest paid black-and-white artist in the world. His cartoons are not only killingly funny, but often they are sermons in picture. One of his most delicious books is his Russian sketchbook, made during a tour of the Soviet Union. Low did more to enlighten people about that much misrepresented land than any amount of Moscow propaganda could do. He seemed to catch the soul of the Soviet scene, with all its humours and absurdities, all its fine humanity, its rich and vigorous progressiveness.
Another brilliant New Zealander who has made good in London is Sheila Macdonald, daughter of Mr. Scobie Mackenzie, of Dunedin. You will remember her delightfully human book “Sally in Rhodesia.” It was a best-seller, and deservedly so. New Zealand girls have certainly played their part in the journalistic world. Another fine novelist is Jane Mander, who has published several books, though nothing has ever come up to her “Story of a New Zealand River.” Jane, of course, is now back in this country, a distinctive figure with her gleaming white hair, and humorous eyes. She spent several years in Fleet Street, as a reader for Jonathan Cape, the publishers. A writer whose books have had quite a vogue is Nelle Scan-lan, who has had a popular success as a writer of light, pleasing novels of New Zealand life.
A very successful youngster is Ian Coster, who used to be on the Auckland “Sun.” For two years he was the assistant editor of Nash's Magazine; now he is film critic, at a salary running into four figures, for one of the great Northcliffe papers. Many of you will remember this charming boy, who looked rather like a Greek god. He was a fine tennis player, a splendid Rugby forward, and a reporter with a nose for news. Ian will never be a great writer, but he has a flair for the unusual. He digs up the most extraordinary and unexpected stories, always carefully documented and quite authentic. His article in Nash's on “Black Magic as Practised in London at the Present Day” caused quite a sensation. Now he is recognised as one of London's most capable journalists—and he was only thirty last birthday. “What a man! What a man!” as Jimmy Durante would say.
Another gifted New Zealander in Fleet Street is Percy Crisp, ex-editor of the Auckland “Sun.” He is now on the “Daily Express,” one of England's most important papers. The “Daily Express” has the most palatial offices in the street. The huge many-storied building is entirely faced with black glass. It has no corners, but curves of gleaming glass—an architectural novelty that is most imposing.
A New Zealander who has made a great name and fortune in London is Hugh Walpole, son of the Bishop of Auckland. He is in the first rank of novelists to-day. Even greater than he, is our Katherine Mansfield, daughter of Sir Harold Beauchamp, of Wellington. Personally, I consider Katherine the greatest short story writer of all time, male or female. Her life was a tragic one. Illness and poverty were her lot, but her work is amongst the bravest and best that has ever been written.
Mr. Ian Coster.
Another very clever cartoonist from this country is Harry Rowntree, who is a frequent contributor to “Punch.” There is one charming picture of his in the Auckland Art Gallery, a slight sketch of some sparrows huddled on a branch.
A painter who does newspaper work is Ronald McKenzie, formerly of Lower Hutt. He paints marvellous coloured advertisements for American papers. He was the first husband of Rhona Haszard, the gifted artist whose death in Cairo in 1931 was such a blow to her friends and such a loss to New Zealand art.
An Aucklander, Reginald Berkeley, is now famous as a successful play-wright, his “Lady with the Lamp” being considered one of the best of the last decade. Another dramatist from this country is Dr. Merton Hodge, whose delightful play “The Wind and the Rain” is still running in London.
So, you see, New Zealand has made its mark in Fleet Street. Our gifted children have gained definite honour there. And, of course, apart from actual writers there are many of our countrymen and women who are always good “news value” in London; their names are frequently in print. First and foremost comes Lord Rutherford, next to Einstein, the greatest scientist in the world. Then there is Dr. Condliffe, of the League of Nations, a very well-known figure at Geneva. He used to be Professor of Economics at Canterbury College. Another person who is much in the news is Jean Batten, our aviatrix, daughter of an Auckland dentist. Jean's brother John is a film star who has done splendid work in English and German films. Considering the size of our population we have really produced some wonderful people, and when we consider the younger ones, like Ian Coster, the Battens, and our young poets, like Fairburn, we can see that the supply is not diminishing and that we have a very big part in the life of the street that rules the world by the power of the pen.
By“
Egmont”
Beautiful Pukekura Park, New Plymouth.
To-Day, New Plymouth, the capital of North Taranaki and the whole province, has a population that borders on 20,000. This town has a fine harbour, which, although artificial, is nevertheless a venue of the largest cargo vessels coming to the Dominion. The chief industry of the province is dairying and while sheep-farming is carried on in a small way, the damp conditions are not conductive to success in this direction. New Plymouth has doubtless been put on the map by her now well-established aerodrome at Bellblock, five miles to the East of the township. Should a permanent airmail service between the Commonwealth and New Zealand be inaugurated, New Plymouth will in all probability become a terminal point for the trans-Tasman fliers. This statement is borne out by the flights of Sir Charles Kingsford-Smith and the late Mr. C. T. P. Ulm, who both made several flights over the Tasman to make New Plymouth their landing-ground. Extensions and renovations are always being executed at the airport and in a few years it should be one of the finest, if not the finest, 'drome in the Dominion.
Mt. Egmont (8,260 feet) is the famous sentinel of this pastoral province, and its conical beauty has been likened to that of Japan's Fujiyama. It is indeed an imposing landmark, situated as it is in the central position of Taranaki and 19 miles from New Plymouth. A fine scenic reserve circles the base of this majestic peak—I say majestic, for what it loses in height it compensates for in symmetry and grace—and the fine native bush of this reserve must be seen to be appreciated. Words are poor things to describe adequately the panorama that stretches out before the eyes from the Old and New Hostels, or the simple beauty of the Veronica Valley and Ngatoro Gorge walks, the tracks to Bell's and Dawson's Falls and the grandeur that attends the 14 miles to the Kahui Hut. Two tried guides, Messrs. R. Sole and S. Arthur, are always ready to take the sight-seer along the track of his or her choice. From the summit of Egmont on a perfectly clear day can be seen the hills that surround Nelson, while Ngauruhoe, Tongariro and Ruapehu stand out in relief. Inglewood, Stratford, Waitara and New Plymouth lie at the climber's feet, glistening and scintillating in the sun.
From Stratford, in South Taranaki, Egmont loses its conical perfection by reason of Fantham's Peak, the parasitic cone that protrudes halfway up the mountainside. Hawera, too, the capital of South Taranaki, offers unrivalled perspectives of Egmont. In winter, when the snows mantle Eg-mont's slopes, she is a thing of beauty, a gem that would vie with Earth's most famed natural glory.
Through the untiring efforts of the North Taranaki Acclimatisation Society, whose president is Mr. W. H. Moyes, M.A., B.Sc., Principal of the New Plymouth Boys' High School, the rivers of the province afford trout anglers the sport of their lives. The Waiwakaiho (laughing water), Ngatoro, Stony, Warea, Henui and numerous other rivers are without rival for fly and creeper fishing. Many a doughty “bag” has come from these streams and many are the parties of fishermen who spend the day of their lives in fishing conditions such as Walton or Cotton never dreamed. Taranaki can truly be classed among anglers' paradises.
Mt. Egmont (8,260ft.) from Hawera, North Island, New Zealand. (Rly. Publicity photo.)
Should the tourist prefer deep-sea fishing, then his opportunities are many. Let him take a launch or a dinghy off the Sugarloaves, Moturoa and Saddleback, where schnapper, cod, hapuka, terakihi, barracuda, kingfish and kahawai are plentiful, and I can assure him that he will return for more.
Historical relics and reminders abound in Taranaki. St. Mary's Church is here in New Plymouth with all its surroundings so redolent of the Maori Wars, Mousland Hill at the back of the church, where once stood the town's barracks—these barracks were taken down and the timber used in the construction of the Old Hostel at North Egmont. Bullet holes may still be seen in the walls of this hostel. To the West of the town, near Omata, is the battlefield of Waireka where regulars (H.M.S. “Niger”) and volunteer troops fought side by side for the first time in British history. To the East of New Plymouth, ten miles away, is Waitara and its Pukerangiora pa where such a deadly scene of carnage was enacted by the Waikatos. On Moturoa island, in the Sugarloaves group, Dicky Barrett of whaling fame lived. Running through the town is the Huatoki stream on whose upper waters, near Baine's Terrace, Maoris blocked the river with corpses and dyed the water crimson near the stone Pai-ane.
Taranaki has an array of beaches of outstanding merit. Ngamotu beach, to the west of the town, is expansive and offers all the facilities one would expect of a popular resort. There are very few “curlers” on this beach, but should the tourist prefer aquatic sport of a more boisterous type then he has East End, Strandon, and Fitz-roy beaches to the east. Here is the place for great breakers and sunny sandhills. Surfing is indulged in to a great extent and during week-ends these strands are one mass of splashing, laughing and carefree humanity. About fifteen miles from New Plymouth is the Oakura beach, while forty odd miles away is Opunake, another popular seaside resort.
New Plymouth High School Old Boys are at present the champion life-saving team of New Zealand.
New Plymouth's chief claim to natural beauty is Pukekura Park and the subsidiary estate, Brooklands. Under the supervision of Mr. T. Hor-ton these two areas have become patches of floral and sylvan beauty on the grandest scale. Many tourists have broken forth into paeans of unaffected praise over these two parks. Some have said that nowhere in the world have they come across anything to equal Pukekura; and indeed it would be difficult to find a more lovely spot. Trees and shrubs of every description abound, while swans glide serenely on the two mirror-like lakes, the upper one in particular with its willow-pattern-like bridge, being most imposing. In the fernery and surrounding garden plots may be seen the pick of the world's flora, while on the fringe of the park is a basin reserve where sports of all description are held. The Grenadier Guards Band played here and many said they had never performed in more imposing surroundings. A fitting background to her parks is New Plymouth's residential area.
As a picnicing area, the Meeting of the Waters, five miles out on the Mountain road, is very popular, for here, as the name implies, the Wai-wakaiho and the Henui rivers converge. Here also is the Mangama-hoe power-station, the centre of electrical supply.
In South Taranaki there are several secondary schools of repute. Stratford Technical High School and Hawera Technical High School are two well-established institutions. Yet I think for scholastic and athletic achievement the New Plymouth Boys' High School leads the province. It is not bias makes me say this, but cold statistics. For many years, from 1923–28, this school's rugby football prowess was a byword. Mr. R. Syme, now of Oxford, was one of New Zealand's outstanding classical scholars, while Mr. M. Barak was a Rhodes Scholar.
Last, but by no means least, are the educational facilities of Taranaki. New Plymouth has two fine secondary schools, the Boys' High School (the venue for this year's Teachers' Summer School) and the Girls' High School. Primary schools include Central, Fitzroy, West End, Westown, Vogeltown, Moturoa, Convent and Welbourn.
After dinner they adjourned to the smoke-room, where the host produced a decanter of Scotch, a syphon, a silver box of cigarettes, and a tin of tobacco. Idly picking up the tin the guest read: “Toasted Navy Cut, No. 3.” “Why Toasted,” he queried. “Improves the flavour, what?” “Ay,” replied the host, “and eliminates the nicotine, or most of it. Don't know another tobacco that's so good—or so safe. Try it?” The guest lit up, and sinking back into the depths of his luxurious chair lazily watched the smoke-rings. “By Jove!” he said, at last, sitting up, “it is good!—American” “Easy to see you're a new chum,” laughed the host, “no, my boy, not American: it's grown and manufactured in New Zealand. What d'ye think of that? Brands? There are five: Cut Plug No. 10 (Bullshead), Navy Cut No. 3 (Bulldog), Cavendish, Riverhead Gold and Desert Gold.” “I'd not the faintest idea New Zealand produced such tobacco,” declared the guest with enthusiasm. “We live and learn,” replied the host as he passed the decanter.*
New Plymouth, the capital of Taranaki, North Island, New Zealand. (Rly. Publicity photo.)
ByRobin Hyde .”)
Iris Wilkinson
Starting point—Wellington. Not that Wellington is really, as unkind critics aver, a good place to get away from—the capital has both charms and charmers, but the northern sunshine, northern flower-gardens, northern hospitality, all beckon.
Nobody could possibly look at, or around, Thorndon Station (where the northbound trains lie waiting for the unwary) without a very genuine sense of pleasure. For isn't this ancient place to be demolished, almost in no time? Haven't the contractors commenced building a new station, a station which Wellington will be able to show to callers with housewifely pride? I hope that when the new station appears on the scene it will be grey and granite-ish in keeping with the rugged empery of the stormy, sea-girdled old city it is to adorn.
“All aboard, please. All aboard!” Well, we were, and looked with reproach and disdain at the fat man who, as the Limited started to move leapt from the bosom of his wife with the agile grace of an antelope, and sank puffing into his seat. Not for us such cavorting. For us the pleasure of choosing a really satisfactory seat, of raising reproachful eyebrows at the spinster who fusses over the window-catch, of buying the evening paper from the youth whose stentorian yells resound, to the very last moment, through the carriages; a train is, above all things, a leisurely-minded vehicle. True, one buys a paper. But one looks through the news with a delightful, airy sense that it doesn't matter in the least whether wool is up or down, or even whether Sir Oswald Mosley has challenged Miss Ellen Wilkinson to a duel in Hyde Park. For a few hours we are all, consciously or otherwise, naturalised citizens of Trainland, lost in a warm, lamplit limbo of strange places and strange faces, and with the cosiest of high-backed, stoutly padded seats to help us relax. It's odd that so few train passengers realise that they are, for the moment, escaping from the world. The fact must filter through to their sub-consciousness, for I don't think I've ever seen a seriously annoyed person on a New Zealand train. Warmth, change, comfort, the possibilities of adventure, dark dream-blue fields slipping quietly past.
