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The New Zealand Railways Magazine is on sale through the principal booksellers, or may be obtained post-free for 6/- per annum.
Employees of the Railway Department are invited to forward news items or articles bearing on railway affairs. The aim of contributors should be to supply interesting topical material tending generally towards the betterment of the service.
In all cases where the Administration makes announcements through the medium of this journal the fact will be clearly indicated.
The Department does not idenjpgy itself with any opinions which may be expressed in other portions of the publication, whether appearing over the author's name or under a nom de plume.
Short stories, poetry, pen-and-ink sketches, etc., are invited from the general public upon New Zealand subjects.
Payment for short paragraphs will be made at 2d. a line. Successful contributors will be expected to send in clippings from the Magazine for assessment of the payment due to them.
The Editor cannot undertake the return of MS. unless accompanied with a stamped and addressed envelope.
All communications should be addressed to The Editor, New Zealand Railways Magazine, Wellington.
I hereby cerjpgy that the publisher's lists and other records disclose that the circulation of the “New Zealand Railways Magazine” has not been less than 20,000 copies each issue since July, 1930.
The Department's accounts show that the sales of the Magazine during the year ended 31st March, 1936, were more than treble those of the previous financial year.
Deputy-Controller and Auditor-General. 26/5/36.
(Rly. Publicity photo.)
In every advance made by science and invention there must first be imagination to picture in the mind some semblance of the finished product. Following the work of the imagination comes the necessity for its practical application, and it is here that artistic talent is called for—capacity to picture forth so that others may see the thing imagined by the scientist or inventor, the philosopher or poet.
It is in the realm of mechanics that model-making plays its most important part. Doubtless many conceptions have been spoilt, if not utterly ruined, by the short-comings of the model-maker—the lack of ability to produce the thing the mind conceived—but against these defects, inherent in the use of models, must be set uncounted successes where, as the model took shape, new ideas developed from it to improve almost beyond imagination the original idea.
The successful uses to which scale models are put in experimental investigation regarding buildings, power machines and transport units is interestingly told in a recent issue of “The Engineer”; but the use of models extends, of course, far beyond the limitations of mechanics. Sculptors, painters, dress designers take nature's model as a basis for their work. Preachers and teachers point constantly to models of humanity—“Lives of great men all remind us how to make our lives sublime”—that kind of model.
There are model houses, model gardens, model stations which are not “scale” models but places actually in operation which might be used either as something to copy or to improve upon. The railways of this country, for instance, are gaining good reputation for the model gardens to be found associated with some of their stations or workshops. To anyone who has had an opportunity to see the work, and skill in design, and knowledge of growing things which these places reveal, the thought comes that here at last is the best possible use made of the means available for making the desert blossom like the rose. The attitude towards things of this kind may either be “Here's something done. Can you better it?” or “Make yours like this!”
There is no doubt that example is vastly more important than precept, and that to have something to judge by and to work to is the principal aid in human progression.
In the realm of the social sciences the use of models is not so simple, yet even here the experience of history is a useful guide in showing what is worth following and what to avoid.
The principle of the use of models is as old as nature itself, and it is an interesting and valuable study to trace the origin of inventions as well as the origin of species.
For the purposes of everyday life, it is a lesson of experience that most is accomplished when work is arranged according to some model—it may be rough and sketchy, but a model, a “scheme of work,” an agenda, should be there, like the shafts of a cart or the rails of a track, to help direction or point the way to the desired goal.
The recently published figures of substantial increases in railway traffic are particularly pleasing to railwaymen who have had the opportunity to handle the business and to judge for themselves the friendly public attitude towards the service the Department is rendering.
In the course of recent travel over most parts of the system I have had many indications of the goodwill existing between the staff and the public, and numbers of those whom I met upon Departmental matters were most appreciative of what the railwaymen of their locality have been able to do to help business along.
The present is a most important transition period in railway affairs. There are very great changes being made in the facilities and equipment of the Department as well as in the methods of operation and in the relationship between the railways and other forms of transport. In these circumstances it is especially important that contact between the public and the staff should be on a basis of mutual understanding and goodfellowship, as it is only by such conditions that the best for all can be secured from the improvements under way.
A recent visitor to New Zealand, a leader in the industrial world, attributed success in business affairs to what he called “The four C's—contact, consultation, co-operation and confidence.” This summary appears to be an almost perfect one, and is in line with the principles in operation upon our own system.
I believe that confidence has been definitely established as between the public, the management and the staff of the railways, that opportunities for contact and consultation are afforded and used to a marked degree, and that co-operation is secured throughout the service and with the business community, to a very great extent.
There is, of course, always opportunity for improvement, and a constant necessity for observation by members of the staff to see in what way new conditions as they arise may be turned to the best account for the public and the railways. It is in co-operation of this kind that the most effective development of our great transportation system lies.
General Manager.
Lord Bledisloe is foremost among those lovers of the New Zealand primitive vegetation who profoundly appreciate the value of the scienjpgic work of the late Dr. Leonard Cockayne. In a notable address, published in his “Ideals of Nationhood,” he described Cockayne as the greatest of the Empire's botanists. Another eminent man in the scienjpgic world, Professor Tansley, wrote that “Leonard Cockayne played the most conspicuous and important part in the development of modern field botany during the first third of the twentieth century. He showed what field botany could become in the hands of a man with the right endowments. Not only could it give us a really adequate scienjpgic picture of natural vegetation, but it could also be most effectively applied to the utilitarian purposes of forestry, pastoralism and reclamation of lands. Cockayne's vigorous indefatigable personality, combined as it was with complete sincerity of mind, wide outlook, and the particularly acute powers of observation and memory that make the born field naturalist, were devoted to a flora and vegetation of great richness and unique interest at a time when it was largely unspoiled by human interference.” His distinction happily was well recognised before he died, and the many publications he gave to the world are his enduring memorial.
Teonard Cockayne was an Englishman whose quick, keen brain early turned to the study of wild nature, and who was fortunately able from his boyhood to engage in the botanical research that developed into the great and all-absorbing love of his existence. He was born at Thorpe House, Norton Lees, Derbyshire, on April 7th, 1855. His father, Mr. William Cockayne, was a merchant. Reared in conditions that made him acquainted with the beauties of nature, his childhood life was a fitting preparation for the pursuits that came to dominate his career. He lived much in the out-of-doors; he was in the midst of gardens and trees. He was educated chiefly at Wesley College, in Sheffield, and he spent two years at a Manchester College with the idea of becoming a doctor. He studied chemistry and botany, but did not take a degree or carry out his youthful desire to be a doctor. His intentions were not very clearly defined at that early stage; it was his migration to New Zealand in 1880—he had an uncle here—that opened up to him interests in the study of wild life that shaped and matured his scienjpgic tastes.
He was first a school teacher, for several years after coming to this country. He was on the staff of the Tokomairiro District High School. It was then that he began the study of New Zealand's plant life; and later, when in Christchurch, he experimented in the reclamation of sand dunes. He established a kind of plant museum close to the sandy coast near Christchurch, and it was there that he became known as a keenly observant student of the New Zealand native plant world. Eventually he gave up his teaching work and applied his whole attention to botanical problems, to the incalculably great benefit of his adopted country.
Henceforth his life was spent in making an intensive survey of the plants of New Zealand and their environment, and in exploring every forest zone, from the kauri groves in the far North to the rich rain forests of the South and the West Coast, and Stewart Island. The alpine and subalpine vegetation particularly interested him, and he was the most vigorous and outspoken critic of the acclimatisation blunders, which have resulted in enormous injury to mountain flora.
