Lake Matheson—Mirror of the Alps and Fox Glacier, South Island, New Zealand.
Contents
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Deputy-Controller and Auditor-General.
The crystal water sparkling drips
In liquid gems of light…
—Robert Richardson.
The Whangarei Falls, North Auckland, New Zealand.
The New Zealand
Railways
Magazine
Railways
Magazine
Registered at the G.P.O., Wellington, N.Z., for transmission by post as a Newspaper.
“”
For Better Service.Published by the
New Zealand Government Railways Department
Service Copy
Vol. XI. No. 11.
Wellington,
New Zealand
February1, 1937
Links And Couplings.
The links and couplings of a train are the agents that keep the whole wonderful mechanism together in harmonious movement. The links and couplings between nations are not always so fortunate in their effects, although the necessity for closer contact between all nations follows from the conditions of modern transport, and becomes more pressing with each new transport development.
The stresses and strains of unfriendly association are particularly in evidence in Europe at the present time, but doubtless this phase will pass with the development of better understanding. Such under-standing is dependent upon the success of men of good will in penetrating the mass consciousness with their ideas. Difficulties of language stand in the way but these are gradually being bridged and will become less evident with increased intercourse.
It is found that all the English-speaking races are thinking increasingly along similar lines, and the link of a common language plays an important part in this approach towards a universal outlook upon most of the things that matter. The printed word, the cable, pictures and the radio make the spread of ideas, the development of tastes, and an appreciation of the other fellow's standpoint increasingly easier day by day.
This Magazine has taken for its province the story of New Zealand, including, of course, the railways of New Zealand; and month by month it tells in prose and verse and illustration, through the pens of leading authorities in literature, art and humour, about the features of development and romance associated with the country; and it discusses particularly those things of interest and value that are characteristic of, or distinctive to, this Dominion.
The main appeal of this field is naturally to New Zealanders themselves; but there is a surprising amount of interest shown in the publication amongst the peoples of other countries. The close family and business ties between the British Isles, Australia and New Zealand make it easy to understand why a publication which gives authentic information bearing on New Zealand and its people should be eagerly looked for by the many sections amongst whom it circulates in the other countries mentioned, but its overseas penetration is not confined to these. By the last American mail, for instance, casual letters arrived from Toronto, New York, Bermuda, Baldwyn (Mississippi) and Hyattsville (Maryland), mostly from people whom we did not know had any access to the Magazine, but all showing an exceptionally keen interest in the publication.
The Hyattsville man had missed the last October issue and was anxious for a replace copy so that he could follow, without break, the continuity of “The Thirteenth Clue.”
The lady on the somewhat insecure banks of the Mississippi wanted to trace family history through a Wellington street-name mentioned in an article of the August number; and Bermuda liked the Magazine all through—including the advertisements.
Toronto and New York, with big city sophistication, merely reached out their hands for more copies—and got them.
These facts are mentioned, not only as something that may prove of interest to our general readers, but as signs of the threads in the weaving of international knowledge, trivial in themselves, but indicative of what is going on upon a huge scale throughout the whole range of human intercourse.
All should remember that it is from the conglomerate mass of thoughts and words printed and spoken, the emotions they express and the spirit they reveal, that the future of world affairs depends.
General manager's message
On Time.
Favourable comment has reached me from several quarters, through the press and from members of the public, regarding the satisfactory time-keeping maintained by the principal main trunk express and inter-provincial passenger train services during the recent holiday period.
It is very pleasing to know that the efforts of the staff have produced such favourable results. Punctuality, next to safety, is one of the most important factors in railway operation, and experienced railwaymen recognise this and do all in their power to ensure that trains will run to time. Besides the importance of punctuality to the travelling public, connecting services, hotels and the like, promptness in the arrival and despatch of trains is a very vital feature in the general success of railway operation as a whole.
I feel that the matter of punctuality cannot be too strongly stressed at the present time, for we have many new appointees in the service who will appreciate advice and guidance at the commencement of their career in the elements of railroad operation, and if they can be adequately impressed, during the early days of their association with the Department, in the outstanding importance of safety and punctuality, it will stand them in good stead when they reach controlling positions in the service.
At a station every member in any way associated with the despatch of trains can aid towards punctuality. The porter can have the luggage properly labelled and conveniently placed for loading without delay. The cadet or clerk can see that waybills are clearly prepared and ready for acceptance by the guard. The booking staff can have the ticket windows opened in good time, and be deft and accurate in their attendance to the requirements of passengers. The signalling staff can see that no moments are lost in setting signals as required, and the guards and shunters can work in close co-operation to assist expedition in the handling of the trains, and drivers and firemen can be ever on the alert for signals and react to them quickly and safely. In giving prompt service of this kind, members are not only serving the public well, but they are also obtaining greater satisfaction out of their work and helping to avoid the troubles that develop in the wake of late trains.
In concluding this message, I wish to express my personal thanks to the staff for their good work in train punctuality throughout the recent Christmas and New Year holidays.
General Manager.
(By.
O. N. Gillespie
(Rly. Publicity photo.)
The fine ocean beach at Wainui, Oisborne, North Island.
New Zealand is unique in the whole wide world in its rich profusion of perfect bathing beaches. The three enemies of the foreshore as a place of enjoyment are shingle, mudflats, and excessive tidal rise and fall. The latter gives rise in the Old Country to scores of music hall jokes about taking the train out to low water mark, and the first two disfigure many famous watering places in the Mediterranean littoral, and elsewhere. The number of our beaches suffering in any of these ways is small, and our hundreds of leagues of coastline contain sealovers' faultless playgrounds every few miles. It would seem that Nature, when New Zealand was planned, having granted such lavish gifts of mild airs and copious sunshine, thought it as well to furnish also the means for their proper use. This article is a brief survey of this particular aspect of our wonderland and its blessings, and a still shorter summary of the extraordinary standard of man-made facilities for this form of human recreation which our fellow-countrymen, with their British love of open air life, have created throughout the length and breadth of New Zealand.
IWas in Timaru early last summer, and I encountered there a New Zealander who holds one of the most important official positions in London. We made a date to go down for a swim at seven in the morning. We sauntered down in Timaru sunshine in our dressing gowns, had a swim in the velvet-seeming waters of Caroline Bay, a shower each, and the use of a comfortable dressing shed. In the hunt for coins in our well-worn garments we eventually mustered a shilling between us and it was ample. Then my friend burst into speech. He indicated with a sweep of his hand the lovely spreading lawns, the groves of noble trees and the hundred and one other amenities of Caroline Bay. “Better than Deauville,” he said, “and by now at that place or any like it in Europe we would have been up for a pound … and yet I heard someone say he was going to retire from Timaru … to Timaru is sense, the other is lunacy.”
He was a soul-mate of mine, inasmuch as he was an addict, not of drugs, but of sun and sea bathing. If I am not approaching a good cream colour in late October, and a medium tan by the end of November, I have a feeling that life has been in vain up to that date. Through the gift of circumstance, I have a nodding acquaintance with a large number of New Zealand beaches. I have a written record of two hundred swims on the same number of different beaches. I was controlling a business once which compelled me to visit every place once every two years that had a picture show. This, as you may know, means every place larger than an incubator or a “K” wagon. I was sea bathing all the year round in Wellington in those days, and when I went on my travels I carried on the practice. I am afraid my itinerary usually provided that I did the Far North in the winter and the South in the summer.
(Rly. Publicity photo.)
School House Bay, Mahurangi. A typical North Auckland beach.
I do not want to pretend that I sampled anything like a fair percentàge of New Zealand's golden sands, but when and wherever I arrived I inquired the way to the beach, that is if the sea were not in sight, as it usually was. In any case, the beach was either “down the road” or “just past the first turn to the left.” How many New Zealanders stop to consider that, with a handful of exceptions to prove the rule, every settlement point, large or small, is within easy reach of a good sandy swimming beach? New Zealand's wealth of this type of Nature's bounty is the greatest in the world, and the extravagant beauty of our beaches,
(Rly. Publicity photo.)
The Mount, the popular beach at Tauranga, North Island.
It may be as well to ascertain the reason. The angry Irishman, discovering his idle son trying to do circus tricks on the farm plough horse sáid that “the only show in the ring the ‘omadhaun could put on would be to thravel as the world's smallest giant.” New Zealand is the world's smallest continent, and a continent is described in the dictionary as “a large mass or great division of land.” However, to quote from a scientific work, “It is continental in structure. The rocks are of the same kind as those of which continents are built.” It is surmised, also, that once the continent of New Zealand was of larger area than at present; but the most interesting fact of all is that, geologically speaking, New Zealand is a mixture of youth and hoary antiquity. It is thus the proper environment for its people, who are young in their settlement here as citizens and as old as England herself in heritage, tradition and racial history. In spite of the great age of much of New Zealand's structural elements, the forces which change the earth's shape, mould its contours and grave its features, are still actively at work here. It is this strange combination of physical phenomena that makes our country a pocket world, a miniature universe, a museum of natural wonders, and provides us with a replica of every world sight.
Now our beaches and their sands that range from the shining gold of Cooper's Beach to the glossy dark ironsand of Fitzroy, are all the product of water and rock. These two constituents are here in unique quality, quantity and combination. The elemental contents of the rocks are responsible for the formation of sand, and we have a surpassing percentage of sand-making rock. We have other natural advantages, too, that assist in the creation of such a multitude of choice beaches. New Zealand stretches across the “Roaring Forties” and is washed by great ocean currents. We have therefore a private climate. There is a good deal of wind, there is a varying but ample rainfall, and there is a constant stream of sunshine. Thus, every foot of our four thousand miles of coastline is flooded with the “little fingers of the rain,” with copious sunlight, and refreshed with steady breezes. Auckland is in the corresponding latitude to Algiers, but it is ten degrees cooler and its sunshine is comparable, and its rainfall immeasurably superior. Our three largest capitals have more than 2,000 hours of sunshine each year, and dozens of lesser towns have 500 hours more. A great part of our terrain has been sculptured by glacial action, and we have many glaciers still busily at work. Other great portions of our country are of recent volcanic origin; and we can sum up by saying that by the greatest of good luck our whole physical frame contains the perfect mechanism for the making of delectable sandy beaches.
Paremata beach and harbour, North Island.
Then, the New Zealand coastline is a network of inlet and cove, a tracery of fiord and deep bays, relieved now and again by long sweeps of sea frontage. These smooth outlines are usually magnificent beaches. Everyone has heard of the Ninety Mile Beach in the Far North, but old atlases had others, notably that stretching from Lake Ellesmere down to the Waitaki River, being the sea-line of the whole of the Canterbury Plains. The West Coast of the North Island has another mighty stretch of sand, and in a dry summer a car can be driven from just outside Paekakariki to the Manawatu River mouth. There are also the thirty-five miles of Muriwai, and the firm, white level of Awakino which has carried many a race meeting. The sweep of the Bay of Plenty is a good hundred miles, and it is a radiant procession of gay, smooth beaches from the
(Rly. Publicity photo.)
A portion of the famous waterfront at Napier.
It is a far cry from the tip of the Coromandel Peninsula to the bold headland of Cape Farewell, standing at the top of the South Island. At the foot of the big bluff is a semicircular beach with the most perfect surf of all the hundreds in New Zealand. But farther south is Porari, close to the Blowhole and the bizarre Pancake Rocks which are heaped up in enormous flat layers, as if some primal gods had been playing a game with titanic counters. I spent eleven hours once at Porari, and it seemed like one dream hour. The heavy green background of bush, the sand that shone like a million jewels, the laughing sea that broke gently into creamy foam, make up a memory that gives the lie to the yarn about the “wet West Coast.” Here I would like to say, too, that New Zealand rejoices in hundreds of beaches which are close to bush trees, in many cases the forest running right down to the border of the beach. This characteristic belongs to New Zealand alone, and should be mentioned in a loud, clear tone whenever beaches are quoted that belong to other lands.
(Rly. Publicity photo.)
Oriental Bay, one of Wellington's conveniently situated beaches.
It is a pleasant pastime, too, to run through the names, for they have a habit of being picturesque. I take these at random: Goose Bay, near Kaikoura; Fuller's Ti Beach, Bay of Islands; Oreti, near Invercargill; Anaura Bay, East Coast, past Tologa Bay; Spirits Bay, in the very Far North; Oruaiti, a pohutukawa-lined crescent of creamy sand; Goat Island Beach, on the East Coast of the North Auckland Peninsula near Leigh; Red Beach, in the Kaipara; and Paekakariki. At Tauranga they have been affected by the movies, for there are Honolulu Beach and Sixth Avenue Beach. A quartette from Canterbury are Corsair Bay, a delicious dimple in Lyttelton Harbour, Woodend, Waikuku, and Kairakei, where there “is the splendid combination of the Waimakariri Estuary and the Pacific; then there are the rolling names from North Auckland: Ahipara, Parakerake, Taipa, and Ngungururu, and a hundred more.
I suppose, however, it is to our city dwellers that the heaviest and heartiest
(Rly. Publicity photo.)
Caroline Bay, Timaru, South Island.
Christchurch has the fine surf beach at New Brighton, and the neat little coves of Sumner and Redcliffs. I have swum in the Sumner pool under the electric lights at eleven o'clock in the evening, and the scene had all the glamour of the best Hollywood cinema production. Dunedin, for my taste, has the red-haired girl of them all in the way of a public swimming place in the St. Clair baths hewn out of the shore rocks. Its harbour beaches are counted by the dozen, and everyone has looked out of the mail train and noted the sheer beauty of Waitati, once decorated by the unpoetic name of Blueskin.
Then when it comes to our provincial capitals and large towns, most of them are on or very near the coast. There is not one without a flawless specimen of beach wonder, and most of them have more than two. Where there are river mouths or harbour enclosures as, for instance, Gisborne, one has the choice of surf or inner sea.
Then there is a type of sea beach which is inimitable and almost wholly ours. It exists at Keri Keri, Whangaroa, and the other exquisite deep inlets of the Auckland Peninsula; it is to be found all about the mighty Kaipara Harbour and is seen in its best form possibly in the complex system of fiords known as the Picton Sounds. This is the tiny beach which sleeps in between the curving shores of waterways which are almost enclosed. The shore line of Pelorus Sound is no less than 237 miles, and its beaches are numbered by the round dozen in every arm of its lovely length.
One of the hundreds of private beaches in Marlborough Sounds, South Island.
One would say that there is little need for New Zealanders to go far for their summer sea sports. But if an air view could be quickly taken of the greater part of our land on a summer holiday, it would appear to be a mass of swift trains carrying happy crowds to beaches. The comfort-loving New Zealander has seen to it that his beaches are equipped as efficiently and as luxuriously in many cases as the best of the South of France. The universality of the love of the sea makes for love of change, and we have the delightful spectacle for instance of sun-tanned crowds filling a special train to go right across the North Island from the dark sands of New Plymouth to the gleaming white of Mount Maunganui. Into Auckland great trains pour tens of thousands to scatter about the Queen City's garland of creamy sands. As for Timaru, several twenty coach expresses rush up and down there from and to Christchurch, and from Oamaru, while Dunedin and Oamaru exchange sea-loving crowds with steady expedition. Out of Wellington on fine days, thousands pour to the five “P's,” Paremata, Plimmerton, Pukerua, Paekakariki, and Paraparaumu, and a dozen intervening stations that are gateways to sunshine and sea breezes. These trains puff past equally large crowds on their way down from the inland towns of the Manawatu and Rangitikei.
When counting our blessings, we New Zealanders should include in the forefront of the gifts that should make us a fellowship of the happy ones of earth, our priceless, our resplendent boon, of the best sea beaches to be found on the surface of the globe.
New Zealand Versa
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Through passenger train operation between London and continental points, rendered possible by the spanning of the Channel either by a railway tunnel or train ferry, is an objective upon which Home railway experts long ago set their minds. For some years to come, at any rate, there seems no likelihood of a Channel tunnel scheme actually being embarked upon. Thanks to the enterprise of the Southern Railway, however, a cross-Channel passenger train ferry is now in active operation, between Dover and Dunkirk, and a new era in European travel has thereby been opened up. A nightly sleeping-car service between London and Paris is the first result of the enterprise, and across the Channel the Northern Railway of France is co-operating whole-heartedly with our own authorities to make the facility a huge success. Instead of having to change from railway train to steamer, and vice-versa, at the Channel ports, the continental traveller journeying by the new night service is carried right through from one capital to the other without leaving his comfortable sleeping berth.
