Publicly accessible
URL: http://www.nzetc.org/collections.html
copyright 2008, by Victoria University of Wellington
All unambiguous end-of-line hyphens have been removed, and the trailing part of a word has been joined to the preceding line.
Some keywords in the header are a local Electronic Text Centre scheme to aid in establishing analytical groupings.
The New Zealand Railways Magazine is on sale through the principal book-sellers, 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.
In all cases where the Administration makes announcements through the medium of this journal the fact will be clearly indicated.
The Department does not identify itself with any opinions which may be expressed in other portions of the publication, whether appearing over the author's name or under a nom de plume.
Short stories, poetry, pen-and-ink sketches, etc., are invited from the general public upon New Zealand subjects.
Payment for short paragraphs will be made at 2d. a line. Successful contributors will be expected to send in clippings from the Magazine for assessment of the payment due to them.
The Editor cannot undertake the return of MS.
All communications should be addressed to The Editor, New Zealand Railways Magazine, Wellington.
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.
(Photo., courtesy Auckland “Star.”)
(photo, courtesy auckland “star”)
Engine-cleaning apparatus in operation at the locomotive depot, at Auckland. A stream of hot water, at high pressure, is applied to the wheels and motion gear of the locomotive, the action of the hot water cleaning the parts thoroughly in a fraction of the time formerly required for this work.
(Govt. Publicity photo.
For any story to be worth-while it must have an elemental background of facts based on the country or subject to which it is related. Hence the richest literature has been drawn from those countries where the life of the people is most diversified both in daily routine and in the larger movements and tendencies of economic and political conditions. Even such purely imaginative works as Pilgrim's Progress and Alice in Wonderland depend for their power on a very thorough knowledge of biblical teaching in the one case and physical laws in the other. Shakespeare's power lies in his presentation of the English life and philosophy of his own day, whether the stage be set in England, France or Padua. He lived in a period rich with opportunity and development.
New Zealand, the country of all the world richest in natural resources, has all the qualities which go to form the background of a great literature. Here education to a reasonably high standard is universal, with ample opportunities for extension to the higher branches. Here a favourable climate not only brings great returns from the soil but encourages physical activity, so that health and long life are the common lot. In productive capacity the country is unexcelled, and the individual output of work, in any line of endeavour where comparisons under equal conditions with other countries can be made, is proof of the high standard of industry and intelligence of its people. Freedom is here, too, and opportunity for enterprise in any desirable direction.
New Zealand writers should read the books of other lands not to be able to write similarly, but to know what has already been done and to ensure that any efforts they make may work a new ore of more precious metal than is to be found among the tailings of other countries. There is a wealth of materials to work on. In this country more worth recording happens in a year than in any two centuries of Britain's earlier history. No country has seen such development at any time in the world's history as has New Zealand in the last ninety years.
The New Zealand Authors' Week, decided on for about March next, should show New Zealanders how much has already been done to lay the foundation of that great literature which this country is destined to produce, and the efforts of the promoters are worthy of all commendation and support.
The worth of the work of some contemporary New Zealand authors has been undervalued by their own people and the movement to draw pointed attention to the already great achievements of the principal New Zealand writers should do much to bring their work into true perspective in the eyes of their fellow countrymen. Some of the best work has been done by authors who have seen clearly and applied their genius to the facts supplied by their own country's history, its resources, life and manifold activities and the varied and changing outlook of its people. It should also be an encouragement to the younger generation of writers, most of whom (and there is a large army of them) can write well and some of whom have already shown that spark of genius which should be fanned into flame by the necessary encouragement of practical support for their efforts.
The response by members of the Railway Service towards the gift in honour of His Majesty's Silver Jubilee has resulted in £401/5/7 being collected amongst them, and receipt of this amount has been gratefully acknowledged by. The New Zealand Branch of the British Empire Cancer Campaign Society, Inc. It has been explained that, in accordance with His Majesty's pleasure, all moneys so collected in the Dominion are to be devoted towards the object of Cancer Research in New Zealand for the relief of the many sufferers from this scourge.
Undoubtedly this amount represents the highest individual contribution to the Fund by any commercial undertaking in the country, and it is typical of the efforts of New Zealand railwaymen, not only in national but also in district campaigns, to help financially when the objective is a cause which deserves their sympathy and support.
Perhaps the public at large do not always realise the value of the Railway industry through the spending power of its sixteen thousand employees, and the generally beneficial results from the dissemination of these railway earnings in all the communities where railways operate, hence an occasion such as this may reasonably be regarded as drawing pointed attention to the important part played by the Railways even in subsidiary ways.
Loyalty to the Throne is a cherished tradition of the Railway Service, and this loyalty cannot fail to be still further strengthened and enriched by His Majesty's magnanimous conception of how a loyal gift by the people of his realm in commemoration of his 25 years of Royal devotion to their interests could best be made to serve the welfare of the Empire and at the same time contribute towards the betterment of the whole world.
General Manager.
(Rly. Publicity photo.)
New Zealanders have made a new thing of the Agricultural and Pastoral Society idea, and in this article I propose to show exactly how proud we should be, and what a great work has been achieved in this regard.
No grown-up amongst us can fail to remember “Show Day.” Our memories are compounded of fleeting visions of long rows of pens of cows and sheep; stock parades; hunters doing miracles over fences; snow-white tents in dozens that held all sorts of wonders; the “Fat Woman”; “Performing Seals”; “The Twelve Midgets”; the “Hoop-La”; the wheezing, noise-making roundabouts, and a wandering, sauntering, cheery, copious, and apparently endless procession of human beings.
No matter where a New Zealander lives, there is an A. and P. Show within a few miles of him. This country has no less than ninety-nine various shows in a year, and over two hundred separate show-days.
This is in line with the settled facts that in most branches of human endeavour, our million and half folks do things on the scale of ten millions in any other part of the world. But, more important than the mere numbers, and the imposing array of figures, is the genuine phenomenon that New Zealand leads the world in making the best cultural and educational use of the A. and P. idea.
The manufacturer of a new implement, the inventor of a new machine, the courageous importer of a new line of bloodstock, be it horse, cattle, pig, or dog; the innovator in transport mechanism, be it motor-car, tractor or steam hauler; the author of sound doctrine in cultivation, care of stock or any branch of farm technique, or the purveyor of the latest fashion fad from London, finds here his best medium.
I will confine this article to the “Spring Show” for many of our carnivals are held after Christmas mainly for the purposes of exhibition of fat stock. Those which are dated before Christmas are essentially typical of this great development in farming science, and the creation of the connecting link between farmer and business man.
The A. and P. Show which was in its beginnings, a sort of picnic holiday, a cheery country carnival, has in the hands of our countrymen, become
(Rly. Publicity photo.)
Naturally, in this article, I have not time nor space to deal with the ninety-nine shows of New Zealand. As is our special habit, so distinctive of our country, this great movement is not confined to our cities. It cannot be said too often, that the Dominion stands alone in one outstanding peculiarity. Our country towns, and more particularly, our provincial capitals, rival our metropolitan centres, and leave the rest of the world far behind, in their general standard of amenities. Every district has a carnival, and splendid and impressive shows are held in centres that in older lands would simply be regarded as a “gap in the hedge.” Ashburton, a town of four or five thousand souls, has a tremendous festival. It has twenty-eight acres of show grounds, vast modern exhibition buildings, and last year had 3,037 entries, coming in close behind the great movable Royal Show. Each district specialises in some way, and Ashburton is particularly strong in horses, its enormous agricultural areas providing unexampled excellence in the whiskery Clydesdale and other equine types suitable for farm work.
