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Controller and Auditor-General.
17/5/37
“On thy fair bosom, silver lake, The wild swan spreads his snowy sail And round his heart the ripples break…”
Lake Waikaremoana, North Island, New Zealand.
New Zealand
Railways
Magazine
Magazine
“
For Better Service.”Registered at the G.P.O., Wellington, N.Z., for transmission by post as a Newspaper.
Vol. XII. No. 6.
Wellington, New Zealand
September1, 1937.
A railway spring
September, besides being the first Spring month of the New Zealand year, can be taken to symbolise a period of Springtime in the Railways; for with all the improvements going on in every realm of railway activity, a railwayman's impression of the service at the present time may well be like Emerson's May Day song to the Spring, which
“In city or in solitude Step by step lifts bad to good, Without halting, without rest Lifting Better up to Best.”
Whatever the cause, there has been a release of imaginative energy, a great awakening of power, in regard to railway affairs that is now found reflected in the quality of service supplied to the public by the national transportation system. A ride by rail has become a thing of joy. The cars are roomy and fresh, well-sprung and smoothly handled. The automatic train signals wink you safely through the denser zones of traffic. The railway staff are looking for ways to help you. Thanks to the care and concoctional genius of the Lindsay Brigade, a railway pie, at a stopping place like Paekakariki, is now the pluperfect prestissimo of all the great pie family, just as, at Wellington Station, a railway hair-cut or a railway bath marks the highest achievement of art and luxury in exterior improvements.
On all sides there is evidence that the Railways are keeping pace with the technical developments for which this age of rapid adaptations of inventive genius to practical affairs is increasingly notable. Every development of this kind suggests new thoughts for the morrow, so that the practical, which feeds on facts, is perpetually being reconciled to that imaginative freedom of which dreams are made.
In this New Zealand we are so fortunately placed by nature that our most daring dreams have the chance to come true. We only fail if our imagination fails. And what great aids to imagination the whole land affords—what food for the imagination in our scenic effects alone! Run the length of the Eglinton—Hollyford road by railway bus on a sunny day and stop to see the glory of snow-clad Mt. Christine across the dark canyons and past the sheer lift of the nearer beech-clad mountains. Cast an eye over the sylvan beauty of the Tangarakau Gorge on the Stratford—Okahukura link of the North Island main trunk line. Take an early dip in the warmer seas up Waiwera way in the gracious Kauriland. Or see Pukaki's mirrored face at six o'clock in the morning, with the first beams of sunlight waking the questing Paradise ducks to flight, and every colour of the rainbow blending in tones of high relief the vision of silver sheen on placid waters, of rock and bush, of sombre sedge and crystal Southern Alps. These are among the treasures that wake imagination to the greatness of our land, to what it can become with interest and application, with daring in enterprise and confidence in ultimate success. They are part of the urge of the Railway Spring.
And they call to us all, in clarion tones, that the best that human hands and brains can do is none too good for the times in which we live, for the opportunities that are ours, and for love of the land that gives so richly all things of use and beauty, presented, too, in a setting of scenic wonders that are the grandest the world can offer.
General Manager's Message.
a test of efficiency.
I have long been convinced that the first requirement of any railway system, and more particularly a nationally owned system, is to be so equipped in personnel and facilities as to be able to deal satisfactorily and adequately with the public demands as they arise under circumstances of either seasonal or unexpected pressure. That is its purpose, and upon its ability to pass that test must it be judged.
One of the unexpected tests to which our system has been put recently was in the handling of the exceptional passenger traffic created by the visit of the Springbok Rugby Football Team to New Zealand.
Up to the time of writing, special train arrangements have been made for the district matches at Auckland, Hamilton, New Plymouth, Palmerston North, Wellington and Christchurch, and for the first Test Match at Wellington. For all these matches, in which the most intense interest has been taken and where all previous records of attendances have been broken, the railway services have proved adequate to the extent that no one who desired to use the trains provided, has been denied the necessary transport to see any of these great games. Notwithstanding the increasing public enthusiasm I feel that we will be equally successful in handling the traffic problems associated with the remainder of the South Africans' tour; but in the meantime I wish to commend those of the Department's Staff who have worked so well in arranging the necessary accommodation for travellers, in running the augmented services to schedule, and in attending so well to the many requirements of passengers.
A very pleasing indication of the benefit of modern station facilities was afforded at Wellington on the day of the first Test Match. Here 195 trains and rail-car services were handled with ease and expedition and approximately 18,000 inward and outward passengers were dealt with throughout the day. Almost 2,000 people had meals in the Station Dining Hall, 3,200 were served in the Station Cafeteria, and 200 passengers took advantage of the hairdressing saloon and bath facilities of the Station, while many more had the comfort, shelter and rest, with easy access to post and telegraph facilities, telephones, bookstalls and refreshment stalls, which the new Station is so generously designed to afford.
It was another test of efficiency, and the result was undoubtedly pleasurable both to the public who used the Station and to the railway staff responsible for the organisation, train running, refreshment services, and general operating work associated with it. It was also an answer to the paid propagandists and others who, at the present time, without justification or evidence, attempt to decry the excellent service being rendered (and to be rendered) by the Railways, and who comment deprecatingly upon the prospect of the Railways Department being asked to extend its activities in the service of the people and the public interest.
I wish to thank the staff for the part they played in rendering such good service to our patrons.
General Manager.
(ByO. N. Gillespie .)
Early Wharves, Te Aro, about 1850.
Making the railways made New Zealand, and the process was perfected by our harbours. It is probable that we are unique in our many examples of the ideal marriage between the two great transport systems, the iron lines of the permanent way, and the charted courses of the open sea.
There is a legendary atmosphere about lines of busy wharves. Great cranes creak and swine as they drop huge crates into the waiting railway trucks. Exotic names from foreign countries are stencilled in black and colours on massive square cases, and the watcher is reminded of the vast overseas world that ministers to New Zealand's needs. Yet it must be remembered that motor cars and Worcester sauce, Arabian dates and English porcelain, French perfumes and Spanish olives, would not be pouring out of those great ocean carriers if it were not for the serried lines of railway trucks that stand on the steel rails running up and down each wharf. They have brought from our farm lands, butter, sheepskins, cheese, meat, wool and other products, to exchange for the varied goods that reach us from the uttermost ends of the earth.
The long iron-jointed serpent of the goods train is the corollary of the handsome cargo steamer In an island country such as ours, their union is vital to our well-being.
There is a curious resemblance between a busy harbour and a large railway station. I remember Robert Blatchford's description of the London junction as seen from a signal box: “Lines curling all round; goods trains, fast trains, slow trains, stray engines; backing, filling, tacking, and running before the wind in all directions; bells ringing, whistles blowing, steam hissing, wires creaking, hoarse voices wheezing through mouthpieces …” and so on.
From one of Wellington's nearby hills, or a lofty building, the massed lines of wharves bear very much the same appearance. Grimy coal barges, spick and span oil tankers, imposing passenger liners, fussy tug boats, darting ferry steamers, portly cargo boats, and hosts of smaller puffing, busy, slick and slow vessels, seem to be turning, twisting, speeding and stopping, to miss each other by hairbreadths.
The great station is the haven of every type and description of the land liners coming and going on their journeys, and the port is the terminus of the sea locomotives of all tonnages and every variety of horse power.
When the two are interwoven as they are in Wellington, the high romance of transport becomes a visible poetry, a shining spectacle of the complex modern tracery of human affairs.
As the geography books tell us, New Zealand is rich in great harbours, and to a remarkable number of these the words of Captain Herd in the Nautical Almanac of 1832 are applicable: “Here all the navies of Europe might ride in perfect security.”
Many of our finest stretches of landlocked waters are separated from our productive regions by mighty mountain chains, as in the far south of the South Island.
Naturally, there are others which have become great sea emporia of trade, reminding us of the dear old gentleman who pointed out to James Branch Cabell how wonderful it was that all the great seaport cities had been provided with such excellent harbours.
I am choosing the harbour of the capital city for the purposes of this article which is intended to show that the wedding between sea and land transport in New Zealand is simply a fine expression of the crystal clear common sense we own as part of our British heritage.
When the first flock of English colonists went to Virginia, they found a land that was new in nearly every particular. In every essential it differed widely from the world they had left. West of Chesapeake Bay lay only endless land and forest for thousands of miles. In New Zealand, however, one remembered condition among a host of familiars was this: there was no place that was not within easy reach of their beloved sea. Thus it was logical and inevitable that the maritime tradition of a thousand years would be repeated in this England of the southern seas.
The history of the port of Wellington is a phase of this racial story well worth the telling.
It is strange to recall that Captain Cook looked in during his voyage in 1770, and casually dismissed the place as an “inlet which lies to the north, inclining to the west and seems sheltered from all winds.” I would like to see him walking down Willis Street now in a bad northerly!
The next visit by a European was in 1826, more than fifty years after, by Captains Herd and Barrett, and in some way or other the place got christened Port Nicholson after the harbourmaster of Sydney. However, that lynx-eyed genius, Colonel Wakefield, had noticed the dazzling description of this faraway harbour, and he arrived in 1839 on the famous ship Tory.
As they sailed into this new imposing inland sea, dreams already bright took on a rosier hue. I wonder though if the wildest imaginings of those ecstatic voyagers would ever form the panorama now presented by the towering buildings and the forest of shipping that greet the eye as an incoming steamer makes its way to anchorage?
We show a picture of the harbour as it was in 1840. Lyall Bay had its small lagoon, and Burnham Water was
Queen's Whart, Wellington, 1862–63.
It is quaint to recall that when “Britannia” had been forsaken for the Te Aro Flat, the first regular ship on the broad waters of Port Nicholson was the ferry Adelaide. When she could not run, the Wellington inhabitants had to go without their “New Zealand Gazette,” which was still being published at Petone on Saturday nights.
As the settlement grew to sizeable dimensions a mosquito fleet came quickly into being, and little ships for the coastal trade began to appear. A wharf became a necessity, and the first was made by Mr. J. H. Wallace. A big hogshead case was taken out as far as possible, filled with stones and sunk as deeply as could be managed.
