The New Zealand Railways Magazine, Volume 10, Issue 8 (November 1, 1935)

Front Cover

Back Cover

Contents

Page Among the Books 51–53 Daffodil Culture 55–57 Editorial— Round and About N.Z. 9 Famous New Zealanders 17–41 Fixers and Fixes 22–23 General Manager's Message 10 Limited Night Entertainments 25–30 New Zealand Journey 32–31 New Zealand Verse 35 Our London Letter 42–43 Our Women's Section 57–59 Panorama of the Playground 61–62 Pictures of New Zealand Life 31 Sea Wrack 37 The World's Newest City 12–59 The Wisdom of the Maori 49 Variety in Brief 63 Wit and Humour 64

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Deputy-Controller and Auditor-General.

25/3/35.

Children'S Health Camps.

Funds to keep the Children's Health Camps active in New Zealand are greatly needed. Any person who has had experience of what these well-organised Camps, with their proper supervision by the Health Authorities, actually do in the way of improving the well-being of under-nourished and weakly children, cannot fail to feel that the Camps constitute a very important welfare feature in the life of young New Zealand.

This year special organisation has been undertaken with a view to greatly increasing the return from the Health Stamps issued at 2d. each for penny postage use—the extra penny going as a direct contribution towards the Health Camp funds. Other efforts will also be made to supplement the funds. The movement, in which the Health Department and the Post and Telegraph Department are co-operating, is certainly worthy of general support.

Wairua Falls, On The Wairoa River, North Island, New Zealand.(Rly. Publicity photo.) The North Auckland District offers, in this photograph, an interesting river scene. The great Wairua Falls, over 300 feet across, are seen in the background, and the Wairoa River brawls before the camera, between banks of native growth. “The fall of waters! rapid as the light, The flashing mass foams, shaking the abyss; The hell of waters! where they howl and hiss, And boil in endless torture.” —Byron.

New Zealand Railways Magazine Registered at the G.P.O. Wellington, New Zealand for transmission by post as a Newspaper “For Better Service.” Published by the New Zealand Government Railways Department Vol. X. No. 8. Wellington, New Zealand November 1, 1935.

Round and about New Zealand.

New Zealand is becoming aware of itself as a youth emerging from childhood or a girl at her first ball. Wherever one goes round and about the country there is found an intense, earnestness to attract the attention of visitors. In Progress Leagues, Expansion Associations, Chambers of Commerce, Harbour Boards, City and Borough Councils and editorial sanctums there is determination that the attractions and amenities of that particular locality shall be made better known to fellow-New Zealanders and throughout the world. Local patriotism is at a high temperature; and gradually, as greater advantage is taken by people, all over the country, of the Dominion's now vastly improved facilities for travel, the fact is borne in upon our people that the time has come when the world must pay court to this Dominion. For it is the home of all that is fairest in nature's most choice selection of scenic wonders, of all that is most remarkable in thermal and subterranean phenomena, and of all those other things that make for the healthy enjoyment of life as it should be lived.

Thus local patriotism is being welded into a national patriotism founded on knowledge that transcends provincialism and permits the story of New Zealand's tourist attractions to be told with one firm voice by the people of New Zealand to the rest of the world.

Accustomed as we are to the contours of our home mountains, lakes and bays, and familiarised as so many of us are with the more easily reached other portions of this country, it is difficult to realise the tremendous uplift which the spirits of overseas visitors, coming here for the first time, must receive in the loom of the vast mountain masses of the Southern Alps and the Southern Lakeland, the wide range of forest—from northern kauri to southern beech—in the lake and river scenery, the richly cultivated fields of the south and the many dairied farmlands of the north, or in the flowering shrubs of Canterbury's home town and the bewildering wealth of colour in Auckland suburban gardens.

But we can, at least, believe their transports to be genuine, and we should be able to waft them on towards further travel in the country, assured that as even the most indefatigable of our own explorers has never yet seen all that the Dominion has in store for the traveller, the visitor will find that the further he goes the more new things he will discover and the greater will be his appreciation of the country as a place of endless charm.

The flow of tourists from overseas is setting in. There is a greater tendency to compete in bringing travellers to New Zealand. Besides the regular sea liners and the rapidly developing business in tourist cruising by steamer amongst these southern seas, the early running of express air-liners may be expected. These, by cutting down the time of travel from Europe and America, will bring New Zealand within the vacation scope of many thousands who never previously could leave their home-country for a long enough period to visit in the Southern Hemisphere. Those who come may be well acquainted with northern countries, but in all their travels they will find the greatest treasures, in scenery, sport and healing waters, round and about New Zealand.

Railway Progress in New Zealand General manager's message The Work Ahead.

It is very pleasing to the Board and myself, as I am sure it is to the public and the Railway staff generally, to find that the daily effort in every part of the Railway system to make the service as pleasing as possible to the public is showing results in increased passenger and goods traffic.

But railwaymen everywhere know that in the natural progress of transport much work lies ahead for the Department, and many new features are destined to become part of the existing system.

The Wellington new station forms the nucleus of these coming developments, for with it are associated the assembly of the whole headquarters' organisation under one roof, with much improved facilities for the transaction of business and for prompt co-ordinated action to meet emergencies or to deal with new conditions.

The new station will also see the introduction of electrification to North Island lines and on a greater scale than anywhere previously in New Zealand. From this and the rail car services which will by then be operating on certain routes, much additional suburban and long distance traffic may be anticipated; whilst the special facilities provided at the new station for the comfort and convenience of the travellers, its proximity to city and wharves and the close co-ordination with other transport services which it ensures, may be expected to give a strong stimulus to general passenger traffic by rail.

Every effort is being made to improve the working conditions of Railway employees and the provision of such desirable amenities as hot water services, and electric lighting where possible, in Railway houses will be welcomed.

Track improvements, by grade and curve easements, by level crossing elimination, and in other ways, are amongst the works ahead which will ensure additional employment and improve travel and operating conditions upon the Railways.

Altogether it may be concluded that, whilst much remains to be done in the way of general transport co-ordination, the Railways are pursuing a well defined policy of service and development which calls for the best that each member is capable of, and promises well for the future stability and expansion of the National Transport System.

General Manager.

(Rly. Publicity photos.) (1) Blythe's Display Windows. (2) West Shore Reclamation. (3) The Cellars at the Mission Vineyards, Greenmeadows. (4) Blythe's Tea Room. (5) A glimpse of Clive Square. (6–7) Anderson's Nursery Glass-houses. (9–10) Afternoon Tea at National Tobacco Coy.'s Factories. (See article on page 12.)

The Bank Corner at Napier. (Rly. Publicity photo.)

<name type="work" key="name-409924"><hi rend="i">The World's newest City.</hi><lb/> The Miracle Of Modern Town Planning.</name> (By O. N. Gillespie .)

A Clear blue day, and the vision through the carriage window of the snowy Kai-manawas in the far faint distance show us that we have entered the porta is of Hawke's Bay. The journey is an intensifying progression of ordered beauty until the capital is reached. They have a new calendar in this province and it is time that it was suppressed. Its abbreviations, as I shall use them in this article are B.Q. (Before the 'Quake) and S.Q. (Since the 'Quake). If there is a place on earth that can laugh at earth rumblings it is Napier. Its reconstruction is such that if it ever strikes trouble through the land getting into motion, then the rest of New Zealand will be under the sea, and a section will have slipped from Sydney.

The one lasting and wholesome result of that old time cataclysm, is that it made possible the building of a modern and lovely city, justifying my title to this article, “The World's Newest City.” It acted like an annealing fire on the courage and enterprise of the inhabitants, and the matchless results of their high endeavour are on view for all beholders.

There are many splendid towns among our provincial capitals and they all have some distinguishing feature. If I were asked to specify the particular, personal and individual possession of Napier, I would name “The Hill.” This really, of course, consists of two hills, and theirs is a twin beauty. After the long fertile cultivated Hawke's Bay plains, the Napier Hill suddenly rises, as if some Titan had decided, at the dawn of time, to vary the prospect. Seen from a little distance it has a fairy air, its dwellings looking like dolls' houses, their eaves showing above the multicoloured shrubs and flowers.

But to get its proper savour one has to go about its winding roads. These wind and twist, and climb, and wander, and every intersection is a gateway to romance. They are lined with glowing gardens, and nearly every home has that most precious of gifts—a sea view. Then it must be remembered that, under Napier skies, the ocean is mostly a washing blue, and so it was when my friend of the camera and I clambered out to the Bluff Hill point to take the accompanying “shot” of the Parade.

This sea-front view is one of the world's sights. The city glows in the sun and you get an impressionistic blur of the faint greens, pale creams, dull pink and other tints of the cement buildings. The esplanade seems to stretch indefinitely, the last tall pine appearing to stand in the ocean. Our view shows something of the charm of the vista, but of course lacks the vivid green of the lawns in the foreground, the darker tone of the mile of giant Norfolk Island pines, and the silver edges of the sea rollers.

At night-time, it is a scene of Titania's realm. Some of the mighty pine are festooned to the top with coloured lights. A floodlight plays on masses of scarlet and purple and blue cinerarias. On the great tesselated pavement in front of the pergola building, gay folks in couples and racing singles, skate gracefully. There is a modern Shell for the band, and the children's recreational facilities are all that the brightest youngster can dream about. With all this, there is an air of modernity, of skilled planning, and of very fine cultural taste.

The natural loveliness has been utilised by beauty lovers with loving care and an appreciation of simplicity and grace of outline. The citizens are still at work, devising, improving and working with unimpeachable taste,

(Rly. Publicity photo.) The distant Kaimanawas as seen from the train on the way to Napier.

The famous Marine Parade, Napier. (Rly. Publicity photo.) and with unexampled devotion to make this sea-front a still more attractive wonderland.

We made our way back from the eyrie where the picture of the Parade was taken, passing through a formal garden which would be remarked upon for its dignity and range of blooms in Monaco or Nice. The house itself would take its place anywhere in the world among spacious and luxurious homes; and on “The Hill” there are very many of the same rank.

We dawdled about on our way back to the town, trying new roads and seeing changing vistas of the waterfront with the placid silved-edged sea that borders a scene of life and colour and movement.

I do not, as a rule, worry about the look of streets in a city, nor do I feel much impressed when a local enthusiast shows me the biggest building in the town, and “all that.” Napier thoroughfares compel attention. They are new, and here architects have discovered and explored the possibilities of coloured cements. In the vivid sunshine, these soft tints have a jewel-like appearance. The variety of tones is wide, but they remain harmonious. The compulsion of town-planning and re-building (S.Q.) has led to many other modernities. There is no disorderly tangle of overhead wires, telegraph poles, tramway cables, or trolley standards. They are underground and the streets wear, therefore, a demure and pleasant air of neatness and order.

Zoning is also apparent, as will be seen from our picture of the Bank corner. The other bank is only a step away, out of the view. As is perfectly natural, nearly all these new buildings have positive beauty of design, and Napier streets have a symetry and aesthetic value which, sadly enough, is denied to most of our towns of any age.

The feature of the flat suburbs of Napier is the palm-bordered street. These feathery things of beauty are planted in wide ribbons of grass beween the footpath and the asphalt and give an exotic touch to the street-line which is most charming. Napier, too, is a paradise of cottage gardens.

There is evidence of cultured taste in the public parks. Clive and Nelson Squares are the products of knowledge and imagination, knowledge which has utilised every advantage of climate and soil constituents, and imagination which has made the grouping of blossom and foliage as gracefully artistic as a modern stage setting. My friend of the camera was always finding, “Here's a good shot,” “Better have this one”; but, unfortunately, this is an article, not an illustrated volume.

The cleft between the hills has been made into Botanical gardens, and it is a bush dreamland. We passed through its cool and pleasant bowers and went to see The Port. This, like all its brethren is rambling, straggling and purely utilitarian. That is why the Hollywood-like front of the National Tobacco Company came as such a surprise. Our picture shows the handsome front elevation, and the entrance lobby is a domelit and imposing hall with exceedingly beautiful oak doors and walls. But the factory itself is a revelation. We took the girls at afternoon tea (provided by the management) and the clatter of tongues and ripples of laughter made one think of birds on a summer afternoon. The men were also at tea, Adam and Eve in this Eden having separate dining rooms. There are rest rooms, bicycle sheds, and every conceivable comfort. The word “National” in this company's title is a “mot juste” or, as an Australian would translate it, “fair dinkum.” Its annual business runs into millions, and it provides work for hundreds directly, and more, indirectly. I was thunderstruck at the scope of its operations and its widespread activities, and the number of allied New Zealand industries in North and South that are dependent upon it. It saves vast sums of money leaving the country, but all this, after all, shrinks into insignificance beside the spectacle of a management that has made a day's work a time of happiness. I believe plenty of the workers in this model institution find their holidays

The Children's Pool, Marine Parade, Napier. (Rly. Publicity photo.)

(Rly. Publicity photo.) National Tobacco Company's Handsome Premises, at Napier. drag. That visit makes my “No. 3” taste better than ever.

Another surprise awaited us at Anderson's Nurseries. I have urged before in these pages that New Zealand is gifted, more than all other lands, as a nursery garden locale. Our special heritage of terrain and our unique range of mild airs, sunny skies and copious humidity enable us to grow anything. This great Napier concern has been established for half a century, and, if it can be said to have a speciality, it is in the art of decoration, particularly in palms. Anyone who remembers the Mayor's Ball at Wellington for the Duke's visit will know what can be finally done with ornamental plants in interior decoration. However, the range of plants is very wide, and the glass houses seem endless. They are indeed the largest collection in Australasia. Plants are exported to the world in general, mainly to India, England and Australia. The Duchess of Westminster's Hampshire home has now a display of plants which she saw growing in Napier soil. We were escorted round this botanical wonderland by the owner of a voice whose richness had lost nothing from his Dublin scientific training, and with his guidance, the trip amounted to an educational journey through the flora of New Zealand and the world.

But, I suppose, our research into Napier's industrial activities had its most pleasant hours at the Mission Vineyards at Greenmeadows. Below the noble Seminary Buildings, where eighty young men are receiving instruction, there are the buildings where the wines are made and stored. We took the accompanying picture of the enormous oval barrels, properly called “tuns,” I learned, where the amber, rose, and red precious liquids are matured for their minimum period of three years. The industry was started by the French clergy many years ago but the Brother who escorted us had an accent whose precision could only have been formed in an English school. The vines grow on the sunlit hillsides in the open air, and the distilled sunshine in the Mission bottles is their natural product. The sweet sherry we sampled was a definite temptation to linger awhile and put off the rest of the tour for a day or two. There is an old world air about the whole place.

We went to see Taradale, dreaming in the sun, and came back past the racecourse, one of the oldest in the Island, with the usual good running track, handsome stands and astonishing set of amenities and provision for public comfort.

Then we reached the area about West Shore, where there lies the greatest gift awarded by the tragedy of four years ago. Here (B.Q.) was a sea lagoon. Now West Shore has a perfect beach, and there are 7,500 acres rapidly being put into order for settlement. A network of drains, dozens of roads and all the huddle of public works activities are in evidence. It will carry some three hundred families. On the way back we visited the “475” acre block which is on the way to completion as a town-planned area. Much of it is already taken up and I should love to revisit it in ten years' time, remembering the miraculously quick growth of all plant life in New Zealand, and how lawns and gardens take on an air of ages in a matter of months. Nearby is the Richmond settlement, a small farm area; and a successful one, made possible by the generous donor whose name it bears.

I enjoyed the Breakwater afternoon. After almost a surfeit of beauty, natural and designed, it was a treat to see this scene of toil. Half a million pounds will be spent here, and there will emerge a safe harbourage. To-day it has that look of plentiful disorder, men scurrying for no apparent purpose, cranes behaving like mechanical lunatics, the whole bearing the appearance of a Meccano set that a cross schoolboy has taken apart and fired into a pool of mud and water. However, it is all very enlivening and behind it all is the settled objective and the really orderly planning of the engineers. Hawke's Bay Province needs a good port, and Napier will provide a modern set of facilities for this rich exporting district.

It is little wonder that there is a calm confidence in Napier's future among its people. However, they do not let it rest at that. They have had experience (S.Q.) of the value of continuous and untiring effort. Their team work is splendid. The Napier Progressive Association is the latest organisation to deal with the task of getting Napier known, and it has the energy and cohesion of an All Black combination. It is true that Napier citizens have a wonderful canvas on which to paint their picture. They have marvellous advantages of position, of climate, and natural riches. It is just possible that the variety of these, even in our land of exquisite

(Continued on page 50.)

The Band Shell and Pergola, Marine Parade, Napier. (Rly. Publicity photo.)

<name type="work" key="name-409925">Famous New Zealanders<lb/> No. 32<lb/> <hi rend="c">The Heuheu Family.<lb/> The Hereditary Paramount Chiefs Of Taupo.</hi> </name> (Written for the “New Zealand Railways Magazine” by James Cowan.)

“Ko Tongariro te Maunga; ko Taupo te Moana; ko Te Heuheu te Tangata.” (“Tongariro is the Mountain; Taupo is the Lake; Te Heuheu is the Man.”) “Ko Rongomai te Atua; ko Te Heuheu te Tangata.” (“Rongomai is the God; Te Heuheu is the Man.”)