After all, there's a queer fascination in the departure from Wellington. First one's farewell glimpse of those ancient and decrepit two-storey Thorndon houses, about which Nathaniel Hawthorne might have written, as he did about the ramshackle parts of his own home town; and then the great shining grey-blue sweep of sea, a hill grade, and a swoop towards the black mouth of a tunnel, and goodbye to Wellington. Already, where green grass and the fairy gold of a whole world of broom wave greeting to the train from the other side of the tunnel, we are over the hills and far away.
Incidentally, can anyone explain with or without diagrams and scale map just why there is always someone who leaves train windows open when a tunnel is drawing nigh, and who therefore has to wrestle simultaneously with the spirit and the window-catch? For so it is. There is absolutely no teaching these hardened smoke-drinkers, and one can only suppose that they are first cousins to the family of fire-eaters. Tunnel number one appears on the horizon, is passed. Reproachful but forgiving, the other occupants of the carriage survey the offender, who beams charmingly. (Almost every male in the carriage has rushed to her assistance as she struggles with the window-catch, which, simple though its mechanism would appear to the brain of the average adult chimpanzee, is none the less entirely beyond her). The instant that the train has cleared the tunnel, up goes her window once more. Nor does it descend in time to escape the vengeance of tunnels two, three, four, or five. Everybody's patience wears thin except that of the lady with the passion for fresh air who comes smiling through it all.
Johnsonville …. Otaki …. now, wasn't it somewhere about here that a moonlight drive distinguished by fields of glistening purple foxgloves and a dignified 'possum strolling at his leisure across the wild Akatarawa Gorge Road, ended in a strawberry garden where everybody ate incredible quantities of the tiny half-wild, sugar-sweet berries grown by cheery Maori gardeners? Levin …. Palmerston North, and a memory of a sort of wake held in a hotel lounge long, long after closing time, to soothe the heartfelt sorrow of half a dozen of us, who had simultaneously lost our all on a fiery-looking black horse that conducted its race on slightly unconventional lines, galloping round the pretty little Palmerston North racecourse at incredible speed, but in the wrong direction.
Marton Junction … a very important place, this, for sandwiches, for cups of tea, for magazines and touching family re-unions. But beyond the town
A Glimpse of Wellington, the Capital City of New Zealand. (Rly. Publicity photo.)
I remember Wanganui with great kindness because (a) there I first encountered wild duck properly roasted, and served up in a sensible little restaurant which knew its business; (b) for a much more important reason, because in remembering Wanganui I can remember a smooth, burnished-steel sheen of river and lake waters.
Stately and slow the black swans sail on little Virginia Lake, and the trees all around are yellow-leaved, because, in the country of memory, it is always autumn hereabouts. A cicala threads the afternoon's peace with a tiny silver stitch of song. The leaves are soft underfoot and there is an archway of boughs, and one understands why the residents of St. John's Hill, which favoured locality flows in a pleasant tide of houses around Virginia Lake, are so proud of their neighbourhood.
The little river steamer toots long soulfully in the early morning, and the creamy plumes of toi-toi quiver in the swirl of her wake. Maori women, bright-frocked but with black shawls drawn over their heads, squat on deck and chat with one another in voices plaintive as a tui's call. A live and wriggling something in the stern of the ship turns out to be a couple of frisky young pigs, kept in order by the simple expedient of having a net thrown over them.
We have many things to show you on this river. A first halt where the kowhai trees usually golden flowered, shower down bright red blossoms, red as new minted sovereigns, and a tui laughs for sheer joie de vivre in the ring of the trees; little dreamy Jerusalem, where the Maoris still believe in the kehu, the ghost that brings death and perches uncannily on the doomed one's gate-post. Maori canoes, old and unpainted, but as graceful in their slender, peascod lines as fairy boats; the great stone where green boughs should be laid as an offering to Taniwha, god of the river, enormous rowan trees, laden with brilliant coral berries, guarding the fine Pipiriki Hotel, and after that a river overhung by ferns and native bush which seem entranced by the delicate beauty of their own reflections in the still water. Earth has splendid rivers enough, but can any of them outrival the Wanganui for this pensive charm of green and dusky blue reflections?
But perhaps you prefer to stick to your ship—or rather, to your train—at Marton Junction. Rivers, you feel, can keep for some other time. Very well. In that case, you follow the example of your fellow passengers and equip yourself with not fewer than three detective novels. These will have paper backs and purple contents. The predominance of detective stories at all railway bookstalls (love limping home a very poor second, and the rest of literature nowhere at all), shows how thin is our veneer of civilization. The book which sustained me from Marton to Frankton Junction sported no fewer than thirteen corpses, and I must confess I could have done with more.
Lights out on the Limited … perhaps it's eleven o'clock when the last page is turned and the last yawn yawned. The game then, unless you are travelling by sleeper, is to curl up in such a way that your sleeping-partner can't object, and lapse into the arms of Morpheus.
The sleepers are alluring, of course, more especially the de luxe kind where your bed looks and feels like a bed, and your wardrobe may be conveniently draped about, and there's a non-spill glass which you may use for drinking purposes.
Yet in the carriages themselves, watching station after station slip back in purple of dusk and shadowy grey of manuka is rather fascinating; especially if your compartment contains a mighty man of valour who will, as the night-wears on, stay you with coffee and comfort you with ham sandwiches. And daybreak is “secret, shy and cold,” with jaunty blue feathers of smoke from some nearby farmhouse signalling greeting to your train's great sweeping ostrich plume.
I tried once, being misguided, to interview a railway guard about the life of the Limited. Adventure and lots of it must be compressed into the engine-driver's domain, or the guard's van, where “dawgs is dawgs, cats is dawgs, squirrels in cages is a parrot, but this yar tortoise is a hinseck, and travels free,” to quote a classic of the rail. Nothing doing. The guard blushed in hectic style, and informed me firmly that the train had three sleepers and I forget how many carriages. He also mentioned the names of the stations at which we might or would stop. Further than that he would not go. I gathered that he was very proud of his train.
Flutter of seagulls' wings …. not Wellington's large and formidable sea-gulls, but dainty scarlet-legged, bright-eyed fellows, a whole cloud of them. The train curves sinuously round a bend of sparkling blue sea. “Auckland.”
That very night, ere gentle sleep was allowed to come anywhere near my eyelids, I was given the difficult and dangerous task of making conversation with two amiable children. Both red-headed. Lessons, as a likely topic, proved a dismal flop. They seemed inured to stories of wild beasts, nor did my perfectly good plasticine model of a sailing-ship cause them to evidence the faintest emotion. I tried them with engines. Their eyes brightened. Simultaneously, and with a sigh of heart-felt satisfaction, they uttered the one glad cry: “Trains!”
So the first instalment of the journey north ended in this far from dignified strain:
“Will you crawl a little quicker,” hissed the Austin to the Ford,
There's a Riley on my bumpers, and I'm getting slightly bored.”
But the train rushed past, ever so fast, on tracks that were shiny and broad.
“My Kingdom for a horse,” King Richard cried, in vain—But nowadays, of course, He'd just have caught the train.
I say, old chap, your hands are all black. Yes, I know; I've been seeing the wife's mother away.
But how did that make them black? Well, you see, I couldn't resist patting the dear old engine.
By “
Kapiti”
“As the bag opened, a roar of laughter covered the big man with confusion.
The evening goods was about to leave Reefton station. Old Ben swung himself to the footplate and took a last look round. It was not unusual to have something put aboard at the last minute, and Ben was too good a railwayman to miss a chance of freight, and too good a Coaster to inconvenience anyone.
“Not likely to be anything more today,” said Teddy Brew, his fireman. “Apart from our staff, I don't believe there is a soul in Reefton. Even the pubs are deserted.”
The day was the occasion of the annual picnic. Instead of having a dozen or more little picnics, Reefton people combine to make one big affair and have a special excursion train for the event. Everyone, from the oldest pioneer to the youngest baby, attends. On this occasion they had gone to Greymouth, and the goods train would most likely pass them homeward bound a short way down the line.
“I seldom get away from here without being held up in the straight,” old Ben replied to his fireman's last remark. “There you are; I thought so.”
The Reefton station is situated about a quarter of a mile from the main road to the town.
Ben's exclamation was caused by the figure of a slight man who staggered round the corner carrying two boxes. He put one down to signal frantically to the driver to wait. Ben gave him an encouraging wave, and waited for him to come up.
“Uhm! Gelignite, eh? Are you wanting to travel on the train with it?” asked the clerk as he filled in the consignment slip. “If so, special permission will have to be obtained from the Stationmaster for you to travel in the van, and you will have to sign a form quitting the Railway of all responsibility.”
“No,” said the stranger; “I do not care for the risk. I will leave it to be called for at Greymouth.”
“That will be all right. It will be left in the truck on the siding, but you will have to pay hire of the truck for whatever time you leave it there.”
“Right oh! I'll pick it up to-morrow.”
The stranger left the station, and the goods, which was held up a matter of moments only, started on its journey to Greymouth.
About three days later the Station-master at Greymouth stopped old Ben and asked, “Did you see the man who consigned those two boxes of gelignite from Reefton a few days ago?”
Ben pushed his cap over the back of his head and scratched industriously. “Ted,” he called to his fireman, who was passing, “Do you remember the man who consigned those two cases of ‘Jelly’ from Reefton the other day?”
“Yes,” was the reply. “That was the day of the picnic.”
“Do you know him?” asked the Stationmaster. “He has not collected the stuff, and it is still in the truck waiting for him.”
“No, he was a complete stranger to me. I was struck by the fact that he was consigning from Reefton to Grey-mouth, when he could buy here all the ‘Jelly’ he wanted. I don't ever remember bringing the stuff from Reefton to Greymouth previously. Didn't he give any address?”
“Yes, he gave the name of ‘H. Smith, c/o Revington's Hotel,’ but he is not known there.” The Stationmaster was puzzled. “I don't know what to do about it. If he leaves it long the hire of the truck will be more than the value of the explosive, and then he is not likely to claim it. If you see him, speak to him about it.”
“Right oh! I'll know him again, sure. He was a little rat-faced chap with black beady eyes and a small waxed moustache. Didn't look like a miner, but these days there are so many prospectors that I thought nothing of it.”
Several days later there being no claim for the goods, the Stationmaster arranged to store them in a shed specially built for the purpose, owned by the Cobden Quarry. This was just over the Cobden Bridge, and the cases were put off the Runanga train, which passes within a few feet of it.
The matter was reported to the Head Office, and nothing was done in the matter until a sale of unclaimed goods was arranged at Greymouth, when they were sent for.
“We'll have no trouble in disposing of this stuff in a mining locality like Greymouth,” said a clerk. “It should bring nearly its full value.”
“Yes,” was the reply. “Not like that set of oil-paints. No one but Miss Smithers, the schoolteacher, paints in
“And I have mentioned this ‘Jelly’ to a dozen or so parties, so we should have a good go for it.”
* * *
“Now, ladies and gentlemen,” said the auctioneer, “this bag is locked, and there is no key. It probably contains diamonds. Anyhow the bag is worth a tenner. What am I offered?” A general laugh greeted this sally, as the bag was obviously not worth a shilling. The gambling spirit of the crowd, however, ran the price up to four shillings before it was knocked down.
The grinning carrier who bought it soon satisfied his curiosity with a pocket knife. The bag contained a six months' old lunch!
“Well, perhaps this is the one with the diamonds,” suggested the auctioneer. The article this time was a very neat suitcase with the initials “B.O'D.” The crowd bid up to twenty-five shillings—a fair price for it. The auctioneer, however, was not satisfied. “Come on, Bill,” he called to Bill O'Dowd, a six-foot miner. “It's got your initials on it; you had better buy it. Do you say 27/6?”
Bill did, and it was knocked down to him. Curiosity again made an immediate investigation essential, and it was unnecessary to use force as someone provided a key. Big Bill opened the case on a counter with a number of men and women round eager for a glance. As the bag opened, a roar of laughter covered the big man with confusion. Frothy lacey undies in numerous pastel shades cascaded out in all directions. As he tried to push them in again it seemed impossible that they could all have come out of one suitcase. Finally, in desperation, he called: “Here, anyone can have these,” and the ladies soon cleared the counter.
“Well, well! Bad luck, Bill, but this is more in your line,” said the auctioneer, as the clerk dragged to light the two boxes marked “Gelignite.” “I am almost certain the diamonds are not in these boxes. No ladies need apply. Now, what am I bid for these lovely boxes of noise? Although I am not a fortune-teller, I predict that the purchaser of this lot may soon get a rise in the world. Now then, each, with the option of taking both.”
There was no hesitation in the bidding. Everyone knew the value of gelignite, and knew, moreover, that they would not get it much below its value.
“Thirty bob,” called Tom Swassie, from the Brunnerton Co-operative party, and grinned as he was immediately overbid by Wildhill from Seven Mile.
“Two quid,” tried Bill again, and lost to Harry—no one knew his other name—from Cronadun. This brought the price to within a few shillings of the actual value ruling at the time locally, and everyone expected that Harry would get the boxes; but a new element entered into the competition.
“Three pounds,” bid a thin voice from a far corner. All eyes turned to see who was bidding over value. It was not as though he had been run up in the excitement of fast bidding. In cold blood the stranger had bid beyond the value.
Among others who saw the stranger, was Teddy Brew, and he moved away from the crowd to puzzle out the riddle, for to him it was a bigger surprise than to anyone else.
The temptation to act detective seems inborn in most of us, and with growing interest. Teddy watched the purchaser wrap the boxes carefully in brown paper before calling a carrier. The carrier was instructed to take the “parcels” to Revington's Hotel, and the owner climbed up alongside the driver.
Brew followed on foot, and after seeing the safe arrival at the hotel, he crossed to the P.O. and from the telephone booth, where he could watch the hotel door, he held a short conversation. Leaving the booth, he waited a few minutes on the corner and was joined by a tall man, whom he addressed as “Dave.” Both proceeded to Revington's, and after a conversation with the manager, the three went upstairs and the manager knocked on a door.
In answer to the call of “Come in,” they entered, and the manager addressed the occupant. “I am informed, Mr Manio, that you have brought two boxes of explosive to this room. This won't do, you know. It's not safe.”
