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leading new zealand newspapers— Continued
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.
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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.
Controller and Auditor-General.17/5/37
It has been well said that success is constitutional—that it depends on a plus condition of mind and body, on powers of work and on courage.
It is fortunate for a business or a country when its leaders possess this constitutional quality, for the difference in the comparative progress of the various nations, measured over a long period of time, may be judged as much by the leaders they have thrown up, thrown off, acclaimed or tolerated as by the economic advantages with which nature has endowed them.
In business it is, of course, the plus constitutional condition of one individual over another that makes the difference between success and failure in those contests where the chances in other respects are equal. The constitutionally strong eat well, sleep well and let worry take care of itself. They are consequently in good shape to handle simply and clearly all problems as they arise, and the driving force of their plus attributes makes them bold in experiment and venturesome in enterprise, and it is from experiment and enterprise that all progress arises.
The new railway station which will this month commence to serve Wellington, New Zealand's capital city, as the main centre of the Dominion's transport, is in itself a sign of success. It is one of those striking physical indications of progress that plants a significant mile-peg on the track of Dominion development.
More particularly is it a tribute to the work of railwaymen throughout the three-quarters of a century since railways commenced operating in this country.
There will be a record of this progress published during the current month, wherein the development of every branch of the service will be briefly recorded; but in this month of public and railway rejoicing over the new railway station opening, some thought can rightly be spared for those sons of the rail who, through every kind of adversity, have kept unshaken their faith in the railways as a public service of vital value to the progress of the country. It is well, also, to think of those great leaders who, gaining control over the destinies of the railways through personal merit, have guided the system safely and surely to its present high place in public service and esteem.
Measured by any standard, the railways of this country hold their own with those of other countries; but when the local problems of construction, maintenance and the size and distribution of population are considered, their achievement is seen to be even more remarkable and is a tribute to the high virtue, constitutional strength, courage and enterprise of those who have made, maintained, worked and controlled them.
The receipt of the Judges' reports and awards in connection with this year's railway station garden competitions in the South Island, affords me a very favourable opportunity to convey to the members of the railway staff who took part in the efforts to improve the appearance of railway surroundings, my very warm appreciation of their excellent work in these most desirable activities.
It also calls for public acknowledgment of the splendid spirit of helpfulness which animates members of the Canterbury Horticultural Society, the Gardening Branch of the Otago Women's Club and other groups and individuals who have taken a public-spirited interest in the improvement of railway surroundings.
I have found that in some localities the citizens, as well as railway employees, take pride in their station gardens, many of which are favourably commented on by visitors from all parts of the Dominion, and by travellers from overseas.
The Department's interest in work of this kind is well known, and it is at all times ready to assist by providing soil, fencing and other material, as well as labour in the preparation of the land. But the human interest and pleasure in gardening and its results, the opportunities for tasteful arrangement, orderliness, and skill in the preparation, care and management of these important adjuncts to the business of railroading, and the valuable reactions upon citizens, travellers and railway-men alike of well laid out lawns and garden plots in the vicinity of Railway Stations, are the features which amply reward all who actively engage in this work.
With 450 acres containing 158,000 trees upon 40 plantations in the South Island (referred to elsewhere in this Magazine) and a number of notable plantations in the North Island, the Department's interest in forestry is naturally considerable, and its Forestry Officer is in a position to assist the gardening activities on railway reserves by the selection of suitable trees for planting in settings of aesthetic value to railway premises and the areas they serve.
Only those who travel extensively in the Dominion can gain a conception of the widespread interest taken in the work of railway gardening on the various railway routes from the smallest tablet station to the spacious gardens and lawns of the Auckland and Wellington terminals. Of special interest are the gardening activities at the Department's main workshops, where, besides gardens at the works, the staff have flower shows and gardening circles.
I gratefully acknowledge the assistance rendered in connection with this work and welcome opportunities for any further improvements of the kind.
General Manager.
Scenes in and About Hamilton and District.
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From top, left to right: (1) Challiner's Travel Service, Hemilton. (2) Hunting Song, New Zealand's leading sire of winners, (3) Baffles, half-brother by Blandford to the famous Manna. (4) Municipal Offices at Hamilton. (5) New Ferro-concrete Traffic Bridge over the Waikato River. (6) Train crossing the Waikato Railway Bridge, (7) The Bledisloe Hall at the Waikato Winter Show, Hamilton.
My genial friend, with a hundred varying interests in the district, stopped the car and said: “This is the farm; there are twelve sheep to the acre on those far slopes.” And they were there all right, their white woolly forms seeming to be almost back to back against the vivid green.
I stood and admired the massively handsome English stallion, Hunting Song, causing bother to my friend with the camera, for, quiet as he was, wherever he trod he was fetlock deep in grass, and would look in the picture as if he were without hocks at all.
I watched from the goods train, the colossal shape of the Waharoa dried milk powder factory, towering above the tall trees beside the Waharoa Railway Station.
I gazed for an hour at the activity at the Manawaru Cheese Factory which handles across its receiving stage, more than one million pounds of milk daily.
These things helped me to solve the problem of Hamilton. For it is profoundly true that these cities in miniature in New Zealand, represented by such a provincial capital as Hamilton, require explanation. They exist nowhere else in the world. They are, in a special sense the creation of their own citizens, and the special production of our New Zealand culture.
Greater Hamilton is a town of approximately twenty thousand people, as a maximum. It has public buildings, shops, factories, huge blocks of administrative offices, and in other ways the amenities of a centre which in any other part of the world would carry five times the population at least.
I can give quickly one striking set of figures which indicates the scope and reach of the municipal activities of this town. The number of consumers of gas and electricity supplied by the city Departments of the Borough Council reaches the staggering figure of over eight thousand. I use the word “staggering” advisedly in case I am met with the provincial type of criticism which proudly recounts the consumption of a city of one million.
However, my first paragraphs explain the secret of the existence of this spacious modern town. To sum up again, Hamilton is there because it is the centre of a great region where to
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Victoria Street—Hamilton's splendid main thoroughfare.
Phenomena such as these in the old days of tyrants, art loving but otherwise intolerable, would have led to the erection in every public place or park, of statues to the Jersey, the Ayrshire, the Friesian, the Red Poll and the other mild-eyed workers of this continuing miracle.
The same sort of ruler would liave decreed that the old home of Henry Reynolds should be a hallowed place. Here was made the first pound of Anchor Butter and the oak he planted on his front lawn would be preserved in its mature splendour as a symble of the growth of the mighty industry he founded.
Any, consideration, therefore, of the qualities of Hamilton as a centre or dwelling place for men, is inextricably bound up in a sense which is distinctive of its own personality with the noble hinterland that it possesses.
In saying this, I do not want to detract from the achievement of its citizens: for in its beginnings there was nothing particularly distinctive or advantageous about its actual location to compel that Hamilton should be the premier centre of this wide region.
Its history is an old one but its growth is a matter of recent years. Its original settlement was one of
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The lovely lake in the Domain Grounds, Hamilton.
Captain Steele handpicked his recruits, and it was a fine body of men that pitched camp on the eastern side of the river and valiantly wrestled with the problems that beset them.
As with other parts of the Dominion, the precious gifts of British racial origin and stout tradition, belong to the Waikato capital and its environs.