Three ferry vessels have been built for the service. Each carries a train of twelve sleeping-cars, there being four sets of railway tracks on the ferry deck. Above the train deck, restaurants, lounges and cabins have been installed for passengers who desire to vacate their berths and stretch their legs. In addition to accommodating 500 passengers, the ferries have a special garage for passengers' motor-cars. These are driven aboard up an inclined ramp. In recent years, there has been a growing tendency for travellers going on a continental tour to take their own motorcars along with them, and the liberal accommodation provided for cars on the new train ferries should prove a great convenience. Looking ahead, it seems likely that, eventually, the operation of these Channel ferries will enable through working to be introduced between London and most of the principal continental cities. In the coming Coronation rush of passengers to London, the new facility should prove of the greatest utility.
“Twickenham Ferry,” one of the three new cross-Channel Train Ferries of the Southern Railway.
From the tourist viewpoint, Coronation year promises to be a red-letter one. Hundreds of thousands of visitors from overseas and the continent will be drawn to this unique pageant, while from every city and hamlet in the British Isles the railways will be called upon to carry to the metropolis sight-seers galore. For handling passenger traffic from overseas, the Home railways have recently improved their terminal facilities at the principal points of entry. Southampton, Plymouth, Liverpool and London, are four ports anticipating record business. The railway hotels, too, are well prepared to cater for the special needs of Coronation guests. Specially fast trains, operated at reduced fares, will link the provinces with London. For Coronation Day cheap tickets at approximately a single fare for the return journey will be issued to the capital from all stations where the train services will permit of both the outward and homeward journeys being accomplished on the same day, these tickets being available by any train. For distances over 150 miles, the outward journey may be commenced from 9 p.m. the previous day.
Railway stations in the metropolis and the principal provincial centres will be gaily decorated for the occasion. Special fare will be provided in the dining-cars, with menus carrying appropriate decorations. To relieve the pressure on hotel and boarding-house accommodation, the London and North Eastern line announces that, it is arranging to place camping coaches on suitable sites in the London suburban districts. Each of these coaches will accommodate six people, and will be let at the moderate rental of £10 for the whole of Coronation week to visitors to London from points on the company's system. The rental charge will also include a free ticket from the suburban station to the London terminus every day of the week for all six members forming the party.
Many noteworthy contributions to Home railway locomotive construction have from time to time been made by the Great Western Company. Recently there has been turned out of
The “Arlington Grange,” first of the new 4-6-0 class locomotives Great Western Railway.
The “Grange” locomotives are of the 4-6-0 type, and similar in design to the “Hall” class. They carry a standard boiler, but are fitted with 5 ft. 8 in. diameter coupled wheels. A new pattern of cylinder has also been provided. The total wheelbase of engine and tender is 53 ft. 4 3/4 in. The Coupled wheelbase is 14 ft. 9 in., and the length of the engine and tender over buffers is 63 ft. 0 ¼ in. The engines are equipped with a standard 3,500 gallons tender. Other principal details are: Cylinders (2), 18 ½ in. diameter, 30 in. stroke; total heating surface, 2,104 sq. ft.; area of firegrate, 27.07 sq. ft.; working pressure, 225 lb. per sq. in.; tractive effort, 28,875 lb.; total loaded weight, engine and tender, 114 tons.
One hundred years ago, there was opened for traffic one of the world's pioneer railways—the historic Grand Junction system — commencing at Curzon Street Station, Birmingham, and running to Newton, 82 ½ miles distant, where it joined the Liverpool and Manchester Railway, opened seven years earlier. The Grand Junction line was merged into the London and North Western, and later into the London, Midland and Scottish Company.
From the outset, one of the principal stations on the system was Crewe. Owing to its unique geographical situation, Crewe ranks as a leading railway junction. It is also the site of the famous Crewe locomotive shops, where so many of the world's outstanding locomotive designers spent their early years. In the pioneering days of the Grand Junction Railway, there were twelve passenger trains passing through Crewe daily. During the summer, about 530 trains now call daily at the station. In winter, the daily total is approximately 420. Twenty per cent, of the trains divide at Crewe for two or more destinations. Crewe passenger station has six platforms, and ten bays, totalling 3,790 yards in length. The station buildings have an area of 64,600 sq. ft., and apart from numerous railway offices, include six refreshment rooms, dining and tea rooms, and eight waiting rooms.
Double-deck bridge, near Leipzig, German National Railways.
A most important obligation falling on railways everywhere is the protection of their properties against fire. At Home, fire brigades are specially trained and equipped by the railways, and thanks to their efficiency serious outbreaks are a rarity. It is at the larger locomotive and carriage centres that the principal brigades are located. So efficient are some of these railway teams that, in certain instances, they act as the city fire brigade in addition to their railway responsibilities. Special trains are also maintained in readiness at many of the larger railway centres. These trains are equipped with fire-fighting equipment, ready to move out at express speed to any fires which may occur on or adjoining railway property. The fire trains have one or more coaches for the conveyance of the brigade, a petrol driven fire pump, water tanks, and a large assortment of fire-fighting equipment. With the exception of watchmen, all the railway works firemen are volunteers, chosen for their interest in the work and their physical fitness. They drill regularly, and are capable of acting singly in an emergency, or as a unit in a brigade.
City collection and delivery services for freight traffic have for long been a feature of Home railway practice. On the continent, also, countries like Germany and France are becoming increasingly interested in combined rail and road movement. In Germany, there has recently been introduced an articulated tractor-trailer unit for hauling standard goods wagons along the road, and giving through door-to-door service. The tractor takes the form of a truck chassis with a 100 h.p. six-cylinder Diesel engine. Six wheels are employed on the trailer, four being mounted on a single axle serving as driving shaft, and the other two on a separate trailing axle. Within the frame of the trailer is a second inner steel frame carrying a pair of lifting rams, for tilting the loaded goods wagon and discharging its contents. A light steel ramp affords connection between the trailer and the railway tracks.
(By
James Cowan
These incidents are complete in themselves, but the characters are all related.
ChapterVIII.
Gang all here?” asked Gillespie as he rapped on the table for attention with the legbone of a cannibal warrior from the Waikanae sand-dunes.
“All here,” said Teasewell, “but I don't like the sound of ‘gang.’ Talk polite like me. ‘Gang’ is Chicagoish. We are a committee of investigators endeavouring to get at the bottom of a blinking mystery, Heaven knows what, I don't. But ‘gang’—no!”
“All here but Lauder, poor fellow,” said Lloyd. “Alas, let his short and too-bacchanalian career be a lesson to all of us. That musical mug of his at our last séance—or was it a tankard—ah, how little did he dream when he introduced us to its mysteries that it would be the last swig he ever swug.”
“Not by a long chalk,” came a hearty voice from the quietly opened door. Lauder stood there in the life. “No, it's not my ghost. ‘Tis I, be not afraid.”
“But your sudden death!” gasped Teasewell. “And what the doctor said about decomposition and all that?”
“Only a rumour,” replied Lauder with a merry ringing laugh.
“Misguided medical practitioner made a bloomer, that was all. What he took for symptoms were simply some over-mature fragments of crayfish which I had inadvertently left in a pocket or two. Did'nt notice it myself, of course, being so Búlletinish, you know. I've been misreported. Death notice exaggerated. So we'll carry on, little ones.”
Fanning rose to a point of order. Could a member of the brotherhood, after being postmortemed and all, and a good deal deader than even a cray, be permitted to return as cool as a cucumber and take part in the business of the living? No, decidedly no! It wasn't done, that was all. It would establish a dangerous precedent. However could this young and—he ventured to say it in spite of all contradiction—prosperous nation forge ahead and all that if these dead-and-done-for jokers were allowed to butt in? It would clog the wheels of progress and clip its wings by drawing dead—or was it red?—herrings across the trail. I move “that Lauder be regarded as merely a Shade henceforth, a deeply regretted Shade.”
“Oh, all right, I'll be a Shade, anything for a quiet life,” said Lauder. “Last time I saw Fanning he was a policeman. Now, apparently, he has become a politician. Ah, me, he was a good policeman, but—no matter. But this is why I have come, I have a message.”
In sepulchral tones Gillespie said: “Shade, or Lauder himself, or whosoever you be, I charge you by the sacred bone I hold in my fist, and the ashes of our ancestors, give over your Message!”
“My Message,” returned Lauder, “is here.” He stepped two paces to the left. “Enter, oh Envoy of the Orient,” he said, “and announce your mission.”
In came a short, sturdy, brown man, dressed in a brown suit. He bowed to the company, advanced and bowed again. He might have been a Jap swordsman, he was so keen and muscular; he might again have been a Polynesian pearl-diver; or half-caste Indian from British Columbia.
The stranger spoke, after bowing again to Gillespie, who he perceived was the Most Noble Grand of the Lodgé.
“I have been charged by the Government, by a great Pacific Government that need not be named, with the task of assisting your honourable bliddy committee in the task of elucidating this most bliddy mystery. I am one Topside Criminal Investigator. I have seen life everywhere, I have helped quell bliddy crime in Yukon City. I have helped crowned heads in Europe lose their bliddy crowns. I have done some honourable bit of everything. I now reveal to you I am original bliddy Japanese House Boy. Ha, you start, honourable sirs! Yes, I am the he for which your Hon. Professor Shellback is on warpath with tomahawk, seeking to gag!”
Cries of “No, no! It cannot be!”
“Yes,” said the Envoy, “but let that pass. Now, to cut the matter short. I have a Clue already. I shall reveal it to you at midnight to-night on board our Harbour Board's inimitable dredge,
“Enter, oh Envoy of the Orient,” he said.
Beckoning the members, fixing them with a mesmeric eye, the mysterious Messenger led the way out of the committee-room. They did not notice that six brown-suited brown gentlemen stepped quietly after them. At the wharf boat landing to which the stranger silently led them, a motor-launch was waiting.
“On board, gentlemen,” he said.
“What the blinky hell does this mean?” asked Gillespie. But the stranger quelled him with a glance of his glittering eyes. “Wait!” he said, “it will be the surprise of your lives, and everything depends on it. It is a matter of life or death.”
No more was said until the dredge was reached. As it was Sunday evening all the crew were ashore at Church. The six mysterious brown figures who had formed the committee's rearguard had quietly boarded the launch too. They leaped aboard the dredge. Some of them sped about their business in the darkness, the others remained behind our friends.
“Down below,” said the stranger. He led the way into the expensively furnished saloon, which was panelled with pearlshell. “Sit down,” he said. “Now I shall reveal the secret to you.” He produced from one pocket a revolver, from another an automatic pistol, and levelled them at the members of the Society.
“Bliddy disguise now thrown off, gentlemen!” he said, in tones that froze every soul with horror. “This is honourable bliddy fact of case. My Government has followed proceedings of your Society with bated breath and great disgust. It has come to conclusion that whole honourable boiling of you are Potential Bliddy Menace to peace of the Pacific, for which our more honourable Government is striving tooth and nail, hook and crook. We consider you have not bliddy feather to fly with. Therefore I have been deputed to carry out certain decision which will totally eliminate potential peril of Pacific and restore status quo in criminal world. So—“ and the terrible stranger drew a silver whistle from his left-hand trousers pocket. He blew a shrill pipe and in rushed the mysterious brown men. They spoke not a word, but they carried eloquent tomahawks.
They threw themselves on Gillespie and his comrades, who were in turns hot with indignation, and frozen with horror, and petrified with amazement.
The stranger threw aside a curtain. His gang, or whatever they were, dragged forth mysterious heavy blocks of a dirty white hue. They quickly tied these to the prisoners.
The stranger grinned fiendishly as he watched this operation. “Blocks of salt,” he explained. “I derived that bliddy clever idea from dear old Edgar Wallace. You remember it? Salt remains solid block long enough to carry you through bottom of dredge to bottom of sea, then melts and not a trace is left to show how deed was done. Oh, very clever! I wonder where Edgar got it? Anyhow, down you go—down, down, and Potential Menace is gone bung, what!”
Gillespie, recognising the inevitable, sang in solemn accents: “Down went McGinty to the bottom of the sea,
Dressed in his best suit of clothes.”
“Oh, don't, don't” moaned Lloyd. “In a few moments we will be no more!”
“Too bliddy well, you will!” said the stranger, fiendishly as before. “You see that lever there.” He touched a machine in the side of the dredge. “At my touch you will be precipitated through the bottom of the dredge. It will open to dump you like a load of mud—see! Now, there's no time to lose. Down, and out goes the Menace Gang!”
“They used to say in England once upon a time, that the seductive cigarette would sooner or later supplant the pipe altogether, but “the trade,” in the Old Land, says that pipe smoking there was never more popular than at the present time. Parsons, lawyers, doctors, politicians are all patrons of the pipe and Mr. Baldwin's Cherrywood has become world-famous. New Zealanders smoke millions of cigarettes every year, but the pipe still holds pride of place with smokers innumerable in Maoriland. As for tobacco, tastes proverbially differ, but it's no less true that “toasted” is first favourite with smoker throughout the length and breadth of the Dominion. The five genuine toasted brands, Cut Plug No. 10 (Bullshead), Cavendish, Navy Cut No. 3 (Bulldog), Riverhead Gold and Desert Gold are in incessant demand, for it's now generally recognised that while they give the most enjoyable smoke it's possible to get, they are (thanks to toasting) the purest and least harmful of any tobaccos manufactured. And you never tire of them! Once you take to toasted you'll never want to change.*
“The stranger quelled him with a glance of his glittering eyes.”
Hark! What is that row on deck? A shot, a whistle, shouts—hearty British shouts!
“Ha! Saved, saved!” gasped Teasewell. “Saved at the very last tick!” He fainted.
(To be Continued.)
The locomotive hauling the train illustrated above was specially built for the Adelaide Centennial Exhibition and embodies the latest improvements for service on the Trans-Australian Railway.
The Trans-Australian Railway
Through Service to be Accelerated.
The Trans-Australian Railway (4ft. 8 ½in. gauge), which provides the connecting rail service between the Eastern States and overseas mail steamers arriving at Freemantle, is commencing upon a modernisation programme in order to save a day on the overland journey of 2,169 miles between Perth and Melbourne and reduce the time of trans-continental travel to three days. These trains have long been noted for their spacious interiors (the cars being 10ft. 6ins. wide), for the comfortable lounge equipped with piano, and the sleeping cars with wide comfortable berths and bathrooms. Now the trains are being air-conditioned, ensuring the prevention of noise and dust and providing cool air in summer and warm air in the colder months of the year.
Recently the construction of a new section of railway has been undertaken between Port Augusta and Red Hill, a distance of 84 miles. This will reduce the distance of the overland journey by 70 miles, but more important still it will eliminate two breaks of gauge, which have for many years constituted the most unpleasant feature of trans-continental travel in Australia.
New express locomotives are being constructed for the Trans-Australian Railway by Messrs. Walkers Ltd., in Queensland, to the order of the Commonwealth Railways Commissioner (Mr. Geo. A. Gahan, M.I.E., Aust.). The tenders of these locomotives will be the largest capacity tenders in Australia. They will permit of long distances being negotiated without stopping for fuel and water, the 17 ½ tons of coal which will be carried being sufficient for 560 miles, and the 12,000 gallons of water meeting requirements for a distance of 200 miles. The distance of 1,100 miles between Port Pirie, and Kalgoorlie (the section of the overland journey owned and controlled by the Commonwealth) will be negotiated with only one change of locomotive. As a matter of fact for a number of years locomotives on this railway have been running a distance of 1,051 miles with only one change, but it has been necessary for tenders to be replenished with coal, an operation which will no longer be entailed when the new locomotives are placed in service.
A feature of the Trans-Australian railway is the continuous stretch of perfectly straight track over 300 miles in length which is regarded as the world's longest “straight.” This, of course, is a great aid to fast long distance travel, but other factors, such as the scarcity of good surface water and the strong side winds, which set up considerable flange friction, are local conditions which present unusual difficulties in railway operation.
The brakevans used on this transcontinental journey are distinctive, for not only do they provide the usual accommodation for the guard and passengers' luggage, but they are equipped with living accommodation for a crew of ten dining car staff and sleeping car conductors. These brakevans, which are 60ft. long, are the widest in Australia, namely, 10ft. 4ins. across the outside walls.
