Contents
The New Zealand Railways Magazine is on sale through the principal booksellers, or may be obtained post-free for 6/- per annum.
Employees of the Railway Department are invited to forward news items or articles bearing on railway affairs. The aim of contributors should be to supply interesting topical material tending generally towards the betterment of the service.
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Short stories, poetry, pen-and-ink sketches, etc., are invited from the general public upon New Zealand subjects.
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I hereby certify that the publisher's lists and other records disclose that the circulation of the “New Zealand Railways Magazine” has not been less than 20,000 copies each issue since July, 1930.
Deputy-Controller and Auditor-General.
25/3/35.
Some Typical Newspaper Comment.
“The figures as a whole seem to demonstrate that the railways are recapturing much of the traffic which severe competition had diverted from them. They may be regarded also as a practical vindication of the progressive policy which the Railways Board has adopted in organising frequent excursions. In this respect the Board is familiarising the public of New Zealand with a practice which has been extensively developed by the railway companies in England and which has proved highly popular. In railway management, as in every other form of commercial enterprise, it is necessary to study the wishes and requirements of the general public. Not otherwise can the goodwill of the community in the mass be won and retained.”
“There is cause for gratification in the fact that the railways continue steadily to gain ground, and there will be no reluctance on the part of the public to commend the Board for the vigour with which it has put its full policy into effect, for the improvements it has made in the comfort and efficiency of its rolling stock, and for the importance it has attached to a well-planned publicity campaign. The Board's record is one of enterprising administration, and the results achieved so far have proved the wisdom of the change in the system of control.”
“To have achieved an increase in revenue of £600,000 during the two years when general recovery in trade and industry has been slow is further justification of the non-political control of the State railway enterprise.
“A most encouraging feature is the improvement in passenger traffic, thus showing that the comfort and reliability of railway travel is once more making an appeal to the travelling public.
“The progress already achieved should give the Board courage and hope for the future, and the taxpayers' confidence in its management of the largest State undertaking in the Dominion.”
His Excellency the Governor-General, Lord Galway, At Tawa Flat.
On Wednesday, 16th May, the Governor-General, Lord Galway and Lady Galway, accompanied by Lieut. Sir Standish Roche, A.D.C., visited Tawa Flat to witness the welding of the last rail-joint on the new deviation. The Vice-Regal party were welcomed at Lambton Station by Mr. G. H. Mackley, General Manager of Railways, Mr. G. J. Bertinshaw, Chief Engineer, and Mr. G. W. Wyles, Signal and Electrical Engineer, and travelled to Tawa Flat in the General Manager's Rail-car. The illustrations show:—(1) The Rail-car entering the first tunnel; (2) arrival at Tawa Flat; (3) watching the rail-welding process; (4) welding plant being attached to rail; (5) examining a welded joint; (6) watching the assembling of the welding plant; (7) listening to an explanation of the welding process; (8) turning the Rail-car for the homeward journey.
The New Zealand
Railways
Magazine
Railways
Magazine
.”
For Better Service
Published by the
New Zealand Government Railways Department
Service Copy
Vol. X. No. 3.
Wellington, New Zealand
This question is addressed to you, reader, and (lest you be in any doubt as to its meaning) we tell you right off that it refers to features of this Magazine and not to entrants for the Grand National.
The fact that tastes differ, naturally leads to an endless variety of efforts to cater for those tastes. Herein lies the spice of life. Yet in regard to any particular commodity, idea, presentation or production, there can usually be found a substantial majority for, or against it; and the successful caterer to the public taste—whether it be in hats or homes, meals or magazines—is he who can discover and supply just what that majority wants—at the time they want it.
Of course there are endless ways, also, by which tastes can be cultivated and dislikes turned to likes. This is usually a gradual process, however, and can best be done by a judicious admixture of the bitter with the sweet—a lot of what is liked and a little of what you would like them to like, that is, the sweet predominating. The first essential is to find your majority and gain their confidence. After that you are free to experiment along the margin which separates the known from the unknown—choosing always a route that leads towards the main objective.
These general principles are stated as a preliminary to an invitation to readers of this Magazine to send along their candid opinions of its contents.
What is there in it that you like, what do you dislike, to what are you indifferent, and what new features would you appreciate?
Increasing circulation amongst the general public is one indication that the popular taste is being met, but it is our desire to obtain, from correspondents, something of a plebiscite upon the general contents, with a view to still further improving the reader interest of the publication. We feel that nothing can assist better to this end than the expressed opinions of readers.
Of course, it must not be forgotten that the principal purpose of the journal is to create and maintain interest in the railways as the largest and most important industry under one control in the Dominion, and as the industry in which the greatest amount of national capital has been invested.
But closely associated with this objective is the New Zealand interest which the Magazine sets out to stimulate, and the love of country it aims to inspire, for accurate knowledge of New Zealand's favoured position and truly magnificent resources cannot fail to strengthen national patriotism.
When you send along your opinions, these will be closely examined and classified, and then an endeavour will be made to extend the features showing the greatest measure of popularity.
Much of the development of the Magazine up to the present has followed the line of expressed opinion by well-informed readers who have taken the trouble to write giving their views regarding various issues. You are invited to follow their lead and so take a hand in making the publication nearer to your heart's desire.
The present is a time when there appears to be an insatiable appetite for information on all kinds of topics. In fact, to be abreast of the times, one must follow the news rapidly, as progress is proceeding in almost every line of endeavour at very high speed. The romance of life nowadays lies rather in the achievements of experimenters, investigators, manufacturers and transporters than in the imagination of fiction-writers, whose plots can vary but little—the triangle love-story of earlier days has become a polygon, and the mystery story is driven for originality to a multiplicity of murders or suspects or both, but in both types the writers usually lag behind woefully in knowledge of practical things, and cause in the more sophisticated either a sense of irritation or a superior smile because of the gross errors made whenever a technical subject is involved.
So topical articles are displacing the short story in many successful magazines, and judged by increasing sales, popular taste has found the general scheme of short articles and paragraphs, sketches and half-tones in the “Railways Magazine” rather to its liking. And so now, once more, we ask, “What do you like?”
General Manager's Message
The very favourable reception accorded by the Press to the recently published results of the railway financial year (which ended on the 31st March last) may be taken as indicating general public approval of the Board's policy as applied to the administration of the Department and of the satisfactory service given by railwaymen in securing the considerable measures of increased business which the figures reveal.
But in the keen competition for business, as it is now carried on, there can be no such thing as resting on one's laurels. Internally and externally there must be a constant pressure kept up to hold what we have in the way of custom and customers, and to secure more wherever possible.
Some recent changes in executive and district re-organisation have been made public. They have grown out of this need for effort towards expansion. For instance, the re-appointment of a Transport Superintendent, the increase in the inspectorial duties of the Staff Superintendent, and the other changes made to strengthen the personnel at headquarters represent not merely an effort to make the internal management and supervision still more efficient, but also they are part of an intensified drive along the whole front of the railway transport organisation to ensure that, wherever it touches the public, it may be sensitive to every transport requirement or opening, and ready with offers of cheap and reliable service of the kind the public will desire and appreciate.
Just as the purveyors of new commodities do not usually find a market ready waiting for them, but have to set about creating a demand, so the Department, in pioneering new transport services, has found means to create a demand not previously existent and to build up profitable new lines of business. It has only been by effort of this kind that the progress recorded in recent years has been possible, and it is only by continued effort in the same direction that the future can be secured.
I take this opportunity of thanking the public, on behalf of the Board, for the splendid manner in which they have stood by their own railways, and to the staff for their good work in securing that goodwill.
A Rail-Served Resort of Many Attractions.
Some views of Okoroire—reached from Frankton Junction (top)—on the Auckland-Rotorua Line. The illlustrations show the hotel and golf links, the hot swimming pool and the Avenue. (See article on page 10).
ByO. N. .)
Gillespie
A glimpse of picturesque Cambridge. (
Rly. Publicity photo.)
This all started in a Main Trunk Sleeper where I encountered the English envoy of a large exporting organisation.
“I would like to meet,” he said, “the crossword puzzle genius who worked out your junction systems here. You never seem to have the waits that happen in other countries, and no matter what hamlet you wander into, you can pick up a train somewhere handy that lands you out again on a main line.”
He added that, more than once, as a result of a bright idea in a club, or, in one well remembered case, a surprise telegram on the train, he had changed his routine completely, and was relieved to find how little time was lost making the switch in his connections.
We are all accustomed to mild wonder at the Napier getting in one hour and some odd minutes before the New Plymouth, and we have all looked up the fractional times at which you change at Marton for Wanganui or Palmerston North for Napier, and so on. It had never dawned on me, however, that there was such a vast problem of intricacy and difficulty about these arrangements, until I did some thinking as the result of my English observer's remarks.
I decided to pay a tour of inspection of some railway junctions, and have what is called in the film world a “close-up.”
I looked over the railway map, and discovered a nest of junctions in Central Waikato. Frankton, Ruakura, Morrinsville, and Paeroa (as will be seen in the accompanying map) are a closely set quartette, compactly linked and serving a district that promised to be interesting.
So I and my friend of the camera set out on this railway junction Odyssey, and a fascinating experience it has all been, a revelation of human ingenuity, ceaseless human effort, and unstinted, indefatigable loyal service to the public.
Incidentally, I went among scenes of unforgettable beauty and interest, giving me still more comfort in the unapproachable variety and the diverse loveliness of our country.
The Waikato is the greatest dairying district in the world, and had for many years a time of universal prosperity, accompanied by bustling progress, unique in New Zealand from the fact that its development has been so recent. Only twenty years ago, Waikato lands were looked upon as somewhat poor areas, and capital for development was a difficulty. However, a sounder knowledge of the use of artificial fertilisers, and the rapid advance in scientific farming practice, produced a revolution. The extent of easy, flat, or gently undulating land was enormous, and the whole great basin of our largest river, flowered into endless richness.
The late development made its organisations grow on the more modern models of big business, and such a concern as the New Zealand Co-operative Dairy Company has a just claim that it is the largest dairy company in the world. It is American in scale.
The Waikato is a district of contrasts. Much of it is very old with a wealth of tradition and the sweetness that comes from age. Much of it is new with the efficient air of ultramodernity and (this is not said in malice) giving the impression that the main objective is commercial utility.
Perhaps the best way to tell the whole story is to keep to the chronological order of my journeyings.
From the Main Trunk train, we stepped off at Frankton Junction. As is usual in New Zealand, the station buildings are useful and that is all. A sporting writer would describe their architecture as more within the category of the mule than the thoroughbred. Still, the workaday mule was of more general utility in the war than the handsomest cavalry charger.
The place is a network of shunting lines, and there is a dense city of trucks, vans, and all manner of goods-carrying vehicles. Here is where I began to see life in its railway junc-
Diagram giving the location of the Junctions referred to in the accompanying article.
A typical scene at Frankton Junction. (
Rly. Publicity photo.)
Hamilton is the capital of the Waikato. It is an up-to-date small city. Its handsome main street has the usual surprising massive blocks of commercial buildings, fine hotels and shops, and the whole place has a self-contained air of commercial competency.
Its outskirts are very beautiful and the noble river, with parks along its banks, and rows of fine dwellings overlooking the water, give the town a distinctive atmosphere.
It has all the amenities of a metropolitan centre in any part of the world—water supply, deep drainage, electric light, gas, paved roads, many wonderful parks, golf links, trotting and galloping racecourses, and automatic telephones. The churches and schools are imposing, and St. Peter's Cathedral is the seat of the Bishop of Waikato and Taranaki. In short, it is a very fine specimen of a New Zealand provincial capital.
We drove to Cambridge along an ideal road, through one of the fairest prospects in the world. The pastures are emerald green, the hedges trim and well kept, the farm houses handsome and spic and span, all with vivid and orderly gardens, and splendid trees are everywhere. The rich autumn colouring of the English trees checkered the varying greens of the native foliage.
The entrance to Cambridge, through a towering colonnade of English trees, is worth crossing oceans to find, and the whole bonny place is endowed with similar beauty. I dare to say that this is a lovely English town, with improvements. This place of three thousand souls can claim a list of-amenities of the same standard as its big neighbour, Hamilton. It has three excellent hotels, and all the business establishments usually found only in very large centres in the Old World.
Its park, ringing a gem of lakes, is, and should be the pride of Cambridge. Our pictures show some of its beauty. Here are kauri trees making normal growth. Here is a veritable cedar of Lebanon of great age and height, and there is a forest of the lords of the tree world, all grown to be giants.
It was the first of May when we paid our visit and the sanctuary waters of the lake were dotted with hosts of wild duck who must have in some way got possession of a calendar.
There is a well attended Hunt, and every variety of outdoor sport with rod and gun is within walking distance. Cambridge is a red-haired girl among the comely towns of our Dominion. No one ever leaves it, once having gone there, and I can understand why.
We went from Cambridge, hating to go, and got out at Ruakura Junction. Through this isolated outpost of the railway front, twenty-six trains pass daily, most of them laden to the Plimsoll mark. The officer in charge has a job rather like that of a sentry, relieved by bursts of uncoupling, leaping on and off brakes, and other forms of physical exercise.
The outward train from Auckland picked us up after a few minutes, and we joined the train which runs to the Bay of Plenty, splitting at Paeroa to take travellers to Thames. The latter is a sweet and clean little place with a fine racecourse, and also, of course, all modern sources of comfort.
But it was on our return to Morrinsville that I got to the true inwardness of railway life. We joined there a
(J. F. Louden, photo.)
Hamilton and the Waikato River as seen from the air.
(J. F. Louden, photo.)
Along the banks of the Waikato River at Hamilton.
At every stopping place, vans and lorries were waiting. Privates in the railway army and the indefatigable guard leaped here and there, the engine roared and whistled, while trucks were detached, pushed along side lines, more put on, all proceeding with speed and efficiency. Cinquevalli could take lessons from our folks who handle with such defitness and precision, those heavy milk cans. A flick of the wrist and an apparently effortless heave, and one goes in and an empty comes out. In a twinkling a mountain of the clumsy things appears and disappears. It was highgrade entertainment.
Waharoa, with its sky-scraper factories surrounded by enormous trees, provided us with a new movie star. This was Mac, a collie with a wise eye and enough brains to understand a book on economics. Mac's owner is the sole officer at Waharoa and his duties often take him down the lines a bit. Let the tablet machine ring, and Mac appears on the platform barking the announcement. If there is no response, he darts after the boss, and tugs his coat, explaining the urgency. After the points are changed he takes up a sentry position and woebetide anyone making even a gesture towards the levers. More than once an emergency call has been taken no notice of by humans waiting about the platform and Mac has filled the breach.
We had a look at Matamata, the newest of the Waikato towns. I liked its flagged pavements, pretty central avenue in the main street, its plenty of dainty homes. It has a city theatre and other amenities.
Nightfall came, but still the ceaseless activity went on with our cavalcade on iron wheels. Torches flashed here and there, the engine ran a fireworks display, moving in short spasms, furiously energetic figures belonging to railway heroes jumped, ran and did and undid things, all in vast good humour, all in the day's work. I registered a vow never to complain again about a missing case or a day's delay in the arrival of a couple of wild duck. These latter, by the way, appeared here, there and everywhere on the second of May. The Waikato sportsman's idea is to make their bag travel, for peeps at the addresses proved them to be a directory of New Zealand.
Next we reached Tirau, from which you go to Okoroire. One of these days the line will pop across the short intervening distance between Cambridge and this place. Okoroire Hot Springs Hotel is three miles by a good road from Tirau station, and was an unalloyed surprise.
Here is a miniature thermal regions township, a pocket Rotorua or Yosemite Valley.
It is complete. The hotel is commodious and has the air of a large rambling country house. Down a marvellous avenue of tall trees are the hot springs, which as the rhyme says of the best things in life, are free to guests. There is a fine sandy bottomed swimming pool, of apparently hot champagne, and there are others of varying degrees of heat, all housed in roomy bath-houses. A stream rushes close by, in a series of terrific, picturesque rapids and swirling cauldrons of crazy waters. The golf links are across the fence, a neat nine hole course. There are bowling greens, tennis lawns and other recreational facilities. There is shooting a furlong away, and a trout can be landed fifty yards from the lounge.
I want once again to mention that in our beneficent climate the exotic trees in fifty years have the growth
(Rly. Publicity photo.)
The lake in the gardens at Cambridge.
(Rly. Publicity photo.)
A scene in the Public Gardens at Cambridge.
Next day brought us back to Morrinsville, a bustling town with the inevitable brace of cinemas, good hotels and up-to-date business places. All these bright little centres should have a statue of a Golden Cow in the Public Gardens.
The trip ended at Hamilton. Here again we found the same tireless servants of the department, waiting late trains recking not of hours and caring only for the service.
These are my abiding impressions. First of all, there are the vast complexity, the enormous technical skill, and the patient supervision required to keep the iron network of this complex circulation system free from confusion.
And I was astounded at the service given by the rank and file. A small oversight by a tired man at one station makes endless work at another. There is no grousing. Grimy-faced warriors, kept long after their proper hours are done, “hop into it.” When trains are delayed, no one realises that for miles up and down the line, railway servants are waiting till the early hours of the morning to put things right, and doing it cheerily and often.
I was staggered at the cargoes meandering about this one New Zealand area. Not so very long ago, the whole Hamilton-Cambridge road could not have held the concourse of animals and men needed to move that colossal mass of goods our one wheezing engine dragged along those miles of rail.
And lastly, what a country we have in New Zealand! I went through New Zealand once with an American who loved the out-of-doors. After twenty miles or so he said:
That is how I feel as I continue my little journeys. We have another England here, another “green and pleasant land.” We have its soil and are of its people, and we have added blessings in more sunshine, milder airs and grander natural features.
We surely can do something towards strengthening our determination to cherish and maintain our precious heritage when we stress its claims.
We should, as our cousins across the Pacific say, “Tell the World.”
(Rly. Publicity photo.)
Two busy railway junctions—Morrinsville (above) and Paeroa (below).
Perpetrated and Illustrated by
Ken Alexander
Things are quiet in the garden just now. It is the period of pause when the turnips cease from turning and the radish takes a rest. With the exception of the somnolent drip of a winter leak or the muffled throb of a stymied beetroot, there is practically nothing doing in the vegetable world.
But is the go-getter gardener resting on his laurels and lettuces? Is he idly ensconced in the inglenook, dreaming of pumpkins so swelled that they have to be handled by a breakdown gang, and cabbages calculated to put a band rotunda to the blush? No sir! He is planning his winter campaign against the forces of insecticidal disorder among the rows and ridges of the ancestral acres. For, according to such authorities as Ho On and Un Yun, “You catchum sluggie to-day—you savem cabbagee to-mollow,” which is one of those inscrutable wisecracks of the East, so bursting with poetic thought yet stagnant with age-old truth. For how true it is that the lone earwig of today produces the crowded auditorium of to-morrow. And so the gardener who is “au fait” with his onions, and allied fruits, lies in wait behind the parsley to slug the slug, get the wood on the wood-bug, and generally waylay the gastronomical gangsters of the garden, before they can select soulmates and produce bed-loads of bugs and slugs for the spring offensive.
Science plays many parts, and research has not been idle in the realms of the rhubarb. To you, dear reader, whose gardening is confined to the idle petting of the potted petunia, it may seem simple to slug a slug or bag a bug; but the Men of Garlic know that there is a right and a wrong way of making the world safe for celery. And so one should study the lives and loves of the garden gobblers. You may imagine that one simply hits a slug a dong on the dome and leaves it for dead.
But it is difficult to know where a slug's dome is domiciled, for it is practically all dome. Thus the scientific method is to make a noise like a sprig of young parsley behind a selected slug and, while it is looking over its shoulder, to fling a lighted match in its path; the slug walks into the flame and is burnt to death. This method is hard on matches, but, after all, matches are easier to borrow than cabbages.