“Oh, it's safe enough,” was the reply, “but I suppose I'd better get it out again.”
“I certainly insist. We will give you a lift down with it.”
As they reached the main entrance, Teddy and Dave put the case they were carrying—apparently carelessly—on the scale. The counterweights were set at 56lb., but the box did not raise a quiver on the arm. With a swift movement, Dave pushed the weight indicator back, till at 40lbs. the arm moved.
Turning to the owner of the box, he said: “I am Detective Joss, and I would like to know what you have in this box. A box of gelignite weighs 56lbs.; this is only 40lbs.”
“How do I know? I bought ‘Blind’ at the auction. If there is short weight, I am the loser.”
“Suppose we open it?”
“Yes, when I'm ready, and without any assistance from you.”
The detective brought the argument to a finish by taking a hammer and knocking off the lid.
“Heavens! I'll put you up for this!” snarled the stranger. The detective moved some of the bricks and pieces of lead piping which coyly peeped through paper wrappings, and a miscellaneous collection of watches, bangles, and other jewellery was disclosed.
The detective turned to Manio and said: “I arrest you for the Reefton burglaries on 1st February, 1930.”
Manio pleaded guilty at the trial. Having burgled most of Reefton during the absence of the residents at the picnic he wanted to get clear of the district quickly. He thought the left luggage branch of the Railways was the safest place to leave the “swag,” but preferred to buy at the auction so as to be able to account for having the goods if caught with them later.
Only Teddy Brew's smartness in remembering his face and that the boxes were consigned the day of the picnic and burglary, upset his plans.
A Railway station is an admirable place, although Ruskin did not think so. He did not think so because he himself was even more modern than the railway station. He did not think so because he was himself feverish, irritable, and snorting like an engine. He could not value the ancient silence of the railway station.
“In a railway station,” he said, “you are in a hurry, and therefore miserable;” but you need not be either unless you are as modern as Ruskin. The true philosopher does not think of coming just in time for his train except as a bet or a joke.
The only way of catching a train I have ever discovered is to miss the train before. Do this, and you will find in a railway station much of the quietude and consolation of a cathedral. It has many of the characteristics of a great ecclesiastical building; it has vast arches, void spaces, coloured lights, and, above all, it has recurrence or ritual. It is dedicated to the celebration of water and fire, the two prime elements of all human ceremonial. Lastly, a station resembles the old religions rather than the new religions in this point, that people go to it. In connection with this it should also be remembered that all popular places, all sites actually used by the people, tend to retain the best routine of antiquity very much more than any localities or machines used by any privileged class. Things are now altered so quickly or coarsely by common people as they are by fashionable people.
Ruskin could have found more memories of the Middle Ages in the Underground Railway than in the grand hotels outside the stations. The great palaces of pleasure which the rich build in London all have brazen and vulgar names. Their names are either snobbish, like the Hotel Cecil, or (worse still) cosmopolitan like the Hotel Metropole. But when I go in a third-class carriage from the nearest circle station to Battersea, the names of the stations are one long litany of solemn and saintly memories. Leaving Victoria I come to a park belonging especially to St. James the Apostle; thence I go to Westminster Bridge, whose very name alludes to the awful Abbey; Charing Cross holds up the symbol of Christendom; the next station is called a Temple; and Black-friars remembers the mediaeval dream of a brotherhood.
If you wish to find the past preserved, follow the million feet of the crowd. At the worst the uneducated only wear down old things by sheer walking. But the educated kick them down out of sheer culture.
I feel all this profoundly as I wander about the empty railway station, where I have no business of any kind. I have extracted a vast number of chocofates from automatic machines; I have obtained cigarettes, toffee, scent, and other things that I dislike by the same machinery; I have weighed myself, with sublime results; and this sense not only of the healthiness of popular things, but of their essential antiquity and permanence, is still in possession of my mind. I wander up to the bookstall, and my faith survives even the wild spectacle of modern literature and journalism.
A good outline map of New Zealand's famous “Raurimu Spiral,” as reproduced in “The Railway Gazette,” London, Sept. 14, 1934. Raurimu Station is seven miles north of National Park Station (North Island Main Trunk Line).
By)
John Fairley
Maungapohatu, commonly known as Rua's Stronghold, Urewera Country.
Dawn was about to break over the bush-clad wilderness as we stopped our car by the road-side and prepared for the ten-mile tramp into the heart of the Urewera. A sign, faintly seen in the half-light, pointed the way to Maungapohatu, that scattered, almost inaccessible, little pa which the road-maps designate as Rua's Stronghold. As the light of day strengthened we strapped on our packs and tramped down the difficult trail into the dense bush, where little rivulets trickle perpetually from mossy banks and go splashing musically down the slopes.
The sound of a turbulent creek grew louder as we descended, and soon we were confronted by the unpleasant necessity of wading through the icy water.
On and on we followed the meanderings of this forest trail; over steep, lofty ridges, down into deep mountain valleys, sometimes levelling out through a fairy-like vista of magnificent ferns with the proud old forest giants towering above with far-flung branches. At one point the track became muddy where the soft clay had been cut away by the constant pounding of horses' hoofs. The trail soon resembled a ditch rather than a path; the sides were scarred where packs had scraped. The floor was uneven and zig-zagged where horses had trodden always in the same places.
Early morning mists hung low over the shoulders of the magnificent ranges, but slowly dissipated as the sun gradually cast his warm rays into the depths of the valleys. We had found at last unspoiled bush—the true bush devoid of comfortable hostels and notice boards and with no sign of human endeavour other than the forest trail. And yet, a threat of destruction has lately overhung this rugged, beautiful country, a country too rugged for good settlement, but invaluable as a scenic reserve, and a sure feed for the countless rivers that wind over dairy pastures on the way to the sea.
The tuis, and numerous other feathered songsters, kept up a continuous, undisturbed chorus. As we crossed the flat at Kakawahine a mob of wild pigs scampered off into the bush. Kakawahine appears both sublime and desolate. Beside a gurgling stream a few tottering old whares with wide, gaping doorways, gaze sadly through glassless windows upon pastures overgrown and deserted. Yet the whole place seems athrob with something unseen, something which frowns upon these evidences of man, but rejoices as the grasses grow long and the forest strives to reclaim its own.
From here, the trail leads over the most difficult range of all, and presently, from the summit, a few scattered whares can be seen far below. This is Maungapohatu, a veritable pa of the wilderness, known to many as Rua's Stronghold, but familiar in name only. The various buildings appear like midgets in a toy set, spread out on uneven ground down in the valley beside a winding stream. This mountain valley is practically devoid of bush, the land a fern covered waste except in parts where the flats show signs of cultivation. On the other side, Maungapohatu Mountain stands sentinel-like and majestically aloof, its covering of bush still in all its pristine glory, marred only by a few landslides and rocky faces. The upper reaches are covered by opaque mists, clinging fondly it seems, reluctant to leave old mother earth on the heavenward journey.
Rua's Stronghold may be conceived by many as being something of a fortified pa on a practically inaccessible eminence, bearing all the old features and traditions passed down by long departed progenitors, but this is far from being so. Undoubtedly, there is an historical flavour in the name so laconically set out in the road-maps, and with the passing of time, the meaning alone has changed, for Maungapohatu is a stronghold still. The lofty ranges and acres of dense bush, the deep valleys and countless streams, are now the fortifications, and the pakeha, with his complex system of living, constitutes the enemy. Nevertheless, the visitor receives a most genuine welcome in this isolated pa, because, no doubt, he
Native children photographed with their pakeha visitors at Maungapohatu, Urewera Country.
The buildings seemed to grow larger as we descended, then one more stream to cross, a slight rise to climb, and we clambered through a fence behind a row of whares. Wondering faces peeped through the windows, little children scampered inside. We paused awhile to watch a game of tennis being played by a few older children, and they seemed to be making good progress despite the fact that their racquets were fashioned from pieces of board.
They were very shy at first, but a few sweets produced from our bags magically broke the barrier. One might anticipate conversational difficulties in this mountain fastness, so far removed from civilization, and we were agreeably surprised when they answered our questions in excellent English and conducted themselves with a cultural courtesy that would put many more sophisticated people to shame.
We were the guests of Mr. Currie, the local Presbyterian missionary, and after locating his residence, were most hospitably received. It was surprising to find baths, stoves, and sewing machines in this isolated place. In the meeting house there is even a portable piano, and the missionary has a small organ, and it is hard to realise the difficulty entailed in packing such goods over that arduous ten-mile trail.
Our visit to the school introduced us to some exceedingly clever work executed by the pupils. Old motor tubes are skilfully cut and made into handsome purses, knife sheaths, racks, and innumerable other articles. A glance through a number of drawing books reveals work of a standard as high as in any pakeha school and bears evidence of many a young artist in the making. There are about forty children in attendance, and their chief pursuits reflect much credit on the efforts and influence of their pakeha teachers.
On Sunday in Maungapohatu Rua left to attend a tangi and almost the whole population followed him. We accompanied Mr. Currie to the big meeting house in the main village to attend a Sunday service. A tingle on a little bell brought a few children out in threes and fours in the leisurely fashion so characteristic of these out-of-the-way places. They gathered around the teacher as he hung coloured illustrations of Scriptural scenes on the wall, their interest in we strange pakehas vanishing as they became reverently absorbed as the missionary impressively told them, in Maori, the oldest story in the world.
Safety On The German Railways
Speeds up to 100 miles an hour for through trains on the main lines are the goal at which the German Railways Company are now aiming. But such speeds demand still more highly perfected safety measures, and hence a special department has been created in the central operating division in Berlin, charged with the perfecting of control methods. The chief aim is the developing of a system for the electromagnetic (inductive) controlling of operation. Only such a system comes into question for all speeds above 100 kilometres (62.13 miles) an hour.
The newly introduced inductive system has the advantage as against former systems that no parts of the locomotive come into physical contact with the apparatus on the lines. The locomotive is equipped with a magnet which constantly sends out electromagnetic waves of a fixed frequency throughout the trip. At all precautionary or stop signals along the line magnets tuned to the same frequency are attached, protected by cases. If the signal stands at track clear, the magnet of the locomotive is not influenced. If it stands at stop, however, different results ensue.
The first experiments along this line were made with a magnet of only one frequency in the locomotive, but the most modern apparatus permits the generating of three different frequencies. A frequency of 500 Hertz brings a full stop at the main signal, one of 1,000 Hertz a warning at the precautionary signal, and a frequency of 2,000 Hertz draws the engine driver's attention to the fact that he is exceeding the permissible speed on this or that section of track.
If the engine driver passes a warning signal, the train is automatically braked ten seconds later, unless he presses the so-called “attention lever.” If, having done this, he still does not slacker, speed, the brakes are applied automatically after another ten or fifteen seconds. And the brakes are set automatically immediately if a stop signal be passed. If the train is running at too high a speed, a warning bell is sounded in the locomotive cab.
Woods
A striking contrast. Locomotive “K” 900, built in the Department's workshops in 1932, and “F” 228, built by Dubs and Coy., Glasgow, 1880.
(Photo., Hugh Bennett).
Julius Vogel, Treasurer of New Zealand, placed his great Public Works scheme before the New Zealand Parliament on 28th June, 1870. Although the scheme was not original in plan, a similar one having been suggested eight years earlier when the Maori Wars had rendered it impossible to spend money on immigration and Public Works (1), the magnitude of Vogel's plans made the country gasp. His Government, behind which Vogel was the moving power, had to grapple with a difficult task. The Maori Wars had raised the burden of national debt to £8,828,000. The population was less than 250,000, and yet was scattered over nine provinces, each with its own Government. There were only forty-six miles of railways (2).
The elements in Vogel's answer to this problem were briefly these: (3) The colony was to incur a liability, spread over a number of years, amounting territorially and pecuniarily to about ten million pounds, which was to be expended in set proportions on immigration, main railways through each island, roads through the interior of the North Island, the purchase of native land in that island, the supplying of water on the goldfields, and the extension of telegraph works. These works were too vast to be undertaken by small local governments, and were to be carried out under a centralised national control. The necessity for thus taking the administration of Public Works and immigration out of the hands of the provincial authorities was pointed out by Vogel when he wrote: “Immigration and Public Works, from 1853, when the present Constitution was first established, to nearly the end of 1870, exclusively devolved on the several provinces; and it may be said that except to a limited extent in the provinces of Otago and Canterbury, they had from various causes ceased to exist for a number of years previous to the latter date. Even if the provinces had generally been able to administer these two great departments of colonisation, it became evident that an administration conducted by independent local authorities with distinct local interests and functions, would necessarily be disjointed and wanting in system and comprehensiveness.”