The accelerated trans-continental service will be introduced in July, 1937, when the 84 mile section of new railway is expected to be open for traffic.
109,000 Miles High-Speed Record.
When the Silver Jubilee Express of the L.N.E.R. passed Hitchin on its northward journey on Thursday, 2nd July, at a speed in the region of 85 m.p.h. it will have achieved a world's endurance record for a steam train—100,000 miles of high-speed work in the short period of nine months.
Introduced into regular service on 30th September, 1935, the train has made the daily journey in both directions (Saturdays and Sundays excepted) between Newcastle and London, 268 miles, at an average speed of 67.1 m.p.h.
Here is an analysis of this record:—
100,000 miles at an average of 67.1 m.p.h.; 86,567 miles at an average of 70.4 m.p.h.; 18,283 miles at speeds exceeding 80 m.p.h.
This performance has been achieved without loss of time attributable to the locomotive.
The work of hauling this train has been shared by the four famous streamlined Pacific type locomotives “Silver Link,” “Silver King,” “Silver Fox,” and “Quicksilver,” but only one set of the special carriages composing the train is in existence, and that they have performed this feat without mechanical defects arising is a remarkable tribute to British manufacture and the designer, Mr. H. N. Gresley, who has mad conferred upon him the honour of Knighthood.
(ByJohn Harland-Barber ).
(Rly. Publicity photo.)
The Marine Parade, Napier, North Island, New Zealand.
One of Napier's most perfect mornings filled me with reluctance to leave for the Southern trip. From the windows of the Masonic Hotel the bay looked warm and blue and inviting, and on the long slow Pacific swell two or three trawlers were patrolling slowly.
The coaches of the Wellington express stood clean, and cool, and fresh at the station; and the roomy, comfortable single seat promised a day of lazy enjoyment in the contemplation of the varied scenery of three provinces.
Smoothly and without appearance of undue haste the train pulled out, and during the short stop at Hastings a diversion occurred. A party of Maoris stood on the platform farewelling a friend, who was most truly a rangatira. His healthy, cheerful, brown face was well set off by his well-cut suit of rough tweed, and the manner in which everyone, pakeha and Maori alike, greeted him, irresistibly suggested that greatly overworked word “personality.”
At last he took his seat in the smoking carriage with a pleasant “Tenakoe” directed generally at the occupants. On the other side of the aisle from him was a party of four young fellows, who started up and maintained an animated conversation on every variety of gossipy subject. As the mail ran smoothly southward into the Te Aute district, one or two motor cars raced the train in the customary way. Here was a topic ready to hand, and the four made the most of it. One of them was particularly emphatic on the subject of road versus rail. In his opinion, the only way for a modern reasonable human being to travel was by motor. One by one he produced his reasons, and in the hope of getting them endorsed, he turned to the rangatira with the question:—
“Don't you think so, Kerehi?”
Then spoke the oracle.
(Rly Publicity photo.)
The Napier-Welhngton Express, passing: through the Manawatu Gorge, North Island, New Zealand.
“Well, I like te motor. I have one of my own and I use him a lot when I run round Hawke's Bay after stock—you know, Hastings, Havelock, Give, Greenmeadows—ho! all round. Now to-day I making for Poneke, Wellington. I don't want te car. I take te car, Henare want to come with me. Pretty hot in that car and Henare get thirsty—I get thirsty. Stop at te pub for beer. Drive a few mile, stop again for beer. Get to Palmerston North and have dinner and some beer. Too tire to go on. Then we stay te night, and next day we drive to Poneke. I think that trip cost too much.
“Now, look here. I get te comfortable seat, I can stretch out my leg—go for a walk on te platform—get a cup of tea. No Henare, no petrol, no driving. That motor car being pretty warm to-day and full of carbon monopoly—you know te gas that choke you.
“This railway carriage, he pretty comfortable, I think—don't waste no time. Pefore half past four I get to te hotel in Wellington, clean, fresh, not tired. You looka here, young fellow, you can have te car. I have te railway train every time. What would you say, Mister?”
The round pleasant face and shrewd brown eyes were swung in my direction.
“You are right, most decidedly,” I answered, and I have continued to think so ever since.
(By “
Robin Hyde
Paterson Inlet, Stewart Island, New Zealand.
This is supposed to be a piece of descriptive writing, a little mild encouragement of the “Go South, young man, go South” variety, and if anyone likes, he or she can still take it as such; but I mean it differently now.
If you haven't been there, you may like to know what this tail end of New Zealand is like; before you reach it. Sliding out from Invercargill southwards, your train passes between long level sheets, of tidal water, and where the banks grow flat and brown, millions of marsh-reeds thrust up, all blowing the same way; as if, hundreds of: years ago, tribes of fighting redheaded chieftains all took cover in the swamps, and have since remained camouflaged, except their irrepressible topknots. This flat, glittering, reedy look, broken only by bright thickets of flowering yellow broom, continues all the way into Bluff; where, unless you happened to be a seagull, and hence interested in the outgoings of the big Melbourne-bound steamers, you might find life a little on the quiet side, though one hostelry was called “The Golden Age,” and from a bar or two came the sounds of revelry by day. I looked about for something that would say: “End of New Zealand” whenever I wanted to call up the memory, and, cxcept for the gulls, could see only a massive black bull in a hillside pasture, the wind flowing round the grave clean lines of his flanks. With head thrust forward, he stood, the breed of bull who, born into the old Greek legend instead of a New Zealand pasture, might have carried off the maiden Europa, and founded another continent and a subsequent peck of trouble.
Father, said little George Washington, I cannot tell a lie. The old Tamatea, queen of the Bluff-Stewart Island run, does roll a little. Anyhow, it is fine to sit, head in the wind, and watch the waves dance; anyhow again, under Captain Hamilton, the Tamatea could just as well be christened the Unsinkable; and anyhow, further than that, he who can't stand a couple of hours' mild rolling for the sake of Stewart Island and its companion isledots is, in my opinion, a long way past praying for. He should be gently but firmly dropped, if not on the head in infancy at least later by his family and girl friends, and left to eke out a miserable existence riding up and down in tramcars and listening in to defective radios. You may think I speak warmly. But you can't see spread out in front of me on this table my beautiful green and blue paua shell, my pieces of ambergris, my shell-fans, my Maori weather-glass, my wild yellow orchids from Ryan's Creek, my white stars of ake-ake, which, hanging in masses of bloom over little rocky islands, smells like some queer tropical fruit, a cross between pineapple and mango. Oh, if I could but get at the idiot who first put about the legend that in New Zealand the flowers have no scent! Why, from the tiny yellow sprays steals the most delicate, enchanting perfume: they are sweetest when the mist or dew is upon them, but sweeter still, the Stewart Islanders say, are the white Easter orchids, which garland the bush in late autumn. And those aren't all. Pressed in the pages of a book, I have the little purple and green spider orchids, with long feelers to their petals: I picked them yesterday afternoon on Ulva Island, under ferns and great rimu trees, while in the bush a tui went into fits of shameless laughter, evidently because I had only succeeded in spearing one flounder while the white dinghy rocked a few feet from shore. Remember the Highland gentleman in the ballad?
“Oh, I'm the laird of Ulva's Isle—“
If he had owned this Ulva, when its rata was just going into flower, and then had gone trapesing about the country for the sake of any hackneyed elopement, he didn't deserve his good luck. Stewart Island's Ulva is a lonely little place, so beautiful with bird and berry, hanging fern and wild orchid, that you might think it waiting for its lord and lady out of the old song. Once it was the home of a botanist, the late Mr. Charles Traill. His house still stands in one of the bushy, golden-sanded curves which are mere repetitions of Stewart Island's commonplace, and is inhabited in the summer time.
I am beginning altogether at the wrong end of the island, my lovely island of dropping wild fuchsias and bellbirds, called by the Maoris, Rakiura, “The Glowing Sky,” because, from far out at sea, they could see it surrounded by a faint crimson glow. Perhaps its blossoming masses of rata—not fully out at the time of my visit—caused the reflection. But it is an island of beautiful names, as well as beautiful sights. One well-known resident, who had the world to choose from, and decided to live at Stewart Island, has a house whose name, being interpreted, means “Leafy Groves Arising from the Sea.”
At the wharf you are met by a patient-looking old horse and a lorry. There are only three cars on the island, and it is quaint to see roads being levelled, and loads drawn by the horses so out-of-date in the rest of the world; quaint, but eminently satisfactory, and the road-menders, judging by their bush cottages, don't get on so badly away from what we call civilisation. Nearly every hut, deep among the ferns and fuchsias, was partly walled with punga trunks; there were neat little gardens, and at most doors hung flax Maori kits, used in season for storing away one's dinner of mutton-birds.
Ryan's Creek, Paterson Inlet, Stewart Island, New Zealand.
If you want to learn something of Stewart Island lore, the authority you should apply to is Mr. Fred Traill, a nephew of the botanist of Ulva Island mentioned a little above, and himself born and brought up an Islander. For a long time, Mr. Traill lived a business life in the much more densely populated parts of New Zealand; then, some few years ago, he decided that Stewart Island was the only place, came back with his wife and family, and has since been guide, philosopher and friend to hundreds of visitors who, like myself, hear from him so much of the Island and its secrets that they hardly know where to begin—whether with the green pearls found in the paua shells, with the kiwis living in colonies near the deer-camp at Mason's Beach, or with the weather-glass. The weather-glass is a quaint bit of Maori land lore. Washed up on the beach, the huge leathery strands of bull kelp are common-place enough, but only the initiated look for the places where the stem is swollen by an enclosed bubble of air. This is cut out, making a rather decorative little brown globe, whose merits, however, are not its looks. If your kelp weather-glass is full of air and resilient, fine weather is unfailingly ahead. If the ordinary barometer is dropping, and rain is near, the kelp feels spongy, and there is very little air in the bubble. I have tried my weather-glass in all weathers, and unlike normal humanity, it lies not. This simple way of telling the treats wind and weather have in store has been in vogue among the Maoris of Stewart Island long before the white man settled there.
Bragg's Bay, Stewart Island, New Zealand.
(Rly. Publicity photo.)
Paua shells, pearls, and the wonderful harp…. A few years ago, Prosper Ralston, famed abroad as “The Man With the Harp” (his life story was published in the Wide World Magazine), entered into correspondence with Mr. Traill over the New Zealand paua shell. Travelling the world with a collection of opals whose value ran into five figures, a harp, and a stenographer to take down the book he was writing, Prosper Ralston decided that the rainbow blue and rose of the paua shell would serve equally as well as opals, to inlay his “dream harp,” in which tone was to take on an exquisite reflection from colour. Shells were collected, and crossed the seas to the Canadian harpist; at last Prosper and the harp turned up at Stewart Island, and he camped down at Mason's Beach, where magnificent surf comes rolling in on a huge expanse of shining sand broken by cliffs and caves. The “red-fire” pauas—those with a deep rose lustre—and the deepest blue-green ones were exactly what he wanted, and when last he wrote from Australia, “The Man with the Harp” said: “Those beautiful shells of yours may mean a great deal to me.” Perhaps the paua shell—long used by the Maoris for decorating images, ornaments and canoes, and occasionally made into knick-knacks for tourists—may yet provide a far more substantial industry, for it can take a high polish, and one of my own island souvenirs is a tiny war-canoe cut from a paua shell rim. A necklace of green pearls was another interesting commission from an English lady. The pauas bearing the little green pearls—larger than seed-pearls, and of a very soft colour—are only to be found at one place on the Island. But what is there that can't be found somewhere or other on the Isle of the Glowing Sky? Seals pushing their foolish whiskered faces enquiringly round their basking rocks—stern-looking mollymawks, and the beautiful, sad-faced wandering albatrosses, almost their next-door neighbours—little seahorses, much prized by curio seekers—kiwis, supposed to be extinct, but cheerfully turning up in thousands on the western side—these are just a few of the quainter individualities.
How does it look, this ignored but beautiful tailpiece of New Zealand, if you come seeking not for curiosities, but for rest and new scenery? Even in the most inhabited part of the Island, Half-Moon Bay, the houses stand out against a soft background of bush, and a rock scarcely a stone's throw from the perfect harbour is a colony of nesting seagulls, screaming so loudly that you can hear their very unseemly invective on the mainland. Wild fuchsia trees line the roads, and out of them tumble fat tuis. The fuchsias were in blossom, and the tuis—not to mince matters—were as drunk as lords. Came from the bush the
Toy, an amber brunette Pomeranian, accompanied me to most of the best nearby resorts: Old Mill Creek, where timber washes, and the lovely “Leafy Groves Rising Out of the Sea,” where Miss Dorothy Baker, author of “A Surveyor in New Zealand,” has built a home that makes you rub your eyes. Picture a white and black English house—peak-gabled, its rimu doors copies of those in an old English house belonging to a relative—looking down on unspoiled New Zealand bush. Rimu is the Island's tall timber, but, besides the fuchsias, all manner of soft-edged, strangely-flowering things grow uncontrollably here. The garden, starting off with a little rockery of New Zealand mountain plants, slopes into green terraces, where the steps are not stone, but the much more appropriate punga fern, until one comes to a green ampi-theatre, whose borders, in a few seasons, will be rife with English primroses and wild daffodils. On this green circlet, in a few days, Stewart Islanders will be watching folk-dancing: the Island is one of the few places which still supports a maypole, and knows how to use it. Inside, “Leafy Grove” is a most charming place of soft colourings, old china, old prints. Half-Moon Bay spreads out beneath it, a crinkled shawl of blue silk. Probably this house is the peak of the Island's homes; but Stewart Island possesses mansions in every style, from the cave inhabited by its authentic caveman (who uses a tent-flap and a few punga ferns to shield him from the icy blast, but whose campfire has for several years crackled merrily up in the cleft he occupies for a dwelling), to the Norwegian whaler's house, its gables crowned with bright-painted wooden dragons. It is some years now since the Norwegians called at Stewart Island, reviving memories of the grand old times when the iron try-pots stood on the beaches, and places like Hell-fire Beach and the Devil's Cave got their names. But they loved the Island, and promised, when the bad days of the depression were over, to come back again. Their base is still intact at Paterson Inlet.
How many people know that ambergris of the value of many thousands of pounds has been found, and is still being found, on Stewart Island, which is the world's steadiest source of supply? A piece valued at over £10,000 was found by one man still living on the Island—and, depression or no depression, he has remained an ambergris-hunter. Ambergris, valued as a perfume-fixer, and used also in giving champagne its bouquet, is quite ordinary to look at—the best quality like a soft, greyish piece of stone, the worst black. It is only when you touch it that you discover it is plastic, and notice its odd pungence. Incidentally, ambergris is sold to the merchants of the East, as well as the perfumers of Paris, and Arab potentates put it in their coffee, under the impression that it is a very potent love-charm. Incidentally again, some hold the same belief about mussels, which, of small size and delicious flavour, flourish in great abundance on the Island. It is certainly true that at the moment the Island is suffering from an epidemic of babies, and the only kinds of wheel traffic you meet are perambulators and horse-lorries, perambulators leading by a big majority. This, like anything else, may be coincidence. It reminds me, however, that Stewart Island's biggest day was about seven years back, when Oscar Garden's aeroplane arrived—and stuck its nose in the sad sea waves a few yards from shore—and almost at the same minute, triplets were born. All the men of the Island were away when this first aeroplane landed—not assisting at the triplets' arrival, just fishing—so the Stewart Island women formed a line, waded out into the sea, and brought Mr. Garden's plane to shore. They were too much excited over this, their first aeroplane, to take off their frocks before starting with the good work, and the consequence was that when the rope broke, their comments very nearly equalled the surprised exclamations of the father of the triplets, bonny little lasses of whom the Island was tremendously proud until they went to live on the mainland.
Fishing boats at the wharf, Paterson Inlet, Stewart Island, New Zealand.
(Rly. Publicity photo.)
The glass boxes are something familiar, I believe, in the South Seas, but Mr. Fred Traill's novelty in New Zealand. First row out in a dinghy, just a few yards from Golden Bay. Float the glass box behind you, and look down through the wavering green. Huge red starfish, sea-urchins, living in colonies, the waving thickets of rose-coloured and golden seaweeds, the blue of a rock-cod lying on ocean floor…. Sometimes your starfish has gone in for slimming, and has whiplash tentacles; sometimes the fat sausage-shaped beche de mer lies there, unhonoured and unsung, plaintively waiting for a Chinese mandarin to arrive and go into ecstasies about it. All this, a world of green light and queer people, gleams up at you through the plate-glass, and, like the light in women's eyes, you lie and lie, oblivious of the fact that you are getting a crick in your elbow and the sandmes, in squads, are sauntering up and down your stockings, selecting what they consider, upon reflection, a really tasty bit.