(After a sketch by T. Allom.)
An artist's impression of early Wellington Harbour. (Whanganui-a-Tara, the great Harbour of Tara, 1839.)
Wooden trestles topped by long logs made the rest of it. More ambitious ventures followed, one structure requiring the formation of a company with a capital of £250 in £2 shares. This was able to accommodate vessels right up to forty tons.
Another picture shows that in quite a little time the water front was laced with numerous little piers all privately owned, and of varying efficiency.
Then came the approach to the Sixties. Wellington in 1856 had a population of nearly 4,000, and a historian recalls its unique feature, “almost every colonist was a man of means and could stand a siege.” They were pioneers in the true sense. They were not content with slow and cautious growth, and it was universally agreed that the times of the little private wharf had gone.
To get the right perspective, remember that away down south the Canterbury handful of families was considering the raising of a quarter of a million of money to build a railway and bore the Lyttelton tunnel. The Wellington settlers made their appeal to the Provincial Government, and the proudly named Queen's Wharf was built. For this deep water structure heart of totara and heart of rimu were used, brought all the way from Foxton, and logged and squared there before shipping. The first pile was driven on 27th April, and down in Canterbury the first sod of the Lyttelton tunnel excavation had been delved in the June of the year before.
Our next picture shows this structure, which cost over £15,000. It was the pride of the citizens. But again, “Time marches on.” The alluring prospect of quicker communication with the Homeland via Panama Isthmus became an actuality when the Ruahine and a trio of sister ships of 1,500 tons started to run. The Queen's Wharf was doubled in size, the contract being let in the year in which the Australian Commissioners decided that Wellington should be the capital city of New Zealand. By 1876 the Wellington Chamber of Commerce was able to report: “The increase of trade to this port is fulfilling that which has been long felt, that Wellington is the natural centre of communication for both Islands.”
About this time, too, the red funnels of the Union Steam Ship Company began to appear in the harbour, for distant Dunedin was demonstrating its possession of maritime genius.
More important than all was the fact that, on 14th April, a railway had been opened from Pipitea Point, just about where Davis Street to-day meets Thorndon Quay. The produce of the Hutt Valley now came easily to the growing city, and port and harbour and railway started to develop mutually,
(Rly. Publicity photo.)
A modern overseas vessel, the “New Zealand Star,” at Wellington.
The new Wellington Station was opened on 1st November, 1880, marking also the opening of the gigantic achievement, the railway over the lofty Rimutaka Ranges giving an outlet to the rich Wairarapa District.
Just across Waterloo Quay from the station building was something new; this was the Railway Wharf, the only rival to the Queen's Wharf on the whole harbour frontage.
The question of control of the harbour now became a vital issue. The debates make refreshing reading, and their standard was, I am afraid higher than much of our local body discussion to-day. With an insight that has its prophetic justification nowadays, the Hon. Colonel Whitmore said that “he was distinctly against the multiplication of local bodies,” and it took a long time and much thorough-going dialectic and investigation before the Government consented to the setting up of the Wellington Harbour Board.
But, all this time, the greatest romance of all was taking shape.
Wellington harbour is for practical purposes, a perfect natural haven. It contains 20,000 acres; its basin is almost circular; its waters are deep but not too deep for anchorage; the entrance is capacious and safe; the current in the entrance never exceeds two knots; and lastly, the tidal rise and fall is negligible.
But the work of human hands and brains have worked further wonders. The land frontage strip for about three miles, has, by to-day crept out into the sea in some places as far as twenty-five chains. In all, nearly three hundred acres have been wrested from the ocean, and in that titanic achievement, all types and descriptions of New Zealand public organisations have taken part.
Consider what it all means. The actual City of London is a mile square. In this faraway “neck of the woods,” a handful of people have retrieved from the sea, an area equal to half the metropolis of their Homeland. Where seagulls breasted the shining waters,
(Rly. Publicity photo.)
“Where the iron trail meets the trackless waters”—a present day scene on Wellington wharves.
An early picture shows one of the first reclamations with the Government Buildings standing, almost in danger of a high tide. The State administration of the time was responsible for that acquisition of a modest two acres, but prior to that a mighty effort had been made in front of Lambton Quay, and a whole twelve acres had been salvaged. This is the piece running from the Quay to Customhouse Quay and having as cross thoroughfares, Panama, Brandon, Johnston and Waring Taylor Streets.
It would baffle the imagination to conjure up Wellington City without that massive sector.
But all those past efforts of the City Corporation, the Oddfellows, the Foresters, the Provincial Government, the New Munster Government, are overshadowed by the great task just completed by the united activities of the Harbour Board and the Railway Department. By this last logical effort of mutual co-operation, a great piece of territory nearly seventy acres in extent, has been newly fabricated to remain for all time.
This work of human magic has done more than change the immemorial shores of Port Nicholson, although that is, in itself, an amazing transformation. The place would be a crossword puzzle now to old Rauparaha,
(A. P. Godber collection)
The old Wellington-Manawatu Railway Company's Running Shed, at Thorndon, Wellington.
As one result, nearly a thousand yards of high-grade shipping frontage have emerged as if by magic. The unique semi-circular basin of the Wellington Harbour, with its unbroken series of wharves, is increased by more than half a mile. This continuous line of modern facilities for the berthing of the greatest liners places Wellington among the great commercial harbours of the world.
The land, thus won from the waters, is treasure trove, assured of proper use for the good of New Zealand and New Zealanders.
Lastly, the opening of the new Wellington railway station has enabled a planned perfection of alliance between the two transport systems.
Our picture shows the tracery of lines which spray out from the intricate
a plan showing-day rail access to the wellington wharves.
Surely this co-ordination of organised enterprise represents a hopeful flowering of social wisdom.
A great public body and a great branch of the public service whose immediate objectives differ widely, are able to find common ground for the common good. There seems no reason why all men should not profit from this brilliant example of the value of co-operation.
I am sure that Colonel Wakefield if he could come back now, would be quick to discern the real foundation for the successful building he wrought in his dreams of the future. On that sunny day when the Tory passed Soames Island, and with his soldier's eye he noted its suitability for a fort, he might well have quoted Tennyson. He had probably read “Locksley Hall,” for it was written seven years before, and he might have whispered as he looked over the ship's side—
When I dipt into the future far as human eye could see; Saw the Vision of the world, and all the wonder that would be, Saw the heavens fill with commerce, argosies of magic sails, Pilots of the purple twilight, dropping down with costly bales.
He did say that Wellington would be a great emporium of interior trade and a magnificent centre for “the purposes of importation of foreign, and exportation to other countries of native produce.”
That other great visionary and seer, Sir Julius Vogel, who saw the railways as the great instrument for the settlement and advancement of New Zealand, would join with Wakefield in the delight at the fulfilment of their noblest dreams.
Both of them would, I am certain, find their greatest joy in the fact that this splendid achievement of the welding together of sea and land transport had been the mutual work of men, working together in the spirit of brotherhood which was the finest heritage of our forebears.
(ByTangiwai .)Under the Government scheme for re-establishing the Maori on the land good progress has already been made. The Maori farmer, I have observed particularly in the Rotorua and Bay of Plenty country, can farm industriously and well when he is given a fair show and assisted with advice and capital as the pakeha settler is assisted. I have not seen any farms better managed or kept more free from noxious growth than some of the group settlements started in the Rotorua country that was a waste of scrub and fern only a few years ago. The Horohoro small farms, already productive beyond all expectations, are a lesson to very many of our less thorough pakeha farmers. The grand old walls of mighty Horohoro, mountain of fame and poetry, stand guard over the new homes and wellkept farms below, where bright streams coil through grassy fields, all Maori. The scheme has cost much money, but the expenditure is well justified.
There are far too many of the Maori people leading a hand-to-mouth existence, or depending on the sustenance scheme; they are willing and anxious to work and their greatest wish is to be established on farms of their own. Land and money are needed, and the scheme for providing both has been worked out well by the Native Department. The Government is taking up the problem of decently housing the people in those districts most in need of it.
There would not be any necessity for State action, of course, if the old independent primitive life of the Maori could have been restored. Some tribes, within one's own memory, possessed a vast range of country, and were self-contained,
The ancient community life, however, will remain, in part. The tribal meeting houses and the marae are necessary features of the social organisations, and the arts of wood-carving and (in the Waikato, in particular) canoe-making will not be allowed to fade out.
I called at one of the Horohoro settlements a few months ago, in the course of a cruise through the country between Rotorua and Taupo. I thought the arrangement of the kainga was excellent. It was Sunday afternoon, and most of the people were gathered at the meeting-hall, built in part-Maori style. There had been a church service in the morning, and the Maori clergyman was there, sitting in front of the big house, watching the young fellows playing tennis on the hard court. “A spot of church, a spot of tennis, and plenty of korero” was one young farmer's pakeha-Maori summing up of the social gathering. Presently they would be off to the milking machine, for the golden cow is she-who-must-be-obeyed.
There is a curious reluctance in Poverty Bay to make away with that ill-omened name and replace it with something more truthfully descriptive of the district. Some amusing reasons for hanging on to the absurd name have been put forth in Gisborne and further north. One resident thought that the words “Poverty Bay” held “great possibilities” as an advertisement for the place. The contrast between name and facts would attract widespread attention. Too true, but not in the way that the speaker imagined!
A Maori of the young generation said that to change it would be “an insult to the great navigator” who christened the Bay. This point of view is decidedly humorous, coming from a Maori whose district was so libelled by Cook because, in the language of the restarurant, “veges” were off the day he called.
The rest of New Zealand wonders why P.B. declines to shuffle out of its threadbare garment and choose a new dress name that will fittingly indicate its history and describe its fertility and wealth. Gisborne and the country around it are looking forward to railway connections with the rest of the world. But what does a “Poverty Bay” want with a railway? That is a pertinent question that could be put to the princes of commerce and the kings of the milking herds and the sheep flocks of that good country.