Vogel, in presenting his scheme to the House, stated that a desire was manifest throughout the whole country for some such scheme. (4)
“I now ask you to recognise that the time has arrived when we must set ourselves afresh to the task of actively promoting the settlement of the country. We recognise that the great wants of the colony are Public Works in the shape of roads and railways, and immigration… . Now, as to the mode of payment for these railways, it is essential, in order that we shall not proceed too fast and undertake more than our means will justify, that we should fix a very effectual limit to the liabilities incurred. Speaking broadly, I contend that during the next ten years the colony will run no risk if it commits itself to an expenditure of ten millions for railways and other purposes comprised in these proposals … The land should be made to bear a considerable portion of the burden. We propose that authority should be given to contract for the railways by borrowing money, by guaranteeing a minimum rate of profit or interest, by payments in land, by subsidies, or by a union of any two or more of these plans. The contractors may want some money, but they should be glad to receive some land to yield them a profit consequent upon the effects of the railway; and similarly, if the routes be judiciously selected, the contractors should be glad to keep the railways with the security of a minimum guarantee… . In some cases the Government might take as collateral security the results of a special tax, or a mortgage over particular properties, such as railways in course of progress, or over rents and tolls… . I suppose that some 1,500 or 1,600 miles of railway will require to be constructed, and that this can be effected at a cost of £7,500,000 together with two and a half million acres of land, and that, in addition, about a million will be required to carry out the other proposals I am making. I leave on one side the cost of immigration, because that expenditure will be essentially and immediately reproductive. Suppose that this money is expended at the rate of £850,000 a year for ten years… . So confident are we that a great deal of the work comprised in these proposals can be effected by guarantees or subsidies, and by land payments, that we seek authority to borrow only six millions to carry out our proposals, including immigration. For the first three years the payments will be so inconsiderable as to leave little room for apprehension of difficulty in finding the money. After three years, supposing that extraordinary sums are required, will it be a great hardship to increase the stamp duties, or to have a house tax, or an income tax, or some tax which will touch that lucky class, the absentees? … It (the question of immigration) is essentially one of the greatest questions of the day… . From whatever point of view you regard it… immigration is a profit to the state, if the immigrants can settle down and support themselves…
As every immigrant who becomes a settler will be a profit, so every immigrant who leaves the colony, or is unable to procure a livelihood in it will be a loss. We therefore say that we will introduce immigrants only to those parts of the colony which are prepared to receive them. What the nature of the preparation may be it would be impossible now to define. It might be land for settlement, it might be employment of an ordinary nature or on Public Works, it might be that facilities for establishing manufactures or aiding special co-operative settlements are offered.” (5)
The foregoing remarks show very clearly the various points which Vogel had in mind in developing his scheme. In view of them it can hardly be maintained that the scheme was not carefully safeguarded in most respects. The scheme was to work in a cycle. Immigrants were to provide the labour for the works, and so obtain employment as soon as they reached the colony. As waste lands were thus rendered accessible by their labours, they could take up sections and become producers.
It was provided that large tracts of land either already owned by the State, or to be purchased by it, along the routes of the railways, were to be reserved as a public estate. The possession of such land would facilitate settlement, while it would also form a security for the expenditure. It was calculated that on subsequent lease or sale, the great increment of values resulting from railway building through such lands would recoup the colony for a large part, and possibly for the whole of the expenditure. Vogel had also asked, as a further proviso, that there should be a tax on the improved value of lands benefitting from Public Works construction. Thus Vogel stipulated for sound security for the loans which he proposed to raise.
The magnitude of the scheme propounded in 1870 is well represented by an American writer: (6) “The total value of the appropriations of land and money, therefore, amounted to 60,000,000 or 70,000,000 dollars, which for a community of 250,000 was a bold bid for development; equivalent, in fact, to an appropriation of 18,000,000,000 or 20,000,000,000 dollars for public improvements in the United States to-day (1904), or enough to buy up all the railroads and telegraphs in the country, clear out the slums of our great cities, irrigate the thousands of acres of arid lands, and colonise the needy in co-operative settlements to the mutual benefit of themselves and the commonwealth.” This writer goes on to state that including the reservation of lands along the railroads as a public estate for future sale or lease, and the policy of a betterment tax on private lands opened up, the Public Works policy prepared by Vogel was one of the “wisest, justest, most far-sighted plans that has ever been devised for the development of a new country.”
[References: (1) “New Zealand in Evolution,” Scholefield, p. 158; (2) “Public Works in New Zealand,” W. J. Bull; (3) pamphlet, “The Finances of New Zealand,” also Handbook of New Zealand, 1879, p. 79; (4) “Are We to Stay Here?” Sealy; (5) New Zealand Hansard, July 28th, 1870, also Cyclopedia of New Zealand, Vol. I., p. 60; (6) “The Story of New Zealand,” F. Persons.]
(By “
Mac.”)Everyone knows him as “Dad.” That's the sort of fellow he is. In years an old man, but in spirit—well, ask those who go “first footing” when “Dad” goes the rounds. “Dad” does most things well. He is a tip-top gardener, plays a useful game of bowls, and can talk intelligently on most subjects from politics to wrestling. In one respect, however, he is peculiar; he hates railways! “Forty years in the service,” he says, “are enough for any man. Started cleaning and finished in charge at —–, and when I retired I finished.”
Yet “Dad” is a “steam” man. When a salesman tried to persuade him to trade-in his excellent, though old radio set, “Dad” crushed him by remarking: “What do I want with one of your new superheated arrangements?” Then he takes a pride in his treatment of his hot-water service. He demonstrates his ability to make a hot fire with a minimum of fuel, and how to keep the hot water supply at top peak. One night something went wrong and boiling water ran from an overflow in the roof where, according to all the laws of plumbing, only cold water should be. The proper vent was temporarily blocked, but “Dad” reckoned it was either a “vacuum” or excess pressure. He was setting to work with a spanner and a pipe wrench to remedy the trouble when better counsels prevailed and he called in a plumber. “What can a plumber do?” he argued. “In my day a man had to do his own repairs, and get his train home.” “Anyway, surely the safety valve should be dependable. The outfit should have a gauge so that a man could tell what pressure he was carrying.”
And he hates railways! He says this, and shortly after is telling a yarn about “that ‘D’ we had when I was firing to a Welsh fellow on the branch,” or, “that ‘U’ I had when I was running express trains on the plains. A tricky engine if you didn't know her, but good. Bit small in the boiler for the job, still—–.” He yarns of the “good old days” when men often spent twenty hours on end on the footplate; of nights of fog and storm, when your straining eyes sought substance in the shadows ahead. Or perhaps he has something amusing to tell of the days before the “Westinghouse,” when a man running late took a risk in pulling up on a greasy rail, and then backed up to the station. Perhaps he'll tell of a mate, fire-blind, not seeing that cow at the side of the track, “Lucky we didn't leave the road;” “She was a brand-new compound, and the main bearing—–.” So this man who hates railways yarns on. You ride in the cabs of express engines now scrapped; you roll along the plains with a “goods” on a moonlit morning, with your mate silent at his window, and the engine beating a “clickety-click, clickety-click” on the track beneath you. You “get there on time,” and all through it you feel this fine old man's pride in his craft.
And you sense a “something” you cannot define. “Devotion to duty” is too high sounding, for it is part of the job to the men who ride in the cabs; the best written rule book cannot guarantee it. There is nothing heroic about it; it is the simple tradition which decrees that a man must get his train “there,” on time, in safety.
(Photo., A. S. Campbell).
Scene at Ngapara Station (Otago) over thirty years ago, the occasion being a visit to the district by the then Prime Minister, the Rt. Hon. R. J. Seddon.
By)
Tangiwai
Looking through some sketches and photographs of scenes and people in the New Zealand of the last two or three generations, the thought comes that those casual visitors who assert that this country has not yet evolved a national type disregard the fact that strongly-marked human characteristics belong in greatest measure to the adventurous pioneering era and to the edge of settlement. As close settlement and city-building develop, and the rough places are made smooth and means of communication improved, the differences between the town and the country dweller tend to disappear. The townsman sees more of the far-back settler; travel is made easy and cheap. The radio, the cinema, help equally with the railway train and the motor-car to make the nation homogeneous. No populated part of the Dominion is isolated from the other, as Westland once was, and as the Urewera Maori country was, before the coming of railway and motor highways. The Westlander, the gold-digger, the surveyor in the back-country, the native-born bushmen and scouts who tackled the Maori in his forest sanctuaries, the coast whaler, were men apart in their manner of life, their attire and often their speech.
Some day perhaps this country will develop the so-called type for which literary folk and other visitors from overseas say they are looking. But the “characters” belong to the adventurous past about which so much has still to be written.
Photographs of some of the old-time ships once such familiar sights at the New Zealand wharves, bring up a flood of memories. The London clippers, the handsome painted-port square-riggers, the smart coasting and South Sea schooners and brigantines, the sturdy barques that took timber and coal across the Tasman Sea, were always in the harbour picture. A memory just now of an incident on a long-ago week-end yachting cruise down the glorious old Hauraki:
It was a fine Sunday morning. A tall ship, one of those big black-painted New York square-riggers that we used to admire for their lofty spars and snowy cotton sails, came strolling up through the Motuihi Channel, the eastern entrance to Auckland Harbour. This is the side-door to the port, the little ships' way, the tradesmen's entrance, so to say. It was the American skipper's first voyage to Auckland; he did not know that Rangitoto Channel was the usual course; the east channel looked as good as any other. There is a long reef, just under water, that runs out from Motutapu Island almost half way across the passage. The yacht's crew, standing out from Drunken Bay—that delectable deep indent between Rangitoto Island and Motutapu—for a day's fishing, saw to their amazement this big Yank coming along serenely, everything set to royals, all but grazing that hidden reef.
“Hi, Captain!” one of the boys yelled, as the yacht ran up on the ship's starboard quarter, “you've come in the wrong way!”
The skipper leaned over the rail. He was a Down-Easter, with a sawed-off sandy beard. He looked at the lads, and courteously expectorating aside, said in a Massachusets drawl:
“Much obliged to you, stranger, but that's Arkland town up yonder, isn't it?”
“Yes,” said the yacht spokesman.
‘Waal, then, I'm in now and I'm etarnally goldurned if I'm goin’ ter turn round and go out and come in the right way.”
There were some unravelled mysteries in the maritime stories of our early days. I have before me some notes, tantalisingly brief, of the tragic affair of the cutter “Three Bees.” (A name to excite enquiry. There was a ship of the name that brought convicts out to New South Wales over a century ago and then went whaling in these waters.)
The New Zealand cutter was built on the east coast of the Coromandel Peninsula at the place now known as Kennedy's Bay. The builder and owner was a Mr. John Kennedy, who arrived in New Zealand in 1836 and married a Maori chieftainess. He traded with the Maoris, and he loaded ships with kauri spars.
About the year 1843 Kennedy sailed in his cutter for either Auckland or the Bay of Islands. He is said to have had with him a sum of over £4000, mostly in gold, the profits of his trading and timber-ship-loading; he intended to bank this money. The crew of the cutter, three in number, murdered Kennedy for the sake of his money, and threw the body overboard. This deed is supposed to have been committed near the Great Barrier Island. The vessel never reached her destination; her disappearance was long a mystery. The villains sailed her down the coast and into the Bay of Plenty, where they scuttled her, and made for the shore in the dinghy. They landed at Tauranga; and by devious ways found their way north to Hokianga, where they shipped in a kauri-carrying vessel for Sydney.
One of the three had committed other murders in New South Wales, and he was arrested and convicted. Before he was hanged he confessed that he and his gang had murdered the owner of the “Three Bees” and pirated the cutter, and that they had killed nine other men at various times. What happened to the other two murderers is not known.
So goes the story, but that is all that is definitely known. There are the bones of an adventure or detective tale in this, for some of our young New Zealanders who have a bent for research work. Some of the descendants of the ill-fated cutter-owner are living in the Poverty Bay country today.
ByW. W.
Bridgman
Standing upon your head is a pastime that can be recommended as being much more exhilarating than golf or rugby football. We are so used to seeing things right way up that it is sometimes refreshing to take a look at the world from a totally different point of view. If we are in New Zealand, we can travel to England and secure a first-rate Antipodean outlook on the manners and customs of the barbarous New Zealanders; if we are natives of England, we can emigrate to the South Seas and amuse ourselves at the expense of the insular, hide-bound Britons to whom we have just been murmuring tender words of farewell. This is precisely the method adopted by Samuel Butler, whom all New Zealanders, whatever their philosophical or religious convictions, should be proud to have had in their midst during the years 1860 to 1864.
It was all a question of infant baptism. Butler had been destined for the ministry, but, having ventured to express some doubts as to the efficacy of infant baptism, he found that his relations with the family had become somewhat strained. Accordingly, in September, 1859, he set sail for New Zealand in the “Roman Emperor.” Even during the voyage he refused to take anything for granted. For instance, we are all accustomed to talk glibly of the Southern Cross; Butler's sharp eyes perceived at once that this was not strictly accurate, for while on board ship he wrote: “It isn't a cross. It is a kite, a kite upside down, an irregular kite upside down, with only three respectable stars, and one very poor and very much out of place.”
(Railway Publicity photo.)
Wellington by night, as seen from Oriental Bay.
A very practical man, this new immigrant of ours. No sooner had he settled in Canterbury than he gladly availed himself of any information the inhabitants could give him. Having made several excursions into the interior, he finally established himself in “Mesopotamia,” a run of eight thousand acres in the upper gorge of the Rangitata. There he prospered. His sheep throve, and his cash balance increased with agreeable rapidity. Like Bernard Shaw, Butler considered poverty a crime, and condemned unhesitatingly the existing social conditions.
Now that he was an independent sheep-farmer, Butler found new light breaking in upon him. While he was living in England, he had had some difficulty in crystallising his ideas, but now, in comparative isolation, he realised that his thoughts were growing clearer day by day. He was a man of wide interests. Literature, theology, philosophy, science, art, and music—all were grist to his mill; and here in New Zealand he found an opportunity to interweave these interests and present them to his readers in a straight-forward, fascinating way.
The process was gradual. In a New Zealand paper—“The Press” of the 20th December, 1862—he published a “Dialogue on ‘Darwin on the Origin of Species'” and later his “Darwin Among the Machines”—a letter that, in these days of intense economic discussion, might still be the means of creating a strenuous controversy. Not that Butler refused to pay his respects to Darwin and his work—he merely disagreed with the great scientist on certain points, and had the courage to say so. Darwin, he considered, was assuming the garb of a prophet and must be ruthlessly exposed, and so, by painting a picture of machines endowed with definite consciousness and finally dominating man, Butler succeeded in anticipating by nearly half a century the thought-provoking Robots of the modern stage.
By this time New Zealand had become part and parcel of Butler's life and thought. In a volume entitled “A First Year in Canterbury Settlement” not only does he give an excellent record of New Zealand plants, animals, and geological formations, but his observations on sheep and bullocks are shrewd and to the point. He even goes so far as to describe for the benefit of the uninitiated a model sheep-run according to the Butlerian philosophy. Then he sits down to write his most popular book, “Erewhon,” published in 1872, a work that contains all his old theories stated in a new and attractive guise.