The birds of Stewart Island, titi and kiwi and purure and pigeon-gull, deserve an article to themselves; those and the little golden bay. Bear with me if I seem garrulous. In all probability, your women and children will detect in you signs of the same complaint,
(Continued on p. 34.)
(By “
.”) Illustrations byTirohia A. S. Paterson
“As usual, we were gathered at the Robertson's residence, ‘Kai-iwi’.”
Robbie'S arm moved with the speed of bad news and rescued the bottle that was just about to topple. It was Saturday morning and as usual we were gathered at Mr. Robertson's residence “Kai-iwi.” Naturally, he was known as Robbie, and his morning reception was usually well attended for, failing appearance at his place, he had a habit of calling on everybody else. As he carried the refreshment in a well-worn cricket bag with the necks showing clear, the wisest course was to go and see him. Our street is of the kind that adorns Wellington. It exists in its highest form in our city. It has a small bend in the middle where there is a short piece of flat, but as a rule it climbs steadily all the way. Consequently all the houses have a view, not only of the harbour, but of all the lower back yards, and the last house on the right at the top carries a prospect clear over to the tram terminus. This place belongs to Smith, who has a ladyhelp who, according to Robbie, “makes Lord Peter Wimsey look half blind, and Hercules Poirot slow in the detective uptake.”
Our suburb is so high up that it is almost self-contained, and its life therefore, is much like that of a country town. We know the amounts approximately of each other's mortgages, all the wives' “At Home” days, and get fairly close to the contents of Monday's mail. According to our most distinguished citizen, Major Owen (retired), it has all the disabilities of the country and no corresponding metropolitan advantages. The major is one of our prize possessions, especially in the summer. He wears a tie that looks like the cross section of a circus flag, and I feel when he is looking at me that I know I am neither crease-conscious, sock-selective, nor tie-minded. His hot day wear, with a hat with green lining, mustard coloured drill, and tenderly coloured silk shirts, makes everyone look in front or behind for a skulking tiger. He uses “sahib, pukka and tiffin,” and (we heard from the Smith's ladyhelp) he got really angry when he spoke Hindustani to the bottle-oh, and the incredible scoundrel said in reply, “I know little of the northern dialects, sir, but my English is quite serviceable.”
He always comes round to Robbie's on Sunday morning—mainly, I think, with the idea, of keeping our views sound. He suspects me, I know of far too charitable views about Afghans, dacoits, Ghandi, and other folk who have never been elected to a decent club. His son is a great trouble to him. He is farming in the Wairarapa and has acquired some very New Zealand ideas. He brought his head shepherd to stay for the match against the Wallabies, and blew down to the Ran-furly Shield match with two Maori shearers. He blasphemes about the prices British manufacturers charge for farming requisites and questions the riding abilities of the members of the Quorn.
Robbie comes second on our list of leading inhabitants—for far different reasons. He has a large income, but devotes a large slice of it to the thorough investigation of the merits of various brands of whisky. His picket fence is a picket one with the points downwards and the flat ends on top. Once a week, at least, he has trouble as he navigates past my matipo hedge and strikes his own. He sees at once that something is wrong and leans over, bit by bit, to get the fence the right way up. Finally he overdoes it and makes a good, but horizontal landing. Watson says that one of these days “He'll just be strong enough to make the last part walking on his hands, and his yell of triumph when he enters his own garden path will be heard in Malaga and Addis Ababa.”
He keeps a gardener who is (according to our maid) his wife's brother, and who (according to Robbie) “came a crash because of his drinking habits.” By mid-day on Saturdays, Robbie was always at his best. He would demonstrate the blunders of the Italian commanders in Abyssinia with bits of cheese for mountain heights and rivers indicated on the garden table with the wet bottom of a beer
“I know little of the northern dialects, sir, but my English is quite serviceable.”
(ByBernice E. Shackleton ).
(W. W. Stewart collection).
The Wairarapa Mail Train passing the rail car at Kaitoke Station, North Island, New Zealand.
The willows will be changing now from red to green, in the bends of the river. They glowed so warmly beneath the clay banks and the jumble of broken limestone cliffs. All the winter the willows flamed as if the burnished husks that imprisoned the green tip of the Spring were polished till they caught light from the wind and rain. The husks knotted the feeble twigs and gave the trees a burning warmth beside the icy river, until one day, they were no longer red, but green with gossamer lightness.
I remember those willows with affection, and the smoke that came up through them as the afternoon sun dipped early down behind the hills, and with the smoke the friendly chugging sound that filled all the lonely valley with a sound like home.
Late winter or early spring is a sharp time to take to the road, but it is a good time. Southward through a gap of the hills that edge the Canterbury Plains a little railway line goes on from the branch line town of Waimate. It was laid down in the hearty and optimistic ‘eighties, but now it keeps to its quiet way, holding occasional and conversational intercourse with the slow stream and the road through the gorge, until it runs into the wider atmosphere of the twin basins of the Waihao Forks and Wai-hao Downs.
It is no longer a passenger line, but when as a goods train, it goes out, the surprising thing is how it draws its own peculiar life towards its quiet terminals. Waihao Forks and Waihao Downs are two stations, though almost one in thought and mood. A willow filled gully and a short fertile stretch keep them one and a half miles apart. When the train whistles at one you can hear it at the other. Yet they are sufficiently distinctive to be each a little focal point of a valley's life. At Waihao Forks a stream joins a good trout river. The hotel hobnobs with the station. The cattle pens are opposite the Post Office, but the Post Office is simply a box at a roadside cottage door. Waihao Downs, further on, is buried in the low hills. It has the homestead, the store, the station sheds and workmen's houses, and it has the blacksmith.
The blacksmith is important. He has a proprietary air towards the station buildings. On the days in the week when no train runs, or when there is no official at the station, he keeps the key of the sheds. He knows his man. He is a chronicle of the country's doings. I see him now smoking his pipe, his hair like Esau's, curly in his neck, his slit leather apron polished with wear, his eyes rarely moving with the slow mechanism of his thought.
Near the wide doorway and behind the tethered horse the wooden slabs of the walls of his shop were covered with the burned marks of sheep brands. The Waihao is good sheep country. Horseshoes piled the floor; links of chain were buried in the dust; the windows were curtained with cobwebs; the tongs were ready in front of the forge. As the smith leans on the arm-lever that works the old-fashioned bellows he peoples the countryside with his talk. Not that he goes often beyond his “shop.” News comes to him at the railhead. But when the train whistles the bellows hang idle. The forge is abandoned. The train, indeed, is a magnet drawing to it not only the township's desultory workers and the idlers from the store, but all the slow quiet industry of the soil.
I had a fancy once to put this country in a book, and so I started making
(Continued on page iv.).
(Photo., R. W. Carr).
The Railway Station at Dunedin, South Island, New Zealand.(Rly. Publicity photo.)
A recent view of Nelson, South Island, New Zealand.
The cowboy's boots are white with mud that has gone the colour of dust. He walks with a footsore tread as if the soles of his boots had never bent with the pressure of an easy step. He clops along in the wake of the cattles rolling flanks. The cumbersome beasts watch the road, and he is silent too, and shy as a calf.
When the “WW” on the Wellington Workshops train went wrong. (Sketch by W. London.)
The shepherd brings his sheep down by slow stages, six or seven miles a day from the back country. The dogs pad across the road and back again.
You know the slow way countrymen talk, chewing on their thought as on the soft end of a stem of grass.
I remarked on the day. The country was washed and warm. A lark trembled over the hill.
“I could envy you your life,” I said, “walking like this through the countryside.”
He looked at me and then at the sky. “And what would you do when it rained?”
I looked at his boots. Like the cowboy's, they were also white, but with dust that had caked to mud.
And thus I passed on all the day, talking to the roadman, the ploughman, the post mistress, and hailed the passing trolleymen rolling along the rails like oarsmen in rhythmical motion. But at that hour when the sun dips and the ground fogs begin to creep eerily over the ploughed paddocks, and a homeward craving, a stomach craving besets one, the chain of my cycle rode the sprocket; the old machine baulked and tipped me down with aching legs and mind a little sated with the sweet alure of country joys. I had lingered too long at Waihao Downs. I was now at the Forks and far from home.
Was ever sound more musical then than the whistle of an engine, or an engine's chug-chug, or sight more blessed than engine smoke coming out of willow trees, red willows turning green. A train is a grand thing in that it always links a strange land with the promise of home.
The smell of the cattle and sheep in the trucks was only warmly and inoffensively odorous during the leisurely unconcern of that branch line loading. A guard's van is a homely place and gangers are good company, for if the blacksmith had the gossip, they had all the blacksmiths' gossip and more. In the mind of the guard, too, the slightly aloof consideration of the guard, the prosperity of the countryside is interpreted in the figures he holds in his hand. He pushes his hat back to scratch his forehead the more easily to make the calculations on his lading sheet.
And thus it came to me, not by words, but by the spirit of the day, that the little train running Downwards and in again to the town, tapped the human and material heart of the country with complete understanding. The train belonged. It knew the sheep yield, the bushels to the acre. It knew the very soil.
mug. However, Watson tells me, his best efforts were during the Great War, when he kept count of the huge masses of prisoners reported in the communiques: “Four hundred thousand Russians taken by the Germans last Saturday, three hundred Russians taken prisoners by the Germans, two hundred thousand Austrians taken on Wednesday” and so on … Robbie reckoned that eventually “all the Germans would be prisoners in Russia and
“Johnston has an irritating habit of giving advice about dealing with slugs that attack dahlia leaves.”
(Rly. Publicity photo.) Day's Bay, a popular Wellington seaside resort.
Watson is the only adequate disputant with Robbie, and in many ways is even more picturesque. His money troubles provide our streets with breathless half hours. His radio is not back yet and it was taken away for repairs, he said, over three weeks ago. The Smith's ladyhelp, discussing with our maid, his inability to meet the current half year's second mortgage interest, said it was ridiculous to see him giving a law clerk beer in the back garden for the second time in one week. He is a crank on sprays. His garden shed is a laboratory of tins, bottles, and containers of lethal mixtures. He has a habit of singing “Down the Vale” while he is spraying, and Smith reckons that he is imagining he is dealing death and destruction to his creditors. Smith is a good sort, but has a wife who, in Johnston's words, “puts on the largest record in creation for the size gramophone she is.” She runs a continuous performance, too. They get very good reception of it without static for three houses each way. It has the steady remorseless persistence of our wireless set when the girls are at home. The ladyhelp told our maid that when Mrs. Smith was away last month, Smith was so lonely without the buzz of Mrs. Smith's insistent tones, that he took the radio set up to the bedroom and only switched it off just as he was dropping off to sleep. Johnston is an obliging sort, but he has an irritating habit of coming round on Sunday mornings and giving advice about the treatment of sweet peas, laborious methods of dealing with slugs that attack dahlia leaves, and other strenuous ways of improving the garden. He has a loud carrying voice which easily reaches the wife's ears, and gives her quite wrong ideas. He has the smallest model yapping toy Pom., a genuine miniature. Robbie pulled one of his best about this one, on one of his long benders. He had missed his own path and was trying to focus this tiny animal growth which was hopping here and there. Mrs. Johnston gathered her darling and Robbie said, trying still to really see it clearly, “Why, Mrshs Johns'on, you're prackertially outer dogsh, aren't you?”
I've missed out the retired Official Assignee who lives two doors from me, and is a mine of stories about the country province in which he officiated; the widow Martin who is rather a mystery, and many others who may appear later on. Robbie is completely out of Major Owen's list just now. He advanced the theory that all wars could be stopped by making the officers wear slop suits, and restricting military age to those over fifty. He reckons there'd be a business conference in No Man's Land in less than a week and the thing would be settled by splitting the difference. It seems sense, too.
Isle Of The Glowing Sky.—
after your first visit to Rakiura. You won't want to desist from talking about it. And after all, why should you? It's not every Saturday night you can go to the southernmost picture theatre in the entire world, and, wrapped up in a borrowed fur coat, hear a most impressive rendering of the late King's Jubilee speech to his Empire. Perhaps that, like the sober horses pulling the Rakiura lorries between the wild fuchsias, sounds a little old-fashioned. But there was something fine about it, the grave old dead face speaking its message, and flashed on the screen scraps of a listening Empire. New Zealand, of course, was represented by sheep. Why the deuce can't they give us ambergris or mollymawks for a change? After all, we can achieve other things besides frozen mutton. To revert to the Stewart Island pictures, they promptly carried coals to Newcastle by putting on a Yankee film about nesting seabirds—Ha! ha! ha!—fancy America telling Rakiura!—and then, with only four breaks, displayed Tom Walls leading Yvonne Arnaud a good deal astray, to her evident satisfaction. And outside the stars were amazingly white and clear and frequent—a better and a bigger Southern Cross than I had ever seen before—and although the tuis had gone to bed like good birds, a melancholy owl clamoured for “More-pork, more-porrk.”
Queer Island of the Glowing Sky!
How much tobacco do you smoke a week? The quantity used varies a lot with the smoker. Some can do with an ounce a week; others there are who smoke an ounce a day. Doctors, parsons, lawyers, authors, artists, inventors, and brain-workers generally are usually heavy smokers. Undoubtedly good tobacco stimulates the mental faculties and often proves a source of inspiration. The marked preference for American tobacco in various countries outside of America formerly extended to New Zealand, but the advent of “toasted” may be said to have revolutionised taste to a large extent in this country and now many thousands of Maorilanders swear by the five famous toasted brands — Cut Plug No. 10 (Bullshead), Navy Cut No. 3 (Bulldog), Cavendish, Riverhead Gold and Desert Gold. Nor is this surprising because only the choicest leaf enters into the composition of these brands, every one of which is subjected to the manufacturer's exclusive toasting process which largely eliminates the nicotine in them and leaves them pure, sweet, fragrant, comforting — and harmless. Don't accept substitutes. There's no substitute for genuine toasted.*
Tangiwai
Correspondents every now and again enquire for a suitable Maori name for a country house, or a club and camp whare in the bush. “Something Maori” is always requested. It is desirable to use the original native name of the locality, if it is known and is suitably descriptive or historically interesting. In the absence of the ancient name, an appropriate title can be coined; the Maori tongue lends itself admirably to the sweet-sounding and poetically descriptive place-names. It is necessary to know the place or to have a topographical note about it before deciding on a fitting name.
In the case of an Auckland club which asked for a hut-name, I happened to know the exact place, a beautifully secluded valley at the meeting of two streams on the southern side of the Wairoa Ranges, South Auckland. It is a peaceful nest surrounded by rugged spurs and ranges all densely wooded; in the distance below are green farms.
The names suggested for such a retreat among the hills included the following: Waikohu (misty river); Te Ngahere (the forest); Rua-ruru (owl's nest, cave, hollow tree); Te Hapua (the dell); Te Kohanga (the nest); Awarua (two streams); Whare-huna (hidden house); Waimarie (peaceful); Marino (calm, quiet); Waireka (sweet waters); Korihi-manu (chorus of birds); Waha-o-Tane (voice of the forest-god, the morning song of the birds); Te Wharau (the camp shed); Mohowao (bushmen); Piri-rakau (cling to the forest).
My preference among these, as I explained to my correspondent, was for Waikohu or Te Rua-ruru. The euphony of the names depends, of course, on the right pronunciation.
I give the list I suggested for the sake of the interest to others seeking appropriate names.
By the way, Piri-rakau is the name of an ancient tribe of bushmen in the ranges south of Tauranga; their descendants live there still, in the forest edge. They were so-called because they clung to the forest as their shelter and defence and their chief source of food supplies.
Since I wrote the above the Auckland club referred to has selected Te Hapua from my list as its choice. An excellent name; it is pronounced with the first “a” long.