In 1904 he was requested by Professor Engler to write the volume on the vegetation of New Zealand for publication in his series of monographs on the vegetation of the earth. This great book was published in 1921; in the meantime Cockayne wrote many reports on botanical surveys for the New Zealand Government.
He wrote about the Arthur's Pass region, which was one of his earliest happy hunting grounds; the Waimakariri River region, the off-lying islands of the South, the Waipoua kauri forest, Kapiti Island bird and forest sanctuary, the Tongariro National Park, the dune areas of the Dominion, and other regional descriptions. Some of his work, such as the Tongariro National Park survey, was done in conjunction with his friend and fellow-lover of the forests and flowers, Mr. E. Phillips Turner, of the Scenery Conservation and State Forest Services.
A most useful handbook written by these two great men is “The Trees of New Zealand,” published when Mr. Turner was Director of Forestry. To this manual I often turn for enlightenment and for sheer pleasure of the study of our trees; its clearness and simplicity, combined with a masterly scienjpgic presentation of the subject, gives it an educational value that should be more widely known. It enables New Zealanders and visitors to the country to idenjpgy trees and shrubs and to learn something of their characters and uses. The authors
Cockayne was a fervent opponent of animals and exotic adulterants in the
Photo., courtesy “North Auckland Times.”)
View along the road which runs for twelve miles through the famous Waipoua State Forest, North Auckland. This reserve of 30,000 acres contains the finest specimens of the kauri in New Zealand.
Dr. Cockayne again and again emphasised this point, the preservation of the rapidly disappearing primeval vegetation of New Zealand in its original unsullied condition. In the Otari Open-Air Museum at Wilton's Bush he illustrated his principle of faithfulness to Nature's original scheme by stipulating that no species should be added to the bush which did not originally belong to that class of forest—the semi-coastal forest of Wellington. His intention, as the Director of Kew observed, was to bring back the forest as nearly as might be to its original composition and status. We may imagine from this, if we had not known it already, that Dr. Cockayne's objection to what has well been called “mongrel forest” was as deep and great as his objection to deer and other destroyers.
Dr. Cockayne frequently pointed out the usefulness of such small trees as manuka as nurse-trees for the larger timbers, especially the kauri. Yet it has been the custom to get rid of the manuka as mere useless “scrub.” He had a strong belief, based on long experience, in the power of much of the indigenous forest to reproduce itself. In his account of the botany of Stewart Island he wrote: “There is a deep-rooted popular belief that when the New Zealand forest is once interfered with, and the light let in through trees being removed, and so on, it is doomed. This opinion is one of those half-truths that arise from an imperfect acquaintance with the facts. It is true that forests do cease to be; but it is not merely the cutting-out of a certain proportion of the trees which has led to their destruction, but fire and cattle-grazing must be added to the destructive influences. In Stewart Island, cut the forest to the ground, burn its last remnant to ashes, and in a very few years, notwithstanding the presence of cattle, it will reappear.”
The indigenous forest, he held, while-some of it was of great value as a source of timber, was for the larger part possibly of greater value in its function as protection forest for conserving and regulating the water supply and preventing erosion.
The great botanist was always ready to place his vast store of plant-lore and his advice about tree-planting at the service of his fellow New Zealanders. He fired others with his enthusiasm for the saving and reproducing of the country's natural vegetation. One of the visible fruits of his long campaign is the Otari Open-Air Museum, at Wilton's Bush, Wellington, where trees and plants representing the original covering of these islands are assembled in a little wild park. In that beaujpgul sanctuary of primitive flora he was most fittingly laid, on
Only a botanist can adequately describe the special value of Dr. Cockayne's plant experiments and surveys, and I turn gladly to an appreciation of his work written by Sir Arthur W. Hill, the famous. Director of the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew, Surrey, who visited New Zealand some years ago. What appealed to Cockayne so strongly, he wrote, and what fired him to pass on his vision so ably to others, was the study of the living plant in its natural surroundings.
“Unrecognised and unlabelled at first, Cockayne in New Zealand was already an ecologist waiting for the term to be adopted by botanists, and fully trained, with his keen insight, to lead the way not in New Zealand only but in the world. Ecology, as Cockayne himself briefly described it, is ‘the class of research which deals with living plants and their relation to their surroundings, and which gathers its data from actual observation in the field.’ Therefore it is fitted to provide ‘a more accurate knowledge regarding the maximum and minimum requirements of each economic plant and its behaviour when growing with other plants and animals’.”
In recognition of natural hybrids—which at the time was considered almost heretical in the botanical world—Cockayne opened up a new branch of study, and stimulated investigation. His attention was first drawn to the prevalence of natural hybrids in the New Zealand flora by his study of the native beech trees. Two distinguished botanists who visited the Dominion, the late Dr. K. Ritter von Goebel and the late Dr. J. P. Lotsy exercised a profound influence on Cockayne and stimulated him further in his special lines of research. When von Goebel came, in 1898, Cockayne was studying the seedlings of our trees and shrubs and their remarkable juvenile states.
The two great botanists deeply appreciated each other's worth and discoveries, and Cockayne wrote in 1933 that “Von Goebel's visit was the greatest stimulus to my botanical career.” It was owing to Goebel's representations that the honorary degree of Ph.D. was conferred on Cockayne by the University of Munich in 1903.
For his researches and writings on plant ecology Cockayne was awarded in 1912 the Hector Medal and Prize by the New Zealand Institute (now the Royal Society of New Zealand).
In the same year his work was recognised in England by his election to the Royal Society; this was crowned in 1928 by the award of the Darwin Medal. New Zealand's great native son, Lord Rutherford, President of the Royal Society, said in conferring the award at the Anniversary Meeting:
“The award of a Darwin Medal to Dr. Cockayne is fitting because of the distinction of his work in fields in which Charles Darwin himself laboured. That distinction has been gained by the use of the Darwinian method: a true naturalist, Dr. Cockayne has waited patiently upon facts before drawing conclusions. For over thirty
Rly. Publicity photo.)
Beauty of bush and fern in the Omanawa Gorge, near. Tauranga, North Island, New Zealand.
Lord Rutherford also spoke of the remarkable local effect of Dr. Cock-
(Continued on page 49
)
These incidents are complete in themselves, but the characters are all related.
”Too much local colour,” exclaimed Impskill Lloyd, wiping the lens of his detective microscope as he stared abstractedly at the blankly bland face of his faithful but erring henchman, Gillespie.
“What!! me?” said “Gill,” putting his left hand over his highly incarnadined dial, “I'm just about as usual, I think, Boss!”
“Gill” was sensitive about his high complexion, which, as he often explained, was like some meters he knew—“it registered more than was consumed.”
“My observation,” replied Impskill, with a haughtiness which wiped out “Gill's” incipient guffaw like a damp sponge over a slate—“My observation applied to Matamata—not to your grossly illuminated map of Ireland. Your countenance, ‘Gill,’ merely accounts for the use of dark glasses by those who have to view you frequently.
“An investigator,” he continued, impressively, “must get away from the influence of local colour which, among the Matamatarians, is developed to an extraordinary degree.
“That is why I have brought you back to Wellington. Here, in the seclusion of my own home, with all the facilities for examination that modern science has placed under my control, and with the opportunities for deep thought which only silence and complete freedom from distraction can bring, I can concentrate upon the remaining clues in this most baffling mystery.