The first town grew up on the eastern side of the river, and is now a suburb with leafy streets and noble old trees. It is said that a rather ebullient manifestation of private enterprise drove the Bank of New Zealand to seek for cheaper sites on the Western side of the big river to be soon followed by other enterprises. The course of farm settlement also tended to make the western bank the most thriving. The present distinctive beauty of Hamilton is largely due to its great river but in those days, it was a definite hindrance to progress. Of course, its traffic, prior to the days of road and rail was large, but in the struggling township a punt was for many years the sole means of crossing. In 1879 the first traffic bridge was built, and the wooden structure was operated on toll principles. I do not think that many New Zealanders know that the town was named after Captain John Fane Hamilton, a naval officer who was killed in a gallant attempt to retrieve the awful disaster to British troops at the Gate Pa.
The town was made a borough in December, 1877, in the wide and joyous days when the conflicting parties were the east and west sides of the river. The total population was then about 1,200 and growth was slow for many years. A loan policy for development was commenced and from then on progress was steady until the amalgamation with the neighbouring borough of Frankton.
But more important than any of these purely local phenomena, was the revolution caused in the usefulness of Waikato farm lands through the use of top dressing. It is in my memory as a grown man that Waikato lands were held in mild derision by the farmers from the permanent grass lands of the Taranaki, Wellington and Hawke's Bay Provinces and the South Island.
There is a paved road now from Cambridge to Hamilton which might well be called the Golden Journey.
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Ornamental Grounds of the Railway Station at Hamilton.
I remember that road when it bore the disorderly, sparsely settled, untilled appearance of the settlers' outback scenes in a Christmas number.
This magical change occurred all over the vast area of the Waikato. Hamilton has shared the benefit and its modest total of 1,200 is now in the neighbourhood of 20,000.
Its early builders had the vision to lay out wide streets, and these fine thoroughfares are a feature of the town's beauty. The noble Waikato river is of course an outstanding natural advantage; it is the greatest of our rivers and as it flows through the town, it is seen in its best clothes. Every town of importance in New Zealand has been blessed with public spirited citizens who have spent time, money and unbounded enthusiasm in the beaujpgying of their place of home making.
Grey Street in Hamilton was the work of very early settlers. Its great trees whose branches meet across the 100 foot street, might be centuries old.
The Waikato river presented a gruesome spectacle only a quarter of a century ago. Its high banks had been generously utilised as dumping grounds for rubbish. The Beaujpgying Society came into being and to-day the banks of the river for the whole length of its saunter through the town, are things of abiding beauty. Memorial
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“Baffles” in his neat paddock at “Hillerest.”
Hamilton has also broken new ground with its fine policy of planting native trees in the streets of the suburbs and town areas. It is always a source of wonder to visitors as to who the fortunate folk are that live in these mansions that adorn our provincial capitals, and Claudelands is possibly the finest example of this type of suburb in the Dominion. Gardens are everywhere, riotous with colour and elaborately designed. The river, however, has its recognisable nobility and its possibilities were easily discerned; but the park known as the “Domain” is an outstanding example of what can be achieved by inspired vision, love of beauty and steadiness of purpose.
Here, in undulating country, an everyday swamp lagoon in a setting, scrub covered and desolate, has been transformed into a spacious pleasure ground and ornamental waters. As is so usual in our country, the trees have the look of “immemorial elms.” The shrubs are luxuriant and the swards have the shining but gentle green of a thousand-year-old Dublin or Oxford lawn. The growth was speedy and the transformation was effected in a few years. It is long years ago, so my genial guide told me, that after a large and cheerful party of farewell, they drove a visitor round and round three tall trees, while he sleepily complained that it was a shame to miss the way to Frankton station and that he “hated these bush roads anyway.” This park contains 141 acres; there are formed sandy beaches, bathing and boating facilities, a nine hole golf course, and picnic places which are like those in a boy's dreamland. Across its wide waters stand handsome residences, and above it again is the Hospital, the fourth largest in the Dominion.
This is not the whole tale of the recreation grounds of Hamilton for every sport is catered for with parks with modern equipment and surroundings of natural beauty.
The gold course at St. Andrews is known throughout the Dominion as one of the best all weather grounds.
Naturally, the river means that acquatic sports are popular; and while I was on my visit there was a tumultuous “King” competition to provide a handsome new rowing club pavilion.
I have described New Zealand before
(Rly. Publicity photo.)
The neat 9–hole golf course in the Hamilton Domain Grounds.
Hamilton is imposing to resemble through as it consists of several main divisions. The river divides Hamilton East and Claudelands with their quite distinctive air from the main town, and still farther west is the populous suburb of Frankton, formerly a sister borough of nearly equal size.
Frankton contains the busiest railway junction in the Dominion. Its figures of traffic and goods handled are impressive, and approximately 100 trains pass through it daily. It has many hotels to cater for the change-over traffic to Rotorua and the Bay of Plenty areas which are among New Zealand's most patronised tourist regions. The travel volume in and about. Hamilton is of enormous extent and it was not surprising to find good travel bureaux busy all the time we were in Hamilton. It seemed to me that both townsfolk and primary producers were planning holidays with gusto and frequency.
The municipality has a fine block of offices on the river bank. I will not weary readers with the familiar list (Continued on page 52.)
The most distinguished of living New Zealanders, and one of the leading scientists in the world—indeed he is considered by many the greatest of all scienjpgic investigators to-day—is our first New Zealand-born peer of the realm, Lord Rutherford of Nelson. The most intellectual man that this country has produced, he has penetrated most deeply into the mysteries of the physical world, and his discoveries have made him a figure regarded with reverence by the scientists of the earth. He has been described as “Britain's No. 1 Scientist.” His discoveries have won him world-wide honours, but he is the most modest of men, delighting in the quiet life in his English home and in his laboratory work at Cambridge. He is Chairman of the British Department of Scienjpgic and Industrial Research, and at sixty-six years of age is still working away eagerly in the field of research which has yielded up to him and his colleagues such wonderful results. It has been said of him that the school of research he has created will produces “discoveries that will change the course of history and that will transform the economics of human life as we live it to-day.”
Ernest Rutherford was born at Spring Grove (now called Brightwater), Nelson, on August 30th, 1871. He was the fourth child in a large family. His father, James Rutherford, had first engaged in timber-milling when he settled in that province; later on he was a flax-miller.
His mother, who was Martha Thomson, was a woman of uncommonly keen alert intellect, and of the physical powers that the pioneer life requires and develops. She was a schoolteacher until she married. She lived to the age of over ninety, clear and vigorous in mind to the last, watching with quiet pride and joy the career of her son, whose greatest pleasure from his youth up lay in the delight his successes gave his parents.
When Ernest was eleven years old the Rutherfords removed to Havelock, in Marlborough, and in that secluded township at the head of Pelorus Sound the boy came under the influence of an excellent teacher, Mr. Jacob H. Reynolds.
This master was not content with the ordinary school syllabus. For an hour each morning, before nine o'clock, he conducted a class in Latin for his most promising seventh-standard boys, of whom Ernest was one. The boy became a source of great pride to Havelock when he won the Marl-borough Provincial Scholarship of £52/10/- for two years, tenable at Nelson College.
Dr. E. Marsden, Secretary of the Department of Scienjpgic and Industrial Research, who tells of those early days of his friend, accompanied Rutherford to the old school at Havelock when the great scholar revisited New Zealand, and heard many reminiscences of Mr. Reynolds and his brilliant pupil. One old resident narrated how young Rutherford sat alone in the school for the scholarship examination, and how the supervisor read each page as it was written and gave his opinion to callers as to how the candidate was getting along.
At Nelson College the Havelock boy quickly jusjpgied his old teacher's faith in him. He won scholarships, and became dux of the college, and in 1889 gained a University Scholarship which took him to Canterbury College. Then, in that congenial home of scholarship the lad's studies inclined strongly to original research in the fascinating world of physical science.