“Endeavour Bay” is hereby once more offered as a fitting name for the Turanga-nui-a-Rua—the Maori name of the place (which is not suitable as an official name, because it might be confused with Tauranga). There is already an Endeavour Bay, in Queen Charlotte Sound, but the historic title could quite well be transferred from that uninhabited cove to Gisborne's roadstead, which has a prior right to it. Really, Turanga-nui does not deserve to have its railway until it has plainly indicated to the world that Poverty is no longer endurable as its first name!
In the Nursery—Wellington New Station.(Rly. Publicity Photo.)
From top left: The Minister of Railways, Hon. D. G. Sullivan, speaking at the opening ceremony; in the background is Mr. G. H. Mackley, General Manager of Railways, and on the left, Misis Small, the Matron. Barrie Nicol, the first client in the playroom, tries out the new equipment. A young visitor stays to ten. The gateway and corridor to the Nursery. The Matron, Miss G. Small, at her desk. A view of the modern kitchen. Views of the two sleeping rooms.
britain's latest streamlined locomotives.
High-Speed trains are now in regular daily service between London and Scotland on both the London, Midland & Scottish, and London & North Eastern routes, out of Euston and King's Cross stations respectively. Commencing 5th July, the L. M. & S. Company's new flyer—“The Coronation Scot”—hauled by streamlined engines, covers the Euston-Glasgow journey in 6½ hours, the fastest regular timing ever recorded for the 401½ miles run. On the same date, the L. & N.E. put into service “The Coronation,” a streamlined express performing the 392 miles journey between King's Cross and Edinburgh daily in the record time of six hours. Five powerful streamlined “Pacific” locomotives were specially built for this service in the Doncaster railway shops, and these have very appropriately been named “Dominion of New Zealand,” “Dominion of Canada,” “Commonwealth of Australia,” “Union of South Africa,” and “Empire of India.” New Zealand railway folk will be particularly pleased to know that this crack train of the Homeland is regularly hauled by a magnificent streamlined locomotive bearing the nameplate of the Dominion, and that at the naming ceremony the L. & N.E. Railway were honoured by the presence of the New Zealand High Commissioner in London.
In years gone by, when more than one hundred individual railway systems served Britain, locomotives and rolling-stock of almost every conceivable colour were seen in traffic. Nowadays, we have only four huge group systems providing transportation, but as each group has adopted a different colour scheme for its engines and carriages, a little pleasant variety is still given to railway travel. L. M. & S. passenger locomotives and carriages are painted in crimson-lake, similar to that once favoured by the Midland Railway; on the L. & N.E. line the majority of the passenger engines are painted green, and the passenger coaches brown; the G.W. favours green for its locomotives, and chocolate and cream for its passenger stock; while on the Southern system engines and coaches are painted dark green. In connection with new Railway Clearing House arrangements for goods wagon painting, in which the initials of the owning company are now in small lettering over the wagon number, the L. M. & S. is repainting its freight rolling-stock in what is known as “bauxite red”—a light brown tint. L. & N.E. wagons are painted in a distinctive dark grey; G.W. light grey; and those of the S.R. dark brown. Incidentally, by omitting the large white letters formerly employed on wagon sides, showing the owning company, a considerable annual saving is being effected in paint.
Passenger carriages employed on the Home railways are recognised as being of exceptionally stout construction and possessing admirable smooth-riding qualities. The majority of the carriages consist of a substantial steel underframe, with steel and timber, or reinforced timber, bodies, with special coupling and buffer systems. This construction is claimed to be superior to the all-steel car from the viewpoint
Wolferton Station, L. and N.E.R., serving the Royal Residence at Sandringham, Norfolk.
In this wonderful Coronation summer of 1937, a feature of the Home railway passenger bookings is the enormous popularity of the combined rail-road-steamer tours operated by the four group lines. To meet the needs of the times, the railways have introduced extensive programmes of tours for combined rail, road and steamer itineraries, covering sight-seeing journeys throughout almost every corner of the land. Apart from the universal “penny-a-mile” monthly return tickets, there have been placed at
An all-steel passenger coach on the Belgian Railways.
Railway-operated road vehicles are, to-day, seen everywhere. In Scotland, these services are particularly appreciated, for the mountainous nature of the country renders rail movement impossible in many parts. With an area of over 30,000 square miles, a little over 21 per cent, of “Bonnie Scotland” consists of moors and uplands. All the main-lines serving the Highlands have sections involving steep gradients, sharp curvature, or both. A particularly interesting Scottish line is the West Highland, a single-track route linking Craigendoran, near Glasgow, with Fort William and Mallaig. This construction involved some of the most arduous engineering work ever attempted. Some 141 miles in length, the West Highland Railway is worked by 4–4–0 and 2–6–0 steam locomotives, normally hauling loads of 180 and 220 tons respectively. At present a new class of 2–6–0 engine is being introduced, capable of hauling 300–ton trains. Through sleeping and restaurant cars are operated between London, Glasgow and Fort William, covering the West Highland section, and many tourists make the trip solely to enjoy the wonderful Scottish scenery.
Railway electrification continues to make steady progress on the continent, and somewhat slower progress in Britain. Here at Home, the conditions are not particularly favourable to mainline electrification, and as we enjoy abundant coal deposits, the steam-driven “Iron Horse” is not likely to give place to the electric locomotive to any considerable degree for many years to come. Actually, at the end of last year, Britain had 667 route miles of electrified railway. In general, the electrification so far undertaken has been largely of a suburban character, where frequent service with heavy peak load periods is called for. The Southern Railway operates the largest of our electrified systems, this covering almost the whole of the lines lying between London and the south coast.
Most railway jobs are of a healthy nature, and, broadly speaking, the railwayman ranks, happily, among the healthiest of workers. Illness, however, must inevitably at some time come the way of all, and suitable provision must be made to meet this contingency. The Home railwayman receives sick benefit under the national health insurance scheme, while during the period of convalescence after seri-ous
Bekescsaba passenger station, Hungarian State Railways.
Record business this season is reported on all the long-distance international expresses traversing the European continent. There are three outstanding long-distance trains crossing Europe from east to west. These are respectively the “Nord Express,” the “Orient Express,” and the “Simp-lon-Orient Express.” The “Nord Express” connects Calais and Ostend with Brussels, Cologne, Hanover, Berlin and Warsaw. A more southerly route is taken by the “Orient Express”— Calais, Strasburg, Stuttgart, Munich, Salzburg, Vienna, Budapest, and Bukarest. Further south still, the “Simplon-Orient” links France with Lausanne, Milan, Venice, Bukarest, Belgrade, Sofia and Istanbul (Constantinople). Budapest, the beautiful capital of Hungary, is one of the most important of European junctions. Hungary, which is so well-served by long-distance train services, is growing in popularity as a tourist haunt.
(By
Joyce West
The approach to Tauranga by way of rail is curiously abrupt. From miles of farming land, and brown and silver sea-swamps, the train bursts out suddenly across a glittering inlet. The traveller gains a brief glimpse of white launches on blue water, of white houses in green orchards, and then he is hurled into the station, into a taxi, and swept up the only low hill that brings him into the town of Tauranga.
It is perhaps partly owing to its position that Tauranga owes its peculiar charm. Bounded by the estuaries of the Waimapu and Waikareao on either hand, the narrow peninsula runs back to the remains of the old fortifications of Gate Pa. From no point is one out of sight or sound of the sea. It lies blue and tranquil at the end of every roadway, and all day long the sea-breezes blow across the Strand.
Tauranga is colourful. Perhaps that is the first impression which the casual visitor gains. Its beauty is far removed from half-tones and pastel shades and mistiness. The harbour is sapphire and emerald, shoaling to amythest; the hills behind are cut in a clear blue silhouette. The green and white and orange launches lie at anchor; triangles of sail drift like white butterflies against the blue. The gardens of Herries Park, by the railway, along the waterfront, blaze in masses of blue and gold and scarlet. The greens run the whole gamut of the colour card from pines and palms to the delicate brightfulness of English elms and aspens.
The architecture of Tauranga is a curious mingling of new and old.
The influence of the Spanish Mission is strong, and plaster fronts and sun-tinted pillars jostle half-timbered Tudors and psuedo-English cottages, and all lie cheek by jowl with small starting houses of no particular design, whose windows probably watched the redcoat soldiers march through Tauranga.
The early settlers of Tauranga must have been prodigal planters of trees. There are giant Norfolk pines, and four-square oaks, elms and aspens, and avenues of walnuts. At Christmas, the pohutukawa glows warm and red, and then the Australian scarlet gum flaunts its scarlet banners. Here, in season, the jacaranda breaks into blossom as blue as heaven; there are pink and white oleanders, and the blood-red blooms of the hybiscus, and the bougainvilla spreading its purple cloak like careless royalty. In autumn the exotics are suddenly bronze and gold and russet, and the persimmon hangs its fairy apples upon its leafless limbs. Winter is the season of the flaming poinsettia, and the orange trees glow with golden globes like Christmas trees decked out too early.
Straight in front of the post office, in a tiny reserve, is an aspen tree popularly supposed to be the largest in New Zealand. It was planted, so the story goes, by a trooper riding in with despatches for General Cameron before the battle of Gate Pa. He carried a stout aspen switch, and, flinging himself from his weary horse, he drove the switch into the ground, and dropped his reins over it. The horse, being an old campaigner, presently flicked the reins neatly over the improvised hitching post, and wandered away to graze. The aspen switch stayed in the ground, and sprouted. If you are sceptical enough to disbelieve such a picturesque story, you may come to Tauranga and see the tree for yourself.
Viscount Bledisloe described Tauranga as the “Riviera of the South,” but to fully appreciate the comparison one must make the brief launch trip to the Mount. That narrow strip of land, between the calm crescent beach of Pilot Bay and the white sands and
(Rly. Publicity photo.)
The Strand, Tauranga, North Island, New Zealand.
Among the sand-dunes and the pines and sea-grass, the holiday houses of the Mount are scattered, without symmetry or design. Their green and red and orange roofs and swinging shutters give the place a strangely picturesque and foreign appearance. Bright canoes are drawn upon the white sand, and Pilot Bay holds a fleet of pleasure craft as neatly at anchor as walnut shells in a tea-cup.