”‘Gill,’ bring me my stethoscope and an Imperial pint of ale.”
“Gill” bounded briskly from the room, while “Imp.” bent once more over the microscope, through which he was examining the stitches in the initials of a handkerchief.
These initials, “M.U.G.,” he instinctively recognised as a blind. The handkerchief had arrived by air mail that morning, addressed to himself in disguised English, with two slight French accents, one somewhat grave over the second “1” in Lloyd, and the other quite acute over the third or unseen L in Impskill.
These peculiarities, only distinguishable by a scholar trained in the Hit or Missler School of European Etymology, might be significant or negligible according to the mental speed of the stitcher. But the stitches, themselves, he felt to be the nub, or hub, or nucleus of the problem.
He could easily see that they were worked with Coats cotton, of 25 guage, and that every other stitch was somewhat longer than each alternate one.
He noted, too, that, on every fifth stitch, there was a discoloration that looked like a rust mark.
There were 70 rust marks—so Impskill divided this number by 5 to produce 14. If the first mark were regarded as a “sighter” this left 13, and as he had only twelve clues upon which to work so far, this sign from the cotton fields of old Alabama confirmed his growing suspicion that there did exist a thirteenth clue, which some unknown friend was anxious he should know about.
He remembered immediately that a stitch in time saves nine, which left four clues still to be pursued after the one upon which he was engaged—perhaps the most awkward of all the clues—the evidence of Lauder's death by a fall, or push.
He remembered Milton's lines about Satan's fall—how the Arch-Fiend had been “Hurled headlong, flaming from the ethereal sky, with hideous ruin and combustion down to bottomless perdition.”
Had the same fate followed Lauder; and if a fall had ended his career, had it been accidental? Or had Lauder been pushed! Thoughts of the evil reputation of some Australian “pushes” he had met, and a recollection of the great push in the Great War, made his mind warm towards the theory of evil intention.
Never had his path been so beset with obstacles. First there was the gang of what could be called “legitimate” murderers who appeared to be receding as fast as they could from his vicinity.
And then there was a mob of crude amateur murderers, cursed with the habits of modernity, who paid not the slightest attention to the sound rules which every good murderer of the
Mixed up between these two groups of associates was a third body consisting of amateur detectives. These sought notoriety, followed false clues, and got themselves into outrageous situations from which even the nimble pens of clever recorders could scarcely extricate them. For besides the dualnatured Imp-Lloyd (Tab. Lloyd to his friends) and Unimp-Lloyd, who is the hero of this drama, there were many lesser Lloyds who deserve to be remembered if only to show by comparison how superior Impskill was to any of them.
There was, for instance, the haughty or stuck-up Lloyd, known as G. Lloyd, or Gloyed, for short. Then there was Deep Lloyd, who had been in the Army and who now couldn't walk a straight line after 6 p.m., and Al. Lloyd, a mixture of brass and boldness; the notable salesman Sellu Lloyd; the fiery Jell Lloyd; the sugary C. Lloyd, called “Cloyed” for conciseness in classification.
It is clear, then, that with the landscape littered with Lloyds, contending professional and amateur murder associations, and a bunch of amateur detectives, it was particularly disconcerting to have two Pat Lauders in the field—one dead and the other imitation.
But Impskill's plight was further complicated by the arrival of another Lauder in the country, this time Sir Harry himself. Although well known to a few with inside information, his arrival caused great surprise in the country. Little did any one guess that it had anything to do with the “to do” about the Matamata murder mystery and Pat Lauder's clue-rich body. But riches are like gold—they are where you find them—and tastes differ in Lauders as they do in whisky—some preferring the Irish Pat (or straight) Lauder, and others the Scotch Harry (or with a dash) Lauder.
The combined effect was that of a diabolical conspiracy to frustrate the application to this case of those methods of cold analysis, after intensive research, which had never failed to find the criminal in every case where the genius of Impskill Lloyd had been engaged.
Amongst those who had stood in the way of this gigantic investigation, readers will recall some of the following:—
There was the notoriety - seeking Blobson, a decadent relic of the stagecoach days, an ex-super of the old Vic, who had masqueraded for a few days as a Lauder come to life again.
Then there was the fatuous Unna Lloyd, a distant cousin of Impskill's but a fellow of no standing, who had counted upon his family resemblance to the great Impskill to deceive the men of Matamata—with what effect we have seen in the last chapter, where, but for the timely arrival of P.C. Fanning with his two revolvers blazing, the foolish Unna would have paid the penalty intended for a more worthy, but infinitely less easily trapped member of the famous Lloyd family. Fanning's fame was fanned to its highest pitch by this episode—which would never have occurred had he not been “DeLloyd” on the way by four frothing handles and a Mendelssohn's Police March, and a crowd who called Bach to him with all the ardour of a Llama's Lament.
His deep concentration was disturbed by the return of Gillespie with the Imperial pint of ale and the stethoscope.
Impskill, with all the skill of a finished practitioner, immediately applied the apparatus to his own chest and listened intently to what his heart had to tell him.
The tale it told was unfolded in a regular series of beats, like the footfalls of a cantering horse over a gently undulating field of red clover.
He next drank the Imperial print of Crown ale, specially imported from Russia for such tests—and again applied the stethoscope.
The heart beats now sounded like the guggle of the soda syphon used by hospital nurses for cleaning sinks; or like the flurried breathing of a bull in its first desperate charge upon the Matador; or like a cow-bell rung hurriedly to break up the Fire Brigades' Annual Conference; or like any old-time cow-cockie counting the spurts as he milked into the pail “over-draft, over-draft, over-draft — mine !” every seventh pull representing his quota from the cow.
Impskill remembered that where the treasure is, there will the heart be also, and he was proud to find that this vital organ still responded, as of yore, to the impetus of internal stimuli.
He measured with a pair of callipers the difference in the measure of the heart beats, and found that the proportions were as four is to five.
Now that was exactly the proportionate difference between the alternating stitches in the letters “M.U.G.”
This proved the matter quite beyond the power of mere coincidence.
A lightning flash of intuition told him he was definitely on the trail of the sinister power that had so badly baffled him so far, and he laughed with glee, and then without, as he noticed the diabolical lengths to which the legions arrayed against him would go to gain their ends.
The different objectives of these forces were very evident to his inner consciousness. Would he win out?
(W. W. Stewart's collection.)
Departure from Auckland of the Rotorua Express.
He pulled out his medal for winning the “Flat-Foots' Handicap” of Pinnacle Creek. Of course he would win!
Handing “Gill.” the stethoscope which now needed some repairs from the strain of recording his faster heart impulses, and surrendering the empty mug, he rang No. 13 on the telephone.
A sepulchral voice answered him: “Is that you, Chief?”
Disguising his voice to an equally sepulchral note, Impskill replied “You betcher!”
This reply appeared to be the correct one, for the man at the other end said: “Been trying to get you all day, Chief. The meet's at 13 Tucker Street. Johnny had to change it, as the cops are fly!”
Any one but Impskill might have been misled by this talk of meat and tucker and flies.
But Impskill now knew he had correctly interpreted the significance of the stitches on the insignificant handkerchief, and that he had at last idenjpgied the new meeting place of the head of the underworld, who had evidently abandoned his previous rendezvous because of police activities at the old quarters.
Impskill hung up suddenly, marked the site of the rendezvous on the map, and then lay down to think things out.