Snails demand a somewhat different technique because, whereas the slug is an all-out snail, the snail can be in and out at the same time—like a bad tenant when the rent collector calls. So the snail-stalker is advised to rap smartly on the back door of the snail's house and then run round to the front door and chalk “to let” on it. When the snail returns to the front and sees “to let” on the door he naturally concludes that he is in the wrong house, and immediately vacates. The snail hunter then seals the shell with chewing gum and leaves the snail to perish from exposure.
When the gardener goes earwigging he changes his tactics. No doubt, perspicacious reader, you have noticed that an earwig moves with the swift grace of a homing hippo, or a policeman who has heard an acid drop in a lolly shop at midnight; also that it has that faraway look in its eyes common to dwellers in the great open spaces. In short, it depends more on its ears than on its eyes for protection. Thus the knowing gardener strews his week's whisker clippings in its path, and lies at the extreme end of his garden with his ear to the ground, exposed to the delighted gaze of the homing earwig which, hurrying towards its natural habitat, hits the whiskers head on and breaks its neck.
Wireworms demand a more subtle system of insecticide. Wireworms, as their name implies, have their own telegraphic code of inter-communication. They are too wiry to be readily destroyed even by wireless, so the
One of those inscrutable wisecracks of the East
Wood bugs are easy prey for the astute rhubarb raiser. As you know, patient reader, wood bugs spend their existence running up and down pieces of wood. This is their fatal mistake; the wood-bug hunter obtains a bundle of chair legs and sticks them in the ground at suitable intervals. The wood-bugs run up the chair legs, naturally assuming that where there are chair legs there must be chairs; but when they reach the top and sit down for a breather—well, this is where the gardener gets the wood on the wood-bug.
Centipedes present a problem which can be solved by psychology. Everybody knows that a centipede has a hundred legs and the same number of feet—unless it is deficient in understanding. Contrary to natural supposition, it does not perambulate with super-celerity, because it takes a good deal of thought to manipulate a hundred feet in consecutive rythm; it has to count its footsteps to see that every foot does its duty. Thus it is easily caught; after which the gardener ties two of its legs together and releases it. When it moves off again it counts up to ninety-nine and, when it puts down the hundredth leg which isn't there it misses its step and takes the count.
“The earwig hurries to his natural habitat.”
So much for the garden plot. Let us now turn to the lawn. A lawn is a plot (almost a conspiracy, in fact) which grows grass in the winter when nobody wants to sit on it, and withers up in the summer when the lawn-sitting season is in full swing. The common worm (or sward-swallower) delights to cover a nice smooth lawn with earth-moulds, until it resembles the floor of a conference room at a convention of chewing-gum salesmen in U.Say.. Of course worms are useful for perforating the pericardium of the greensward to admit oxygen from the air and beneficial juices from the upper reaches. A worm's life, in fact, is just one good turn after another. When it comes to turning, a worm is capable of making Dick Whittington look like Lot's wife. It fills itself with mud, worms its way to the height of its ambition, holes out in one, and returns for more—and so on, “add spinfinitum.” From this habit arises the adage, “Every worm has his turn.”
But when too many worms turn simultaneously in the precincts of the paspalum they are liable to make a lawn's sylph-like skin look like an air view of the Tibetian border. The only way to take the wind out of the worm's spinaker is to creep out and turn the lawn over while it is asleep, thus confusing the worm's ups-and-downs so that, when it thinks it is coming up it is really going down; the worm thereafter keeps on going until it strikes rock-bottom and dies of shingles or gravel rash. This rids the lawn of worms until the next annual migration arrives from Wormwood Scrubs.
Briefly put, the gardener who refuses to adopt scientific measures is nothing more nor less than a boarding-house keeper for bugs. But,
Scientific!
A Reliable Travellers Guide
Corridor tender on L. and N. E. R. “Pacific” Locomotive, employed on long-distance non-stop runs.
The future of our railways is a topic of first importance, alike for railway managements, employees, and the general public. After a century of service, railways the world over continue the principal means of movement for mankind and mankind's belongings, and it seems certain that, for long years to come, rail transport will hold pride of place as the most convenient, efficient, and economical system of haulage. During the past few years, many perplexing problems have had to be tackled by railway managements and their staffs. Trade depression has been universal, while the rapid development of road transport on both the passenger and freight sides has also come as an obstacle to railway prosperity.
Probably the biggest problem facing railways to-day is that which concerns future methods of traction. There are two main lines of development open to the railways. One covers the utilisation of autonomous, or self-propelled, traction units, like the steam or oil-fired locomotive; the other embraces electrification, depending upon central generating stations and a radiating system of overhead feeders. Which of these arrangements is likely to be favoured? It is a significant fact that, at the present time, the majority of the big British and American railways are fighting shy of the immense initial capital expenditure involved in main-line electrification. There are exceptions to this situation, of course, as witness the continued electrification expenditure of the Southern Railway of England, and the Pennsylvania Railroad of America. In the main, however, trunk route electrification is, to-day, definitely under a cloud, interest everywhere being turned towards the development of more powerful and more economical self-propelled traction units, such as the steam locomotive and the Diesel engine.
Prophecy is apt to prove dangerous, but it would certainly seem as if a very promising future lay ahead for self-propelled traction. In particular, one is impressed by the obvious advantages and economies offered by the internal combustion Diesel engine. These self-contained motive units can get along without any elaborate system of overhead transmission lines, and usually even the most severe climatic conditions prove only a temporary obstacle to regular schedules. Improvements and refinements in self-contained units may be at once taken advantage of, without costly alterations to electrical machinery or transmission lines, and altogether there appears a very strong case for self-propelled traction as against universal electrification.
Steam locomotive design is making marked progress in Europe. In Britain, the London and North Eastern Railway are leaders in the search for more powerful and more economical steam locomotive units, while across the Channel the railways of France are to the fore in this direction.
On the Paris-Orleans, Nord and Est systems, clever design has resulted in an increase in locomotive power of from thirty to forty per cent. The Nord is at present experimenting with steam engines capable of hauling 700 ton trains at 75 m.p.h. High-powered Diesel-electric locomotives are also being turned out in considerable numbers for service on the French lines. One batch of these consists of experimental engines of 800 h.p., capable of drawing trains of 200 tons at 75 m.p.h. Other experiments aim at turning out light engines capable of handling 150 ton trains at speeds up to 95 m.p.h. A good deal of main-line electrification has been tackled in southern and central France, but these latest experi-
Tourist Pullman Train Crossing Gstaad Viaduct, Montreux-Bernese Oberland Railway, Switzerland.
“Superpacific” Express Passenger Locomotive, Northern Railway of France.
Streamlining of fast passenger trains has definitely come to stay. The most searching of tests under actual working conditions have proved beyond doubt the utility of the idea, and to-day most of the larger European railways are introducing streamlined passenger trains into their main-line services.
Old-established servcies such as the “Flying Scotsman,” the “Royal Scot,” and the “Cornish Riviera Express,” that have brought fame to the Home railways, may shortly be maintained by new streamlined locomotives and carriages. As yet, however, only partial streamlining has been attempted in Britain. Complete streamlining has made exceptional progress in Germany. Because of the success of the “Flying Hamburger” train, Germany is now introducing eleven new streamlined passenger trains in long-haul service. These trains will consist of saloon cars, having two seats on each side of a central gangway. The trains will run at an average speed of 75 m.p.h., and will operate between Berlin and Koenigsberg, Breslau, Dresden, Munich and Cologne.
Hand-in-hand with streamlining, goes the employment of aluminium and aluminium alloys for carriage construction. This results in a great saving of dead weight. The Danish and Norwegian State Railways have recently acquired numbers of aluminium carriages for express service. The latest Danish aluminium cars give accommodation for 235 passengers, as against the 168 passengers accommodated in the older and heavier type of vehicle.
That exceptionally active organisation, the International Railway Congress Association, recently published a comprehensive report on the general railway situation in Europe, and the measures taken by the railways to combat trade depression and road competition. Dr. Cottier, of the Swiss Federal Railways, and Reichsbahn-direktor von Beck, of the German National Railways, are the authors; and they state that in several European lands the economic crisis reached its peak in 1932, and since then it has become less serious. In Britain, Germany, France, Austria, Switzerland and Norway, increased business is now coming to the railways. In other European countries, however, the economic situation and traffic condition show no improvement.
After noting that the bettered conditions in Britain and the other lands named have largely been secured through lowering railway rates and charges, the report remarks that passenger traffic losses are due mainly to the growth in the number of private motor-cars and motor-cycles. The losses the railways suffer through bus competition are regarded as slight. On the freight side, losses have been caused by the modern arrangement for large commercial undertakings to operate their own fleets of collection and delivery motors. As regards road transport contractors, the competition of these organisations is keenest in the long-distance services and for merchandise paying the higher rates.
Certain of the European railways are fortunate in covering territory as yet unconquered by the road carrier and the private motor-car. The Swiss lines present several examples of this character, among which may be named the picturesque Montreux - Bernese Oberland Railway. This remarkable line runs from Montreux, near Lausanne, to Interlaken, with forward connections to beautiful Lucerne. Operated by a private company, the Montreux-Bernese Oberland Railway is electrified throughout. Three-phase current at 8,000 volts, 50 cycles, is generated in the company's power plant, and this is transformed to 750 volts in six sub-stations. Electric locomotives haul trains over the route at speeds up to 45 m.p.h., and some of the most luxurious of passenger stock is employed in the tourist season now in full swing.
Obstacles to fast running everywhere abound on this unique Alpine line. Tunnels, bridges, viaducts and cuttings are constantly met with, while at vulnerable points special protective works have been built to combat the winter danger from falling avalanches. In the summer season, travel over the Montreux-Bernese Oberland line is a sheer delight. Wonderful Alpine panoramas meet the eye on every side, while the tiny roadside stations are a picture of cleanliness and floral beauty.
The railway station of to-day is a very different affair from that of a decade or two ago. Not only has equipment of every kind shown immense improvement, but from the viewpoint of cleanliness and general appearance the modern station is one hundred per cent, better than its nineteenth century counterpart. An attractive railway station can do far more to attract business than at first sight appears to be the case. At Home we have evidence in abundance of the value of an alluring shop-window, such as is presented by a well-kept station.
In Britain the annual competitions for the best-kept railway station have for long been a feature. Some of the smaller stations annually present the most delightful of floral pictures; while in city areas, hanging baskets and platform tubs take the place of the more conventional garden beds.
A typical goods train, Great Western Railway, England.
James Cowan
Dr. Peter H. Buck (Te Rangihiroa), D.S.O., Doctor, Soldier, and Ethnologist.
The mingled blood of Pakeha and Maori has given New Zealand some very gifted and distinguished men, who have risen to the highest offices the State can bestow on them. None of the brilliant little band of native sons has given greater service to his country, than Dr. Peter Buck, D.S.O., whose Maori name is Te Rangihiroa. He has nobly helped his people along the paths of health and renewed hope in life. He has a record of splendid service in the Great War, on Gallipoli and in France, both as Medical Officer and combatant officer. He was second in command of his Maoris, the Pioneer Battalion, with the rank of major. He was director of Maori Hygiene on his return from active service. For many years he has been engaged in scientific research among the islands of Polynesia, for the Bishop Museum in Honolulu, and to-day he stands foremost among Maori-Poylnesian ethnologists; a great and scholarly and gallant figure whom New Zealanders would like to see at the head of Pacific anthropological studies in his own homeland.
Dr. P. H. Buck (Te Rangihiroa), D.S.O. (S. P. Andrew, photo.)
PEter Henry Buck was born in 1880, at Urenui, North Taranaki, the son of William Henry Buck, a veteran of the Maori wars, and the chieftainess Ngarongo-ki-tua. His race-blend gave him, for one thing, one may suppose, his love of adventure and for another the poetic trend of mind and the eloquent tongue that are the hereditary gifting of the Maori. As a youth he had his sound schooling at famous Te Aute College, and he continued his studies into the University. His taste was for the medical profession, and in that excellent school, Otago University, he obtained his M.D. diploma. He was for a time house surgeon in Dunedin Hospital, and then, after the late Sir Maui Pomare had initiated the beneficent crusade of health and new life for the Maori people, young Te Rangihiroa became a health officer among his mother's race, holding this position for three years, 1905–8. He married in 1905 Margaret Wilson, of Milton, Otago, and that lady has been a true co-partner with him in his varied career. While he was on the fighting fronts in the Great War she was constantly engaged in hospital and other useful work for the New Zealand soldiers, and since then she has assisted him in his anthropological research duties in the Pacific. A lady of fine courage; she fearlessly toiled beside him in the smallpox epidemic among the Maoris in North Auckland when he became a Government health officer.
It was in grateful recognition of this great self-sacrificing work for the native people that the Ngapuhi and their allied tribes invited Te Rangihiroa to become their representative in Parliament. This was after the death of the popular Hone Heke, who for many years had been member for the Northern Maori district. So the Doctor turned politician, and more than mere politician; he developed a statesmanlike outlook which embraced a wider range than New Zealand, in his concern for the well-being of the ancient race. Besides representing the Maori people, he had under his care as Minister the Cook Islands and other Polynesian isles over which New Zealand's flag had been raised.
Then, after six years of politics, came the Great War, and Te Rangihiroa was one of the first to offer his services to the country and his race, when the Government yielded to the enthusiastic desire of the tribes to meet Britain's foes in battle overseas. He left with the First Maori Contingent for Egypt in February, 1915, and it was four years before he saw the shores of New Zealand again.
It was on July 3, 1915, that the First Maori Contingent landed at Anzac Cove, Gallipoli. The boom and crash of artillery that was to be a familiar sound for the next three years on the Peninsula and in Europe first startled and delighted the Maoris' ears that morning. “At last,” they said, “here is the real thing!”
From that day on there was the almost continual ordeal of intense shell-fire, varied by sharp infantry fighting.
At Sari Bair the Maoris went into the attack on Table Top, their first battle with the bayonet, in a mood of savage determination and delight. They had endured shell-fire patiently; now was their opportunity for utu.
They went for those Turks, bayoneted them in their lines, and cleared the trenches, and burst into a haka
yell of “Ka mate, ka mate! Ka ora, ka ora!” then silence as they pressed on to the next point.
“… We could hear our men doing splendidly,” Captain Buck wrote in his diary (August 26). “Rattle of musketry, then silence, and the loud English cheer, followed by a Maori haka. Owing to the Maoris being distributed, the hakas came from every ridge. Everybody is pleased with our men.” Captain Buck had a most strenuous time of it with the wounded; he tended many besides his Maoris.
Sunday, August 8, saw the Maoris in the fiercest fighting of all, the desperate attack on Chunuk Bair, as a preliminary to the general assault of Koja Chemen Tepe, the apex of the range held by the Turks. The fighting continued till on the 10th the Turks made so strong a counter-attack that the ground won by the New Zealanders and others had to be abandoned. The Maori casualties were severe in the four days' fighting—the first battle in Europe in which Maoris were ever engaged. During August 6th—10th they had 17 killed, 89 wounded, and two missing, out of 400 men, the total strength of the Battalion.
The Maoris' medical officer was in the thick of it, attending to the wounded. Of the work on August 9, he wrote: “We had a very bad time with shrapnel which burst all about our gully, the aid post. Only the fact that we were dug in a little saved us.
… The shrapnel bursts were only a few feet beyond us. Once, while I was dressing a wounded Ghurka, I had to lie down beside him, as the shrapnel was striking the ground just beyond us.”
Mr. John Masefield eloquently joined our Maoris with the other fighters of the Empire when he wrote in his “Gallipoli,” describing the storming parties in the battle of Sari Bair: “Men of all races were banded together there. There were Australians, English, Indians, Maoris and New Zealanders made one by devotion to a cause, all willing to die so that their comrades might see the dawn make a steel streak of the Hellespont from the peaked hill now black against the stars.”
Later on, in September, there was some of the most severe fighting in the campaign, and the Maoris suffered severely. The Australians were camped near them, and Captain Buck tended some of their wounded under heavy artillery fire. Then came the dramatic evacuation scene, on October 3, a rest on Lemnos; and departure for Egypt.
Captain Buck wrote from Egypt to the New Zealand members of Parliament representing the Maori race:
“All who have come through the Gallipoli campaign where Pakeha and Maori have shared the fatigue, danger, and incessant vigil of the trenches, side by side, recognise that the Maori is a better man than they gave him credit for, and have admitted him to full fellowship and equality… . One of the finest incidents in the history of the two races took place when the Maoris left the trenches during the Anzac evacuation. Their pakeha comrades who were remaining behind for a later shipment carried their packs down into the gullies and many stood clasping hands when the moment of
In a trench-digging competition with British reinforcements at Malta, before going on to Gallipoli, in 1915, the Maori Battalion easily beat all the Pakeha diggers. In the trench are Captain Roger Dansey (in front) and Captain Peter Buck, M.O.
full of aroha to express themselves in words.”
In February, 1916, when the Maoris were reorganised for service in France, and were constituted a Pioneer Battalion, under Major G. H. King, Captain Buck was appointed second in command, and now became a combatant officer, Captain H. M. Buchanan (from the Otago M.R.) taking his place as medical officer. Major King was promoted to Colonel and Captain Buck to Major.
Thenceforth the Maoris' work was trench-digging on the Western Front, with now and again a raiding party by way of relief from the trying trench labour under heavy artillery fire. The story of that long and harassing service of the Maoris until the Armistice is told in full in the official history “The Maoris in the Great War.” Heavy shelling was the daily and nightly experience, for month after month. There was a constant drain of casualties.
There were innumerable narrow escapes; for example an incident during trench work on Bezantin Ridge (September, 1917). Major Buck and Lieut. O'Neill were returning to camp down “Fish Alley” when a “whizz-bang” grazed O'Neill's right shoulder, knocking him down, and burst in the ground just in front of Buck's feet. O'Neill, who was walking behind the Major, sustained an abrasion of the shoulder. Twelve days later O'Neill was killed by a shell.
In June, 1917, the Pioneers had their share in the great battle of Messines; their casualties in three weeks were 17 killed, 88 wounded, 45 gassed. In October the New Zealand Division had its part in the third battle of Ypres, where the artillery hammering fell heavily on the Pioneers.
The New Year of 1918 saw the Maoris hard at work around Ypres; hard indeed, for the ground was frozen. On January 17, Major Buck left the Battalion on transfer to the New Zealand Medical Corps, after a period of most courageous and useful service with the Pioneers. All his comrades deeply regretted his departure. He was the ideal officer, never sparing himself, always looking to the welfare of his men, and often battling with the higher powers for decent treatment for them. Thenceforward to the end of the war he was on medical duty at the front with the Ambulance and in the New Zealand hospital. He received the decoration of the D.S.O. in recognition of his long and gallant service. At the same time Mrs. Buck's work in England was rewarded with the honour of Member of the British Empire Order.
On his return to New Zealand after the great adventure of his life, Dr. Buck was engaged by the Government to attend to the health of the Maori people, and he went into the duty with the same zeal and devotion he had displayed in his life as a soldier. But another and even more absorbing occupation presently claimed him, anthropological exploration in the Pacific, with special reference to the Maori-Polynesian zone. His unexampled knowledge of the Maori in his own country and his excellent lectures and papers in the “Polynesian Journal” on various branches of native culture attracted the attention of the authorities of the Berenice P. Bishop Museum, in Honolulu. He was invited to become a temporary member of the Museum ethnological staff, and since 1927 he has been engaged
But it is field work among his beloved Polynesian cousins that is Te Rangihiroa's most absorbing pursuit. He delights in that life for which most of us have longed at one time or another, cruising in the glamorous tropics. It is not always glamour; and the Eastern Pacific inter-island auxiliary-screw trading schooners are very different from comfortably-appointed yachts. But “Pita” and his wife are content to take the rough with the smooth, and there is always a warm welcome for them in the islands, everywhere from Hawaii to Rarotonga (you can at least reach those places by mail-steamer) and from Penrhyn of the pearl-lagoon away south-eastward to Tubuai and romantic Mangareva or Gambier islands. Te Rangihiroa has made intensive studies of the various branches of culture in several groups, particularly Samoa and the Cook Islands, and the French islands that make a Pleiades of archipelagos across the chart of the Eastern Pacific. From Tonga in the west to the almost countless atolls of the Tuamotus, or Paumotus, his range of scientific explorations extends.