These are the proverbial sayings or pepeha of the people who live on the shores of Lake Taupo, or Taupo Moana, regarding the hereditary Chiefs of the Heuheu family, the heads of the Ngati-Turumakina section of the Ngati-Tuwharetoa tribe. Most tribes and some families of high aristocratic lineage have their special sayings, slogans, or honorific aphorisms; but that of the Heuheu line is the proudest of all in its lofty-sounding and poetic symbolism. The tradition and history of the heart of the North Island are for centuries the history of this long-pedigreed family. The most celebrated of the line was the majestic old chief Te Heuheu Tukino, of whom some of the pioneer travellers and missionaries wrote, and who was killed with many of his tribe by a landslip in 1846. It was his son, Te Heuheu Horonuku, who presented the New Zealand Government with the sacred peaks of the Tongariro volcanic country, a gift that was the nucleus of the Tongariro National Park. The present chief, Hoani te Heuheu, is the grandson of Horonuku.

Te Heuheu Tukino (Horonuku), who presented to the State in 1887 the mountain peaks now the Tongariro National Park. He died in 1888.

The genealogy of the Heuheu family line of South Taupo is a family tree that is worthy to stand alongside any chieftain's pedigree in the Scottish Highlands. No Lord of the Isles can point to a longer line of fighting chiefs than the members of some of our New Zealand first families, whose ancestral names go back into the Hawaikian era, generations before the first sailing-craft from Tahiti and other Eastern Pacific islands touched the New Zealand shore. The old families preserved their word-of-mouth lists of descent as tapu things; the very recital of the revered ancestral names had the virtue of a prayer. Now many of these lists are preserved in print; the ancient tapu has gone, but the wonder and the magic of old, old traditions remain. The hereditary paramount chiefs of Ngati-Turumakina came of a line not only of warrior leaders but of high priests. The most revered of all the ancestors of the Heuheu family was Ngatoro-i-Rangi, who was the priest of the Arawa canoe and who discovered the volcanic mountains, the history of which is so interlocked with that of the Heuheus.

The unusually dramatic quality of the Tongariro landscape is in keeping with the heroic traditions of the olden overlords of the country. It is a place of classic Maori-Polynesian mythology in which the nature-legends of the dim and faery past are blended with the long warrior history of the Heuheu family and their clans. The high chiefs and the high peaks alike were tapu; they were as gods and guardians of the land and the people. That wide view of water and mountain that comes to the eye as one looks from the north end of Lake Taupo gives you the domain of the ancient line whose beginnings in the whakapapa or family-trees go back to the gods and the personified powers of nature. Those flashing pinnacles of ice and snow; those fuming craters and nests of steaming mountain-springs and heights moulded by the never-resting powers of the under-world, they all have entered into the making of the soul of the Heuheus and their people. The chiefs identified themselves with the volcanic peaks. “I am that Mountain,” said the great Heuheu to those who asked his permission to climb Tongariro and Ngauruhoe. “You cannot tread on me.” Or again, “That Mountain is my ancestor; it is tapu to alien foot.” This sacredness was intensified in the Maori mind when the bones of the great Heuheu who had scorned to acknowledge Queen Victoria as his superior in mana were given mighty sepulchre, in a cave high on Tongariro's side.

The King of Taupo.

There is material for a bookful of legend, song and history intertwined with the story of the Heuheu line. I have a great deal not only from the late Te Heuheu Tukino, who was a member of the Legislative Council when he died in 1921, but from his elders, such warriors of old time as Tokena Kerehi and Waaka Tamaira, Whata-iwi and their contemporaries. But for the present it may be more interesting to quote, for one thing, what was written about the greatest of the Heuheu family by an enterprising pioneer traveller, that noted character and entertaining writer, Edward Jerningham Wakefield.

There is a splendid declaration of royal authority in a speech made by Te Heuheu to Wakefield, who gives it in his book, “Adventures in New Zealand.” He was on an expedition

through the heart of the Island, and on the day before leaving Tokaanu he went to Te Heuheu's village, Te Rapa, to take leave of the old chieftain. It was the first of January, 1842.

After the usual greetings had passed, he (Te Heuheu) told me at once that he suspected our two parties had met, one from Wellington and one from the Waitemata, to consult over his land, with a view to buy it, or even seize it forcibly, at a later season.

“‘If this be your wish,’ said he, 'go back and tell my words to the people who sent you. I am king here, as my fathers were before me, and as King George and his fathers were over your country. I have not sold my chieftainship to the Governor, as all the chiefs round the sea-coast have done, nor have I sold my land.

I will sell neither. A messenger was here from the Governor to buy the land the other day, and I refused. If you are on the same errand I refuse you too. You white people are numerous and strong; you can easily crush us if you choose and take possession of that which we will not yield; but here is my right arm, and should thousands of you come you must make me a slave or kill me before I will give up my authority or my land. When you go you will say I am big - mouthed, like all the other Maoris who have talked to you, but I am now telling you that by which I mean to abide. Let your people keep the sea-coast, and leave the interior to us, and our mountain, whose name is sacred to the bones of my fathers. Do not bring many white people into the interior who may encroach on our possessions till we become their servants. But if you can make up your mind to come yourself now and then and visit this mean place, whose people are your slaves, you will find the same welcome. The place and the people are yours. Go to Wanganui.'

“The old man,” continued Wakefield, “said all this calmly and without working himself into a state of excitement; but while he disclaimed any intention of swaggering, and on holding up his right arm from beneath his mat, displayed his herculean proportions unimpaired by the sixty years that have whitened his hair, I could not but help admiring his calm and manly declaration; and believing it to be, as he said, true, I succeeded after much trouble in making him understand that we had all come to Taupo out of curiosity only, and with no view of acquiring land, and assured him that the Southern pakehas, at least, would never annoy him by any attempt to wrest from him his chieftainship or his land.”

The chief told Wakefield also about the missionaries and their faith. “Te Hapimana”—the

Te Heuheu the Great, and His Brother Iwikau. The famous old chief was killed in the landslide at Te Raps, South Taupo, in 1846, two years after this picture was drawn by G. F. Angas, the Australian artist. Iwikau te Heuheu succeeded him as head of the tribe. Rev. Thomas Chapman—from Rotorua, had repeatedly pressed him to accept books and become a “missionary,” but he had steadfastly refused, as he saw in the conversion of his people to the white man's religion an inevitable levelling of rank and the end of his regal sway. “When I last heard of him, in August, 1843, he was still threatening to use the missionary books as cartridge paper, and the tapu still dwelt on the sacred mountains.”

Would Not Sign the Treaty.

Not only did Te Heuheu decline to sign the Treaty of Waitangi in 1840, when an agent brought the sheets to Rotorua but he prevented, by his mana and his arguments, any of the Arawa there from signing. His brother Iwikau te Heuheu had previously been persuaded to sign the document, but the elder brother insisted that he should return the red blankets which had been given to him, as to all the other chiefs who signed, by the Governor's representatives in the North.

G. F. Angas, the Australian artist, who visited the Taupo country in 1844, travelling by canoe and on foot from Auckland, spent some time at Waihi and Tokaanu and painted the picture of Te Heuheu and Iwikau which is one of the treasures in the celebrated portfolio of Maori life scenes and portraits. Angas was not always successful with his Maori faces but he preserved for us in this drawing the air of dignity and majesty which the early days' travellers to Taupo have described as the distinguishing characteristic of Te Heuheu the Great. An official visitor to the home of the Ngati-Tuwharetoa in 1845 was Donald Maclean (afterwards Sir Donald), who while a very young man became a trusted and able Government intermediary in native affairs. He was impressed by Te Heuheu's intellectual powers and his strongly patriotic and nationalist attitude. The old chief stoutly supported Hone Heke, at that time engaged in his little war in the North; and he expressed his fears that the pakeha would soon become dangerously numerous and powerful in the land. His vision was prophetic; but his tribe's position far in the heart of the Island gave them a security which many of the coast dwelling tribes presently lost.

The Buried Village.

The tragic end of kinglike Heuheu, with fifty of his tribespeople, in 1846, is spoken of to this day by the old people of the Taupo country as an act of the Maori gods. It was the gods of wild nature at any rate; the forces of Ruwaimoko against which man is powerless. The story of that historic landslide from Hipaua's steam-soaked and flooded slopes was told me by one of the only three people who escaped from Te Rapa village.

This survivor, whom I was fortunate enough to find at Waihi village in the year 1900—fifty-four years after the disaster which entombed his people—was a white-haired ancient warrior named Tokena te Kerehi. He was one of the younger sons of the great Te Heuheu. He said he was grown up and tattooed on the body as well as the face, at the time of the midnight landslip. His narrative, which I have placed on record, is too long to reproduce here; but one or two leading incidents may be mentioned.

Te Heuheu Tukino, M.L.C. (Born 1865, died 1921). The son of the chief who gave the sacred mountains to the Government of New Zealand.

He said that the high priest Te Pahau had prophesied that Te Heuheu would not die by the hand of man, but by the stroke of the gods; and truly this was fulfilled. There was a thunderstorm early on the night of the disaster, and it was alarming to the people of Te Heuheu's household, and seemed to threaten the village as the lightning flashed downward and the guns of heaven crashed. Te Heuheu took his famous sacred greenstone máeráe Pahikaure in hand, a weapon of wondrous mana, and climbing to the roof of his house he essayed to quell the spirits of earth and sky. He loudly recited his prayers to avert the death-stroke from the sky, and after thus invoking the gods of his race and the spirits of his sacred ancestors he returned to his house. It was in the midnight hours when all but one or two were asleep that that destruction fell on the kainga. Te Rapa was close to the lake shore, fair in the mouth of the valley of the Wai-mataii and the steamy gulch and slopes of Hipaua. It was a challenge to fate. A fortunate wakeful one was young Tokena te Kerehi. When the hillside came down and buried the village he was outside his house; he was restless, for the night was ominous. He was all but buried as he ran—there was no time to warn the sleepers—and only escaped at last by climbing up a leaning tree, a moari or swinging tree of the young people, at the lake edge. Old Heuheu might have escaped but he tried to save his wives. When the horror-stricken people from the other villages gathered, and, after many days, were able to dig out the buried chief and his household, they found his favourite wife lying near him with the precious myáeráe Pahikaure, the sacred talismanic weapon of the family, clasped to her breast. The chief's house was the only one uncovered. The great hole dug there was still to be seen when I was there in 1900. The other houses overwhelmed were left under the deep covering of clay.

In the year 1910, the bones of the great Heuheu were searched for on Tongariro. The cave in which they were deposited in 1850 was found, and the skeleton was recovered and brought down to Waihi. A few days later another horo or landslide came down the water-logged steaming valley alongside the landslide of 1846; it was a larger slip which went out a long way into the lake. There was only one person killed by this slip, which took place in the daytime. A curious coincidence, one of several strange occurrences at that time discussed by the Maoris.

The late Te Heuheu Tukino, M.L.C., told me that the skull of his grandfather, which he viewed and wept over when it was borne down from the sacred mountain, was exceptionally large; and that the great man must have been 6 feet 5 inches or 6 feet 6 inches in height.

The Family Name.

The name Heuheu has puzzled many people interested in native nomenclature. Its right pronunciation, too, is difficult to some, but it presents no trouble when the Maori vowels are learned. “Hay-ooh-hay-ooh,” pronounced quickly so that the vowels easily coalesce, gives the correct sound. The story of the name-giving, as told to me by the late Te Heuheu Tukino, takes us back a hundred and fifty years—six generations. The story is over-long to tell here; enough just now to explain that it means “brushwood” or jungly growth; the story of an over-grown grave, the tomb of a near kinsman of the chief Tukino, the first Heuheu's father.

Iwikau te Heuheu.

The great Te Heuheu's younger brother Iwikau became head of the clan on the death of the sacred Ariki in 1846. He had been a warrior of renown, a famous wielder of the taiaha. He was a kindly old man, in the experience of early pakeha visitors to South Taupo. In 1849–50 he accompanied the Governor, Sir George Grey, from Auckland to Pukawa, which became the headquarters of the tribe after the destruction of Te Rapa by the great landslip. The first resident missionary at South Taupo, the Rev. Thomas Samuel Grace, who settled there in 1850, found in Iwikau a friend and protector. The chief was a leading man in the movement to set up a Maori King, and he was offered the kingship himself but declined and suggested Potatau te Wherowhero as a more suitable head. Upon that suggestion the chiefs assembled at Pukawa acted—the date was November, 1856—and old Potatau was proclaimed King at Ngaruawahia and Rangiaowhia.

(Continued on page 41.)

<name type="work" key="name-409926"> <hi rend="i">“Fixers” And Fixes</hi> </name> Perpetrated and Illustrated by Ken Alexander.

Big-time Fixers.

The world is too full of “fixers.” I don't mean people who fix things, but rather people who say: “Let me fix it”; “Leave it to me”; and “Here! I'll show you how to do it.” Most dictators are “fixers in a big way.” All the “Nosey Parkers” of this trying world are “fixers,” whether they “fix” egg-beaters or empires.

The mark of the fixer is that he leaves everything he “fixes” in a fix. He is the owner of an addled ego which deludes him into the belief that anything he thinks he can do must be better than anything anybody else can do. Thus the trail of devastation left in the wake of the world's “fixers.” whether domestic or dynastic.

For ages the wild works of the big-time “fixer” have smeared the pages of history with the blood of innocent non-fixers and, until the earth is finally “fixed,” this urge to pull things to bits just to see if it is possible to put them together again, will keep popping up in the methylated mentality of the fuddled “fixer.” People who do things because they know from training and experience that they can do them are the antithesis of the “fixer.” The completed job is their only advertisement. But the way of the “fixer” is strewn with bits that won't fit.

Domestic Despoilers.

The household “fixer” can't make and break empires, but these are about the only things that are safe from his morbid machinations. We know his works because haven't most of us been household “fixers,” or domestic dabblers, ourselves—before we learnt that it is cheaper to get a plumber to fix the gas than a doctor to fix the result of our fixing the gas?

If there is one quality the household “fixer” has in plenty it is courage. He will tackle anything from the drainage system to a wristlet watch. Nothing that can blow up, fa” down, unwind or come unstuck, is safe from his misplaced ardour.

He can put up swinging bookshelves which are one-tenth bookshelves and nine-tenths swinging. He can assemble a radio receiving set which will do everything except receive and which looks like a cross between a boiler-house in Bedlam and the plan of a jam factory done by Heath Robinson in shorthand. He builds fowl houses which are so tottery on their pins that the hens lay scrambled eggs. His dog kennels are calculated to drive the best dog to the dogs. He can repair the sewing machine so that it goes—in leaps and bounds (one leap, two bounds, and one for his knob). The rooms he papers look like the hanging gardens of Babylon after a midnight garden-party thrown by the Babylonian Borstal boys. He mends taps so that they fail to flow through the faucet but squirt out through the top like Pohutu at play. If the caliphont won't run he “fixes” it so that it can't even walk. Locks and clocks are as putty in his hands. He can take a lock to pieces as prettily as a professional and if, when reassembled, it is no good for locking purposes, it makes a good sinker for deep-sea fishing. He can rejuvenate the grandfather clock so completely that it becomes infantilely inarticulate; but (household hint) old grandfather clocks which have been “mended” make handy meat safes.

The Day of Unrest.

Saturday is the “fixer's” big day (no, sir! handy men never play golf; they would rather stay home and “fix” golf clubs). In the suburbs you hear him with hammer and saw and axe and wrench adding a few more grey hairs to his wife's permanent wave.

How many brave feminine hearts miss a beat—even a whole octave—at the sound of those sinister syllables. “I'll fix it”? How many of the nearest and drearest of the fecund “fixer” wish that their husbands were just ordinary lazy dull duds like you and me? But the actual destruction and annihilation is not all. There is the weekly hunt for the fixer's tools, to add bitterness to the aloes in the cannubial cup of the “fixer's” bitter half.

As the Assyrian came down like a wolf on the fold, so sounds the horrid cry of the maddened fixer.

“Where's that saw?” “Who's had the pincers?” “Find the axe!” Little children fly whimpering to their mother's skirts; the cat takes off for the rhododendrons; the dog moans beneath the wash tubs, the hair bristling on its neck; for the shadow of

“Rejuvenate the Grandfather Clock.” guilt lies upon the household of the “fixer.”

The saw is found under the wood pile where Willie has been sharpening it on the crowbar. The coalman has deposited half a ton of Westport on the pincers. The axe! Well, who ever had an axe that could be found? Little Lancelot (being too young to realise that “we men must stick together”) divulges that Willie has been engaged in erecting a fort, somewhere in Noman's Land, to resist the Italian invader. On such slender evidence is Willie taken away to “another place,” and wild cries testify to dirty deeds “down under.”

Even a spot of plumbing is powerless to deter a real he-man fixer. (Fixers, anyway, are only plumbers who have been cheated by Fate out of their birthright—or wrong).

No Fact is Stranger than Fixing.

No fact is stranger than fixing. Have you never heard a fixer's wife imploring him, with straws in her hair, to spare the plumbing? No? Well you have never seen the depths of despair plumbed. A ship's fireman sobbing for beer, a cow calling its calf, even a citizen paying his income tax, sound as glee songs compared with the passionate poignancy in the voice of the fixer's wife. But all in vain!

“Leave it to me,” says the fixer. “It's only an airchoke in the what'dyer'call'it; I just unscrew the thingamy, pull out the brass gadget and blow through it.”

Says his wife. “You know what happened last time we got an artichoke in the what'der'call'it. I can still see the mark on your head.”

But of course the fixer must fix. The dread virus clamours in his veins. Result: One doctor, one fire brigade, one plumber with mate!

The Fixer's Axe-iom.