The title is arresting. It is, of course, an inversion of the word “nowhere,” though two letters, “wh,” which Butler regarded as one sound, are not interchanged. With this in mind, we shall have no difficulty in recognising two of its main characters, Mr. Nosnibor and the jailer's daughter Yram, or in identifying the prim and proper Ydgrunites whom the author satirises so mercilessly. For the book is pure satire from start to finish, and everything which at first sight we may think peculiar about it has in reality a deep secondary meaning. Here in its pages we have a Utopia—a Utopia which has for its actual setting the undiscovered country beyond the mountain ranges of the South Island, but which in its application to human thought and experience is world-wide in its appeal.
Once more we are in the upper gorge of the Rangitata, and the hero of the book, bent on discovering what lies beyond the ranges, has, after a
In the country of the Erewhonians, the adventurer is treated with inimitable courtesy; but before long he discovers certain peculiarities in their behaviour. His watch, for instance, they regard with extreme horror, and in a later chapter the author describes their attitude to machines in general. “The servant glides by imperceptible approaches into the master, and we have come to such a pass that, even now, man must suffer terribly on ceasing to benefit the machines. If all machines were to be annihilated at one moment, so that not a knife nor lever nor rag of clothing nor anything whatsoever were left to man but his bare body alone that he was born with, and if all knowledge of mechanical laws were taken from him, so that he could make no more machines, and all machine-made food destroyed, so that the race of man should be left as it were naked upon a desert island, we should become extinct in six weeks.” So the Erewhonians, fearful of the tyranny of the machines, rose in revolt and destroyed all such evidences of European civilisation, and the greater part of their national museum was occupied by broken machinery of all descriptions. “There were fragments of steam-engines, all broken and rusted; among them I saw a cylinder and piston, a broken fly-wheel, and part of a crank, which was laid on the ground by their side.” This in itself gives food for thought; but it is only fair to point out that Butler himself did not regard the machines with such extreme terror and disgust.
Not a whit less advanced were Butler's ideas on crime and disease. In an irresistibly amusing fashion he describes the attitude of the Erewhonians towards their “criminals.” “In that country, if a man falls into ill-health, or catches any disorder, or fails bodily in any way before he is seventy years old, he is tried before a jury of his countrymen, and if convicted is held up to public scorn and sentenced more or less severely as the case may be.” Hence the Erewhonians possess a somewhat remarkable code of manners. They do not say, “I hope you are well this morning,” because to be unwell is with them a serious breach of law. So they greet one another with “I hope you are good this morning” or “I hope you have recovered from the snappishness from which you were suffering when I last saw you,” and they try their prisoners for such odious offences as illness or misfortune. Thus one young man afflicted with pulmonary consumption is sentenced to imprisonment with hard labour for the rest of his miserable existence; while a youth charged with having been swindled out of his property during his minority by his guardian, receives twelve strokes with a cat-o'-nine-tails. “Young man,” said the judge sternly, “do not talk nonsense. People have no right to be young, inexperienced, greatly in awe of their guardians, and without independent professional advice.” People, Butler means to convey, have no right to be poor in a country overflowing with wealth, or sickly when the means of building up a healthy, virile race are at their disposal if only they have the intelligence to use them.
By way of contrast we have the pathetic story of Mr. Nosnibor, a wealthy merchant, who in the course of his dealings on the Stock Exchange has embezzled a large sum of money. “He drove home at once, broke the news to his wife and daughters as gently as he could, and sent off for one of the most celebrated straighteners of the kingdom
Junction of the Hooker and Mueller Glaciers, Mt. Cook, South Island, New Zealand.
Of the Ydgrunites and the Musical Banks, the Colleges of Unreason and the World of the Unborn the author has much to say that will inevitably interest the earnest reader. That Butler owed much to his temporary exile in New Zealand must be obvious to all. New Zealand gave him renewed confidence in himself as a writer; it benefited his health to a marked degree; and it gave him the opportunity for reviewing in his dispassionate way the habits and customs of the Victorian era. Immortality is his, the immortality he so fondly desired when he wrote: “I fall asleep in the full and certain hope That my slumber shall not be broken And that though I be all forgetting
Yet shall I not be all forgotten
But continue that life in the thoughts and deeds Of those I loved Into which while the power to strive was yet vouchsafed me I fondly strove to enter.”
“Cigarettes are superseding cigars in this Country,” remarks the “New York Times”, It's the same story in New Zealand, where the sale of cigars, even the cheaper qualities, is steadily dwindling. Like the Yanks we smoke prodigious quantities of cigarettes (in proportion to population). Nevertheless and notwithstanding, the pipe, with us, is more than holding its own. It's true that the coarser brands of tobacco are not nearly so much in request as formerly. The demand now is for brands of a better—but not necessarily a more expensive grade, with less nicotine in them. In a word smokers are at last waking up to the fact that nicotine is a menace and must be cut out. Hence the overwhelming success of “New Zealand Toasted,” which, quite moderate in price, combines flavour and bouquet with practically complete immunity from risk. The effect of toasting is magical!—it gets rid of the nicotine! The genuine toasted brands are five in number: Cut plug No. 10 (Bullshead), Navy Cut No. 3 (Bulldog), Cavendish, Desert Gold and Riverhead Gold.
(By
Tohunga
In the farewell address by the Waikato Maoris to their Excellencies Lord and Lady Bledisloe there were some of the poetic allusions in which the old-time orators delighted and which fortunately are still treasured and on occasion used by their descendants.
One of these eloquent flights of symbolism likened the departing Governor and his wife to the “Kowhai-tu-rangiora” of legend, the sacred trees that showered their golden blossoms (typifying benevolence and affection) on the Maori people. The classic expression is a very beautiful phrase to the Maori mind. Rangiora is an ancient Polynesian name; it signifies health, beauty, and well-being and joyfulness, and a great deal more. I have frequently heard mention of the “Kowhai-tu-rangiora” in ceremonial speeches among the Waikato, Ngati-Maniapoto and other tribes descended from the crew of the immigrant sailing canoe Tainui. It is peculiarly a saying of the Tainui stock. Students of comparative folk-lore may be reminded of Fraser's “Golden Bough.”
“Hui-te-Rangiora,” with which the allusion to ever-blooming kowhai trees is interwoven, is the full and original form of the name Rangiora in this association. The reference I have traced back to a very remote period, long before the Maoris left their tropic islands homes for this new land. In the other world, as I translated the story I had from Ngati-Maniapoto elders, now passed on to that shadowy land, there was a great and sacred dwelling called Hui-te-Rangiora, meaning the assembly-place of all things good and wise and delightful, the abode of health and life. The high chief of that place was named Miru. He was an alua or god; he is also described in the tradition as a Patupaiarehe, that is a fairy-like being, a spirit. He had the power of making himself invisible, and in this way he wooed and won a beautiful girl of this world named Hine-rangi or Heavenly Maid. The great sacred house stood in the place called Te Tatau-o-te-Po, otherwise the Door of the Other World. Hui-te-Rangiora was a kind of Hy-Brasil, the enchanted isle far in the West that beckons the soul of the Celt to a faery Paradise.
Moreover, Hui-te-Rangiora was the home of fine arts and of all learning. In that place Miru the atua taught all manner of charms and prayers and ceremonies. There, too, were taught all the joyous games and amusements that bring pleasure to mankind. In this home of learning the wisdom of the Maori and the arts of skill that were desirable to teach and preserve were handed down from generation to generation.
A most curious bit of folk-lore this, and one of much beauty when unfolded in full. I have an ancient song enumerating the desirable kinds of knowledge preserved therein, and the chanted farewell of Hine-rangi's father when the maid of this world departed to dwell with Miru in his magic hall.
Hui-te-Rangiora is a greatly honoured name among the Ngati-Maniapoto people. To-day there is a Maori home known by that name; it is the house of Rewi Maniapoto's widow on the south bank of the Puniu River, close to the present main highway bridge, two miles from Kihikihi township. It was the name of Rewi's council-house which stood at Kihikihi over sixty years ago; this carved house, in which the chiefs of the tribe discussed their political policy and other matters of importance, was burned by the British troops when they invaded and occupied Kihikihi in 1864. So present is linked with past, in the traditional poetry and figurative sayings so treasured by the Maori.
Many years ago, when three of us explored the mysterious—seeming little grove of gale-twisted manuka which grows around the traditional resting-place of the Tainui canoe at Kawhia Harbour, I wished for a spade where-with to satisfy our curiosity in a perfectly legitimate spirit of scientific enquiry, of course, as to what lay underneath the surface in this sacred spot. As it was, we could only wonder whether any valued relic of the past was buried there, or whether that clear space beneath the ancient trees, that bent over it as if in protection, of the tapu ground, was simply the spot on which the Tainui's hull fell to decay six centuries ago. A friend who visited the place lately has sent me a photo snap he took of it which shows that the historic clump of small trees that shelters it has thinned considerably since I first saw it.
The two white stones, each about four feet high, which were placed there by the captain and the tohunga of Tainui, still stand, marking the length of that sailing canoe of long ago; the stones are about sixty-six feet apart.
Many points of resemblance between the Celtic race and the Maori have often been remarked upon. When I first read Miss Gordon Cumming's book “In the Hebrides,” the traditions of famous Iona island at once reminded me of the tapu resting-place of Tainui, in the sacred manuka grove, in particular the story of St. Columba's curragh or coracle. Miss Cumming described “The Port-na-churraich, or Harbour of the Boat, the spot where St. Columba and his brethren are said to have buried the frail coracle of wicker covered with hides, in which they sailed hither—lest they should ever be tempted to return to their beloved Ireland.” In the middle of this stony shore is a small grassy hillock, just the shape of a boat lying keel uppermost; and, curiously enough, corresponding in size to the traditional measurements of St. Columba's curragh. “This is the place where it is supposed to be buried and the only spot where (doubtless out of compliment to the Emerald Isle) the grass continues to grow.”
The shore of Kawhia Harbour must have risen considerably during the six centuries since Tainui was hauled ashore there. The grove of the canoe is several hundred yards inland and higher than the landing-place at Maketu village, the now modernised little settlement on the beach. That kainga, by the way, like the other Maketu on the Bay of Plenty, where the Arawa canoe was beached after her long voyage from Tahiti, was named after a village in the Polynesian homeland of the people.
By
Quentin Pope
It was the magic of the name of Vardon which had brought the great crowd to Brookline that September, just a year before Europe became a shambles and the graveyard of seventeen million men. For Vardon's fame was world-wide, he was the supreme artist of the game, swooping gracefully at the ball while on his toes like a ballet dancer; he had won championships innumerable and had really converted the United States to golf. That tour of 1900 when he had won over fifty matches of the sixty played, though in most cases he had to face the best ball of two rivals, was still fresh in memory. And with him was the great iron player, Edward Ray.
These two veteran golfers had faced the field in the American Open, a trifle tired from their visits to a dozen courses and had seen their names at the top at the close. But those names were not alone. With them was that of a young man of twenty-one, an amateur, Francis Ouimet, who worked in a golf shop in Boston and was attached to the Woodland Club near that city. The largest field that had ever entered for the event, 170 competitors, with other famous golfers from England and France, had narrowed down to these three, the two finest players in England and this unknown boy from a sports goods store. MacDonald Smith, Jerome Travers, Wilfred Reid, these were some of the famous golfers who had failed. In the qualifying round Ray had led the field with a total of 148, but at the beginning of the championship proper he fell into a period of general slackness and his morning round on the first day was a 79, eight strokes behind the leader. A brilliant 70, a new course record, in the afternoon, retrieved some of the lost ground, placing him two strokes behind Vardon and Reid, another Briton. Four places lower was the unassuming Ouimet, who was to make history a few days later, but to-day he did not attract any attention because all eyes were on the cracks from overseas who were naturally expected to win the event. The young American began with a 77, he followed that with a 74 which was better, but nothing to grow excited about. And what was more he began with two 6's at holes which were comparatively simple 4's.
But the following day there had been a change of scene. The fine weather vanished and from two o'clock in the morning the rain descended in sheets. The sudden need for an alteration in touch caught the cracks out. Vardon's putting deteriorated, his confidence deserted him. He took 41 to play the first nine holes and though he came back in 37 it was valuable ground lost. Ray had also been 41 out, but his homeward journey was better and he stood two strokes better on the round giving him the same aggregate as Vardon—225. But in the afternoon both the British players crashed heavily. Vardon began with figures of 55655, unbelievable for him. He finally had to smoke for the first time in his life when playing a match, in order to steady his nerves. Ray was as bad. Both of them escaped an 80 by the skin of their teeth and when they returned to the club-house it was to consider that their hopes had vanished.
But as time passed it became clear that it was a day of disaster. Player after player returned to report undreamed of scores made on the slushy fairways and sodden greens. The most feared Americans, it seemed, had crashed, too. Then gradually there spread the news that Ouimet was achieving great things somewhere out on the course. Anxiously a new gallery ran out to find a desperate position. Ouimet was four holes from home, they were holes of 370, 125, 360, and 410 yards, and he had to play them in one stroke better than 4344 to tie. He almost lost a stroke at the first hole when he pushed out his iron to the green, but his chip was on the very edge of the hole and all he had to do was tap it in for a 4. He got his 3 at the sixteenth without trouble and at the seventeenth he picked up the stroke he needed when he sent down a thirty-six foot putt for a 3. Everything then depended on the final hole. Amidst the silence of a tense crowd the young American played soundly, holed a five foot putt and got his 4 to tie with Vardon and Ray.
The question on this final day was not so much if he would win as whether he would make a good showing. At
(Railway Publicity photo.)
Arrival at Tauranga of the Frankton Railway Employees' Excursion Train on the occasion of their annual picnic, 27th January, 1935.(Railway Publicity photo.)
Geraldine, South Canterbury, New Zealand.