When Dr. Buck visited New Zealand at the beginning of this year, I remarked to him that the only Polynesian scene he did not seem to have visited in his anthropological cruising was Easter Island, famous and mysterious Rapanui. “Yes,” he said, “and I am disappointed that I have not been able to set foot there yet, but it is not an easy place to reach; and then there was a French expedition there last year, and the Bishop Museum heads thought that probably its members would be able to carry out the work necessary.”
But then no one with Te Rangihiroa's special knowledge and qualifications has yet visited Rapanui. All the previous scientific inquirers have required interpreters to communicate with the native inhabitants, and research under these conditions is never satisfactory. No wonder the savants who tried to unveil the secrets of Rapanui described the natives as reticent, often sullen. I am sure a sympathetic New Zealander like Te Rangihiroa—speaking the tongue that is practically identical with that of Rapanui, and besides that conversant with the various other dialectical forms of Maori in the islands—would soon establish good accord with the remnant of the Easter Islanders on that melancholy wind-swept mountain top of theirs, last peak, perhaps, of some long-vanished land. I hope Te Rangihiroa will yet be able to see these farthest-east Maoris for himself.
But, setting that aside, we have a vast amount of recorded information about the Polynesian isles for which to thank our far-travelling fellow-New Zealander.
An example is his very complete yet concise survey of the people of Mangaia, that strangely formed island of the Cook group where the Rev. W. Wyatt Gill long ago gathered so splendid a series of legends and folksongs. “Kila” and “Pita,” how they would have rejoiced to meet each other! The liberal-minded missionary's spirit still haply haunts his beloved Mangaia. He and Te Rangihiroa between them have made that coral land and its hospitable people live for the great world of readers who will never set eyes upon its curiously-walled tropic garden.
Te Rangihiroa is serving a noble purpose in his ethnological researches under the Bishop Museum auspices. It is unfortunate that New Zealand has not been able to offer him any inducement to make this country his base of scientific work. Truly, clever New Zealanders are too often insufficiently appreciated in their own country. The foreigner knows their gifts and worth, and quickly secures their services. It is a reproach to this country that Honolulu should be the headquarters of Polynesian research, instead of New Zealand, which by situation, traditions and associations is the natural base for scientific as well as commercial connections with the South Sea groups. Private munificence made Honolulu the research centre of Polynesia, remote as it is geographically. The late Professor Macmillan Brown was strongly of opinion that New Zealand should become the chief home of Polynesian studies, and to that end he bequeathed a large sum to the Canterbury University College. But handsome as that gift is it is inadequate for its purpose as yet.
Some day I hope to see State and private generosity combine to provide a school of Maori-Polynesian studies here, and perhaps then if our distinguished native son Te Rangihiroa is still available we may have him with us to direct and develop those branches of research which lie closest to his heart.
Hon. Sir Apirana Ngata, M.P., and Dr. Buck, at Sir Apirana's home, Waiomatatiri, East Coast.
(This photo. was taken by Mr. James McDonald, of the Dominion Museum, who died recently at Tokaanu.)
Introduction.
A Doctor, a barrister, a banker and an engineer boarded the Limited together at Auckland with gun cases, fishing rods and bags labelled “National Park.”
As far as Frankton Junction they played some very solid bridge, but after leaving that station, the doctor, who was a merry looking little man with ruddy cheeks and snow white hair, trumped his partner's perfectly good nine and endeavoured to conciliate that gentleman's wrath by explaining that he was thinking of something else!
This seemed to the others a good enough reason for relaxing—and after some good-natured chaff at the doctor's expense—urged him to divulge whatever it was that had so engrossed him.
But the doctor had a better plan. He admitted that he could probably tell a yarn or two—but his modesty forbade his being the only performer, and he suggested that they should each in turn recount some incident or happening, and, to make it more interesting, cut the cards to decide the order in which they should do so. The pack was shuffled accordingly and each member of the party cut for himself, the doctor calling “Aces low.”
The barrister drew a knave, the banker an eight, the engineer an ace, and the doctor a three.
The engineer was a burly grizzled man of perhaps sixty-five and having drawn the lowest card, it fell to him to tell the first story. For some moments he gazed out of the window, straining to catch the fleeting forms of trees inky black against the receding lights of Te Awamutu—and then, turning his head, regarded first the card in his hand and then the faces of his companions with an enigmatical smile.
“The Ace of Diamonds,” he mused. “I'll tell you a story of how the ace of diamonds saved perhaps a whole train-load of people from disaster—months before the first train ran right through from Auckland to Wellington—nearly thirty years ago.”
“Raining - raining - raining - always—well raining
From early in the mor-or-ning—till … .”
The singer, who framed his words to a well-known hymn tune, stamped his feet upon the floor of the running-shed locker room to rid them of the thick paste of clay and cinders that stuck all round his boots.
“You can cut that right out,” remarked the Loco. Foreman, appearing suddenly from nowhere, “and clear that mess outside. Everything has to be in apple-pie order round here tonight.”
The singer—who was that humblest of creatures, a junior cleaner—silently obeyed, and the foreman strolled past him to the doorway where he remained some minutes gazing out into the streaming darkness.
There was certainly some truth in young Simmonds' ditty for it seemed as though the rain had made up its mind to go on for ever. Day after day it had pelted down almost incessantly—bringing down slips, washing out ballast where culverts had blocked and turning streams into roaring torrents which battered at bridge piles with great boulders and the trunks of up-rooted trees.
No one could say with any certainty when trains would arrive or depart—all up and down the new line station yards were blocked with delayed freight, loops were congested and everywhere distraught railwaymen were battling day and night to preserve schedules, the track, and the tempers of marooned passengers.
Such a state of affairs naturally had its repercussions in the running shed—but Morgan, the foreman, whose routine was completely thrown out of gear by engines which arrived at odd hours all round the clock, looking as though they had been ploughing, felt it was a little hard that it should coincide with the visit of the engineer. And the engineer in his turn felt it was a little hard that such a state of affairs should coincide with the travels of a certain Very Important Personage who was passing through on his way south that very evening in an ornate car that would be tacked on to the rear of the little Public Works train, thus bringing the train up to a weight which, in this weather, necessitated an extra engine to work it over the heavy grades to Taumarunui.
“And where the deuce,” growled the engineer, “am I to find an extra engine at this time of night?”
The train was due out at 7 p.m., and at 6 o'clock the stationmaster telephoned the running shed to say that a ballast train from the north, from which they could filch the engine would arrive in half an hour. The engine, he added, was old 123.
The engineer groaned, but conceded that it might be worse—an opinion which was almost immediately confirmed when the hospital rang up to say that McAhster, the senior driver, who might have driven No. 123, had just been admitted with a broken leg which he had sustained at the South Road cattle stops.
“Who else is there?” snapped the engineer.
“Ordinary times,” replied Morgan, “there would be two relief drivers—but these ain't ordinary times, and they may be doing anything at this moment—even digging themselves out of a slip or playing three-handed poker with a goods guard in some God-forsaken siding up in the bush.”
“Well the driver of No. 123—who is he?”
“Jack Randall—well he's only a junior,” said the foreman evasively—the engineer caught the tone.
“Anything wrong with him?”
“No—no—of course not,” answered Morgan hastily.
“All right,” said the engineer, buttoning his coat and turning up his collar,
“Playing three-handed poker with a goods guard.”
As Morgan stood watching him pick his way across the tracks to the station he thought of Jack Randall's kid. A little golden-haired, blue-eyed imp who used to play with his own youngsters on the hill-side at the bottom end of South Road. She didn't play any more now, but lay very quiet in a cot on the verandah watching with wistful eyes the little blight-birds and occasional fantails that tumbled in and out of the foliage of big clumps of tree lucerne.
They had told Jack Randall a lot of long-winded terms up at the hospital; but it didn't really mean anything but lack of money—money to send her away to the high country and a sanatorium where they could massage some life back into those pretty limbs. Money that in the circumstances was as far out of reach as the moon.
That was why he had tried to save Jack from extra duty—for he knew the fever the big fellow was always in to get home—hoping against hope—that there might be some change—that by some miracle she would be standing up, holding out her arms to him as he entered the gate.
His thoughts were interrupted by a whistle which sounded beyond the South Road crossing—and peering from the window he saw the blurred beam of an oil headlight moving slowly beyond the sidings. He listened intently—it was a train beyond doubt—but which (and what was more important) who drove it, he could not say.
He hurried across the yard and arrived at the crossing as the engine lumbered off the main line into the siding—and swung himself aboard.
Joe Allen was at the throttle, grey and haggard, with 24 hours' stubble on his chin and seams of grime in the tense lines about his mouth.
“Joe,” said the Loco. Foreman, “would you assist the regular back to Taumarunui with old 123?”
“Like hell, I would!” retorted the driver—“I've been sixteen hours on the road now—I'll tell you what it is,” he cried angrily, “a man needs to be a wooden god with a master mariner's ticket to drive a train these days—” “I know—I know—“said Morgan conciliatingly—and as Allen, shutting off steam, turned to face him—told him how things stood with Jack Rand-all and the extra duty.
But Allen though sympathetic was obdurate—“It's not a fair buck”—he protested—“I'm sorry for Jack, we all are, but a man can't go on for ever. For two whole shifts I've been punching this old ‘P’ over a journey that ought to take five hours. I've been blocked and side-tracked, stuck in the mud and nearly starved to death, and now when I just manage to get in, with no water in the tender and hardly enough steam left to whistle with, you want me to turn round and do it all over again with a train of nabobs!”
As they argued, the ballast train from the north rattled in on the far side of the station— “There's Jack now,” said Morgan dropping through the gangway, “I'll see you over at the shed.”
Twenty minutes later when Allen backed his engine alongside the coaling ramp he found Jack Randall and the foreman waiting for him. Randall was a tall athletic looking man—but under the gas lamps that lit the ramp, there seemed to be a weary stoop to his shoulders and his step lacked spring. He greeted Allen diffidently.
“You got nothing on me,” remarked that worthy as he descended from the cab of the “P”—“I wouldn't take your old engine out to-night for Father Peter.”
“Now listen Joe,” said Morgan, leading the way to his office. “Just put yourself in my position for a minute. I've always given you boys as fair a deal as I could and it's up to you to help me now.
“You've been out sixteen hours Joe, but it hasn't been all driving. Jack's been out ten, and he's got a wife and sick kid to worry about. You're both the same grade and I'll leave it to you—or rather to chance!” He grinned faintly and produced an old pack of patience cards from a drawer.
“You cut,” he said to Allen “aces low.”
“Aces low,” echoed Joe and cut the ten of spades. Randall, bit his lips, and, with a hand that trembled slightly, cut—the ace of diamonds.
Something like a spasm of pain passed over his features, but he pushed back his cap with a short laugh.
“Here,” cried Allen impetuously, “I'll go—you get home, Jack.”
“No chance,” responded the other, “but you can lend me your push bike—I'll leave it at your place on the way back.”
“For the love of Mike don't be late,” cried the foreman, “you've only got half an hour!”
On the tick of 6.30 p.m. the “regular” swept in—a long line of gleaming cars,
“Holding out her arms to him.”
But Randall over in the siding and 123 hardly noticed it. His thoughts were back in the spotless kitchen where his wife sat waiting over the glowing range, tired out, but too anxious to sleep—and the little form beneath the blankets in the day cot, whose solemn, dark eyes roved the ceiling restlessly.
The engineer came crunching down the clinkers, his oilskin flapping.
“Come on!” he cried clambering up, “get a move on—we'll hook on to the ‘W.F.’ out at the tanks and back down together”—he glanced at the driver sharply.
“Feel al—right?” he demanded.
Randall was freshly shaved and in clean overalls, but his face showed dead white beneath the visor of his cap.
“Sure—I'm alright,” he replied, tugging at the throttle lever.
But he felt far from alright when, with “W.F.” behind him straining like a wiry terrier, they snaked the old four-wheeled cars complete with the V.I.P.'s coach, out of the station and gingerly threaded the points at the South Road crossing.
Out ahead, beyond the vast bulk of old 123's diamond funnel, the rain came down in a steady slanting stream shutting out sight and sound of everything except the twin threads of the rails; objects leapt out of the gloom with startling suddenness—white painted farm gates—the twisted arms of a dead tree.
“Take it easy,” said the engineer kindly, “let the other feller do the pulling—just keep off him till we strike the grades,” and then as 123 settled into her stride and began licking up the miles, he talked easily and kindly, telling Randall that Morgan had told him of his trouble and how he had been unlucky enough to cut out. “Life's like that,” he said, “seems to take a delight in piling things on us, until we feel we can't stand it any longer, and then blowing them all away in dust.”
Randall nodded, easier now. “It's a funny thing about that ace though,” he said, “if there's one card I can depend upon to let me down it's the ace of diamonds—not once, but dozens of times. I've seen it drawn to fill up an ace-high straight when I was sitting on three cards. I've seen it drawn to make three card hands and full houses—and the funny part of it is that it is always the deciding card—it's never there beforehand. But if it's in the pack and I'm anywhere near it always turns up to put me in a bad spot.”
For an hour or more they drove steadily across the lowlands and then the track began to rise, twisting right and left between high banks and cuttings as they reached the foothills.
There were evidences of storm havoc on either hand now, and talk died away as they peered through the streaming cab windows at rubble and tangled fence wires and the watercourses bubbling with yellow froth.
At the top of the ridge they spied flares and with steam shut off drifted through a little knot of bedraggled men toiling to clear a mass of earth and tumbled roots that spread fanwise from the top of a bluff almost to the edge of the rails.
From the top of the ridge began a long switchback of twenty miles which led at last down through bush clad slopes to a limestone cutting and the river, spanned by a wooden bridge.
It was a difficult piece of track at the best of times and under adverse conditions it became a veritable nightmare, for as they drew nearer the river, patches of fog hung in the hollows beneath the dripping trees.
Twice at the bottom of a grade Randall checked violently with the air, and the second time the engineer asked what the deuce he thought he was doing.
“I thought I saw a red flare, shining through the fog,” said Randall sheepishly.
Once they were across the river matters would be simpler—it was all straight-forward pulling then through solid rock cuttings. It was this sliding downhill through sodden greasy country that might be expected to cave in at any moment that tried a man's nerves. So thought the engineer, and the next instant pitched forward against the back of the firebox. Randall, with his left hand frozen to the air-brake and with his right working the lever into reverse, was leaning back in his seat as though by the very backward thrust of his body he could bring his engine to an earlier stop.
The engineer, rubbing his nose, came over and stared through the glass on the driver's side.
“If this is another of your fantasies,” he foamed, “I'll put you back on the cranes for ever.”
Randall, wrestling to bring the heavy train to a stop, made no reply and the engineer peering over his shoulder whistled softly, so that the fireman sticking his head out on the other side exclaimed suddenly—
“Randall climbed quickly over the buffer beam and examined it more closely.”
“Why, blow me Jack, if it isn't your ace of diamonds!”
At last, with much grinding and squealing of brake-gear, they brought the train to a stand, and remained for some moments staring out ahead.
They were in the mile-long limestone cutting that led down to the bridge, and wreaths and whirls of fog were rolling up it like steam from the mouth of a volcano. Every now and again as it lifted, a queer red gleam shone out—low down on the left hand side—and there could be no doubt that it did resemble a diamond in shape.
The engineer quickly dropped to the ballast and Jack and the fireman followed him. As they did so, they became immediately aware of the sullen roar of the river rising above the hiss of steam like the menacing roll of distant artillery.
The red gleam, as they hurried down the track seemed to recede will-o'-the-wisp fashion before them, but it was almost immediately forgotten in the peculiar behaviour of the permanent way as they approached the bridgehead. It writhed and quivered, the new ballast seeping and chuckling, and oozing gouts of mud.
A fog wraith enveloped them and they halted, lost in a clamorous, unstable world of damp vapour, and then froze in horror as it suddenly cleared and they saw, vaguely, the bridge.
Where the decking and rails should have been there raced a yellow flood that foamed against the struts and bows like an angry sea; and the struts and bows themselves were not the firm, upright supports they should have been—for the whole bridge was adrift and rocking. It heaved and groaned with each fresh onslaught—canting alarmingly and rolling back like a ship in a gale.
They stood fascinated by its contortions for some minutes, and then became aware of the small crowd who were making their way down the cutting. The fireman off the “W.F.,” the guard, drowsy passengers; and, rather enjoying it all with a macintosh over his pyjamas and ridiculous pumps flopping and slapping in the mud, the Very Important Personage himself.
It was the latter who, while the rest of the crowd gaped and shuddered and pretended to laugh, buttonholed the engineer and asked him some very pertinent questions, and presently seeking out Jack Randall, congratulated him, and walked back slowly with him to the engine.
They stood for a moment in front of the cowcatcher and looking back towards the crowd at the bridge saw the ace of diamonds wink slyly at them from the cutting wall.
Randall started, then raising his eyes, regarded intently the old-fashioned oil head-lamp that burned steadily above their heads.
Just off the centre of the glass, where the metal reflector at the back would concentrate the beam, appeared a dark smear. Randall climbed quickly over the buffer beam and examined it more closely—“it's blood, I think,” he said, and stooping, picked a broken feathered body from the plate below the smokebox door. Reaching up, he rubbed his finger over the smear—and looking forward again found the ace of diamonds had vanished from the white glistening wall of the limestone cutting.
“It all ended very happily,” concluded the engineer. “We backed the train out of the cutting and spent the rest of the night in the bush. I had to go back and be entertained in the V.I.P.'s private car, and somehow or other, for we all became very matey, as people do in those sort of circumstances—the story of Randall's kid must have leaked out—because not long afterwards he got a letter all done up with seals and things, with a pretty useful sort of cheque inside it.”
“He is driving this train to-night,” he added glancing at his watch and listening a moment to the beat of the wheels, “and in an hour or so his big ‘K’ will be crossing the steel bridge that was built on the site of the old wooden one, and Jack's kid married the son of the engineer who built it!”
His story finished, the engineer relaxed into his seat and the steady rhythm of the train rose like a sonorous accompaniment in the silence. Presently from out ahead came the deep-toned baying of the locomotive and a tremor ran through the car as the Westinghouse brakes gently checked the full rush of speed—pinpoints of light flickered in the gloom beyond the windows.
“Te Kuiti,” observed the engineer. “I can do with a well-earned cup of tea. And it will give you time to think up your yarn, Doc.—it's your turn next.”
The display arranged by the Railways Publicity Branch at the Wellington Winter Show, 10th to 27th April, 1935.
Tangiwai
Some day, as likely as not, there will be a story of adventurous New Zealand written around a certain relic of pioneering days at Matamata, the tall square tower built by the first white settler of the district, Mr. J. C. Firth. It stands in the old homestead grounds at Matamata, between the modern busy little town and the Waihou River. It is nowadays a true “ivy-mantled tower,” and I can well imagine that its thick and tangled garment of foliage harbours a moping owl that “doth to the moon complain.” It looks a place for moreporks. On the day I visited it the leafage that densely covered the concrete hold was humming with bees, busy about its sweet sticky flowerets. So luxuriously have the creepers grown that it is not easy from a distance to make out the square of the tower; it resembles a close grown grove of trees.
“Firth's Tower,” standing alongside the old station homestead, is of comparatively modern construction; it was intended as a kind of baronial keep, perhaps, by J. C. Firth when it was built in the early Eighties, for there was then no danger of attack by hostile Maoris. It replaced a timber tower built in the ‘Sixties, when there was real fear of the Hauhaus; this building was burned down. It could stand a little siege to-day. This loopholed concrete tower with walls eighteen inches thick would be safe against fire as well as firearms.