The town of Dargaville was recently visited by a warship for the first time, the Wellington, one of New Zealand's own. Dargaville is forty miles from the open sea, but the Wellington could have steamed up the great Northern Wairoa River for many miles further. The channel of navigation is deep enough for ships of two thousand tons for fifty miles from the sea. We used to see, in the sailing-ship days, the tall spars of large barques against the sky, almost alongside the smokestacks of the timber-mills far up the broad river. I have seen a thousandton barque loading kauri at Mangawhare, a short distance below Dargaville. Deep-sea vessels were always in, loading for colonial and foreign ports with cargoes of kauri and white pine; tugs were passing up and down the river towing in some inward-bound vessel in ballast to load, and hauling to the harbour mouth the deeply-freighted sailers fresh with paint, deck-loads piled above the bulwarks, and casting the loose to the winds of the Tasman Sea. That phase of the Northern Wairoa life has passed. Now the shores, stripped of their timber, are a great dairying land; and motorcraft, working every creek, have replaced the sails. There is tidal influence all the way for nearly fifty miles above Dargaville, although there is no trace of salt water. The fresh water is backed up by the flowing tide far below, and recedes with its ebbing.
The North Auckland country is well railroaded now; still there are attractions in a run up the river that a land journey does not give. The scenery quickly increases in beauty once Dargaville is left astern. There are farms and orchards, and tall forest remains in places.
The settlers who pioneered these parts and made the lonely places fit for man displayed, perhaps unconsciously, appreciation of the beautiful in the selection of their farm sites. Very pretty and inviting are many of these riverside nooks, with the homestead overlooking some noble curve of the broad river, green pastures as level as a table, orchards of apples, peaches, lemons and oranges, old-planted grapevines that sometimes trail their clusters over the fruit-trees and dip their heavy bunches in the running water. The homes of the pioneers of the Wairoa were pointed out as I went up the river in one of the small steamboats long ago; the sites where the explorers of these forests settled in the early days remote from civilisation and hewed the woods away. There were the farms of the McGregors, the Patons, the Wilsons and many another. At Mataiwaka we passed the old home of Tirarau, who was the greatest chief on the river—a warrior who was so beautifully tattooed all over that his face and body carving was famed throughout the Island.
ByMona Tracy
(Rly. Publicity photo.) Blazing the trail for the extension of the railway to Ross, 1902.
With the Homeric blue of Tasman's Sea always before its eyes and the encircling arms of the mountains about its shoulders, with its setting of green malachite of bush and its gemmed marquetry of gardens—“The mountains look on Rosstown, And Ross looks on the sea…”
Ross, at railway's end is, I think, one of the two most attractive townships I have come to know during years of vagabonding up and down Westland. Yet its first reception did not suggest anything of the charm which, in later days, I was to find in this most entrancing little place. To be decanted from a leisurely train near to midnight on a wet Christmas Eve; to be able to see nothing but a little station lighted by a solitary kerosene lamp, and peopled with vague, oilskin-coated figures emerging from or disappearing behind the down-drawn curtain of the rain—this, indeed, was railway's end, the end, one felt, of civilisation itself. Behind were brightly lit towns, and their busy people and the pleasant memory of a warm (if leisurely) train. Ahead, one knew, were long leagues of rain-forest, incredible bush-clad leagues that stretched themselves interminably into the sparsely-peopled south. One trembled on Omar's “strip of herbage.” One stood, metaphorically, between the desert and the sown.
Ross, rightly, reproached me for an ill-timed arrival. Obviously, too, it resented being treated as but a mere stage on a hurried journey south instead of having due regard as a terminus. Knowing its own charm, conscious of its power to caress those who inger to savour of its sweetness, the town at railway's end scorned me as one of the great company of transitory folk who take the gasoline trail from Hokitika to the glaciers in a day and then come back and insist that they have seen South Westland. In reality they have seen little more than two green walls of bush; the real Westland withholds her face from them, as Ross withheld hers from me on this, my first passing-through.
But the station and the lonely lamp, with no hint of settlement in the drenched darkness behind them had already intrigued me; and later, as the car that had been sent to meet me squished up the long road from the station, hurtled itself past a few lighted windows and panted up the steep hill that leads away from Ross, I vowed to go again, and soon, to the town at railway's end.
And so I went again to Ross, and Ross smiled for me. When the sunkissed air is filled with the exquisite, intangible scents of bush; when there is running water close at hand and a tui is singing; when the millions of scarlet bells on the great, wild-running fuchsias are calling to the rata to match them in colour; when you may look on fields of pink and white foxgloves and see lassiandra setting out its purple cups, when there are mallows and pinks and Canterbury be'ls and Sweet Williams ablaze in little, old-fashioned gardens; when there is met with, always, the simple, the great, the unquestioning courtesy of the Westland-born—when you can appreciate these things, go, as I did, to Ross, and you will find them all. You will find, also, a kind of deep peace, such balm to the soul as one does not find readily in most New Zealand towns. Why so very few of our towns have the power to impart this sensation is a matter for thought. Perhaps it is because in few places in New Zealand will you meet with a judicious blending of the old and the new, such a marriage as brings, instinctively, the idea of perfection. I found such perfection, long ago, at Howick; more recently at Akaroa; and but yesterday at Ross. How passing strange to find it at Ross, the town of all towns whose very being was engendered by a fevered quest for gold!
There are many towns of the West Coast, relics of the hectic gold-hunting days from which the mind turns away, saddened. They are old and they are weary. Their houses are falling into decay, the iron chimneys ruinous, the verandahs slimy with moss, the windows askew in decrepit walls. They are like the tragic Gunhilda of Kingsley's Hereward who, when misfortune overtook her, refused to have a bath. Said she: “I have done, lady, with such carnal vanities.” But Ross is no Gunhilda. True, there are old-fashioned, shabby little houses which hide themselves discreetly behind veils of climbing roses or passion vine or honeysuckle; but generally Ross is brightly clean, and her cheek is still painted for the admiration of townsman or visitor. Her pride does not allow her to say that her day is done.
And what a day was hers! As early as 1866 there were five thousand men on the Rosstown field. It was a scene of frenzied activity, of delving and burrowing and shifting and sluicing; of strong men pitting themselves against the stony-breasted earth in order to filch her bright necklaces of gold. Nor was the work confined to the daytime. Rosstown's night was lit up by great flares, and the rattle of the engines never ceased; for on some of the deepsinking claims the work went on, in shifts, through the whole twenty-four hours. In the upper valley, however, there were claims on which the gold lay at no great depth. Here, instead of shafts, great excavations called “paddocks” were made, the stones and soil being hauled to the surface until the rich wash-dirt was laid bare. Owing to the nature of the ground (the Ross
Archdeacon Harper, whose “Letters from New Zealand” contain so many stark little vignettes of the old West Coast, has left us a description of an early Rosstown funeral. “As I stood there waiting,” he relates, “I looked down on a scene of singular beauty… An extensive valley encircled by primeval, forest-clad hills, a few years ago untrodden by man's footsteps, silence broken only by the voices of birds and the murmur of the stream winding through it … to-day the habitation of some thousands of people, dotted with huts and tents and mining machinery, the main street of the town which leads up to the church thronged with men making way for a procession of four hundred miners; the coffin, with its cross of clematis, carried between its bearers, the sound of hymns rising and falling as the procession wound its way up to the church. At the grave the hillside was thick with people, and I took the opportunity of speaking to them and asking them to sing. For a long time we remained there, the evening sunshine casting its quiet glory on the forest and the distant sea, lighting up the faces of the great crowd of mourners who seemed loth to leave the place …”
That was a day of peace in old Rosstown; but at midnight the work began again, with the night-shifts in full swing, the engines puffing and rattling, and the tingling bells making strident echoes among the hills.
The records of early Rosstown contain accounts of many such accidents, all too many of them fatal. But some had their grimly humorous aspect. Consider, for instance, the case of the miner who, when frying his evening meal of bacon, found himself falling down, down into the earth. He had unwittingly built his tiny shack on a heap of tailings concealing a deep shaft which had been roughly boarded over. With the giving way of the boards the tailings began to pour into the shaft, and the miner went with them. The accident was seen, and men flocked to the rescue. Although there seemed no chance for the unfortunate man, it was a point of honour with the miners never to lose an opportunity of succouring a mate. All that evening, and well into the night the rescuers worked in relays, hauling up the dry stones which had filled the shaft. At last, some fifty feet down, they came on the entrance to an old drive, and there found the man who had been so rudely shot into it. He was bruised, of course, but was otherwise uninjured; the air, penetrating through the loose stones had enabled him to breathe. In his sudden descent he had clutched at the blanket of his bunk, and they found it with him, also the frying-pan, to which he had held. His one lamentation was that the bacon had, somehow, got lost!
I climbed, on an evening of gentle beauty, to the old cemetery on the hillside above the town. Thence I could see the whole sweep of the lovely valley with its treasures of bush and berry, in sharp contrast with the great, bare heaps of tailings built up by man's gold-lust. From below me there floated up the joyous voices of young people, playing tennis—actually on the site of a mine from which millions of pounds worth of gold were literally wrung! All about me, on the green hillside, slept the pioneer diggers, the men who in the prime of their manhood had danger and discomfort as their hourly companions, who stood, each man by his mates, and who were among the most law-abiding community of miners the world has ever known. And, being a woman, I could not but help think of their womenfolk, they who had planted the honeysuckle and the roses and the red-belled fuchsias about the doors of their tiny habitations, and who had scrubbed and cleaned and baked and done all the difficult jobs of primitive housekeeping through days and weeks, often, of the reeling Westland rain. I thought, too, of the children, of the little girls to whom a field of growing wheat would have appeared as a miracle, of the small boys to whose tongues, in imitation of their elders, there came so readily talk of washdirt and flumes and sluices and sludge-channels. And when I reflected that these folk of early Ross lived and toiled amid the wild freedom of one of New Zealand's most enchanting valleys, I could not wonder that the Westland-born, for all his deep courtesy, does not readily call any man master.
(Rly. Publicity photo.) Ross township, Westland, South Island, New Zealand.
Later in the evening I sauntered through Ross with a Rosstown man, an enthusiastic citizen of the town at railway's end. After he had pointed out the various sights of the township with elaborate carelessness, I sensed the high pride he had in it, and his love for the place which, refusing to grow old and unlovely, still paints her cheek and adorns herself with flowers. We visited the library and the very fine open-air swimming pool, lingered beneath the great English trees planted symmetrically in the heart of the town, and viewed from afar the white scar on the hills which marks the limeworks of the West Coast farmers. We came at last, on our travels, to a quaint little one-storey hotel across whose low-set windows were huge guards of the coarsest-meshed wire-netting.
I suggested that the mosquitoes in this part of the world must be abnormally large.
“We don't get mosquitoes at all—or very few of them!” most promptly responded the Ross man.
I asked, then why the wire netting? He explained very patiently, almost apologetically. “You see, the calves eat the curtains!”
Yes, even without the bush, without the tui singing, without the thousand romantic memories of the past, one can be happy in a town like that!
By)
Tohunga
A learned professor in his course of instruction of New Zealanders in the right use of their English language incidentally referred to the excellent orthography adopted for the Maori tongue as contrasted with the grotesque treatment of Australian native names. This was due to Professor Lee, of Cambridge, who, he said, “with the assistance of the notorious Hongi, devised in 1820 the phonetic script which we now use.” That statement of history is correct, but I must cross tomahawks with the writer who could not give Hongi Hika a more complimentary adjective than “notorious.” His point of view is the typical Englishman's, where native races are concerned.
Would he describe Napoleon, or Wellington, or Cromwell, or any other great figure in military history as “notorious”? By comparison with European leaders our Hongi was very small potatoes indeed, so far as numbers slaughtered went. Hongi, it should be remembered, was always the friend of the whites; the English should be the last to call him uncomplimentary names. He fought his Maori enemies according to the ancient code of his race, and he was not without a touch of chivalry. An implacable foe certainly, but “notorious,” Professor, is decidedly not the right word.
There is a wonderful plenty of Maori poetry in the excellently-compiled souvenir of the Pomare Memorial gathering at Manukorihi, Waitara, recently. There are poems of great beauty and there are many charming ditties written to suit old-fashioned pakeha tunes.
Sir Apirana Ngata's clever hand is discernible in this capital poetry section of the little book.
There is humour, too, in many of them. This is the translation set opposite part of one of the waiatas:
“I never did fancy any lad from Nati; My heart was already lost to one from Taranaki; But beware lest you wed me to things out of date; I'd rather have the latest, the things of to-day.”
(“Nati” signifies the East Coast; a Taranaki girl is speaking.)
But the translation of the last two lines would have been improved had the author made it a literal rendering. The Maori lines printed are:—
“E kore au e pai ki te piki wakena, Engari motoka ka piki atu au, e.”
The exact English meaning is:—“I don't want to climb into the wagon; I'd rather ride in a motor-car.”
There is nothing wrong with that as an expression of modern tastes. No old farm wagon for the Maori girl any more than for her pakeha cousin.
An enquirer has asked for “the longest Maori word,” and suggested that the place-name in which the famous Tamatea and his nose-flute are embodied is the one. Such names, of course, are not single words but are coined phrases containing many words. They are numerous in this island, but are seldom given in full; life is too short.
The Tamatea guess is correct. There are several versions of it. The rendering which I think is correct, as given me by the Maoris, is:
Te taumata okiokinga whakatangi-hanga o te koauau a Tamatea-pokai-whenua.
The meaning is: “The hill-top where Tamatea-who-explored-the-land rested and played his nose-flute.”
There is another place-name almost as long in my list; it is not known to any pakeha but myself, I think. It is the meaningful name of the hilly neck of fern land between Lakes Tikitapu and Roto-kakahi, in the Rotorua country; the road to Te Wairoa passes within a few yards of the exact spot: Te tuahu a Tuameke te ahi tapoa i taona ai te manawa o Taiapua.
This being interpreted is as follows:
“The sacred place of Tuameke, the fire of witchcraft incantation in which the heart of Taiapua was cooked.”
You may link these historical place-descriptions together with hyphens, or leave them as I have given them, according to taste. But do not attempt to make one portentous word of them.
The shores of Lake Rotorua, especially old Ohinemutu and its neighbourhood, and the Government Sanatorium Grounds and park, abound in spots of historic import in the unwritten annals of the Lake people. Every spring, every little stretch of beach, has its place-name and its story. As examples of the interesting character of the place-names about here I note a few, given me by the warrior chief Kiharoa and others of the now-vanished old generation.
Tiritiri-matangi, the main street from the Rotorua Post Office to the Palace Hotel, was a kumara plantation. The name originated thus: When a kumara plot was levelled and dug up, and the earth heaped up in little mounds, a hole was made in each mound for the seed-kumara and a twig stuck there (tiritiri). It was inclined to the north or north-east, the place of the longest sunshine; and when the tubers were planted they were placed in this position to face the direction of the matangi, the warm northeast breeze. Tiritiri-matangi is also the name for one of the Maori heavens, of which there were ten in native mythology. Tiritiri, the lighthouse island outside the entrance to Auckland, is in full Tiritiri-matangi, and was so named over five centuries ago.
Whanga-pipiro is the name of the hot springs which supplies the Rachel Bath in the Sanatorium Grounds. The name refers to the strong smell of the sulphurous waters. It is a deep everboiling well, once a geyser. When its steam column was seen rising up on calm still days, the Maoris, observant of the spirals and convolutions, called it “Te Roro-o-te-Rangi”—“The Brains of the Sky.”
Perpetrated and Illustrated by
Ken Alexander
It is the privilege of parents to imagine that they bring up their children. Perhaps they really know better, but foster the fiction to save their souls from damnation and despair. Have you never shrunk before the candid contempt in baby's blue orbs? Has your polluted past never reared up and socked you one in the Conscience when the searchlights of inspired Innocence have illuminated the solitary-cells of your personal penitentiary? Have you never said to yourself, when, cringing before the contemptuous contemplation of a three-months' morsel, “If those lips could only speak?” Have you not thought what a good thing it is that the lisping lip is sealed until such time as pristine prescience is dulled by the perpetual demands of the midriff? Else what a crop of red left-ears there'd be amongst those present.
Perhaps you have listened-in to the optimistic oblations of young ‘prentice parents contemplating the first-fruit of their optimism chewing its toe in its cot. Ten to one they say, “We shall bring him up different. He shall be reared as no other child ever has been reared. There shall be no mistakes.” They dismiss the matter as easily as that; as though the Infant Samuel were so much cat's meat on the hoof. Not for a moment do they consider him as a whirring bomb of obstructive and destructive potentiality; a bundle of dynamic perversities—an enigmatical engine whose only certainty is its uncertainty. Do they discuss with Samuel a matter so vital to his future? Not on your life! They take it for granted that Sam is happy, nay proud, to be the property of such blu-perfect parents. And Samuel just goes on sucking his toe and marshalling the facts and arguments against the time when he can give them the air. But, could he broadcast his bedtime story, this is what he would say:
“How you ever fell for that sap I can't imagine.”