The average “fixer” can do more damage with an axe than the average

An aerial which fell down on Grandpa.” plumber can do with a whole kit of lethal weapons. With the axe the “fixer” has got Robinson Crusoe, George Washington and Bob Pretty whopped to a chip. As a one-tool operator there is nothing to beat him in the realms of destruction.

Watch him build a fowlhouse with only his trusty axe and a tin of nails. As casually as the man who mapped Melbourne he scratches out the ground plan with a stick. Then he puts in the piles. Then he lops off the joists with his axe to the required length. Then he finds that he has amputated too much. Then he extracts said piles and replants them. Then he finds the joists are too long; he slices off another length, but discovers that he has overdone it again. So he replants the piles and repeats the aforesaid processes until the fowlhouse, which originally was designed to hold twelve hens, has shrunk, until a china egg would feel crowded in it. So he decides that he won't build a fowlhouse, after all, and uses the joists for a wireless aerial, which falls down on grandpa. Of course there are husbands who can mend things that will stay mended, and make things which stay made; but they are so rare as to be practically museum pieces. There are few men who have entered upon the “sere and yellow” who cannot say:—

I was a fixer once, But now have learnt the error of my ways, And am content to be a sorry dunce, Enjoying well my peaceful Saturdays. No leaking pipe can tempt me with a wrench, No locks nor clocks nor taps have power to call, No more for me the fixer's little bench— My trusty axe hangs rusting on the wall. I've learnt my lesson—learnt it to the core, And say with Edgar Allan—“Nevermore!”

<name type="work" key="name-409927">Limited Night Entertainments<lb/> Part VI.</name> By R. Marryat Jenkins

We gathered a deal of amusement from watching the crowd upon the Junction platform. Innocent passers-by were invested with the most fantastic characters which we created for them from the way they wore their hats, the shape of their noses, the manner in which they walked and talked. Three of them we wove into the following story, and should they happen to recognise themselves, a circumstance that is extremely unlikely, I hope we may be forgiven!

Sidney Harris woke from a sound sleep with a sense of security such as he had not enjoyed for many weeks. For a while he lay contentedly listening to the patter of wheels and watched the pale sunbeams of early morning weave back and forth across the floor of his sleeping car compartment. His compartment! To the man who for years had travelled in nothing more pretentious than a second-class smoker the privacy and quiet luxuriousness of his surroundings was impressive. He basked in a feeling of substance and power; the power of wealth, the power that had transformed him from a pinch-penny clerk to … Abruptly his eyes dulled with something akin to fear and the tense lines about his mouth deepened as his thoughts went creeping back through channels grown darkly familiar.

Back to the evening when three thousand pounds in unchecked notes lay in the Walton Company's safe, that impregnable safe of which he had by chance acquired the combination.

Back to the nerve-racking days which followed the discovery of the theft.

The gruelling cross-examination to which each member of the staff had been subjected. The mutual suspicion. The thought that one was being spied upon, watched, for some incautious move that would betray him as the guilty party.

But nobody had seriously suspected Sidney Harris. Why should they? That ineffectually conscientious rabbit of the staff had been able to establish a perfect alibi on the night of the theft, and his conduct since had been absolutely above suspicion.

He chuckled to think of his cleverness, many a man would have given himself away, he reflected, unable to resist the temptation to spend. He had not so much as bought an extra tin of tobacco. In his shabby clothes and patched shoes he had carried the fortune home, and in his shabby clothes he had come to work for many weeks after it had been secreted beneath the flooring of his bed-sitting-room.

For two months Sidney Harris had spent not a penny more than his salary had warranted, and then one evening he was drowned. A bathing-shed caretaker had found his clothes still hanging on their peg long after the beach had grown chilly and deserted.

A strong ebb-tide was swirling past the rocks at the seaward end of the bay, and it was greatly feared that Sidney Harris would never be seen again.

While the coroner's inquest was discussing the uninteresting relics, the patched shoes, the cheap flannel trousers, and the boarding-house towel, a Mr. Maxwell was emerging butterfly-like from the chrysalis of Sidney Harris.

He emerged very slowly and un-obstrusively in a mean lodging almost next door to the police station in the heart of the city. Where Harris had thinning hair, Mr. Maxwell's pate was covered with a well-thatched, almost fool-proof toupáee. Harris had been clean-shaven, Mr. Maxwell sported a moustache. Harris had worn spectacles, baggy trousers and a felt hat. Mr. Maxwell, though it hurt his eyes to do so, spurned the use of eye-glasses, and dressed in a very neat blue suit and bowler hat.

When Mr. Maxwell was fully emerged from his chrysalis state, he spent a night and a day at a comfortable family hotel, and reserved a whole sleeping compartment for himself on the Limited the following evening. He needed a whole compartment because in one of his immaculate suitcases were carefully packed two thousand nine hundred and sixty pounds in un-checked bank notes.

It had all been ridiculously easy, he told himself as he lit a cigarette and watched the smoke go drifting upwards, although there had been bad moments. The feeling of utter loneliness that had at times oppressed him. Nights when he had started awake in a sweat of terror. Days when his imagination had played him tricks and he crouched panic-stricken in the stifling heat of his little room. Then there was the afternoon when venturing out to a cinema, a man, mistaking him for an acquaintance, had tapped him on the shoulder. The evening when thunderous blows had resounded upon the door of his room and, paralysed with fear, he had cowered helplessly on his bed. The blows had not been repeated, and stumbling footsteps had retreated while a convivial voice sang:

“Who is knocking at my door? “Said the fair young maiden.”

That had been a bad moment, right enough, but … there came a sharp rap upon the door of his compartment. Sidney Harris, or rather Mr. Maxwell as we must now call him, started, letting fall his cigarette. The knock was repeated.

“Who's there?” he gasped.

“Frankton Junction in fifteen minutes, sir,” a cheerful voice replied, “time for breakfast!”

Mr. Maxwell groped under his pillow for his handkerchief and wiped the beads of cold perspiration from his forehead, then he climbed out of his bunk and fumbled through the pockets of his overcoat until he found a travelling flask. He swallowed a mouthful of brandy.

“Musn't get the jim-jams,” he muttered, making a wry face.

In less than three hours now he would be in Auckland. Courage returned to him at the thought. Although he had never been in the northern city, it had always presented itself to him as a fine adventurous place, the gateway to the Pacific—the World. There would be no possible chance of his being recognised there. He would slip across to Australia, then, changing his identity once again—Canada, the United States, London!

Beyond the windows, meadowlands were giving way to scattered groups of houses, a water tower on a hill wheeled

“… Upon leaving the telephone … you got into a taxi.” into view, and presently the sleeping-car swayed gently as the train negotiated the points and crossings of the junction.

After breakfast, Mr. Maxwell decided to sit for awhile in the smoking-car, and, having removed the suitcase containing his fortune from his sleeping compartment to the rack above his head, he settled himself comfortably in a corner seat. All about him was the buzz of conversation, all-night travellers refreshed by their meal were discussing the morning papers with crisp looking men who had boarded the train at the stop to make the early morning run in the interests of business. There was an atmosphere of briskness, of suppressed excitement almost, as the train settled down to the two-hour gallop that was the last lap of its long journey.

The country was growing vaguely familiar to Mr. Maxwell. Long years ago he had lived, a barefooted youngster of seven or eight in a farmhouse back in the low range of hills to the east. He pondered a moment. Somewhere just before Taupiri it would be, a rambling sort of place with toe-toe bushes all around it and a belt of gloomy pines at the back.

Memories came thronging, but were interrupted by a stout, red-faced man who entered the car from the vestibule, and, glancing about him a moment, seated himself with a friendly nod opposite Mr. Maxwell. He lighted a cigarette, unfolded a morning paper and after reading for a little while threw it aside in disgust.

“Heaven help us!” he exclaimed, then noting Mr. Maxwell's stare of surprise, “Don't mind me,” he laughed. “I'm not in a very good humour this morning, and the paper does nothing to improve it.” He paused looking keenly at Mr. Maxwell.

“You know,” he said presently “whenever I travel by this morning train I am filled with a spirit of what the Americans call ‘boost.’ It comes from watching the activities of this district as one passes through it,” he indicated with a sweep of his hand the countryside speeding past the window. The warm red roofs of farmhouses, the dairy cattle, cream wagons and butter factories.

“They present themselves to me as a drama, if I may be permitted to be so flowery; the epic drama of a young nation going to work. So I want to know all about it,” he added with a smile, “and feel that everyone else knows about it, too. I should like to read about it in the newspapers and feel that all this work and industry and nation building is being recognised. And do I read of these things?” He picked up the offending news sheet.

“Listen,” he said, “this is what I read. ‘New development in the Walton safe-robbing case. Police are reticent, but it is understood that they are investigating a fresh clue to the identity of the thief who, last November, rifled the safe of the Walton Company, making a clear get-away with £3,000.’”

Mr. Maxwell's heart missed a beat, his mouth went dry, and a wave of nausea swept over him.

The train roared over the Ngaruawahia bridge.

“Do you suppose,” the red-faced man waved his hand again, “that these people, these toiling farmers are any better off for hearing about the Walton Company,” he jerked the question sharply, “What is the Walton Company?”

“A—an importing firm, I believe,” Mr. Maxwell managed to reply.

“Exactly, well, imagine yourself a farmer. Say, for instance, that you lived in that house over there—” Mr. Maxwell followed the direction of the man's hand, and his jaw dropped. There, exactly as he remembered it twenty odd years ago, stood his old home. The toe-toe bushes, the rust-

“Miss Brown … . saw what appeared to be your back at a telephone.” streaked roof, dilapidated weather boarding, even the grass-grown track to the gate, and riding down it two youngsters astride a pony.

“Suppose you had just come in from the milking shed,” the man was saying, “four hours of hard graft before breakfast, the cows are feeling the hot weather, and the yield of milk is down. So is the cream cheque. There is a letter from the factory manager informing you that from the first of the month the price of butter-fat is to be further reduced.

“Then you open your paper, hoping against hope to read of something that will give you a grain of encouragement, that will make you feel your efforts are not all in vain, that prices will soon mend, and what do you find? The Walton Company has fresh hopes of recovering its £3,000!”

The stout man paused triumphantly, his eyes, cynical, very blue eyes they were, seemed to be probing Mr. Maxwell's inmost thoughts.

“Wouldn't you say, under the circumstances,” he continued, “'Devil take the Walton Company!'”? You'd feel, knowing that as soon as you had finished your breakfast, you had to go and pull turnips, mend a fence, maybe, and dig a drain round the pig-sty, a

certain sympathy for the fellow who had got away with the cash. He might, of course, have been just a common thief; on the other hand, he might be some chap who had gone on year after year, muddling along somehow, without getting any forrader, just as you had.”

“Just as I had?” Mr. Maxwell's voice in spite of himself, rose in a panicky crescendo.

“Not you personally, of course,” said the stout man, reassuringly, “I was referring to our hypothetical farmer!”

Mr. Maxwell rose from his seat and reached for his suitcase.

“Well,” he said, more steadily, “perhaps you're right. I think I'll get back to my compartment.”

“Sure,” the stout man nodded, “excuse me,” he said, “it's getting very warm in here,” and with a quick movement let down the window half-way. The sudden uprush of air caught Mr. Maxwell's almost fool-proof toupee and lifted it from his scalp.

“Oh, forgive me!” said the man retrieving it with a grin, and Mr. Maxwell, scarlet-faced, thrust it into his pocket and hurried down the car.

Back in his compartment he sat a long time, trembling, and nervously biting his knuckles. All the security that he had felt earlier in the day had vanished. All the hunted fear of the past weeks returned, overwhelming him, so that once again he cowered unable to move.

Huntly with its slag heaps, then … the broad Waikato with a big stern-wheel steamer breasting the current, brimmed close to the line before he regained a measure of composure. Then he arose, adjusted his toupee, brushed his clothes, and was about to extract a novel from his suitcase, when the train plunged into the tunnel at the southern end of Mercer Station.

In the clamour and darkness he did not hear or see the door of his compartment opened, and, turning, as the station buildings flashed by, was shocked to find the stout, red-faced man regarding him with a faintly cynical smile.

“You've made a mistake, haven't you?” Mr. Maxwell demanded curtly, “this is my compartment.”

“I don't think so,” the man replied, “and that answers both your question and your statement. Your name isn't really Maxwell, is it?”—indicating the reservation label.

Mr. Maxwell made a movement towards the bell push which would summon the sleeping-car attendant.

“I wouldn't do that,” said the other drawing from his vest pocket an identification card in a leather case.

“You see I'm from Police Headquarters—and it's my duty to arrest you, Mr. Harris, in connection with the Walton Company robbery.

“Now,” he added briskly, “shall we take it easy, or do you want me to call in a couple of the boys and make a fuss?”

Mr. Maxwell stared at him in silence. It had come then, the dread moment through which he had lived a thousand times in the past three months. But it brought with it none of the sensations that he had experienced in imagination. There was none of the fear that had started him from his dreams, no panic, no bitterness of remorse; rather, a sense of overwhelming relief that he

“You've made a mistake haven't you?” Mr. Maxwell demanded. was freed at last from the burden of anxiety which had haunted him incessantly from the moment he had become possessed of his ill-gotten fortune.

“Let's take it easy,” he said, and, sitting down, buried his face in his hands.

“That's the idea,” said the stout man, “no weapons, I suppose?” touching him expertly here and there.

The train swept on, green fields, orchards, suburban villas. Buckland, Pukekohe, Drury, the passengers in other parts of the train began to fidget and tidy themselves, stowing magazines into suitcases, rolling up rugs, all unconscious of the little episode drawing to a close in a compartment of the sleeping-car.

“Would it be against the rules,” said Sidney Harris to the stout man, “for you to tell me how you bowled me out? It might help to pass an irksome twenty minutes.”

The stout man scratched his chin—then he rose and, opening the compartment door, called “Peters,” and a burly man with a clipped moustache entered.

“Pencil and notebook,” the stout man commanded, waving him towards the seat, and the other producing the articles required, sat down.

“If you know your poets fairly well, Mr. Harris,” said the stout man, “you will remember the quotation ‘Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned!’ In your case she was apparently not only furious but vindictive. She had, I understand, auburn hair, grey eyes, and a somewhat outspoken manner; she works on the staff of the Walton Company.”

“Madeline Brown!” cried Sidney Harris.

The stout man inclined his head, “You ought to know,” he said. “Anyway she thinks you treated her rather badly. Before the robbery it appears that you had what might be called an ‘understanding’ with each other. You exchanged photographs, went to the pictures and several dances together, and even, I believe, went so far as to discuss ways and means of marriage.

“Then came the robbery, and a slight rift in the lute. A woman's intuition, particularly that of a woman who imagines herself in love, though not altogether to be relied upon, is a very subtle thing, Mr. Harris. It picks up unconsidered trifles and turns them into facts. It might easily turn pre-occupation into deliberate slight.

“Doubtless you were preoccupied; a man with three thousand pounds unlawfully come by naturally would be. I expect you were secretive, too, and not so frank as you had formerly been.

“However that may be the old order was changed, and the seeds of suspicion planted, for it seems that she was not quite convinced that you were drowned.

“The day after the tragedy she went round to your lodgings at lunch-time, and found amongst your effects a bathing suit!

“Bad slip that, Mr. Harris,” the stout man shook his head gravely, “and had Miss Brown not appropriated it, it might have started a few inquiries there and then. Of course, you may have had two bathing suits, but Miss Brown who knew you pretty well didn't think so. At any rate, her suspicions were increased, although she did not impart them to anybody. Possibly she was still loyal to you, possibly her intuition having assured her that you were both alive and in possession of the money, she intended to track you down and make you pay.

“One of the differences between a professional and an amateur criminal, Mr. Harris,” said the stout man after a pause, “is that the amateur in the case of a man like yourself, is a creature of habit. All your life you have been doing the same things in very much the same way, and so, because you had always gone to the Van Diemen Hotel when you wanted to make a bit of a splash, you went and stayed there the night before you left.

“Miss Brown watched that hotel pretty closely, and the evening you left, saw what she took to be your back, at a telephone. You probably don't know it, but your back, unless you can grow a hump on it or otherwise distort it is a difficult thing to disguise. She was so sure that it was your back, that, even when you turned round and revealed yourself as Mr. Maxwell, she hid behind a pillar and took stock of your features.

“That momentary hesitation on her part was your final undoing; for immediately upon leaving the telephone, your luggage was brought out and you got into a taxi.

“Miss Brown's indignation boiled over, and from the Van Diemen she went down to Police Headquarters.

“The train had left before they got her story—not that we should have tried to stop you even if it had not. We wanted further proof, and so I was acquainted by phone with all the facts and instructed to come up to Hamilton from Auckland last night.

“The rest was really very simple, you had often talked to Miss Brown about the old home at Taupiri. The registrar supplied any other details I might have wanted, and the window which I opened in the smoking car dislodged that little extra bit of hair you have grown!”

Sidney Harris shrugged his shoulders, and, smiling faintly, turned towards the window. Blue water, sparkling in the sunlight, trim pleasure craft, a big steamer making port. Peters shut his notebook with a snap, and the stout man began to gather up the late Mr. Maxwell's suitcases.

Presently the train, panting as though with the exertion of its eighty-six mile sprint, drew alongside the platform. The crisp business men hurried towards the barrier, tourists and holiday makers followed more slowly.

At the last, walking between two tall men, looking neither to right nor left, went Sidney Harris to the lengthy requittal of a moment's indiscretion!

<name type="work" key="name-409928"> <hi rend="c">Pictures Of New Zealand Life</hi> </name> (By Tangiwai.)