(Rly. Publicity photo.)
The Bay of Islands Show at Waimate North started in a frame covered with nikau palms, with an open centre to admit the light. The next step was a hall 44 × 32ft. with two ante-rooms, which cost altogether $58, the kauri timber and the labour being contributed by the executive and their mates. To-day it is a modern exhibition worthy of any capital.
I am taking one society as an example to give readers the right impression of what we have to boast about in the growth of this great institution. Once more, I pause to suggest that we cultivate the habit of mentioning, not loudly, necessarily, but very often and with great firmness the good things of our lovable, beautiful, and progressive paradise of the British Empire.
This year of grace marks the Golden Jubilee of the Manawatu and West Coast Agricultural and Pastoral Association. This titanic exhibition takes place in a New Zealand country city, Palmerston North, which has a population of twenty thousand. Owing to its unique centrality, however, it operates as a centre for five times that number, and is in fact, within easy reach of any part of the North Island. The rise and growth of the Association is, of itself, a panorama of the development of the whole district, and has, moreover, its own essentially New Zealand atmosphere.
The Association began its activities, half a century ago in a log-strewn paddock, in the midst of a great forested plain, ringed and guarded by the lofty Tararua and Ruahine Ranges. Inroads into the dense bush had been made by courageous settlers, and sweet English grasses were taking the place of the tall trees. Wekas, kiwis, fern-birds and makomakos would be heard in the country roads which are now the elegant suburban streets of the City of Palmerston North. The settlers were, however, of the type that fashion new worlds, selected Anglo Saxons, with a sprinkling of Norsemen. They had courage and imagination, and behind them the tradition that farming was a science, a profession with a heritage that needed cherishing. A railway system was in course of completion and those dreamers of high dreams, were certain that their town was to be in the future, a great and important railway centre. The Association was formed, Mr. David Buick presiding at the first meeting, where Mr. J. C. Sly made an impressive speech in the role of prophet. The committee started to function immediately, taking off their coats to start the job of clearing away the stumps,
(Rly. Publicity photo.)
In November, 1886, the first show was held, and it was conservatively estimated (turnstiles were not “within the sphere of practical politics” in those days) that the attendance was in the vicinity of the colossal total of 1,200. The membership was sixty. Today it is over 2,000 and modern turnstiles click to 50,000.
It is not the province of this article to go into historical detail. The first President was Sir James Prendergast, succeeded by Sir James Wilson (for six years) and thereafter came a long procession of distinguished gentlemen who laboured loyally, zealously and unselfishly for the advancement of the institution. It is invidious to mention names for, in the accident of circumstance, many a great worker, many a valiant enthusiast, did his task without figuring in the official honours list.
It has been said that pioneering in the Dominion was comparatively easy. The attainment of a high standard of comfort was reached very early in our history. This may be so, and, assuming that it is, the achievement was only made so speedily because of the high calibre and the specially selected material of which our pioneers consisted.
Our duty now is to appreciate, understand, and estimate at its real worth, and to look upon, with proper pride, the tremendous result of the work of those mighty men of the early days of our country.
The Manawatu Agricultural and Pastoral Association is, of its kind, one of
(Rly. Publicity photo.)
Let us make the tour, on an “off-day.” It is only a trifle easier than on “People's Day” when the crowds are reminiscent of Epsom on Derby Day, and all roads radiating out from the town are black with traffic. We enter through the turnstiles situate under the imposing administration buildings. We take a ramble through the industrial exhibition. Everybody in the world that has anything to sell to New Zealanders seems to be represented, and every stall has its knot of folks inspecting the display. Things on show range from ribboned sticks and candy floss, to milking machines, and the latest electrical devices for comfort in the home. At the Show you could buy a large farm, stock it under the best auspices, build and furnish a modern home complete with the latest comfort-bringing “gadget” from London, and live for six months.
The motor display is lavish and impressive, and we pass through the stadium with its ingeniously arranged seating to the poultry exhibits. This is where one begins to see life. Ducks, and fowls take on sizes, shapes and varieties of such a number and bewildering maze of colour and form that it stuns the imagination. All these differing species have some particular and worthwhile value.
Then we pass to the open air. Our picture shows the imposing stands, the grandstand seating over three thousand people. The parade-ground is a sports centre for the city, and is a well-kept recreation field suitable for all games.
To-day will be the maiden jumpers' competition and the steer-riding, and every day there will be interesting events. The jumping events have become classics, and where they talk “horse” there are still memories of the deeds of Pickpocket, Tomtit, and Duchess which rival those of Carbine and Desert Gold.
(Rly. Publicity photo.)
The practical side of the Show now comes in evidence. Commodious and well-built pavilions house the cattle and sheep, the latter being the fine memorial to that great pioneer, Mr. G. C. Wheeler. For auction sales there is a covered in Sale Ring and Buyers' Gallery. There are many other temples to the science of agriculture and its brother arts. The Breeders' Club, Plunket Rest Rooms, caretaker's house and workshop, committee building lecture hall make up with the six great exhibition edifices, a set of general equipment second to none in the Dominion, and able to claim parity with most in the world.
On Peoples' Day with its surging crowds thronging the endless side shows, streaming through the industry exhibits, and massing to see the Grand Parade, one might very easily forget the high purpose which dominates the whole conception. It is never lost sight of and is working all the time, even when the carnival is apparently a mighty entertainment, a mixture of circus, gymkhana, world's fair, and sports' meeting.
No one can come away without learning something new, but to those engaged in any branch of farming, the Show acts as an excellent post-graduate course. Great skill and ingenuity are exercised in maintaining the interest of the younger generation in all the arts of homecraft, farming and its kindred industries and occupations. Classes of entries are open for scholars of primary and secondary schools, and every device is used for encouraging the progress of the Boys' and Girls' Agricultural Clubs and Gardening Circles.
(Rly. Publicity photo.)
A Pyramid of competing New Zealand Cheeses.
The competition created in the blood stock arena is the healthiest and surest method of improving our standard strains, and maintaining their excellence.
In Palmerston North, the Show also acts as a conference centre. Here sit the little parliaments who administer the affairs of the many breeds of cattle, sheep and pigs, where the discussions are handled by men who are the best in the land on each subject.
The Show does not only function as the shop window of the Manawatu. It acts as a University College where assemble all the finest experts of our rural industries, to instruct, mark progress, and search for means of improving still more the great original science on which New Zealand depends for its very existence.
The A. and P. Association movement is largely responsible for the position we hold in the world in the standard of our livestock, for our leadership in the technique of farming, and in the unsurpassed excellence of the wide range of our primary production. The Royal Show development was a step forward in this direction, intensifying the competition between breeders, and assisting to raise the already high standards. Palmerston North, by the way, was selected as the venue for the first Royal Show.
All of us who are able, should see the Jubilee Show at Palmerston North. It promises to be a peak achievement, and will be the Mecca to which tens of thousands will proceed, with a hundred and one objectives in their minds. I noticed with interest in one old report that 14,500 people went on one day by rail to the city. On that day also, every road for miles round would be a packed procession of vehicles.
What an imposing instrument such a carnival is! Its power for good or ill is almost illimitable.
However, here in this Dominion we can rest assured that the wisest possible use is being made of it.
And in conclusion may I say that this is to be expected. We are simply maintaining the great tradition of which we are the natural heirs, and by doing so are taking the proper advantage of those beneficent gifts of climate, terrain, and surroundings which our lovely land affords.