“Look here, mum and dad, cut the cackle and get down to crusts! It's all very well for you to go about blowing up your chests and spilling the beans about me. I admit I'm the stork's double-yoker, but what have I got to skite about? What about me? Was I ever consulted about this parent business? No, siree! I just woke up to find my whole future gummed to a pair of burst-tyres like you. It's not fair—'pon my body and soul, ‘tis grossly unjust. The least a baby might expect is a pre-view of his parents and the right of veto. But what do I get? The double-raspberry, that's what I get. Here I am with ninety per cent, of dad's bad habits ready to burst out on me like measles; I inherit Uncle Willie's egg-head, grandpa's bow-legs, Aunt Agatha's anti-streamline chassis, and dad's thirst. Do you call that a fair pop? Talk about the accident of birth! It's a calamity—a calamity with crepe trimmings. You'll have to change—change good and plenty—if you want to be a credit to me. I want to bring you up different. I want to rear you as no other parents ever have been reared. I would like to think that there shall be no mistakes. But when I get an eyefull of pop! I'm amazed at you, mum. How you ever fell for that sap I can't imagine. Of course, I realise that love is blind, and all that, but even a blind woman could sense out that dad's not the full quid. And I've got to be handicapped with him all my life. ‘The sins of the fathers' is right! But I suppose other babies have put up with almost as much and have grown up in spite of their parents. But let me tell you.
“Boys, they're not much to look at, but can they cough up the mazuma? I'll say—y—y!”
If you want this thing to go over, remember, I'm the boss, and what I say goes—and I don't mean half-goes.”
“And while I'm in the headlines let us get this name business straight. I'm wise to you parents with your pansy monikers and fancy baptismal frills. So get this! No Percy names for me! No Marmadukes or Mont-morencys or Plantaganets or Rudolphs. Life is going to be hard enough with a couple of dumbells to rear, without having a can of nominal improprieties tied to me. I refuse to carry a load of ancestral tradition in my Christian names. Christian is right! Do you call it Christian to penalise a poor puling innocent with such pseudonymous slanders, such phony prefixes, as Cuthbert Adolphus Sebastian, or even Basil Megaphus Rufus, just because they have been in the family for centuries like inherited flat-feet and warts? Plain Bill will do me; I'll probably be called Dough-face or Fish-eye, anyway.”
“Another thing that's got to be cleared up is this career business. Don't think I'm asleep just because my eyes are closed. I'm wise to your discussions about my future. Future—nix! Don't you think I've got any ambitions of my own? You can wash out everything you ever thought of. Don't imagine that I'll button up at the back all my life. You only do it so I can't chew off my fastenings, anyway. If dad thinks I'm going to be a stool-pigeon he's crazy. He can put this in his cherry wood. If I can't be an engine-driver or a traffic cop on a motor-bike, or an air pilot or a cowboy movie hero or a pirate, I stick right here in my bassinette until I qualify for the old-age pension. And that's that.”
“And while I'm in the mood I want to lodge an emphatic protest against the way folks take an unfair advantage of my temporary helplessness. They seem to think that just because I'm on the broad of my back they can come and goo-goo all over me. They make me feel positively small the way they go on. If they only knew how nutty they looked they'd cut it out and be their age. Besides, all this finger-poking will send me cock-eyed unless something is done. Grandma is the worst offender. Hasn't she got any dignity at all? Can't she grow old gracefully instead of yelping tiggy-tiggy-tiggy at me like an oyster-dredger in a fog, and bobbing her face in and out of my pram like a Christmas balloon? It's humiliating, to say the least of it, for a five-bottle man.”
The Call of the Wild
“And, speaking of bottles; the stuff you've been slipping across lately has been pretty ‘pansy’ liquor—a cissy sort of soup. It lacks the kick we Moderns demand in our ceremonial cups. I grant you that it may be Plunketly perfect and saturated with glucose and vitamins A to Z, but it lacks snap—it's deficient in devil. No wonder my five-o-clockers are a flop. From now on dad can have my bottle and I'll have his. Heaven knows, he acts childish enough to take his stimulation in a childish way. How I'm going to live him down I don't know. Honest-to-goodness, mum, you really should have thought of me before you slipped the bracelets on him.”
“And, getting back to parents, you'll have to ginger up your technique if you want me to be proud of you. You're out-of-date, off the map, old-fashioned, Victorian. You tip off all this goo about respect-to-parents, obedience, and speaking polite. You've got to slip in the clutch and be Modern. What's modern? Why, shiver me rusks! Pull up your ladder-proofs, mum! Modern is doing all the things your parents think you shouldn't; it's—well, you had parents of your own once, didn't you? But, honest, folks! I want to respect you when I grow up. I want to be able to point to you and say, ‘Boys, they're not much to look at, but can they cough up the mazuma? I'll say-y-y!’” So, in future, you adults, when you broadcast what you think of babies, try to imagine what babies think of you.
By.)
Tano Fama
(W. W. Stewart collection). A suburban train entering the Station Yard at Auckland.
Early visitors to New Zealand were impressed by the great size of some of the nets used by the Maoris in sea fishing. It was quite common for the Maoris to use nets over 1.000 yards long requiring upwards of 500 men to draw them in. Polack speaks of seine nets “several thousand feet in length and owned by the community.” Captain Cook wrote of a net seen by him. “It was five fathoms deep and by the room it took up could not be less than three or four hundred fathoms in length.”
Banks remarked that the Maoris laughed at the ships “King's seine.”
Captain Gilbert Mair described a huge net made in late times by the Ngati-Pikiao fold of the Bay of Plenty. This monstrous net was found to be 95 chains (2,090 yards) in length. The hauling of that new net and the tremendous catch of fish it made was a wonderful sight. These huge seines, or drag nets, were termed Kaharoa.
They were made in sections. Each family of a community, of several villages, in some cases, would make a certain length of net, then all these parts would be assembled and fastened together. The making of such nets was regarded as “tapu” or sacred and no one was allowed to approach the places where the nets were being made.
Travellers were compelled to make a wide detour to avoid the place and trespassers were sometimes slain.
In taking the nets out for casting, two large canoes, 50 to 70 feet in length, were used and the paying out of the net was accompanied by much ritual, chanting of Karakia and the repeating of charms. The tohunga always took a fish from the first lot captured and would offer it to the gods, depositing it at a sacred place in the village.
The Maoris made twenty-four other kinds of nets besides the great Kaharoa, and the whole tribe would feast for many days after the great catch. Line fishing was a pastime in which young and old were wonderfully proficient.
The process of drying fish occupied a great deal of time, for the Maori loved the dried fish which he frequently ate raw. The native of early times depended on fish as an article of diet more than any other food. It was considered most important that the fisherman should attend to his business seriously and a fishing excursion was attended with numerous ceremonial and “Karakia” for breaches and omissions of which there were severe penalties. The surprising thing was that the crude bone or shell fishing hooks of the native enabled him to catch fish where a white man would fail with more up-to-date gear. Spiders were the favourite bait.
The test of a youth's manliness was the supreme task of catching a sword-fish with a noosed rope, hence the ancient Maori aphorism, “When thou hast caught a swordfish single-handed then thou canst claim to be a man.” The youth of the hapu was counselled to be attentive to his task when fishing, for, as the elders of the tribe put it, “Fish well, lest you have nothing but excuses to offer as food for your guests.”
That they were well aware of the frailty of human nature and the necessity for such exhortation, is evident by the Maori proverb, “He nods who feels no bite on his fishing line.”
The New Zealand coast was admirably suited for their fishing providing, as it does, a greater area of shallow fishing ground than the whole of the Australian coasts. The rivers too, were full of fish and eels were abundant. The eel weirs in most rivers were skilfully constructed.
It was well that the fishing provided a prolific source of food, for the Maori indulged in a prodigious hospitality, whole tribes being entertained at one time at feasts which sometimes lasted for weeks.
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Rly. Publloity photo.)
The Auckland-Wellington Express at Palmerston North Station, North Island, New Zealand.
By “)
Straggler.”
A typical scene from the carriage window in the Wairarapa Valley, North Island, New Zealand.
“All seats please!” It was the voice of the station-master at Masterton which with the clang of the station bell sent passengers on the southbound Wairarapa express scurrying for their seats on a recent afternoon. It was a glorious summer's day—a true sample of Wairarapa's brilliant weather; bright sunshine from an azure blue sky and scarcely a breath of wind.
A wave of the guard's hand sent the train on its way rolling along over the great plains of the smiling Wairarapa valley on its way to Wellington, known to people of the valley as the “smokey city,” perhaps more commonly than as the “windy city.” It was a long train and there were many people travelling. Leaving Masterton, the hub of the district's commerce behind, the train sped on, and from the carriage windows was to be seen an everchanging scene. Passing huge freezing works on the right just a few miles from Masterton, and several small flag stations, Carterton was reached in good time. Named after Charles Rooking Carter, one of the earliest pioneers to penetrate into the Wairarapa, this township cannot be said to have exactly prospered because of its close proximity to Masterton with its much greater population. But for all that Carterton has progressed slowly but steadily over the past 50 years. From the carriage little can be seen of the actual town, the train just touching on the outskirts of the residential area. Bright little flower beds at both ends of the station platform were attracting comments of admiration from travellers. They were simply a blaze of colour. “It's a pity all station platforms were not decorated alike.” This was the remark of one of the passengers which seemed to epitomise the general line of opinion.
A brief halt at Carterton and then we sped on again. A change from sheep-farming lands to country where dairying was mostly in vogue was perhaps the strongest contrast. For on most of the country skirting the railway track in the vicinity of Matarawa and Dalefield, dairy cows were to be seen grazing on sound pastures. Indeed this position was the order for the bigger part of the journey from Carterton to the foot of the Rimutaka incline. Without a stop, scenes of rural activity of a widely varied nature flashed past the carriage windows on both sides.
Woodside was the next stop. It was here that one elderly lady disembarked from our train and boarded one standing on the other side of the station, which would take her to Greytown along a branch line. It was as a memorial to the name of Sir George Grey, Governor-General of New Zealand, many many years ago, that Greytown was called such. In the very early days of colonisation Sir George took a keen interest in land matters in the Wairarapa, especially at Greytown.
From Woodside to Featherston, the scene was still one of dairying activity. One could not help but marvel at the verdant pastures for the time of the year. There was a fair crowd lining the platform at Featherston as the train glided into the station. Alongside the station service cars and taxis were drawn up to transport passengers leaving the train to their ultimate destination, be it the township of Featherston or to Martinborough, some ten miles away to the east. The few vacant seats filled rapidly and the train was once more on its way. Leaving Featherston behind, a wide expanse of water came into sight with the high ridges of the Orongorongos in the background. Of course! This was the Wairarapa Lake, its shimmering waters glistening in the afternoon sunshine like a light on a newly polished mirror. But the lake does not always appear so tranquil. It frequently gets into the news for its flooding. Probably that is why it is so widely known. When it floods, it generally makes no bones about it, and very many acres of fertile farm lands are lost temporarily.
Suddenly all sight of the lake is lost behind a long avenue of willows all dressed in their verdant summer growth. The train slows up and comes to a standstill at Pigeon Bush to let down a passenger. So named because of the abundance of wild pigeons in the bush in this locality before the pakeha began to colonise the district, Pigeon Bush looked very peaceful when we passed through. But it is said that the place can be anything but peaceful when the wind blows.
From there our conveyance sped on into the lower hills of the Rimutaka range. At Cross Creek the attention of passengers was diverted from scenery to the changing of engines. Perhaps there were some who were unaware of the operations that transpired during the ten minutes which we stopped there; but to those of a more inquisitive frame of mind it was obvious that something was happening. Instead of the one AB engine, two Fell engines were attached to the train one to the fore and one to the aft. These
To one who has travelled a great deal on the Railways in most parts of both Islands there is no trip more pleasurable than that over the Rimutakas.
Half a dozen or more bright faced and carefree school kiddies climbed aboard before the train departed from Cross Creek. They were returning to their homes at the Summit under the advantage of the Government's free transport system.
The change of engines effected, the train once more got under way, but progress was greatly reduced as it wended its way round the bends of this steep climb—about one in fifteen. A special feature of this portion of the trip is undoubtedly the mountain scenery. What bush remains—and there is a good bit—is truely beautiful. As one looks down over acres of virgin bush into the gully far below with its placid stream winding its way out on to the plains the impression is awe inspiring. But one cannot help but attempt to visualise what this scene must have been like before the cruel hand of man wielded an axe and gave rise to fires. Alas! the face of the hillside on the opposite side of the valley is unpleasantly barren in appearance today.
Though the speed is reduced to a minimum in places, the steady chug chug of the engines as they strain to pull the load up the incline reminds us that there is still activity. The koninis, lacebarks, karakas, huge five-fingers, tall and stately tree ferns with their frail-looking fronds flapping furiously in the wind were among a few of the native trees to be seen. And a few pohutakawas were in evidence, but without their deep crimson flowers. All was peaceful in the carriage with most heads glued to the windows, though a few travellers did not lift their heads from newspapers or books, except perhaps to take a casual glance at the passing scene. “Time for refreshments at Kaitoke,” came the voice of the guard, who manifested a particular interest in the kiddies travelling. Momentarily passengers' attention was distracted, but it was quickly flashed back to the scenery outside.
Three fairly long tunnels were passed through before the Summit was reached, but then who need worry about those; readers continued to read for the carriage was well lighted and others continued to talk. The Summit, a narrow plateau at the top of the incline, is a deserted sort of place. Other than a few railway employees there seemed to be no one about. After the 35 minutes' climb, those aboard were firmly impressed with the marvellous feat of engineering which was performed in the construction of the line. At the top the Fell engines were left behind and an ordinary engine attached. The grade of the line on the Wellington side of the ranges is easier though there is more hill country passed through. So far, this side has not been denuded to the same extent as the other side and in consequence, we had the best scenery to come after leaving the Summit behind. Indeed, there is actually nothing to rival it on the Wairarapa side.
Though clouds hung overhead at the Summit, the train soon sped out into sunshine again and the pleasantness of the countryside as it flashed past became ever so more apparent.
After passing through two more short tunnels Kaitoke was eventually reached and there was a hurried rush for the refreshment room for a keenly awaited cup of tea and large ham sandwich. Within five minutes four smartly dressed waitresses had served upwards of 100 hungry passengers with tea and sandwiches or cakes. Their civility was a feature and through it all they remained perfectly calm and above all, were courteousness personified.
Two more tunnels were passed through and the train sped from the Maungaroa hills out onto the farm lands of the Hutt Valley. Upper Hutt was passed and then on to Trentham, where the fine grandstands and environs of Trentham racecourse attracted the attention of travellers. The military camp was passed and then on through Wallaceville to Silverstream, where the stately and very much English-looking buildings of St. Patrick's College came into view. Further wayside stations were passed by almost without notice until Lower Hutt was reached and then Petone. So vast has been the growth of the Hutt Valley in recent years that it is impossible to pick where Lower Hutt ends and Petone begins.
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Rly. Publicity photo.)
A mail train, hauled by four “Fell” engines, on the Rimutaka Incline, North Island, New Zealand.
On leaving Petone on the final stage of the journey to Lambton Station the train runs out on to the edge of the harbour, a glorious sea view coming into sight with Mt. Victoria and other prominent points of the city appearing. Further round the harbour, nearer Wellington, the train passes the new line which is to carry Main Trunk rail traffic through the new electrified tunnel.
Finally Wellington is reached, and the first thing on stepping from the train, which attracts the eye of the visitor is the fine new railway station now nearing completition. The journey is completed with the lasting impression in my mind, at least, that travel by rail provides every ounce of the courtesy, comfort and civility claimed for this mode of transport.
By “)
Shibli Bagarag
One of the smallest of New Zealand annual publications is one of the most important. It is “New Zealand Best Poems.” The 1936 issue edited by C. A. Marris is, because it is edited by Marris, something to read and re-read, something any true lover of New Zealand literature simply must have on his bookshelves. I truly believe that if in any one year the material were not up to the high standard he demands Mr. Marris simply would refuse to publish his annual. The year of 1936 was full of the right inspiration. Robin Hyde with success beckoning her on has three grand poems. Listen to four lines of “The Corn Child.”