Pioneer Days.

As the year of New Zealand's Centenary as a British Colony approaches, interest in the records of the country's many-coloured story will increase. There are still with us many old people who can tell a tale of adventure in the breaking-in period and the days of the Maori War. The older generation of Maoris, too, in the Waikato, Taranaki and Bay of Plenty could, if they liked, add their stories to those already put on record. But all the old chiefs have gone; the men who were the leaders of their tribes in the numerous campaigns repose in the soil for which they fought. Fortunately their stories have not gone unrecorded; their side of the long struggle is in print.

But the pioneering period within the recollection of most of the old New Zealanders is narrowing in. We must now include many who came here after the close of the Maori Wars, and who still found a vast amount of adventure and hard-faring in the task of making homes for themselves in unbroken country. The end of the period of the pioneer settlers must be fixed approximately, I think, as corresponding to the end of the sailing-ship passenger period. After 1880 few British and other immigrants came to New Zealand in a “wind-ship.” The beautiful clippers and semi-clippers of the New Zealand Shipping Co. and the Shaw Savill and Albion Co., carried in their day many thousands of new settlers out to the new country. One of the last to bring passengers was the Lady Jocelyn, a splendid old three-skysail-yarder, troopship of the Crimean War and Maori War days, whose last important immigrant voyage was with the second party of North of Ireland settlers for Katikati in 1878. The Lady Jocelyn, wonder of the merchant navy, is still afloat on the Thames, her moorings down for good.

Those pioneers of Katikati, 1875–78, found no militia duty to complicate their efforts at home-making, but it was sufficiently rough and wild without that. They had no roads at first, the only access to their scrub and fern sections was by the harbour and creeks of Tauranga. They lived in raupo whares at first; it was a bewildering place to the farmers and men of various professions from well - settled secure Ulster. But they buckled in with success, a quicker success than that which came to the bush pioneers of North and South Auckland, where the great forests of tall timber had to be attacked. Katikati, which celebrated last month (September) the sixtieth anniversary of its founding, had a comparatively easy victory over untrimmed nature, albeit they had many reverses of prosperity. But the ups were more than the downs.

The Bell Block.

Many people no doubt have been a trifle puzzled by that name, the site of the Taranaki aerodrome where thousands have waited to greet trans-Tasman fliers from Australia. Bell Block has nothing to do with a city block. There is a story of pioneer pluck and Maori war-thrill in the name. This pleasant rural spot, with its small farms and its aircraft ground, eight miles from New Plymouth, was a battleground in the fighting Sixties, when the English settlers who had been located there, refused to abandon it, and built a stockade to defend it. The Maori name is Hua. The English name is accounted for by the fact that this block of land was bought from the Taranaki Maoris by Mr. (afterwards Sir) Dillon Bell, father of the present Right Hon. Sir Francis Dillon Bell. He was the New Zealand Company's agent in New Plymouth, 1847–1848.

Originally consisting of .1,500 acres, the Bell Block was enlarged by further purchases, and in 1860 when the first Taranaki war began there were about seventy Englishmen and their sons of fighting age in the settlement. These sturdy sons of Devon and Cornwall soon had a hundred bullock-cart loads of timber on the spot selected for their fort, a leveltopped hill overlooking the little village.

Sketches of that day, by an artist settler, Frank Arden, show a stout stockade, a blockhouse and flanking towers. This compact little fort was occupied for several years as a useful half-way post between New Plymouth and Waitara. In 1860–61 it was customary to send a column of two hundred soldiers, with a howitzer (drawn by bullocks) to escort the provisions and ammunition carts from New Plymouth to Bell Block, along the rough Devon Road, the main thoroughfare northward, where hundreds of motorcars now speed daily along a smooth highway. Not a trace now remains of that hill-fort; the farmers' dairy cows graze on the rich grass where the palisades bristled and field-guns sent shot and shell over the fields at the Maori raiders on the bush-edge.

The Return of the Horse.

Dr. Heber, our recent visitor from Monte Video, Uruguay, in his travels through New Zealand viewing the land and the products thereof, has expressed pleasure at the increasing use of the horse on the farms of the country. Machinery for some time displaced the horse-power throughout the land, and those who liked to see a good horse grieved to contemplate its gradual disappearance. But the horse is coming back; the tractor is being discarded by many a farmer.

It has been noted, too, that there is a decided tendency to return to the horse in America. In England, Scotland, and Ireland, of course, the horse has never been displaced so largely as in New Zealand; the strong hold the saddle- and the plough-horse and carthorse have in the Old Land will never be shaken loose by mechanical contrivances.

Motor highways prevent the horse coming back for roadster use; but in a pastoral country like this there will always be great use for the saddle-horse. A good horse is excellent company; I do not think any motorist has ever felt disposed to pat his shining radiator on the neck or address kindly soothing words to the magneto or the carburetter.

<name key="name-408638" type="work">New Zealand Journey</name> Margaret Macpherson <name type="work" key="name-409929">New Zealand Journey <lb/> VII.</name>

Please get out your thick woollen undies. Don your heavy sweater and your furlined coat. We are going up into the King Country. As a matter of fact, the King Country is gloriously warm in the summer, but in the winter (which is the season in which I saw it) it is cold.

“Bracing,” say the inhabitants, sturdily. But bleak as it was, I could not help seeing that Ohakune was beautiful. I stayed at the King's Court Hotel there, and the view from my window was something one never forgets. There, the hills compete with each other for height, grandeur and beauty. The closer hills are bush-clad in a hundred different greens; the further ones are blue with shadowy snow, but the topmost ones are gleaming white, glinting crystalline and opalescent in the sun

Thirty years ago Ohakune was a dense primeval forest. When the Main Trunk Railway line was put through it, it suddenly became a commercial proposition—a vast source of wealth. The tall trees which had been for centuries the home of bellbird and tui, were now seen as material for the homes of men. Sawmills were quickly established all along the line, hundreds of men were employed, wages were good, and a happy and prosperous colony of men and women took charge of the lonely forest clearing.

The forest giants issued their challenge to the axeman, and he valiantly responded. In a few short years the landscape became plentifully dotted with spirals of steam-exhaust from the busy mills. Where all had been silence for thousands of years, now all was noise—the whistle of the saw as it slid quickly and easily through soft wood, the harsh scream it gives when it rips its way through harder timber, the short sharp bark of the log-hauler as it dragged its burden from its ancient bed, and, above all, the deep-voiced singing of the men at work.

But now the steam spirals are gone, leaving a certain desolation in the landscape. The mill was a remorseless foe to beauty, and it left the country littered with stumps and small trees usually battered and ragged looking, depressing beyond words. But some courageous and far-seeing souls have already started to tidy up the debris. What was formerly forest is now emerging as beautiful dairying land. Root crops grow to perfection in the ash which remains from the fire which the farmers put through the gutted bush. When the rest of the North Island was stricken by drought and most root crops had failed at the beginning of this year, little Ohakune sent 1,490 tons of greens and potatoes to the various markets. Ohakune is gradually becoming famous as potato land. Ten tons to the acre is not exceptional, and a crop of seventeen tons to the acre is authentically recorded. Whilst there, I was told of one man who made £100 an acre (gross) from peas during a good year. So, you see, though the forest is done, forest land is not. The King Country has still a great future ahead of it.

And now I must introduce you to my friend, Mr. Johnnie Murdie, who drove me all over this district. Johnnie is a small farmer with a large intellect, and a dry sense of humour. He took me to the place on the railway where the line going South joined the line coming North long ago.

“Sir Joseph Ward drove a gold spike to commemorate the half-way mark,” he told me. “There's still a sort of memorial stone with the spike embedded in concrete in memory of the great day.”

“I wonder you don't go and remove it,” I said.”

“Two reasons why I don't,” said Johnnie quizzically, “First, it isn't real gold; I tried it. Second, you can't get it out; it's too firmly set in the concrete.”

“You tried that, too, eh?”

“Look at that hillock,” said Johnnie, disregarding my question. “That is one of the highest points on the New Zealand railway; it is 2,457 feet above sea-level. It is called Horopito.”

We came to a viaduct built at a dizzy height above a wooded gorge.

“This bridge,” said Johnnie, “is more than 200 feet above the ground, and if you drop a hammer off the bridge it takes you a whole hour to climb down and fetch it.”

“Why a hammer? Why not a stone ? Does a hammer fall slower than a stone?”

Johnnie grinned. “I mention hammers because that's what we used to drop when we were building it. I was one of the carpenters. When we got sick of the bridge we used to take an excursion into the gorge, after dropped hammers.”

The day we went to National Park, Johnnie lost his best cap and borrowed his sister's scarlet knitted tam-o'-shanter. He looked exactly like an executioner of the French Revolution. We had tea at the Chateau Tongariro. Johnnie, wearing the blood-thirsty headgear over one eye, was loath to enter the Chateau. When I insisted, he said, “Well, you can pretend I'm the chauffeur. I can't go about as your friend in this hat.”

“Too firmly set in the concrete.”

“If you imagine for an instant that I would have such a disreputable, villainous-looking man for my chauffeur, you're mistaken,” I said. “But as a friend of mine you're quite de rigueur.

So in we went. Mr. and Mrs Cobbe, hosts at the Chateau, received us kindly and showed us all around. The lounge is particularly fine—a lofty, imposing room with plate glass windows larger than any I have ever seen. These windows frame the landscape—beautiful views of Tongariro, Ruapehu, and Ngauruhoe. The room is furnished fatly and voluptuously, and in the centre of it is a very good floor where the young visitors may dance o' nights.

Mrs. Cobbe took me upstairs to see some of their more sumptuous rooms, including the royal suite where Prince Henry stayed early in the year. The bedroom had two beds, a double and a single one. The carpets and hangings were of old rose, the furniture of beautifully figured walnut. The bathroom adjoined, a simple affair of white tiles and chromium plating.

We went to inspect the bridal suite, which I liked better. The two beds (one double, one single) were of silvery ash and sycamore; the furniture matched, the hangings were bright and cheerful. It was not so imposing as the royal suite, but it was considerably more pleasing.

Then, with Mr. Cobbe, we went to visit the ski-house and the cellars where people dry their clothes after coming in from the mountain. Everything necessary for mountain sports may be hired at the Chateau—skis and ski-sticks may be had for half-a-crown a day. Waterproof capes may be had for 1/6, so may boots. Strides are hired for 2/-, socks for 9d., gloves for 3d. If you go for a day or two it pays to hire them; but those who stay long usually take their own.

There are six guides attached to the Chateau; they will go with you and direct a mountain ascent for £1 a day; also they teach ski-ing. The chief guide is Carl Risberg, a Swede, a wonderful mountaineer and a delightful personality.

Mrs. Cobbe offered us afternoon tea which I accepted with joy. Johnnie Murdie hesitated.

“If we take their tea, we're the guests of the Government,” he growled, taking me aside.

“Uh-huh.”

“But I'm against the Government. I'm against the increase of the police force.”

“Well, you can't do anything about it till the election. If we eat two shillings-worth of their cakes, they'll have so much less to spend on the police.”

Johnnie sat down at the table.

“Pass those sandwiches,” he said firmly.

The next day Johnnie invited me to go with him to the local sheep-dog trials. Reader, you had better come with us. Put on your oldest tweeds, and bring your shooting-stick or a rug to sit on when you get tired. Ready? Off we go!

The sun sparkles with a sort of crackling brilliancy. The air is like iced champagne. The hills seem to have heaped themselves a little nearer to the town and the road is thronged with bronze-faced men. They are all going to the dogs.

Have you ever been present at sheep-dog trials? If you have not, you have still much to learn of what Kipling calls “the true first friend.” No dog is quite so wonderfully specialized in his intelligence as the sheep-dog. Another sort of dog will do wonders in the drawing-room or on the garden lawn. Command him to “beg” and he will beg your dear wee pup to be, or bid him “die” and he will die with great solemnity.

A sheep-dog is unique in that he can be controlled when he is half a mile away. At the trials we saw this done time and again.

On this green circle, which is outlined by upturned sods, stands the shepherd and his dog. Far away on yonder brown hill are three white specks—the sheep. Ready? Off!

“Whee-hee-oo!” whistles the shepherd, meaning “Go and fetch them!”

The dog bounds away, through fences, over hills, down gullies. Suddenly, on a rise, he stops, crouching, and gingerly slinks off to the right. He has seen the sheep. So as not to frighten them he makes a wide detour and works round behind them.

“Whee-hee-oo!” whistles the shepherd.

The dog drives them down towards us. He is trotting rather too quickly, and the sheep are stampeding.

“Whoo!” whistles the man, meaning “Stop.”

The dog stops. The sheep slow up; the dog walks forward sedately. The sheep come quietly over the hill, down the gully, through the gate. Now they see the man and run wildly to the right.

“Whee!” goes the whistle and the man points to the right. The dog trots quietly round and heads them off.

“Whoo!”

The dog stops, one foot in the air, alert, poised. Then very gently, very quietly, he drives them into the turfed ring. The man stands in the middle. The sheep go round as in a circus, the dog gently driving them and stopping like stone when they become frightened.

“Reverse!” calls the judge.

The dog turns and gently heads the sheep the other way, round and round. Ah, wonderful, wonderful… .

The spectators clap and cheer, But I cannot clap. I stand there wringing my hands, my eyes glazing. There's something about a dog that goes right to my heart.

Another man and another dog stand in the ring. This dog has a humourous

“Rover fetches the sheep.” tail and he keeps smiling at the spectators. The sheep are on the hill. The dog leaps off, over the gullies. He is no psychologist. He does not hide or crouch, but slams his headlong little carcase right into the faces of the sheep.

“Whoo!” whistles the man, meaning “Stop.” But Rover does not stop. Not he! The sheep are in a panic. They scatter all over the face of the hill.

“Split sheep,” writes the judge in his little book.

“Whee-hee-oo!” whistles the man, meaning “Fetch them here.” Rover turns and barks defiance at his master.

“Rover, you—–!” yells the man.

“Wait till I catch you!”

“—–—–—–!!”

Rover brings the sheep. His tail is a-quiver with merriment. He laughs aloud. The sheep run among the spectators. Rover flops down and fairly splits his sides at the joke.

“Time!” calls the judge.

“Damn!” says the man.

The training of a sheep dog is a labour of patience, tact, and discrimination. The well-trained dog does not bark and stampede the sheep, but moves about with precision and restraint. He will stop immediately upon command, sometimes with one foot in the air as he was about to step; but there he will stay, as if carved from stone, until his master's whistle releases him. Sometimes sheep, being headed, will turn upon the dog and stand at bay, and here is where the dog shows his admirable self-control. Crouching patiently, he backs the sheep, inch by inch, until they are in the required position. An ill-controlled dog, on the other hand, will lose his temper before an angry ewe. When confronted he will bark, snap or even bite. In judging the trials points are given for silence and for the master's command of the animal.

I had the pleasure of seeing a champion dog at work. If his owner could control his own right hand as he controls his wonderful dog he would be a master of any handicraft.

The two old mates chanced to meet in Auckland Domain and got talking about the old days. “I 'member the time,” said one, “when you could buy a prime leg o' mutton for a bob.” “Ah,” said the other, “and I mind the time when beer was threepence a pint and bacca sixpence a ounce. Not this here toasted bacca 'most everyone smokes now, of course.” “Not likely,” agreed his mate, “toasted's diff'rent to other bacca. I been smoking it this dozen years—and can you beat it?” “There's nothing to touch it!” declared the other with emphasis, “and mind you it couldn't do you no 'arm not if you smoked a pound of it a week. That's what toasting does!” This being carried unanimously the pair lit up and toddled off in quest of “'arf-a-'andle.” “Toasted” certainly has an irresistible appeal for smokers. Look at the demand for all five brands: Cut Plug No. 10 (Bullshead), Navy Cut No. 3 (Bulldog), Cavendish, Riverhead Gold, and Desert Gold. Yes, and look at the imitations!—and avoid them!*

New Zealand Verse

<name type="work" key="name-409930"> <hi rend="c">Only Your Eyes.</hi> </name> Eyes to cause dreams—and I have dreamed The long day through, since, passing by, Your careless glancing snared my eye. So soft, so calm, so sure they seemed. That I have wondered, envying such, How one so young could know so much. Perchance that heavenly softness beamed In prime effulgence on a morn, Heart-twisting, when the spring was born. And such tranquility was creamed From water's green translucent glaze As, motionless, it fed your gaze. For Steadfastness, your Soul's light beamed; And where that glowing lamp was lit I cannot know, nor guess at it. But if I go on pilgrimage, A palmer of another age, I'll seek to know an English spring And love each green and growing thing, Upon my soul's brown wood to know, Thereby, the thrust of buds that grow; And some day when my soul's in leaf To know of ecstasies the chief—To meet another one like you Who'll stop: and see my soul shine through. Margaret Macpherson

* * *

<name type="work" key="name-409931"> <hi rend="c">Barren Gold.</hi> </name> Far to the north, where the sand-dunes lie, And the sea-birds' plaint mocks the empty sky, The great god Waste rules his barren gold With a bland conceit that is old, so old: For the birth of time found him seated there, With the mad, west wind in his unkempt hair; His trident sceptre the lightning's fork, Rapier keen—as the arrested hawk Swoops to pinion his stricken prey—The blue fire flickers in sinister play; And the wild seas rock where the crazed wind taunts A shore so arid no scarred reef vaunts A stark relief 'gainst shifting sand, For the great god Waste stalks the desolate strand. And man himself fears this tortured zone, Where the cold sea claims what is not its own, Nor bird nor tree haunts the lonely shore, But the phantom ships that will sail no more— The phantom ships that lost their way On the unknown coast of a bygone day— Ride the seas when the moon is high, And the scudding clouds scour the weary sky: The great god Waste is infinitely old, And the sand-dunes' march but a tale half-told. —Gwenyth Evans.