In season an amazing colony of tents springs up as suddenly as a mushroom ring; the long dusty road is one procession of cars; the brown-and-white launches come in hour after hour to the little stone landing beneath the shadow of the Mount.
Over on the great white stretches of the ocean beach, the peacock and white-jewelled emerald breaks in long slow rollers that come cresting and foaming in. Slender girls in all shades of sun-tan
The really athletic climb the Mount. From the top the view is almost hard to comprehend. The harbour lies at one's feet like a silk glove flung down, the blue and silver fingers among the gentle hills. The white ocean beach and the lines of creaming surf stretch away to uncomprehended distance. The blue bold silhouette of Mayor Island has come curiously closer, and there are the rocky Aldermen, and, down by the horizon, Motiti, and the creamy cliffs of its coastline. To the south a puff of sulphur-hued smoke hangs over White Island. It is from the Mount, and the Mount only, that your bewildered eyes may look in a single sweep from the dim blue hills of Coro-mandel to the misty headland of East Cape.
It is in winter, perhaps, that the Mount exercises its greatest fascination. The campers are gone, and the township …. left to its skeleton population of residents and privileged seekers after winter sunshine …. resumes its pleasant, leisurely, sea-coloured existence.
The easterly storms fling the seaweed up on the deserted beach in long shining brown strands; the seagulls come in to mew and chatter in the tennis courts. The ice-cream stalls are closed, and the little white lazy donkeys range up the frowning slopes of the Mount. Then it is that the breakers come foaming in in all their wind-flung glory, and sprout from the Blow-hole in a tumult of thundering spray. The little painted boats are drawn up from the beach, and the surf-boards stacked away, and the fishermen sit and tell stories, and leisurely mend their nets.
Certainly a great part of Tauranga's attraction lies in its brief storm-punctuated, sun-drenched winter. May, June and July it regularly tops the sunshine averages for the Dominion. The easterly storms rage in across the harbour, and the sea-spray drives over the waterfront into the very shop doorways. As swiftly as the storms come they are gone again, and the thin clear golden sunshine holds sway once more. In the gardens the roses bloom, and before the chrysanthemums are gone the first pale spring flowers star the earth.
Tauranga is a town peculiarly divided between holiday-makers, retired colonels, and dairy farmers. In the season, the visitors upset the balance, but, as summer ebbs, so ebbs from the town the unrestful tide of young women in slacks and young men in shorts and sandshoes, and it becomes possible once again to appreciate the institution of “farmers' Saturday.” On Saturday the farmers come in as one man from the country, in every kind of vehicle.
In the light of our brief history Tauranga seems an old town, but looking back, we find the first mention of it in 1769, when Cook passed the harbour without discovering it, and called Mount Maunganui an island. It was not until almost sixty years later that the schooner “Herald” sailed up the uncharted passage beneath the shadow of the Mount, and cast anchor in virgin waters.
In 1835, Alfred Nesbit. Brown, pioneer missionary, starting the mission station of Te Papa, laid the foundation stone of Tauranga to be. Before 1840 he raised the heart-of-kauri buildings which stand to-day, and bought from the Maoris the thousand acres of the narrow peninsula where the town of Tauranga now stands. To mark the boundary, he had dug across the neck of land at Pukuhinahina a ditch with a gate crossing, and the spot began to be known as the Gate Pa.
By 1864 a handful of white people had gathered in the settlement, and, in that year … with a concentration of British troops and men-o'-war at Tauranga … there was fought one of the most tragic engagements in the
(Rly. Publicity photo.)
The popular beach at The Mount, Tauranga, North Island, New Zealand.
In Tauranga the past is curiously interwoven with the present. You find it in the street names … in Cameron Road, and Greertown, in Durham Street, and Brown Street, and the Old Redoubt. The Camp is that leisurely pleasant residential section of the town that lies on the rise toward the Domain, and you might live there a year without realising that the bugle calls of the 68th and 43rd once rang beneath the gnarled old elm trees. The Monmouth Redoubt is a garden now, and where the sod of Gate Pa was soaked with English blood the boys play light-hearted football. But on an afternoon's casual visiting, you may find, as a doorstop, a cannon ball, pitted with rust and salt water, fired from the “Esk,” or “Harrier,” or “Miranda” more than seventy years ago.
The old mission station, as it stands to-day, is a page of the past preserved. Set amid its green lawns and century-old elms, it is a lovely shrine of old rare things. By its closed white gates stands the first bell to be landed in the Dominion. For a hundred years it rang the call to prayer and the tocsin of alarm, but it stands silent now.
They say thereabouts that once you have lived in those sun-drenched lands of the East Coast, you must go back. Perhaps its enchantment lies in its odd trick of making one forget everything but fine weather, so that, under farther greyer skies and drizzling rain, one is stricken with a sharp nostalgia for Tauranga's vivid seas and white beaches, and, above all, for the clear golden brightness of its sunshine.
(By
J. Joyce Garlick
The famous “Rocket” and the great railway Pioneers.
In these days of almost incredible progress, we are constantly hearing and reading of the amazing speed records of trains on the continent of Europe and in England and America. Photographs of the “first engine employed on a public railway,” and the scene at the opening ceremony provide the greatest possible contrast, and picturing, as they do, the introduction of the era of travel by steam, they are rich in romantic appeal.
Beneath the brave little engine with her two carriages we read: “The first engine employed on a public railway. It was built by George Stephenson, and was drawn on the Stockton and Darlington railway till 1858, and is now placed on a pedestal in front of the Darlington Station.” Beneath this explanation are photographs of three distinguished looking gentlemen, who, from left to right, are George Stephenson, Edward Pease and Ira Newbun—“Pioneers of First Public Railway.” Englishmen have distinguished themselves in many spheres, but among this illustrious company none is greater than the genius of the steam-engine, and certainly none has conferred a greater benefit on mankind.
According to present-day standards the engine and carriages present an exceedingly quaint appearance, the former with its stovepipe funnel. There is no cab for the driver, and the various gadgets and controls are erected above the boiler and furnace. The carriages, as can be seen, are open too, and continued to be so for many years. Accustomed as we have always been to comfortable, closed-in carriages, it does not at once strike one what it would mean to travel in an open carriage, exposed to every wind that blows—particularly in a climate such as that of the Old Country—and also to the heat of the sun.
There was another inconvenience, too, as a little story related, by an old lady now resident in New Zealand, goes to tell. The incident took place many years after the first train commenced to run. This old lady said that her family, who were Scotch, possessed a much prized Paisley shawl. Unfortunately, her mother donned it when going for a train journey. “Sparks were flying” evidently, for one burnt a hole in the precious shawl!
An interesting example of passenger coach construction in Britain in the early days of the railway.
The coach rather dubiously dubbed the “Experiment,” however, was modelled on an ordinary coach, and so, of course, was closed in. Possibly the “Experiment” was reserved for important folk, or perhaps it was a carriage “de Luxe,” or merely “first class!” And it seems highly probable that the seats in front and behind, in which, in an ordinary coach the coachman and footman sit in stately immobility are in this case occupied by servants who accompany travellers of high estate!
A photograph of the time-table states that the “Experiment,” which commenced travelling on Monday, the 10th of October, 1825, “will continue to run from Darlington to Stockton, and from Stockton to Darlington (Sundays excepted) setting out from the Depot at each place at the time specified, (viz.): On Monday from Stockton at half past seven in the morning and will reach Darlington about half past nine; the coach will set off from the latter place on its return at three in the afternoon, and reach Stockton about five.” The time-table for the remaining days of the week is then specified, and underneath, the charge for the carriage of parcels is stated as follows: “Passengers to pay is. each, and will be allowed a package not exceeding 14lb., all above that weight to pay at the rate of 2d. per stone extra. Carriage of small parcels 3d. each. The Company will not be accountable for parcels of above £5 value, unless paid for as such. Mr. Richard Pickersall at his office in Commercial Street, Darlington; and Mr. Tully at Stockton will, for the present, receive any parcels and book passengers.”
The photograph depicting the festivities which attended the “opening of the Stockton and Darlington Railway, 1825
The opening of the Stockton and Darlington Railway, 1825.
a.d.,” and which took place at Darlington, was taken from a painting. It is reminiscent of an old English fair, and was evidently a gala day for the district Ladies in crinolines grace the proceedings, and vans and carriages apparently provided transport for the more fortunate of those who were privileged to witness this epic-making event. But the “opening” has evidently taken place, for crossing a distant stone bridge—so typical of the English landscape—can be seen “the train,” and a close scrutiny reveals, some distance ahead, a horseman, whose duty and high privilege it is to see that “all's right ahead,” and perhaps also to see that the train doesn't exceed the speed limit. Later, when Queen Victoria travelled in state at a few miles per hour, scouts were posted ahead all along the line to see that the way was clear.
The atmosphere on board the train as she chugs her way across the bridge is evidently a very festive one, and those privileged to travel on “the first train”—the official party, and so on—are waving flags, and excitement is running high. The train is a lengthy one, consisting of eight carriages, the engine belching forth a column of smoke as she bravely puffs her way towards her desfination, a distance of 38 miles, at about twenty miles per hour.
The commencement of the first railway service has a unique connection with New Zealand, for, at the Gisborne jubilee celebrations, some years ago, Mr. Ginders, a native of Darlington, related that he and two other boys, tremendously thrilled with this extraordinary invention of “modern science,” were, the day before the official opening, viewing it with ill-concealed awe. She was just about to be given a trial run in preparation for the great event of the morrow, and the engine-driver, thinking the boys might as well be usefully employed, called out “Here you youngsters, what about getting water from the creek over there for the engine?” The “youngsters,” of course, delightedly complied, and were forthwith supplied by the engine-driver with three buckets. After many laborious trips from creek to engine, the requirements of the latter were satisfied, and as a reward for their labour the three boys enjoyed the unique privilege of being passengers on “the first train in the world” the day before she ran officially.