Under Professor Bickerton he studied wireless waves, then called “Hertzian waves.” That was about the year 1893. These were some of the first world experiments in the wonderful wireless. Continued afterwards at Cambridge they led to the construction of the first magnetic detector of wireless waves, afterwards completed and patented by Marconi.
Dr. Marsden tells this little story of a prophecy made by Rutherford while he was a student at Canterbury College. At one of the meetings of the College Debating Society in 1890 the subject was “Is Sculpture or Architecture the Greater Art?”
Ernest Rutherford, then eighteen years old, in his first year at college, gave his views. The architectural beauty of the new College Hall was discussed, and Rutherford complained that the view of the building from the street was spoiled by the intrusion of an ugly great telegraph post, loaded with wires. The day would come, he said, when the telegraph post and the telegraph wires would be unnecessary, for science was on the threshold of further discoveries that would abolish both. Even at that date the eager student had peered with accurate
Graduating at Canterbury with double first-class honours, in mathematics and physics, the young investigator was awarded the 1851 Exhibition Scholarship by the University, and this carried him to Cambridge. There he was quickly immersed in the study of Rontgen's great discovery of X-rays, so called because at that time their nature was quite unknown. The experimental work arising from this discovery has led during the forty odd years which have elapsed to the understanding of the whole nature of electricity and matter and the isolation of the individual units of both. The whole of physical and chemical science has been revolutionised, and the commercial and industrial application of the work has given us a succession of modern miracles.
To a non-scienjpgic writer like myself, marvelling at the mental capacity which can unlock such magical secrets of the physical world, a technical review of the great New Zealander's work is not possible. I must turn therefore to the narratives and explanations of others, and especially to the writings of Dr. Marsden, who has been Secretary of our Department of Scienjpgic and Industrial Research since its foundation some fifteen years ago; before that he was Professor of Physics at Victoria University College and Assistant Director of Education.
We have all read of Rutherford's amazing discoveries in the study of atoms, and of how he succeeded in splitting the atom, but how he accomplished that wizardly feat is a recondite mystery to most of us. Dr. Mardsen has, therefore, most kindly come to my help, and has given this lucid exposition of the Rutherford discoveries, amplifying articles and a radio talk he delivered several years ago.
From X-rays, Dr. Marsden explains, Rutherford turned his attentions to the radiations from radium and so-called radio-active bodies which had certain similar properties and on which pioneering work had been done in France by Becquerel, and by Curie and Madame Curie. He soon made interesting and far-reaching discoveries, including the radio-active emanations, such as are used in treatment in our hospitals; and he worked out the nature and properties of the radiations emitted. He found these to be of three kinds—the alpha rays, or atoms of helium, the beta rays which are electrons emitted with speeds almost up to that of light, and the gamma rays which, like X-rays, were similar to light waves, but because of their small wave-lengths were able to pierce the relatively coarse open structure of ordinary matter. Since that time he has devoted himself to the use of these radiations, in unravelling the secrets of atoms and the way in which these atoms are constructed. He was able to count atoms one by one, although they are so small that in air, for example, in a space occupied by a pin head, the number of atoms is about 25,000,000 times the total population of the earth.
“But perhaps the most amazing result of his work,” Dr. Marsden continues, “is the discovery that these atoms, although so infinitely small, have a wonderful structure very similar to that of our solar system, with a central sun of so-called positive electricity and planets of electrons or units of negative electricity. He has shown that these atoms are storehouses of large amounts of energy, and has been able to disintegrate some of them arjpgicially, leading to the release of some of this energy. It is just possible, that some day this energy may be harnessed for the service of mankind, after all of our easily available resources of coal and oil are used up. At any rate he has achieved the dream of the old alchemists, namely the transmutation of elements or matter. This work has led to a revolution in philosophic thought, and has given rise to the fascinating
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Nelson College, inseparably associated with the name of Lord Rutherford.
Professor Andrade, of the University of London, in an exposition of Rutherford's experiments with the structure of the atom, said that the scienjpgic interest of atomic transmutation could not be exaggerated, but the prospect of an actual engineering use of atomic energy seemed remote.
The total amounts of energy with which the Cambridge school workers are dealing are ludicrously small, Andrade said, from an engineering point of view. “But they are not so absurd from a medical point of view, for here it is not a large amount of energy that is required, but energy of a very special kind that can be produced locally, as in the radium treatment of cancer.”
Sir William Bragg, head of the Royal Institution, has described Lord Rutherford's working methods and influence in very pleasant terms. Rutherford, he wrote, keenly loved research for its own sake. He had a fine judgment of the essential, and he had the courage to break with precedent and try out his own ideas. “Rutherford has upset many theories but he has never belittled anyone's work. He has added new pages to the book of Physical Science and has always taught his students to venerate the old, even when the writing has become a little old-fashioned…. He always takes a broad and generous view, giving credit to others for their contributions to knowledge, and never pressing for the recognition of his (Continued on page 55.)
tropical north queensland for winter sunshine!
These incidents are complete in themselves, but the characters are all related.
Readers who are following this engrossing mystery story will remember that the body of Pat Lauder was found in the signal cabin, and that the super-sleuth, Impskill Lloyd, had pronounced that there were at least twelve causes of death, ranging from drowning to starvation. Gillespie, Lloyd's much misunderstood and much maligned chauffeur proved, in the last chapter, to be a secret service agent who had unmasked Lloyd's nefarious activities. However, in the game of adventure, Lloyd had turned the tables, Gillespie and the plodding P.C. Fanning were neatly tripped, and, bound with ingenious tackle, were condemned to be tattooed by a Maori fellow-conspirator in the pay of Lloyd.
Gillespie lay perfect'y still, staring at the ceiling while Hari Pongi was portentously fiddling about with his mixtures and preparing his pawa shell edge. He was known as Mata Mata Hari on account of an efficient and cheery deviousness. Gillespie attracted his attention and, as the liquid brown eyes turned gently towards him, indicated with a swift, sly sign the butt of a cheque book protruding from his pocket. The Maori picked up the signal with the speed of a company director or a rail car driver, and halted at his task. Then a whispered conversation took place as Hari traced the Manaia pattern gently on Gillespie's smooth cheeks.
“A round hundred,” said Gillespie, “if you dummy the job or just make it a surfaceman's drag.”
With the noble simplicity of his race, the Maori whispered back: —
“By korri, what about you stop the cheque, ay?”
Gillespie answered, “Don't be a fool. It's payable at Hamilton … make some excuse, run down and cash it and come back …”
The patrician features of Hari Pongi dissolved into friendliness and in language that showed his age-old lineage.
“O Kay, ‘tranger,” he said. “You te ferrer!” He walked across to Lloyd and an undertoned colloquy took place. Lloyd shook his head several times, then broke into a smile and Hongi strode from the room.
Gillespie lay in a rather pleasant reverie. Thoughts went vagrantly through his head, and the opening of the new prospect of a getaway, faint as it was, made him philosophise…. “The good die young,” he remembered. “Just as well, perhaps,” he thought, “if they'd lived they'd be just like the rest of us.”
The reverie went on. There was old Fanning, perfectly relaxed. His tattoo job had been quite a light one. There was ample room on that iridescent dome for a portfolio of drawings, and Gillespie could see nothing from the angle of vision possible to him in his chair.