This tenth is quite a short hole—140 yards—no more than a mashie-niblick pitch, but without any concession to the man who is off the line and with a green which looks horribly small from the tee. Everywhere are woods and bunkers and in front there is first a stream and then a big bunker with a timbered face. All three players reached the green with their tee-shots, but both Vardon and Ray had to putt over the holes which their balls had made in the muddy surface before jumping backwards. Ouimet's ball was extremely muddy, but he got it down in two putts, whereas the others needed three and he took the lead. It was to prove the turning point, for he never let that lead go again. At the twelfth he was two strokes up. Vardon got one of these back at the thirteenth by a good pitch and putt. The pace was hot now and it was obvious that someone would crack soon and the someone proved to be Ray. He was bunkered, took two to get out and was four strokes down to Ouimet. That was the end of him, but Vardon was still only one stroke behind, he was in fine form and he had the honour at the sixteenth, a not extremely easy short hole. The old master unwound himself and played a beauty. Ouimet's caddie wiped the grip of his club with a towel before handing it to the American, and the young amateur roused cheers as his ball soared high and true. Amidst deafening noise from the rocks and promontories where men with red flags waved wildly and megaphones boomed, the ball fell beside Vardon's on the green. Ouimet got his 3 and Vardon could do no better. Ouimet one stroke up and two to play.
It was the seventeenth which ended it all. Vardon could see now that there was no hope of him winning on the nerves of his youthful rival. The finish in the fourth round had shown that and now Ouimet was playing the man which was never so hard for him as playing the score. Vardon took a short cut for the hole and was trapped. He could not get better than 5. Ouimet played perfectly again. He steered his tee-shot to the right of a looming hazard, put his second eighteen feet from the hole and had to putt downhill. The green was fast in spite of the weather. Ouimet might not even lay the putt dead, in which case Vardon would have the chance of picking up his lost stroke on the last hole. But the American surveyed the scene calmly and then hit the ball with perfect judgment and caressing gentleness so that it trickled downhill slowly and then trickled into the hole to the accompaniment of a shout of delight. It was all over now if the American finished the course at all for he had a lead of three strokes. The last hole must have tried his nerves, however. There was a wait while the two Britons, outdriven from the tee, played their seconds. Ray put his on the green, Vardon, from a heavy lie, went into the bunker. Ouimet shaped up to the ball confidently and with a click sent it soaring over the bunker and onto the putting surface. So Vardon was beaten by five strokes and Ray by six.
By)
John R. Hastings
There is nothing in the world more individual, more emphatically itself, than a great railway terminus. Think but a moment of Charing Cross, Paddington, and Waterloo. Picture them as they may be seen week by week and month by month; and if nothing comes into your head but a confused medley of loud voices, dingy waiting-rooms, and hurrying crowds, you do not deserve the name of an observer.
A railway station, like a house, takes its name from the people who occupy it, and every station has distinct types of its own. Similarly, we may say that a terminus is a kind of summing-up of all the stations along the route. If the railroad passes chiefly through business towns, the terminus will swarm with business people; if it goes to the southern coast of England, it will be crowded with holiday-seekers.
As I think over the names of the great London termini, I am surprised to find how rapidly my emotions change. For instance, there is Victoria—all sunshine and fresh air. Instinctively the visitor repeats the word “holiday.” Then there is Charing Cross—that means the Continent. And then St. Pancras—another name for Scotland. Sure enough it has a misty atmosphere!
For Charing Cross, though somewhat small and grimy, I have the deepest regard. Not only does it imply the Continent, but it has a peculiarly cosmopolitan temperament; it bears the name which the whole world associates with London.
Paddington is an essentially English station where a foreigner would be entirely out of place.
There is a distinct air of polish about the name Euston. It rings with elegance and early Victorian quality. The great arch at the entrance gives the keynote—a little severe, perhaps, but still in harmony with stately, old-fashioned good breeding. It has a classical, a Roman flavour, the columns are of Doric simplicity, and there is just the one word “Euston” blazoned in gold letters at the top.
Then we come down from aristocracy to upper middle-class—to Waterloo, in fact, whither come trains from a number of decidedly nice suburbs. This is the station you go to if you want to be a genuine tourist, but are unwilling to leave England for another country.
Waterloo is lively, but its liveliness is rather the bustling kind than the more Gallic and spirited activity of Charing Cross. There is none of the grandeur of Paddington or the elegance of Euston. It is a large, comfortable station. Yes, Waterloo is decidedly upper middle-class.
Then there is Fenwick Street. The atmosphere is usually smoky and foggy, for the sum rarely shines in Fenwick Street.
What a contrast is Victoria! Here everything is sunny and pleasant. The light red brickwork, the clean granite columns, the freshly painted woodwork all fit in with the holiday mood of the crowds inside.
From Victoria all classes travel, from Royalty downwards—for all classes combine on holidays. Certainly there is a gaiety, a lightness about this station that is very distinct from any other.
Every one of these stations has, to my mind, a most distinct temperament. There are people to whom they bear a decided resemblance. Charing Cross seems like a foreigner, cosmopolitan, and yet provincial at the same time; Paddington is like Louis Phillipe, or some other old-fashioned, early Victorian king; Euston is like—no, not like, but it reminds me of Major Pendennis. Take Fagin for Fen-church Street, and for Victoria you have Robert Louis Stephenson!
The old Metropolitan railway stations have some personality, but they are the good old battered-up type. King's Cross, Liverpool Street, St. Pancras, Cannon Street are not without their characteristics, but they do not stand forth like the Great Five among the stations of the world.
An Appreciation.
Writing to the Chairman of the Government Railways Board, Mr. H. H. Sterling, C.M.G., Mr. Garth Hail, Koromatua, commends the services rendered by the stationmaster at Eltham, in the following appreciative terms:—
I am prompted to write this letter to you personally, commending the action of one of your responsible òfficers. My small son, aged five years, had been spending the summer holidays with relations near Patea, Tara-naki, and was to have come home with friends by car. The arrangements that these parties made over the telephone was that the boy be put on the train at Patea and met at Eltham. However, the boy was put off at Eltham by a passenger (who apparently was asked to do this) and no one was there to meet him. The stationmaster, Mr. A. W. Jackson, seeing the boy alone, took it on his shoulders (fortunately) to find an owner for him. Just what trouble this entailed may be gathered from the fact that the boy did not know at which station he was put on the train, could not give any information as to who put him on the train (other than Aunty), and did not know who was to meet him. The station-master was kept busy for two hours ringing up, finally ascertaining (through the guard of the train) that the boy entrained at Patea, and then, with the co-operation of the Patea Post Office, the telephone call was traced and our friends arrived at Eltham for the boy three hours after the train.
Without the kind consideration shown by the station-master of Eltham anything may have happened, as it was 6.30 p.m. when the boy arrived.
The lad is now home and quite innocent of the trouble that was made over him. The action of the station-master concerned is appreciated and serves in still another manner to demonstrate what thoughtfulness is now given to the users of the New Zealand Railways.
Perpetrated and Illustrated by
Ken Alexander
If You would make the world your orange to be seized and squeezed, if you would see the world without “spend,” if you would sample the subtle scents of the mystic East, the lotus-laden airs of isles becalmed in scented seas, the whistling sting of the Ice King's breath through mountain pines, the snarl of age-old cataracts, the shout of the seas, the moan of the mounting storm, and peaceful evening laying a soothing palm across the burning brow of day in some far land of light and colour; if you would have these things, while yet lashed to the chariot wheel of Commerce—though your pocket be as empty as your head is full, they are yours if you will take them. Simply you rub the lamp of imagination and, lo! there comes to you the geni of Vision saying: “What would you, master?” And, if you are wise, you will not answer thus: “I would drink deep of the vintage which is of gold, I would eat long of the flesh pots of Egypt, oh verily! and taste of the delights of scented idleness.” No sir, you would say: “Give to me, oh gem, a nose that knows the language of Imagination, an eye that is a window in the tower of Vision, and a mind, semi-detached, that can take to itself the wings of the albatross and zoom to the ends of the earth.”
Then all else you need is an hour of old Fugit's “tempus,” a peaceful mind, and a mile or two of wharves. For the wharves are where the world steps off to shake your hand and say “how do,” and its hundred inevitable equivalents. There the air is heavy with the breath of foreign lands and the scenery is strewn with raw material for building castles in Spain, log cabins in Canada, pagodas in China, bridges in Japan, temples in Burma, and any other structure your sub-conscious contractor craves to erect on the building sites of your brain. For—The sea is the open track Whence Romance comes, Tramping through heat and wrack, Beating her Diesel drums, Bearing her merchandise, Singing her wares—Sugar and tea and spice, China and chairs.
The sea is the road she bides, Keeping the track, Salt on her heaving sides, Spray on her back.
Out of the East and the West, Beating her drums, Tramping at Trade's behest; That's how she comes! Who but the knowing can tell
Where Romance bides, Battered by blizzard and swell,
Rust on her streaming sides.
Which but the eye that discerns, And the vision that speaks, Takes what the gold-beater spurns, And the Romancer seeks, Black and high-pooped though she be, Blistered and bare, Those with discernment can see The romance that is there.
It is there; it is here in this tramp from Canada, moored like a giant captive “hippo,” her stern soaring up from her rudder post in a blank black curve, broken only by her name rambling across her wide posterior. A blade of her single propeller juts out of the water like the burst-out busk of a disreputable corset. Her decks sweep unadorned to the castle-like superstructure in her middle. She is untidy; she is one of the salt-soaked “hoi polloi,” but she has a sort of robust vulgarity which seems to say: “I mebbe rough, I mebbe tough but, buddy, I sticks to me pals.” She is a Mae West of the seven seas. God help me, I fall in love with her ample curves and her honest countenance. And the scent she uses! It breathes of pines cloaked in frost, of trappers on snow-shoes, of bears snuffling to their winter beds; it brings visions of lumber camps, of lumber-jacks leaping bucking logs in the swirl of icy rivers.
“A nose that, knows the language of imagination.”
And here, on the other side of the wharf, dipping her sawn-off bowsprit to the greasy swell, is a bulgy, blunt-nosed, slab-sterned, flat-bottomed relic of the days before the sea dogs slipped their earthly leashes and shipped aboard the celestial bark for the eternal voyage. Her two masts are stumpy, and her soiled sails are wrapped about her booms. A ship such as this, with the addition of a castle poop, may have taken Columbus across the seas to discover the land of the three D's—dollars, deals and doughnuts. But there is something sailorly and salty about her—something sea-sousy and saucy. Apart from the metallic contraption in her bowels which is called an engine, but which looks like a baker's oven with ambitions, she is one of the “white-wings” and she has the novelty of the good old-fashioned girl (almost extinct) that she is. You can see her burying her stem deep in the frothy rollers like Dockside Dora of old, dipping her nose into a schooner of rum-and-porter. There is a scent of tar in her breath and a hint of devil-may-care in her rolling gait. She looks as if all her cargo should be kegs and barrels; by rights there should be a teak brass-bound salt-horse tub abaft the mainmast, and a brass cannon at her stern.
It is easy to picture her slipping into a blue lagoon where the parakeets are screaming and the white gulls swooping and crying around her truck. Such is the prompting of Imagination, but dull Truth tries to compel Common Sense to admit that she chugs and staggers from port to port with her abdomen heavy with cement and galvanised iron. But why admit it?
“Bears snuffling to their winter beds.”
It's not what she is, but all that she suggests—
A snow-white bird to skim the ocean crests,
Adventuring among the isles of dreams It's not the ship she is, but what she seems.
You see her bravely heeled, with scuppers churning
The torquoise waves her questing prow is spurning;
You see her skipper gallant, legs out-spread,
Who spins the wheel to take her by the head;
You hear the mournful cry that sailors know,
Blown down from up aloft, a long “la-a-a-nd ho!”
Perhaps the Jolly Roger's at her truck,
The while she sends a parting shot, for luck,
Across the bow of some wide-bellied cruiser,
Which, knowing it is vain, yet still pursues her.
The scenes her barrel sides cause you to dream,
Are pictures from the mystic Might-have-been.
Across the way a fat, stump-funnelled tramp flaunts the flag of the rising sun. Her forecastle rail is lined with small brown faces which look like a row of Oriental “aunt salleys” carved from teak.
She smells of the East—that rice-and-joss-stick aroma which pervades the haunts of Orientals. Here your sub-conscious picture-projector gives you a flash of half-moon bridges leaping over lily-clad ponds reflecting the evening sun impaled on the tip of a painted mountain.
Across the way is the lady of luxury, the lily-white aristocrat of the seas, her broad beam sveltly corsetted by the best corsettieres of the Clydebank, her ample bust compressed in a filigree
The End of “The Jolly Old Tar.”
(A Tragedy of The High Seize.
best people. Argentinian cattle kings flick a faultless napkin at her tables, Pittsburg millionaires pace her promenades, and milords and their ladies do their daily dozen round her immaculate decks. She stalks into every port with little funnelled flunkeys tooting the tidings of her arrival. She is the Luxury Liner, She seems to examine each city through haughtily upraised lorgnette; she is the lady of the “look.” But she is really a dear old duchess at heart, and even cattle kings are much as you and I beneath their “airtex.” Certainly they offer something of the romance of the rolling pampas and, in spite of their Midas handicap, they must sense something of the glamour which is a part of every land one wasn't born in.
And so, if you would travel without travelling, Slip down to the wharf, Take an hour or two off; You will travel a lot— If you know what is what.
And when you get home your wife will say: “Have you been very far?” And you will answer, “Thousands of miles.” And she will think you are slightly mad—and so you are; but happily mad. Being happily mad is like being happily married—there is a lot of satisfaction in it.
An Appreciation.
From C. F. Mill ward & Co., Wanganui, to the General Manager of Railways, Wellington:—
We wish to convey to you an appreciation of the business-like way in which your Department is managing the handling of goods traffic.