Our own country is still sufficiently young for a few of our oldest identities to remember “the first train that ran” in various parts of the North and South Islands. One such train was hauled by the “Josephine,” which, after a varied career, and a long life of usefulness rests in front of the Otago Early
The “Josephine” which hauled the first train on the Dunedin—Port Chalmers line, South Island, New Zealand, in 1873.
The following letter from the Otago Rolling Mills Association to the Otago Early Settlers' Association provides some interesting information with regard to the “Josephine.” It reads as follows:—
“The ‘Josephine’ lay in our scrapyard for quite a period, sentiment alone preventing us from cutting her up. Then one of our main boilers gave out, being finally condemned. These mishaps usually occur during rush periods and our case was no exception to the rule. However, we overcame the difficulty by bringing the ‘Josephine’ into commission, special permission having been granted by the Inspector of Machinery. Owing to reduced boiler pressure she was far from being economical, and although her appetite was abnormal in the way of fuel consumption, she, like most old people, suffered from chronic indigestion, necessitating quite a few internal operations. She seemed to be particularly susceptible to appendicitis, for she was constantly having her tubes removed, but contrary to usual practice, insisted on having them replaced.
“However, in spite of these disabilities, the ‘Josephine’ did excellent service and helped us through a difficult
The old railway station (in the ‘sixties) at Invercargill, South Island, New Zealand, showing: the wooden rails which were then in use.
A very early visitor to our shores describes the beauties of the train ride of between eight and nine miles from Dunedin to Port Chalmers, along this “arm of the sea,” with the wonderful virgin bush on the other side, and we can picture the “Josephine” busily plying back and forth in these very early days between the township and its port, and it is gratifying to know that after such a long life of faithful service every courtesy and consideration was accorded her in her old age.
An old friend of mine who, with her parents, arrived at Invercargill about 73 years ago, said that the first train from Invercargill to the Bluff commenced to run a few years after, and she also remembered the first sod being turned of the railway from Invercargill to Dunedin. The former place was then, of course, just a small settlement. Great excitement prevailed, and she relates that she and her husband who were strolling rotund viewing the festivities found a gay party at Puni Creek—where there was a park later—roasting a bullock in honour of the occasion. The animal was suspended above a roasting fire, and every now and then they turned it. The same lady relates that the first train from Invercargill to Makarewa—where her family
(A. P. Godber Collection.)
The opening of the Te Aro Railway Station, Wellington, in March, 1893, long since disused in the march of railway progress.
Mrs. McMenanim, of Lower Hutt, Wellington, was also a very early identity of Invercargill, arriving there from Dublin—after a few months in Melbourne—in 1862, when the settlement boasted little more than tents. They had to coach from the Bluff to Invercargill, for there was then no railway. She relates that an outstanding event in the history of Invercargill was the visit of Sir George Grey. As it was unfortunately raining when he arrived awnings had to be put up, at the railway station, a gaily decorated dais was erected for the honoured guest and his entourage, and flags and decorations created a very festive atmosphere. But the great man flatly refused to sit on the dais, preferring, instead, to move about among the
(Rly. Publicity photo.)
The Auckland—Wellington “Limited” Express at Frankton Station, North Island, New Zealand.
A very novel entertainment had been arranged in honour of his visit in the form of a railway excursion. Wooden railway lines had been constructed some miles out into the country from Inver-cargill, and the engine steamed out of the station amidst great excitement. All went merrily—till the return journey, when the engine refused to budge. Investigation proved that the rain had caused the wooden rails to swell.
Other old identities, Mr. and Mrs. Charles Cudby, of Lower Hutt, have recollections of the commencement of the train service from Wellington to Lower Hutt. Mr. Cudby's father, of Boulcott Farm fame, was the contractor for the laying down of the railway line, and Mrs. Cudby, as a schoolgirl of tender years remembers the official opening at Wellington. The children of the private school she attended were given a half-holiday in honour of the occasion—a rare event in these days. The tiny railway station was where Dealy's Hotel now is. There was great jubilation as the train, with the official party aboard, steamed out of the station towards Lower Hutt.
These very early recollections of the commencement of transport by steam in the Old Country and in the “New” are a forcible reminder of the marvellous progress of, the intervening years. The recent introduction of rail
(Photo., J. D. Buckley.)
One of the last main line trains to enter Johnsonville Station before the recent change over at Wellington.
And as for the Old Country, a special train which ran recently from Reading to Paddington, the London terminus of the Great Western Railway, to enable artists to keep a broadcasting engagement, completed the journey of 36 miles in 30 minutes 30 seconds. For 29 miles the train averaged 81 miles per hour.
Speeds even exceeding this have since been attained on the British Railways. Other trains on the Continent and in America also reach an incredibly high speed, and engines and carriages are the last thing in streamlined perfection. All this is indicative of the wonderful progress of our age.
praise for new station.
Creche an “Eye-opener.”
If the new Wellington railway station impresses every overseas visitor to New Zealand as it did Mr. Ray Henderson, New York, who left Wellington for Sydney recently, then it should not take long for the city to consolidate its already handsome reputation, says the “Dominion.”
“I do not know of any city with the same population with so dignified, beautiful and well-arranged a railway station,” he said to “The Dominion.” “Except in the largest cities in America we have nothing to compare with it.”
Mr. Henderson visited the creche on the roof of the building. “It's an eye-opener,” he said. “Such places may exist in other countries, but I've been travelling most of my life and I've never seen anything of the kind.”
A prominent Westralian business man, largely interested in the tobacco trade and who has been holidaying in Maoriland, has been telling a daily paper on his return home some of his impressions. “One thing that struck me especially,” he said, “was that all the tobacconists were selling the New Zealand grown and manufactured tobacco which on sampling I found of most excellent quality and as good in fact as any I have ever smoked. The manufacturers' extensive works are at Port Ahuriri, Napier. Here they are producing five brands of tobacco that are in general request, viz., Navy Cut No. 3 (Bulldog), Riverhead Gold and Desert Gold and Cut Plug No. 10 (Bullshead) Riverhead Gold and Desert Gold being for cigarettes. A distinguishing feature of these blends is that they are toasted, which process eliminates the nicotine in them and renders them virtually harmless. Overindulgence in some brands may effect heart or nerves. With ‘toasted’ the smoker runs no such risk. I was told these tobaccos were being freely imitated. Shouldn't wonder. Good things generally are.”*
(ByG. G. .)
Stewart
chapter xiii.
From Matamata to Scotland Yard.
concluded.
the final clue.
Twelve clues in the Signal Cabin Mystery have been well and truly classified, tested and examined under the skilled guidance of that arch-detective—Impskill Lloyd.
And each phase of the astounding history following the discovery of Pat Lauder's body at Matamata, has been vividly described with an attention to detail, a dramatic intensity, a wealth of wit, and that keen analysis of character which mark the best work of the writers taking part in this omnibus story.
This final chapter was to have been written by Impskill Lloyd himself. Only circumstances of an unusual nature prevented this.
A disjointed radio message has come from Pekin. It was sent by Impskill himself. He is busy there now engaging boxers to combat a band of international criminals. But he has spared time to provide notes for the thirteenth clue—the strange explanation of those stranger happenings which have been reported monthly since July of last year in the pages of this magazine.
After his many thrilling experiences, rapid readjustments, and clever escapes from the ever-present dangers of the Matamata underworld, Impskill Lloyd, the lightning conductor o f criminal investigation, felt more convinced than ever that a thirteenth clue existed.
He must find it.
Good mathematician though he was, even Imp. found difficulty in arranging, in lucid order, the many pieces on the checker-board of the Matamata Mystery—the Pawns, the Knights and Castles, the Kings and Queens and Bishops that stood and moved in intricate array through the kaleidoscopic changes, the cavalcade of that Homeric drama.
An expert Matamatician—nay, a genius at the game was required. Could one be found?
Fortunately for Impskill's purpose, he suddenly recalled the subtlety of mind possessed by the” Matamata butcher, Kidney Jenkinson.
Here, surely, was a Matamatician after his own heart—one who could square the spare ribs of a tender mutton with meticulous accuracy; who could turn a triangle of beef into a rhomboid with one sure, swift stroke of the cleaver; one who could find the quadratics in quadrupeds with unerring instinct; one to whom the square root of a pork sausage and the binomial theorem of a boiled mutton were equally simple.
He must have the Matamatician Jenkinson—the man who could reduce a surd to the last decimal point of absurdity—to whom sines and portents were equally familiar. Jenkinson ! Who lapped up logarithms like a kitten at the cream jug. Kidney Jenksinson! The Matamata butcher—a Matamatician indeed, in whom there was no bile. Who had, indeed, been called “Kitteny” at College on account of his logarithmic mind. “Kitteny” became “Kidney” when he abandoned logs and anti-logs to enter the butchery business at Matamata.
To Jenkinson, then, must Impskill Lloyd appeal!
Now picture Kidney early on a spring morning in Matamata, munching Matamatically a grilled chop of his own square chopping brought home by his wife on her way from shopping the previous afternoon.
The telephone rings.
Kidney, masticating hurriedly the last morsel, bisects a straight line at right angles as he hastens to take the call.
Over the wire he hears:
“Is that you, Kidney? Impskill here. I want you to stay where you are until I arrive. Be with you in five minutes.”
Kidney's acute mind immediately deduced that an acute angle had developed at a tangent of the fast-closing Lauder Mystery circle.
When Impskill arrived Kidney's deduction soon proved to be accurate.; “Have you anything of Lauder's here,” were his first words, as he
(From this machine Impskill frequently obtained useful clues through upstairs windows).
Kidney laughed. “I have three sillings in the late Pat Lauder's deposit account for beef,” he said.
“Gillespie is left behind.”
“But I mean something personal,” said Imp. seriously.
Kidney gazed reflectively through the back kitchen window and, in his mind's eye, squared with Matamatical precision the circle of his own backyard.
“It's a funny thing you should say that!” he replied after a pause.
He walked through to the office safe, spun the combination to the key word “clue,” and—as he swung the door open—pulled out a small drawer from which he extracted a match-box.