“Tobacco has been one of the greatest blessings of my life,” declared Geo. R. Sims, the well-known journalist and dramatist, on one occasion, and he went on to say that although cigarette and cigar had their attraction for him he found that “after all there's nothing like a briar.” Judging by the popularity of the pipe countless smokers agree with him. Here in New Zealand, despite the rivalry of the cigarette, the pipe still holds its own. As for the weed the demand for “toasted” points conclusively to the almost universal preference for these beautiful tobaccos, the most delicious, the most soothing and the least harmful of any. Why “the least harmful?” Simply because they are practically free from nicotine, removed by toasting. Thus their purity is assured. There are only five brands of the original “toasted.” Three —Cavendish, Navy Cut No. 3 (Bulldog) and Cut Plug No. 10 (Bullshead) —are unequalled for the pipe, while the other two, Riverhead Gold and Desert Gold, make the choicest of all cigarettes, as those who roll their own long since discovered.*
Many explorers and men of science have left their mark on New Zealand. The master hand of all, the foremost and most persistent and enthusiastic in the pursuit of knowledge of the country and its hidden wonders and treasures was that distinguished German-born colonist Sir Julius von Haast. Not only was he a courageous and persevering explorer, who specialised in geology, but he became a leader in the cause of higher education. He was the first advocate of the study of physical science as an indispensable part of advanced education in New Zealand. He founded, and for many years presided over the Canterbury Philosophical Institute, and with Bishop Harper founded the Christchurch Collegiate Union, which developed into Canterbury University College. Christchurch was his home and the Canterbury Museum, which he founded and enriched, is a noble monument to his career and achievements. He was an eloquent speaker and as eloquent a writer, and his reports on the geology and landscapes of the South Island are admirable for their scientific thoroughness and for their graphic and vivid descriptions of the alpine and forest country which he explored under the most arduous conditions.
Sir Julius Von Haast, K.C.M.G., Ph.D., F.R.S., F.G.S. (Horn 1st May, 1822; died 16th August, 1887).
Two great names of foreign-born scientists are linked together in an early-days' exploring association in New Zealand. Science knows no frontiers, and it is to learned men of the Continent of Europe that we have reason to be grateful for much pioneering data concerning this British Colony. One man of note whose observations on the physical characteristics and the people of New Zealand nearly three-quarters of a century ago still stand as reliable and authoritative was Dr. Ferdinand von Hochstetter, the geologist. A friend and professional colleague of Hochstetter was Julius von Haast. Hochstetter soon returned to Europe; von Haast remained to become a naturalised British citizen, a valuable settler, and a great scientific benefactor of his fellow-colonists.
It was within a day of each other, in December, 1858, that Hochstetter and Haast set foot on New Zealand's shores. They were then unknown to one another, but they soon met and became friends and travelling comrades, and their friendship lasted until death. Dr. von Hochstetter had come out as geologist in the Austrian warship “Novara,” cruising round the world, an expedition which led to the formation of many links of interest between the colony and Vienna.
Julius von Haast was born on May 1, 1822, at Bonn, in Germany. His father was for many years Burgomaster of that city. When young Julius entered the University of Bonn he developed a taste for geological and mineralogical studies, which decided his life's bent and purpose. He travelled about his native mountains, and soon formed a large mineralogical collection. After leaving the University he spent several years in France, and for eight years before coming to New Zealand he travelled about Europe, visiting Russia, Austria and Italy, occupying himself with scientific research, and also with the study of art and music. In 1852 he made an ascent of Mt. Etna while the volcano was in eruption. In 1858 he was sent out to New Zealand by a firm of London shipowners to report on the suitability of this country as a field for German settlement. The result of his report was the emigration of many German people to the colony.
It was in the British ship “Evening Star” that the gifted son of the Bonn Burgomaster reached Auckland; and it was on board the hospitable “Novara” that he began his acquaintance with the young geologist from Vienna, who was considerably his junior. The pair of scientists soon found themselves associated in an exploring journey through the greater part of the North Island.
Here it is convenient to explain that von Haast's career may be divided into three periods. First, there was his life in Europe, up to the age of 36; then his coming to New Zealand and his era of many scientific explorations in this country in the prime of his life, 36 to 48. Next, from 1870 onward for some fifteen years, came his development of a Canterbury Museum and preparation and publication of his geological writings and descriptions of his explorations. Lastly, in 1886, his official visit to Europe and London as Exhibition Commissioner.
In 1859, Dr. Hochstetter having been commissioned by the Government in Auckland, with the consent of the Austrian Government, to carry out a geological examination of the interior of the province, the two new friends, with a large party, set out up the
The late Mr. L. M. Grace, the Taupo missionary's son, told me that one Sunday morning the family were at prayers in the mission home at Pukawa, at the south end of Lake Taupo, when he saw as he looked up a line of men with packs on their backs approaching the house. The strangers halted when they heard the voice of the missionary, the Rev. Thomas Samuel Grace, and stood there in silence near the porch until the devotions were over.
Then they introduced themselves—Hochstetter and Haast and their party. The scientists were most hospitably received and made free of Pukawa while they remained; educated Europeans were too seldom seen in that remote part of the country.
The geologists examined the country and particularly the thermal springs region extending to Rotomahana and Rotorua. Dr. Hochstetter's description in his large book on New Zealand is of special interest in this section for purposes of comparison with present conditions in the Geyserland country.
The Maori War in Taranaki and the looming war in Waikato checked for a time European immigration to the colony. Haast had sent reports to the leading German periodicals on his explorations. Dr. Hochstetter returned to Europe, taking with him as guests of the Austrian Government two Waikato Maori chiefs, who returned with many gifts, and then cheerfully took up gun and tomahawk with their tribesfolk in the Waikato War. By the time of their return Haast was established in the South as Canterbury Provincial Geologist.
At the end of 1860, after the North Island journey, Haast was requested by the Nelson Provincial Government to carry out an exploration of the West Coast district of the province. He spent several months on this arduous mission and carried it through with great success and with profit to the province, especially in the revelation of South Nelson's vast mineral resources. He produced a report which to-day reads like a wonderful story of adventure in no wise less absorbing than Thomas Brunner's account of his famous journey to the West Coast many years before Haast. Mr. James Burnett, surveyor, had been engaged as his topographical assistant. For a considerable part of the explorations von Haast was in company, at various times with James Mackay and Alexander Mackay. He also met and camped with occasionally that skilful explorer and surveyor John Rochfort. After exploring thoroughly the headwaters of the Buller, he prospected the Lower Grey Valley, where coal measures had been reported.
He found the main seam, which he followed up to the bed of a small rivulet, where it was lying exposed to a depth of 12ft. 6in. “I must confess,”
in situ, it was clear to me that I had to do with a real coal, its compactness, specific gravity, lustre and combustibility leaving nothing to be desired. As the seam struck in a regular way across the river, whilst at the same time I was able to trace it towards the north I had no difficulty in concluding that the spot upon which I was standing would prove a source of great wealth, not only to this district but to the colony at large.”
That discovery meant a great deal for the West Coast and New Zealand. More valuable still, if possible, was his exploration on the high forested range near Westport, where John Rochfort had reported coal some time previously. He climbed Mt. Rochfort, and on descending to the plateau below—where Denniston, the alpine town of coal-miners now is—he found pieces of coal everywhere among the creeks and gullies. At one place he found a large seam of good coal in a creek, and on removing the moss and ice that encumbered a small waterfall he found 8 ft. 2 inches of pure coal. He named the valley Coalbrook Dale. That is not the only treasure-trove in coal that a waterfall has revealed to New Zealand geologists.