He had long ago discovered that the brain gets tired if it stays long in one position. Hence he did his thinking in some extraordinary attitudes, with even more extraordinary results.
He even sometimes stood on his head to produce certain of his most notable thoughts. But this, of course, he did only behind a locked door.
To-night he let the whole weight of his high head rest upon the back or cerebellum position. This eased the tension on the base of the skull.
Very soon the frontal section got active, and then he decided all was ready for the next stage of the drama. He was loaded to go!
Steered by the dispirited Gillespie, who had up to this point been puzzling over his master's most recent criticism, he called at the local gas-works and borrowed a petrol lamp. This he carried to the front door of a chimneysweep living in the locality and by its light proceeded to blacken himself until his skin resembled the pure ebony of an African negro.
So disguised, and using a limp which he could put on with impunity, and closing one eye to look as much like a calendar as possible, he quickly walked to the place of meeting.
It was a very handsome house in generous grounds.
Impskill went to the coal cellar which he knew would be in the rear of the premises. He climbed with his lamp, like a will-o'-the-wisp crossing a dry creek, the bulwarks of the outside chimney, cornering his way up by
(Rly. Publicity photo.)
Invereargill-Lyttelton Express leaving Timaru, South Island, New Zealand.
Once on the roof he went over the top and crawled carefully down inside the wide stack, aided by a rope he attached to the topmost brick.
The chimney fortunately was not smoking, so he lit a cigarette in the shelter of its interior and listened from the dark side of the register grate.
The inner circle were assembled within the room. His space was cramped and try how he would he could not get his eye to the crack left in the lid of the grate by a previous tenant.
But he heard a voice, evidently that of the leader, and this voice thrilled him by its extraordinary timbre.
And now he caught the words: “This push has fallen in over Lauder.”
“Do you think so?“’ came a sycophantic voice and a hoarse murmer of consternation from the others.
“I'm sure so!” replied the Chief. “It's too cold here, light the fire, someone!” he continued.
Impskill realised his own peril at the words, put out his cigarette, and commenced to reclimb the inside of the chimney.
He knew now that no fall had caused Lauder's death. If the push had fallen in over Lauder, how could they have pushed him in?
But now the first smoke from the newly kindled fire reached him. His clutch on the rope faltered, his toe missed the next brick, and with a reverberating crash he fell down, feet foremost into the blazing grate.
There was a wild outcry and scramble in the room, and as Impskill struck the mounting flame he lost consciousness, as a terror-stricken voice cried: “Look out you mugs—here's Impskill Lloyd!”
(To be continued.)
“Among the new pleasures of life, that of switching off the wireless can never be under-rated.” This deftly phrased jest is perpetrated by one of the most famous of English essayists, E. V. Lucas, and I have come across its blood relations in several forms in the obiter dicta of other eminent writers. When I read this type of remark, I am always reminded of a saying of the famous American philosopher, Dooley. He said one day to his friend Hennessey, “You know, Hinnissey, when I read by the papers that modern youth is decaydent, and that modern times is more corrupt than the ould wans, and that democracy is a failure, there is one thing that makes me feel aisy.” “And phwat is that?” said Hennessey. “That it is Not so,” said Dooley.
The only thing wrong, therefore, with the witticism of Mr. E. V. Lucas about the radio is that it is Not so. The pleasure that can never be under-rated is that of switching On the wireless. It is true of the long suburban street in which I live at anyrate, for if I travel its winding length early in the morning, there is only one silent member in its multitude of houses.
When the scienjpgic ingenuity of modern man makes possible an invention fraught with the immense potentialities of the cinema or the radio, the impact of the invader upon the castles of privilege, tradition and established usage, is so terrific that reception by the community takes as many forms as there are kinds of private opinions. Discussion and criticism, defence and attack, grow in violence and bitterness, and claims and counter-charges are made with an enthusiasm which has no limit.
A little clear thinking (a pastime that has never been popular since the dawn of time), and a little calm consideration will reveal the interesting fact that radio has elected to go its own way, and that it has taken a route which is often a complete surprise to both defenders and attackers. This article is intended to be an examination of some little-known aspects of the new entertainment form, and some attempt to foretell its future. I also would like to deal with the array of faulty criticism which is so often directed at the radio, and, by implication, at those who are responsible for the programmes.
I have, as it were, been present at the birth of both the cinema and the radio, and I watched as well, the swift rise and slow descent of the intermediate device, the gramophone. In each case, the early apostles of both gave deep voice to excited assertions and prophecies which were far too overleaping. With transatlantic fervour the cinema chieftains predicted the end of the legitimate stage, and when the sound films arrived, the end of the concert platform, the opera and the revue. Similarly the wireless captains foresaw the end of the press, the platform and the concert chamber.
These thrilling forecasts naturally aroused a host of fears, and an army of antagonists. But Old Father Time and the human being known as the “man in the street” have, in practice, a salutary method of dealing with this type of controversy. None of the farreaching results has arrived. Both forms of entertainment have slowly but surely settled into their places, entered into the warp and woof of the communal fabric, and can now be surveyed with some calm, and with some certitude as to which way they are heading. My first proposition is that the radio is the mightiest engine so far discovered for the defence of basic democratic rights, one of which is the right to self education and personal aesthetic decisions as opposed to dogmatism and authority. To quote from the widely read Edmond Holmes: “The struggle for freedom is in its essence, a struggle against the deadening pressure of dogmatism, a struggle for the right to live one's own life, to grow along the lines of one's own being.” The radio has taken its place already as an advance guard commander of the forces fighting this long campaign. Let us consider some of the reasons.
It is certain that when the major sillinesses of our social system are remedied, that every home will possess a wireless set. Already, the radio, as the most highly specialised form of one sense entertainment, has the largest public ever assembled since the first harp recitals of David. Its capacity for good is therefore greater than all other forms of time spending put together. It has some distinctive and integral difficulties, for its appeal is to the ear alone. Now the aural sense is the easiest of all in it's operation. We can close our eyes if we do not like a face or a view. We cannot furl our ears. Consequently, listening is almost an automatic sense process which brings an accompanying danger. A book requires some mental effort to read. The words that lie on the printed page require imagination and certain brain processes, before conversion into emotion, mental images or thought. The stage play is slightly easier. Here the transmutation is assisted by the spoken word, the gesture of the actor, the scenery or the settings. It still demands some attention, some degree of concentration and rationalisation. In the case of the lecture, the orchestral concert and so on, these are helped by the living personality of the performing artists, and by another consideration. Those who are listening to an orator, or to music
This instance supplies an example of the difficulty facing the radio entrepreneur, the problem of first arresting, and then maintaining attention. That it has been partly solved is a tribute first to the fertility of resource of the providers of the entertainment, but most of all to the power of this form of amusement over the public's tastes. Now, as the appeal of the radio is to the ear alone, and the greatest degree of aural enjoyment is produced by music, we can take it as obviously certain that the basis of the radio pyramid is music. All other uses are subsidiary, even if the new instrument does contain all the range of uses of human speech.
The appreciation of music is a subject infinitely crowded with points for mischief in discussion and acrimony in the conflict of opinion. Consider the case of “classical” or “good” music. I confess at once to being a lover of “good” music. I am a trained musician, brought up in a musical household, and acquiring therefore a fund of exact knowledge about music. It is often forgotten that music in its modern form is less than five hundred years old, and that it is an art form of mathematical precision and basic laws. These apply to the work of the song writer on New York's “Tin Pan Alley” as well as to the writings of Delius. The forms of musical expression, however, are changing all the time, as is the case with all arts which give pleasure to the senses.