And then Gillespie's reflections wound about in his brain and drifted. What a fool he had been. The contretemps was all in order; it was in the accepted Edgar Wallace tradition; but there was the bitterness of debt itself in the knowledge that he had fallen for Lloyd. There he was, strolling about with the large self-confidence which always went with small moustaches. He was actually trying to twirl the thing, though the most pertinacious groping for a hair to clutch had ever and always resulted in the finger-slip of defeat. He was grinning in the most fatuous, complacent way…. “Can I trust Hongi,” thought Gillespie…. His morals are like a land agent's, and then, of course, he called to mind a land agent in the long ago who was a decent man, never charging double commissions unless jusjpgied by results. P.C. Fanning remained calm. He sat there, trying as usual to think of twelve things at once. He turned slowly, and the decorated area came into view. It was the conventional canoe prow scroll,
He mused ruefully … Lloyd was irritating; he was such a bad actor to start with; even when he was imitating himself there would arrive that smile of self-satisfaction, all out of character. Even as the “Man in the Iron Mask” he was easily recognisable as himself. Gillespie dreamingly saw George Arliss in films with Lloyd. Arliss had run out of historical characters and was doing a male impersonation of Boadicea, and Lloyd was playing the left wheel of her chariot … turning … turning … turning. Gillespie could see them years ago, B.M.—before the movies—when there was no wickedness…. He felt drowsy…. Where was Hongi? Had the cow exercised his great gifts of initiative and private enterprise and double crossed … had he met with an accident … had the bank been taken over by Major Douglas … had … Lloyd was still pacing the room, smiling pleasantly and vainly probing his moustache. He had just seized firmly one short golden hair, when there was a terrific crash….
Into the room burst Kidney Jenkin-son. He was an awe-inspiring sight. His face was red, his blue eyes were blazing, and with his white hair he looked like the Union Jack in conflagration. In his hand flashed a steel weapon, dripping with blood. The truth was that he had just finished jointing a large loin of old ewe to look like lamb.
Lloyd, with a howl of dismay, made a running dive, but Kidney was too quick for him. He had, as well as an elementary knowledge of engineering, passing acquaintance with electricity, and as Lloyd moved, he tripped the switch and Lloyd fell as though pole-axed.
Kidney smiled. “Now perhaps,” he said, “they'll understand why I formed the league for the electrification of the line to Okoroire. If this had been a steam plant I'd have had to hit him with the governors.”
It was a matter of seconds to release Gillespie and Fanning. After all, the explanation was simple. Kidney Jenkinson, with his picturesque capacity for minding other people's business, had always suspected these homely prosaic looking bungalows of the Lloyd chain. Kidney himself had shops at Matamata, Morrinsville, Hamilton and other places, and these houses worried him. They looked so respectable that he knew there was something wrong. All his life he had refused to be beguiled by appearances. For four years in the third standard, he had put up a stout fight that eight and six did not come to fourteen, his grounds being that the mathematical authorities claimed that they did… Any everyday fact was enough for him: like the boss, it must be wrong. At a pinch, on a drowsy summer afternoon, he would enunciate a positive statement for the purpose of working round to contradict himself.
Well, here he was, and Gillespie knew that as long as it appeared clear to Kidney that it was not the forces of law and order and authority that were being released, all would be well.
“Well, Kidney, “he said, “what do we do now? You knew Lloyd was not a detective?”
“Yes,” said Kidney, “he looked like one—that was enough for me.”
“Well,” said Gillespie, “he won't lie there for very long, and there are some of his company about …”
“The car's outside,” said Kidney. “Let's throw him in and bolt for Matamata. I've got an idea.”
The trip to Matamata was uneventful. Lloyd twitched and snored sten-toriously, and Gillespie regarded his condition with a loving eye.
They halted at a neat bungalow. “Another Lloyd dwelling,” said Kidney. “Bring him in, and I'll slip over to the shop.”
Kidney returned in a few minutes. He had a small parcel of sweetbreads, tripe and an ox-tail. He placed the blood-stained cleaver in Lloyd's right hand, a copy of the Supplementary Estimates in his left (a good deal of this was missing having travelled out from the shop round various small orders). About the unconscious form he strewed the other articles.
“Looks like Ted Parrett, the morning after St. Bartholomew's Eve,” he said, surveying the look of massacre given by the mise-en-scene.
“Come on,” he said, “leave him.” As the gate clanged, Gillespie saw a portly citizen making his way in. “Who was that?” he asked. “That's the representative of the ‘Matamata Voice',” he said. “I told him there was a good ad. to be picked up here. Anyhow we'll go on to the shop.”
Kidney had an office at the back, and dodging their way through a gallery of hanging carcases of beef and mutton, they entered. There on the stool was the easy-going form of Horsey Stewart. “Hold Your Horses Stewart” he should have been called, according to Kidney.
In his case speech was given to conceal thought. He had an almost infinite capacity for holding his cards, and a pleasant smile, except on Monday morning. The smile was a brilliant
Kidney pulled out a form and took the beer from the corned beef vat. He held his secret meetings of the
“Well,” he said, “is there anything I can do?” Gillespie replied swiftly, “You can. We're not one day further ahead in this enquiry as to the murder of Pat Lauder . Fanning will tell you.”
“Yes,” said Fanning, with an appearance of ponderosity that concealed a pretty good workmanlike mind: “I've got a list of false clues, wrong arrests, and so on that is a positive disgrace for Matamata and would be crook in New York.”
“Well,” said Kidney, “I do not know that the motive is so obscure, nor do I think the mystery of Pat Lauder's murder is so insoluble. The mystery to me is why he was allowed to live so long…. Look at some of his habits: He was the world's most copious confessor; his form of alcoholic remorse was a frightful thing. Considering that there is hardly a town in either Island that does not own sufferers from this pest when he got genial … that alone must have left him with a considerable mass of enemies. Then he believed in fairies' money—never got writer's cramp…”
Horsey Stewart interrupted, delivering a slow, sweet smile in neutral, “Yes,” he said, “but did you ever suffer from his writings? They had the most infuriating appearance of being composed in English …”
The smile almost imperceptibly intensified a little and his speech slowed down, showing that he was thinking rapidly. “His loss was most satisfactory in some ways, it could have been done more on purely railway principles, of course, but …”
Kidney Jenkinson sprang into the air and hurled himself at one ten foot bound at the tall figure that was entering. This splendid Carisbrooke Ground tackle took poor Teaswell by surprise.
Dusting the sawdust from his immaculate clothes as he rose, he muttered, “What's all this about—what has the law to say, do you think, about an assault on a toffee maker of my productiveness…. I'm on my fifth volume now.”
“That'll teach you to swing llama on to me for a vealer,” said Kidney. “You've lost me the postmistress, Dr. Brannigan! … toffee flavoured! too!” Teaswell was for once at a loss.
The situation was relieved as Kidney rushed to the front of the shop, heavily crashing a large Jersey heifer carcase on the way. He signalled to everyone to come out, bubbling with laughter.
Along the street of Matamata was prcceeding the quaintest cavalcade. It would have made Noah green with envy. Even the Neon lights were visibly in doubt as to their colours, and blue was vacillating to orange, and reds were trembling to green. P.C. Fanning was in the lead, Impskill Lloyd was held tightly by the arm by a large phlegmatic person, subsequently ascertained to be a visiting detective, sent from the Capital to look for an absconding grocer who had been discovered putting sand in the sugar on Tuesdays and Thursdays instead of Mondays and Fridays.
Walking with an air of fortuitous pride next in line was Stewart Bury, the local mortician.
“If Lloyd gets his, as he oughter,” said Gillespie, “Bury won't be interested he won't even be wondering whether it's oak and silver handles or plain beaver board.”
Proudly holding the collection of small goods that Kidney had left, in walked the newspaper representative, and next him was a small boy brandishing the bloodstained cleaver. It was a great show. The population had turned out and, according to Kidney, looked like “The Eastbourne football park mob on an off day.”