I shall not bear bending willow Nor wild-rose wan as a star—My sons will be wheat-spears, valiant And setting forth for war.
Little Gloria Rawlinson has two poems in the book; the better is “Vires Vitae.” Kevin Maher's beautiful tribute to G.K.C. would be heard in the great chorus of prose and verse that sang forth on that great writer's demise. Dora Hagemeyer in her “Renascence” actually sings of spring in a manner sweetly new. Also there are verses we might be proud of from Arnold Wall, Eve Langley, D'Arcy Cress-well, Douglas Stewart and others. And I did revel in J. R. Hervey's “Mrs. Carmichael.” It was so delightfully different. Certainly the best Marris authology to date.
* * *
I have the greatest sympathy for the poor old prophet and what his country fails to do for him. Sad to say we have such frequent illustrations in New Zealand. A recent example. A book from a Wellington writer was dismissed in a ten line fill-up par by a local daily. In a leading Melbourne paper appeared a signed review of the same book. The review took up more than half a column of high praise and included a photo of the author who, by the way, has never been to Melbourne!
* * *
As an essayist Professor Walter Murdoch has been applauded by the critics of several countries. Certainly as far as this part of the world is concerned he has re-created what was deemed to be a lost art. Of his several books of essays possibly his latest, “Lucid Intervals” (Angus and Robertson, Sydney) will be most popular. In that charming, intimate style of his, he discourses on two dozen or more subjects, from the art of skipping to the art of leg-pulling. Perhaps one of the most delightful essays is his preface in which he gives his own definition of an essay, “a newspaper article, exhumed, reprinted in larger type on thicker paper, and placed, along with other articles between cloth covers.” Alas, I wish it were true! Could I but “exhume” one of my old newspaper articles and make the publishing magic suggested cause it to emerge of the Walter Murdoch standard I would be a happy man.
* * *
The number of books for children is legion, but, how few of them endure. In this country Edith Howes and Mona Tracy have had success with
“The Sea Hawk.” Caricature of New Zealand Writers (No. 3). O. N. Gillespie.
Chum is a fellow, not very big, Angelina is a Wallaby guide, Um is an animal. Sh! he's a pig, Flip is a nuisance—read inside, And to read inside will delight any kiddies heart.
* * *
Reviews.
“Sorrows and Joys of a New Zealand Naturalist.”
Mr. Guthrie-Smith has said good-bye. in his latest book “Sorrows and Joys of a New Zealand Naturalist,” so taste-fully produced by A. H. & A. W. Reed, who have been so assiduous during 1936 in giving us the best in New Zealand literature. Mr. Guthrie-Smith has given us his classical “Tutira,” and also from his pen will endure his “Birds of the Water, Wood and Waste.” This latest study of Nature sustains all the fine thoughts we have of his work. He is no week-end observer of our flora and fauna—no hiker dabbling for an hour or so in the country's beauties. Here is a man who has closely studied our outdoor life and written of it in a polished style. Mr. Guthrie-Smith delight in the big high sounding association of words. Having given this delightful and important volume to us is he not modest to a degree in his introduction?
The Messrs. Reed have reason to be proud of their printing of this grand book. Pictures, letterpress and format do them credit.
* * *
“Suwarrow Gold” by James Cowan (Jonathan Cape, London) is a collection of South Sea stories by our well known New Zealand author. He has written more important books but nothing more romantic, nothing more interesting
* * *
“England Calling” by William S. Plowman (Angus & Robertson, Sydney), is the story of a journey by car through England and Scotland—from Penzance to Caithness. “Towns and cities are much alike …. so we decided to keep away from them as much as possible and find delight in quaint villages and with simple people.” This is the very reason why this book is so interesting. In the by-paths of both countries the author has found much to interest himself and his readers. The book reveals a great love of England and all she stands for and is just another tribute from this part of the world. It is a beautifully produced volume and charmingly illustrated.
“Follow The Call” by F. S. Authony (A. H. & A. W. Reed, Dunedin and Wellington), is a welcome addition to our small library of New Zealand fiction. It is welcome because it is simple and sincere. There is no attempt here to play with big words to tell a story with “that correct literary atmosphere.” Merely a plain recital of the adventures and love story of a returned soldier who establishes himself in Taranaki as a dairy farmer. Because it is true to life, because it is sincere, it must be regarded as an important addition to New Zealand fiction. The author was born in Gisborne and after serving in the war, died in 1925.
* * *
“The Test Match Murder” by Denzil Batchelor (Angus & Robertson, Sydney), is one of the most original and involved murder mysteries I have read. “The third wicket had fallen and England had scored exactly eight pitiful runs,” are the words with which the story opens. As fourth player strides towards the wicket he drops dead—poisoned. Then follow the ingenious and exciting story of the search for the murderer. The interest of the yarn is relieved by delightful touches of dry humour. I can recommend this brilliantly written story.
* * *
“Children of the Dark People” by Frank Dalby Davison (Angus & Robertson, Sydney), is a story told with charming simplicity of two Aboriginal children and of the people and of the adventures they meet with in the Australian bush. Reality is linked with phantasy. I think it is a book that will live. With her artistic illustrations Pixie O'Harris follows the author like a devout worshipper of the story he tells. I wish we had a Davison and Pixie O'Harris (Mrs. Bruce Pratt) in this country to immortalise two Maori children in similar fashion.
* * *
In sending me the obituary notice of Mr. Andrew Fraser, a retired Oamaru bookseller who died a few months ago, Mr. Bernard Magee, a well known free lance writer of the same town, states: “Mr. Fraser is the bookseller who published ‘Wisps of Tussock,’ by David McKee Wright, some thirty-five years ago, when Mr. Wright was a young Congregational minister in Oamaru. You bought this book as recorded in your page, the copy being the property of the late Richard Penfold, a printer at the Oamaru ‘Mail’ and a friend of the poet. No mention was made of Mr. Fraser's association with David McKee Wright by any of the papers.”
Twelve Inches Less Round The Waist
Fat Man's Figure Now Becoming Normal.
Breathing Easier—Since Kruschen Reduced His Weight.
It is a mistaken idea that some people are doomed from birth to be fat and that nothing they can do will help them. Read how this typical fat man reduced his girth 12 inches, and got back his normal breathing:—
“Having been troubled with shortness of breath for the past two years, and also stoutness of the abdomen, I was advised by my wife to try Kruschen Salts. So I started to take it, and after the first bottle I found a little relief. So I took another one, and I had better results, and I am now with my third bottle and intend taking more. My breathing is far better than it has been for about three years, and my weight has gone down. Owing to my being so stout in the abdomen I was 180 lbs., and now I am only 161 lbs., and the girth of my stomach now is 42 inches, but was for a long time 54 inches.”—E.A.M.
Taken every morning, Kruschen effects a perfectly natural clearance of undigested food substances and all excessive watery waste matter. Unless this wastage is regularly expelled, Nature stores it up out of the way in the form of ugly fat.
Once Kruschen gets into the blood, just sit back and watch that roll of fat leave the waist, that double chin disappear, those ungainly arms grow thinner, that stout figure become firm. Kruschen is a saline—Not a drug. It is an ideal blend of mineral salts found in the aperient waters of those European Spas which are resorted to by the wealthy for the reduction of excess weight.
Kruschen Salts is obtamable at all Chemists and Stores at 2/6 per bottle.
Minister in Oamaru. You bought this book as recorded in your page, the copy being the property of the late Richard Penfold, a printer at the Oamaru ‘Mail’ and a friend of the poet. No mention was made of Mr. Fraser's association with David McKee Wright, by any of the papers.”
So we have lost the final figure of an interesting trio, David McKee Wright, Fraser and Penfold, all most interesting personalities of the old-time Inky Way in this country.
“Shibli” Listens In.
“G. B. Lancaster” (Miss Edith Lyttelton) is now in Australia, and will be there some time.
A well known New Zealand journalist is busy on a biography of Dick Harris, the New Zealand poet.
Variety In Brief
Fishing Around Wellington.
The Maoris who occupied the many fortified hilltops around what is now New Zealand's capital city, lived largely on fish, and (like the often-quoted sage of another country) believed in catching their food before regarding it as edible. Elderly Maoris still assert that among the other virtues of this method, with regard to fish, it kept them free from goitre, now noticeably on the increase in some districts. “There was no name for this sickness, or sign of it, till empty fish-tins appeared in the rubbish-heaps instead of fish-shells.” They declare roundly, “It will disappear when we catch all the fish we eat, and eat seaweed, too, in the old fashion.”
Why there are varying seasons of plenty with varying kinds of fish, Maori observation could tell little more certainly than modern science. Different years will bring differing waves of fish immigration, and the essential thing is to use what comes, as its season may not recur for unknown years, whatever species it may be.
Once the English whiting was plentiful, once the blue cod. Where it was common to watch a stalwart, tattooed Maori marching along the beach, followed by a woman with a kit full of 4 lb. cod caught off the rocks, now motor-launches come puffing fussily in with hapuka from deeper water and the sometimes quiet Strait, for motor-lorries to hurry into town.
Where now will a shark hang, cut into strips, under a tree, to provide a feast? Shark may have its disadvantages, to the pakeha senses, but it is nourishing food and its highly flavoured flesh no more attracts blow-flies than does a side of bacon hanging from a rafter. It could hang, or lie on a beach, for a fortnight, if not needed sooner, without being “blown.” Once, say brown-skinned fishermen, a warm summer would have brought enough of them well in along the beach to make it wise to be sure, before diving, if a long grey shape in the water was an accustomed rock, or a visitor easily stirred to activity.
Yet, who knows how long before they stray in again more closely? The pawas are returning again in plenty to their old haunts. Around the rocks where they are thick the butter-fish will flock, though never more will they be lured by the native pole-pot. To make that a Maori went to the bush-covered hills—now bare, or gay with fragrant gorse-blossom—and selected a 14 ft. sapling, dried it, and fastened to its end a hoop made with supplejack into the shape of a crinoline, about 4 ft. across. This was covered with netting made of dressed flax, painstakingly scraped with shells, and filled with kelp.
Of the various kinds of kelp that grow freely along the coast, the fluted one of medium length, with little bladders and its own crop of barnacles, was that preferred by butterfish, when in suitable order. Earlier it may float in thick masses along the shore of any little bay where it grows, but is esteemed merely as a playground for silver herrings to dart among from the bigger fish hiding below. But when, fullgrown, the kelp has been broken off by the tides and swept out into the Straits, to drift or be driven about for several weeks, once a heavy tide brings it back on to the outer rocks again, in early February or March, they will eat it greedily. Then is their time to feast on it and its barnacles, and the ridged sea-lice that breed and grow in the sand just below low tide. They will come thronging in, two hours before the tide, for there, and two-legged hunters, very small and active some of them, rallied before the tide surges over their own playing-ground, find the butterfish, or larger prey, with their delicacy in their mouths. To-day's fishermen may wield nets, hand-knotted of brown Russian hemp, hanging from iron hoops, instead of the more supple Maori weapon, but the game is for exactly the same end.
—“Waiokura.”
* * *
Surely the strangest railroad ever built was that of Captain Bauendahl, a retired German navy officer, who the celebrated explorer Roald Amundsen encountered in Spitzbergen thirty-five years ago. Bauendahl had previously failed in several attempts to reach the North Pole; and perceiving that the prime difficulty lay in the extraordinarily rough surface of the ice in the Polar Sea, where the ice surface is broken into myriads of irregular hummocks, ranging in mass from the size of a brick to the size of a house, he commenced to build an overhead railroad track that would reach from Spitzbergen to the Pole, a matter of 800 miles. To this end, he brought from Germany a large number of heavy poles, to be set up in the ice at intervals, and heavy wire to stretch between them. Some kind of a car was to hang by an overhead wheel which should roll on this wire as a track.
Baeundahl actually managed to get a few miles of his quaint railroad built before the patience of his workmen gave out. Amundsen, in his “Life as an Explorer,” caustically cites the German's idea as a perfect illustration of the common human failing of inventing a plausible solution of a problem by considering only one of its obvious aspects.
—M.S.N.
Specially Written for “N.Z. Railways Magazine,” by)
W. F. Ingram
“The weather is hot and sultry and the wicket easy. The crowd is nearing the capacity of the ground”—cable message from Sydney on December 19, in reporting on the Second Cricket Test Match between England and Australia. “The crowd is nearing the capacity of the ground.” How happy would be cricket administrators in New Zealand if they could say the same about attendances in the Dominion!
Why is it that the average Australian is an ardent cricket enthusiast—attending in thousands—while only a very small majority of New Zealanders show more than a passing public interest in the game except at very rare intervals? That is, passing interest other than that aroused by listening-in to a rebroadcast of the Tests in Australia!
Yet in many New Zealand cities it is a common sight to see ten or twelve cricket matches in progress on the one ground every Saturday afternoon—a ground which does not seem large enough to cater for half that number of games. Over two hundred players in action on the ground, and not more than fifty spectators!
Rugby football and wrestling may rightly claim to be the two sports which regularly attract large attendances during the seasons in New Zealand. But the smallness of the numbers viewing other sports may not be altogether an indictment against the sporting attributes of New Zealanders.
It has been said that the principal objection to professionalised sport is that it is apt to breed too many spectators and not enough participants. Perhaps—and it does seem to be a logical assumption—there are too many New Zealanders busy playing at tennis, cricket, bowls, swimming and track athletics and therefore unable to watch others playing. If such is the case it is better for all concerned that it should be so.
One of the youngest colleges in New Zealand is St. Patrick's at Silverstream, near Wellington. This handsome structure, with its “model” golf course in the foreground, is a picturesque sight from the train or rail car on the Wairarapa line and is destined to make history for New Zealand.
Within a short time of its opening and absorption of a large section of boarders from St. Patrick's College, Wellington, it began to make a name for itself on the field of sport and for two seasons held the McEvedy Shield for the most points scored at the Wellington Secondary Schools Athletic Championship Meeting.
But greater than all or any of its sporting achievements is the honour that has recently been won by pupils of the college. “The Third Battalion, C. Company, Wellington Silverstream (St. Patrick's) College won the Earl Roberts Imperial Cadet Rifle Shooting trophy with a score of 304. Harrow were second with 288, Sydney Grammar School third with 287, Nelson and West Coast Regiment fourth with 283, Melbourne Grammar School eighth with 242, North Auckland ninth with 216.”
The paragraph quoted above appeared in the New Zealand Press on December 14 and chronicles the highest honour New Zealand Secondary School pupils may win in Inter-Empire rifle shooting.
Only a few miles past Silverstream, is Trentham, the training camp for thousands of New Zealand soldiers who won fame in the Great War.
It is also the venue of the National Rifle Association's big championship meeting. If you haven't attended one of these gatherings, your sporting education has not been complete!
It may not seem to be a very exciting way of spending a day, but this writer, who went for an hour, remained for a day and will go again!
All manner of “uniforms” are worn at this great gathering and the oldest and most tattered uniform is invariably worn by a high-ranking officer! It's a soldiers' holiday and a reunion of riflemen from all over New Zealand.
Which brings about the realisation that New Zealand's representative riflemen have long enjoyed a reputation for accuracy and that shooting is on the list of events at the Olympic Games. Would it not be possible for a New Zealand team to compete at the Olympic Games at Tokyo in 1940? If the competitors who won the Earl Roberts trophy for Silverstream College were kept in view it might be possible to send a young team.
Reference was made in the “Railways Magazine” recently that an Australian team of women hockey players had competed with success in an international hockey tournament in America and that it was unfortunate that New Zealand women had not been given an opportunity of showing their prowess at the game.
Last year the New Zealand hockey team proved immeasurably superior to the Australian and State teams, but at the international tournament the Australians won sixteen games and lost only 3. The English team went through the tournament without defeat.
The next international tournament will be held in England in 1939. It is possible that an All-British team will tour Australia later this year. If it is possible to arrange a series of matches in New Zealand much good would be achieved. Just prior to the outbreak of the Great War, an English womens' team toured New Zealand and the writer has happy recollections of seeing the Poverty Bay team score a convincing victory over the invaders. That tour did a great deal to popularise the stick and ball game in New Zealand.