* * *

<name type="work" key="name-409932"> <hi rend="c">Roads.</hi> </name> Broad roads there are, and white, and concrete-paved, High along ridges, gleaming in the sun, Noisy roads, important roads, and clean, for there The wheels of the wealthy run. Down in the valleys there crawl hot streets, Narrow and bent like a beckoning hand; Hemmed in with hovels and crumbling shops Almost too old to stand. I know that they are dirty, sordid, mean, That ugly things are done behind their walls, And yet the moon and stars are silver there When holy evening falls. And clean white roads have map-directed ends, But ugly, crooked lanes may hold surprise, For many a side-street climbs to look into The City's sparkling eyes. And sometimes a wretched shack can dumbly show A plot of tulips shining to the sun, And even there Sleep's opiate slowly stills The voices one by one. —Christine Comber.

* * *

<name type="work" key="name-409933"><hi rend="c">Aotearoa.</hi><lb/> Lovely Place Names of New Zealand.</name> Sat a poet idly dreaming, Far and long into the night, Burnt his candle all unheeded, For his muse had taken flight. Drew his atlas idly to him, Turned its pages through and through, Suddenly its names came crowding, “Let us see what we can do!” Then they formed in ranks before him, Four and four and four abreast, And they watched and waited gently, While he put them to the test. Quick as thought he glanced them over, Took one here, and took one there. Found that, stringing them together, He could make a poem rare. Waiareka, Whakapara, Whangaroa, Waihopai, Onewhero, Otahuhu, Onerahi, Otukai, Manawatu, Matamata, Maunganui, Mamaku, Tongariro, Tarawera, Taranaki, Timaru, Whakatane, Wanganui, Waitemata, Waikanae, Rotorua, Rangiora, Ruahine, Ruawai, Papakura, Pukekohe, Pakaraka, Pekerau, Katikati, Kerikeri, Tikitiki, Takapau. —N. Langley.

<name type="work" key="name-409934">Sea Wrack</name> (By F. Marryat Norris .) D'you mind the days when sailor-men took pride in their employ When ships were things of beauty, in which one sensed a joy? See her close-hauled, her lower yards hard up against the stays With tacks hove down and bowlines taut, she courts the slatting sprays, Caught by the fierce Pampero when off the River Platte Or sweltering in an Indian port, waiting months for freight. Drowsing 'neath the blazing sun, while in the doldrums' spell To the patter of her reefpoints when dipping to the swell. Now under goose-winged topsail, hove-to in adverse gale, Or running 'fore an icy wind that stains each drumming sail. “Shenandoah” and “Rolling River” I'd love to hear again With the clanking of the windlass as it rounded in the chain. Outward bound from London, general cargo in her hold To cross a thousand leagues of sea and earn the owner gold, Or loaded down to Plimsol mark with gunny-bags or coal She stemed the seas of every clime, each port of call her goal. Railway-iron from Middlesboro', or wool from Timaru, With paddy-rice from Akyab; salt-petre from Peru, Mat-sugar from the Indies, through the Golden Gate with grain, Now hides and horns from Callao, to round “Cape Stiff” again. You get to thinking of the times you knew away at sea To earn your three-pound-ten a month to waste upon a spree. You felt a man when once aboard, aloft, or down below, And took the weather earing, when reefing in a blow; Fought to get the gaskets passed lest the canvas tore away; Took your “trick” and steered the course the skipper chose to lay. Stood by the topsail halyards in snow squalls off the Horn, Or watched the tropic sun climb up to paint the sky at dawn. You pulled your weight upon a rope, used marlin-spike or fid, And with a “sailorising” job took pride in what you did, As on the sea of memories the old-time ships sail past While fancy wafts the seaman's cry, “Come up, behind! All fast!”

“That's a nice pipe of yours,” remarked a passenger by the Tauranga express to a fellow traveller. The man addressed pulled the handsome silver mounted calabash he was smoking out of his mouth and regarded it fondly. “I won that there in a raffle,” he said, “and I wouldn't take two notes for it.” “Looks worth it, too,” said the other. “I smoke a humble cherry-wood myself” (with a laugh), “but I'm more particular about my tobacco than I am about my pipe.” “Then I reckon you smoke something special?” “I do—the best—Cut Plug No. 10. I'm always smoking but that's alright. No nicotine to worry about in ‘toasted’.” “I believe you,” said the calabash owner, with a grin, “smoke it myself, only mine's Cavendish. But I agree—you can't beat toasted.” It would be interesting to know how often that or something similar is said every day! For there certainly is no tobacco to compare with the real toasted—Cut Plug No. 10 (Bullshead), Cavendish, Navy Cut No. 3 (Bul dog), Riverhead Gold and Desert Gold.*

(Rly. Publicity photo.) The “New Zealand Star” at Wellington loading produce for overseas.

The Railway Bridge which spans the Waikato River at Hamilton, North Island, New Zealand. (Railway Publicity photos.) Maoris in their canoes on the Waikato River, at Ngaruawahia, North Island, New Zealand.

These two photographs cover several chapters in transport evolution. Mr. James Cowan has told how, before the outbreak of the Waikato War in 1863, the Maoris objected to the road the soldiers were making. Have we not (said the Maoris) our rivers and our canoes? … Less than fifty years after the Waikato War the Main Trunk railway, traversing the heart of the King Country was complete; Rotorua was linked by rail long before that; and numerous rivers were crossed by such massive bridges as this over the Waikato at Hamilton. Canoe traffic has almost passed. Yet still Ngaruawahia, of regatta fame, can revive old glories.

Famous New Zealanders. (Continued from page 21 ).

In its beginning the Maori King movement was peaceful and altruistic, and it had the approval of the missionary, Mr. Grace, who saw in it a means of establishing law and order among the tribes, in which the white Government had failed.

The Giver of the Sacred Peaks.

The third chief called Te Heuheu, in direct descent from the first Tu-kino, was originally named Patatai. He was the second son of Heuheu the Great; the eldest son of the chief wife, a young man named Te Waaka —had perished in the landslip.

Patatai was absent in the Rangitoto district of what is now the King Country, at the time of the disaster. When he returned with a large party of Ngati-Maniapoto, to mourn over the awful red clay tomb of his family, he assumed the name Horonuku, which means “Landslide,” or “Swallowed up in the Earth,” in memory of his father. His good old uncle Iwikau died in 1863, and he then took the family name Te Heuheu.

Horonuku went on the warpath at the head of his clan in 1863. He marched off to the Waikato War; and his friend Mr. Grace, on his advice, abandoned the mission station and returned to Auckland, for the safety of his family. “If we are beaten in the war,” he sadly told the missionary, “I may no longer be able to protect you.”

Later, in 1869, Horonuku, against his own wishes, perforce joined Te Kooti in the fighting around the South Taupo country and he narrowly escaped in the battle of Te Porere, where Te Kooti's last redoubt was stormed by the Colonial forces. This entrenchment, overgrown with flax and fern, is close to the present main motor road from National Park railway station past the base of the Tongariro Range. The chief came in and surrendered to Lieut.-Colonel McDonnell a few days after the fight, and Sir Donald Maclean, Native and Defence Minister, had him and his family taken down to Hawke's Bay on a kind of benevolent parole to keep him out of the Hauhau complications until the wars were over; they all returned in 1870.

It is to this chief Te Heuheu Tukino Horonuku that New Zealand owes the nucleus of the wonderful National Park, but the moving power behind the gift was the late Mr. Lawrence M. Grace, the son of Taupo's pioneer missionary. The Native Land Court at Taupo township in 1886 awarded the mountain peaks of Tongariro, Ngauruhoe and Ruapehu to Te Heuheu and his family, because of the intimate tapu associations of the mountains and the Heuheus. The old chief was troubled as to the ultimate fate of his ancestral volcanic peaks. “After I am dead, what will become of these sacred places?” he asked his friend Mr. Grace (who had married his daughter Te Kahui). Mr. Grace suggested that the best plan would be to make them a tapu place of the Crown, a sacred national property under the mana of the Queen. “Yes,” agreed the chief; “let them be a gift to the Government, a sacred gift for ever from me and my people.” And so it was done, with all the necessary formalities, and the mountain tops, an area of 6,500 acres in, all, were deeded to the Crown.

Thus came into being the Tongariro National Park, the area of which was increased from time to time by purchase until it is now a splendid domain of over 150,000 acres.

The Park is a grand memorial to the noble donor and his line, and as is fitting one of the most beautiful of the peaks in the Park bears the family name. This is the North Peak of Ruapehu, which is mapped as Te Heuheu; it is a perfect pyramid seen from the north, a glorious sight under snow.

The Ever-Burning Occupation Fire.

I could narrate many a story of Te Heuheu Horonuku, the Park-giver, who died in 1888, leaving his son, Tureiti te Heuheu, a great friend of mine in the days that are gone, to carry on the mana of the family and clan in his stead. Just one may be recalled; it is the story of the good old chief's splendid retort to an impertinent counter-claimant to parts of the Southern mountain area. It was in the Land Court in Taupo township. Major Kepa te Rangihiwinui, the fighting chief of the Whanganui tribes, asserted that his fires of conquest (raupatu) had burned in South Taupo; his ahi-ka, or “kindled fire” was his title to the land.

Te Heuheu Horonuku heard with rising indignation this speech of Kepa's. He rose and answered him.

“Who are you,” he said, “that speak of your fires of occupation burning in my country? Where is your continuous fire, your ahi-ka-roa [long burning fire]? Where is it? You cannot show it, for it does not exist. Now I shall show you mine! Look yonder”— and he pointed through the open window of the Court-room across the great Lake, southward. A curl of yellow vapour coiled up from Ngauruhoe crater.

“Behold my ahi-ka-roa—my mountain Tongariro! There burns my fire, kindled long ago by my ancestor Ngatoro-i-Rangi. It was he who lit that fire; it has burned there ever since! That is my fire of occupation. Now show me yours!”

No wittier or more forcible argument could be uttered. Kepa and his party were silenced. They found it useless to press their claim. No human hand could light so long-burning a fire of conquest. That is one of a hundred dramatic passages in the grand saga of the sacred mountains.

Taupo Moana and the Volcanoes. From a water colour drawing by the late Captain T. Ryan, of Taupo. This view of the Lake and the mountains of the Tongariro National Park is from the Red Rocks at Waipahihi, North Taupo.

<name type="work" key="name-409935"> <hi rend="c">Our London Letter</hi> <lb/> <hi rend="i">A New Turbine Locomotive.</hi> </name> by Arthur L. Stead

Pillows and rugs for night travel on the L. and N.E. Railway.

Afeature of present-day railway operation is the almost universal increase in passenger train speeds and loads. As a result, new and more powerful locomotives of various types are constantly being introduced, and on the Home railways we now have, as the latest innovation, a new London, Midland and Scottish turbine locomotive, the first turbo-locomotive to be constructed in any of the British railways' own shops.

The L. M. & S. turbo-locomotive is No. 6202, the third of the “Princess Royal” class of 4-6-2 express passenger engines to be built in the Crewe works. In general, the new locomotive follows the design of the previous conventional engines of its class, but it is driven by a turbine. The drive from the turbine is direct on to the driving wheels. On this account, there is no outside motion visible, except the coupling rods. The principal dimensions and details are as follows:—total wheel-base, 63 ft. 10 in.; weight in working order, 163 tons 13 cwts.; coal capacity of tender, 9 tons; water capacity, 4,000 gallons; boiler pressure, 250 lbs. per sq. in.; total heating surface, 2,967 sq. ft.; grate area, 45 sq. ft. The turbo-locomotive is at present undergoing trials in main-line working. Its main advantages are claimed to be smooth starting and rapid acceleration, coupled with important savings in locomotive and track maintenance through the abolition of the hammer-blow effects usually associated with reciprocating motion.

Progress in Locomotive Design.

Looking back, it is pleasing to note how marked is the progress effected in locomotive design within recent years. A quarter of a century ago, the most favoured Home locomotive type was the 4-4-0 class. “Pacifies” then made their appearance, led by the Great Western “Great Bear.” “Pacifics” are largely employed for express passenger haulage to-day, although a tremendous amount of useful work is put in by 4-4-0 locomotives. An example of this class is the “Schools” series of engines of the Southern Railway, a 4-4-0 design almost as large as the “King Arthur” 4-6-0 type.

The year 1923 saw the introduction of the Great Western 4-6-0 four-cylinder “Castle” locomotives, and four years later the same railway gave us the first “King” class 4-6-0 engine, the most famous example of which is the far-famed “King George V.” About this time, too, there was born the “Royal Scot” class 4-6-0 express passenger locomotives of the L.M. & S. Railway. Innovations were the L. & N.E. high-pressure locomotive No. 10,000, with a 4-6-4 wheel arrangement and water-tube boiler with working pressure of 450 lb.; and the L.M. & S. high-pressure locomotive “Fury,” of which little, incidentally, has recently been heard. To-day, the most powerful Home passenger locomotive is the L. & N.E. “Cock o' the North,” a 2-8-2 engine weighing 1651/2 tons, and having a tractive effort of 43,462 lbs. Altogether, the four Home railway groups own about 20,400 steam locomotives.

Increasing Use of Railways.

All over the world, rail-cars have become established as profitable train units. In Europe, the railways are finding these light rail-cars of the greatest utility in combating the competition of the road carrier; and while, at the outset, train units of this type were principally confined to branch-line operation, to-day their use is generally extending to the main-lines. In Britain, long-distance rail-cars are regularly in commission, a noteworthy service being that of the Great Western system between Birmingham and Cardiff.

Across the Channel, France is putting into traffic high-speed rail-cars on many main-lines, while in Hungary specially fast rail-cars are running daily between Budapest, the capital, and the Austrian capital of Vienna. On the Paris-Brest route recently, a world's record was set up by a Bugatti petrol-driven rail-car, which attained a speed of 122 m.p.h. A similar rail-car connects Paris with Vichy, the popular spa. In Germany, a new fast rail-car service has just been inaugurated between Berlin and the Rhineland city of Cologne. The trains employed are on similar lines to the well-known “Flying Hamburgher,” but incorporate a number of improvements aiming at greater passenger comfort and quieter operation.

Petrol-driven rail-car, seating 48 passengers, now operating extensively on the Italian State Railways.

Britain's latest locomotive giant—the L.M. and S. Turbine Engine, No. 6202.

New British Trains.

New and more luxurious passenger rolling-stock continues to be built by the Home railways. The most interesting recent addition under this head takes the form of the first of a pair of new corridor trains which are to maintain the “Cornish Riviera Limited” daily services of the G.W. line. As mentioned in last month's Letter, the London-Cornwall services have been entirely remodelled, and these new train sets are for operation in the accelerated runs, which include a daily non-stop flight of 279 miles between London and Truro, except on Saturdays, when the “Down” train runs from Paddington to St. Erth (2991/2 miles) non-stop.

The trains are being built in the railway shops at Swindon, and each consists of thirteen coaches, accommodating 508 passengers. Each coach is sixty feet in length and nine feet seven inches wide. Vestibule entrances are provided, with overhanging bow ends reducing the length of gangway between the cars. The bodies have fireproof floors, and are completely encased with steel plating. Included in the composition of the train is a first-class and a third-class dining-car, these seating 24 and 64 passengers respectively. The kitchen forms part of the first-class dining-car. It is lined with stainless steel sheeting, and cooking is done by gas. In the adjoining pantry there is special accommodation for the storage of china, cutlery, etc., in addition to wine cupboards, sinks and serving-tables. Altogether, the new “Cornish Riviera Limited” trains may truly be said to represent the very last word in long-distance passenger comfort.

Eliminating Night Noises.

While improvement in daytime travel conditions is keenly watched by the Home railways, the closest attention is now being given to the comfort of the night passenger. Not only are smoother riding coaches and quicker trains being introduced in the mainline night services, but the fullest consideration is also being paid to the need for reducing noise at the various stopping-places en route.

With the idea of popularising night travel, the L. & N.E. Railway has recently embarked upon an intensive campaign for the reduction of station noises during the night hours. At all stopping-places on the route of its principal night expresses, the platform barrows have been fitted with rubber tyres, while a special instructional bulletin has been issued to all concerned in night working regarding the need for quietness during the night hours. Thus, drivers are admonished not to allow their locomotives to blow off steam through the safety valves unnecessarily, nor, unless in emergency, are they to use the engine whistle. The guard's signal to the driver to start, similarly, should not take the form of the blowing of a whistle unless this is absolutely unavoidable. When stopping and starting, drivers are instructed to so regulate their speed as to entirely eliminate jarring and jerking. Station staffs are warned against shouting while on night duty, and a special instruction concerns the avoidance of noise in closing the doors of night trains.

The Railways and Safety.

It has been said with truth that the safest place in the whole wide world—so far as freedom from accidents is concerned—is a cosy seat in a modern express train. New Zealand is rightly proud of her rare record for railway safety, and in Britain the safety of the traveller is ever the prime concern of railwaymen of every grade. In 1934, the liability to death or injury in British train accidents worked out at one killed in every 96,000,000 passengers, and one injured in every 3,000,000. During the year, only seventeen passengers were killed in train accidents, and 537 injured. As regards railway employees, twelve men were killed in train accidents in 1934, and 96 injured.