As Shipping Agents, we have to deal with large quantities of cargo both import and export; frequently there are two or three ships to be attended to at the same time and the bulk of the cargo is taken from and brought to them by New Zealand Railways. A short time ago there was a particularly heavy rush, when expedition and precision were vitally necessary—any confusion would have caused a bad hold-up—but we are glad to say that the Department's officers handled the situation most effectively and there was no hitch of any kind; everything came and went on time.
We appreciate, too, the courtesy shown by the officials, to whom nothing is too much trouble.
(Railway Publicity photo.)
The Buller River, South Island, New Zealand.
By “)
Shibli Bagarag
I Had just heard of the death of Frank Morton. I think it was in December, 1923, when Dick Harris, who was a close friend and admirer of Morton's, came into my office. I told him the sad news. Dick was obviously very distressed, but I could not help smiling over his first comment. “Poor old Frank,” he murmured, “My God, I'm sorry—we must have a drink—lend us a bob.” And yet if Frank Morton could have heard Dick's suggestion I am sure he would have appreciated it as a rare tribute to his memory.
I have a picture of Frank Morton, drawn by Tom Glover—it was drawn in 1914. It is a faithful conception of the arch Bohemian as he appeared to Wellington people over many years. Had Tom Glover linked one of his arms in that of Fred Hiscock's, and the other in that of Henry Wright's, there would have been perfect atmosphere as well.
Although he is generally referred to as an Australian writer, Morton really belonged to New Zealand. The claim is worth arguing about. A man of great mental activity, he had a prolific output in elegant prose and verse. “The Bulletin “described him as perhaps the best ballade-writer in Australia or New Zealand. He was a master of all those French forms of verse— the triolet, the rondeau, the pantoum, vilanelle, chante royal and ballade. In his prose, he preached a quaint worldly gospel, denouncing Christian gentlemen, modish matrons, and glorifying dimpled damozels and rollicking glad lads. As David McKee Wright once observed to me, “Morton was a missioner to the heathen of respectability; but what he wanted to teach them Morton was never quite sure.”
“The Triad” was his happy hunting ground. All his best work appeared in that classic monthly. Under a multitude of pen-names he wrote most of the paper. It was Morton and not Baeyertz who made the “Triad,” and, when Morton died, “The Triad” virtually died. It lingered on painfully, but it was only a shadow of its former Mortonian greatness.
During his life Morton published several interesting books of his verse. His “Laughter and Tears” (the deluxe edition) is the largest and most imposing volume of poems ever published in New Zealand. It was printed in a limited, signed edition of 125 copies by the “New Zealand Times” in 1908.
The last time I met Frank Morton was on a sunny Sydney day at Cremorne. He was to me, then, as he always was to all his friends, a dear, sympathetic, kindly soul, ever ready to help and smooth over another's misfortunes.
Frank Morton wrote his own epitaph in triolet form many years before the end came:—
Lino-cut by miss Hilda Wiseman (Auckland) for Lady Anne Walpole, daughter of the Countess of Orford.
* * *
At the cost of a few shillings I bought a rare bundle of New Zealand booklets at one of Bethune's book sales recently. First and foremost was “Wisps of Tussock” by David McKee Wright, published in Oamaru thirty-five years ago, by Andrew Fraser. As precious as the poems in the book was the autograph inside, of the poet himself. Then there was a copy of Alan Mulgan's “Three Plays of New Zealand “with interesting marginal notes by the previous owner, Richard Pen-fold. Others in the bundle were “Samoa and Its Story” (by James Cowan), “Hinemoa and Tutanekai,” by A. Perry; a critical appreciation of Thomas Bracken by Louis H. Victory and a number of ancient tourist booklets. By dint of careful collecting I am building up a comprehensive library of these old-time New Zealand booklets and pamphlets. I am still searching for a copy of Dick Harris's “Monodies.”
* * *
Another addition to my collection of defunct New Zealand magazines is a copy of “The Kiwi,” which appeared in Invercargill several years ago. The editor was S. G. August.
It was quite a good little magazine, but, like most provincial publications (other than dailies) it finished, I believe, with its first breath.
A particular feature was an article picking our six greatest men, who were enumerated as follows:—Samuel Marsden, Sir George Grey, R. J. Seddon, Judge Maning, Thomas Bracken and Hone Heke.
* * *
One of the best newspaper yarns I have heard is short and to the point.
A reporter, attending a fashionable wedding, carves his way to the rather worried verger.
“Can you find me a seat—the Press?” he murmurs breathlessly.
Replies the verger: “I'm afraid not, sir—the squash.”
* * *
One of my readers inquires if it is correct that the original of Sidney Carton (Dickens's “Tales of Two Cities”) spent a portion of his life in Wellington?
I believe that this is so.
The original Carton is said to have been Mr. George Allen, and a gentleman of that name is stated to have been on the staff of Wellington College as a teacher of languages. More than this I do not know.
* * *
The Editor has passed on to me a charming letter from Mary Gilmore anent a review I wrote recently of her delightful book “Old Days Old Ways,” in which I likened the task of the reviewer to one exploring many quaint and long forgotten ornaments on an old-fashioned what-not. Miss Gilmore's letter to the editor runs as follows:— “I do want to say to you or your reviewer how I appreciate your notice of my book. It has had the most wonderful notices! But what warmed my heart in your notice was the reference to ‘an old-fashioned what-not.’ How did I come to forget the what-not! But I did not, after all, for I have it in the notes and rough for my next book. If you did not write the notice will you kindly send him or her this note to say ‘thank you.’” Miss Gilmore adds: “New Zealand's Sam Gilmore, of the Royal Oak Hotel, Wellington, was a cousin of sorts of my husband. I believe he had or has a brother in Invercargill.”
* * *
Reviews.
‘The Silent Division,” by O. E. Burton, M.M., M.d’ H. (Angus & Robertson, Sydney). There have been several notable war books published in Australia and this is one of the finest. It should be in big demand in this country for it deals solely with the prowess of the New Zealanders at the front from 1914 to 1918. The book is vivid yet restrained, is in parts candid and critical. One feels that the author is a very sincere man with an unusual sense of fairness and justice. His comments on official bungling are plain spoken but in no way vindictive, even though it is evident that he was with thousands of others, one of the victims. He pictures all the horrors of war with such telling realism that the reader must see as well as feel the pictures he creates. I think that this is the most vivid, truthful and allembracing story yet written about the big part New Zealand played in the Great War. The book contains a brief foreword by Major-General Sir Andrew Russell.
* * *
Blinky Bill Grows Up,” written and illustrated by Dorothy Wall (Angus and Robertson, Sydney), contains the further adventures of the quaint little Australian animal. Having created such a lovable kiddies' idol it was only right and proper that the little folk of Australia and New Zealand should be informed as to what manner of creature he became with the years. It is sufficient to say that Blinky has justified his existence. He should brighten up many an hour for kiddies this coming Easter season. The book is attractively produced and delightfully illustrated.
* * *
Shibli” Listens in.
Alan Mulgan's latest book will be published by the Oxford University Press.
During his library explorations abroad Dr. Guy H. Scholefield, Parliamentary Librarian, hopes to attend the Annual Congress of the P.E.N. at Barcelona.
A recent article in the Auckland “Observer” refers to the poor sale of books published in New Zealand. The case of “Journalese,” one of the cleverest and brightest books ever published in the Dominion, is instanced. I understand that of the 2,000 copies printed, less than half have been sold.
London “Bookman,” one of the leading English library journals for the past half century, is to be amalgamated with another and younger paper, London “Mercury.”
A rare modern first edition is “The Secret Battle” (1919), by A. P. Herbert. I secured a copy recently in Hamilton. Herbert visited New Zealand several years ago.
Publication of R. A. K. Mason's collected poems has been held up owing to some uncertainty as to the style of binding.
Mr. R. A. Singer, the well-known Auckland barrister, is giving a most interesting series of talks from Iya on poets and poetry. He intends to introduce leading New Zealand versifiers.
Will Lawson's latest book, “The Laughing Buccaneer,” will be published shortly by Angus & Robertson. Mr. Lawson has just completed another novel entitled “Bound for Calloo.”
To be published early in May by Thomas Avery & Sons Ltd., New Plymouth.—A selection of addresses delivered by Lord Bledisloe in New Zealand during his Governor-Generalship. The book, which is entitled “Ideals of Nationhood,” has been compiled by Mr. T. Lindsay Buick, C.M.G.
By
Helen
A Busy Morning Buying Nothing.
Do” the Shops.
The wind blew a little chill in the shadows, but the sunlight was warm and yellow on the roadway as I crossed from pavement to pavement. Plaintively the bow of an itinerant musician shook forth the notes of an ancient melody. The plate-glass shopfronts had a cold sheen and one peered to see what was within. Science has evolved a new glass, an “invisible” glass, which seemingly sets no barrier between shop and street. We have only heard of it, but the faults of plate-glass are immediately apparent.
What are the new colours in stockings? Anxiously I gazed at an elaborate hosiery display. I blinked, I puzzled, I laughed, and longed for someone to share the joke. The pair of legs was so amusing, so unnatural. The stockings covering them were impeccable, but the legs! The attitude was wrong and suddenly I knew why. Two right legs had been placed together. And further along, featuring the latest in dull-finish smoke grey, and the two left legs. I felt cheered and wished people would do things like that oftener.
In a different quarter of the town, unconscious humour is frequently met with, especially on “home-made” show cards. I remember the laughs I have had, but memory refuses to supply examples. Friends won't believe I once knew a Chinese laundryman named Wah Shing.
The corner window was admirable— composition excellent. A regal brunette, gowned for conquest, stared superbly at the street. Near her, seriously considering her, stood a slim, pale figure, neatly dressed in black and bearing over one arm a cascade of red net frills and a gleaming length of oyster satin. There was art in the arrangement. The colourings were right, attitude right, contrast excellent. The eye was drawn and held. And then the little fair one moved and slipped quietly away through a panel at the back! I breathed a disappointed sigh and wished for a moment that I could be a window-dresser in order to reconstruct my scene and experiment further with ideas from tableaux vivants.
That was the start of my morning. I spent the rest of a hurried time in a whirl of hats, 'slouches with delightfully folded and peaked crowns, charming pull-ons in velvet, haughty Russian toques, jaunty affairs exclamation - marked with a gay quill, models trimmed with jet (neither old-fashioned, nor ugly, as they may sound), felts with mixed colourings for “tweed” wear, Breton sailors, berets, and brief affairs to show your curls. I whisked through the neck-wear section in a flurry of frillings and fronts, tailored, demure or even slightly flamboyant, coveted a cravat in gold lamé and a Peter Pan set in silver, blinked happily at the new tinsel-studded velvet and decided we'd all have to shine this winter.
It started, if you remember, with chromium buttons and diamente. Now, even woollen materials follow the gleam. Metal-run fabrics are ravishing. Cellophane-run laces are adorable (but that's anothers story). That sequin cape with Elizabethan collar of silver lamé will be the focal point of your whole evening wardrobe. The gown one just naturally covets has a quilted silver wing-back. Let's all join the angels. And we fold our wings under an ankle-length wrap with a star-sheen.
For informal occasions, note this printed satin gown, beautifully cut, draped and clipped softly to a square neckline, and belted with a wide Juliet tie, knotted at the left side with ends dipping almost to the hem. Satin or velvet is best for the Juliet sash, and contrast is the thing.
It was a mistake to leave street wear to the end. After glitter and gleam, I couldn't raise the necessary interest in tree-bark coatings, camel-hair and knotted tweeds, chevron velours and homespuns. I approved the slim-fitting coats, length much the same as last year, and the high, rich collars of fur. Two-way and three-way fastenings were noticeable. Capes were important features. Sleeve treatments are still interesting. The newest pockets are slanting. And so home to lunch.
The Slimming Craze.
The present-day craze for slimming is now more than a passing phase of fashion. It has apparently come to stay. Since woman discarded the voluminous and stiffly whale-boned garments of bygone days the improvement in health, both mentally and physically, has been obvious. She now has freedom of movement and an alertness that enables her to take a prominent place in the different sports and outdoor recreations that was unheard of a generation or so ago.
The craze for slimness has unfortunately led many women to go to extremes in the matter of diet and exercise. To a great number of people a slimming diet literally means starvation. Others have taken various drugs to gain the desired effect. These methods invariably lead to a serious lowering of the general health and resistance, and serious illness is often the result.
To many people diet means giving up all favourite and interesting food. This need not happen. Food should be varied within healthful limits, and, of course, simple and wholesome, and be partaken of temperately and with regularity. In the proper selection of foods, due regard should be given to the requirements and conditions of the individual, and must always be in
There are many systems of home exercises. The idea is the need of an all-round physical development and the toning up of all the muscles of the body. Allow yourself from five to ten minutes first thing in the morning and at night for a few simple movements. Try stretching before you get out of bed in the morning. Stretch all ways, first on one side, then on the other, pushing against the foot of the bed with the feet. Then get out of bed, and, standing on the balls of your feet, stretch your body as tall as you can make it, pulling yourself well out of your hips, with the spine straight and abdomen as flat as possible. Then stand on the whole foot, and raise the arms straight into the air, swoop sideways and touch the floor with the fingers. Return the arms overhead and swoop to the other side. Do these alternate movements several times.
Friction is a part of the bath routine that is a most beneficial and effective way of hastening the slimming process. A brisk rub down with a rough towel until the body is in a glow, invigorates the system, stimulates the circulation and tones up the muscles and skin.
Walking is a health-giving pastime that helps greatly towards achieving the desired goal. Take a brisk walk daily if at all possible—strolling leisurely is useless. To be of real benefit, the feet should be comfortable, so wear a pair of well-fitting walking shoes if a long walk is contemplated.
It is well to make sure, by consulting your doctor, that you are in normal health before commencing any system of unaccustomed diet or exercise.
Health Notes.
As we approach the autumn and winter months, the subject of colds, coughs, chills, and like ills, cannot be entirely ignored. Especially where children are concerned, the fight against the cold germ cannot be relaxed. In children, colds turn frequently to bronchitis, and more serious illnesses are the direct cause of ill-health in later life. It is also necessary to keep the little folk away from infection, as many of the infectious diseases of childhood are ushered in by a common cold.