This report of Haast's covering those great coal-finds abounds in eloquent descriptive passages and quite thrilling adventures and narrow escapes and the inevitable spells of hunger in an all but foodless land. The geologist was also a good deal of an artist and a poet. Up in those wild ranges, where it was so cold that it was difficult to hold a pencil to sketch or write, he could not resist setting down this evening vignette:
“… It was wonderful and beautiful to see the valleys below us in deep shades, while the summits of the mountains around glowed in the rich red tints of the declining sun. As the night advanced, the stars shone with extreme brilliancy, the splendid constellations of the Southern hemisphere rising one after the other above the sharp serrated outline of the eastern mountain chain, and the dazzling snowfield around us, illuminated by the flames of our campfire, imparted additional grandeur to the scene.”
Haast's next appointment, which proved to be his life work, was that of Geologist to the Province of Canterbury. The many and great duties of technical skill and arduous exploration which he carried out from 1860 to 1870 are detailed in his work, “The Geology of the Provinces of Canterbury and Westland, New Zealand,” published in Christchurch in 1879. His narrations combine graphic accounts of “the difficulties, dangers and joys of an explorer's life,” with a great mass of detailed information on the geography and geology of this very beautiful and wonderful region of New Zealand.
The Superintendent of Canterbury, Mr. W. Sefton Moorhouse, after whom Haast named the Moorhouse Range and Mount Sefton, sent a special urgent summons to Haast to examine the extinct volcano through which it was proposed to pierce the Lyttelton-Christchurch railway tunnel. The first contractor had abandoned the work on account of the hardness of the basalt lava rock met with. The geologist explained the sequence of the lava streams and ancient crater walls that would be encountered, and the small proportion of hard rock. In consequence of his report the contract was re-let and the
A memorable, and tragic expedition, undertaken in 1861, soon after von Haast's appointment as Provincial Geologist, was the exploration of the Rangitata and Ashburton Rivers up to their alpine sources. The geologist was accompanied by his friend Dr. Andrew Sinclair, who went to assist him with the botanical researches. Their headquarters were fixed at Mesopotamia, where Samuel Butler, presently to become famous as the author of “Erewhon,” had a few months previously established himself as a sheep-farmer. The scientists explored the glacial heads of the Rangitata — space prevents Haast's eloquent description of those scenes of alpine gloom and glory — and returned to Mesopotamia to rest their horses and obtain food. A few days later, when crossing one of the deep main streams of the Rangitata, Dr. Sinclair was washed away and drowned. His body was found next day 300 yards below, where he entered the river; the riderless horse had arrived at the Mesopotamia Station the previous night. It was a sad blow to Haast.
“We brought the body of my lamented friend to Mesopotamia and buried him on March 29. Near the banks of the river, just where it emerges from the Alps, with their perpetual snowfields glistening in the sun, amidst veronicas and senecios and covered with celmisias and gentians, there lies his lonely grave. With almost juvenile alacrity he had climbed and searched the mountain sides, showing that notwithstanding his advanced age his love for his cherished science had supplied him with strength for his pursuits, until at last, over-rating his powers and not sufficiently aware of the treacherous nature of alpine torrents he fell a victim to his zeal. Great and deep was my sorrow, and with a saddened heart I had to continue alone the work upon which we had set out together.”
The Provincial Geologist's next scene of exploration was the head-waters of the Waitaki and the glaciated Tasman country. In this duty, which occupied four months in 1862, the late Sir Arthur Dudley Dobson (then a youthful cadet surveyor) was Haast's assistant in the topographical work. It was the first exploration and mapping of a country that is now a famous pleasure-ground for tourists, “the very centre of the Southern Alps, which,” Haast wrote, “in grandeur and beauty are worthy rivals of their European namesakes.” The excellent descriptions in the geologist's report are the first ever written of the Aorangi region. Haast named the chief peaks and glaciers and rivers of the region, and measured the terminals of the Great Tasman and other iceflows, and with his assistant set down a vast amount of data about this glorious centre of Alpland. He examined the lakes, traced the courses of the rivers, noted the vast eroding powers of the glaciers; pioneered the way for the surveyors and route-makers and squatter-station owners of far-out.
The next important exploration of Canterbury's geologist was a journey south to the Lake Wanaka region and thence through the unknown country at the head of Wanaka across the
(E. T. Robson, photo.)
The Canterbury Museum (founded by Sir Julius von Haast), Christchurch, New Zealand.
Willington's new station in course of construction.
The above illustrations give a good impression of the imposing dimensions of the new railway station at Wellington and of the progress being made with the building operations. The top view shows the main entrance to the station (facing Bunny Street) and the view below shows the Featherston Street elevation and the arrangement of the passenger platforms, The present Lambton Station is shown in the left foreground of the picture,
On January 2 he started from Makarore to find a practicable way; his companions were William Young (Assistant Surveyor for Canterbury, as topographical assistant), R. L. Holmes, F. Warner (later on proprietor of Warner's Hotel), and Charles Haring. The party carried very heavy swags; they took provisions for four weeks. About twenty-five miles from the Lake, following up a tributary of the Makarore through wild country, the travellers came to a place where the level of the swampy open forest had a slight fall to the north. Soon the small waterholes between the swamp moss increased, a watercourse was formed, which was running in a northerly direction. Thus a most remarkable pass was discovered, which has no equal in the whole range of the Southern Alps.
From these observations on this watershed, Haast found that its altitude was only 1,716 feet above sea-level, or 724 feet above the surface of Lake Wanaka. The mountains on both sides rose into great glaciated heights. This is the place now known as the Haast Pass. A horseback track has been made through the forest and ranges following closely the way pioneered by our explorer and his party. Some day it will be roaded for motor traffic and thus form a wonderful highway to the West Coast, linking up with the South Westland main road. An amazingly rugged route of sublime scenery, it is a difficult track to-day; the great snow-fed rivers are the obstacles. We may imagine, therefore, the formidable character of this wilderness of mountains and forests and roaring rivers through which Haast's party, laden heavily, toiled in 1863.
There is a high icy mountain, just on the northern side of the pass, which Haast and Young ascended, in order to use it as a central topographical station and examine it for its geology. Haast named it Mount Brewster. Its glaciers give rise to the main head-waters of the river flowing to the West Coast, which the Maoris called the Awarua in its lower parts.
“From the slopes of this grand mountain, from an altitude of about 6,500 feet,” the explorer wrote, “we had a most magnificent view over the Alps. Lake Wanaka appeared far in the South, its blue mirror-like surface set among wild rugged mountains. All around us rose peak above peak, their rocky pinnacles towering in grand majesty above the snow and ice upon their flanks, while deep below us, in narrow gorges, we could look upon the foaming waters of the torrents almost at our feet.”
Tramping and clambering westward, making for the sea, the explorers encountered the most difficult part of the journey. It was a gorgeous savage country, with its lofty mountains, its precipices, tangled bush, snowy torrents and cataracts. “Among other curious places,” wrote Haast, “we were camped for several days under an enormous overhanging rock, with a vertical precipice of 150 feet near us, and the thundering and deafening roar of the swollen main river, forming here a large waterfall as its companion.” The Burke, Clarke and other rivers were named. Often the travellers had to scramble for hundreds of feet above the river, in making their way along the jungle-choked cliffs. It rained as it only can rain in the Westland country. At last, following down the wide many-branched river they reached the beach, and “stood in the surf, giving three hearty cheers.” The journey from Wanaka had taken them thirty days. It can be done now on horseback in two days, provided the rivers are not in flood.