Level crossing mishaps during the year accounted for the death of 31 persons, and injury to 68. The problem of level crossing protection is a somewhat difficult one, and at remote crossings much must necessarily depend upon the caution of the public themselves in making use of the facility. We have two main types of gated level crossings at Home—those on public roads, and those on private roads, known as “occupation” crossings. It is on the latter that most of the mishaps are recorded, and the railways are now collecting data with a view to determining what further measures, if any, may be taken to ensure additional safety at these points. At public road crossings a useful move now being made is the transference of protective signals to a greater distance from the actual crossings, this in view of increasing train speeds.

First-class restaurant-car on the new “Cornish Riviera Limited” trains of the G.W. Railway.

<name type="work" key="name-409936">Daffodil Culture</name> (By R. H. Allan .)

To those who love the beautiful, the daffodil should have a special appeal. It is a flower we cannot afford to do without — a flower which the ardent gardener, as soon as he sees it in some of its finer forms, feels he must grow.

Its numerous varieties supply a very real need in our gardens, and occupy a prominent position in the year's procession of beautiful flowers. Growing in the open ground, they delight us at a time when cut flowers from the open border are very scarce; many of them rival in beauty the choicest treasures of the greenhouse and hothouse; when cut, their flowers last in water for ten days or even more; and although there is a certain amount of truth in the objection that it is easy in a large collection to pick out a number of varieties which are rather similar in character, it is still easier to select a very large number which are far more distinct from each other than rose from rose or carnation from carnation.

To get the most vigorous plants, the most perfect flowers, the greatest possible increase of bulbs, you must plant early. As early as December a ring-like swelling may be seen all round the base of the bulb. This is caused by the effort of the young roots to start into growth, and it is Nature's warning to plant the bulbs as soon as you can if you do not wish them to lose in vigour. You should, therefore, order your bulbs early; and plant them early in January.

Method of Planting.

Wherever your beds may be placed, the ground should be dug deeply, and well drained, if there is not good natural drainage. The digging should be done long enough before planting time to let the soil settle, for the Narcissus bulb does not do well in loose soil. If for any reason you are obliged to prepare your beds shortly before planting time, it is a good and simple plan to take the opportunity when the soil is not wet to press the bulbs down firmly by placing a fairly wide board on the surface and standing upon it. This very primitive method gives an even and not too great pressure, and will relieve you from the necessity of planting in too loose soil.

Though the Narcissus likes plenty of moisture when it is in vigorous growth, it likes that moisture to pass through, and not remain stagnant in the soil, and the bulbs of most of the varieties strongly resent being water-logged, in fact, they soon get diseased under such a condition. Those bulbs which are in deeply dug beds do better both in dry and in wet seasons than those planted in shallow soil. A good deal must, of course, depend on the nature of the subsoil, but as a general rule deep digging and good drainage are necessary for permanent success.

In the case of very dry and sandy soils, when the natural drainage is free, it may be found advantageous to place a layer of stable manure at a depth of at least twelve inches, so as to be quite out of reach of the bulbs; it should not be mixed with the soil but be merely a layer, as it

Some of the best blooms shown at the National and Auckland Daffodil Shows, 1932. (1) Fortune, (2) Kingdom, (3) Beersheba, (4) Maharajah, (5) Lady Superior, (6) Silver Dawn.

is not intended as a stimulant (which would be injurious to many of the varieties) but only as a sponge to retain moisture in the soil.

Planting should be done, if possible, when the soil is nicely damp (not wet) and in planting, great care should be taken to settle the base of the bulb firmly in the soil, so that no air space is left under it. After planting, the surface of the beds should be kept open by “lightening up” with a hand fork about every ten days throughout the autumn; otherwise it will become too hard set by the autumn rains.

Varieties which increase slowly may, if they seem quite happy, be left for three years; but on the other hand delicate sorts which look as if they were not doing well, may, with advantage, be lifted year by year. When it is necessary to apply manure it should be borne in mind that the daffodil likes phosphates, but strongly objects to ammonia. Basic slag and bone dust make reliable manures. The best method is to apply them as a top dressing soon after planting, mixing them in with a hand fork in the covering of soil above the bulbs, but not in immediate contact with them.

Gathering the Flowers.

If the greatest possible enjoyment is to be obtained from the cut flowers of the Narcissus they should not be left on the plant until fully opened, at the mercy of wind, rain, sun and dust, but cut as soon as the flower begins to unwrap itself from the crown, and then allowed to open out in water in a fairly warm room, or other sheltered place, such as a greenhouse.

All the beauty and freshness of colour which are so charming in the Narcissus will thus be preserved, and although flowers which have been open on the plant for a considerable time may attain to rather larger size, the slight gain in this respect does not counterbalance the loss in purity and freshness. A further advantage gained is that blooms cut in the bud may be packed for transport in a much smaller space, and yet will open out in water better and even larger than flowers cut as soon as they have quite opened out on the plant.

Mr. C. Goodson's seedling, Star Plane, champion at the Wanganui Show. It is a seedling of Silver Plane and Fire King.

Now for the commercial side of daffodil raising. This Dominion has become a serious rival of Britain and Holland, and, in my opinion, will, in the near future, lead the world in outstanding blooms and varieties, our climate being suitable to this end.

The enormous increase in the number of named daffodils necessitated the adoption of a classification for garden and show purposes. Moreover, in order to reduce the possibility of confusion through the use of a given name for more than one variety the Royal Horticultural Society, London, has published a list of names already in common use. This can be purchased for 1/6.

The export of daffodil bulbs has been for some years very considerable. Many New Zealand-raised varieties can be found in Australian growers' catalogues. The names of New Zealanders who have created and registered in the Royal Horticultural Society's Year Book number eleven.

The following beautiful varieties owe their birth to New Zealand hybridisers, and can be purchased, viz.: Bonny Glen Durness, Egmont Queen, Flash Lightning, Glen Eden, Golden Fleece, Goodson's Choice, Gramophone, Hallmark, Hone Heke, Kaloola, King Frost, Kinlock, Lady Roberts, Letty, Mararoa, Mrs. Hugh Campbell, Oceanid, Owen Bray, Silver Plane, and Vera Bray. This by no means exhausts the number which have been produced in New Zealand. The 289 named varieties registered and classified up to February, 1933, indicates surely, the birth of a new industry. Already there is evidence of cultivation on a large scale, such as the large area planted on the hillside at Wetherstons, this area being a centre of attraction for tourists, nearly 1,000 of whom journeyed by one train to view a multitude of daffodils. The establishment of further areas of this kind in other parts of our Dominion would augment the revenue of our Railways and stimulate the popular interest in floriculture in New Zealand.

(W. W. Stewart collection). New Zealand's finest train, the Limited Express, approaching Auckland after its 426-mile run from Wellington.

<name type="work" key="name-409937">The Wisdom of the Maori</name> (By Tohunga.)

Railway Station Maori Names. (Continued.)

The Thames-East Coast Line. OwhāTroa:

O = food for a journey; wharoa = long-continued or lasting for a long time. Otorohanga is a name of similar meaning in one sense.

Waikino:

Bad water.

Waihi:

Fishing water, apparently referring originally to the ocean beach.

Tahawai:

Sea shore, water side.

Katikati:

To bite frequently, or nibble.

Omokoroa:

O = food; mokoroa = a large white grub found in the kahikatea and other trees. Also the place of Mokoroa.

Te Puna:

The water-spring.

Otumoetai:

The tide standing still as if asleep. Compare with Tennyson's lines: “But such a tide as moving seems asleep, Too full for sound and foam.”

Tauranga:

The resting-place; anchorage.

Matapihi:

Window.

Te Maunga:

The Mount; the famous fortified hill Maunganui (“great hill”) on the east side of Tauranga Harbour mouth.

Papamoa:

Level cultivation ground with beds or raised plots.

Rangiuru:

The western sky.

Paengaroa:

Paenga = site of a building, &c.; roa = long.

MāTniatutu:

A plain or level expanse grown with tupakihi or tutu bushes.

Pongakawa:

Ponga = the fern-tree Cyathea deal-bata; kawa = unpleasant to the taste, bitter. Kawa was also a ceremony in which a sprig or branch of a shrub, sometimes a small plant pulled up, used in house-opening ceremonies.

Pukehina:

Puke = hill; hina or hinahina = the small tree Melicytus ramiflorus, or mahoe, commonly called white-wood.

OtamarāTkau:

A famous ancient pa of large size overlooking the Bay of Plenty in the mouth of the Waitahanui stream. O = the place of; tama-rakau = the warriors (lit. the young men who bear arms).

Pikowai:

Crooked or curving stream.

MatataT:

To carry on a litter. Also, part of a charm or incantation in legend—“Matiti, Matata,” meaning “Open up, split open,” addressed to a magic rock of refuge.

AwakāTponga:

Fern-tree stream.

Awakeri:

A ditch or trench dug out.

Whakatane:

An historical name, dating back several centuries to the arrival of the ancestral canoe Mataatua. Wairaka, the daughter of the chief Toroa, jumped ashore with the end of a line here, when the canoe was in difficulties entering the mouth of the harbour, saying as she did so: “Ka whaka-tane ahau” (“I shall act like a man”).

Peka-tahi:

The single branch.

TāTneatua:

Tane the God. The name of a celebrated ancestor of the Urewera tribe who explored these parts, in the Whakatane Valley, and travelled to the heart of the mountains at Ruatahuna. The township (now railway terminus) founded in 1896, when the Opouriao block was subdivided for close settlement, was named after him.

The Waikato-Rotorua Line.

Kiwitahi:

A single kiwi (apteryx bird).

Waharoa:

“The great mouth,” i.e., gateway to a pa. Named after Te Waharoa, the great warrior chief of the Ngati-Haua tribe.

Matamata:

The tip or point; Matamata-hara-keke = the tips of the flax leaves.

Hinuera:

Properly Hinu-wera, hot oil or burning fat.

Okoroire:

The place of the koroire, a ring-necked duck once found in the streams here, now extinct.

Tirau:

A stick or peg; to pick potatoes, etc., out of the ground with a stick.

Putaruru:

Nest or hole of the owl, often in a hollow tree. Commonly and erroneously pronounced like “p'tar-raroo.” Correctly it is “Poo-tah-roo-roo,” giving equal value to each syllable.

Ngatira:

The parties of travellers. (In full, Nga-tira-haere).

Arahiwi:

Ara = the track or trail; hiwi = the ridge or hill-top. The way to the summit of the range over which the railway passes to Roto-rua.

Mamaku:

The black-stemmed fern tree (Cyathea medullaris). Originally this place was Kaponga, the silver fern tree (Cyathea dealbata). The name was altered officially when the railway line was being made, in order to prevent confusion with another Kaponga, in Taranaki. But it is to be noted that the mamaku (korau) species of fern tree is not found in this Mamaku district.

Tarukenga:

Slaughter; vengeance; to lie dead in great numbers.

Ngongotaha:

Ngongo = drinking funnel, mouth-piece; taha = calabash (the hue gourd). Tradition says that the chief Ihenga when exploring these parts five centuries ago, was given a drink out of a calabash by a fairy woman on the mountain now called by that name, above the present station and the stream (also called Ngongotaha). The shape of the mountain was also fancied to resemble a calabash lying on its side.

Koutu:

A projection, promontory. The name of an entrenched hill above Rotorua lake shore, near the site of a mission station of a century ago.

Rotorua:

Roto = lake; rua = two. The second lake discovered by an ancient Maori explorer. Coming from Maketu, he first saw a bay of Rotoiti (Small Lake) then continuing his journey he found this lake, which he called Rotorua (“Lake Number Two.”)

The World'S Newest City.

(Continued from page 15 )

little cities, is unique. But these people do not leave the situation there. They are ceaselessly and intelligently working to make Napier an ideal New Zealand centre. I have said nothing, so far, of those amenities whose standard everywhere in New Zealand, leads the world. Deep drainage, electric light, four modern cinemas, paved streets, telephones, ample water supply, and all other aids to the comfort of living exist here. Fishing and shooting are handy. There are countless tennis courts, croquet lawns, and good recreation grounds of various sorts. There are two good golf courses, the nearest of which we show in the picture. The Maraenui Club is less than three miles from the town, and its green fees are 2/- a round or 10/- weekly. Here is an instance of the devotion of the towns-folk of Napier. This was an ugly swamp area a few years ago, and today it has a comfortable golf house, smooth, wide fairways, and eighteen interesting holes. From its putting green, there is a radiant far picture of the “minarets of snow” on the distant ranges.

The hotels are, of course, excellent, and being entirely new, are the last word in up-to-dateness. I always enquire at the bookshops of a place to get a line on its cultural ideas, and discovered that Napier absorbed a remarkable number of the good English literary weeklies and high-class magazines. I attended a meeting of the Napier Society of Musicians, and it might have been a London show. Blythe's restaurant room, in which it was held, is genuinely beautiful, in keeping with the rest of this fashionable twentieth century emporium, and the crowd to my eye made a restful, albeit smart picture of good frocking and correct evening male wear.

Napier is “on the way.” Its period of reconstruction is over. It is marching now to be a Riviera resort. Be reminded that its newborn beauty of buildings, its modernity of street line and civic planning, are set in a base of age-old natural loveliness, and an arbour of garden sweetness that only time can perfect.

I look forward confidently to the day when, among its tens of thousands of annual visitors, there will be only an occasional one who even remembers that dark day in its history. I noticed already that organisations of professions and businesses are starting to find that their deliberations would be most efficient if held in Napier. That is a sign pointing the way.

<name type="work" key="name-409938">Among the Books<lb/> A Literary Page or Two</name> (By “Shibli Bagarag.”)

For years past I have been collecting old New Zealand magazines, preferably No. 1, Vol. 1. I am told I have one of the best collections in the Dominion. Many more of these publications have to come my way, however, before my collection is complete. I think, therefore, I may interest my readers if, from time to time, I refer to the more interesting of these periodicals. My selection for this issue is that fine old magazine of many years ago, “The New Zealand Illustrated Magazine,” the first number of which appeared at the latter end of the 'nineties. Let us peep into Vol. 2, No. 4. The feature item is the winning story in the New Zealand Literary and Historical Association's Competition. Miss Edith Lyttelton is the unanimous selection of the judges out of eighty-six competing stories. Her pen name then was “Keron Hale.” To-day she is known throughout the world as “G. B. Lancaster.” We come to the interesting personal feature, “In the Public Eye,” where we see a laudatory reference to the Hon. W. P. Reeves, “the best Agent-General New Zealand has ever had”; a stressing of the “love of country” of “that able politician, the Hon. Mr. J. G. Ward”; a reference to the fact that “Mr. Alfred Paterson, otherwise ‘Banjo,’ war correspondent and poet, has just completed a successful New Zealand lecturing trip”; congratulations offered to “Editor W. K. Triggs, who has broken the record for penny papers in New Zealand with the Jubilee number of the Christchurch ‘Press.’ It contains twenty-four pages.” Passing over a few articles of general interest we reach a further instalment of a serial by “Alien,” “Another Woman's Territory.” Part 2 of “Australian Poets and Their Works,” by Edith G. Woolcott, is an interesting survey of the great verse writers of the Commonwealth of that period. Those were the days when Henry Lawson, Victor Daley, Will Ogilvie, “Banjo,” Barcroft Boake and others were singing in all the glory of youth on the slopes of Parnassus.

I could go on for pages commenting on this one issue, but space, and conceivably the patience of my readers, would not allow. I will return to my subject with another old-time magazine at a later date.

* * *

The thought arises: How is it that, to-day, New Zealand cannot or will not, support a magazine of the style (modernised, of course) of the one I have quoted? The only real literary magazine in the Dominion to-day is the one I am writing for. Possibly New Zealand Authors' Week activities may make our reading—and advertising—public sufficiently literary-minded to lend the necessary support to such an undertaking.

* * *

“The New Zealand Journalist,” the official journal of the New Zealand Journalists' Association, is developing into a sturdy child. The ninth issue, recently published, is full of excellent copy. Of course this is only natural, for is not the presentation of readable matter the duty of every ink slinger?

* * *

The New Zealand Authors' Week organisation continues to move along on the well-oiled wheels of excellent organisation. Keen interest has been aroused from North Cape to the Bluff. The public is already rubbing its eyes and awakening to the fact that such an animal as a New Zealand author does exist.

Here is a book-plate designed by a 15-year-old reader of the “Railways Magazine.” “I love drawing birds and flowers,” he states in a letter to “Shibli.” “I have a negative of the drawing and whenever I want a book-plate I print them from the negative myself.”

* * *

It is for such publications as “Art in New Zealand,” as well as for New Zealand books in general, that New Zealand Authors' Week must do a power of good. The attention of our reading public must be focussed on the strong-hearted endeavour of this classic quarterly. The latest issue to hand celebrates the entrance to its eighth year of being. Of the struggle for existence only the editor and publisher can tell, and they have won through without any lowering of the high artistic worth of the magazine. What a sad reflection on the appreciativeness of the artistic public of the Dominion to know that only once in its seven years of existence has “Art in New Zealand” shown a balance on the right side, and that of £6!

Two beautiful colour plates and eleven full-page illustrations in black and white complete the art side of the latest issue. The literary section is representative of the work of several of our leading writers. My copy comes from the publisher, Harry H. Tombs, of Wellington.