The square tower is nearly fifty feet high and is sixteen feet square. There are two floors above the ground floor and on top there was a small watch-tower. The upper parts are pierced for rifle fire. These firing apertures are about fifteen inches long by four inches wide on the outside; they slant inward to larger dimensions, in order to give play to the defenders' rifles, after the usual design in the old military blockhouses. A stairway, now removed, gave access to the upper storeys.
Firth's Tower seems to have been modelled somewhat after the plan of the old stone keeps and peels on the Scottish border, such towers as those to which the merry raiders retired after harrying their neighbours, and within which they were safe as long as food and water held out. Some day it may figure as a rallying place and refuge for the local farming community—in a romantic New Zealand cinema thriller.
Our pioneer settlers, in the spacious days of the past, thought little of long horseback journeys. In that era, long before railways and motor-cars had made transit easy and luxurious, the horse was the only long-distance time-saver for the New Zealander; and they raised good horses in those days. Some of us have covered a few thousands of miles on horseback in our time, but the growing-up generation knows little of the saddle. (Perhaps our new Governor-General, Lord Galway, a famous lover of good horses and the hunt, will do something to stimulate a healthy return to horsemanship in the Dominion.)
A veteran of the pioneering years in the Upper Waikato, a friend of mine, cast back in his memory the other day and recalled some incidents of the ‘Seventies.
“There were two brothers,” he said, “who had come from the Tamaki, near Auckland, and who had undertaken ploughing contracts on the Roto-o rangi estate, on the old Frontier line, before they settled on their own farms, which had to be broken in from a wild state. The elder brother was courting his Kate at the Tamaki but it was a long way to go, quite a hundred miles. Yet he did it frequently, riding the hundred miles on the Saturday and returning to the station by Monday. He'd leave very early in the morning, ride the tracks and cross the unbridged streams—there was only a punt on the Waikato River at Ngaruawahia, and the other rivers had none—travel the Great South Road, and reach the Tamaki at night, do his courting, and off again next day.”
There was a quick-travelling lover for you; but the hardy lads of those Waikato days did not regard it as anything out of the way. They bred splendid horses then, hacks that could carry a man's weight and last the long day at a steady tireless gait. Good riders, too, who could nurse a horse along.
The other brother, also, used to make week-end trips to the Tamaki to see his parents. On one occasion he rode down there from Roto-o-rangi on the Saturday. On the following evening the men at the frontier station were astonished to see his horse, without rider or saddle or bridle, come trotting up and put his head over the gate. He had got out of the paddock at the Tamaki farm, apparently not finding the company or the feed to his taste, and made a quick journey home. Two hundred miles in two days may seem a knock-out journey for horseflesh, yet they could do it in those times. He must have swum the Waikato River at Ngaruawahia on his return journey; the puntman would scarcely be likely to give a stray horse a free passage.
At the Wellington Police Court the other day while a witness was under examination, counsel suddenly hurried across to the “box” and told him he was “on fire!” Smoke was actually issuing from the man's coat pocket although he was blissfully ignorant of the fact. When he hastily pulled out his pipe it was half-full of burning tobacco. It appeared that he had removed the pipe from his mouth when he entered the Court, thrust it into his pocket, and forgotten all about it. Smokers are often very careless in that way—and in another way. They'll go on smoking tobacco reeking with nicotine and never realise their danger until their health gives way. Nicotine, it cannot too often be insisted, is poisonous stuff and brands rich in it should be rigorously avoided. The safe and sure way is to smoke the genuine “toasted.” The five brands of the real thing—Cut Plug No. 10 (Bullshead), Navy Cut No. 3 (Bulldog), Cavendish, Riverhead Gold and Desert Gold are unapproached for quality, and being toasted are perfectly harmless.*
Margaret Macpherson
II.
(All Rights Reserved.)
Christchurch, as that Blonde Whom Gentlemen Prefer, used to say, is divine. It is chockful of beautiful and astonishing things, so that I do not know whether to begin with the Illuminated Fountain or Professor Shelley, the Provincial Council Chambers, or Mr. Shurrock's overall.
Perhaps I had better begin in the municipal manner and introduce you to the Square. The Christchurch Square is a large open space bounded on the north by the Post Office, on the south by the “Press” newspaper (wherein sits my dear John Schroeder who wrote the best poem about a monkey ever produced outside heaven). There! That monkey has done it again! One puts on one's grandest municipal manner in order to introduce the reader to the Christchurch Square, and here is John's monkey clamouring for your attention. I perceive that this story cannot proceed until he has done his little song and dance. John Schroeder produced this delicious little piece when he heard that Mussolini had forbidden Italian organ-grinders to leave Italy. (Notice the capering, pattering movement of the verse):—
* * *
Yes, yes, dear reader, it is a fascinating sight, this monkey, but you have yet to see the rest of Christchurch Square. Come along. The Square, like the world is quite full of a number of things. For instance, sixteen hundred bicycles have swooped by whilst you have been observing the monkey, and all these bicyclists are anarchists. They know not law and order. They laughingly loop the loop in front of the half-swearing half-swooning tram driver. The crossing lights signal your taxi to go?
Then four-and-twenty cyclists fly gaily across your path, if that can be called a path which is in shape (thanks to these cyclists) a true-lovers' knot. Every Christchurch person who buys a car goes white-haired within a week, that is well-known. You say that Dr. Xyz is not so? Believe me, whilst the cyclist lives, the doctor dyes. Billions of cyclists—anarchists all. Such is the Square.
But, as Al Jolson says, you ain't seen nothin' yet. In this Square is a statue, three tram-shelters, a green enclosure and a belt of traffic that will soon rival Piccadilly Circus. Here, too, is the Cathedral with its soaring spire pointing us to heaven. In fact, this is the centre of city life and drama. Here princes and duchesses have made their bows to the people; it was here that Pamela Travers, our own poet, ran barefoot playing leapfrog in the dark at 2 a.m., and if ever there is a revolution it will be here that the guillotine will be raised.
Christchurch is as flat as a fryingpan. The inhabitants say proudly, “Isn't it English?” But I thought it Dutch. The endless repetition of long flat streets, the ever-recurring river Avon, reminiscent of Holland's canals, the raised bridges every quarter mile or less—these were more like the Netherlands than anything else I have seen outside Amsterdam. The lovely bits of Gothic architecture complete the illusion.
Loveliest of all is the Provincial Council Chamber, that exquisite jewel of Gothic which I have not seen equalled anywhere. This was built by an English architect, Mr. B. W. Mountford, in 1864, as a House of Parliament for the early fathers of Canterbury province. The old Council
“Every Christchurch person who buys a car goes white-haired within a week.”
I went up into the gallery of this splendid hall and tried the acoustic: perfect! Upstairs here one could see the detail of the painted roof-decoration—a glowing symphony in gold, orange, blue and red, the work of one Francis St. Quentin.
“Why is it so beautiful?” I said to Hamish. “There is something about it that is different from anything else in New Zealand.”
“It was all done by craftsmen,” he suggested, “by men who lived to work, not men who worked to live as they do now. They have given it that same quality one sees in mediaeval churches and monasteries …”
“Yes, yes,” I put in eagerly. “I know what quality you mean. I can name it … love!”
It certainly took all the courage and foresight and unselfishness of love to erect this building in 1864. At that time there were only 3,000 people in the whole of Canterbury and Westland—pioneers facing bitter odds, untold hardships. Then the Council Chamber must have seemed a bold token of faith in New Zealand's future. Yes, it must have been a labour of love, the love that “beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things.” You dreaming architect, you gallant builders, colour-mad painter, merry stonemason, your brave and joyous vision was solidly materialised for the inspiration of countless unborn men and women, a thing of beauty and a joy for ever.
Another lovely bit of Gothic is the University which, quadrangle and all, reminds one of some of the Oxford colleges. Above the main doorway is a fine old clock which has an exceedingly sonorous strike. And thereby hangs a tale.
It was Speech Day and the Chancellor of the University of New Zealand was due to address a large audience of students and visitors at 3 p.m. Which he did. Hardly had he uttered the first words of his carefully prepared speech, however, when the University clock started to strike—“One, Two, Three, …”
The Professor smilingly waited for the “Three” and prepared to go on. But it was the clock that went on. “Four, Five, Six,” … The gathered multitude looked at each other inquiringly. “Twelve, Thirteen, Fourteen,” … Obviously a practical joke. Had one of the engineering students … ? Yes, one had. A clockmaker had to be sent for before the thing could be stopped. Ah youth, which delights more in a noisy clock speaking eleven hundred times, than in the most learned professor speaking once! This story was gleefully told me by—no, dear reader, Not a student—by one of the professors!
I met many of the professors, and liked them all. Let me introduce you. Here, to begin with, is Professor Tocker, the economist. He it was who acted as economic adviser to the Prime Minister at the Geneva Monetary Conference. But do not be misled by this. You are not to picture a dour financier with little marks round his mouth. If there is one adjective to describe Professor Tocker, it is “boyish.”
“Tell me all about Geneva,” I begged him.
His eyes twinkled reminiscently.
“Well to give you an idea of the nature of the place, this is the sort of thing that went on all the time: one night, I, a New Zealander, dressed in an English suit, laid down a Havana cigar in order to dance a Spanish tango with a Chinese lady to an Argentine tune played by a Hungarian band in a Swiss hotel.”
“And of all the great personages you met there, whom did you admire most?”
“Keynes,” replied Professor Tocker emphatically.
“A clockmaker had to be sent for.”
Professor Shelley, on the other hand, is quite grown up. Saturnine as to countenance, he glowers upon an inartistic world, and in spurts of dynamic energy tries to alter it and us.
With him I had a vigorous argument upon the subject of whether material or spiritual things come first in life. He belongs to the old school of idealists. I argued that men cannot turn to higher things without a modicum of material sustenance. His reply was “Seek ye first the Kingdom of Heaven and all things shall be added unto you.” This seemed to me to be the typical argument of a man who has never been hungry. The artist needs bread and meat in order to build the body that produces art (art, of course, being what Prof. Shelley means by “Heaven”). The first necessity for functioning in this world is, surely, a physical body. Professor Shelley was, and is, profoundly distrustful of materialism, however, and we left each other unconverted.
Amongst other things I did in Christchurch was a broadcast from the Government radio station, 3Ya. There we saw Professor Shelley again. He was next after me on the programme, in a one-act play. The play was about a gruff old doctor and a whiney neurotic patient. Hamish and I sat in an adjoining room watching Shelley. From where I sat, the other actor was out of sight. Shelley acted the gruff, cantankerous old man to perfection. The other actor was good. Although I could not see him, I admired the way his voice conveyed mental agony and strain. After a few moments, however, I got tired of it and we left the building. As we went down the street Hamish said, “Didn't you think Shelley was marvellous in that play?”
“Oh, Shelley, Shelley, Shelley!” I snapped. “If he does a thing everyone thinks it perfect. The other actor was just as good.”
Hamish roared with laughter.
“Why do you laugh? The other
“My poor child,” Hamish chuckled.
“I am not your poor child. And I am not a Shelleymaniac. I can appreciate other actors still, thank God.”
“But, my dear, Shelley was playing both parts.”
“What?”
“Yes, he was. And, what's more, sometimes he takes a whole play with five or six parts, men, women, children, everything!”
There was a long silence. Then I put my hand in Hamish's. In a very small voice I said, “He is wonderful. I apologise.”
After this we must seek something that is definitely not art, by way of relief. Such is the Illuminated Fountain, as every young person in Christchurch will tell you. The fountain stands in another Square and throws up successive columns, jets, rosettes and Prince-o'-Wales' feathers of water very beautiful to behold. And at night it is lighted from inside with blue and green and rose and purple lights, and thus changes from champagne to burgundy, and from burgundy to creme de menthe, and from creme de menthe to cherry brandy; but not such liqueurs as you get in shops but such as come from fairy pubs, glittering and evanescent as a houri's dream. It is all very bad taste, as the Superior Young Persons of Christchurch assured me, but I loved it, and would watch it for twenty minutes on end, always trying to guess what it would do next, and always miscalculating.
Those who are interested in psychic phenomena may be surprised to hear that one of the most powerful “direct voice” mediums in the world lives in Christchurch. His name is Mr. Lance Brice, and he is in private life a hairdresser. I had the privilege of sitting with his circle several times and was deeply impressed with all that went on. He is a New Zealander by birth and speaks but one language. Nevertheless, at his circle, voices spoke to me in French, Italian, Dutch, Russian, Jugo-Slav and German. Some of these were people I knew quite well.
Christchurch is fortunate in having one of the finest Art Galleries south of the Equator. The building stands in a beautiful park, surrounded by trees and shrubs. When I was there a blaze of zinnias, dahlias and michaelmas daisies surrounded the gallery with a ring of perfume and colour. Zinnias! Who but God would dare to throw so many clashing colours together? And who else would succeed so magnificently? Zinnias—yellow, orange, scarlet, crimson, magenta, purple, lemon, ochre, umber, terra cotta—with their sturdy stalks and glowing coronets … these are the sort of things that make me believe in a deity in spite of myself … a god of flowers, dizzy—as Stalin puts it—dizzy with success.
The Robert McDougall Art Gallery was founded in 1928, and who should lay the foundation stone but Mr. McDougall himself! This is but right, for this man gave £25,000 to the City of Christchurch in order to suitably house the collection of pictures assembled by the Canterbury Society of Arts. There are two portraits of him in the gallery—one a large canvas in oils by Archibald Nicoll, and the other a vigorous bas-relief in bronze by Francis A. Shurrock. The delightful and encouraging thing about this gallery is that it contains a good deal of fine painting by New Zealanders, and has not been filled up with tenth-rate work by English and Continental painters, as the Auckland Gallery has, for instance. It is a joy to see the telling portrait work of Elizabeth Kelly, ànd then to go out into the street and meet the same Elizabeth Kelly, just rushing off to meet her husband for lunch. It is interesting to view the somewhat academic painting of Richard Wallwork and then to slip across to the Art School and to watch him teaching a design class. Best of all, it is good to stand, gripped, before the sculpture of Francis Shurrock and then to go and gossip with him as he stands in his extra-ordinary voluminous khaki smock which is decorated with regimental buttons, heavens knows why, and discourses, in his homely North Country accent, with all the originality and insight of the true artist, simple, sincere, a craftsman to his finger tips. To my mind, Shurrock is The artist of Christchurch; but this may be a heresy so I will not labour the point.
If you go to this gallery there are two or three things that you must be sure to see. First, there are the landscapes by Nugent Welsh, done when Nugent Welsh was happy. But, you ask, is Nugent Welsh not happy now? … I do not know him; I have never met him; but I do know that his Christchurch gallery canvasses are serene, broad and benign; one senses the happiness in the paint. His later landscapes, on the contrary, are profoundly melancholy, typical products of our declining capitalistic era. Now-a-days, art is either melancholy, as in the case of Welsh; or insincere, as in the case of what's-it and you-know who; or revolutionary, as in the case of Epstein and his school. Happy art is a thing of the past … and of the future.
Then, too, you must see a picture called “The Sea and the Bay,” by Rhona Haszard, for this is a very good thing, and Rhona was a very special person. Yes, “was.” She is dead. At the age of thirty she fell from the roof of a building in Alexandria where she was painting, and thus ended much joy and genius and womanly beauty.
Rhona Haszard was born at Thames, New Zealand, in 1901. Her art education began at Christchurch, and then she went to Paris and perfected her craft there. The outstanding thing about our Rhona was her felicitous
knew colours as the deaf Beethoven knew sounds. The loveliness she put into paint was really an expression of the beauty within her; she was, as the Psalmist puts it, “all glorious within.” When she died a friend wrote of her: “She was so guileless, always believing the best of everyone, often disillusioned but never embittered… . She was like a sparkling stream with hidden pools of unknown depths and beauty. She was lovely—to see her was to be made happier, to talk to her was to have a lamp lit in one's mind. How she loved life! Nothing of beauty, however insignificant, passed her by unnoticed. Radiant, vital, lovely, one will always remember her.”
This is in her pictures. Every bit of it is in her pictures—and there are examples of her work in each of our big galleries. Leslie Greener, her husband, brought out all her paintings to New Zealand after her death. Many went into private hands, but the best he would only sell to the galleries. One feels that this is what Rhona would have wished.
We cannot leave Christchurch without seeing the Catholic Cathedral, a beautiful church in which classic and Gothic architecture are very happily combined. This Cathedral attracted Mr. Bernard Shaw when he was here, and he boldly stated his reasons for preferring it to the Anglican one. The latter was a copy, stereotyped Gothic, absolutely academic; but the Catholic Cathedral, he said, reminded him of the work of Brunelleschi, the supreme architect of mediaeval Italy. When Michael Angelo was asked, “Can you build a church with a better dome than Brunelleschi's?” he replied, “I can build a different dome, but not a better one.”
“They have here in New Zealand,” said Mr. Shaw, “a man who is capable of doing that work, but what an awful time he must be having! Just imagine! Supposing yourself born here in New Zealand, a Brunelleschi, and that your business is to produce cathedrals of that kind. New Zealand might make a great effort and give you one commission and one cathedral to build. That is pretty hard lines. That man wants to be building cathedrals all his life. There should be cathedrals like that in every town in New Zealand.”
I cannot quite agree with Mr. Shaw that we should build dozens of churches in order to keep a good architect in bread and butter; I would sooner see the money spent on building schools and universities to the glory of God; and these buildings should be just as noble and inspiring. When everyday surroundings are dignified and beautiful it will reflect on the character of the whole nation.
Christchurch hospitality is a legend. I cannot describe it, or shall I try? Shall I tell you how John Oakley, that competent young artist, gave a party for me in his studio, and invited 20 guests, and how, just-sorter-friendly-like, 54 turned up; and how John never batted an eye, but miraculously served supper by some sort of magic that exists in Christchurch but in no other town in the world? Yes, yes! Christchurch is divine (but I said that before). Dear, friendly Gothic-Dutch town, how much I loved your academic walks, your beautiful vulgar fountain, your boyish professors, your flaming zinnias, your crazy cyclists. How sad I was to wave you “Good-bye”! But Otago beckons and we must go.
The West Coast Road, South Island, New Zealand.
By(
Iris Wilkinson
“Robin Hyde ”).
(
Rly. Publicity photo.)
You may not, perhaps, know quite what a tawhara is. No matter. You will agree that it sounds like the Maori for either a special sort of blanket or a more special sort of shellfish, but it is neither. Of tawharas more anon. To go back to the station from which we should have started: do you know that little Avondale station is a picturesque mass of rambling roses?
The north-bound express is a quaint train, cheerful and comfortable. The moment I had reconciled pillow and seat, I knew that the journey was to be a momentous one. For, going into wild country, one naturally remembers the pioneers. And what does one associate with pioneers? Beards, of course, not to mention whiskers. Of the four male passengers who decorated the carriage of the Opua train, three were bearded—one to the eyes, one merely to the nose, and one chic and elegant in a goatee. They were all three, so it transpired, men experienced in the timber business, in the days when timber was business: and all through their conversation, once they really got under way, was the keen, resinous smell of the woods, which is somehow like the lowest notes of a steel guitar. Kauri cut out for ship's masts and spars, they remembered, and great rough nuggets dug from the black swamps, in the days when it was worth while going twenty feet deep after gum.
Northern hospitality is proverbial. City folk must find it a breath of fresh air, a healthy, healing breath, blowing away the fatuous idea that life is confined to the four blank walls of office or house. A train, you might think, is an odd place to look for hospitality: but there it was.
Great country we were passing through. Helensville was the last stop. If by strange mischance you don't know it, here is the Reno where you can procure a quick and pleasant divorce from your rheumatics. Even if you have no rheumatics, Helensville is to be recommended. The hotels go in for Roman baths and swimming-pools, wherein you can float in exotic style, under hanging draperies of tangled green creepers. There are gloriously sunlit gardens, full of roses and flowering currant bushes, and carnations as big as dolls' teacups. A little place of rest and dreams and sunshine.