Lifting the match-box lid, he tipped upon his open palm a small quartz specimen studded richly with gold.
“I knew it! I knew it!” exulted Impskill in tones of breathless excitement. “The thirteenth clue at last!”
Before replying, Kidney tried to steady his mind by saying, below his breath, the Matamatical exercise for times of excitement—the six times table backwards, and then sideways.
“Why did you never tell me of this before?” continued Impskill reproach fully.
“Had this vital piece of evidence been produced earlier in the proceedings, much might have been saved—and recovered,” he added significantly.
“Well,” said Kidney, “since this mystery started, things have been looking up in the butchering business.
Business, in fact, has never before been so brisk in Matamata. I don't know that I want the mystery cleared.
“Matamata is now a tourist resort for those in search of sensation—and the keen air of mystery surrounding the place since our Signal Cabin sprung into fame has made everyone simply ravenous.
“But I was not holding back anything from you, really,” he continued.
“The phenomenally increased demand for beef made me go outside the usual sources of supply. I've had to buy up quite a number of local cows that for some reason or other the owners were willing to part with—at a price,” he added, somewhat ruefully.
“There was a sale, last week, of Lauder's household and personal effects, including six hens, a pig and a cow. I bought all this livestock.
“The cow was soon converted to prime beef, but a successful butcher must be up in the Matamatics of economical butchering.
“There is a great and growing demand for calf's foot jelly here, and I do my best to supply it. Cow's foot, I find, is twice the strength of calf's foot, so that a given quantity of the older hoof goes twice as far.
“When about to put the four feet of Lauder's cow in the jelly pot, to my amazement I found this quartz specimen firmly embedded in the fork of the off hind hoof.
“I intended to get a legal opinion as to whether the specimen was mine—having bought the cow, or whether—not being a usual part of a cow, but something accidentally attached thereto—it would have to be treated as a separate article and returned to the estate.”
“A fine point,” nodded Impskill.
“Come,” he said, “let us now visit the Lauder estate.”
Mounting the high bicycle and taking Kidney as a back-step passenger, Imp-skill rapidly trundled down the main street until he reached the Lauder place on the edge of the town. The whole property consisted of three acres—the minimum holding for a cow in the by-laws of, Matamata. Impskill quartered the section like a hound, while Kidney split it into small squares which he rooted, but the square roots revealed no trace of any quartz seam! Nor could Impskill's eagle eye detect the slightest trace of auriferous bearing sand or rock on any part of the section. This was not surprising as the nearest known gold mine was at Waihi about 60 miles away as the kaka flies and at least 85 as the kiwi runs.
It was clear as daylight to Impskill that the specimen had dropped out of Lauder's waistcoat pocket as he milked the cow on some date prior to the discovery of the deceased Lauder in the Matamata Signal Box.
It was clear, too, that the cow in its clumsy way had stumbled on the nugget, and in accordance with the mining proverb that “you never know what's in front of the pick,” had picked the specimen up between its splayed off hind foot, and hoofed off with it.
“Lend me the specimen, Kidney. You shall have it back in seven days, when I hope to solve the Lauder Mystery,” said Impskill.
Kidney readily agreed, seeing some further fame for himself through his foresight in guarding so soundly what was proving to be the thirteenth clue.
Impskill's next call was on Zeb Barrett, the Mayor of Matamata. Besides being a Mayor, Zeb had two very keen hobbies of which Impskill had heard soon after his arrival in Matamata.
The first was a very sound knowledge of geology. The second was an insatiable curiosity as to everything that happened in the borough of Matamata. It was this latter quality which accounted for his unfailing return as Mayor. People had a fear that if Zeb failed to be returned he might tell some of the innumerable things he knew about them. Impskill wanted the use of both of these Zebby hobbies.
Zeb greeted him cordially. “How's the solution going?” he cried. “I say, there's a lot of talk around that you've already solved the mystery, but are waiting for the Government to increase the reward!”
(Continued on page 35)
“The Hunt for Gold.”
“the thirteenth clue”
(Continued from page 33).
“Nothing of that kind,” laughed Impskill.
“Take a look at this, will you?”
Zeb took the specimen with the light of curiosity in his eyes. “This is a fine little nugget,” he said. “Wherever did you get it?”
“I'm wanting you to tell me where it comes from!” said Impskill.
Barrett placed the specimen under his powerful microscope, and a puzzled look came over his usually open countenance.
“That's not from Waihi and it's not from Thames. Otago or the West Coast,” he said. “The crystals differ from all the known gold fields in New Zealand.
“And yet,” he continued with growing excitement, “it's from somewhere in this country, I can tell by the colour of the gold.
“I wonder if it's come from the Crawley country?”
“The Crawley country?” exclaimed Impskill. “Where's that. I've never heard of it.”
“What!” said Zeb. “Never heard of Bill Crawley—everybody in Matamata knows about him—he's a legend in the place.”
“Tell me,” said Impskill urgently.
Zeb laid down the nugget reluctantly.
“Bill Crawley died in Matamata hospital two months ago,” he said, “and with him died all chance, it seems, of solving the mystery of where he found his gold.
“Crawley, for the past 30 years, has made a yearly visit to Matamata. He always arrived on a big horse, heavily loaded, and he always had a gun in the crook of his arm and two revolvers in his belt. Bill's first visit invariably was to the bank and the Bank Manager has told me the people of Matamata would be surprised if they knew how much gold Crawley brought with him each year.
“Anyway, after he had been to the Bank and then stabled his horse, Bill was the most cheerful soul in Matamata. He would keep things lively at the hotel and was very free in his spending. Good-hearted, too, was Bill. Any charity could count on him for good help during his visit. Then one morning he would be gone, and another year would go by before anyone saw Bill Crawley again.
“Three months' ago, Bill came in as usual, but while at the Bank he looked ill and acted queerly, so Roberts, the Manager, advised him to go to hospital. They found he had a high temperature —a very bad case of 'flu. He was well looked after in hospital, but in delirium he seemed afraid someone might find his gold mine.
“When he was over the fever he was very weak.
“I heard that Lauder visited him. Bill had heard that Lauder was a crooner, and so … .”
“That will do for the moment, thanks, Barrett. I must now visit the hospital. I'm very grateful for the information you have supplied.”
With these words, Impskill was on his way and the high bicycle hummed as he raced down the hill to the hospital.
An interview with Sister Round, who had nursed Crawley through his illness, was readily granted as soon as the Matron knew the identity of her distinguished visitor.
Impskill wasted no words.
“Tell me, Sister, about Bill Crawley,” he said.
“There's not much to tell,” she said. “He had got over the worst of his 'flu—only weak and seemed to be coming along fine until the day Lauder called.
“I remember that day well,” she continued.
“I said to Crawley, ‘here's the noted crooner, Pat Lauder, to see you.’
“‘That's fine,’ said Bill Crawley, ‘I've neither seen nor heard a crooner. Bring this one along.’
“Well,” continued Sister Round, “Lauder said although he did not know Crawley he liked to visit the sick and hoped Bill wouldn't mind him calling for a chat.
“Crawley said it was very decent of Lauder to call, as there were very few whom he (Crawley) could call friends in Matamata, and he was feeling rather lonely.
“Then he asked Lauder if he would mind crooning a little to him.
“‘Oh!’ said Pat Lauder. ‘I don't think it would be right to croon in hospital, would it Sister?'
“Well, I said, I was afraid it might not be regular.
“Then Bill Crawley reached under his pillow and handed a little gold nugget to Lauder. ‘That,’ said Crawley, ‘comes from my private gold mine, near the headwaters of the Mungatu. And it is yours if you will croon to me now.’
“Lauder looked at me appealingly, and I nodded, signalling him to make his crooning low.
“He did so. It quite depressed me. But when he finished, Crawley said a strange thing: ‘I wanted to live,’ he said, ‘but now, having heard that, and also that the world is gradually filling up with crooners, I die happy.’
“And he never recoverd from that minute,” she continued. “Just turned his face to the wall, refused his food, and gladly passed away within the hour.”
Impskill's decision was made on the moment. He was morally certain that Lauder, having the Crawley nugget, had been obsessed with the idea of finding the Crawley gold mine. Hence his sudden disappearance from Matamata.
Next day saw Impskill Lloyd aboard a yacht at Taupo on his way to Waihaha, a lovely little settlement on an unfrequented portion of the lake's foreshore. And this time he left Gillespie behind.
Arrived there, he soon made friends with the local Maoris. He described Lauder to them and tried to croon. They all went off into gales of laughter.
“He te fella make te funny noises!” (Continued on page 37.)
(Photo, Thelma R. Kent.)
Mustering sheep on the Glenhope Station, Upper Waisu Gorge, South Island, New Zealand.
said Peti, the Chieftain. “He come here all ri. Try find where Bill Crawley go.”
“Not see him or Bill again,” he added.
The next day, Impskill, with Peti as a guide and a small party of natives, all strongly mounted on Maori “hoi-hau” (horses) set off past the lonely Waihaha Falls and struck across country towards the headwaters of the Mungatu.
At the point of the forest above the river, where an ancient whaka (used for trapping the alert native wood pigeon) is still suspended high off the ground, Peti paused and pointed to some foot prints in the soft rich humus beside the whaka.
“Lauder, eh?” he said, and started off down towards the river.
On the brink of the river a lightning blasted rimu trunk stood mute testimony of some recent storm.
The main branch lay across the river-bed as it had fallen. The river was now low, and Lloyd saw that which gripped attention—a shred of clothing caught between a sharp stem of the fallen tree and the gravel of the riverbed.
“The last proof,” he exclaimed, as he reclaimed the piece of cloth. This is a part of Lauder's suit—the part missing when I examined the body in the Matamata signal cabin.
To a skilled mind like Impskill Lloyd's, the rest of the solution of the Matamata Mystery was easy.
“Peti,” he said. “We can now return.
“Lauder was not murdered at all. He was killed by a convulsion of nature!”
The twelve possible causes of death were subsequently explained in a paper read to Scotland Yard by Impskill Lloyd and circulated throughout the Police Forces of the world as a set of hints and aids in the detection of crime and the analysis of evidence.