An open-air life is the enemy of germs of all descriptions. Fresh air helps to keep the body fit to withstand the invasion of enemy bacteria. Moving and changing air carries away the microbes. A clean, healthy body makes a poor breeding place for microbes.
Diet is an important factor. In the winter there is generally an inclination to increase the starchy ration. Include as much fresh fruit (especially apples and oranges) and raw and cooked green vegetables, as possible in the daily menu.
Clothing is also another important item. Do not coddle in cold weather with extra layers of thick underclothing. Have a lightly-woven porous garment next the skin. Two, or at the most three, layers of clothing are all that are necessary. On a cold day an extra woollen cardigan or jersey is all that is necessary out-of-doors. A healthy child keeps warm with exercise.
If a child complains of an unusually chilly feeling, the best thing is to give a warm bath, taking care to prevent chilling afterwards. Have ready a warm bed, with a hot water bottle. Keep the room well ventilated and the window open all the time, keeping the bed out of the way of a draught. If necessary give a laxative.
A light, nourishing diet is required, such as broth, custard and light milk puddings, and plenty of drinks—water, barley water, fruit drinks, milk, etc. Withhold all solid food for a day or two.
If there is a tickling or irritating cough, black-currant tea (made with jam or jelly and boiling water) is a homely and efficacious remedy, also a mixture of glycerine, honey and lemon juice is effective. For a slightly sore throat, gargling with a mild antiseptic, such as salt and water has a soothing effect for the child who is old enough to be trusted not to swallow the gargle.
A chest cold or cough, if there is a temperature, really calls for medical advice, as there is a risk of bronchitis. An inhalation of Friar's Balsam (one teaspoon to a pint of boiling water) gives relief. To give an inhalation, place a paper with a small hole cut in the corner, over the receptacle that holds the inhalant. Inhale the steam directly into the nose and into the lungs. If an inhalant is given in this way, the pores of the skin of the face are not opened, thus preventing chilling.
For a severe sore throat, it is advisable to isolate the child, as it is often an early sign of one of the infectious diseases. If there are white spots or patches on the throat, the doctor should be sent for immediately.
Home Notes.
The “unbalanced home budget”— probably the greatest worry and source of nervous strain to the average woman—is one that is not likely to “let up.” Cutting down expenses has been more or less the rule for the last few years and it is necessary to be sure that the “cuts” are wisely made. Reduction of the expenditure in the commissariat department of the household should always be done with the greatest of care and thought, as it is essential that the family is supplied with well balanced meals, including plenty of vegetables and fruit, and dairy produce. For those who have their own vegetable gardens there is no problem, as the essential articles of diet are at hand. Of course, it is totally different when with a limited income one is dependent on the greengrocer and the purchasing of the fruit and vegetables depends so much on the prices at which they are retailed. That is a real hurdle to be surmounted. On the other hand, it is surprising how remunerative it is to cultivate a small patch of ground. Unless one actually saw what could be done with it, the imagination of the average person could not visualize the profit that could be derived from utilising the ground to the fullest extent. Think of the lettuce plants, carrots and other vegetables not requiring much space, which could be grown for the greater part of the year!
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Stuffed Vegetables.
During the late summer and the autumn when vegetables are losing their first freshness, variety may be had by adding stuffed vegetables to the menu. Vegetable marrows, pumpkins, tomatoes, cucumbers, potatoes, onions, etc., are all suitable for stuffing, and make an economical and delicious change. All these may be served with a variety of fillings. Stuffed mushrooms, too, are a delicacy which appeals to most tastes.
1 small marrow, 3 tablespoons of any minced cooked meat or poultry, 3 tablespoons bread crumbs, 1 teaspoon chopped parsley, grated lemon rind, 1 egg, beaten, seasoning, 1/2-pint thick brown gravy or tomato sauce.
Method.—Skin marrow and keep it whole. Cut out a wedge-shaped piece lengthwise and remove the seeds and soft pulp. Mix the minced meat, breadcrumbs, parsley and lemon rind with beaten egg. Put this mixture in the marrow and replace the cut-out piece. Dredge the marrow with flour. Place on a greased baking tin, bake in a moderate oven for 45–60 minutes or until tender, basting frequently. Serve with gravy or tomato sauce.
The marrow may be boiled instead of baked. Tie in a cloth like a roly-poly. Serve with white sauce.
1 large firm, straight cucumber, 1/2 cup minced meat, ham or cooked chicken. 1/2 cup breadcrumbs, 1 teaspoon chopped parsley, seasoning.
Method. Remove ends of cucumber and cut in pieces about two inches long. Remove skin in sections, to give striped effect. Scald cucumber in boiling salted water for five minutes, rinse in cold water and drain well. Scoop out the seeds and place the rings on a greased baking dish. Mix the other ingredients and pile into the prepared rings, and sprinkle with brown bread - crumbs. Cover with greased paper, and bake until tender. Serve with brown gravy or tomato sauce.
6 onions, 2 tablespoons chopped ham, 3 tablespoons cooked peas, 1/2 oz. butter, a little mint, seasoning.
Method.—Parboil the onions, strain and scoop out the centres. Toss the cooked peas in butter. Add the chopped ham, season well and fill the cases. Lay a small piece of butter on top of each. Place in a greased casserole with about 1/2-inch of water or stock. Cover, and bake until tender, basting frequently. Serve with thick brown gravy or sauce.
(N.B.—As an alternative, use stuffing as for marrow).
6 tomatoes, 2 tablespoons breadcrumbs, 2 tablespoons grated cheese, 1/2 oz. butter, chopped parsley, seasoning, Cayenne pepper to taste.
Method.—Choose firm tomatoes of equal size. Cut a small round from the stem end of each, and scoop out the pulp. Mix the stuffing with the tomato pulp and season well. Re-fill the tomato cases and place a piece of butter on each. Bake on a greased tin in a moderate oven for 15–20 minutes. Serve on rounds of hot buttered toast and garnish with parsley.
Why His Headaches Ceased
After Troubling Him Since a Boy.
Wife Put Kruschen in His Tea.
He could not understand why the headaches he had been subject to suddenly ceased. His wife told him, and he sat down and wrote the following letter :—
“I am 62 years of age, and ever since I was a boy of ten years, I was subject to very bad headaches. But two years ago the headaches stopped—for what reason I did not know. I was surprised when one day my wife told me I had been using Kruschen Salts in my tea for over two years. I am still using them, as I know of nothing finer for the system.”—J. T.
Headaches can nearly always be traced to a disordered stomach, and to the unsuspected retention in the system of stagnating waste material which poisons the blood. Remove these poisons—prevent them forming again—and you'll never have to worry any more. And that is just how Kruschen Salts bring swift and lasting relief from headaches. Kruschen Salts aid Nature to cleanse your body completely of all clogging waste matter.
And because the ingredients of Kruschen are in no sense foreign to your system, there is no lowering aftermath such as you commonly experience with depurative drugs. On the contrary, Kruschen exerts a remarkable tonic influence upon you, both physically and mentally.
Kruschen has a world-wide sale. It is taken by the people of 119 different countries. In none of those countries is there anything else quite like it—nothing else that gives the same results.
Kruschen Salts is obtainable at all Chemists and Stores at 2/6 per bottle.
Wit And Humour
The scene was a street in London and the time was eleven o'clock on a hot Thursday morning; two navvies of the gas company paused in the sweltering job of digging a deep hole in the road. There passed a labourer who, despite the hour (and day), had obviously “had one”—or two.
Peering over the top of the hole, one of the navvies saw the convivial one and remarked to his pal: “Strewth, 'Arry, there's a bloke wot's canned already.”
“Luv us, so 'e is,” exclaimed 'Arry, and then added in a mixture of mock admiration and envy: “Blimey, 'Erb, get 'is autograph.”
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The defendant in the breach of promise action was a singularly ugly little man.
“Gentlemen of the jury,” said his counsel, “you've heard the evidence of the plaintiff, and doubtless you've admired her. Now, do you believe this enchanting, this fascinating, this captivating, this accomplished girl would favour the advances or listen, save with scorn, to the amorous protestations of the wretched and repulsive creature, the deformed and degraded defendant?”
His client tried to interrupt. “Silence, sir!” replied his counsel, in an undertone.
“Gentlemen,” he continued, “do you think this girl would ever have permitted an offer of marriage to be made her by this miserable atom of humanity, who would have to stand on a penny to look over twopence?” The jury thought not.
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“Would you mind walking the other w'y and not passing the 'orse?” said a London cabman with exaggerated politeness to the fat lady who had just paid the minimum fare.
“Why?” she inquired.
‘Because, if 'e sees wot 'e's been carryin’ for a shillin' 'e'll 'ave a fit.”
At the breakfast table the other morning he was relating to his wife an incident that occurred at the lodge the previous night. The president of the order offered a silk hat to the brother who could truthfully say that during his married life he had never kissed any woman but his own wife. “And would you believe it, Mary, not one stood up?”
“George,” his wife said, “why didn't you stand up?”
“Well,” he replied, “I was going to, but you know, dear, I look so funny in a silk hat.
Mrs. Higgins and Mrs. Brown, after a quarrel, were making up at the ladies' bar.
“Well, Mrs. Iggins,” said Mrs. Brown, “I bears yer no malice.” She raised her glass.
‘So 'ere's lookin’ at yer, an' 'eaven knows that's a heffort!”
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Judge: “Do you know the meaning of an oath, madam?”
Witness (proudly): ‘Your Honour! An’ me husband shippin' before the mast these fifteen years!”
Nervous suitor: Sir—er—that is, I would like to—er—that is, I mean I have been going with your daughter for five years—
Father: Well, waddye want—a pension?
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Professor (to mother of College student): “Your son has a great thirst for knowledge. Where does he get it?”
Mother: “He gets the knowledge from me and the thirst from his father.”
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A widower was to be married for the third time, and his bride had been married once before. The groom-elect wrote across the bottom of the invitation to a friend:
“Be sure to come. This is no amateur performance.”
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He was an enthusiastic but unskilful golfer.
“You know,” he confided to his caddie, “I seem to be improving. Can you see any difference?”
“Yus,” replied the fed-up caddie, “you've 'ad yer 'air cut.”
At the Time of the Flood.
Proud “used-car” owner: “Well how's this for smooth riding? Almost think we were running on air, wouldn't you?”
Variety In Brief
Of late years, especially since the Great War, the Scandinavian sport of skiing has become a very popular one in this country. Most people think that it is rather a new thing in New Zealand; but such is not the case. (The writer travelled on skis nearly 60 years ago).
He was at the time a young boy living on a goldfield in Otago on that part of the Rough Ridge known as the Serpentine—high country ranging from 3000 to 5000 feet above sea-level. This country was under snow for several of the winter months. A party of Norwegian miners made themselves skis so that they could travel over, instead of through the snow. In a short time all the diggers had skis, and used them regularly in the winter. I had a little pair, suited to my stature, and used to travel for miles over the frozen snow at a great rate, and enjoy scooting rapidly down the long slopes. So you see skis are not new things in New Zealand.
By the way, the Norwegians taught me to pronounce the word, sky-ee; the “y” being sounded like the “y” in yet.—A.W.
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There's been a good deal of comment in the “Railways Magazine” regarding the pronunciation of Maori words. But none of the writers has attempted to state just exactly how certain words should be pronounced, even though they have laughed at the attempts of others to evolve something reasonably correct. The main point is, how should Maori words be pronounced? In general perhaps only one per cent, of Maori place names receive true Maori pronunciation; maybe even that low estimate is an exaggeration. One authority on pronunciation states definitely that the Anglicised pronunciation of Maori words must be accepted as the correct pronunciation, and it is merely being pedantic to attempt to pronounce words differently. So, though no true Maori would pronounce Waikouaiti as Wakouwite, or Wakatipu as Wakatip, the very fact that these words are generally pronounced so by the New Zealander, makes the latter pronunciation correct. It is a matter for argument, undoubtedly, but as regards foreign names we accept the more phonetic sound as being correct, and do not attempt to pronounce the words as peoples of those lands would. In the face of this statement it certainly seems that to accept Anglicised pronunciation of Maori words as correct is the only thing to do. South Island Maori names as a rule offer little resistance and can generally be mastered satisfactorily. The same cannot be said of North Island names where there are some extremely difficult to pronounce decently. He would be doing a service who would compile a list of place names and set opposite each word the “correct” Anglicised pronunciation.—C.H.F.
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While visiting the old goldmining village of Maori Gully (Westland) recently, I chanced upon a pile of rounded boulders, each about a foot in diameter, lying in a heap at the side of the main tailrace. Some of the boulders had been split in half with a spalder, and there, imprinted on the surface, were delicate brown tracings, mostly of ferns, but others of peculiar shell-like pattern. The designs were of great beauty, and as clear and distinct as though they had been painted but a few minutes before.
The digger who owned the claim informed me that the bulk of the boulders in that particular heap contained similar designs, and in proof of this he invited me to try my hand with the hammer on some of them. After drawing several blanks (and just about braining myself into the bargain) I chanced upon an exquisite pattern, the whole surface of the stone being-covered with delicate fronds. It appealed to me so much that I forthwith packed it away, and carried the ten pound weight to the station, four miles distant, and later brought it up to Wellington, where it is now deposited in the Dominion Museum. In case others may chance upon these peculiar boulders—the first I had encountered, though I have visited many goldmines—and be puzzled as to the origin of the designs, the appended letter from Dr. W. R. B. Oliver, director of the Museum, may prove of interest:
“The specimen you left for identification is a boulder, apparently of greywacke, which shows on the fissured surface a deposit of hydrous manganese oxide in a form which geologists term a dendritic growth. Such deposits are not always of the same chemical composition. The manganese oxides are either the substances known as Psilomelane or Wad, and occasionally copper or magnetite will be deposited in a dendritic form.”
—M.S.N.