On towards Tangowahine … through green fields and hill country dimly brocaded with gold, a broidery of buttercups. The Three Musketeers of the beards are talking timber. One of them, in his logging days, has seen two million feet of kauri cut out. They are all respectful to the king of Waipoua Forest, “Tane Mahuta,” whose name is that of the forest god of ancient Maori lore. But not Tane Mahuta's classic associations nor his soaring crown impress them. It's his sheer majesty of size which does the trick. “Enough timber in that tree,” I was reverently informed, “to build the biggest hotel in Auckland over again.” Whether that's accurate or not I don't know: but Tane and I met, a little later, and I am glad that instead of providing an hotel, he will hold up the sky in lonely majesty, deep in the heart of New Zealand's glorious and eternal forest.
Change at Tangowahine to bus … a few minutes' run, and there you are in Dargaville, the population of which, man, woman and child, seems to have turned out to the street. A brisk and entertaining place is the main street: up-to-date European shops make quaint contrast with the picturesque fashion and flashing dark eyes of the Maori folk. Yes—picturesque Maori fashions still are, despite the lamentable disappearance of flax mat and huia plume. Who but a Maori would, with superb insouciance, don a lemon-coloured beret, a deep crimson pullover and the most dashing of Cambridge blue “bags?” Even so was one white-toothed, smiling young blood who boarded the bus thus arrayed.
From Dargaville onwards, one must leave Trainland for a while, for one of the world's wonders is beckoning … . the Waipoua Kauri Forest, home of a thousand legends and sanctuary of the grandest trees in New Zealand. But don't think that the railway gives up its northern run so easily. A train continues the march to Donnelly's Crossing—Donnelly having been one of the early settlers. A luxuriously upholstered service car leads through the depths of the forest, but a still better way is to continue on horseback from Donnelly's Crossing. That's if you're of those whom horses regard with sympathy and trust. A fiery steed is easily and cheaply hired in the north, and deep, deep in the heart of the forest there are three gemlike lakes, so lonely and faraway that their names are only known among the Maoris. Not all of New Zealand is “beaten track” yet, by any means.
It was near enough to Dargaville when I suddenly noticed something odd about the manuka. The little snow-white, dusk-hearted cups are so common that their fragile charm goes unnoticed: but here the road was flanked with bushes of pink manuka—not even the scentless crimson flower known to gardeners, but a delicate, peach-blush pink which looked as though Aurora of the rosy fingers had been busy among the bushes. And all through the woods, lighting the afternoon as though small pink clouds had obligingly drifted down to earth, mile after mile of these most colourful manuka bushes were to be seen. Never before have I met them, and somehow I think they are one of the wild North's charming rewards, reserved for those who take the trouble to seek her out.
The sales at Kaihu have been on this day. That means that sturdy, good-tempered Bert Docherty, of the little hotel which boasts the finest kauri gum collection in New Zealand, has both hands full attending to the stupendous thirsts of a crowd of men—“cockies,” Maoris, a tourist or two, alike only in the fact of their passionate
Not only gum, but oddities from every part of New Zealand and from foreign lands afar adorn Docherty's bar, and the museum is the pride of the neighbourhood. A duck-billed platypus consorts with a thoughtful-looking kiwi. There are dozens of these quaint wingless fowls, the New Zealander's very own mascot, in the Waipoua district, and, as the law protects them, very amiable and saucy they are. The grinning jaws of a mako shark, a tui's little cream bib of feathers, and several “Captain Cookers,” having met an untimely end, now adorn the walls of the queerest and most fascinating little bar north of Auckland.
Through a sorrowful land of ghostly dead trees and past a red-ochred gate, patterned in Maori style, and the tinkle of a little waterfall welcomes us to Waipoua.
Late afternoon broods grey and dreamy over the trees. Their towering beautifully symmetrical shafts make one feel as though in a harbour full of tapering masts, and indeed, the trunks, just as they stood, were greatly coveted by the masters of sailing ships in the old days. But it is only when, beyond the fringe of the forest, one comes to the real giants, the superb trees whose size dwarfs humanity altogether, that one realises what Waipoua really is. For thousands on thousands of acres, up rise these solemn, colossal pillars; wearing odd spiked boots, the Maori lads can climb them like steeplejacks, but to reach even the first fork would be a feat far beyond the powers of any white man, unless he had expert assistance and advice.
Rangi, god of the skies, Papa, the earth mother, lay together in their dark eternal marriage. Tane Mahuta, their son and god of the trees, was the principal cause of their separation, for with his stalwart arms he helped to thrust them apart. Looking up at the great trees, one can almost believe the legend: there is such a pride and sturdy determination about them.
The Forestry Department's little colony of rangers is comfortably accommodated in huts at one end of the wood. A forest camp, palm leaves lashed down to roof the storehouse and the “wild men out of the wild woods” sleeping under canvas, is more picturesque. Life is by no means uneventful hereabouts. Wild pigs are to be found in the deep Waipoua glens; cattle, given half a chance, take to the wildwoods with a zest which Robin Hood himself might admire—and did somebody mention wood pigeon? One surly old shorthorn bull, an old hand at the outlaw's life, made a business of occupying the trail just when cars wished to pass; and no mere passive resistance for him either. His bleached skull and branching horns now stand out on a signpost, a warning to other truants.
Once, long ago, the heart of the forest held a dell which was called “The Place of the Birds.” Here, year after year, pigeons would gorge themselves on particularly fat and juicy berries, to be found nowhere else among the trees. And every year the soft-voiced Maori folk held a courteous religious ceremony, before trapping as many of the birds as were needed. But even the echoes of the tohunga's chant have died away, for the white man came here with rifles, and “The Place of the Birds” is no more… .
Tane Mahuta… . He is so big that at first his size seems incredible. To reach him one follows a little forest trail, over rough rustic bridges that might belong to a very old fairy tale. About fifteen hundred years ago Tane Mahuta first began to look for the
The road which runs for 12 miles through the Waipoua State Forest, North Auckland, New Zealand.
Touching the matter of the tawhara. A long green palm waves flax-like leaves at you, and you perceive that it has produced a great cream, lily-like flower, of thick fleshy petals. Break off the petals, and you find that their base tastes something like watermelon, something more like honey. The Maoris leave the tawhara sprinkled with sugar overnight, and then indulge in a royal feast. Why starve in Waipoua? Yet how many New Zealanders know that we can produce, on demand, a highly superior, honey-flavoured watermelon?
Only the Maoris know the real ins and outs of the great forest. Few have ever seen the little lakes which glisten, amethyst and emerald, somewhere in the shadows of the kauris. Yet all along the road there is a majesty of great trees, so that I envied most bitterly the cheerful souls who slept under canvas in that wet little forest camp. Some day New Zealanders will understand what Waipoua really is. But until you have seen peach-coloured manuka blossoms, saluted Tane Mahuta, and devoured tawhara fresh from the tree, you know only part of what New Zealand can offer you.
They were talking tobacco as the Thames express thundered on. “Well,” said the jolly old sport as he re-filled his pipe, “me for the chap that takes his glass (in moderation), and enjoys his smoke! Its odds on he's O.K.—that's my experience!” — and his hearty laugh echoed through the carriage. “Yet scientists affirm that smoking shortens life,” remarked the thin man in the dyed suit. “Do they?” said the jovial old boy, “well, I've been smoking for fifty years, so it hasn't cut me off in the flower of my youth, ha! ha! ha! Bless you there's no more harm in my tobacco than there is in winking at a pretty girl in the dark, ha! ha! ha!” “Yours must be wonderful tobacco,” sneered the thin man. “It is,” said the old Jolly-face, “Cut Plug No. 10 (Bullshead). Smoking it is one of the joys of life! Four other toasted brands—Navy Cut No. 3 (Bulldog), Cavendish, Riverhead Gold and Desert Gold. All harmless! They're toasted. Learn to smoke, friend, and try them!” But the thin man pretended to be asleep.*
By)
N. S. Woods
The old “K” class locomotive, the first of the “Columbia” type to be constructed. This locomotive was imported by the Railways Department to run the through express trains between Christchurch and Oamaru.
The Public Works Scheme as finally adopted by the New Zealand Parliament was put into operation with remarkable energy. It must be remembered that the population of New Zealand was only some 250,000 at this time. The immediate object was to build roads and railways, but the real aim at the back of Vogel's mind was to unite nine isolated settlements into one nation and to fill the waste lands with a prosperous people. By working in a vast cycle the railways development was to achieve both results. Immigrants were to be introduced to provide the labour required by the Public Works. These works were to open up the unoccupied lands, and these lands were then to absorb the immigrants. Successful immigration was thus the first essential to the completion of the scheme and this was carried out on a bold scale.
The first appropriation which Vogel asked for in 1870 was £1,500,000 for immigration. He met with opposition, but retorted that had he asked for an appropriation to stock the land with cattle and horses it would have been considered as a business proposition, and that men were infinitely more productive than cattle and horses. He warned intending immigrants that they must be willing to endure hardship and to start, if need be, at the very bottom. He warned them to save and invest. He warned those controlling immigration that they should base their computations on the basis that so many immigrants would be successful, while so many would be the reverse, and he warned the agents at Home of the need for care in selection.
In October, 1873, Vogel sent to the Agent-General in London instructions to send out 20,000 immigrants before the close of the year, and recommended that two first class steamships should be chartered to convey agricultural labourers to Otago and Canterbury in time for the harvest season. The Agent-General was given authority to defray the travelling expenses of suitable immigrants from their homes to the port of emigration, as well as from England to New Zealand. These immigrants were to be absorbed by the Public Works. But Vogel had no desire to swamp the country with only one class of immigrant. Speaking on the Immigrants Land Bill in September, 1873, he advocated a more balanced influx of population, especially of people with independent means. He advocated that fewer total strangers should be brought out, but rather people already connected with families in New Zealand.
From 1873 to 1883, labour was introduced for the Public Works and Land Settlement Scheme at a remarkable rate. From 30th June, 1873, to 30th June, 1874, Vogel introduced 17,573 immigrants, while on the latter date a further 14,530 were still on the water. He had provision in mind for them all, and despite the magnitude of the undertaking, unemployment was an issue which Vogel had not seriously to contend with. The different Ministries which succeeded to power from 1870 to 1890, all remained more or less faithful to Vogel's programme, and by 1883 over 100,000 immigrants had been introduced at a cost of only £2,000,000.
Over 78,000 of these immigrants were brought out during Vogel's short period of office from 1870 to 1876, and these were all absorbed successfully. Meanwhile the building of the Railways and other Public Works went ahead swiftly. In 1870 the country had 46 miles of railroads. In 1873 there were 145 miles open, with a further 434 under construction. In 1877 there were 1052 miles open, with a further 251 under construction. The total expenditure from 1870 to 1878, under the Public Works Policy, was:
The scheme brought about a large increase in population and achieved the building of a net-work of arteries (railways, roads, telegraphs) which made national life a possibility. Shipping kept pace with internal development and the country's isolation was lessened. Yet the Public Works Policy had also given rise to a scramble for borrowed capital. Vogelism produced the greatest land-boom the colony had experienced. Land revenues at first went to the provincial exchequers which thus rivalled each other in selling as much as possible. Land became locked up in unduly large holdings.
(Hugh Bennett, photo.)
The Department's latest “K” class locomotive attached to the “Limited” express at Auckland station.
Prices were inflated owing to the false prosperity arising from the ease of obtaining borrowed money.
Much of the loan, it has been seen, was extravagantly wasted. The Ministry was compelled to build miles of useless or premature roads and railways to retain power, while main trunk lines were left uncompleted. Vogel's weak acceptance of amendments in 1870 and his haste were largely to blame.
Yet despite all its shortcomings, the scheme conferred untold good. Vogel, writing in England, in 1878, said: “No doubt it was a bold policy: it was a policy virtually forced on the Colony by the abandonment of the Mother-Country of the duties it had contracted by the Treaty of Waitangi. That the remedy of the colonists was in opening up the land and increasing the population, was recognised by the Government of this country (England), for after great reluctance they passed through Parliament a Bill authorising an Imperial guarantee to be given to a million sterling of Colonial debentures. All doubts as to the soundness of the policy are at rest. Already it has been found necessary to make the railways fifty per cent, more substantial than was at first contemplated. The value of private property in the country has much more than doubled. The value of the public estate has equally advanced. Till lately land was to be bought from five shillings an acre to £2. At the session of Parliament just concluded, an Act was passed by which henceforth, wherever land is open to selection, the price shall not be less than £2, nor where it is put up to auction shall the upset price be less than £1. Excepting Canterbury, where the price has always been £2 per acre, this means a very large increase, in my opinion an increase more than equal to the whole cost of the railways, roads, and immigration.”
The great fault in the whole scheme was the lack of the land reservations proposed by Vogel in the original scheme. H. J. Sealy, writing in 1881, said:— “To render a large scheme of Immigration and Public Works really successful, every acre fit for cultivation ought to have been reserved by the Government from the very first promulgation of the policy, for actual settlement in moderate-sized farms with numerous village centres… . I maintain that one half the present rates, both for passengers and goods, would have been amply sufficient to pay interest on the cost of construction of the railways, if the country through which the lines pass had been occupied under a proper system of small farm settlement—which, I have shown, was an integral part of the original Public Works Scheme… . I can only express a hope that we may all live to see the whole of the good land of the Colony thickly settled upon by an industrious and contented population, and then, and not till then, shall we be able to acknowledge the benefit derivable from our railways, roads, bridges and other monuments of Sir Julius Vogel's Public Works Policy of 1870.”
The dominant factor in the whole policy was the building of the railways. The most fascinating aspect of the story of these railways is the figure of this man looking so far and so unerringly into the future; juggling successfully with finances of a bewildering magnitude; scheming not for the love of personal power, but for that of setting giant forces into action in the moulding of a nation. His nationalism was a nationalism in terms of railways—in terms of the civilization which the Iron Horse inevitably draws after itself into the wildernesses. Sir Julius Vogel—for he was knighted in 1875—stands out in history as the founder of the New Zealand Railways and of New Zealand as a nation. He had created from the isolated provinces of New Zealand a unified country on the highway to full nationality. He had established a centralised government and through it had embarked upon the building of good communications. New Zealand owes its nationhood primarily to its railways and the man whose genius conceived them—Sir Julius Vogel.
(H. M. Christie, photo.)
A train of twenty-five trucks of lambs passing through the Waimate Gorge, South Island, New Zealand.
Tohunga
In last month's Magazine I gave some reminiscences of the good old chief and tohunga Tauke, of Hokorima, on the famous Waimate Plain. I continue his life-story as I heard it from him many a year ago. He warmed up with the memories of his fighting days when he narrated the events of 1864, when he became a Hauhau. He was one of the band of heroes, half-crazed by the Pai-marire faith, who charged upon the British redoubt at Sentry Hill, or Te Morere.
The railway now passes within a few yards of the spot where the Imperial soldiers who manned the little hill fort repulsed the Taranaki braves. It was a mad affair; Tauke admitted as much, with a grim smile, when he told the story of his wounded hand. Fifty of those plucky warriors died on the red field of Te Morere.
Later, Tauke fought all through the Hauhau wars up to 1869, and he was one of the leaders in the bush battle at Te Ngutu-o-te-manu, where Von Tempsky and many others were killed.
Tauke told me that he once wrote a book for “Kawana Kerei.” This was in the years before the war. It was a large notebook which, at Sir George Grey's request, he filled with Taranaki history and folk-lore and poetry, dictated by his older relatives, the tohungas of Ngati-Ruanui.
Sir George Grey, he believed, took it with him to South Africa. Most probably it is one of the M.S. books in the Library at Cape Town, which in recent years were returned to Auckland in exchange for the South African material in the Grey collection.
The old chief was a wonderful repository of Taranaki legends and poetry, and above all his still active mind, was rich in poetic memories of Taranaki mountains. Puke-haupapa—“Snowy Mountain,” he said, was the most ancient name of Mt. Egmont. Like all the dwellers about the mountain foot, he loved and revered Taranaki peak. It was his Matua, his parent, the father and guardian of the land; its forests were the refuge place for many a harassed tribe-fragment in the days of cannibal raids.
Tauke was the last of the tohungas of the Ngati-Ruanui tribe. He was a dreamer, a seer of visions, and he was the instructor of his people in the Whare-Maire, the school of legend and tradition, religion and genealogical recitals, which he revived in pursuance of the policy of conservatism and of return to the old Maori ways. He conducted the ritual of the ancient Polynesian religion. He was a priest of Hawaiki and Aotearoa. And at the same time he spent hours daily in poring over the pakeha Scriptures.
It was in keeping with the medley of ancient and modern in Tauke's character that the burial ceremony at Hokorima, beneath the lofty gaze of his ancestral mountain, should have been preceded by a poi dance by the women of Ngati-Ruanui, and that the sage of the Plains should have been laid to rest with the poetic conjunction of pakeha rites and the wild musical chants of the ancient race.
Enquiries are constantly coming along regarding the origin and meaning of Maori place names, especially those in districts much visited by tourists. Whakarewarewa is one of the popular puzzle names. Travellers have told me that they seldom can discover a Maori, much less a pakeha, who can elucidate such conundrums. No doubt they question the younger generation, who follow the pakeha fashion of contracting the name of the geyser valley to “Whaka,” which is meaningless. If it is abbreviated—as it might well be in these speeding-up days—it should be “Whakarewa.”
When I was first searching out legends and place-names and associated knowledge of the past in the Lakes Country, I found that only the older people of the tribes could be relied on for information on such subjects, those whose minds had not been transformed by study of English books. Their mental stores were their library. This, from the then head chief of Tuhourangi, old Te Kepa Rangipuawhe, is the story of Whakarewarewa; it agreed with the tradition given me long afterwards by the late Mita Taupopoki.
Nine generations ago (I add a generation to Kepa's eight to bring it up to date), about 225 years, the chief Wahiao assembled a war-party of twice seventy men of Tuhourangi in this geyser valley to march against the Ngati-Tama tribe at Rotorua. The ope fell in at the foot of one of the level-topped pumice hills in the valley. As was customary, a war dance was performed before setting out on the expedition. At the shouted words of command, each rank in succession sprang up from its kneeling position, with spear at the ready, and leaped into the wild dance of the peruperu with a roaring chant of battle, and immediately afterwards started off on the march. This swift setting in motion, the “Whakarewarewatanga” (root-word “rewa”) of the warriors, was the incident that gave its name to the pa which Wahiao built about that time on the hill-top. The full and original name of that spot is “Te Whakarewarewatanga-o-te-Ope - a - Wahiao,” meaning “The Upspringing, or Starting, of the Army of Wahiao.” The name was, in course of time, extended to the whole valley. The historic hill called Te Puia (now a burial place) was the first pa built in the valley. The Whakarewarewa hill stands beyond it, near the base of that steep green hill Pohaturoa, overlooking the wonderful glen on the east.
So Whakarewarewa is a name of story and some mana. The full title will be found a useful jaw-limbering exercise in Maori pronunciation. (You may practice making a Maori chant of it).
There are several literal interpretations of which Whakarewa is capable. One is to float on high, as the clouds of steam drift up above the geysers and hot springs, and another is to melt or dissolve. But the war-party story is the authentic tradition.
C. H. Fortune
A well-known mountain scene, South Island, New Zealand.
(Rly. Publicity photo.)
It is the purpose of this article to draw attention to those memorials and monuments erected in various parts of the South Island, that are in some way unusual: or that for other reasons are worthy of having attention bestowed upon them. Of course, many of the memorials here tabulated have been erected only because of the generosity of some person who has seen fit to perpetuate the memory of an event or personage, but in nearly all such cases the name of the donor has been lost in obscurity.