Suddenly Gillespie ejaculated, “Well, of all the fools I'm …” and left at even time pace for the procession. Teaswell followed with more dignity.
The smile left Horsey Stewart's face. He looked almost sinister for a moment. He never felt entirely easy over that intuition of Gillespie's and he feared a getting together of Lloyd and his erstwhile chauffeur. After all, Lauder's death had been more of an execution than a crime, as was shown by the number of willing collaborators who had helped, some, perhaps a mite too enthusiastically. It was, all considered, a splendid instance of good brotherhood and selfless fellowship, working for the good of the community. It would be a pity if a fine lot of fellows were to become the victims of the pitiless majesty of the law. He knew that Gillespie's reverence for the law was almost devotional
(Rly. Publicity photo.)
The Union Steamship Company's T.S.S. “Awatea,” at Wellington, New Zealand.
Horsey Stewart thought all this out in two flashes and turned to the telephone. He spoke hurriedly in Maori, thanking his stars for Jimmy Cowan.
In the meantime, Tmpskill Lloyd has been lodged at the police station, P.C. Fanning lumbering about now in charge of everything. The temporary charge was his being in illegal possession of Kidney Jenkinson's cleaver and the mixed proteins.
Gillespie lost his indecision. He took P.C. Fanning aside. “I must see Impskill alone,” he said.
P.C. answered, “What about the regulations … I'll look them up.”
Gillespie waited impatiently as time went on. He could see that P.C. was through the regulations under “The Lands for Settlement Acts” “The Stamp Acts” and “The Divorce and Matrimonial Causes Act.” However there was nothing to do but wait. P.C. Fanning was nothing if not thorough.
At last, however, the constable gave a majestic nod of affirmation. Gillespie darted down the passage. It was a wooden lock-up, and he jabbed the key in the lock—and laughed grimly. The far side of the lock-up was missing and so was Lloyd! The whole wall had been neatly removed, and there were footprints all over the ground that might have been made in a Springboks Test Match. Gillespie tore across the paddook at the back of the police station. There was no one in sight, except Horsey Stewart, who was smiling in dulcet fashion and sauntering towards Gillespie … (To be continued.)
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For many a year I have written on the subject of the Maori language and urged that not only should it be taught in the native schools, but that it should be included in the general education scheme and given a place at least equal to that of any foreign language. It is, in my view, more important to preserve and popularise the original tongue of the country than to insist on college students spending years on the study of French. It may seem incredible that Maori is not only not taught in native schools, but it has actually been discouraged in some of them. The effect has been, of course, to make the Maori children ashamed of their mother tongue, a complaint that has often been voiced by their disgusted elders.
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Now I am glad to see that some of the younger generation of our Maori people are championing the effort to give the language its rightful place in the national education plan. Mr. C. Bennett, son of the Right Reverend F. Bennett, the first Bishop of Aotearoa, in an address at Hastings lately urged that Maori should be taught in the schools and placed on at least the same plane as foreign languages. He pointed out that French and other languages were of very little practical value to those who were taught them in college. It was at any rate necessary that the pronunciation of Maori should be taught in schools.
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With Mr. Bennett's plea “Tohunga” is, of course, in complete agreement. The Maori language is of more actual use to the New Zealander than French is, because it is to some extent before him daily, in the form of place-names. Many of these names are habitually mispronounced, and it is desirable therefore that the correct pronunciation should be taught. The place to begin is in the public schools;
It cannot, of course, be held that French need not be taught because very few need to use it. Latin and French enter so much into our English language that it is essential they should be part of any system of education. There is the literary and cultural value that needs no stressing. But it is not a question of substitution or replacing any other language with Maori. It is simply claimed that it is of at least equal value.
There is a great literary value in the classic Maori legends and history and folk-lore that make up the very soul of the race and give interest to so much of the country itself. How dull and dead is a land which has no poetic background, which lacks the salt and fire of an ancient warrior tradition! The Maori and the pakeha contact with the Maori supply that element in New Zealand. There is a vast amount preserved in books; but there is more than that. The tongue is a living tongue, though often sadly misused, because in these quickly changing times it is not taught to the young generation.
Now, in the first place, the children in native schools should be taught Maori, by means of the best examples of the language in print and by teachers who are either educated Maoris or pakehas who have studied Maori and have qualified themselves to give instruction. Some people will ask, why teach Maori to Maoris? The only reply to this that is necessary is, why teach English in our pakeha schools and colleges? Native school teachers who cannot speak and teach Maori should gradually be replaced by qualified men and women. Next, pronunciation and elementary lessons in the language could easily be mastered sufficiently by all teachers in the primary schools. Going on to post-primary schools, Maori could be given equal value with foreign languages for examination purposes.
A young teacher who qualified in Maori should find his or her field of usefulness and profit extended. So, too, with those going in for newspaper or other literary work. There are such pathetic examples of ignorance among young writers who look over the fence at the Maori. They will never get across that fence until they learn to speak to the people they so confidently essay to discuss.
It would be amusing were it not so unfair and unjust to the Maori to read the frequent criticism of the Maoris because ragwort and other noxious weeds grow on Maori land. Talkers at Rotary Clubs, editorial writers who have probably never travelled a mile in the Maori country, rate the native landowners for their neglect to kill ragwort. A South Canterbury paper says the Maori “is in a position largely to defy the law.” Alas, that much-defied law!
I have recently travelled several thousands of miles through pakeha farming districts, and I can recall very few places, even in the most productive districts, that were without a spot or so of ragwort. I have seen paddocks that could be described as “Fields of the Cloth of Gold,” in historic memory. A sheet of ragwort; the farmer had apparently given up the struggle, law or no law. The Maori has an adequate reply to his critics. The pakeha has muddled his land titles; the pakeha brought the ragwort and every other tarutaru (weed). “Why pick on the Maori? You pakehas have most of his land. Get rid of your pests first and show me the way.”
That the finest private Dumas collection in the world should have been built up by a New Zealander is a fact sufficiently astonishing. What is one to say, then, when it is found that the collector has spent his whole life, since his thirteenth year, in the little North Auckland town of Whangarei? One of our present problems is the wise spending of an increased leisure, and Mr. F. W. Reed's story is an example and a challenge from which most of us, I think, may receive benefit and encouragement.
The small boy who arrived in New Zealand in 1887 was allowed to bring with him only twelve books. One of these was “The Queen's Necklace” by Dumas. Whereas the average boy wants stories of adventure by flood and field, young Reed had already developed a taste for historical romance. “The Queen's Necklace” had been a revelation. As he himself put it:
“Here at last was history in fiction, written as it should be presented, swift, full of action, with brilliant, clever, natural and sweeping dialogue, and also, though I could not then have divined it, an impassioned delineation of human nature.”
Pioneering in New Zealand meant, inevitably, a shortage of pocket-money. Spare time spent on the gumfields resulted in two or three new books a year—no more. Occasionally another Dumas volume was bought, but it was sheer luck if one of these became available. The boy was apprenticed to a chemist in Whangarei. He was to work for twenty-three years in this shop and then to acquire the business for himself. There was not much leisure in those days. The shop hours were from 8 a.m. till 8 p.m., and till 10 p.m. on Saturdays. In addition, examinations required many hours of preparation. In 1897, Mr. Reed passed his final examination and at once was able to devote more time to reading. History and historical fiction still came first, but the Dumas influence had already opened up a new field—the French memoir-writers. In 1902, two lives of Dumas were published, and, in addition, Messrs. Methuen announced that they were producing a complete edition of the Dumas romances. Their prospectus disclosed a large number of titles till then unknown to Mr. Reed and the books were published at sixpence or a shilling according to length—ah, happy days!