It was March 2 before they completed their return journey, continually through the rain, emerging at Mr.
In 1865, at the height of the great gold rush that made Westland famous, Haast made another journey across the Alps, this time by way of the Hurunui Pass, to examine and report on the new goldfields. For several years he had pointed out in his official reports that without doubt there were rich gold-bearing areas south of the Grey River. His views were more than confirmed by the results when thousands of eager diggers worked the fields as far south as Bruce Bay and the mouth of the Haast. The Geologist's report, as was always the way with his writings, covered a far wider field than the scientific aspect. He gave a vivid description of the huge bustle and feverish activity of the population so quickly attracted to a vast silent wilderness. In this expedi-
(Continued on page 46.)
Exceptionally heavy passenger bookings have been recorded on the Home railways during the holiday season. Summer vacation travel by rail has exceeded all expectations, and the railways have reaped a rich reward for their enterprise in providing unique facilities for the holiday-maker, such as additional fast services, cheap fares, combined rail and road travel, “all-in” home and continental tours, camping coaches, and “land cruises” by specially equipped express trains. Railway-owned hotels and guest-houses have been filled almost to overflowing; cross-Channel steamships have daily been booked to capacity; accommodation in railway-operated aeroplanes has been reserved weeks in advance, and in every phase of railway activity there has been recorded the same pleasing story of bumper summer business.
Because of the welcome improvement in passenger traffics, many additions have recently been made to the passenger carriage stocks of the group lines. Especially interesting are new vehicles put into service on the Great Western and London and North Eastern systems.
The Great Western have recently turned out of the Swindon shops two new ten-car trains for long-distance excursion working. Each carriage in these trains is 60 ft. long, and designed on the most modern lines. The vehicles are of the saloon type, with seats arranged on either side of a central gangway. The total seating capacity of the two trains is 416 and 384 passengers respectively. Two kitchencars are included in the composition of each train, these being panelled throughout with stainless steel. More spectacular still are the new carriages built by the L. & N.E. Company. These are first-class all-electric restaurant cars for service between King's Cross Station, London, and Scotland. Some 63 ft. 6in. long, each car consists of a dining saloon to seat eighteen persons, a pantry, kitchen, attendants' compartment, and toilet section. In the kitchen, all cooking is carried out electrically. The main cooking-range comprises a roasting oven, steaming oven, grill and hot-water boiler. In addition, there is a boiling-range with six hot-plates for frying and boiling, and a 10-gallon capacity boiling-pan for cooking vegetables.
Special fare facilities have been a feature of the summer programme on the Home lines. Enormous crowds have thereby been drawn to seaside and country holiday resorts, while record passenger movements have been registered in connection with many outstanding events of the season. A few of the Jubilee year gatherings that have brought big business were the
Among special fare arrangements there may be noted the innovation known as “Inclusive Holidays,” introduced this season by the L.M. & S. and L. & N.E. lines. These inclusive holiday tickets provide full accommodation for a week at a hotel or boarding-house, day and half-day sight-seeing trips by rail, road and water, and rail travel to and from the selected resort. A weekly “inclusive holiday” ticket may be purchased for as little as $3/13/-, and a fortnightly ticket for $8/10/-, the charge, of course, varying according to the distance covered and the accommodation selected.
Mechanical equipment of various types is constantly being introduced to aid the railway traveller. Two recent interesting developments take the form of the provision of a quick-service ticket-issuing machine at Liverpool Street Station, London, and a new electric train departure indicator at Paddington Station, London.
The Liverpool Street machine speeds up ticket-issuing enormously, and what is better still from the railway point of view immensely simplifies operations in the booking-office. Not only does the machine print and issue tickets, but it also actually counts up the day's takings. By the pressure of a button the machine prints, dates and issues a ticket selected from 3,040 different types, and simultaneously records the amount of money involved. The consecutive amounts are automatically added together, so that the booking-clerk can tell at any moment what are the total receipts.
The Paddington train indicator is an equally ingenius contrivance. It is an electrical indicator (installed on the concourse) which not only tells passengers the time, destination, and platform of departure trains, but changes its face throughout the twenty-four hours without any human aid. The machine is enclosed in a glass-fronted case ten feet high by six feet wide. To look at, it is like a large venetian blind with twenty-nine metal slats, on each of which is painted the time of a train and the principal stations served. The slats run on endless belts, in groups of ten, only one slat in each group being displayed at one time. An electric motor sets in motion, at intervals during the twenty-four hours, the twenty-nine endless belts, thus erasing the one setting and bringing into view the next set of trains. Altogether, this is one of the most ingenious train-departure indicators we have seen.
Aeroplanes named after famous cities on the line of route have been introduced by Railway Air Services on the Liverpool-Brighton and Plymouth-Nottingham services this season. The machines on the former service are called “City of Birmingham” and “City of Bristol.” Plymouth and Cardiff are the two cities honoured in naming the ‘planes in the other service.
The new railway-operated air-links connect Liverpool, Cardiff, Bristol, Plymouth and Southampton with each other, and the industrial Midlands with popular holiday resorts, by means of a rapid morning and afternoon service in each direction on each route. Multi-engined air liners, seating eight passengers, are employed. They are equipped with wireless, and have a cruising speed of 100 to 130 m.p.h. At Southampton the Liverpool-Brighton ‘planes make connection with other’ Railway Air Services' ‘planes for the Isle of Wight and the Channel Islands. At Liverpool there is a link with the morning air service to Blackpool and the Isle of Man. In many cases, the fares are lower than those of last year.
Important schemes of development and modernisation have for some time been in progress at the South Wales docks of the Great Western Railway. As a result, the shipping facilities in this corner of Britain have been brought right up-to-date, and increased freight handlings may be anticipated in the future. One interesting improvement is the introduction of special appliances for the prevention of the breakage of coal during shipment. These consist of an escalator comprising a number of trays worked on an endless belt. Each tray as it is filled lowers the coal without breakage, and thirty-four of these machines have so far been installed. The “Norfolk” spade, or mechanical digger, has also been introduced successfully, to clear wet coal from wagons. Fifteen of these machines are in service, and they clean a wagon in a few minutes, as against manual labour of more than half-an-hour.
The Great Western Company have completed a scheme of enlargement of
Cinema cars have from time to time been tried out on many of the world's railways, but no particular success seems to have marked the experiment. The cars hitherto utilised have been devoted to the exhibition of silent films, but now the London and North Eastern Railway has launched out with regular “talkie” shows on certain of its express trains between London and Leeds. The “talkie” coach accommodates 44 passengers, tip-up seats being provided, these being raised towards the back of the car, so that everyone may see the films in comfort. A six-foot screen is utilised, and most of the films are of “news” interest. A small charge is made for admission. Whether or not the show becomes a permanent feature remains to be seen. In any case, we may certainly congratulate the King's Cross authorities on their enterprise in introducing the world's first railway “talkie.”
Willington's new station in course of construction.
The above illustrations give a good impression of the imposing dimensions of the new railway station at Wellington and of the progress being made with the building operations. The top view shows the main entrance to the station (facing Bunny Street) and the view below shows the Featherston Street elevation and the arrangement of the passenger platforms, The present Lambton Station is shown in the left foreground of the picture,
An old friend, a pioneer settler, and I were talking of the past conditions on far-back farms and the present day conditions of the husbandman—Viscount Bledisloe's favourite term. The frontier settler in the Waikato was in mind. We both recalled the fact that the farmer and his family did a great deal for themselves fifty or sixty years ago that they send to the township shops for now. The farming then was mixed, that is, root and grain crops of many kinds were grown, and there were sheep as well as cattle on every farm of any size. Candles were made by the farmer's wife from tallow; I remember the old candle moulds. Smelly candles they were, but better than nothing, especially when kerosene was hard to get. Peaches and apples were cut up and sun-dried and made into pies and preserves, and fruit wines were made. There were no orchard pests in those days.