Some of the memorials referred to are sufficiently off the beaten track for the average man never to have seen: others are in the heart of cities and are passed by every day by the citizens—passed by and heeded not. Only the other day a Dunedin man admitted he had never seen the tablet reposing on the pavement in Water Street, in the heart of the city, and which bears testimony to the fact that here the first Otago settlers landed from a boat belonging to the “John Wycliffe.” Other vessels are mentioned on this tablet: “Philip Laing,” “Blundell,” “Bernicia,” and “Victory.”
Every little centre, every little cluster of houses that proudly terms itself township, possesses to-day its war memorial. Which is as it should be. Many of these memorials are worthy of mention in any article of this nature, but space forbids too much consideration here. At least they all serve the same purpose—that those boys who fell in the hideous years of 1914–18 shall never be forgotten. Christchurch's imposing bridge; Dunedin's stately column; Invercargill's granite cenotaph with its brooding soldier and mighty list of names, are fine tributes to the “glorious dead.” Akaroa is proud of its simple, impressive monument that looks like the entrance to a church with steeple and cross above, and which carries a simple message that rings true: “Their bones are buried in peace.” Sumner boasts a row of lights erected on small cairns along the esplanade, and Timaru, in addition to a tall column near the Gardens, has on Caroline Bay, a War Memorial Parade. And here is an oddity. For on Caroline Bay is a V.C. Memorial Sundial, claimed to be the only memorial in the world dedicated to a number of V.C.'s. On the sundial is an array of names that will go down in history, and that should stir the blood of any patriotic New Zealander: C. R. G. Bassett, D. F. Brown, S. Frickleton, L. W. Andrew, H. J. Nicholas, R. C. Travis, S. Forsyth, R. S. Judson, H. J. Laurent, J. G. Grant, and J. Chrichton. Eleven brave men, five of whom lost their lives in action.
Yet of all war memorials, commend me to the great boulder situated at Cave, on the Timaru-Fairlie road. This great boulder, rough and rugged, with but one glazed surface, seems to be the epitome of sincerity and faithfulness. The inscription is magnificent and one is a queer being who cannot be stirred by the words thereon: “So long as the rocks endure, and grass grows and water flows, so long will this stone bear witness that men from the Cave, Cannington, and Moutakaika districts rode and walked on their way to the Great European War 1914–1918. Some of them have not returned but have left their mortal remains in foreign lands and strange seas that our British way of living may continue, but their immortal souls have risen from the grave.” Then follows a list of names of “Those who offered their lives by serving overseas.”
There are other memorials in this district worthy of mention. On the hillside in a commanding position is Cave Church, built as a memorial to Andrew and Catherine Burnett, who were the original settlers on the Mount Cook sheep run, May 1864: and also in memory of the runholders of South Canterbury and their women folk. It is built of glacier borne boulders taken from the great tracts of Mackenzie Country lying beyond the hills. In the porch is a tablet: “This porch is erected to the Glory of God, and in memory of sheepmen, shepherds, bullock-drivers, shearers, and stationhands who pioneered the back country of this province between the years 1855–1895.”
At Cave is the home of Thomas David Burnett, M.H.R. He has recently had erected a new gateway. This consists of a solid stone wall running for a short distance, and a fine iron gateway. On this appear the words: “Erected to keep minds and hands busy during the great depression 1932–33.” Probably the only memorial to the depression in the world!
The road continues from Cave, through Fairlie, and through a low pass in the hills that guard the Mackenzie Country. This pass was discovered by Michael Burke, an Irishman, in 1885. A monument has been erected and bears this unusual inscription: “To put on record that Michael John Burke, a graduate of Dublin University and the first occupier of Rancliff Station, entered this pass—known to the Maoris as Te Kopi Opihi—in 1885. Oh, ye that enter the portals of the Mackenzie to found homes, take the word of a child of the misty gorges and plant forest trees for your lives! So shall your mountain facings and river flats be preserved to your children's children
And in the Mackenzie Country we find the monument erected at Mackenzie's Pass: erected in memory of “Jock” Mackenzie, the pioneer, who first discovered a way through the hills into the Mackenzie Country: and which also serves to mark the spot where “Jock” Mackenzie, the sheep-stealer, was captured by John Side-bottom, manager of the Levels Run, in 1885, after he had stolen 1,000 sheep. Mackenzie escaped, but I have related the exploits of this notorious raider elsewhere.
At Waimate we find probably the only memorial of its kind in the Southern Hemisphere. Dr. Margaret Cruickshank was the first woman doctor to practise in New Zealand.
Oamaru is proud of its delightful Peter Pan memorial which occupies a prominent place in the Botanical Gardens.
Trees have been planted in many places by prominent visitors—members of the Royal Family, and others. It is not so common to find trees planted to commemorate an event occurring elsewhere. In the Dunedin Gardens a somewhat misshapen oak bears a tablet: “The Royal Oak. This tree was planted by John Hyde Harris, Esq., Superintendent of the Province of Otago, to commemorate the marriage of the Prince and Princess of Wales, 10th March, 1863.”
In Arun Street, Oamaru, overlooking the harbour, is a sturdy young oak, planted to commemorate one of the world's saddest disasters. On February 10, 1913, Doctor Atkinson and Lieutenant Pennell landed from the “Terra Nova” with the news that Captain Robert Falcon Scott and his companions had lost their lives returning from the South Pole which they had reached not long after Raold Amundsen, the Norwegian. Oamaru was the first town in the world to learn of this. To-day, on the Arun Street oak a simple inscription reads: “In memory of the Antarctic heroes, Scott, Wilson, Bowers, Oates, Evans, who reached the pole on January 18, 1912, and perished on the return journey.”
Scott is well remembered in New Zealand. On the banks of the Avon River in Christchurch is the replica of Lady Scott's monument, which has this grand inscription: “I do not regret this journey which shows that Englishmen can help one another and meet death with as great a fortitude as ever in the past.” Scott's last heroic message. At Port Chalmers is another memorial, and there is yet a fourth in the shape of a mountain boulder in the Queenstown Gardens.
The man who proclaimed New Zealand as a British possession, Captain James Cook, is not so well remembered. A very fine statue was unveiled in the Victoria Square, Christchurch, on August 10, 1932, and there is the older memorial at Ship Cove, in Marlborough, where Cook landed and hoisted the Union Jack for the first time on New Zealand soil. Cook's name, however, is well remembered in place-names, and it is to be hoped these last forever.
(Rly. Publicity photo.)
Scene on West Coast, South Island, New Zealand.
More strictly historical memorials are to be found in divers places. At Memorial Point, Akaroa, is an obelisk erected in a commanding position at the very end of the point, to commemorate the hoisting of the British Flag, in 1840, when Captain Stanley, of H.M.S. “Britomart,” arrived just ahead of Commodore Lavaud, of the French ship “L'Aube,” and forestalled the Frenchman's intention of proclaiming Akaroa a French possession. The lettering on the stone reads: “On this spot, Captain Stanley, R.N., of M.H.S. ‘Britomart,’ hoisted the British Flag, and the Sovereignty of Great Britain was formally proclaimed. August 11th, 1840.”
As a result of a foolish dispute over lands, in 1843, Captain Arthur Wakefield and a small body of men of the New Zealand Company attempted to arrest the Maori rover Te Rauparaha at Wairau. The tactics used by the white men were stupid and blundering, rightfully rousing the ire of the Maoris. They attacked the white men who had little chance. Twenty-two white men, including Wakefield, lost their lives, and to-day on Memorial Hill, near Blenheim, a pyramid-shaped monument bears silent testimony to the foolishness of the pakeha, and displays the names of 22 men whose lives were really “thrown away.” Place-names give frequent grim reminders of the days when Maori and pakeha were in conflict, but in the South Island, monuments themselves are rare. Had there been as much fighting in the South as there was in the North, this article might have assumed inordinate lengths.
In 1861 Gabriel Read discovered gold near Lawrence, then known as Tuapeka. To-day a cairn in the sleepy township of Lawrence commemorates Read's great discovery that placed Otago on the map and proved to be the forerunner of one of the world's greatest gold rushes. The cairn bears an additional inscription to the effect that in May, 1911, 50 years later, 260 of the original pioneers gathered at Lawrence to celebrate the jubilee of the Gabriel's Gully Rush.
Further on, some miles past Lawrence, at Gorge Creek, is another cairn that recalls the hectic gold rush days. In its heyday this deserted place was known as Chamaunix Creek, and boasted a canvas town population of several hundreds. Now the cairn is all that is left to tell of the glory that was Rome's. It also serves as a silent memorial to many diggers who lost their lives in the terrible snowstorms that swept the
(Rly. Publicity photo.)
Head of Lake Manapouri, South Island, New Zealand.
Near Millers Flat is an entirely different kind of memorial that is well worthy of inclusion in this article. In 1865 a man named Rigney found a young man's body on the beach of the Molyneux River. He buried it and put a fence round the grave, and erected a slab with the words: “Somebody's darling lies buried here.” The original stone decayed and a new one was erected in 1903, and is there to-day, marking the grave of some unknown unfortunate. When Rigney died he left word that he be buried in the wilds alongside this unknown person. And this was done. Rigney's tombstone bears this inscription: “Here lies the body of William Rigney, the man who buried ‘Somebody's Darling.’”
Trig stations are not memorials, but on the summit of Botanical Hill, Nelson, is a trig station that is worthy of mention because it marks the geographical centre of the Dominion.
Near Hanmer is the Red Post. Not a memorial, really, yet not out of place here, surely. At the junction of the Culverden-Hanmer and Culverden-Kaikoura roads stands a red post familiar to all who travel in this locality. About 1878 it was moved that a railway to the West Coast be run from one of the North Canterbury stations, and a certain spot was designated as one of the most likely places for a junction. A red post was erected to keep the site of this proposed junction in view, and at one time it really seemed as if Red Post would become a very important centre. But—nothing happened, and to-day Red Post is—just a red post with a history.
No article of this nature could be complete without brief reference to the only travelling statue in New Zealand: one that in recent years has travelled about Cathedral Square, Christchurch, with disturbing frequency, and one that has been the subject of more debate in council than any other could have been anywhere—the statue of John Robert Godley, the Founder of Canterbury.
One Big Eat.”
“Railroad journeys in this country seem to me to be just one big eat,” said an American woman tourist, who has spent some weeks in the Dominion, and who, during her travels about the country, has used the railways to a considerable extent. Remarking on the number of stations on the various lines at which time was allowed for the procuring of refreshments, the visitor said: “People seem to jump out of trains at every opportunity for the purpose of joining the scramble for the refreshment rooms, and return to their cars laden with cups of tea and food, which appear to satisfy them for only a few miles. Then out they rush again.”—“Auckland Star.”
A ragged old fellow, charged at Melbourne with stealing a tin of tobacco from a grocer's shop owned up, but pleaded that he was an old smoker and sometimes when he had no money suffered acutely from “tobacco-hunger.” So when he went to the grocer's to make some small purchase and saw the tobacco on the counter the temptation proved irresistible, and he fell for it! Taking his age into account and that he was unknown to the police the magistrate discharged him with a caution. It appeared that he was 85, and had been smoking for nearly 70 years. Anti-tobaccoites please note. Wonder what he's been smoking all these years? Must be something like our celebrated “New Zealand Toasted.” You can smoke this beautiful tobacco till you are 85, if you like. It can't hurt you because there's so little nicotine in it. And it's so soothing and comforting! Five brands only, remember!: Cavendish, Cut Plug No. 10 (Bullshead), Navy Cut No. 3 (Bulldog), Desert Gold and Riverhead Gold. But watch out for worthless imitations!*
(Govt. Publicity photo.)
Mt. Tutoko, Milford Track, South Island, New Zealand.
New Zealand Verse
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)By .
Traveller
Queenstown as seen from the slopes of Ben Lomond, South Island, New Zealand.
During the recent Easter holiday period a very successful excursion (organised by the Christchurch Corsair Social Club) was run, under ideal weather conditions, from Christchurch to Dunedin and Queens-town. The train, which consisted of sixteen well-filled carriages (four for the Dunedin excursionists, one for a party en route to the Eglinton Valley, via Lumsden, and eleven for the Queenstown excursionists) left the Christchurch station at 4.45 p.m. on Easter Saturday, a large number of people being present to witness its departure. Stops were made for refreshments at Ashburton and Oamaru. After leaving the latter station many of the excursionists settled down in rugs and pillows to sleep. Others, however, were content to gaze out over the moonlit countryside and enjoy the silhouettes of the distant hills and farmhouses. Amongst the excursionists were many who had read the recent articles “From a Smoker Window,” which appeared in the “Railways Magazine,” and thus, to them, the scenic highlights of the journey were particularly interesting and inspiring.
The train arrived at Dunedin at about 12.30 a.m. Here the Dunedin excursionists alighted and the carriages occupied by them were removed from the train. The journey was resumed to Gore, where a fresh engine from Invercargill coupled on to the train and hauled it to Kingston. Lumsden was reached at 4.50 a.m., and the carriage containing the 25 excursionists for the Eglinton Valley trip was detached from the train. (These excursionists were met by two good buses belonging to Campbell's Service and conveyed to their destination.) The journey was then resumed to the railhead at Kingston. Here approximately 300 excursionists joined the gaily decorated Railway Department's lake steamer “Earnslaw,” and within fifteen minutes were under way for Queenstown.
Queenstown, the centre of the great Southern Lakes District, was reached about 8.30 a.m. Excursionists were quick in disembarking and setting off to view the various places of interest near at hand. Many trips were available for those desiring to make them—launch trips to Kawarau Dam and Bob's Cove, motor trips to Skippers and Arrowtown, and, for the “hikers,” Queenstown Hill (2,958 ft.) and Ben Lomond (5,757 ft.) sent out a challenge to conquer.
In addition, a day excursion trip to the Head of the Lake by the T.S.S. “Earnslaw” had been arranged by the Railway Department. This steamer was due to leave Queenstown at 10.0 a.m., and many availed themselves of this opportunity of a cruise to the upper reaches of the lake. The air of festivity was enhanced by the attendance of the Invercargill Pipe Band, and a few minutes after 10.0 a.m. the whistle was sounded and the gay party sailed away from Queenstown. Mist, however, clung to the tops of the surrounding mountains and a keen wind prevailed, but the spirit of the party remained undaunted. A visit was paid to Walter's Peak Bay where lay the old ship “Mountaineer,” now used principally as a houseboat. Leaving this pretty little bay the foot of Mount Nicholas was skirted, Bob's Cove passed and a call made at Elfin Bay. Many excursionists elected to leave the steamer at this point and make a trip to Lake Rere, some two and a half miles inland. The steamer then set her course for Glenorchy (the head of the lake), arriving there at 1.30 p.m. At this point arrangements had been made for the Knowles Motor Service to transport as many as possible on a motor run of twelve miles distance to that world-famed scenic resort. Paradise. Over fifty excursionists availed themselves of the arrangement, and all expressed appreciation and admiration of the scenery en route.
The steamer was due to depart from Glenorchy on her return trip at 4.0 p.m. The sun had now broken through the mist, and the return trip down the lake was one which revealed the magnificence of the scenery so much talked of by tourists to New Zealand's Southern Lakes.
Shortly before 8.0 p.m. all were on board, the wharf being thronged with the Pipers and residents of Queenstown, who gave the excursionists a stirring farewell. Immediately following the departure, gramophone dance music was broadcast over the ship, and the trip to Kingston was thus rendered pleasant by the consequent dancing and community singing. At Kingston a clean and comfortably-heated train was soon filled, and an immediate departure made for Lumsden where the Eglinton Valley party joined the train. Breakfast was served at Oamaru, and the end of a most enjoyable trip was reached at Christchurch at 12.7 p.m. on Easter Monday.
The efforts of the Christchurch Corsair Social Club in organising an excursion of this kind won the enthusiastic appreciation of all who were privileged to make the trip.
By
Quentin Pope
It is a commonplace of the boxing ring that a good big man will always beat a good little man, but there is at least one name in British boxing history which disproves this assertion as overconfident. That name is Tom Sayers; he held the championship of England from 1857 to 1860, he was defeated only once and never beaten for the championship, and he held his place at the head of the fighters of the world by thrashing men up to four stone heavier than himself.
Sayers, “the Little Wonder,” was an Irish Cockney bricklayer from Brighton. He helped to build the Great Western Railway and lived most of his life in Camden town. He weighed only ten stone during his fighting career and his greatest difficulty in getting championship matches was due to his lack of brawn. His courage and skill were unquestioned, but no one could see him giving away weight and winning. His early victories were gained with neatness and dispatch, and when he improved to the stage of being able to force Jack Grant, an able and experienced fighter, to throw up the sponge, Sayers definitely entered the front rank of fighters below the rank of heavyweights. Then he fought a sixty round battle with Nat Langham, middleweight champion of England, who was looked upon as invincible by a man of his own weight, and narrowly lost. Langham had the advantage of knowledge. He excited and irritated Sayers by the trickery with which he used to nurse himself against the twenty-six-year-old boy, but for all that, Sayers lasted the better and would have won the fight but for the fact that Langham's blows closed both his eyes. Though Sayers was defeated here it was a useful lesson, for it taught him the way in which to beat heavier men. Using his greater activity to keep out of reach, he battered their faces until their eyesight was affected and he had them at his mercy. In this way he beat Harry Paulson, who was considerably over 12 stone and who had beaten Tom Paddock, the previous champion, and in this way he beat Aaron Jones, who was 23 pounds more than Sayers and three inches taller. That brought Sayers his chance at the championship, and in gaining the belt he thrashed the 14-stone Tipton Slasher in a battle which lasted ten rounds and in which, by making the powerful champion fight in his own style, Sayers revealed that intelligence which gave him supremacy over all his English rivals.
Sayers had little difficulty in staying at the top because he had heavily thrashed most of his potential rivals before he got there. He twice beat Bill Benjamin, a hope rather than a champion, he won from Bob Brettle, the pride of Birmingham, by a blow which dislocated Brettle's shoulder, and he fended off an attempt by the old champion, Paddock, to make a comeback in a bout which revealed Paddock at his worst and Sayers at the pinnacle of his career.
Prize-fighting in those days was far from the exact display that it is in this century. The “rounds” lasted almost as long as the fighters were willing to carry on without rest—when Sayers met the Tipton Slasher one round lasted for half-an-hour—fights of over sixty rounds were common, the bouts were staged under great difficulties and constant threat of arrest of the principals, prize-fighting being a breach of the peace. A purse of £400 was a large one, and often the fighters battled until darkness fell. It was when the United States made a serious attempt to win the championship belt that the system was seen at work on a scale never before revealed.
John C. Heenan, the “Benicia Boy,” who had worked in the Benicia Workshops of an American steamship line, had fought and struggled on the California goldfields and finally took up pugilism, was the man chosen to represent the United States. He was narrowly beaten by John Morrissey for the championship of America, the fight being determined by Heenan's accidentally striking a stake of the ring and badly injuring his hand, and the ability he revealed was such that the Americans were confident that he would be able to beat Sayers. This match, which came to be known as the battle of the century, was made in 1860. It was surrounded with adventure from the first, and it came to one of the most dramatic conclusions in the history of sport.
To reach England at all Heenan had to disguise himself to avoid the American police who wanted him for some minor breach of the peace, and all through his training operations he was harried by the British police force. Warrants, sworn out by foes of prize-fighting, pursued him all over the country, and finally a policeman in disguise was introduced to his training quarters. Though clad only in his stockings, he made a desperate attempt to escape, but was arrested and released on £50 bail. Sayers, who was allowed to finish his training in peace, knew no peace thenceforth, for the police made a most determined effort to prevent him from reaching the scene of battle, and he had to be smuggled there in the disguise of a stable-boy attendant upon some racehorses which were shipped by the fight train. The impending battle aroused the greatest excitement all through England. “Amongst youngsters at school, in all the universities, at clubs, in military circles, in the lobby of the House of Commons, at the Stock Exchange, indeed everywhere,” says a contemporary historian, “the great prize-fight was the topic of conversation.” Lord Palmerston, the Prime Minister, was among the crowd of 12,000 which witnessed the struggle, and two special trains, packed to the doors, were run from London (starting at 4 a.m.) to Farnborough, the scene of the encounter.