You can tell at once the value of the pronouncements of any musical critic by the breadth of his tastes. I heard a lady of very “arty” pretensions, ask Kreisler why he had included “Blue Skies” in his programme, and the great violinist said, “Because it is a most beaujpgul melody.” The greatest of all musical critics, W. J. Turner, said that Irving Berlin had a gift of melody comparable with Schubert, and I remember in a long critique of his of an ultra modern work by Stravinsky, in which he laments the dearth of melody, he finished by saying, “Now I've just heard ‘Valencia’ and ‘Valencia’ is a darned good tune.”
The source of a vast amount of wariness and suspicion where classical music is considered is dogmatism. As soon as the voice of authority speaks as to what is to be rated as good, or as bad, music, the average citizen is in rebellion. The extent of his rebellion is the measure of his civic health. There is also the complication that the standards of “good’ music have become the playthings of the social spectacle. One of the best things in young Vanderbilt's impish “Farewell to Fifth Avenue” is the revelation of the real motives behind the American aristocracy's support of the New York Metropolitan Grand Opera House. Nor is America the only country in which grand opera is as much a medium for the display of diamonds and gowns, as for any critical enjoyment of the best in musical artistry. Yet many of these folk are capable of smiling in a superior way when someone admits to liking “Mellow ‘Cello” or “Lucky Star.”
R.K.O. Radio Pictures' Star.
Irving Berlin, composer of over 500 melodies, many of them of striking originality. (With him is the screen star, Ginger Rogers).
On the other hand, snap criticisms are often levelled at classical music. It is accused of complexity and lack of tunefulness. The slow movement in the Brahms Concerto for Violin and Piano is as simple and rich with the honey of melody as the most haunting of popular waltz tunes. I have seen a programme manager rifling Tschai-kowsky for melody strips and musical effects to decorate a revue, and hundreds of song hits have been pillaged from our great composers, notably Beethoven, Handel, Schubert, and Brahms. Cinemagoers are familiar with “The Tune Detective,” which is devoted to the task of uncovering the lineage of all the latest hits, and is
However, this splendid fact emerges. The radio has brought to millions the truth about “good” or classical music. The terrors have evaporated through hearing after hearing; but best of all it has enabled listeners to make their own private decision. I quote from Holmes again: “And the higher the faculties, the more essential it is that we ourselves should exercise them if they are to make any growth.” Of course in every sphere of human endeavour there must be leadership, but it must have solid grounds. In the case of music, the voice of authority can be disregarded if it proceeds from anyone who cannot at least handle one instrument with reasonable competence. No one would accept the judgment on a game as authoritative of one who had never kicked a Rugby ball. This is not to be confused with the right to enjoy music, for in the instance quoted there are thousands of New Zealand girls who enjoy a North v. South Island match.
But I remember encountering in Sydney a formidable figure in the realms of one art who was ponjpgically enunciating the verdict that Handel was a lesser musician than Beethoven, and I found as a result of a brace of questions that he did not even know the order of the movements in the Ninth Symphony. It was like a man solemnly awarding Newton, Leibnitz or Diaphantus their places in the mathematics ladder who could not himself do a quadratic equation. This is one of the foundations of the world view of the highbrow, that useful word which, according to St. John Ervine, represents the American capacity for rejuvenating the best of Anglo Saxon speech. The interior chuckle in the word highbrow comes from the shrewd public observation on certain pretensions, and it is derived from the common habit of folk who have distinguished themselves in one art, arrogating to themselves the right to appraise and set valuations in all avenues of art endeavour. It is possible for a first rank poet to be a musician, and for a painter to be a good essayist. Samuel Butler was a typical modern version of the “Admirable Crichton,” and there are hundreds of other instances. But authority as to standards of any medium of aesthetic enjoyment can only proceed from practical knowledge of that particular art, and no other method.
In any case, the shores of history are littered with the wrecks of governments who beached themselves in trying to regulate the amusements of their people. From well meaning republic to enlightened despotisms, they could interfere with every phase of their citizens' lives until they started on a regimen of recreation. The present unpleasantness in Spain would be over in a week or two if one side would dare to advocate the abolition of the bull ring.
The radio, through the immensity of its scope, through its infinite variety of appeal, and through the sheer width and immensity of volume of its cascade of sound, forbids any infringement of the liberty of the listener. It reaches the man who flippantly claims that “Bach had only two tunes, the one fast and the other slow, and I think the last one is the first played slowly.” It conspires to suddenly awaken some chance and casual listener to the beauty of the tune of “Caro Nome” from Rigoletto. If the latter had been called “The Hunchback of Mantua” or if “Pique Dame” were better known as “The Queen of Spades,” I think some of the caution about listening to their melodies would disappear. The foreign language difficulty is a genuine one and the lifting of supercilious eyebrows or the recommendation to study will not cure it. The astute advertising stations in U.S.A. who liberally use Grand Opera recognise this.
At any rate the radio is operating to cure us all of quarrelling about the “high” and “low” of entertainment or of aesthetic valuations. I had a very hoity toity musician cornered the other day, and made him hearken to Clapham and Dwyer. He has become a fan of that delicious couple and I have all the feelings of a successful missionary.
Viscount Harberton, in his clever exposures of pomposities and pretences in conventional authority, claimed that a lad who could tell a Ford from a Bentley by its engine sound as it passed a distant street intersection, was exercising just as valuable a gift of aesthetic discrimination as the experts who took months to decide whether a picture was a genuine Tintoretto or not. This is a delicious over-statement, but it does dispose of the lofty oracle who wants to tell us that there is some mystic difference in quality between the Invocation in “Iolanthe” and “Trema in cor te lessi” from “Aida.”
I have not touched upon the other capacities of the radio; its magic gift of the short wave which brings a Moscow girl advocate and a rich Berlin voice into our sitting rooms to plead their opposing doctrines; its power of news dissemination from the New Zealand Cup winner to the prospects for to-morrow's yachting. These will work in their own inevitable way to the only form of human progress which is real—the widening of the area of human brotherhood. I am concerned in this story only with the highest manifestation of this one sense medium, the art of music. Radio comes to us as the latest and greatest gift of human scienjpgic wizardry, bringing with it the further benison of the right to self-development. The very splendour of its profuseness, the very fact of its refusal to be dragooned or regulated, its capacity for universality, its exuberance of supply, and its wealth of resources, all conspire to make it the friend of liberal democracy.
So we will translate Mr. E. V. Lucas back to fact. “Among the new pleasures of life, that of switching On the radio can never be over-rated.”
Doreen May has taken to masculine trousers heartily for summer wear. Auckland especially rejoices in the frequent glad spectacle of a long-trousered girl who vainly imagines she is looking quite boyish. The fact that long pants accentuate her femininity never occurs to her. Kohimarama beach, of which I had too brief a view as we went through, was one of the brightest spots in the land with its bathing girls in shorts so short as to be invisible and its parade girls in blue or yellow or red longs so long as to trip them up, and liberal of cloth everywhere but in the rear, where they dimpled tightly, bless their pretty hearts.
Those are the rainbow-like pleasure pants; there are feminine trousers of the workmanlike cut, to be taken seriously. We saw them on the hayfield a good deal this season. The family and the neighbours busy on the field and at the stack often included a young woman in the garb of her menfolk, and she was as capable a hand as any of them.