The flax-bush was all important. No farmer could have done without it, for a score of purposes. The down or pollen (hunehune) of the raupo-flower-head was a capital substitute for feathers or kapok in filling pillows and cushions.
Harness, my friend recalled, was made, in his first farming days, from green cowhide, prepared with salt and alum. Plough and bridle reins and stirrup-leathers were manufactured in this way. Floor mats and carpets were made by Maori neighbours, and on these were often laid dressed and dyed sheepskins. The old-fashioned flail was used for threshing grain. Home-made wooden harrows did useful work on many a farm.
We have travelled far since those days of the semi-primitive life. But I question whether the excessive specialisation of the farming industry in dairying has been altogether a change for the better. The dairy-farm nowadays is often a bare comfortless-looking place.
The ground for plantations is begrudged; most of the trees are felled; there are fewer orchards. A farm in the old days was self-contained; nearly everything that the family needed except clothes and a few groceries was produced there. Intensive dairy farming means that some of the amenities that make country life pleasant and happy are sacrificed. Machinery saves labour and time; but a farmer and his family are too often slaves to machinery and cows.
I know if I were a boy again I would sooner be a youngster on a far-back Waikato farm of that era than on one of these down-to-date places where they put through a hundred cows twice daily. That, too, in spite of the speeding-up devices and wondrous inventions of this age. We were not all standardised then by radio and cinema and motor-car. But now happily there are indications that the mechanisation of rural life has reached its crest, and that the inevitable reaction has set in in many places.
Some literary folk in our midst and out of it are periodically concerned about the future of our writers and their work. “New Zealand,” said one, “may never have a distinctive atmosphere so as to give a particular character to our literature, because actually we differ so little from England.” That is essentially a narrow and ill-informed view. No country can differ from England more greatly than New Zealand in its physical character and tradition. One town is very like another, and townspeople are as alike as Chinamen. But it is the romantic frontier character, the infinitely coloured, thrilling past of New Zealand compressed into say a little more than a century that gives it its background that competent writers can use to the advantage of their work. There are distinctive types of character in the backblocks and in such a land as the long woody West Coast that the town-dwelling critic does not know. The native-born reared on the frontiers of civilisation where wild history was made has a character and outlook differing vastly from that of the English immigrant of to-day who never strays far from the city lights. Our tradition is as distinctive as our landscape. There is nothing wrong with our atmosphere. But fiction-writers who have to hunt up “local colour” will never find the real thing. It is forever far beyond their skyline.
I have remarked on the tendency to standardisation of type in the farming business, due to excessive specialisation. But there are many, many places to which this does not apply. And there is our heroic tradition, the like of which no other country has known; it is sui generis.
There was a certain hard-case old scout and bush-fighter, of whom I have heard many an anecdote from his comrades. Tom Adamson was one of three stalwart Wanganui brothers—I knew two of them well—who took to the war-path, in the ‘sixties; he wore the Maori shawl-kilt and marched barefooted. In his old age, when he was sheepfarming at Urukehu, on his Maori wife's land, he became “as bald as a billiard-ball,” as one of my friends described it. “Tom asked me, when I called at his place one day, what he should do for that pakira, or baldness. I advised him to use sheep-dip, to rub a dose of it into his scalp daily. I did not see him again for some months. When I rode up to his home next time I asked him how the sheep-dip had acted. ‘Look and see for yourself,’ he said, taking off his hat. Sure enough, his head was covered with a fine downy growth. ‘Stick to it, old man,’ I said. ‘I will that,’ Tom replied; ‘if I go on like this I'll have enough wool on top by Christmas to give a shearer a job'.”
I have not heard of any one else who experimented with that heroic hair-restorer, but I pass on the tip to my many pakira acquaintances, and eke our “tonsorial artists.”
How pleasant it is when reading some English or American book, often on subjects far removed from our own sphere of life, to come across those two words “New Zealand.” I think most New Zealand readers can glance from top to bottom of a page of print and, if those words are there, pick them out instantly, chiefly of course by the uncommon letter Z.
It is surprising how many books, novels and other volumes, on every imaginable subject contain these allusions to New Zealand. Take the immortal Dickens. In his “Bleak House” we read of someone going to “Australy or New Zealand” and in a chapter on Arcadian London in his less well-known volume “The Uncommercial Traveller,” he likens himself to Macauley's New Zealander, while in “Reprinted Pieces” he mentions an old school-fellow who “Built mills and bridges in New Zealand.”
The once popular Jules Verne not only mentioned New Zealand in several of his famous novels but also wrote a tale in the Swiss Family Robinson style of a party of boys from a school “half way up Queen Street,” Auckland, who were wrecked on a South Sea island after being wafted out of the Auckland harbour on a yacht. He named his tale “Adrift in the Pacific.”
Robert Browning's friendship with Alfred Domett, the early New Zealand politician and author of the poem “Ranolf and Amohia,” is well-known, but few people know that he wrote a poem from Italy addressed to his friend, entitled “The Guardian Angel” and ending:—
“My love is here! Where are you dear old friend?
How rolls the Wairoa at your world's end?
This is Ancona, yonder lies the sea.”
In “Pride of Palomar,” Peter B. Kyne makes an outburst against Japanese penetration of California and ends with the words: “If only we had the courage and the foresight and the firmness of the Australians and the New Zealanders! Why, Kay, those sane people will not even permit an Indian Prince—a British subject, forsooth!—to enter their country, except under bond, and then for six months only.”
Artemus Ward, the once famous American humourist who achieved his ambition of writing for “Punch” and then died in England, wrote an article in that magazine about an imaginary side-show he ran in London when he hired a “young man of dissypated habits” and disguised him as “A Real Cannibal from New Zeelan.”
In the works of Australia's Henry Lawson we find several New Zealand tales, which is not surprising considering that Lawson once lived here for a while, working some of the time for a Pahiatua newspaper. One of his tales is about a schoolteacher and a recalcitrant Maori schoolgirl, and in “Joe Wilson and His Mates,” he wrote a tale of the West Coast diggings, and
(Photo., G. H. Davies.)
Sylvan Lake, Paradise, South Island, New Zealand.
The great Sherlock Holmes once deduced that a man had worked in the New Zealand goldfields and his creator once wrote a short story of a place many miles north of Nelson, and someone pointed out to him that the specified locality was well out at sea.
To come to a more modern novel, Francis Brett Young's “Portrait of Claire,” whose heroine drives through the New Zealand camp at Sling during the War. “Close by the roadway some New Zealanders of the Auckland battalion were busy with bayonet practice, plunging their steel into straw stuffed Germans, whose heads some fanciful Maori must have painted with features that resembled those of South Sea gods or devils.” Later they drive past again, when the New Zealanders are “dying like flies” of influenza.
In Lowell Thomas's biography of the much discussed Colonel T. E. Lawrence, “With Lawrence in Arabia,” is a chapter on the rock-hewn “rose-red city half as old as time,” Petra, in Arabia, the American chronicler quotes six stanzas of a poem on this mysterious city by “Mona Mackay, Christ-church, New Zealand.” “Old Fire-proof,” a Boer War novel by one Vaughan, describes how a New Zealand soldier is heard singing “The Holy City” at night on the African veldt.