Tom Sayers was first in the ring, attended by his seconds, Harry Brunton and Jemmy Welsh, and when Heenan arrived the two had a quiet chat before they turned to their seconds for the finishing touches, for both had arrived in fighting kit. Heenan was the first to strip, and his
Heenan was the first to attack, advancing to where Sayers stood with the sun in his eyes and leading with his left, only to find Sayers quickly jump back. Again the Benicia Boy led and again Sayers was too quick. Then Sayers stood his ground and as the American closed in there were some sharp exchanges. Sayers landed heavily on his adversary's nose and there was a yell from the crowd as the blood began to flow. They came together again and Sayers planted another blow in the same place, but received a heavy counter on the head. They sparred cautiously after that, then worked in to close quarters and Heenan got his arm round Sayers's neck but received some half-arm blows which shook his hold, and Sayers slipped to the grass laughing.
Faces were flushed and both showed signs of heavy hitting on their bodies when the second round began. Heenan slowly fell back into his corner, then halted and let drive with his left. Sayers blocked cleverly, but missed with his counter and the American rushed in, gripped his foe, threw him and pinned him. There was a yell from the numerous Americans who were offering two to one on their man, as they saw that Sayers was no equal of Heenan at wrestling. Sayers quickly recovered from this jar and realised that he must keep away from his heavier opponent. Quickly the Englishman altered his tactics and dodged about the ring while Heenan tried to close in on him. Sayers proved the cleverer general, yet at the finish he underestimated Heenan and paid the penalty, the Benicia Boy catching him on the nose with a heavy blow which knocked him off his feet.
Sayers's customary grin had vanished when he began the third round.
The succeeding round determined the fight. It was evident now that Sayers had decided to hold his ground and fight back, no matter what the risk, and he took up a position in the centre of the ring. Heenan led, there was a volley of terrific blows and then one of the American's tremendous swings at Sayers's head drove the Englishman's guard back on his face. It was a terrific impact and the champion's arm became swollen and purple; a bone was broken. It was evident that Sayers was suffering. He held his injured right arm (his “auctioneer” the crowd called it) close to his body and drove his left against Heenan's cheek. The American lashed back at his opponent's forehead and again Sayers went down. The succeeding rounds were an epic of heroism. A brilliant fighter with a broken arm held off a terrific hitter for twenty-five rounds. Sayers astonished the Americans with his great agility, slipping away out of dangerous corners, causing Heenan to miss and waste his strength, darting in and connecting and dodging out of range before a counter could land. In the twenty-ninth round Sayers seemed to have gained his second wind and, as in his other fights, he had maintained an attack on his foeman's eyes until they were painfully swollen, one being all but closed. The champion's arm was twice its normal size, his face and body were bruised and battered, but Heenan was almost blind. The Englishman's chance lay in closing the Benicia Boy's one good eye. Again Sayers landed a punch to the face and a second shouted, “That's it Tom, put up his shutters and the show is over!” By the thirtieth round Heenan could barely see; there was a consultation in his corner, but he was told to go in and make the best use of his strength at close quarters. He forced the fighting again, still the stronger of the two, but matched against a quicker man. At the height of the struggle there was a yell from the crowd. The police had come.
The scene which followed was the most remarkable in the history of prize fights. The crowd held the police back while the men fought round after round. In the thirty-sixth Heenan tried to hold Sayers against the ropes, but the Englishman escaped and in the next round Heenan's hands, swollen like boxing gloves, were able to do little damage to his adversary. Sayers landed twice on the American's good eye and completed his blindness; unable to see, Heenan rushed at the champion and by luck encountered him. Using all his strength the Benicia Boy forced Sayers back over the ropes and would have strangled him if someone had not cut the ropes just as the police reached the ring. In a moment referee and seconds were scattered, ropes and stakes were knocked down and the crowd milled around in the enclosure. Amidst the confusion the two fighters, ignoring the referee's command to cease, went on with a mad, reckless fight. Sayers was knocked down and almost trampled on by the mob, Heenan's name was called as winner and then the Englishman was up raining blows on his enemy's face. During a momentary lull Sayers was on his second's knee when Heenan rushed across the ring and knocked over Jemmy Welsh with a blow to the face, seized Sayers and rolled with him on the grass. At this time the referee intervened and once more commanded them to stop. By now the police were present in such force that it was obvious the battle must end. So closed the great international fight which was also the last appearance of Sayers in the ring. The contest was pronounced a draw, each man being awarded a belt.
By “)
Shibli Bagarag
One day in Sydney, in 1922, I was in “Aussie's” old offices in Kent Street, yarning with Phil Harris, the founder and first editor of that wonderful little magazine, when the door of his room was pushed open and a tall gently swaying figure stuttered an apology.
“Alright, Henry, come in,” said Harris, and “Henry” came in treading carefully as though someone were asleep and was not to be disturbed.
This picture of Henry Lawson leaning through the half open door is in my photographic mind, as I write. The poet rivetted his deep, deep eyes on me as he took a seat in Harris's room. He kept on repeating in his halting way Harris's words of introduction “young fellow from New Zealand.” I left after a few minutes for I could see that Harris and Henry had some private matters to discuss.
I have always regretted the fact that I never met Henry Lawson again. I can never forget his eyes—those striking eyes that revealed something of his great soul. Some years later, when I heard of his death, one of his verses came to me suddenly and irresistibly, as indeed it would to other of his admirers:—
We in New Zealand must feel proud of the fact that Henry Lawson spent some years here. He was journalist, teacher and painter in this country. The last qualification requires some explanation. Henry was out of a job and the late Mr. Edward Tregear, then Secretary for Labour, secured him a position as a painter on the Public Works staff! Tom Mills, of Fielding, later saw him at work painting a small side door to Government House.
Henry wrote some of his best poems and stories in New Zealand, so we can claim to share with Australia the work of a poet whose name will ever live, and of a story writer who has been classed by St. John Adcock with De Maupassant, Kipling and Bret Harte.
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From every point of view Professor Arnold Wall's recently published book of poems “The Order of Release” (Whitcombe & Tombs, Ltd.) is arrestingly original. The author has composed engaging verse on themes that are new; instead of employing a linotype machine in its printing, he has engaged an artist to letter and decorate his poems, for nearly all of them are bound up in the illustrations. Because he has shattered conventions in all departments, his book simply compels interest. The volume is a delight to read. Perhaps the reader will understand my enthusiasm if I quote only one poem—one of more than three score of sets of verse of sustained excellence. The illustration is of Death, the artist depicting quite a presentable figure beckoning to a placid, dignified old man:—
A striking bookplate by Russell Clark, the brilliant young Dunedin artist.
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L.B.Q. writes to me as follows:—“Your note in the April ‘Railways Magazine’ regarding the original of Sydney Carton prompted me to draw the attention of our College historian, Mr. F. N. Leckie, to the reported connection between Dickens and Wellington College—Mr. Leckie informs us that it was not Mr. George Allen, a Thorndon boat-builder and sometime Mayor of Wellington, but Mr. Gordon Allan, a leading barrister and solicitor of early Wellington, to whom the reference should have been made. This Mr. Allan acted as Examiner in Languages at the College. It was not until after his death that it came out that he was the original of Dickens' Sydney Carton.”
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In the few months that have elapsed since the appearance of its first issue, “Walkabout,” the Australian travel magazine, has developed into one of the most interesting and artistically produced periodicals published on the other side of the Tasman. Its articles deal with all aspects of life and colour in Australia, New Zealand and the South Seas. In the May issue Eric Ramsden has an article entitled “A Modern Maori Princess.”
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Reviews.
“A Century of Love Stories,” edited by Gilbert Frankau (Hutchinson, London) will, I think, be the best seller of the “Century Omnibuses.” Where is the man or the woman who does not love a love story? No
“A Century of Sea Stories” is another worthy edition to the library of Century Omnibuses. And what more worthy editor, than Rafael Sabatini. Such a volume as to make Cook's Tours look very small indeed. Here we have a saloon ticket (return) to any country in the world. If your tastes are for a Spanish galleon, a brigantine, a speed launch or a sumptuous modern liner it is all the same. You embark and meet the most weird and fascinating companions. Sometimes you may ship with bloodthirsty buccaneers but you are always observing them from a safe distance. The whole series of trips are so discreetly arranged for the reader, and with such famous sea writers as guides (Conrad, R.L.S., Herman Melville, Max Pemberton, Edgar Allan Poe, etc.) we are surely in the best of company. A great volume of 1024 pages with its 53 stories.
“Far Caravan,” by E. V. Timms (Angus & Robertson, Sydney) confirms my opinion that Mr. Timms is one of the most ambitious novelists Australia has produced. This, I think, is his fifth novel. His development is remarkable. In this book he deals with a period in history practically unexplored by the novelist. His pen travels over the vast area of Russia of a few centuries ago when the people were being torn asunder by a mighty religious conflict between the old and the new. He places the old eight pointed cross of the Orthodox Church in the hands of a mad, lovable old fellow named Dmitri Zalka, who gathers around him the adherents of the old faith. They travel across the wild and often desolate country like a mighty snowball—on, on to Moscow. Interwoven is the glorious romance of Narelle and Bertrand. The story simply teems with action. Small wonder that such a huge canvas lacks in composition.
“Man Tracks,” by Ion L. Idriess (Angus & Robertson, Sydney) is another worthy addition to the Idriess library of true adventure stories of Australia. Here we travel with the Mounted Police through the Australian wilds in search of lawbreakers. His facts have been carefully assembled from those who took part in the desperate man hunts he tells of. An engrossing novel of adventure—real life adventure. Price 6/-.
“Insect Wonders of Australia,” by Keith C. McKeown (Angus & Robertson, Sydney) is a popular book on the life stories of Australian insects. Possibly the unusual prevalence of mosquitoes during our recent record summer may develop an “insect-mind” among New Zealanders. After reading this book there should be no doubt about the earlier development of such a mentality in Australia. The Commonwealth has an insect family that is truly immense. Mr. McKeown, who is Assistant Entomologist to the Australian Museum, is on familiar terms with the whole tribe and introduces them to us in turn, producing the family album of portraits to illustrate his story. Price 6/-.
“Famous Trials,” by the First Earl of Birkenhead (Hutchinson, London) incorporates in a single volume at a popular price (6/-) his two noteworthy books, “Famous Trials of History” and “More Famous Trials,” both of which books ran into many editions within a few months of publication. This “Omnibus” must have a record sale incorporating as it does the outstanding criminal and civil trials of the last few centuries. Quoting the introduction: “Here is mankind under the microscope, the raw materials of fifty novels fashioned into glittering gems of narrative and character drawing.” The tragic parade of such notorieties as Charles Peace, Burke, and Hare, Landru, etc., makes an engrossing series.
“Shibli” Listens in.
“Good Stories I Have Heard,” by “Tusitala,” in the May issue of the Auckland “Mirror,” contains one of the brightest collection of yarns I have seen assembled on one page.
A warning to New Zealand writers. Make careful inquiries before submitting Ms. to Australian publishing houses. Two books submitted to one concern last year were held up for several months, the publishers ignoring frantic appeals for return of the Mss. Among the several reliable houses are The Endeavour Press and Angus and Robertson, both of Sydney.
One of the most artistic New Zealand book productions of the past decade is the St. Patrick's College Jubilee Book, published last month by Ferguson and Osborn, of Wellington.
Had Lumbago For Six Years
Spent a Small Fortune Seeking a Cure.
Spent a Small Fortune Seeking a Cure
Says Kruschen is a “Boon to Mankind.”
For six years this man suffered with lumbago. After spending a small fortune on various treatments, he tried Kruschen Salts. Within three weeks he felt a new man. He expresses his gratitude in the following letter:—
“I feel that I must place on record my appreciation of the curative powers of Kruschen Salts. For six years I have been a martyr to lumbago and rheumatism. I have spent a small fortune on treatments and specifics, without avail. I was advised several times to try Kruschen Salts, but only recently overcame my scepticism that such a cheap remedy could be of any use.
‘Now, after three weeks’ treatment, I feel a new man, and walk with pleasure instead of pain. I sleep as I haven't slept for years, and am filled with a deep sense of gratitude to the chemists who have evolved such a boon to mankind.”—R.T.
Lumbago, like gout and rheumatism, has its origin in intestinal stasis (delay)—a condition of which the sufferer is seldom aware. It means the unsuspected accumulation of waste matter and the consequent formation of excess uric acid. If you could see the knife-edged crystals of uric acid under the microscope, you would readily understand why they cause those cutting pains. And if you could see how Kruschen dulls the sharp edges of those crystals, then dissolves them away altogether, you would agree that this scientific treatment must bring relief from the agony of lumbago.
Kruschen Salts is obtainable at all Chemists and Stores at 2/6 per bottle.
Mt. Cook (12,349 ft.), the Monarch of the Southern Alps, South Island, New Zealand.
(Rly. Publicity ph
What Emerson called “The frolic architecture of the snow” is responsible for some of the most beautiful scenes that greet the seeker after health in the mountains. In the above view we look out on Mt. Cook (the above picture is taken just behind the Hermitage) from a leafy bower that has been draped overnight so as to become a home for Santa Claus. It has been said that the finest of scenery can be seen from the Hermitage door. So all-comers, in whatever degree athletic or unathletie, have here their Mecca.
“Above me are the Alps,
The palaces of Nature, whose vast walls
Have pinnacled in clouds their snowy scalps,
And thron'd Eternity in icy halls
Of cold sublimity, where falls and falls
The avalanche—the thunderbolt of snow!”
—Byeon.
By
Helen
This Season's Finish.
How about that smooth woollen frock in your wardrobe? It was smart last winter, but this year, though the cut is right and the length is right it doesn't feel right. In fact, it bores you to put it on. Now is the time for the expenditure of a shilling or two and a little ingenuity. We will focus attention on the neckline. Perhaps the frock has a turn-down collar; a triangular scarf, or piece of patterned silk, may be arranged with one point at mid-front and the ends tying under the collar at the back. Or a wide, double bow in smart taffeta may tuck under the collar at the front and lend just that air of newness which you require. An “afternoon” finish is given by the addition of a deep “bib” in silk or satin, softly draped, and clipped to give the square effect at the neckline.
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Probably last year's “best” evening frock is not trained and consequently seems rather useless to you. But alter it slightly, and you will dance gaily in it. Add a short cape of rucked tulle in a pastel shade, to tone or contrast, and you will be charming. The covered shoulder-line may be attained by attaching bands or ruckings of material at the arm-hole edge of the shoulder, and continuing in a straight line about a foot down the front and back of the corsage.
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Long, trailing ends are a feature of the evening mode. They may be scarf ends, sash ends, or merely attached at the neck-line and floating decoratively but uselessly. Bear this fact in mind when refurbishing. By the way, some evening materials dye beautifully. A dyeing day and new accessories work wonders for clever young things with many engagements, some dress sense and little money.
Artificial flowers, big and beautiful, are blooming this winter. I first fell in love with white camellias on black velvet. One or more petalled beauties on the corsage or accenting the back decolletage are definitely smart.
If your wardrobe is graced by a black velvet, give it a present this winter. For formal dinner or bridge, kimono sleeves of gold lamé will add a fashionable gleam. Or, for the young thing, nothing could be more lovely than a deep silver collar with wide double revers. The deep collar is a quaint and very smart touch on one or two of the newest gowns. A well-cut black velvet may form the foundation for one of the new evening blouses in metallic fabrics which the fashion-books have spoken of for some time, but which have just recently appeared in our shops. And so smart they are, too.
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Evening shoes are in court or sandal styles. Many are dyed to match frocks. Silver kid is attractive and has the advantage of doing double, treble or quadruple duty according to the number of your frocks.
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Evening bags are in pouch or pochette shapes. Many in pastel shades are cleverly beaded. Diamante clips accent black bags. Most have handles for slipping over the arm, a very sensible idea for evening entertainments.
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Long evening gloves may be had in pastel tints as well as in the range of shades from white to coffee colour.
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The new evening slips are important, especially for the lady in lace. She will probably choose a sheath slip in satin beauté to wear under the gown which cascades so softly from slender shoulders to the back fullness of a short train.
Helping Lame Dogs.
Joan has just rushed in to talk to me. She and Angela came to tea last week and were full of talk about the opening of the Badminton season. Angela had nominated a new member who worked in the same office and seemed rather lonely. Angela is always doing kind-hearted things on the spur of the moment, and afterwards, sometimes, regretting them. This time, according to Joan, she had introduced quite the wrong kind of girl into their club, a jolly club, where everyone knows everyone else, and jokes and banter are the order of the evening. The new girl, it seems, comes from the country, has only been in town two months, has never mixed with people much, is hard to talk to, is, in fact, no “mixer.”
“She just sits there,” said Joan, “and expects us to make a fuss of her. We have tried to drag her into things, but she never sees the point of our jokes, and when we arrange Badminton sets for her, she never seems to enjoy them, and hardly takes the trouble even to swipe at the shuttles. Her partner has to do all the work, and the good players won't be bothered with her because she's not even keen. And then to-day, coming home from work, I met her and we walked a little way together. She actually talked, but anyone so abrupt and brusque I never did meet. Said she felt left out of things at the club, and didn't think she got as many games as other people. Said we didn't talk to her, and here, for three weeks, we've been trying to pull Angela's ugly duckling into things, and sending the cheeriest lads to talk to her, but she's such heavy weather they give up. There's gratitude for you! Well!”—and Angela slumped dramatically into my best easy chair.
Of course, I don't know the girl, but I've been talking to Joan, and
Wedding Bells.
The executive officers and members of the Railways Head Office gathered together recently to say farewell to Miss R. M. Tipling of the Head Office staff on the eye of her marriage to Mr. Keith G. Reid, also a member of the Head Office, and to extend to them both congratulations and best wishes.
In the course of a happy speech Mr. G. H. Mackley, General Manager of Railways, made reference to the fact that this was the first occasion in the history of the Head Office where two members of the staff were to be joined in matrimony. In congratulating them on their wise choice of partners, he remarked on the able assistance they had both given the Department and the efficient manner in which they had always carried out their duties. Mr. Mackley considered the future would hold for them many of the good things of life and expressed the wish that they might long be spared to one another to enjoy a wealth of happiness in their married life to which they looked with the enthusiasm and idealistic spirit of youth.
On behalf of the staff Mr. Mackley presented the happy pair with a choice selection of stainless cutlery and silver which he asked them to accept as an expression of the esteem in which they were held, and extended to them best wishes for their future happiness.
Mr. E. Casey, Assistant General Manager, paid a special tribute of personal thanks to Miss Tipling and Mr. Reid for the splendid service they had rendered to the Department and to himself in his official capacity, and to the whole-hearted manner in which they entered into every phase of social, charitable and departmental activities. He wished them much happiness throughout their married life.
Miss McQueen, speaking on behalf of the lady members of the Head Office staff, paid a tribute to Miss Tipling's willing assistance and extended to the prospective bridal couple every good wish for happiness in their new life.
Mr. Reid suitably responded on behalf of himself and Miss Tipling, and the singing of “For They are Jolly Good Fellows” brought a cordial and pleasant ceremony to a close.
(
Photo, courtesy J. A. Barton, Taumarunui.)
The scramble for sweets at the Taumarunui Railway Employees' recent picnic.
Health Notes.
Chicken Pox.
Chicken Pox is prevalent amongst the children at the present time. Luckily, this annoying disease usually occurs only once in a lifetime, but parents should be able to recognize it, if it happens to any of their children so that proper action may be taken. It is usually preceded by a feverish condition, and the eruption of white-headed pimples occurs on the breast, shoulders, face, scalp and body generally. The palate also is sometimes affected. It is very important that the pimples should not be scratched or rubbed by the patient, as this sometimes results in slight pitting. The irritation may be allayed by sponging the patient and applying an antiseptic talcum powder or carbolised oil to the affected areas.