* * *

If there is one thing that annoys me it is the habit of some New Zealand publishers of failing to print the title of a book on its back, or, to be technical, the spine of the book. Sometimes they aggravate the offence by printing the title along, instead of across the back. This, of course, is unavoidable in slender volumes. Surely, though, where a book has the necessary amplitude of pages, the title should be printed so that it may be read decently as the back stands on the book-case.

* * *

In the catalogue of Bethune's last sale were included four interesting bundles of New Zealand pamphlets in prose and verse, the collecting of which is a favourite hobby of mine.

Full of golden expectations I attended the sale and found myself seated next to a keen bibliophile. We eyed each other anxiously and then came the mutual confession that we were after the same bundles. We agreed that it would be futile to attempt to “cut each other's throats” in the bidding. Accordingly, the booklets, about fifty in number, were knocked down to us for a matter of a few shillings. We adjourned quickly to my office nearby and shared up the literary booty, spinning the coin when we were both over-keen on a particular booklet.

* * *

I am sure my readers will be interested in some of the items that came my way: “The Road to Muritai” (by O. N. Gillespie, with a delightful cover design by D. H. Souter), “A Venture in Verse” (the late Marjory Nicholls), “Poems from the Port Hills” (Miss B. E. Baughan), “A Little Anthology of Mary Colborne-Veel” (edited by Jessie Mackay), and “Tramps in the Far North” (Hector Bolitho). Many of the booklets are out of print. The printing of such “ventures” seldom runs to more than two or three hundred copies so they are often very rare and well worth following up.

* * *

At the same sale I bought two of Thomas Bracken's earliest books of verse, “Behind the Tomb” (1871) and “Lays of the Land of the Maori and Moa” (1884). The former copy is autographed. These are rarities and although they cost me £1 for the two, I am well pleased with the bargain.

* * *

Reviews.

“The Brierley Rose” by Leslie Haylen (Angus & Robertson, Sydney) is one of the best Australian novels I have read. The plot is essentially Australian but the delicate subtlety of style is indubitably English. Haylen is a writer. The scope of the story is ambitious, extending from the close of the convict period to the Boer War, the Great War and after. We meet the Brierley Rose's parents, then Rose and her children. Brierley Rose is a woman who steps from the pages and asks us to love her, and we do, and I believe that people will go on loving her for many years to come.

“Human Drift,” by Leonard Mann (Angus & Robertson, Sydney) is one of the most powerful yarns yet written of the old goldmining days in Victoria. It is handicapped by a sordid sex streak. I revelled in the rollicking story of those furious days, but ever and anon sex would obtrude. The reading and picture-going public are sick to death of sex, and the sooner writers and film producers realise it the better. At times, also, the story is profane. What a pity! I would have revelled in the blue pencilling of certain passages and I think I would have left a story that would be read and enjoyed for many a long day—for Leonard Mann can write.

“The Doctors are Doubtful,” by Authory Weymouth (Arthur Barker, London) is a worthy addition to detective fiction. Once more we meet the very human and astute detective, Inspector Treadgold, who was first introduced to us in the same author's novel, “Frozen Death.” It is usually almost a sacrilege to quote the final paragraph of a book, but here it may be done with safety. Observes our hero, the Inspector: “Five deaths … and all for one sin …” He folded the confession and carefully placed it in an inner pocket. “Heigho! What a life!” And I might add: “Heigho! What a yarn!” The diabolical ingenuity with which the murderer removes his victims is revealed after a maze of mysterious complexities. The reader is kept guessing until the last few pages. My copy from Whitcombe & Tombs Ltd.

“1001 Wonderful Things” (Hutchinson, London) is a pictorial record of the wonders of the world and is uniform with the Century Omnibus Series of volumes to which I have referred in previous issues. Here is a vast treasure house of knowledge in which new and old wonders of the world are shown in picture and described in tabloid paragraph. Just the ideal book for these rushful days. It is a valuable reference work and it is pleasing to note that New Zealand has not been forgotten in the kaleidoscopic survey of this amazing world of ours. Sold by Whitcombe & Tombs Ltd., all centres.

“Explosion,” by P. C. Wren (John Murray, London) is, as one would expect from the author of “Beau Geste,” capable of holding you fast in its grip, whether you be in home, hospital, or travelling. It is the story of an unscrupulous Indian agitator who schemes to overthrow British rule in India. The network of intrigue through which is woven an appealing love story, culminates in a colossal explosion that is to bring success to the conspirators. To the reader it may appear incredible that the explosion back-fires, as it were, killing the nest of desperados. In an author's note at the conclusion of the novel it is explained how a similar explosion actually occurred. Whitcombe & Tombs, all branches.

* * *

“Shibli” Listens In.

John Barr is now running a witty, full-page, weekly feature in “The World's News” under the characteristic title of “The Shanty On The Rise.”

Winton Keay, who, although a young man, has edited three or four New Zealand country newspapers, has lately turned to novel writing. He has been advised by a London publishing house that his mystery novel, “The Juryroom Murder,” has been accepted.

In connection with the Anzac Festival Competitions (1935–36) in Australia, prizes are offered for poetry, short stories, playwriting and art. Entries close on November 30th. Full details may be had from the secretary, Scot Chambers, Hosking Place, Sydney.

Messrs. A. H. and A. W. Reed, of Dunedin and Wellington, are becoming quite an important factor in the publishing world in New Zealand. In addition to having several interesting Mss. under consideration they have in the press “A Trader in Cannibal Lands,” by James Cowan, and “Recollections and Reflections of an Old New Zealander,” by E. Maxwell.

The interest in New Zealand books, old and modern, has never been so apparent. The latest catalogue of interest to collectors comes from F. I. Jones, Box 183, Wanganui. It contains the names and prices of a big collection of New Zealand literature. The catalogue is free on application.

Leading Hotels A reliable Travellers Guide

Timely Notes and Useful Hints.by Helen. Early Summer.

Crisp Shopping.

Have your tennis frock this year very tailored. Pleats provide fullness at front and back, at the side seams, or both. Sleeves are present and look tailored too; either very plain, severely pleated, or neatly made in one with the yoke. Buttons, in white, or in vivid contrast, provide a front closing, cluster in a pair at the throat, or hold pockets closed.

* * *

Pockets, by the way, are usefully decorative. They are of all shapes and are attached at divers angles. They show themselves in pairs or in quartettes. Some sports frocks are smartly finished with rows of machine stitching on collar or revers, sleeves, pockets and belt.

* * *

Materials are interesting. Some weaves featuring artificial silks are fascinating, but one must beware of those which are liable to be a problem in laundering. It is safer to buy a pure silk or a linen. Belts are of leather, macrame or self material. The latter, I think, look best. If you choose a white linen tennis frock, make a short loose coat to go with it. This linen coat will form a smart accompaniment to other summer frocks in any material or shade.

As the season develops, linens show their predominance even more. Furnishing linens make one long to redecorate. Among the dress linens are delightful flowered or spotted designs for frocks and the smartest of fabrics for suits—in natural or beige, or in these backgrounds lightly flecked or smartly checked. Two enchanting plain linens are in dull pink and a soft blue. The success of linens, of course, is due to the fact that most of them are now anti-crease. If a hat en suite is required buy enough material for it when you are ordering your costume. Buttons, square or oblong, will accent most of the new tweed suits.

* * *

Cottons are crisp and delightful, whether for house, street, or evening wear. For a frilly summer dance frock what could be more charming than hailstone muslin with contrasting ribbons. More sophisticated is a frock of black net, splashed at throat and waist with vivid velvet. The skirts of summer frocks are fuller, fullness in some cases coming from the waist and not from the knees as heretofore.

* * *

For daytime, too, skirts are fuller and freer. Fullness is supplied by gores, or by mid-front pleats and flares. Some frocks are shirred, or even smocked, at the waist-line. Bodices, too, are full. They may be softly gathered in a frill at the neck, decorated with shirring, gathered at waist and on to a plain yoke, or softly draped and kept in position by intriguing clips. I noticed one model with bodice gathered on to a latticed yoke. Latticed pockets were also featured.

Sleeves for afternoon frocks are very full—puffed, flared or shirred— and gathered in to fit below the elbow. Armholes may be plain or deepset.

* * *

This is a flower season. Flower designs predominate in materials over the also-popular spots, checks and monotone designs. If the material of your frock is not flowered, you may wear a cluster of flowers at the throat, or two or three single blossoms applied flatly down one side of the bodice. Your hat may have flowers flattened on its crown, on its brim, or gently tilting the brim up at side, back or front.

* * *

Shoes to wear with dressy frocks are still high-heeled, but low heels have the right of way with linens and cottons. Light cruising shoes are showing with an open mesh and bar and buckle fastening. Sandal bar shoes are popular. Noteworthy also are toeless shoes with an open sandal vamp.

* * *

One Job At A Time?

“I really can't do more than one job at a time, so I stick to that.” She was a girl student at one of our University Colleges, and, while visiting a friend of mine one Sunday afternoon, some-one had asked her why she had let her music drop. It seems that in her early teens she had been a promising pianist, but now she refused herself time to practise. She left soon after tea, saying that she had a book to finish before lectures in the morning. We were used to that, knowing undergrads. But this serious young damsel also turned down a bathing and tennis party for the following Saturday as she usually swotted for so many hours on a Saturday.

“It's no use asking Eileen,” someone else remarked. “She's always snowed under with swot.”

This happened early last April. I could have understood it this month or last, with examinations looming, but not in April, that delightful early month when most undergrads shun the studious precincts of the Library, save when a merciless Professor ordains that at least a minimum of research be undertaken and the results ably set forth in a “paper.”

I have met Eileen several times since then—a very nice girl, and doing well at her studies, I believe. Nothing outstanding, but a real plodder, who will collect her letters in due course.But the girl vaguely annoys me. I would like to jolt her out of her rut and make her take a little interest in the world around her. I know why, before she took up 'Varsity work, she showed promise at the piano. It was because she felt, even then, that she could do only one job at a time—and music was it. Probably when, and if, she marries, she will devote herself entirely to the one job of housekeeping and become (though I do not mean to be unkind) even more boring.

The young things I like to have about me are those who are willing to divide their interests. They work with zest and manage to sandwich in all the play they can. In the interplay of interests and social relationships they develop their sense of fun, lose their feeling of self-importance, broaden their outlook, widen their sympathies, become “all-round” people. And they are the girls who are going to develop into the type of older woman I so much admire—capable in many directions, friendly, sympathetic but bracing, au fait with the world.

I am sorry for Eileen, who will go on deepening her rut, with satisfaction to herself, not realizing what she is missing, unless some cataclysm jolts her into the sunlight again.

* * *

Your Odd Shillings.

Every woman has to make up her mind from day to day what to do with the odd shillings, and what she decides is usually either according to her nature or the strength of the temptations for spending placed in her path.

To the woman who will lay by and accumulate the odd shillings for some larger objective in the more or less distant future, there are thousands who place nothing but an immediate value on them, namely, what to buy with them right now.

Of recent years a marked feature has been the determined—and successful—efforts to capture these odd shillings by such methods as the price catalogue for small sundries and the chain stores. The real difficulty now is to find all the odd shillings to buy all the odds and ends you would like.

A good rule to follow is to choose, whenever possible, something with a more lasting quality rather than the more ephemeral things. For instance, one afternoon tea is the price of six mousetraps—that sort of thing. What will you have—a box of chocolates or a potato peeler? A picture show or a pair of stockings? A “binge” or a book you've craved for?

I have known people who do weigh up several expenditures this way. They are the kind of folk who have all the handy knick-knacks about the house and who seem to be up-to-the-minute in getting those little personal accessories that go with being well-turned-out.

The odd shillings have a habit of burning a hole in the pocket. I don't blame them a bit—it's their business to get into circulation somehow or other. But it really is worthwhile to say to yourself—“Well, I want this and I want that and I want the other thing. I can't have them all, but as I want them all equally, I will at least choose the one which will give me the longer-lasting pleasure or satisfaction.”

We all have to work out some kind of philosophy of life about almost everything we hear or see or come in contact with, so I think it may be no waste of time for each of you to ponder, for a little while, the philosophy of the odd shilling.

The great advantage of reaching an outlook of a definite nature on a small scale like that of your odd shillings, is that it helps you in dealing with greater things. There is the story of the rich lady who bought a painting of a cow for £11,000. She could have bought the original cow for £11. The cow, as a matter of course and in the due process of nature, kicked the bucket for the last time many years ago. The pictured cow is still a work of art, is worth much more than when it was bought, and will increase in value as the decades roll by.

He Once Weighed 161/2 Stone. 21 Ibs. Off with Two Bottles of Kruschen. Now Ties Shoes Without Puffing and Blowing.

If you are overweight and want to reduce, there is no need to-day to put yourself on a drastic diet. Here is a letter from a man who is steadily losing his unwanted fat, yet satisfying his appetite to the full on four meals a day. He is taking Kruschen Salts, and he tells us that after taking only two bottles he is 21 Ibs. lighter. He writes:—

“After taking two bottles of Kruschen Salts, I have reduced my weight from 161/2 stone to 15 stone. I have made very little change in my diet. I have only cut out white bread and potatoes and gone on to whole-meal bread. I have four meals a day. The reduction in weight has been so beneficial that I can now tie my shoes without having to puff and blow after the effort. You may use this letter as testimony to the benefits I have received and I hope shortly to be able to write to say I am down to normal weight for a person of 55 years of age.—P.W.L.

Kruschen is a scientific blend of six mineral salts found in the waters of those European Spas which have been used by generations of overstout people to reduce weight. Before the first bottle of Kruschen is finished, the fat starts to go. Then, month after month, the scales tell the same story—a few pounds less of superfluous flesh to burden the body and endanger the health.

Kruschen has a world-wide sale. It is taken by the people of 119 different countries. In none of those countries is there anything else quite like it—nothing else that gives the same results.

Kruschen Salts is obtainable at all Chemists and Stores at 2/6 per bottle.*

Having given you these extreme examples, you can, of course, work out the intermediate problems for yourselves—but remember that the odd shilling is the basis of all such calculation.

Photo., courtesy W. Styles.) Historic Silver Poplar Tree at Tauranga. In a reference to this tree the “Bay of Plenty Times,” 13/1/30, says: “Near where the beautiful tree now grows, was the Constabulary Camp. It is said, remarked Mr. Allely (a pioneer who arrived at Tauranga in 1874, and died about three years ago at the age of 95 years), that the tree was planted quite by accident. A patrol had returned to camp, and an A.C., after dismounting, stuck the switch in the ground, as is the habit of horsemen. The switch, being undisturbed, soon took root in the soft earth, and grew in splendour, as if to pay a tribute to the big and strong men and women of those early pioneering days.”

Health Notes.

During the spring and early summer months various rashes and other skin irritations are inclined to be troublesome. Now that the cold weather is over it is necessary to change the diet, and eliminate most of the more heating foods such as starches, fats and red meats. Substitute with fresh fruit and vegetables (raw and cooked) and white meats—fish and chicken.

Take alkaline aperients and medicine such as bicarbonate of soda, magnesia, etc. Apply cooling lotions, cold cream or ointment to the affected parts. Calamine lotion (which may be obtained from any chemist) is a useful remedy to have on hand, also bicarbonate of soda solution (one tea-spoonful soda to one pint boiling water).

* * *

Sunburn is a frequent source of irritation during the early summer, especially during the early stages of sun bathing. Precautions should be taken to avoid a badly sunburnt or blistered skin. Injudicious exposure to strong sunlight causes unnecessary pain and discomfort and can be very harmful.

Gradual exposure to the morning and afternoon sun should be the rule, avoiding the strong mid-day sun. Commence the first day with ten minutes, five minutes for the front of the body and five minutes for the back. The second day allow another five minutes, gradually increasing the time each day until the skin is well tanned. Wear a light wide-brimmed hat to protect the eyes and the back of the head and neck. Children's sunbaths should be supervised, and they should be provided with a ground sheet so that chills may be avoided.

* * *

Simple Remedies for Sunburn.

1. Apply olive oil, cream, or calamine lotion.

2. If the skin shows signs of blistering, soak small pieces of soft, old rag in carron oil and apply to the affected area; bandage to keep in position.

* * *

Home Notes.

Some Strawberry Recipes. Strawberry Conserve.

When making strawberry conserve the flavour is improved by the addition of red currant or gooseberry juice. To every pound of strawberries allow one teacup of the juice and 1 Ib. sugar. Hull and weigh the strawberries, and lay them on flat dishes, sprinkle over half the sugar and leave until next day. Place the red currant or gooseberry juice into preserving pan, add the juice from the strawberries, also the remainder of the sugar. Bring to the boil and skim; add the strawberries and cook gently until it jellies when tested (about 20 minutes). Place in warm jars and cover next day. The strawberries should be whole in a firm jelly.

* * *

Strawberry Vinegar.

4 Ibs. strawberries, 1 quart white vinegar. Method: Mash the strawberries in a basin, pour the vinegar over, cover and leave for thirty-six hours. Drain slowly without squeezing. To each pint of juice allow one pound sugar. Boil up for four minutes. Bottle when cold and seal. Use one tablespoon to tumbler of water.

* * *

Strawberry Shortcake.

Ingredients: 2 large cups flour, 2 tablespoons sugar, 2 eggs,1/2 Ib. butter, 3 tablespoons baking powder, little milk. Method: Sift the dry ingredients, rub in the butter, add the beaten eggs and milk to the dry ingredients to make a soft dough. Divide in two. Place each portion of dough in greased sandwich tin, smooth over to fit tins. Bake to a pale brown in hot oven (about 20 minutes). While hot, spread one portion thickly with sweetened crushed strawberries and whipped cream. Place second layer on top. Cover with whipped cream and decorate with whole strawberries. Dust with castor sugar and serve.