Even in the exclusively Wessex tales of Thomas Hardy, we meet the
E. Phillips Oppenheim in his “Simple Peter Chadd” settles his hero in the manner of many another English writer of fiction by providing him with a small fortune left by “an uncle in the colonies,” in this case by an uncle from Christchurch, New Zealand.
Arnold Bennett in one of his stories describes a solid, respectable type of hotel as one “such as visitors from New Zealand” patronise.
In a recent number of the “Wide World Magazine” was a New Zealand tale introducing a mounted policeman, and the accompanying illustration depicted a policeman wearing the cap and uniform of the U.S. police, with a big revolver slung around his waist. Perhaps the illustrator believes New Zealand to be a New York suburb bordering on New Jersey.
To conclude on a more cheerful and flattering note, let us quote the passage in praise of New Zealand from “My Life of Adventure,” the autobiography of A. G. Hales, traveller, adventurer, and author of the famous McClusky novels: “I had hoped to say something concerning a country I love and a people I honour in this book of my knock-about life, but New Zealand is a land that needs a book in itself, and a passing mention is in a sense an insult. Only a small spot, but the home of heroes, a land where democracy has reached the highest level the followers of Demos have ever attained, a dream of beauty and a joy forever. That is a thumbnail sketch of New Zealand. The land never bred a snake, nor the women a sneak. Some day I am going back to the ‘King Country’ to see if any of my old Maori friends are still alive; to live for a few months in a
(Photo., Thima R. Kent.)
Architects Bridge, over the Copeland River, West Coast, South Island, New Zealand.
Somebody has been writing to an Auckland paper to complain bitterly of the invasion by smokers of the non-smoking tram-cars. “Just fancy!” as the ladies say. But this disgruntled correspondent said never a word about the invasion of smoke-cars by non-smokers. These passengers (mostly ladies) sometimes crowd the smokers clean out! As a matter of fact the ancient objection to tobacco-smoke is fast dying out. This is undoubtedly due to the growing demand for tobacco of better quality. Most of the old-fashioned tobaccos, so hot, acrid and poisonous with nicotine are giving place to purer and less harmful brands—more especially the five toasted varieties, so pure, fragrant and alluring—and so harmless, because, owing to the toasting, they contain so little nicotine. Five brands: Navy Cut No. 3 (Building), Cut Plug No. 10 (Bulls-head), Cavendish, Riverhead Gold and Desert Gold. But these comprise a brand for every smoker—including the cigarette smoker. You can get them anywhere and everywhere. They are on sale throughout the Dominion.*
* * *
* * *
The finest thing in Nelson (and indeed one of the finest things in New Zealand) is the Cawthron Institute. This is a cluster of buildings containing laboratories for the purpose of research into the primary industries of this country. With that essentially scientific patience which attracts no limelight and calls for no applause, the specialists of the Cawthron quietly pursue the tasks of ridding the land of blights and pests, bringing barren country to fruitfulness, advising and helping farmers in all their problems.
I met most of the experts of the Cawthron Institute and learned a little of what they are achieving. The Director of the Institute, Mr. Theodore Rigg, very kindly showed me round. Tall, thin, roughly hewn as to countenance, this man has always been a servant of humanity in one capacity or another. During Russia's worst years of agony—1918 to 1921—Mr. Rigg, as secretary of the Friends' Relief Party, worked amongst the sick and starving peasants of the Soviet Union.
But his real life-work is that of an agricultural chemist—a soil chemist. He devotes his time to the manurial problems of the orchardist and farmer. One of his outstanding successful experiments was that in connection with the Moutere Hills apple orchard soil. The soil was deficient—not sufficiently productive—and Mr. Rigg undertook to diagnose and cure the trouble. He succeeded so brilliantly that comparison now shows that blocks of land brought under his treatment yield 200 bushels of apples more per acre, than blocks not so treated.
This, of course, does not solve all the difficulties of the apple-grower. One Nelson lady invited me to come and see her “orchards.” When I got there, after a long drive in her car, I found, to my surprise, that the “orchards” consisted of hundreds of acres of young pine trees.
“All this used to be apple-trees,” she said, “but the bottom fell out of the fruit market, so I had a forest planted instead.”
Nevertheless, Mr. Rigg's attempts to make the wilderness blossom as the rose are worth examining. His conversion of the pakihi wilderness, on the barren West Coast, into fine agricultural land was something I felt ought to be explained, and I asked him to tell me how it was done.
“When I first took it in hand,” he said, “I thought it the most formidable and depressing task I had ever been given. I don't know if you ever saw the land, but it was simply a barren wilderness covered with umbrella-fern and ti-tree; hardly a blade of grass to be seen.”
“But you knew you could change it,” I said, thrilled.
“Not at all,” he returned. “I thought I never would. It seemed hopeless. I had over two hundred small plots laid out for experiment. Surface weeds were burned off. Then some sections were ploughed deep and some were ploughed shallow; and some were not ploughed at all. But the worst and most forbidding feature of it was the land's natural resistance to percolation of water. It had a hard pan, past which the water could not sink.”
“Now I can guess how you won through,” I said. “You had it ploughed very very deep, with one of those swamp ploughs.”
“Wrong again,” smiled Mr. Rigg. “In the end I abandoned ploughing altogether.”
“But if the soil would not let the water through—“
“Then manuring processes, which alter the nature of the soil, must be devised. This was done. Then I tried all sorts of grasses and clovers until I found the most suitable crop. That was three years ago. Now the experimental stage is over. See these photographs. There you see a six-acre field of pakihi land carrying fourteen cows, and even then there was difficulty in keeping the growth down. Pastures established three years ago now yield three tons of hay to the acre.”
But this is only the beginning of what the Cawthron does for farmers. Let me now introduce the reader to Dr. Kathleen Curtis, quiet, modest, slender and brown-eyed, whose task is investigating the fungus diseases which attack our commercial plants. Black spot in apples, brown rot in peaches, virus in tobacco, tomatoes, hops, tulips and sweetpeas; these are the enemies against which Dr. Kathleen wages unremitting warfare. Most of these blights are attacked by means of spraying, but the sprays have to be carefully prescribed and applied at the right time.
“How do the farmers know when it is the right time to spray?” I enquired of her.
“Well, we tell them.”
“And how do you know?”
“By keeping specimens of the diseased plants growing in the gardens here. When the dangerous spores are being liberated by the plants, we put an advertisement in the papers telling the farmers it is time to spray.”
“And may any farmer, any farmer at all, come to you for advice?”
“Yes, indeed. We get letters and specimens from all over the Dominion.”
“And is the advice given free?”
“Quite free.”
Dr. Kathleen is a very distinguished scientist. She is an M.A., D.I.C., D.Sc. To me she seemed totally absorbed in her work, upon which she speaks with authority and complete assurance. On other subjects, however, she was diffident and did not readily express an opinion. She is one of those rare persons who insist on thinking before they speak.
Leaving Dr. Kathleen in her laboratory I made a trip across the road to interview the chief entomologist, Dr. David Miller. Dr. Miller talks with a birl; that is to say he is Scotch—Scotch as Hamish, Scotch as porridge. I asked him to tell me all about his work.
“Well, I must explain,” he said, “that these laboratories are devoted to the extermination of insect pests. We breed parasites to kill pests.”
Dr. Miller went on to tell me of some of his experiments. The most spectacular success he has had in this line has been the extermination of woolly aphis, that sinister white parasite that spreads a leprosy of white wool all over the apple trees. Another parasite, named aphelinus, was bred in the laboratories and sent out in test tubes to the affected farms. All the farmer had to do was uncork the test-tube and hang it up in his tree. And, Hey Presto! In a few short months the aphelinus had eaten up the white woolly horror and the trees were clean once more.