A little earlier Mr. Reed's employer had added bookselling to his pharmaceutical business. Previously there was no bookseller in the town, though a grocer had made a practice of keeping a shelf of “yellow-backs” in his shop and occasionally a Dumas was obtainable from this source. It was not long before Mr. Reed was in complete charge of the book department and the spate of publishers' catalogues was an absorbing interest. It was at this stage that the dream of the Dumas collection was taking shape and hopeless enough it must at times have seemed. However, a large loose-leaf note-book was opened, and methodically, information as to the various romances was jotted down. The introduction in each of the Methuen volumes provided the initial material. Then a copy of Davidson's “Life of Dumas” was bought, the full scope of his work became apparent, and the man himself was revealed. Most of the Methuen introductions were signed “R. S. G.,” but it was not till 1916 that correspondence in “The Times Literary Supplement” disclosed to Mr. Reed that the initials were those of Robert Singleton Garnett.
The Garnett family holds, I think, a unique place in modern English literature. The original Richard Garnett was Assistant Keeper of Printed Books in the British Museum. His son, Dr. Richard Garnett, C.B., well-known as the author of “The Twilight of the Gods,” became Keeper of Printed Books in his turn. It has been said that none in England knew more of books than he. One of Dr. Garnett's sons is the Robert Singleton Garnett of this story. Apart from his translations and other work on Dumas he was the author of “Some Book-hunting Adventures,” “Odd Memories” and “The New Sketchbook.” His wife, nee Miss Martha Roscoe, was also a novelist, “The Infamous John Friend” being the best-known of her books. Another of Dr. Garnett's sons is Edward, author and playwright, whose name is familiar to those who have studied D. H. Lawrence's letters. His wife, Constance, translated many Russian novels and I suspect that Katherine Mansfield's admiration for Tchekov was largely due to her acquaintance with this lady. David Garnett, the son of this couple, is the author of “Lady Into Fox” and other popular novels of to-day.
Promptly Mr. Reed wrote to the hitherto unknown “R. S. G.” He was dubious about getting a reply, but there is a wonderful camaraderie amongst fellow-collectors, and in due course eight
In 1919 Mr. Garnett presented to Mr. Reed a copy of the rare bibliography by M. Charles Glinel, “Alexandre Dumas et Son Oeuvre.” Alas! Mr. Reed knew no French. Nevertheless, in a year's time, he had translated this volume of 110,000 words and had typed and indexed it, including all his own and Mr. Garnett's notes. The drive of his hobby and his own natural persistence saw him through, but lesser difficulties would, I fear, have baffled most of us.
That, however, was merely the commencement. Mr. Reed had taken over his employer's business in 1911, and in 1926 he retired to devote himself to his hobby. He had then 932 Dumas volumes. To-day he has 1,642 and in addition Mr. Garnett at his death left his collection of 625 volumes to Mr. Reed. Fortunately the two collections include very few duplications. I come now to Mr. Reed's own work. He has translated, typed and had bound, all of the available plays of Dumas—seventy-two in number. Only one of these had previously been translated into English as written, and five have not seen print at all. He has also translated entire volumes and many articles and extracts, none of which had previously been available in English. From the information he had so patiently gathered, arranged and indexed, he prepared, in 1928–1929, two typed volumes totalling 858 pages, copies of these being deposited with the British Museum and the Bibliotheque Nationale at Paris. The second volume was published in 1933—the most complete bibliography of Dumas in existence.
Naturally the French Government would dearly like to secure this collection, but fortunately for New Zealand, it is destined to be placed in the Public Library at Auckland. France has, however, not been slow to recognise Mr. Reed's work. In 1927, at the request of the Consul for France in Auckland, Mr. Reed received the decoration of “Officier d’ Academie” and in 1934, the higher honour of Officier de I'Instruction Publique”—for services rendered to French literature. The insignia of this decoration consists of two gold palm-leaves with a purple ribbon and rosette. The small boy who came to New Zealand with “The Queen's Necklace” in his box has faithfully followed his dream.
And now to deal with the collection itself. The Reed Collection includes 100 volumes of the original editions of Dumas, many of them in mint condition with the original wrappers. The Garnett collection added a further 66 of these. There are also 331 volumes of the pirated Belgian editions, most of which are in the Garnett collection. Many of these are really the first editions, though unauthorised, having been taken direct from serial publications. They are now very scarce and both collectors have displayed a special pride and affection for these little books. There are as well in later editions 180 volumes of Dumas' work in French and 323 in English translations, of which 138 are early editions now out of print. Finely illustrated editions number an additional 56 volumes, the majority of which are in the Garnett collection. The illustrations reach a very high standard, the best being perhaps Leloir's illustrations for the Routledge edition of “The Three Musketeers” in English and for the French edition of “Dame de Monsoreau.”
Naturally the dry enumeration of the last paragraph conceals many a rarity. For instance, in 1826, Dumas, then a young and unknown clerk, published, partly at his own expense, his first volume. It consisted of three short stories and was entiled “Nouvelles Contemporaines.” Only four copies were sold though Dumas presented a number to his friends. The difficulties of finding a copy of this book a century later are obvious. Nevertheless no fewer than three copies have passed through Mr. Reed's hands and he has retained the finest—in almost perfect condition—for his collection. Apparently rarer still is the four-volume set “La Maison de Savoie.” No bibliographer other than Mr. Reed has mentioned it and it is missing from both the French and English national collections. Mr. Garnett discovered a set in London in 1917 and five years later on purchasing a second set which contained several additional plates he sold his original find to Mr. Reed. One other copy has since been found, so that of three known copies two are now in Whangarei.
Dumas had a passion for editing journals of his own and some of these ventures involved him in heavy monetary losses. His first, “Psyche” was literary and contained a large amount of verse, including some of his own. Not many copies of this journal remain in existence and Mr. Reed has not been able to
Mr. Reed has also an admirable collection of volumes, booklets and pamphlets dealing with Dumas. The Garnett collection has contributed only to a slight degree to this section. Some of these concern the man himself, his life and work. Most, however, are histories, memoirs, etc., covering the period of Dumas romances and the lives of the many historical characters appearing therein. Magazine and newspaper articles dealing with Dumas have proved difficult to collect, but Mr. Reed has bound five volumes of these, two in French and three in English. An interesting pendant to this part of the collection is an enormous map of France in sections which was produced for Napoleon by Cassini. The sections, 182 in number, are nearly three feet by two and are enclosed in 27 boxes.
The twenty-seventh box covering the South-East corner of France is missing, however. In addition to the usual details, posting-stations, wayside inns, windmills, and gallows, as well as churches, monasteries and mansions, are shown. In short here you have France as it was prior to the railways, and in following the wanderings of a Dumas hero, the reader would gain from these maps much pleasure and profit.
Perhaps the most interesting part of the collection is the manuscripts. Up till 1923 Mr. Reed had collected only two or three brief notes in the Dumas handwriting. The first important manuscript came through the good offices of Mr. Garnett. It consists of two chapters of an unfinished romance skilfully combined, and prefixed and followed by comments on the then situation of Garibaldi, who was Dumas’ close friend. The romance referred to is “Isaac Laquedem”—the Dumas version of the ever-recurring legend of the Wandering Jew. The full story of the acquisition of this manuscript is most interesting, but space will not permit the telling here. The next manuscript was a collection of articles dealing with Garibaldi and the Italian situation between 1860 and 1864. This volume is beaujpgully bound in full green crushed morocco, each manuscript sheet inlaid in a wide border of cartridge paper, the edges fully gilt and the leather binding handsomely decorated. In the Garnett collection are two further volumes, bound to match. These holographs are known as “On board the ‘Emma’.” Later Mr. Reed was offered and bought the complete manuscript of the romance “Conscience I'Innocent” (400 pages), this being the only complete romance to come on the market in Mr. Reed's memory. Then there is “La Jeunesse de Louis XV,” a fine comedy which was refused production on political grounds and which has never been either printed or produced in its original state. Not only has Mr. Reed this manuscript but he has also a copy made by M. Glinel (previously referred to) and in all probability no other copy has ever been made.