Isolate the patient in a warm, well-ventilated room. Give a light, nourishing diet and copious drinks, such as water, fruit drinks, boiled water, etc.
* * *
It is not good to treat a sore throat casually. If the pain is severe it may be a symptom of one of the dangerous diseases, in which case the doctor should, of course, be consulted. For instance, scarlet fever, quinsy and diptheria all affect the throat. If it is just the usual accompaniment of cold and catarrh, it is generally benefited by an inhalation of Friar's Balsam—a teaspoon to a pint of water.
General Treatment.—Keep in bed, in a warm, airy room, and out of draught. The nose should be kept as clear as possible. Handkerchiefs should not be used, but pieces of soft rag which should be burnt. The discharges are very highly infectious. An aperient may be given—castor oil, or some other usual medicine. Give a light, nourishing diet—plenty of drinks—water, barley water, fruit drinks, milk, etc. Soda-bicarbonate drinks may be given at the outset in an attempt to break up the cold. Take up to half a teaspoonful in a tumbler of water.
Coughs.—If there is a tickling or irritating cough, black-currant tea (made with jam or jelly and boiling water) has a soothing effect. Another good help in allaying the tickling is a mixture of glycerine, honey and lemon-juice. If a cough persists it is well to obtain medical advice.
After all, the best thing is to keep children from cold and damp, and the conditions which produce chills; warm feet are very important.
The Cooking of Meats.
Grilling.—The griller should be made hot and well greased before the meat is placed on it. As soon as one side is seared, turn the meat and keep turning frequently until cooked
Dr. and Mrs. Buck and some of their Cook Island friends. (See article on p. 21.)
Stewing.—On no account boil, but simmer gently.
Roasting.—In roasting meat it is necessary to harden the surface and so keep in the juice. To do this the oven should be very hot at first, but as soon as the surfaces are seared the oven should be cooled off considerably.
Braising.—Braising is a combination of roasting and stewing. To get an appetising flavour, the meat should be roasted on the vegetables covered with stock. It then absorbs the flavour of the vegetables, and plenty of rich gravy is produced. First of all it is best to brown the meat in a frying pan on either side before placing in the saucepan.
Boiling.—Place fresh meat in a pan just covered with boiling water. After about ten minutes boiling, simmer until cooked.
Corned Meat should be put in a pan and covered with cold water. After the water comes to the boil, simmer until cooked.
Recipes.
The following are some economical and tasty dishes that appeal to our taste during the winter months:—
Remove the surplus fat and bones from a flap of mutton and roll it round the following mixture: 1 cup of raw potato (cut up in small pieces), 1/2 cup of turnips (cut up in small pieces), 1/2 cup of chopped onion, 1 tablespoon breadcrumbs, 1 tablespoon lean bacon (chopped), 1 teaspoon chopped parsley, salt and pepper.
Tie the roll firmly, place in a casserole with 1 cup of stock (if obtainable) and simmer in a slow oven for about two hours. Serve with brown gravy and vegetables.
* * *
1 1/2 lbs. potatoes, 1 1/2 lbs. stewing steak or neck or breast of mutton, 1 pint stock (or water), 1 onion (large), pepper and salt.
Cut the meat into pieces, place in a pan with the potatoes (cut into dice) and onions. Stew all together for about two hours. A few potatoes (whole) may be added to the stew about one hour before serving.
* * *
1 1/2 lbs. lean beef, 3/4 pint stock or water (hot), carrots (2), turnip (1), onion, 1 oz. flour, seasoning, suet pastry (1/2 lb.).
Method: Wipe the meat and cut into cubes, roll in seasoned flour and fry till brown. Add the vegetables and stir in the flour, cook for a few minutes. Add the liquid, stir till it comes to the boil, remove the scum. Roll out the pastry about half-inch thick to the size of the saucepan lid. Place on top of the meat and simmer gently for about two hours. Loosen pastry from the sides occasionally, and see that the meat does not stick and burn. When meat is tender, cut the crust into eight triangles. Turn the stew on to a hot dish and arrange the crust round.
* * *
1/2 lb. flour, 1/4 lb. suet, pinch salt, 1 teaspoon baking powder, water to mix.
* * *
1/2 lb. cooked fish, 1/2 lb. mashed potatoes, white sauce (teacup), chopped parsley, pepper and salt to taste.
Method: Flake the fish and mix with the mashed potatoes, add parsley sauce and seasoning. Turn into a buttered pie-dish, adding a few knobs of butter to improve the crust. Serve with mashed parsnips.
By “)
Old Sport
The Indian Hockey Team.
IN New Zealand in the last month very little has been seen of the exciting competitive side of any type of sport. Racing, cricket, athletics, tennis, hockey, football—for all these this was the dead season. The visit of the Indian hockey team is an important event although the tour threatens to lack anything of that excitement that is bred by keen competition.
These Indians are verily the “All-Blacks” of the hockey world. Hockey, like Victorian football, lacrosse, and baseball, has never been played in New Zealand to such a standard as to enable the players or spectators to appreciate its beauty and subtlety. All that the public can do during the tour is to sit on the bank—“Silent on a peak in Darien”—and realise that they are watching one of the best team games in existence—fast, subtle, exciting, full of brainy tactics and strategy—played by the best team in the world—speedy, brainy, expert to the last degree and sportsmen whom we should be proud to honour. Unfortunately, although a New Zealand team could probably beat that of any other country but India, for all the difference it would make to those uncanny brothers, Rup Singh and Dyan Chand, our players might just as well follow the example of the spectators and sit in silence wondering how it is done!
It may here be said that, in respect of noble birth, native intelligence, education and general culture this team is probably the “Aristocrat” of all teams that have ever played any sport in New Zealand. On the previous tour, Victoria happened to meet the Indians on a cold day and greasy ground, and playing a roughish, jostling game, managed to hold their own for three-quarters of the game. The way in which these Indian sports accepted the (to them) somewhat boorish conditions of the play was an object lesson to all true sportsmen. How free from jostling and interference hockey, properly played can be, may be guessed at when I remind you that hockey is the Indian national sport, because the difficulty of the “untouchables” among the castes does not arise therein!
Tennis.
The contest between Australia and New Zealand in the first tie of the Davis Cup series ran true to form. Andrews and Malfroy did as well as could be expected, and the remarkable “Marathon” between Crawford and Stedman only showed what can sometimes be done by a player, not quite in the first flight, who is in the pink of condition and who determinedly plays his own game, refusing to be lured off it by even the most wily opponent.
Stedman is a good, hard driver, not as clever as Andrews or Malfroy at tricky shots and cunning placements—so he refused to compete with Crawford at the net in the strategic game at which Crawford is supreme. Stedman stuck to the backline and whanged everything back as hard as he could, whereas if he had attempted to take the net, the astute Crawford would either have lobbed the ball past him or driven it to his feet. Probably the wet and greasy ground helped him, but good tennis tactics were the real cause of his success. Perry used to try the same game against Crawford with some success, but it is a feather in Stedman's cap that he held Crawford to such wonderful figures as 14–12, 17–15, 4-3 unfinished.
It is sad to consider that all the advantage that would accrue to New Zealand tennis if such experience were given to “pukka” New Zealand players, resident in New Zealand, who would pass on the gain to the younger players, is lost. Andrews and Malfroy are now cosmopolitan birds of passage and Stedman may, or may not, return to New Zealand tennis in the near future. Young players like Noel Bedford would benefit greatly from association with the returned Davis Cup players.
* * *
Football.
Possibly many readers will exclaim in relief, “That's right, cut the cackle, and come to the hosses,” since the “All-Black” team is now the burning question that will soon be somewhat disappointingly solved for all enthusiasts. However, no matter what happens, the “Railways Magazine” will not suspend publication nor Rugby football die.
I am going to select my team here and now—not only as a guide and warning to the official selectors, but also as a matter of interest and information to the general reader. I will show him the line of attack that would be followed and the result that would be attained by Rugby selectors if football excellence were the only consideration. This last proviso makes my task the more difficult than that of the official selectors, because virtually half their team will be picked for them and forced on them by various influences emanating from sources outside real football that cannot be ignored with impunity.
Starting with the most difficult problem—the backs—it will clear the ground if I enumerate the obvious available talent for each position. We have then for—
Full-back: Collins, Bush, Pollock, Lilburne, Gilbert, Nolan, Nepia(?).
Right Wing: Hart, Mitchell, Smith, Holder, Dunne.
Left Wing: Bullock-Douglas, Wright, Ball.
Centre: Caughey, Killeen, Pollock, Lilburne, Olliver.
Second Five-eighth: Lilburne, Killeen, Pollock, Griffiths, Mortlock, Olliver.
First Five-eighth: Page, Solomon, Gaffney, Fookes, Mortlock, Langdon, Hedge.
Half: Kilby, Sadler, Simon, Tindill.
I have followed no order in naming these, except that I have placed first those men whom the official selectors, with all the various disturbing influences behind them, will probably pick first.
My first consideration is this—the big matches of this tour will be very even goes, and winning them will depend largely upon a tactician to decide the type of game to be played. Football followers will see what I mean if they recall how Jimmy Duncan won many games, particularly perhaps the Kaikorai-Linwood match in 1897, how Mark Nicholls won the Wellington-England game in 1930, and how Kilby lost the Australia-New Zealand games in 1934. These were all cases of the better team being beaten because the correct tactics were adopted by the poorer team or the wrong tactics by the better team. The coming “All-Black” team should have such a tactician in the five-eighth line. Among the backs I have mentioned
The rest is fairly easy. Of the fullbacks Pollock is the surest and best and Bush is the safest for a strenuous tour and the best kick. Pollock is such a very versatile and useful man that I feel he must go with Bush—certainly Killeen will want someone to discuss tactics and strategy with. At centre I would place Lilburne, a great natural footballer, slow for the position, but with too poor a knowledge of tactics and strategy to play closer in. Two centres have to be taken, and I am forced to select Caughey, a strong, fast, bustling footballer with little or no knowledge of team play. He is younger than Olliver but it is only the present dearth of good backs that allows him to be in the running for an “All-Black” team.
Among the wings Hart has had his day, Holder and Dunne are not really class, Bullock-Douglas is uneven and raw at his best, Mitchell, Smith, Wright, pick themselves, and Ball shows signs of finding his old form.
Of the inner backs, Griffiths is a young and heady player who won his chance on his play two seasons ago, and will profit by the experience. New Zealand has lost, or had the worst of the game, in every match in which Page and Lilburne have played as five-eighths and I do not quarrel with these results; neither is fit for the five-eighth position, nor plays a five-eighth game. Mortlock is strong and a trier, but has no team work in his play on attack. Hedge is small, perhaps, for a first five-eighth, but is the only one playing to-day who appears to have any knowledge of the correct piercing strategy, which calls for breaking through without losing touch with the rest of the team. It must be a natural gift, since he could not learn it in Auckland club football. Of the others, Solomon is the nippiest, fastest and cleverest, and just as likely to learn how to play a five-eighth game. Unless Langdon surprises us in the tests, the best thing is to take Solomon and let Hedge coach him on the trip over.
Sadler is the outstanding half, on present form the best seen for years, young and wonderfully strong and rugged. His passing is perhaps not so quick and accurate as Kilby's or Tindill's but his close to the line play and his generalship is as good as any I have seen. Tindill is brilliant, but lacks ruggedness, but in both respects he is safer than Kilby, and in the less important matches he would electrify the English crowds. Simon is a great defensive half in a forward game, but Sadler is his superior in this respect even on a wet ground. Simon has been unlucky to be passed over in the past, but for me to-day Tindill wins by a nose—chiefly on account of his youth.
No great difficulty or danger attends the selection of the forwards. Setting down a 3-4-1 scrum (knowing that it is not so effective as a 2-3-2 with a wing-forward, but feeling that it is in better accord with the rules of the game) the obvious available talent is:—
Hooker: Hadley, Lambourne.
Front Row: Hore, Leason, Pepper, Hull, Leahy, McLeod.
Locks: Steere, Purdue, McKenzie, Reid, Clarke, Best, Fraser-Smith.
Side and Back: McLean, Manchester, Andrews, Dellabarca, Mahoney.
I have placed these in the order in which the selectors will probably place them and a great forward team is a certainty. Personally, I will only argue in favour of one man—Dellabarca—the most dangerous scoring forward ever seen in New Zealand, as his record shows beyond dispute. In his knowledge of where to direct the attack in open play, he is superior to any back, and his sureness of handling and wonderful speed when he gathers in the ball have been displayed too often to be questioned. He is the most rugged player in the game, and has never been hurt during the progress of any game which I have seen or of which I have record. If selected he will return the idol of the football world, and will undoubtedly score more tries than any other player in the tour—the first forward in the world to achieve such a distinction.
This then is the team I would select, and I will place first in the list in heavier type the men I hope to see playing in the test games:—
Full-back: Bush, Pollock.
Centre: Lilburne, Caughey.
Right Wing: Smith, Mitchell.
Left Wing: Wright, Ball.
Second Five-eighths: Killeen, Griffiths.
First Five-eighths: Hedge, Solomon.
Half: Sadler, Tindill.
Back Row and Sides: Manchester, Andrews; Dellabarca, McLean.
Locks: Clarke, Steere, McKenzie, Reid, Hull, Fraser-Smith.
Front Row: Leason, Pepper, Leahy.
Hooker: Lambourne, Hadley.
It is mortifying to reflect that even the team I have chosen would probably be beaten in the tests.
I would not expect to see any tries scored for New Zealand from clean passing rushes; the backs are too slow. I would confidently look for at least one try from Dellabarca as the result of open play, and I would hope for one from Sadler wriggling over from a scrum close to the line, and another one or two from the Dellabarca-McLean combination. The English team would score at least one try early in the game from a dazzling passing rush, but after that I would look for Dellabarca to keep their two halves closely bottled up, or to spoil their three-quarters by sheer pace.
Good luck to the team chosen—they will need it!
This 40-ton metal cylinder over-peering the guard's van and adjacent station platform was railed from Bluff to Mataura for the Mataura Paper Mills. (See note p. 48, March issue, “Railways Magazine.”)
A Padre was seated at the bedside of a Jock frae Aberdeen. “You want me to write home to your wife,” he remarked.
“Ay,” replied Jock.
“Well, what would you like to say?”
“I dinna ken,” was Jock's answer.
“You don't know, then how do you expect me to write? Suppose I begin with ‘My Dear Wife’”—–
“Ay, that'll amuse her.”
* * *
“You're home early from the court, Mrs. Murphy.”
‘They shoved me out for clappin’ when me 'usband got three munce.”
* * *
Four workmen were playing cards. “I knew you were going to play a spade, Bill,” said one.
“'Ow?” asked Bill.
“Because,” said the first man, “I saw yer spit on yer 'and.”
* * *
He: “I was a fool when I married you.”
She: “And I was so infatuated at the time that I didn't notice it.”
* * *
“Trim the lawn, ma'am?” asked the disreputable looking gardener, who was carrying a large pair of shears. “No thank you,” said the lady of the house.
“Clip the bushes, ma'am?”
“No.”
“Well, ma'am, I must earn an honest penny somehow. What abaht 'aving yer 'air bobbed?”
* * *
“I like this room, but the view from the windows is rather monotonous.”
“Well, of course, this is just a rooming house, not a sightseeing bus.”
* * *
“To think,” exclaimed the enthusiastic young husband, “that by the time we get all this furniture paid for we shall have genuine antiques!”
A kind-hearted English vicar one day observed an old woman laboriously pushing a perambulator up a steep hill. He volunteered his assistance, and when they reached the top of the hill, said in answer to her thanks:
“Oh, it's nothing at all. I'm delighted to do it. But as a little reward, may I kiss the baby?”
‘Baby, Lor’ bless you, sir,” she returned, “it ain't no baby, it's the old man's beer.”
* * *
The small boy had been naughty, and was sent to his room as a punishment. He was so quiet that his parents went to see what he was doing, and found him writing a letter.
“Is that a letter of apology?” they asked.
“If you want to know,” he replied, “I'm writing to the Archbishop of Canterbury to get a divorce from both of you!”
* * *
Mrs. Tattlebaum: “Do you know that you talk in your sleep, Henry?”
Mr. Tattlebaum: “So you begrudge me even those few words.”
The reason a Scotch bagpiper walks up and down when playing is because it is always harder to hit a moving target.
* * *
Wife (to absent-minded professor): “Your hat is on the wrong way, dear.”
Prof.: “How do you know which way I'm going?”
* * *
Pat: “Phwat's the matter with ye, Moike?”
Mike: “Sure, Pat, Oi cannot get me new boots on at all.”
Pat: “Don't ye worry about that. Ye can never get new boots on until ye've worn them once or twice.”
* * *
“Yes,” said Mrs. Bloggs, who was discussing her next-door neighbour, “I got one 'ome on 'er properly yesterday. She was 'anging 'er washin' out on the line, and when I sees her old man's shirt, I says, ‘Wot, ’as your 'usband joined the Fascists?' Prides 'erself on 'er washin', she does!”
Economy.
“What size tube of tooth paste would you like, sir?”
“Oh, just enough for two teeth, laddie—just enough for two teeth.”
Grandma, who is well-known for her strict temperance views, and who would never dream of taking alcohol except medicinally, travelled up to visit us, sharing a double seat in the railway carriage with an austere elderly Bishop with whom she had a nodding acquaintance. While she endeavoured to chat affably with the old man, she was painfully conscious of the overpowering fumes of alcohol which enveloped them, and by the time the embarrassing journey ended her respect for him had completely vanished. We listened in amused agreement to her scathing comments upon the high living and over-indulgence of certain ecclesiastical dignitaries. But when she went to unpack, a shriek came from her room, and I found a tearful, distracted Granny bending over her little suitcase, which reeked like a brewery. Grandfather had thoughtfully placed a medicine-bottleful of brandy among her clothes “in case she had a bad turn”—and the cork had come out. Imagine the mess—and the fumes! But worse still—imagine what the Bishop is thinking of our Granny!
—D.C.
* * *
The work of turning by hand the driving-wheel of George Stevenson's lathe, with which he built his first engine at Killingworth, was so strenuous that five minutes shifts were all that the operatives could manage.
Every single nut and bolt used had to be made by means of this hand driving-wheel of the lathe.
Robots were few and far between in 1821.
—“Pohutu.”
* * *
It was recently discovered that there was still one young New Zealander not conversant with the correct pronunciation of the name applied to the fair sex of one of our most productive animals.
Walking into a country railway station a farmer found the young relieving postal assistant looking frightfully hot and bothered, clutching the telephone receiver in one hand, and calling the word “e-wees” into the mouthpiece.
“What on earth are they?” the entrant asked himself.
Evidently the man on the other end of the line was equally baffled, for after listening to a positive volley of “e-wees,” he demanded that the word be spelt. “E-W-E-S,” cried the postal official, and the mystery was solved!
—N.E.
The Otago University Museum, at Dunedin, New Zealand, possesses the rarest egg in the world, that of the enormous bird the moa, which is now extinct, but which at one time inhabited New Zealand in great numbers. The larger museums of various countries possess skeletons of the bird, but no complete egg had been discovered. From time to time bits of shells and parts of eggs were found, but no one had seen or heard of a complete egg. In parts of New Zealand dredging for gold is undertaken, and the dredges in many places leave the streams and cut into the banks. In one of these dredges which was cutting into a bank of auriferous sand and shingle, a workman, some years ago, noticed a big yellow lump which he took to be a turnip floating on the surface of the water. He found that the supposed turnip was a large egg. It had apparently been buried for ages, and the contents had entirely dried up, but experts decided that it was an egg of the moa, the only complete one in the world. The bird when full grown was about 14 feet in height, but none have been seen alive since about the middle of the seventeenth century.
—A.J.
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