<name type="work" key="name-409939"><hi rend="i">Panorama of the Playground</hi><lb/><hi rend="c">How Do We Compare</hi>?</name> (By Samuel J. Gudsell.)

The crowds are cheering as one of our national champions smashes a Dominion record and spectators are enthusiastically smiling at each other in exultation. “By jove, he's good, isn't he?” “Little New Zealand can breed them!” are among the remarks made by the more ardent supporters. Our men are good, wonderfully good when the circumstances of competition are considered. But New Zealand is a small country and the only way we can become a great athletic nation is to aim for world championship standard and make that standard alone our guiding star. To smash a native record is fine; in fact it's most difficult, but if we set our mark at our own standard instead of the world's, there can be no real progress.

Observers have been amazed by the cheerful attitude of youthful American college athletes towards world record figures.

“Aw heck! Don't let's worry about our records. Let's have a smack at the world's!” they say quite seriously. Consequently they now find that quite often their own records are equal to or better than the world's standard!

It was not always this way. For years, in fact, right up to about 1913, an athlete who cleared 6 ft. 1 in. in the high jump was a certain place-getter in the American National Championship. In other words, their pre-war standard was on a par with our present New Zealand record. By aiming higher, the new school of student athletes studied, trained and practised, until now the world's mark, held by W. Marty, is 6 ft. 9£ in.!

Let us examine, therefore, our best New Zealand performances in sport and see just how much we have to advance before we can look the world squarely in the eye.

In boxing, New Zealand has brought forward many great fighters, prominent among whom were the great Bob Fitzimmons, Billy Murphy, Tom Heeney and Charlie Purdy. At the present time there is not a single man in this country up to world's class. Why? Perhaps because there are very few aiming at the top. In boxing the standard is gauged by the win over another man of repute and fighting ability. If our boxers remain in this country, or do not battle against the best of visiting boxers, how can they ever become any better? They can only defeat their fellows. Bob Fitzimmons and Billy Murphy had to travel to Australia, and thence to America, before they could gain recognition. Charlie Purdy proved himself at the Olympic Games, later in Ireland and finally in Australia. Boxing is not like the track where times are everything and the opponents nothing.

Tennis is a similar sport to boxing in that the player is judged by the prowess of the opponent defeated. Therefore, Anthony Wilding, our own great world's champion, had to travel to Europe to become famous. No matter how well he played in Christchurch, it is very doubtful if he would have been heard of outside of matches with prominent visitors. At the present time tennis leads the sporting community of this country in that its best players, Malfroy, Andrews and Stedman, are abroad gaining international experience. The New Zealand Lawn Tennis Association has introduced more world's champions to the public and players of New Zealand than any other similar sporting organisation. Tilden, Johnson, O'Loughlan, Crawford, Perry, Borata, Austin, Hughes, McGrath, Miss Round and others, are the very cream of the world's tennis elect, and players here have all had the opportunity of studying and playing against these stars.

Australia is not far distant and players there are equal to the best in the world. Why not send a Dominion team to compete there at every Australian Championship? Despite the visitors from whom we have benefited, our general standard is not at all good. Only more and more matches against better class opponents can remedy this. The trouble is, of course, that whilst the boxer has a chance of earning money during his travelling, the tennis player, unless very famous, has to pay out all the time! So personal and Association finance has a tremendous bearing upon international sport.

Golf is in the same category. This game is rapidly becoming the most popular winter pastime for all classes and ages in the Dominion. No other sport has gained such an increase of adherents during the last ten years. Despite having our own professionals and the visits of prominent overseas players, we still have a very long way to go before we can even look at the world's best players. This was proved during the big Centenary tournaments in Melbourne, when New Zealand's best players were well down in the list.

Of course, there are a hundred reasons. Relatively small numbers of players to choose from, lack of suitable courses, lack of real competition, lack of finance, and others that would take pages to enumerate. But we are not looking for excuses; merely endeavouring to impart a national flavour and enthusiasm to our sport. We are small, but when all is said and done it is individuals who count in sport. The musterer in Ohakune is only “one” man, as is Babe Jones of New York City!

Let's take two countries at the last Olympic Games—Ireland and Finland.

(Photo., courtesy A. B. Harris.) A view of Palmerston North station, North Island, New Zealand, about 1900.

For years now, little Finland has defeated every country, excepting the U.S.A., in athletics. And its population of five million people is very insignificant in contrast to the teeming millions of Great Britain, France, or Germany. The Irish Free State sent the smallest team to Los Angeles and had the greatest percentage of success. Dr. O'Callaghan won the hammer throw, Tisdall won the 400 metre hurdles, and Sam Ferris was second in the marathon, which was not bad for a team comprising four athletes. New Zealand's only Olympic title was won by Ted Morgan in the boxing section at Amsterdam in 1928. Malcolm Champion was in the winning Australasian relay team in the swimming events at the Stockholm Olympics, but these two firsts are this country's total wins in Olympic events.

Joe Kirkwood, perhaps Australia's best golfer of recent years, made his international name when he went to reside in the U.S.A. after the Australian people had subscribed to give him a trip!

In a country such as New Zealand where there is a dearth of high class competition, there is some excuse for an ordinary standard in all sports, excepting, perhaps, tennis. But in games where times and measurements are the deciding factors there is little excuse for our “loafing.” A mile race run in better than 4m. 6 4/5s. would gain immediate recognition as a world's record if it were run on the Domain in Auckland. It is not at all necessary for the runner to journey to London or Princeton.

The only world's track record this country has to its credit is the time of 3 minutes for the half mile walk, held jointly by F. H. Creamer and Dave Wilson. This is recognised all over the world as the standard in these events.

For years now, our swimmers and athletes, both competing in sports where time and distance are the distinguishing factors, have been far more concerned in defeating a rival opponent, than in smashing a record. Thus we have had the spectacle of runners capable of running a mile in under 4m. 20s. winning a championship in 4m. 26s. merely because it was a “tactics” race. This is only human nature, but it is keeping the sport back.

In America there must be the same number of formidable rivals in each race, yet they all win in wonderful times. No more carefully-planned races can have been witnessed than the series of great miles between Lovelock, Bonthron and Cunningham. Yet in a few races the world's mark shot back from around 4m. 10s. to 4m. 6 4/5s., and it must be remembered that their own individual best times were only around 4m. 12s. to 4m. 15s. Time! Time! Time! That is the only thing that matters in track and swimming events.

Let us compare track standards alone. Don Evans and Dennis Anderson have run a half mile here in 1m. 54 4/5s. The average championship is run in 1m. 57s. “Blazing Ben” Eastman holds the world's mark with 1m. 49 4/5s. Our men are knocking at the door. Training to time will open it.

For years our pole vaulters clung to 10 ft. 6 in. to 11 ft. with “Bill” Batstone finally clearing 11 ft. 4 1/2 in. to establish our native record. Over in the U.S.A., Deacon soared to 14 ft. 2 3/4 in., and W. Graber, of Stanford University, sits pretty with 14 ft. 4 3/8 in. Why, there is 3 ft. difference!

It was away back in 1906 that the great G. P. Keddell cleared 23 ft. 3 in. in the broad jump. That is almost 30 years ago, and yet not a single New Zealander can beat this figure, even when we know that the world's mark is 26 ft. 2 1/8 in., held by Chuhu Nambu, of Japan. Young Sammy Richardson, of Canada, who was here this year, cleared 24 ft. 4 in., and he was 16 years of age. Another young negro of 18, Jesse Owens, got over 25 ft. 7 4/5 in., and dozens of men around the world hit the 24 ft. to 25 ft. mark. If an athlete clears 21 ft. here, it is considered to be an excellent leap.

The javelin mark is now up to 251 ft. 7 in., so let's forget that 160 ft. to even 190 ft. is splendid throwing. It is good, but not good enough.

Perhaps the nearest in this country to world's standard is Harold Brainsby whose 49 ft. 8 5/4 in. in the hop, step and jump is still a bit below that of the little Japanese, Oshima, who recently broke his countryman Nambu's record when he cleared 52 it. 6 in. Brainsby is nearly 3 ft. behind, but he is still above the average, as there are few who can touch 50 ft.

The New Zealand discus record is 139 ft. 2 in. and the world's record, held by Anderson of Sweden, is 172 ft. 1/2in., which is about 33 ft. better than ours. In the hammer throw we are throwing 153 ft. 5 in., whilst the world's mark is 189 ft. 6 1/2 in. Our shot putt record is 46 ft. 1/2 in., but big Jack Torrance, of Louisiana, has hurled the 16 lb. weight 57 ft. 17–32 in. Our swimmers are thrashing out the hundred yards in 54 4/5s., whilst Fick, Medica, and Spence are swimming the same distance in 50 seconds and under. Young Vande Wighe swam a 100 yards back stroke in 59 4/5s., which is faster than many here can cut it out in free style!

One could go on and on, but the inference is clear. In New Zealand we have still a long way to go before we can rank high in the world of sport. Don't think for one moment that the ability of our men is being disparaged. They do wonderfully well, considering all things. The inference is that we must not “kid” ourselves we are good, when the rest of the world is so far ahead of us.

Variety In Brief

Nearly fifteen years before Auckland was founded a party of immigrants came out to settle on the shores of the Hauraki Gulf. The expedition, under the auspices of the New Zealand Association, arrived in the Gulf in 1826. Mechanics, ships' - carpenters, sawyers, blacksmiths and flax-dressers were among those who came, for the settlement was intended to work up a flax-and-spar-trade. They sailed up to the Sandspit Island, Pakihi. There were found rich deposits of iron ore, and the leaders bought the island with a view to settling there and opening an iron-mine.

But natives came to the district in increasing numbers and alarmed the immigrants by their “ferocious appearance and conduct” so much that they refused to land. The leaders were not enthusiastic, so they gave up the idea and sailed off to Australia and finally formed a pearl-fishery. The “New Zealand Handbook” declares that the leaders were alarmed by a war-dance of the natives, performed, there was every reason to believe, as a mark of welcome.

We can readily understand the reluctance of the leaders. The massacre of the “Boyd,” and of other ships, had not been forgotten; nor had they any knowledge of the Maoris.

If the immigrants had settled, perhaps Auckland would never have existed. They were an organized band of selected people, and, but for the tumultuous welcome of the Maoris, they might have formed the nucleus of a big city. Certainly the approach from the sea would not have been so good, but the hinterland would have been as suitable for settlement and cultivation as the environs of Auckland are. And, at least, there probably would have been fewer hills!

—J.R.B.

I have been doing a lot of reading and have read the “Railways Magazine” (August) from cover to cover. It is good reading and a wonderful little magazine. There is an article on New Plymouth—“Perfect New Plymouth” it is called, and is especially interesting just now prior to our projected visit. I have decided I didn't half see it the last time I was there.

My only objection to the “Railways Magazine” is that it gives me an intense desire to go for a long train ride and see our wonderful country.

—R.M.

* * *

When on holiday in Cross Creek recently, I noticed one railwayman was very keen on tennis and happening to mention it to him, he replied that tennis to him represented the slogan of the New Zealand Railways. “Safety, Comfort and Economy.” Pressed for details he answered: “As to safety, one may break any limb at football or hockey; noses may be spoiled at cricket and tempers at golf; swimmers may drown, and even poker is not without its dangers, but tennis is a safe game. It is played in comfort, for Whites are the most comfortable summer wear for men; our courts are never overcrowded, one is sure of a game and it is handy both to work and to home; being a hard court, it is never messy with rain, never needs cutting or watering. And the economy—well, the court is free even if one plays a hundred games a day; we employ no green-keeper and don't even use a lawnmower or roller. We don't buy fertiliser, top-dressing or grass seed. Safety, Comfort and Economy, you see?”

—C.McB.

* * *

How many people know that until quite recently there was a penguin rookery on the Otago Peninsula? At a lonely spot on the seaward side these birds had quite a large rookery, and visitors could see them in their nests at any time. The birds lived in the bush by the water's edge and their shrill cry could be heard quite a distance away. A wholesale slaughter of them a few years ago by a party of young men diminished their number and since that time their presence has not been advertised. However, quite recently, when the bush was being cleared from that area, remains of their nests were found.

—D.G.C.

The chap wearing the brown bowler (looked like a commercial), noting a fellow-passenger by the “limited” lighting a cigarette, remarked: “I see you're a heavy cigarette smoker.” “How d'you know?” queried the other, looking surprised. “Oh, it don't need a ‘Sherlock’ to tell that,” laughed the stranger, “look at your fingers! But why smoke ready-mades? You should roll your own, same as me. Those packet things are often as dry as a bone—and as tasteless, through being kept so long in stock. Besides rolling your own comes a lot cheaper. Roll them just as you want them—then they're always moist and fresh.” “What's your tobacco?” asked the youth. “Riverhead Gold—sweet as a nut, full of flavour, and can't hurt you—it's ‘toasted.’ Let me roll you one? Then you'll see.” And he did see! “Toasted” is at once the finest and most harmless of all tobaccos. There are only five brands: Cut Plug No. 10 (Bullshead), Cavendish, Navy Cut No. 3 (Bulldog), Riverhead Gold and Desert Gold. The two latter are appreciated by all cigarette smokers.*

Wit And Humour

Ah—If He Could Only Cook.

Head Cook—“Didn't I tell you to notice when the soup boiled over?”

Assistant—“I did. It was half-past ten.”

* * *

Why Indeed!

“If I'd been offered a plate wi' two cakes on it, I'd have taken the smaller.”

“Weel, an' ye've got it,” replied Jessie's greedy little brother, “so what's a' th' fuss aboot?”

* * *

Just a Correction.

A weary telegraph agent stationed many miles from nowhere in the Sudan, Africa, in the hottest part of summer wired his superior officer: “Please relieve me, can't stay here, am surrounded by lions, elephants, and wolves.” The officer heartlessly wired back: “There are no wolves in the Sudan.” Whereupon the weary one replied: “Referring to my wire of yesterday, cancel wolves.”

* * *

These Modern Contrivances.

When the pithead baths first opened at a certain coal pit, a miner, trying the baths for the first time, was unable to cleanse himself from the coal dust and grime. After a few attempts with the shower spray he called to the attendant, “Hey, Bill! This watter's dirty.” The attendant smilingly replied: “Tha, ad better try takin' thi cap off.”

* * *

Superfluous.

“George, dear, do you remember what Wordsworth said about Daffodils?”

“No. And what's the use of bothering when we pay a gardener?”

* * *

Not Introduced.

Sam (to wife at show): “Mandy, tell dat Niggah to take his arm away from ‘round yo’ waist.”

Mandy: “Tell him yo'self. He's a puffect stranger to me.”

* * *

Court Humour.

Old Lady (only witness of car smash): “They was neither of ‘em to blame. They was both lookin’ the wrong way.”

Feathered Familiarity.

“British Birds” was the Council schoolteacher's subject to his class of small boys, delivered in the open.

Having duly impressed upon his boys the beauty of our wild birds' song in their freedom, and the cruelty of robbing their nests, he proceeded to enumerate various acts of their tameness and approach, when they recognised the donor of tit-bits of their food and water during a dry spell. He was anxious to test their knowledge, so concluded: “Only last week,” said he, “I sat in my suburban garden, under a larch tree bareheaded, when a certain brown bird with a speckled breast actually alighted upon my head. Now, then, which of you can name that bird?”

Swiftly a youthful treble replied: “A woodpecker, sir.”

* * *

In Cellar Cool.

Drunk (to splendidly uniformed bystander): “Shay, call me a cab, will ya?”

Splendidly Uniformed Bystander: “My good man, I am not the doorman; I am a naval officer.”

Drunk: “Awright, then call me a boat. I gotta get home.”

* * *

Fragile Freight.

Nervous Old Lady: “Guard, I hope there won't be any collisions.”

Railway Guard: “Oh, no fear, Madam!”

Old Lady: “I want you to be very careful; I've got two dozen eggs in this basket.”

A Timber Worker.

“Want a job, do you? Have you ever handled timber?”

“Well, I once had a job cutting the sticks for wooden matches.”

Benefits of the Machine Age.

Interested Friend: “I hear you have invented a new machine. What is it?”

Amateur Inventor: “It's a revolving nest. When the hen lays an egg, the nest revolves and the egg falls into a receptacle underneath. The hen turns round, and, seeing no egg, thinks she has made a mistake and promptly sits down and lays another.”

* * *

On The Menu.

“And what,” asked the cannibal chief in his kindest tones,” was your business before you were captured by my men?”

“I was a newspaper man,” answered the captive.

“An editor?”

“Only a sub-editor.”

“Cheer up, young man, promotion awaits you. After supper you shall be editor-in-chief.”

* * *

Explaining an Omission.

The works clerk approached the foreman of the factory. “Any accident to report?” he asked.

“One,” replied the foreman, and handed over the report. It read: Date—November 2. Nature of accident—badly crushed toe. How caused—blow from hammer (accidental). Remarks—.

“Why no remarks?” asked the clerk.

“Well,” said the foreman, “seeing as ‘ow you know Bill, and seeing as ‘ow you know what crushed his toe, ain't you got no imagination?”

* * *

New Year's Day.

Two Scotsmen who had been present at a New Year's party met the following morning, and one said to the other:

“Weel, Donald, and did ye get hame all richt?”

“Aye,” replied Donald, “I got hame all richt, except that just as I was turning the corner a policeman trod on my knuckles.”