They are summarised here briefly, for the enlightenment of the many thousands who have followed, with breath more or less bated, the many vicissitudes of this master mystery.
Lauder got lost in the wild country at the back of the Mungatu while searching secretly for Bill Crawley's gold mine.
He was practically starving, on the banks of the Mungatu when lightning struck the tree under which he was sheltering. Besides striking the tree, the lightning electrocuted Lauder, who was pinned beneath one of the falling branches and hurled into the river where a sliver of rimu penetrated his heart.
The lightning also burnt the poor victim, and one of the tree limbs had lain across his neck after his immersion in the river.
Thus it will be seen how being drowned, burnt, struck, impaled, choked, frightened, electrocuted, felled, and having his ribs caved in, all occurred from the misfortune of Lauder having been just where he was when the lightning struck.
These were nine of the possible causes of death deduced by Impskill Lloyd in his first five minutes over the case. Starvation (the tenth possible cause) has already been explained and proved. Heart disease, the eleventh possible cause dealt with, was shown to be latent in the subject, and the twelfth, poisoned, was undoubtedly due to an enterprising katipo spider resenting the presence of Lauder's body on the banks of his river.
How the body got to the Matamata signal box was also discovered by the genius of Lloyd.
He proved that a subsequent flood had carried the body to Lake Taupo and then down the great Waikato River to the Arapuni Hydro-electric Works. Here a workman, shocked by the appearance of the floating body in his section of water, became frightened of being involved in what looked like a clear case of murder, and ran the body in his car to the Matamata signal box, where he deposited it, having every confidence in the Railway Department's ability to deal adequately with any problem that might confront it.
It need only be added—that Impskill Lloyd, before leaving the Mungatu region, picked enough from the Crawley mine to reward him amply for all the trouble he had taken over the Matamata Signal Cabin Mystery. (The End.)
(By
Andrew Stewart .)“Old Warrior,” Kendrick had christened him when, over a week before, he had glimpsed the mighty fish deep down in a shady pool close to a bend on the Waiau. “The Hermit” might have been an equally suitable name, for the old fish—and old he must have been— lived alone.
Evening after evening Kendrick had lain there in ambush among the flax, watching the trout feeding, yet not daring to try a cast. Once, he had seen its great head—as wide as a man's hand—as it rose to take the fly. But usually only a swirl indicated its presence; a swirl that showed even above the ripple.
(Photo, Thelma R. Kent.)
Lake Hawea, South Island, New Zealand.
Evening was spreading its long shadows across the valley of the Waiau, when Kendrick halted near the edge of the river, his heart throbbing, a queer dryness in his mouth—that strange sensation that only the angler can understand.
For there was a wind—a breeze that sighed among the flaxes, set the kowhai buds a-nodding, but what was more important—sent ripples of liquid silver scudding across the water.
Somewhere out in the chuckling water—orange and red in the reflected rays of the dying sun—was a fish that might yet be his; a splendid fish, about which a man could dream, long after his arm had become frail and too weak to longer wield a rod.
He lowered the rod—a thing of finest green heart, English-made, and examined leader and lure, then changed at the last moment for a finer gut. From the corner of his eye he saw a sudden disturbance on the water—a strong movement apart from the ordinary ripple.
The old fish was feeding.
His fingers trembled as he knotted the gut. Excitement gripped him—a mixture of elation and despair. The fish would be old, wise, cunning; but the water was perfect, and the wind just right.
Wading into the water, he stripped silk from the reel. He raised the rod, poised a moment. The silk flashed out. Like thistle-down the lure kissed the placid water above, then floated slowly down on the ripple.
The water swirled again, Kendrick's heart leapt to his throat. But the lure floated on, unchecked. He cast again and again, deliberately, carefully, drying the fly in the air, and waiting for the little puffs of wind that whipped the water's surface.
Seemingly disdainful of the man-made lure, the old veteran continued to feed. Kendrick's arm grew tired, but he felt it not. His lips were set, his body tense, his eyes sparkling at thought of combat.
Once again the huge trout bulged from the water. Kendrick moved outwards until the cold Hauroto water raced above his knees. Kendrick knew he was not a good enough angler to deceive the old fish, but there was the possibility that with the wind causing just sufficient ripple, the trout might make a mistake.
Then suddenly, without warning, the great fish struck.
The line snapped back, taut as a steel cable. A dorsal fin slashed the surface in a sweeping circle. Kendrick heeled the butt, sharply, savagely. His blood was on fire. His heart was singing. Not for a throne and untold riches, would he have exchanged that moment.
Seemingly puzzled at its predicament the old fish stopped, affording Kendrick a momentary respite and time to brace himself for the coming struggle.
And then, swift as lightning, the line leapt out and across, slicing the water; a slurry of foam marking the trout's mad rush. Kendrick let him go, steadying the line and desperately stripping more line from the reel.
Fast as he was, the fish was faster. The line tightened and the reel screamed. Kendrick's right hand held the rod—arched like a bow behind him —tight back against his shoulder. With his left hand he tore more line from the whistling reel.
The fish stopped suddenly and sounded, sulked for a moment, then flashed back to the surface, savaging the hook from side to side in a desperate effort to free itself.
The line went suddenly slack. He drew it back through the snake-rings, recovering as much as he could. He suffered a momentary qualm. The line still came back, running without resistance.
Had he lost the fish?
No! The water boiled. The line scorched his fingers as it hissed through the rings. Kendrick gave line! he could do nothing else. If he attempted to check that terrific rush, the gut would part like a rotten strand. And still the fish continued its head-long flight—straight as an arrow towards the dense flax and submerged stumps near the opposite bank.
Kendrick shot a swift glance at the reel. It was almost empty. He could do nothing but hope. The sweat burst out on him. If the fish continued, it was finish.
He breathed again as the racing trout turned suddenly, fighting its way up stream, seeking a snag. With all of his line out, Kendrick turned and raced after the fish, the rod whipping and straining above him.
He stumbled through the shallows and over the boulders, the water splashing out from his waders. He hurdled a fallen totara, plunged into water that took him to the waist, charged furiously across a sandy spit, and back into the water again.
Kendrick was gasping for air when finally the fish stopped, and, where the
The fish was fighting now; fighting as though it knew for its very life. And what a battle! Kendrick was recovering line slowly, checking the trout's short, furious rushes; gradually wearing him down. Though Kendrick didn't realise it, he was yelling hoarsely.
“C'mon, old timer! You beauty! Oh, you beauty!”
In the uncertain light Kendrick saw the extended tail lashing the water to foam. The fish might have sulked then and regained some of its lost strength, but Kendrick goaded it into activity, while he worked slowly back into the shallows.
The valiant fish was gradually tiring; his splendid strength fast failing. Its rushes were shorter, but none the less savage.
A fighter till the very death!
Kendrick had him now, his nose against the current, gradually drawing him in. In his moment of triumph Kendrick couldn't but feel a twinge of pity for the game old warrior. The trout's extended tail broke surface, lashing feebly. Kendrick reached for his gaff.
Then it happened!
The old fighter streaked off again, taking reel and line in a joyous, furious rush; boring close in to the bank farther up stream.
It happened in a flash. To Kendrick, caught unawares for a split second, it seemed incredible from what he thought was a done fish. But maybe the old battler knew of the submerged log, and that it was perhaps, that spurred him to a final desperate effort.
Kendrick heard the twang and saw the leader flash up as it snapped. He waded to the bank, drew a packet of sodden cigarettes from his pocket and tossed them away. Then he glanced back towards the river—a silver sheet in the dusk—and grinned ruefully.
“You beat me fair, old timer. And— and—well, I reckon you were too game a fighter to die.”
He shouldered his rod and went back to his camp among the flax.
new zealand verse
* * *
The above two poems were awarded the 2nd and 3rd prizes respectively, in the recent competition announced over 1ZB.—[Ed.].
* * *
* * *
(By “
Robin Hyde .”)Te-rerenga - wairua.” The flying-off place of the spirits. A young man in Whangaroa told me this was its proper name —New Zealand's own Land's End, beyond Spirits Bay and Hector Mac-quarrie's funny little Pandora, beyond that bare country from which the godwits make their yearly flight to Siberia.
Not so very many people have been to the flying-off place. In Auckland it was almost legendary, and even in Whangaroa, the Maoris, many of whom had migrated from further north, spoke of Spirits Bay as a place a long way off. But we were going, because of the same restlessness that drives the godwits, when autumn is in the air again and the bush-fires start.
The road to Spirits Bay goes through Kaitaia, which is quite a town, with more energy and enthusiasm about it—outwardly, anyhow—than any of the other northern centres, Whangarei excepted. Dargaville I remembered as a quaint main street where there were gas-lamps, countless dogs, and Maori boys wearing magenta blazers plus peppermint-pink berets. Dargaville has electricity, and has gone in for brick and concrete. It looks almost incongruously respectable; north, south, east and west run the rambling northern roads, low bare hills either naked or massed with manuka, sudden surprisingly tall and grand outcrops of black rock, wooden houses quite isolated, built in the style of the ‘eighties and still possessing a few creaking old apple trees by their front verandahs, and Maori cabins.
We ate fried fish, considerable quantities of fried fish: the rain slipped down in a silvery drizzle, which bothered us, because the roads north of Kaitaia were a complete mystery as far as we were concerned. But a garage proprietor reassured us. There was a good clay road, all the way up to Spirits Bay: a hotel at Houhora, if we wanted to sleep indoors: and, if the tide was right, a fine run down Ninety-Mile Beach for our trip home.
“Can we get right to the very edge? To Rerenga itself?”
The garage proprietor scratched his head.
“There used to be one of those rope and basket arrangements,” he said obscurely, “Only the last time I was there—that would be twenty years back—the rope looked as if it had been there for ever. Yes, that rope was pretty near worn through.”
“Oh … we can get near, though?”
“If you ride hosses.”