Another successful experiment was the attack on the blow-fly maggot which affects our sheep. To combat this dreadful creature, which costs New Zealand sheep farmers many thousands of pounds per annum, a parasite was introduced which would attack the maggot of the blow-fly. I saw this little warrior in the laboratory. He looks rather like a flying ant.
“What I don't understand,” I said, “is how you get him to attack the maggot. Do you take him and put him on the sheep's back, or what?”
Dr. Miller laughed at this naive idea.
“No, we send them out in the crystalis stage,” he said. “Then the farmer has to scatter them on the grass where the sheep are. Soon the parasite emerges from the crysalis and settles on the sheep.”
“But why does he? Has he the intelligence to do that?”
“Well, you see, he is a blow-fly maggot parasite. He must live on the blow-fly. That is all he can do if he is to survive.”
One of Dr. Miller's most diverting stories was about his search for an insect which would destroy the biddy-bid, one of our worst weed pests. To find this useful beastie, Dr. Miller journeyed to South America and took a pioneer's march inland to where the fierce Auracanian Indians live in their primitive savagery. In approaching them he was certainly risking his life.
“However did you manage to survive your first meeting with them?” I asked him. “Did you threaten them with a gun, or impress them with conjuring tricks?”
“Neither,” he replied. “I have a theory and it always works. I believe that if you treat a man as you would like him to treat you you will be safe anywhere. As a matter of fact they were awfully nice to me.”
When the savages saw Dr. Miller grubbing about in the hills for insects, they concluded that he wanted them to eat. He rejected this suggestion. He was no insect-eater, he told them.
“He will make ointment out of them,” suggested a big chief.
“No, no. I just keep them in these little boxes,” said he, showing them his neat Cawthron cases.
The big chief wagged his head sadly, and drew the others aside. “Poor fellow, he is mad,” he said. “We must take care of him.”
From this time on they were most solicitous of their protége, “the Mad Stranger,” as they called him.
But we have already lingered too long in beautiful Nelson. The West Coast awaits us, and we must push on. We take a service car—a luxurious seven-seater — and leaving the charming little township behind we thread through the beautiful orchard lands of the province. The apples are ripe and the trees are heavy with their decorative burden. But soon we run out of this domain of genus homo and come to long stretches of native bush where nature reigns in all her pristine beauty.
At the top of the Hope Saddle we exclaim with delight as the magnificent panorama bursts upon us. We see the distant ocean, the mountains surrounding the Sounds, the forest-clad hills behind Nelson, and tier on tier of green and blue hills rising up to the distant snow-clad peaks of the Spencer Range.
From the Hope Saddle the car curves and zigzags down again until we reach the Hope Valley, with its pellucid waters singing their everlasting song as they rush to join the Buller River. We pass through the little town of Murchison and enter the famous Buller Gorge. From now on the scenery ascends a scale of increasing grandeur, rugged forest lands succeeding to the sparse bush of the first few miles. The road twists and turns, dives into unexpected tunnels, skirts along precipices, winds beneath overhanging cliffs. At last we enter Westport, a little town huddled close to the sea as though the mountains were pushing it into the water. These mountains are the reason Westport stands there, for they are full of coal. It is here that we spend the night.
Our landlady had a little boy of three summers. An adorable child with the funniest little face, he in
Margaret Macpherson.
“Well, we call him ‘Ugly Mug’,” he said. “But his mother doesn't like it, so you'd better call him Herbert, that's his real name.”
“Ugly Mug” came sidling up to me.
“Can ‘oo smell cat?” he asked.
I sniffed the air, horrified.
“No, son; I can't.”
“I can,” he squeaked triumphantly.
“C.A.T. smells cat.”
The next day we made the 68-mile journey to Greymouth. This road provides some of the weirdest and most impressive scenery in the Southern Hampshire. After a twenty-mile run we come to the Fox River, and from thence to Punakaiki. For many miles now we strike patches of glorious bush which gives a semi-tropical effect, the principal trees being nikau palms and tree-ferns. Punakaiki itself is a geologist's paradise. We stop here and make a little trip up Dead Man's Creek to inspect the famous Blow Hole. This roaring blow hole appears at first to be a geyser. Every now and again a column of water shoots up into the air to a great height. Upon closer inspection, however, we find that it is caused by the sea running with great force into an underground cave and thus forcing the water up through the cavity. On stormy days, our driver tells us, the Blow Hole booms like a cannon.
At Punakaiki, too, we saw the curious Pancake Rocks with their horizontal layer formation exactly like a giant's batch of newly-baked pancakes piled up in heaps. A very queer geological phenomenon, this; I would like to have heard some scientist explain it. But there was no time for explanations or conjectures. We had to rush on. From time to time we passed little ghost townships, deserted villages which were once booming with the prosperity brought by the gold-rush of last century. A few ramshackle tumbledown buildings mark their decease; kindly nature has thrown a winding-sheet of ti-tree across the scarred earth. Birds build in the old saloons. Such places are Lyell and Charleston, pathetically clinging to the mountain side and appearing to dream of happier days. At last we reached Greymouth, another coalmining place of the “Wild West Coast.”
From Greymouth we journeyed on to visit the famous Franz Josef Glacier. This is, without exception, the most wonderful and beautiful thing I have ever seen. The glacier, the ice-river, flows majestically down from the eternal mountains and penetrates right through the forest, so that one sees ice and semi-tropical vegetation side by side. The fairy greens and blues of the glacier, the swaying fronds of the nikaus and tree-ferns, the glowing ratas, make a memory picture that remains in the heart and mind for ever. We now climb towards Waiho and the country unfolds an ever spreading vista of loveliness until we emerge upon the “Roof-garden of New Zealand” and see the shimmering peaks of the Southern Alps before us. There is Mt. Cook, 12,349 feet high; there is Mt. Tasman, 11,467 feet, and there is Mt. de la Beche, over 10,000 feet. Below these glistening turrets and towers the Franz Josef gleams like a broad silver ribbon. It commences at over 9,000 feet, and runs right down within a few hundred feet of sea-level. We had to stop for a few moments at the St. James ‘Anglican Church in the Waiho George. Here the altar has the most beautiful reredos in the whole world. It is neither of wood nor marble, nor of stained glass nor of gold. No, my reader, it is just a piece of transparent glass which shows the natural splendour of hill and glacier to the kneeling congregation. More eloquent than words to illustrate the awesome and eternal Mystery, the Franz Josef preaches its sermon to mankind.
There is a very fine hotel at Waiho Gorge and the glacier itself is about three miles away, an easy walk by a good path. The end of the glacier is about half a mile wide, and breaks off
(H. C. Peart, photo.)
A scene on the Main South Road, Westland, New Zealand.
(To be continued.)
Women smokers are becoming as plentiful as house-flies in summer in Maoriland, and, what is more, many of them now roll their own instead of buying factory-made—always liable to go stale and flavourless owing to being kept so long in stock. In Sydney, according to the “own correspondent” of an Auckland daily, the girls not only prefer to make their own cigarettes but lots of them are taking to pipes!—pretty little things specially manufactured for ladies' use. “I haven't heard of women smoking pipes in public—as yet,” naively adds the correspondent. Our New Zealand damsels are, so far, sticking to cigarettes, and show a marked preference for toasted Riverhead Gold and Desert Gold, two of the very finest cigarette tobaccos on the market.