Rly. Publicity photo.)
Lake Rotoiti, one of the gems in the lakes region of the Rotorua thermal district, North Island, New Zealand.
But the Maori girl in trousers is the most charming picture of them all. She likes them as bright as a picture-book cover, and she unconsciously achieves some astonishing colour schemes. There is a gloriously rebellious head of black hair above a scarlet blouse, and there is a pair of bright blue trousers and a pair of sturdy brown feet. Hinemoa shows off her attire better than her pakeha sister for there is no foolish slimming down with her. She wears her natural figure and she fills her blouse and trousers passing well. Moreover, she is not so self-conscious as the pakeha town girl in tall pants. She goes with an air and a swing that are not assumed but are the natural heritage of a dancing race.
Some pictures on our North Island midsummer rovings:
In Rotorua we saw girls wearing figured cretonne trousers, pleasingly well-fitting about the hips, topped by bright red or yellow blouses and here and there a sports jacket.
In another Maori kainga a middle-aged dame on horseback was selling blackberries from a big basket. She wore long dungaree trousers, very suitable for horseback, and she wore over that a short frilly skirt of organdie which reached to her knees.
But Putaruru, on Saturday night, gave us the most colourful and perfectly delightful item of all. The scene was the footway in the main street; there two girls, merry young parties of sixteen or seventeen, were putting on trousers which they had just bought in one of the shops. They could have got into them in the store, perhaps, but they were more at home outside. They struggled in and tucked in their blouses. One girl had picked scarlet trousers, the other blue. They admired themselves in the shop-window; then they strode off perfectly happy, and, I dare say, perfectly indifferent to what dear old grannie would say when they reached the kainga. But grannie with the tattooed chin would probably try on those strides herself at first opportunity.
Our pioneer records at first or secondhand, are scant enough. Hence it was a pleasure to come upon such a book as “New Zealand Memories,” by Brenda Guthrie, a grand-daughter of the man whose experiences she describes.
Ebenezeer Hay was ordered by his doctor to take a long sea-voyage for his health's sake, and with his brave young wife he came to New Zealand by the Bengal Merchant. The sailors on the Bengal Merchant were in the habit of secreting, for barter with the natives, muskets, tobacco, beads, red blankets or powder. Though the Captain was a bully of the first water, each voyage lost him one of his crew, for the attractions of the Maori maidens proved too strong.
It was a life to ruin any sailor, for to the Maoris he was merely a trafficker who, by his knowledge of English, could obtain for them by barter the wares they coveted. They feasted with the sellers and they feasted with purchasers and most of them ended as sullen, sodden wrecks. They had not the long, hard fight with the sea that the whalers had, to cleanse them. With the coming of the settlers their usefulness ceased and they became disreputable hangers on of both camps.
There are little fragments that will be seized on by the New Zealand novelists of the future. Take this: “Dr. Logan told them of another chief called Te Rauparaha, a small, slightly built Maori, with six fingers on each hand, quiet in speech and action, but capable of the most horrible atrocities when roused. Although his name meant ‘Convolvulus Leaf,’ in spite of such a soft sounding epithet, he won as many victories by cunning as his opponent, Hongi, won by war.”
The book gives an account of Maori customs, among them this description of the feast at a tangi or Maori wake: “Bags of fat eels from the rivers, endless baskets of sweet potatoes, dozens of choice pigs, and birds from the forests, nets full of fish from the sea, piles of fern-root, and the greatest
It tells the story of New Zealand's marvels, of the “tuatara,” the oldest reptile. “He is a sluggish fellow about twenty inches long, of the lizard family, with strong jaws and three eyes. He lives in holes and is very fond of raw meat when he can get it.” It discusses the strangeness of the kiwi and the kuaka, but does not mention the short tailed bat, one of the seven wonders of the world.
The ships Aurora, Ariel, and Duke of Roxburgh were lying behind Matiu or Soames Island and the Bengal Merchant dropped anchor beside them. “The sons of Epuni, two fine stalwart youths, in silky mats with huia feathers in their hair, dined with the captain, and the other sailors were much diverted when the two young Maoris carried away with them all that they had been unable to eat, but, Dr. Logan explained to the former that this was a native custom, it being considered by them most disrespectful to one's host to leave any food behind.” They were displaying an ancient courtesy.
The Hays landed at Pito-one (End of the Sand). In that awful fog and rain their poor worldly possessions were scattered on the beach, but “with the aid of an old sail, some canvas, blocks of wood, and a spar or two, the men of the party and a few willing Maoris fashioned a shelter of sorts by making the upturned boat habitable. So with a boat for a roof and sand for a floor, a sail for walls and canvas for a door, my grandparents and party spent their first night ashore.” Verily they deserved the stately home they owned at the end in the South. This is a description of their first hut and its making: “They placed a chimney—on a supplejack framework—of stone and clay at each end, and for windows they used some of my grand-mother's precious calico from the big box. An earthen floor beaten down hard and slabs of timber for doors completed this small hut which was to be their home for two or three years. Across the chimney, halfway up, an iron bar was built in, from which was suspended the kettles, three-legged’ pots, and camp-oven which later was the bane of a young house-wife's life.”
Their friends also had a house built on the pattern of a whaler's house with a framework of Kareau or supplejack plastered with a thick coating of clay inside and out. The Hays finally migrated to the South, but not before they had seen horse races on Petone beach.
“Mr. Jerningham Wakefield, as Clerk of the Course, looked resplendent in velvet cap, breeches, and pink coat, while one of the Petone ladies caused quite a sensation in my grand-mother's flowered silk gown.”
One reader at least was sorry when the scene shifted from Wellington, so vivid and simple was the picturization of the early days in the present capital. The Hay family prospered in the South. Their new house in the Pigeon Bay Valley was made of wood put together with dowels. They had no nails. The natives were at first hostile, but, realizing later the benevolence of the newcomers, became friendly.
For a treat Ebenezeer Hay would row his young family in a whaleboat to Port Levy, a strenuous pull of ten or twelve hours for the four or five rowers. Their visitors included such diverse personages as Sir George Grey and “Bloody Jack,” the old chief, Tuwhaike, who borrowed Hay's gold watch to wear while interviewing the Governor. It was a lucky loan, for Tuwhaike had great influence with his own people and his friendship was worth cultivating.
Then the first batch of settlers came to Canterbury Plains. “Clinging to each other so as not to be blown away from the top of the Bridle Path, they gazed disconsolately upon miles of waving tussock and flax, stretching in flat desolation to the snowy Alps in the far distance…. Immaculately dressed and gingerly picking their way among boulders, they must have presented a picture very much like those young surveyors who, caused so much merriment at Port Nicholson.” These were the men who made “The Plains.”
This is a book that is meat both for novelist and historian. To such memoirs we will owe much in the years to come.
* * *
Davies, the tramp poet, wrote: “A rainbow and a cuckoo, Lord, May never come together again”—
And perhaps never again, or not once in a thousand journeys, might I see this: the Remarkables standing out of the mist, Mount Earnslaw with white runnels of November snow streaking its dark face, beneath them Lake Wakatipu still and silvery: and over all, flung down from the peaks to lose its scarf-end in the lake waters, emerald and rose of a fully-fledged rainbow.