This by no means exhausts the Dumas holographs, rather I have given you but a taste of their quality. Even the minor manuscripts contain much of interest.
It will be news to most people that Dumas also wrote poetry. His collected verses have never been published, but M. Glinel made in his own handwriting a collection of 155 poems and these are now in Mr. Reed's hands. He has managed to add a few to this collection including a number of originals. A little green notebook of Dumas', formerly in the Glinel collection, contains amongst much interesting matter two or three early pieces of verse in course of composition. Twenty-nine songs by Dumas are known to have been set to music and of these Mr. Reed has fourteen.
Among a number of photographs and portraits is an original pencil drawing of more than passing interest. It is
Finally it must be mentioned that two travel volumes edited by Dumas are of special interest to New Zealanders. One is an account of the experiences of Dr. Felix Maynard who served for a number of years as surgeon on board a whaler in New Zealand waters. The other is the journal of Madame Giovanni who visited Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific Islands in the early part of the nineteenth century. Both of these Mr. Reed has made available for the first time in English.
Mr. Reed has not been unmindful of the town in which he has spent his life, but to enlarge on his services to Whangarei would be to incur his wrath. It must be stated, however, that Whangarei is to benefit from his collection. While he has very properly bequeathed the Reed-Garnett Dumas collection to Auckland, there are still about 1,500 volumes to be given to his own town. In this connection it may be mentioned that a very fine Public Library has recently been opened, a building which would do credit to a much larger place. The moving spirit in this has been Mr. A. T. Brainsby. Here a “Reed Room” has been provided and already a part of Mr. Reed's collection has been housed. This includes a duplicate set of the 72 typed Dumas plays previously mentioned, very nicely bound in 23 volumes. There are also a further seven volumes of typed translations. Then there is a Black Letter “Treacle” Bible of 1557, a “Breeches” Bible of 1599, a Fourteenth Century Manuscript, being the text of the minor prophets from Hosea to Malachi, in Latin, with notes and commentary, and a holograph letter from Lord Nelson to Admiral Collingwood dated from the Victory on 12th October, 1805.
There is much treasure still to come, including fine sets in translation of French Nineteenth Century romances and Memoirs from a much earlier date. There is practically a complete set of John Payne's works—limited editions including “The Arabian Nights,” “Bandello and Omar Khayyam in the original metre. There is a collection of books dealing with the Arthurian legends, another of early Italian novels and literature dealing with them, and there is the first edition of the Mardrus “Arabian Nights” in eight volumes in French, beaujpgully and profusely illustrated from Persian and Hindu manuscripts—a scarce set.
Any booklover who may find himself in Whangarei would be well-advised to visit Mr. Reed, and this whether or not he knows anything of Dumas. Apart from seeing the collection I have very imperfectly described, he will find Mr. Reed's literary gossip and his stories of hunting down his various treasures most fascinating. Further, if anyone is attempting to collect material
(Photo., courtesy Burfoots Ltd., Whangarei.)
The Whangarei Public Library.
We have had a visit from a famous English artist and some of his comments on Art in New Zealand, while pleasing and encouraging in some directions, were also critical of certain defects in the work of our painters and the contents of public galleries. The stimulating note was strong. Mr. Lamorna Birch, marvelling at the clearness and crispness of much of our scenery, and, per contra, the lush rich moist colouring of the rain-forest and lake districts, advises the young artist to paint exactly what he sees, as he sees it. The courage of this opinion should be expressed in his brushwork. “Never mind other people,” was in effect one of his bits of advice; “trust to yourself. If you see that a white cloud casts a black shadow on the earth or the water, paint it black.”
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Lamorna Birch perhaps tried to paint more of New Zealand than he should have attempted in so short a visit. Certainly he saw more of the Dominion's varied landscapes in a few weeks than many New Zealanders see in a lifetime. He took away with him a great number of sketches and colour notes for future use, and these and his finished pictures will help to spread the fame of our scenery. The artist took a great fancy to the pohutukawa tree, not so much for its flowers as for its glorious lawlessness of growth, its irregularity of shape, all elbows and knees, and its fearless habit of rooting-in on cliff-tops and coast edges. In that liking for the pohutukawa and its sister the rata, he brought to my mind an artist of the older generation in the North, the late Kennett Watkins; it was his favourite picture tree.
Another artistic visitor of ours has expressed surprise that New Zealand painters devote themselves so exclusively to landscape without the touch of human life that gives double interest to the picture. Too true, ye artists! There is a maddening monotony in the landscapes we see year after year in our exhibitions, and in some of the permanent collections. I have often suggested that our artists would develop some originality of subject and treatment. There is the wonderful wealth of Maori legend; there is the inspiring history of our country. Most artists seem quite ignorant of both; it may be that they are afraid of their capacity in figure drawing.
There is, too, the life of to-day, all around us. Has no artist the vision to grasp the wonderful dramatic quality of great engineering works in construction such as the Mohaka railway viaduct? It is a subject a Brangwyn would seize upon with delight. The artistic value lies in the scenes of human activity, man's effort to overcome the wilderness, to bridge the gulches. Most of the interest vanishes with completion of such tasks; the artist must show the pioneer at work.
I remember that during the making of the North Island Trunk Railway I rode down the valley of the Ongarue to Taumarunui and thought what a subject it was for an artist—the white camps, tents and slab whares, of a thousand navvies; gleaming among clumps of dark bush and on the pumice terraces by the river, the great rock cuttings in the half-way stage, the busy little puffing locos. Alas! Our artists were all painting “The Waitemata by Moonlight” and “The Rose Bowl.”
In last month's article on this page I gave some account of the rugged Maruia country, between the Buller Valley and the eastern side of the Alpine ranges in the South Island. The olden Maori route between west and east traversed the wild valley called the Kopi o Kai-Tangata, or “Cannibal Gorge.” Continuing the narrative, I take from my notes of many years ago on the West Coast some details of primitive life and travel in the back country in ancient times. The very few surviving old Maoris at Arahura described the manner in which the travellers through that savage territory contrived to obtain food. Their principal items of food were weka (woodhens) and eels. They snared the weka—an easy task, because of its inquisitive habits—and also used dogs to catch them. These woodhens were in abundance, in the valleys and small natural clearings, in the great bush. The Maoris carried eel-baskets (hinaki) for the capture of the tuna, and early European explorers passing through the Maruia country found remains of those baskets in numerous places. Besides those staples there was fern-root; indeed this should be considered as the main item of food in some places. In the mountain-beech country, there was little bird life, because of the absence of berries, but in the lower parts where the miro and tawa and white-pine and other berry-bearing trees and shrubs grew, there were plenty of pigeon, tui and kaka parrots, and the kokako or blue crow, which were snared or speared. In some parts, including Maruia, the kakapo, the flightless ground parrot, was caught with the aid of dogs, which the Maoris trained to hunt silently
(Photo, Thelma R. Kent.)
Sheep country near Queenstown, South Island, New Zealand.