New territory is to be broken in “inter-Dominion” sport when amateur wrestlers from Australia compete against New Zealand wrestlers in March and April. This will give New Zealand amateur wrestlers their first opportunity of testing their skill against wrestlers from overseas; but in the opinion of Anton Koolman, who himself held Australian amateur wrestling titles and is New Zealand's most successful wrestling instructor, our amateur wrestlers are right up to international class. In fact, he considers L. Nolan and R. W Hutchinson to be amongst the really great amateur wrestlers.
The Hon. W. E. Parry, Minister of Internal Affairs, has broken new ground in his announcement of his favourable view to the formation of a “National Council of Sport.” Far-reaching though the suggestion may sound, there is room for such a council. With the general adoption of the “Five Day Week” New Zealanders, in ever-increasing numbers are seeking avenues of sport and healthy recreation. Just how the necessary facilities may be made available is a matter that will give sporting administrators much food for thought. In England there has also been a suggestion that a National Council of Sport be formed—but for a different reason! Following on England's poor showing at the Olympic Games, sporting officials came to the conclusion that only by a concerted national effort would England regain its lost athletic prestige. Since then England has defeated Australia at cricket, so the need for a National Council in England, may not be so pressing!
Helen
February Trip.
February is a dead month as far as clothes are concerned. Even if your vacation occurs then, and you are going cruising or beaching, you have already had weeks of wear out of the clothes you are going to take with you—at least, you have if you are sensible. You will have discovered, too, just which clothes are most sensible for the “picnic life” most New Zealanders lead in the summer.
You have found, for instance, that “best” shoes, hats and coats are out of the picture; that canvas beach shoes are in wear all the time; on beach, in the house, garden or street; that, for most occasions, bare legs, attractively browned, need no silk covering; that a large hat for sun should be a cheap one, so that the fact of its being left on the beach anchored by a stone while you swim, or being crushed into a week-end bag, will hurt neither your peace of mind nor your purse; that beach frocks are the only wear, plus two or three “better” frocks for summer evenings. Now, too, being well browned, one has changed one's powder tint to suit the darker skin.
There is nought to worry about for this trip save the packing of one's every-day gear, not forgetting the coat for cooler evenings, the not-too-good cardigan or pullover for chillier days or fishy pastimes, and the raincoat and beret, weather like ours demands.
A good holiday to you! Meanwhile, those of us left at home will endeavour to carry on the holiday regime in the hours that remain to us after daily toil is finished.
Reflections On Grandmothers.
I don't know what sort of life my grandmother lived when she was a girl. She was not the sort of woman who reminisced interminably and presented me, gratis, with a freely touched-up picture of hen youth. Victorian childhoods, are known to me only by the reading of a few novels and plays, and, more, by a study of the outlook of those times and by a realisation of how ideas on social and individual behaviour must have influenced the development of youth.
I know she helped a great deal in the house. There seems never to have been a time when she was not capable of scrubbing, patching, dusting, preserving. She led then, an “active” life. In other words, she was continually bustling, except of an afternoon or evening when the mending basket was emptied and she sat, “tidied,” in her stiff corsets and best dress, hair neatly swept back from forehead and ears, and read (but not too often or with too catholic a taste) or sewed (often and beautifully). Crochet work of hers, lacy-fine, yards and yards of it, gives me a full feeling at the heart when I remember how her eyes, faded-blue, strained to read in her last days, or rested, lids lying quietly over them, while her hands, work-gnarled, clicked the bright knitting-needles forever busy for sons and grandsons.
I think she sometimes went for picnics with a merry crowd, all piling into a horse-drawn vehicle or two, more or less grand according to the occasion. The venue would be some shady spot by lake or river, where the girls would busy themselves with the setting out of a grand luncheon, baked in hot kitchens the day before by themselves, while the men boiled water for tea or swam.
After the clearing away, of lunch there would be desultory chat and a walk, in groups dwindling sometimes into pairs, along some well-marked path, or to the top of some neighbouring small hill to admire the view. The girls' hats were shady and swathed, in the “brake,” by veils which protected white skins from sun and dust.
There would be fun on this picnic, perhaps a little horse-play, but altogether it would be a very genteel affair. So were all my grandmother's outings—genteel affairs. She certainly was always busy, but she never knew the joy of perfect physical exertion, the glow that comes as one's body cleaves its way against the smack of small waves, the feeling of poise and “rightness” as, evening approaching, the tennis court takes on a glory wherein one dances, moving perfectly across and across, weaving curves of motion to and from the ball which plops and pings as one feels it always should.
Did grandmamma know these joys we know? Or did tight-lacing and an enforced frigidity rob her of physical happiness? She certainly seems to have been a strong woman, rearing her large family one-handed, while the other hand dealt with a large house, a garden and a husband who required a little managing. Perhaps she lived almost entirely outside herself—enviable perhaps when one considers the ups and downs of one's own personal existence, but somehow machinelike. She was adjusted to her immediate duties, but never to the self of which she was probably but rarely and dimly aware.
A fine woman, my grandmother. Despite my strivings I shall, at every age, feel immature in comparison with her.
Margaret Kelly and Dawn Wareing, of the Railway Settlement, New Plymouth.
The “Miseries.”
To be at odds with our immediate universe, to hug that unhappy feeling, to quicken our resentment at some small lack of consideration in others, gratifies something in us. Wilfully we assume the pose of martyrdom and in doing so increase our sense of self-importance.
Mankind is anything but rational. It is only by the exertion of considerable intellectual force that we can prevent our ego feeding upon the hurts of others. So most of us blunder on, “cutting off our noses to spite our faces,” alienating those dear to us in our blind hitting-out. Just as a baby kicks and throws its tiny arms about in the process of physical development so do we wildly use our faculties especially that of speech in the cause of some sort of personal enlargement. Yet we know in our thinking moments that such a form of development is harmful.
All, in these times of blind rational “hitting-out” are yet ready to pray for peace on earth. We only ask: “We want it; but what can we do to obtain it?” Meanwhile we are engaged in numerous small wars of our own. Of these wars, none can be brought to perpetual peace save that waged with oneself. It is only by the exertion of the reasoning faculty in times of social strain that the individual can attain concord within himself.
All this seems very “high-falutin'.” It is my attempt to put into words my idea of social life and of the quest of individual peace which I am inclined to think is a necessary prelude to world peace.
Next time I feel irritated at the behaviour of a dear friend, I want to recall this idea of mine and to realise that he (or she) is suffering a moment of stress, is temporarily at war with himself, and that it is not my part to join in and make the war triangular; that any careless remark or casual hurt is not inflicted by him rationally, but is a by-product of the process he is undergoing.
When I myself feel irrationally annoyed, ready to be unpleasant to any who come near, may I realise that I cannot conclude my war by embroiling others in it. It is a civil war in which I must invite no outside power to join. For, after all, on the friendliness of these outside powers depends my social happiness.
Postscript: I settled down to write about the “miseries” probably because I was suffering from them myself. In the eagerness of the pursuit of words, I have lost them, dumped my load. That is a marvellous thing. In pursuit of my hobby, as you no doubt find in the pursuit of yours, the mental landscape lightens considerably.
Eye Strain And Electricity.
I don't always believe what I read in the papers, but a report published in the English press of a demonstration staged by the Electric Lamp Manufacturers' Association of Great Britain put forward some sensible assertions, the principal of them being that through the electrician and the optician the eyesight could be efficiently preserved.
An interesting address dealt with the measurement of light under which we use our eyes. Just as we speak of a “degree” as the term of measurement for heat, light is measured in “foot candles.” The pertinent part of the speech, to my mind, was this: “Sunlight on the lawn in midsummer would measure 10,000 foot candles; in the shade of a tree it would be reduced to 1,000 foot candles; under a verandah it would fall to 500 foot candles, and close to a window something like 200 foot candles. But at night, after the sun had set, we drew up an easy chair and with a 60 to 100 watt lamp got no more than 5 foot candles.”
Obviously, then, the illumination in most of our homes needs to be increased. The placing of lights has improved considerably, though many people still endeavour to carry out eye-work with the aid of one central bulb in a room. For reading or sewing, you see a comfort-loving and sensible member of the household pull up a chair so that he or she can sit with the light behind and a little to one side. Unthinking younger members, or unfortunate visitors flop on any handy seat and do their best with the illumination that reaches them.
Many people hesitate to instal stronger light bulbs in their homes for fear of incurring heavier bills. If only the economical person realised the danger to the eyes of inferior illumination, she (it is usually a she) would change the bulbs immediately.
* * *
Odd Notes.
Keep a saucer containing plate-powder in a cupboard by the sink. Any stained silver may then be rubbed up during dish-washing.
Dressings for windows! Spot muslins are daintiest — and smartest. Notice the white spots, small, medium or large, in lines, in circles, in designs, all over pastel muslins; or else coloured dots parade on white or cream.
* * *
For a colour note in a living-room, choose a tapestry stool. There will be the joy of making and the joy of using. Designs are here to suit any type of furniture—Jacobean, Queen Anne, Hepplewhite, Louis XVI—or jazz for the motley room.
* * *
Always clean flower vases before storing them. You will then never be annoyed by stains when arranging flowers in a hurry.
* * *
If you value your books, and yet enjoy lending them to friends, keep a notebook in which to enter the name of book lent, the date, and name of friend. You will probably lose one or two friends by this method, but save your library entire. Any librarian will tell you that among the people who would regard with indignation any accusation of dishonesty, are a few who lapse where books are concerned.
* * *
Recipes.
Batter.
Four ounces flour, ½oz. butter (melted), 1 tablespoon cream, 1 yoke egg, 2 whites eggs, good pinch of salt, ½ pint warm water (about).
Sieve the flour into a basin, add the salt, yoke of egg, butter and cream, and stir until smooth, adding the water gradually. Beat well, put aside for at least half an hour, then add the white of eggs, previously stiffly-whipped, and use as required.
Time.—About one hour. Average cost, 5d. to 6d.
* * *
One fair-sized orange, 3oz. butter, 3oz. sugar, 3 yokes eggs, 1 white of egg, ½ teaspoon vanilla essence, short crust paste (or puff pastry).
Grate the rind of the orange. Cream the butter and sugar well together, beat each yoke in separately, add orange juice and rind, and essence. Whisk the white of egg stiffly, add it lightly to the rest of the ingredients, and pour the mixture into the tartlet moulds, previously lined with paste. Bake from fifteen to twenty minutes in a moderate oven, and when three-quarters baked, dredge them well with castor sugar.
Time.—Thirty to forty minutes. Average cost, 8d., exclusive of the paste. Sufficient for nine or ten tartlets.
Sugar, 2 cups; cream of tartar, ½ teaspoon; egg (whites), 2; baking powder, ½ teaspoon; hot water, 1½ cup; lemon juice, ½ lemon.
Mix sugar, cream of tartar and baking powder, add water and let it boil without stirring. Beat whites stiffly, add boiling syrup a spoonful at a time, beating well. Keep syrup boiling, continue until about half the syrup has been added. Add lemon juice. Boil the rest of the syrup until it forms a thread, add it all at once to the mixture and continue beating over warm water until the icing will remain in shape. Pour over cake immediately.
* * *
2lbs. Blackberries, 1 pint vinegar, lib. sugar to each pint of juice. Put the b1ackberries into the vinegar and leave for 24 hours, then press out the juice, strain, and add 1lb. of sugar to every pint of juice and boil to a syrup (about three minutes). Cool and bottle. Allow about one tablespoonful of the vinegar to a tumblerful of water. Equally good for a summer or winter drink. Raspberries and black currants may be used in the same way.
* * *
Home Made Sweets.
Almond Toffee.
Ilb. sugar, 5oz. almonds, ipt. water, pinch of cream of tartar, almond essence.
Blanch and skin the almonds, cut them across in halves and dry them in the oven without browning. Dissolve sugar in the water, add cream of tartar and boil until a deep amber-coloured syrup is obtained. Remove from the fire, add the almonds, boil up again and pour on to a buttered plate.
* * *
2lbs. golden syrup, Ilb. walnuts, I tablespoon glucose, I good pinch carbonate of soda.
Blanch the walnuts, chop them coarsely, and dissolve the carbonate of soda in a small quantity of hot water. Bring the syrup to boiling point, add the glucose and boil until ready. Remove from fire, stir in the prepared walnuts and carbonate of soda and at once pour on to a buttered plate. When sufficiently set mark into sections and when perfectly cold divide into cubes.
* * *
3lbs. loaf sugar, ½lb. desiccated cocoanut, ½pt. water, vanilla essence, cochineal.
Line a shallow tin with grease-proof paper. Boil the sugar and water. Remove saucepan from fire, add the cocoanut and flavour to taste. Let it cool a little, then pour half into the prepared tin, and stand the vessel containing the remainder in hot water to prevent it setting. As soon as the portion in the tin is set add a few drops of cochineal to the preparation in the pan, and pour it over the ice in the tin. When cold turn out and cut in cubes.
Wit And Humour
“Mrs. Jones,” said the annoyed woman to her neighbour, “I make no complaint about your Alf copying my Percy's sums at school, but I do think it's time to say something when your boy starts ‘itting my boy when the answers ain't right.”
* * *
A little boy had been taken to see the Toys Department at one of the big shops. On returning home, his mother said: “Well, dear, did you see Santa Claus?”
“Oh yes, Mummie, he was wearing a lovely red coat and had a great white beard and long white hair.”
“And what did Santa Claus say to you?”
“He said, ‘Put that d—d train down!”
* * *
“Mary has a wonderful husband.”
“Yes? How is that?”
“Why, he helps her do all the work. Monday he washed the dishes with her. Tuesday he dusted with her. And to-morrow he is going to mop the floor with her.”
* * *
Engine Driver's Sweetie: “And do you always think of me during your long night trips?”
Driver: “Do I? I've wrecked two trains that way already.”
Sweetie: “Oh, you darling!”
* * *
The domestic squabble was in progress.
“I spend hours toiling in the garden!” said Jones.
“Bah!” came the response from his other half. “And the only rose we've got is on the water-can!”
* * *
Husband (as burglars are heard downstairs): “Sh-h, dear! This is going to be a battle of brains.”
Wife: “How brave of you, dear, to go unarmed.”
“Now, boys,” said the teacher, “tell me the signs of the zodiac. You first, Thomas.”
“Taurus, the Bull.”
“Right! Now, you, Harold, another one.”
“Cancer, the Crab.”
“Right again. And now it's your turn, Albert.”
The boy looked puzzled, hesitated a moment and then blurted out: “Mickey, the Mouse.”
Putting the Finishing Touches After a Good Clean up
Courtesy Great-Western Railway.
A small girl said to her father: “Daddy, I have just caught five flies, two were males and three were females.” On being questioned how she knew which were males and which were females, she replied: “Two of them were on the whisky bottle and the other three on the mirror.”
* * *
The schooolmaster was explaining to his class of small boys the nature of common fractions.
“If I take a potato, cut it in half, then in quarters, and then in halves again, what shall I have?”
“Chips, sir,” was the unexpected response from one small boy.
“Buy a Christmas tree, lady, buy a tree and make the kiddies happy.”
“Sir! I have no children.”
“My mistake, lady, buy some nice mistletoe!”
* * *
Landlady (confiding troubles with lodgers to friend): “Then I had one ‘oo made out ‘e was a bachelor of arts, an' blow me if ‘e didn't ‘ave a wife and family in Taihape all the time.”
* * *
Fussy Lady: “Is the 4.10 a good train?”
Porter: “Well, people will talk, of course, ma'am, but there's nothing definitely known ag'in ‘er.”
* * *
The farmer's wife had just paid the last instalment on the perambulator.
Clerk: “Thank you, madam. How is the baby getting on now?”
Lady: “Oh, he's all right. He's getting married next week.”
* * *
“Yes,” the teacher explained, “quite a number of plants and flowers have the prefix ‘dog.’ For instance, the dog rose, and the dog violet are well known. Can you name another?”
There was silence, then a happy look illuminated the face of a boy at the end of the class.
“Please, miss,” he called out, proud of his knowledge, “collie-flowers!”
* * *
At a recent race meeting in our Hawke's Bay township two Maoris were the joint owners of a horse that competed in the local Cup event. One, Reta, acted as the jockey, and, as he flogged his mount home, the last of a big field, his companion, Rewi, full of anger, rushed to meet him. “Why you never come away in te straight, like I told you?” he demanded angrily. Reta spat contemptuously. “How could I come without te hoi hau? (horse)” he roared—O. W. Waireki.
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