It's my own special good-luck sign, the bow in the clouds; so I knew, as soon as it shone into sight, that I would love little Queenstown, the place which nestles at the side of Lake Wakatipu, looking through trees into a grey water of which the inhabitants say proudly, “Average depth 1,500 feet, many places bottomless.” Queenstown has no trams, a once-a-week picture show, a tiny newspaper, and such an imposing collection of snow-peaks and lake-heads that its clustering houses, marching down from gentle hills into a valley beneath its famous Gardens, look perfectly pleased with themselves. They have reason. The townlet itself is attractive, built mostly in that old cottage style which you find only in the South Island: solid walls of stone, in the wilder parts walls of clay, fastened together securely as a martin's nest, and low, stout-bodied chimneys crouching above. There is a little stone church with a lych gate and great green trees almost touching its windows. But in the early evening (which was when the service ‘bus pulled into Queenstown)—two things predominate: the soft, dim rustle of trees in the Gardens, the slapping and shining of the water.
It was lilac-time: a thin clear drizzle of purple and white in all the gardens, and the last bees, belated revellers, persuading themselves that another little drink wouldn't do them any harm. At the accommodation house (there are several in Queenstown, all good) everybody talked cheerfully of mountain adventures past, present and to come, even the young honeymoon couple whose baby car had been blown off the road as they crossed the Crown Range. Supposing you have a son of between eighteen and twenty-two, one of the young blades who thinks he can do things with the internal economy of a motor car, and consequently gives the traffic police more to think about on his nights out than is right and fitting: one way of curing the youth might be to send him (and car), down to some of the roads in this region—Crown and Cardrona Ranges, or “Skippers,” which even when taken by service car has a little way of making its passengers hair rise slowly on end. The gorges coming through “Central” are terrific, just the homeopathic dose to cure most flippant speedsters.
In Queenstown the first thing they ask you is, “Have you seen our Gardens? And the Memorial?” After that, you are told that the Duke of Gloucester visited Queenstown, walked down to the Memorial, and admired the bowling greens. The Duke had the right of it. I don't think that any city in New Zealand, certainly no other little town, can boast Gardens lovelier or better laid out than Queens
(Rly. Publicity photo.)
A view of Queenstown, showing the snow-capped Remarkables, South Island, New Zealand.
“They rest in the great white silence of Antarctica, amid the scenes of their triumphs … wrapped in the winding-sheet of the eternal snows.”
If you first saw that huge boulder, much too huge to be moved by man or a score of men, with darkness making the lake and the snowy peaks beyond rather indefinite, twilight sifting down thick and diffuse as
I heard, further down south, that an American had made a suggestion that by lowering the level of Lake Wakatipu a thousand feet, gold-mining interests might be best served: and that this course would certainly be taken, did Lake Wakatipu reside in “Gaard's Own.” In the heat of the moment, I replied that I would rather see the entire American nation, man, woman and child, subside a thousand feet into You-know-where, than see a hair of Lake Wakatipu's head perturbed. The protest may be over-vigorous, but, with all due respect to the gold standard, any proposal to interfere with the lake is immoral, blasphemous and indecent. If Lake Wakatipu desires to make any changes, these will be accomplished in its own
Next thing in fish-stories to the crowding tame trout of Fairy Springs, Rotorua, might be the tame perch of Lake Wakatipu, who come alongside the jetty to be nourished by small boys and girls with large crusts of bread. You can see their foot-long grey bodies flashing in the transparent water, and mark that a very heavy fine would lie waiting for the opportunist who dangled a fishing-line before the innocents' blunt noses. A notice says, “Now you're here, enjoy yourself,” and an old man rents out dinghies. The conceited craft of the lake are, of course, the launches—a mail-steamer for the full traverse to the lake—head, and the little boats for chugging about to places like Bob's Cove and Elfin Bay, where red deer come down and look at you with surprise, if not with admiration, through their greenwood trees.
I was warned against it: people at the boarding—house said that (a) if done at all, it should be done with a 2 a.m. start, (b) that womenfolk who undertook it thereafter remained in bed for a week. But the Sunday afternoon was gloriously fine, and there wasn't, as it happened, either a launch trip or a drive, November being too early for “the season”—so, with one stout-hearted but rash companion, I set out for Ben Lomond. Old Ben isn't a shining monarch like Mount Cecil or Mount Earnslaw, but nevertheless it's a bona fide mountain, over 5,000 feet, and channelled with snowdrifts among the dark and solemn rock-faces which crown its height.
Great bushes of sweet-scented briar and metagauri—thorny “Wild Irishman,” which is supposed to be poisonous at one time of the year: tussock slopes, easy and springy to climb, and then the first of the mountain birch forest. Its little leaves, molten red-gold, like the coinage of a great king who sits in the hills, drop by the million, and are trodden into the dark, soft soil. The trees grow close together, thrusting out in cliffs of strong, stubborn trunks and roots. Away from the ravines, they have been destroyed, and only very slowly win back their hold, lacking the warmth and shade that their own forest gave them. But there are still splendid fragments you cross, climbing Old Ben; and through them you can hear the singing talk of thin mountain cascades, rattling down, white and lace-like, a hundred feet or so at a leap.
The mountain flowers begin about the place where you first feel tired: probably not halfway up. They grow low, with fleshy leaves, and no colour but the grey of their foliage, the pure,
The little hut looked like something particularly desirable out of “The Pilgrim's Progress.” To get there, we squelched with giant strides across a white drift, opened the door, crying “Tea!“—only to find that the old, hospitable custom of the mountains, which leaves tea and a billy-can for weary climbers, had fallen into deseutude on Ben Lomond. The little hut was dark, dismal and dirty. There was a fire-place and an ancient black pot which might have done for a billy. No tea, no manner of comfort. And one impertinent wench had written in the visitors' book, “Climb is child's play.” In silence and with grim determination, we scrunched on……
Over the other side of the mountain, one looks out on something worth the climb, even worth the climb down again (which is a very different story). Except for the scar where the Moonlight gold-diggings were worked in the old days, there is no sign of man's handiwork—nothing but the golden mountain light moving swiftly across the hills, turning to terra-cotta, mingling with the shadows of clouds that pass over some of the once richest country in the world. It is still rich, with such a wild, lonely beauty that it seems strange no man should live there: but in all the valleys and along the ranges, you won't see as much as a solitary prospector's smoke. Only gold and sunset colours, and straight above, with a frown on its surly rock-face, the geometric black and white of Ben Lomond's summit.
Of the return trip I say nothing: except, perhaps, an echo of the gipsy's warning, “Don't, or you'll regret it.” And yet—I think the sight of the lonely hills subsequently cancels out the calamitous state of stumbling down an impossible, elusive track in the darkness, and lying down under tussocks to escape, for a moment, the swooping devil of a wind which, having grilled one all the afternoon, turns icy cold the moment the sun vanishes. At one moment we saw, drifting about in the shadows, three large pumpkin coloured spots of light: and thought, with horrid conviction, “Oh Lor',—a search-party.” But so it was not: the lights later turned out to have been occasioned by a local fire-bug with an odd passion for making bonfires up on the mountains, and punctually at 12.30 a.m., dinnerless and aching in every bone, I crawled into the accommodation house, which, to the last guest or dog, lay wrapped in dreamless slumber.
The Paradise trip used to be another sort of nightmare in the old coaching days. You find the record of it in such names as “Devil's Creek,” “Hell's Gates,” and other landmarks passed along the roads. Evidently crossing wild, white water, in snowtimes, appealed neither to horses nor to those they carried. By mail-steamer, and service car, the trip nowadays is of almost monotonous safety. Our little steamer took us over Lake Wakatipu, into little bays of plumy peacock-blue, softly foliaged with native bush, and at last to Glenorchy, which stands at the head of the Lake, complete with accommodation house. After this, you drive through birchforest, and Paradise earns its name.