What I like about New Zealand (apart from the several things I love about it), is its power of quick-change artistry. It is like a book of small, brilliantly coloured and varied pages; if you are the sort of gastronomically hardened sinner to whom rainbow trout, grilled over a campfire and eaten underneath the lake pohutukawas doesn't appeal, you have only to flick a page, and behold a very fair imitation of Greenland's icy mountains, only much less forbidding, and sufficiently easy for the amateur's alpenstock to make a dent in their sides. In the South, if anything, this infinite variety is even more striking than in our old North Island; which, if I continue to write the flowery truth about the South, will set me down as a backslider and a renegade altogether.
Nevertheless, the way those small clay cottages cling to the black edge of nothingness has its fascination; and the rumble of the green and the yellow rivers.
Dunedin people, in a absentee landlord way, are very proud of what they call “Central.” Sometimes they saddle up and ride into its heart, sometimes their baby cars give an appealing look at the angles and set off to skirt the brinks of cliffs and gorges which are a little too awesome to be a motorist's paradise. One gathers, vaguely, that it isn't only the stern, slightly Scottish grandeur of Central which dwells in their minds, but the romance of the old gold-seeking towns, springing up fifty and more years ago, to harbour some of the wildest characters and strangest legends that ever took root in the soil of a new country. Mr. Bob. Gilkison, of Dunedin, has written an excellent book on the old days of gold in Central Otago, and if you want first-hand information about the “old identities,” you can hardly apply to a better source. I was told by a friend of Mr. Gilkison's that to go with him on a Central Otago trip was an almost unbearably slow process; because, all along the way, old-timers, complete with whiskers and nuggets appeared from their lairs and cried “Hullo, Bob!”
There is tragedy enough in some of the old stories. Mount Misery, Mount Hunger, dozens of other landmarks won their names through the deaths or suffering of pioneer goldseekers, straggling across the great hills, always in hopes of the grand strike which would put them on velvet for the rest of their lives—or, anyhow, enable them to paint bright vermilion the roaring goldrush towns, which look so sleepy to-day. Cromwell, Clyde, quaint little Arrowtown, how much they could say of the way New Zealand diggers had with a mate, a girl, a pickaxe, a good horse and a bottle!—all things which it behoves the well-educated man to handle as well as the next one.
Before visiting Dunedin, I had never seen a clay cabin; and when you do see one, you hardly believe your eyes, so quaint are these ghostly survivals from another time. Yet the pioneers were very proud indeed of their clay cottages, and there is an artistic charm about them which one would go far to seek in tin-roofed, wooden bungalows. Old settlers write that they were warm, dry and comfortable, with only one real disadvantage—the thick clay walls were a happy hunting-ground for fleas. Fleas or no fleas, it may interest New Zealand city dwellers to know that still, far down in “Central,” numbers of their countrymen live on in huts of clay or rough stone slabs, so crudely piled together that one wonders how their sides keep out the weather. Some of the cabins are empty and crumbling into decay, but others show a thin column of smoke, rising above the jade-green of the Kawarau river gorge, the grandest bit of “Central.”
Rivers of yellow, rivers of green. The yellow river tells how, miles to the north, prospectors are washing out alluvial gold, perhaps meagre scrapings which just enable them to keep going with the aid of the Government subsidy, perhaps a more or less reliable £6 or £7 a week. I know one young Christchurch journalist who lost his job during the depression; he “parked” his family, said goodbye to the city, and went out to Central, where he lived in a cabin, washed river gold, and seldom bothered a razor strop. The first year was hard enough, but at the end of the second, he struck the lucky patch about which diggers still dream. Since then, he has been averaging at least £6 a week, and thinks his claim a steady-going proposition for the next several years. His cabin has become a little house, and his family have joined him—young New Zealand growing up with the old gold days under their eyes. Around clay cabins in Otago Central, I saw little gardens, gay with flowers, or boastful with grandiose-looking onions, potatoes and curly kale; and young New Zealand, playing tow-headed and bare-legged outside these little abodes, looked by no means so forlorn as the comfort-loving mortal, who has never been beyond a stone's throw of the talkie palaces, might expect. Nor are the women living in the gold-bearing country of New Zealand entirely cut off from an interest in the world and its affairs. One sees wireless masts popping up on the queerest pinnacles. A souvenir which I am keeping for luck was a specimen of alluvial gold sent to me by the wife of a gold-seeker. A charming, well-educated young girl,
The yellow Molyneux and the green Kawarau could both tell great stories both of the ancient gold-rush, and the modern gold-walk—for that is what to-day's straggling progress across the mountains into lonely ravines amounts to. All the old-timers in Otago Central believe in the future of gold—and not only because of the present high market prices, but because they are sure that heavy reefs still remain to be discovered. Some of them carry within their memory the faces of men who made thousands; whom they themselves “grub-staked” for a few days' desperate combing of the gullies, and
(Photo, Thelma R. Kent.)
A camera study at Lake Howden, South Island, New Zealand.
Not the glitter of gold alone, but sheer majesty catches one's breath at the first sight of Central. At the Kawarau Gorge, where “scenery” begins, and continues until one gets to Queenstown and the Southern Lakes, the huge black cliffs rise up, so sharp and steep that the sunset is cracked against them like the rind of a pomegranate. All the way from Dunedin to Cromwell, the train rumbles through tussock country. Such trees as dip their green heads into the wind have been planted, in little groups forlorn against the wide-spread yellow. From a little distance, the tussock country looks exactly like a lion's skin. There is the taut-stretched, tawny drum, the lean rocks stretching up for ribs, the high tufts which make the lion's tail. Part of the country is high plateau, splendid, and yet most desolate. But there is no weariness for the eye in this barren gold. The scenery has only one feature which is a nightmare touch; almost as soon as we left Dunedin, the fences bore queer little crescents, sometimes still befurred, sometimes bleaching into mere sticks of skin and bone. The tale of mass rabbit-killing is part of Otago's history. Old residents can still remember how the first rabbits came to “Central,” and to the Mackenzie Country; and how, a few years later, scores of men were employed on every big station, trying to wipe out the hordes whose numbers could not be counted. Evidence that the trapper is still hard at work to-day hangs sjpgfening on the fences; it is an ugly thing to see, and if you want another touch of the fantastic, nothing could be queerer than the effect of millions of dried foxglove stalks, nodding their withered heads against the cliffs. Evidently some attempt has been made to stamp out the foxglove, and these witch's fingers wag at you for scores of miles, with the bleaching rabbits to keep them company. Mount Hunger … Mount Misery … There is still a touch of the grim and bizarre in the country which gave space to such names.
A lonely thing to see, past Cromwell (and by that time, having travelled all day in the train, you have transferred to a service car, and are sitting side by side with two diggers who have been celebrating in Cromwell, and insist on singing all the way back to their clay hut), is the old garden-patches that have been abandoned, and run into wilderness. The colour of gold is oddly reproduced in marigolds and escholtzias, great banks of them; but the white irises outnumber them, taking little dips and gullies to themselves, while behind rise the black cliffs, and the huts and cabins clinging on their eaves like swallows' nests. The car swoops through white irises on either hand into a thick waft of scent from hawthorn hedges, white and pink, so heavy with blossom that their great plumes trail in the dust; and that is the approach to Arrowtown, which is of all spots in Central one of the prettiest and quaintest to look at, and was the home, some seventy years ago, of a fine, fat, notorious buccaneer, Bully Hayes.
I met in Arrowtown an old man of ninety-six, with blue eyes and a back as straight as a dart. His name was Romans, and on being told there was a stranger in the service car who would like to speak with him about the old days, he strode across the main street, and shook hands with me. There was nothing wrong with his sight, hearing or memory, thoug