Once every few years, a period that seems strangely irregular, like the flowering of the cactus, the birchwoods flower. I know one old resident of the far South who saw this happen just once in her years there—and I, by sheer good luck, struck it on the one day's journey. There are three main varieties of native birch tree, white, black and red. The flower is a tiny red crest, so that when all the trees blossom, you drive through a blaze of little red candles, sprouting out of the sombre leafage. The driver sprang out and brought back a piece; like most New Zealand wood-flowers,
Rly. Publicity photo.)
A harvesting scene in Canterbury, South Island, New Zealand.
Paradise is one of those places to which I am going to retire when I grow either old or affluent. There are several, all quite different, except that they are all little and very quiet. On the other side of the woods it stands, with snow-mountains glittering in the background, and green knolls rounding off into further birch forest. The accommodation house here has a wild and lovely old English garden—a tangle garden, with bright brooches of colour pinned on a dishevelled shawl patterned in columbines, snapdragon, late snowdrops, primroses, marigolds, early and slipshod old roses. Bees were entranced with pink lupin, and honeysuckle and flowering creepers fell in heavy masses over arches. In the dining room, the heads of Paradise stags looked down upon us with awful solemnity, like Victorian archdeacons. But it was a place, not to see for a day, but to know for years and years: the lady of the garden was another of those South Islanders who have fallen into the continuity demanded by hill and forest. For over fifty years she had been making her garden……
And there was another, on the way home. The ‘bus stopped especially to make the call, and as soon as he saw visitors, the old man—his name was Mr. Haines — came hastening up through the exotics and beaujpgul flowering shrubs of the garden he has cultivated since he was a boy. People drop in at his house for three things— to visit the old man himself, to admire
Rly. Publicity photo.)
A Highland Band Concert in the new Sound Shell, Caroline Bay, Timaru, South Island, New Zealand.
It was aboard a Lyttelton-Wellington boat. A cheery-looking old chap —the picture of health, was enjoying his after-breakfast pipe on deck when accosted by a fellow-passenger. “Do you know, my good Sir, that every ounce of tobacco you smoke shortens your life by a year?” “Great Scot! Then I ought to have been dead and buried long ago!” “You may laugh, my friend, but tobacco will get you, sooner or later!” “Well, let's hope it will be later,” said the jolly old boy, “But I'm not worrying! Next to no nicotine in my baccy! It's practically harmless.” “What tobacco may that be, pray!” sneered the crank. “Cut Plug No. 10. Try a fill?” Offer declined with a shudder. But there's no harm in “toasted” and for a really comfortable and thoroughly enjoyable smoke it's equal isn't manufactured. The five (and only genuine) toasted brands. Cut Plug No. 10 (Bullshead), Cavendish, Navy Cut No. 3 (Bulldog), Riverhead Gold and Desert Gold, are everywhere on sale—a convincing proof of their widespread popularity!
New Zealanders should thank their gods daily, after reading the cable news, for the happy fortune of life in such a land as this. We are blessed in beauty of landscape, in soil and climate and water and wood; we are blessed in the mighty protective arm that blue ocean has placed around us, and in the distance and comparative isolation that once was counted a disadvantage. The horrors of modern warfare that surpass in ghastly massacre all the wars of earlier times cannot touch us here. We are spared climatic terrors' that afflict Continental lands such as America and the heart of Australia; we have no “dust bowl,” and no nightmare of drowned cities; no areas depopulated by offended Nature's punishment for the mistreatment of her land.
Our visitors from overseas express delight at the vivid green and the luxuriant grass and the glory of trees that New Zealand shows. Some of them have remarked on the excellence and the cheapness of the food they were served. The freshness of everything, the freedom, the healthiness of the New Zealand life, the inviting character of the country for home-seekers, is the theme of many.
We are only too well aware, of course, that everything in this New Zealand garden is not lovely. Many parts of the land are already suffering seriously from the greed and the ignorance of those who deforested the country and who are still wiping out the forests that should be kept inviolate. If grass grows luxuriantly so do all kinds of noxious weeds. I have seen hundreds of farms when travelling through the richest parts of the country as well as some of the wildest,
And yet, weighing up everything, and giving the grumblers full play, the conclusion of the whole matter is vastly in New Zealand's favour. The intelligent visitor from overseas sees the picture in its true perspective; his knowledge of other countries and other peoples enables him to strike an accurate balance. We have had many people who came here originally for sport, and who have become permanent settlers. An American ex-naval officer, who is a writer, lately announced his intention of making his home here; he had found “the most beaujpgul place in the world.” He might well have added, the most peaceful land, and the most agreeable climate. We may miss a lot, because we are not in the whirl of hectic metropolitan life. But there are the compensations, which perhaps are not valued as they should be by New Zealanders, because they are the commonplaces of our daily life.
The hydro-electric light and power stations, scienjpgic triumphs of recent times in the Dominion, have transformed life for country and smalltown dwellers. The far-out farm has its electric power cooking and lighting. The light services especially have enormously enhanced the pleasure of a country life—or rather, perhaps, ameliorated the loneliness and gloom, if you like to put it that way. What a contrast, the country village of the past and the brisk little town it has become to-day. Once upon a time, we would pass through a township, as we rode home to the farm late at night, and see but one solitary light, the kerosene lantern that the law required every publichouse-keeper to keep burning over his front door from dark to daylight. No street lights, no guiding light but the stars, or haply a jolly round moon. Night entertainments which called the country dweller were usually fixed for a night of full moon.
Now, travelling swiftly and easily along remote roads, you are never far from the bright lights. The one-time one-pub, settlement flashes at you suddenly as you emerge from the hills or the bush—a constellation in the valley below, a golden glitter against the black of the country night. There are all-night signs, the smart hotel has its eyes on you, so, too, has the police station.
There are lights, too, in many a roadside homestead; there is the sound of music in the air, for the radio is a necessary of existence far back. The other evening we happened to pull up at a farmhouse on a lonely hilltop near the Waikato River, where it flows through the rugged Waotu country. We heard clock chimes—eight o'clock. “Why, it's the old Wellington Post Office clock,” said the girl friend. The farm family had tuned in on 2YA.
In New Zealand soil—on the brow of picturesque Marsland Hill, New Plymouth, overlooking the “Garden of New Zealand,” lies buried the noble friend of a poet whose fame grows with the years. Charles Armitage Brown was a friend in need to John Keats, and to Brown all lovers of literature owe an immeasurable debt, for it was due solely to Brown that some of the best of Keats' glorious poetry was rescued from the crumpled “waste paper” stage. New facts have been brought to light concerning the great friendship of these two men. Descendants of Brown are living in New Plymouth and from them have been gathered some fresh facts here recorded.
John Keats
as drawn by his intimate friend, Charles Armitage Brown, who emigrated from England to New Zealand and died at New Plymouth in 1842. Mrs. Gordon Osborne, of Auckland, the grand-daughter of Brown, forwarded the original drawing to England several years ago (1922), that being the first knowledge England had of its existence.
Was the name of John Keats written in water? His critics would think otherwise, and Keats himself would be grajpgied could they but know to what heights his fame has risen in the minds of the living. A new book is to be published in E