Sounded a bit doubtful: my experience of hosses was negligible. However, never do to-day what you can put off till to-morrow, planning included. Filled with fish, we sank again into the motherly bosom of the Liz, and drove on. A show-tent, with tags of red, white and blue climbing up a flagstaff, fluttered patriotically at us as we started: somebody's “Greatest Show on Earth—See the Child Wonder.” Poor dears, in all that rain.
By the way, the mana of Allan Bell stands high among Maoris and others in the north. It was he, they said, who made Kaitaia. One man told me that if any white man had ever seen the godwits fly, it was Allan Bell. Others have seen the great gatherings of birds, and the frequent false starts, but Bell laid a regular plan of campaign, and is said to have caught the godwits in the act. He died at Spirits Bay, and, like the Maoris he loved, departed from Te-rerenga-wairua. It was explained to me that the spirits wait until a great number of them are gathered together. Then they travel along their last journey, and make the plunge in company. And a female
(W. W. Stewart Collection.)
Departure from Auckland of the Auckland—Taneatua Express.taniwha is said to follow their footsteps, but whether she is there in friendly capacity, or waits like the monsters of an Egyptian stream, nobody seemed to know. Fear of the spirits of the dead must have been particularly strong in the north, for Edward Markham's journal says that the meaning of the name Ngapuhi— the name of the great Hongi's tribesmen, who were lords and masters here —is “Night-Goers.” They alone were not afraid to travel about after dark, and because of this were able to carry on surprise raids and attacks which helped to put them in a position of supremacy.
Your last little glimpse of semicivilisation is Houhora, where the White Pig still stands, the remnants of a glory. This was the gumdiggers' hotel, in the great days of high kauri gum prices, when Maoris and Dalmatians might be digging with a titled Englishman alongside them in the swamps. Dalmatian and Austrian people still live as far north as Te Kao, in little weatherboard cabins like those of the Maoris. Two of them jumped into the Liz for a lift of a few miles towards the sea: one had been in New Zealand seven years, and couldn't yet speak the language—a proof of the isolation of his life—and the older man, wrinkled, tanned like mahogany, smiling and resigned, explained that he had come here twenty years back. They both wanted to own land, but times were hard. Now that gum prices were down among the dead men and dead markets, casual farm labour was all that came their way.
I never saw a fat man or woman in the north: they may have been there, I can only say that they weren't conspicuous. The Maoris, about whose health troubles so much has been
(Rly. Publicity photo.)
A scene on Lake Walkaremoana, North Island, New Zealand.
We met, after dusk, with a carload of them, stranded through an accident. Their ancient and dilapidated motor had broken down: they had been trying all day to get a sick man to hospital. They were quite quiet, strange brown figures with sad black eyes and flowing black hair, like harmless witches.
The Maoris have an odd way of starting little roads among the manuka, roads that look as if they meant business, and suddenly fade out, leaving you beached, bogged and cursing. Half a dozen times we curved grandly into the unmistakable road, only to find ourselves in a wilderness, stalled, the Liz panting cruelly. And every time a polite Maori and several little boys and girls came across, and gave us expert directions. On the right side of midnight, with only a memory of Houhora's few lights and Te Kao's little schoolhouse twinkling in our minds, we gave the darkness best, and blew up the Lilos.
Sleeping in the manuka is good: I don't vouch for it without the Lilos, because one has to admit that the sharp little leaves prickle, and prickles at 2 a.m. are apt to take romance out of any situation. But plus Lilos, and a sprinkling of vague cold silver-daisy stars, and a wind blowing, it is worth while.
In the morning we drove on to Te Hapua, and had bacon, lots of bacon, not to mention currant scones and jam, and beautifully amber tea, in a Maori household where there were red amaryllis lilies on the breakfast table; everyone was rather distressed about the recent newspapers' stories of Te Hapua's degeneracy and disease. Plenty of mental vigour in that house, anyhow, and plenty of commonsense: not to mention a brown-eyed nine-year-old who sat on the balcony and played a Hawaiian guitar for us. We saw the first glitter of white sands, over at Parenga. The sea looked cold and choppy, and remembering the fuss the pakeha launch-owners made about going beyond Whangaroa Heads if there's the merest ripple on the waters, I didn't blame the Maoris for preferring to buy their fish canned rather than turn out in ancient craft in all weathers. A Maori health movement has been started in the vicinity of Te Hapua and Ta Kao: well, it has a foundation of real physical beauty and charm to work upon, if the Maoris get their chance. The northern type is too good to be wasted.
Clay road to Te Paki: in boom days, Te Paki was a famous station, and even now, as we drove past, it had the alert and up-to-date look of a big farm where things are living and moving.
The raupo huts, quite empty, were Hector Macquarrie's Pandora. I remember he mentioned that even when inhabited, the little settlement was subject to specially ardent and agile bugs, and now the bugs are monarch of all they survey, I hate to think how many of them must be flourishing there. An ancient black and white cow—the original one that jumped over the moon—tossed her horns at us skittishly. We walked on over the glistening white sandhills.
White sandhills: bleached, clean, silvery white, white as the moon, moulded in windswept curves and fine ribbed patterns, stretching away down a coast of foam, as far as one can see: and tearing in to meet the sand, two diagonal lines of surf, clashing together a hundred yards from shore, spouting up, a great creamy mass.
There are things to be seen in New Zealand, but nothing else that gives the thrill of that lonely surf at Spirits Bay. The solitude is complete. Nothing lies in sight but the miles of shining white sand, birds flaking up and down on a light wind, the surflines pouring into one another, the sea speaking with a massive voice, and out against the rocks great pillars of foam lifting into the air. It is not a sad place, but a startling one, this Spirits Bay; and wherever the waves have crashed, through the centuries, they have pounded and broken millions of little gleaming shells, biscuit and heliotrope shells, so that you walk on a beach of purple and gold, shining with salt. There is no vegetation but the paraha vine, that used to be used for wrapping up the bodies thrown into the ovens at cannibal feasts: it's a delicate, wind-trembling little flower that doesn't know its own sinister history. Its mauve bells are like silk.
That is all, except that the spirits of the Maori dead did rightly to come to Spirits Bay: it is a magnificent place, Te-rerenga-wairua.
We had given up the hosses: in the first place, I didn't feel confident of controlling one of these temperamental beasts for eight miles (which was the distance onwards to the very last bit of New Zealand), and in the second, so far as we could see, there weren't any available. So, inaccessible by those few miles, the last cliff and rock, and the cape Tasman saw, lay unassaulted, and I made up my mind to go back again, perhaps in winter when the big storms would be towering here, and look over the edge.
(Rly. Publicity photo.)
A Mother Rata growing through papa rock on the shores of Lake Waikaremoana, North Island, New Zealand.
In the meantime, Ninety-Mile Beach; the exhilarating snow-white desert on your left, the exhilarating snow-white surf on your right, and between them, a beautiful sweep of firm, iron-coloured, unflawed sand.
We had just agreed that “The Sheikh,” “The Garden of Allah,” “Bel-
A little gentle cursing from behind the wheel; but it was all right. The Liz, coaxed and blarneyed, agreed to start again.
Five hundred yards further on, the Liz stopped once more.
This time, it took action. We were rather expert about it. We dragged out a large tarpaulin from the car, spread it before the wheels, like Sir Walter Raleigh's cloak before Queen Elizabeth's red slippers and shoved pieces of driftwood under the rear wheels. After that, I lay in a graceful attitude shoving the car from behind, and wishing that just for one perilous minute I had the girth of the fat lady in a circus. The Liz muttered and argued, then suddenly hiccuped, and was off, leaving me picking myself up from wet sand.
“Wouldn't it be better to turn back?” I suggested. I didn't want to turn back: nobody, once having set wheel on Ninety-Mile Beach, could conceivably want to turn back. The seagulls would sneer so, and the breakers shout such loud hoarse laughter among themselves, as they come rolling up the beach. We didn't turn back.
About fifteen miles from Spirits Bay, the Liz did it again. This time it was serious. The tide had turned, and was just coming in. Not a soul, not a tyre-track, had been visible from first to last. We once saw a goat, which sprinted away without uttering any helpful suggestions. We ought to have milked it, of course. We hadn't eaten since breakfast at Te Hapua: but this was no time to bandy suggestions about food, or even drink. Action, more action… .
I like to think of the next three hours. When I am an old woman, and have kept all my dependents running about like beetles waiting upon me hand and foot, I'll still like to think of them. They were action…
The Liz had sunk in a lopsided, ungainly way on her seaward side. Her tyres were down eight inches in a mixture of sand and water, which ever as we gazed became soupier and soupier. I was told to go comb the beach for driftwood—not matchwood, but heavy stuff—and departed. I found a place where several casks and apparently a vessel also had come to grief. There was plenty of sea-washed plank timber, also logs; large, fat, knobbly logs, the happy home of countless bugs and beetles. I started to haul them.
There was no comment, no verbal reward, except an occasional terse, “Get some more wood… Hurry, she's going down again.” The car, jacked up in front, rose beautifully: our little tower of driftwood fitted in underneath, we wiped sweating brows and said, “That's got her.” Liz objected: she wobbled for a moment, then crashed.
“Hell,” said a dreadful voice. Then, “It's about forty miles to Kaitaia. I'll have to walk. You will stay here.”
“But Liz?”
The tide will cover Liz to her bonnet. Can't be helped.”
“Insurance?”
“Yes. But they'll probably blame me. They'll point out that reason and De Witts' Almanac and the meteorological's office all said it wasn't right to do Ninety-Mile with the tide on the turn. They'll argue, and they won't pay out in full. This will probably mean a hundred gone west.”
“It seems funny to think there is so much money.”
“Well, couldn't you get some more driftwood, instead of standing there?”
“Oh, driftwood. .”
Besides bugs, some of it had rusty nails; I'll probably die of blood-poisoning, I thought, and wondered whether I really wanted the Liz to be saved, or whether it wouldn't be glorious to spend a night alone by those gigantic booming waves, with a huge driftwood fire. Nothing to eat, except a little marching chocolate and toheroas—if I could catch the toheroas, and if toheroas are bearable raw—but still, fun; however, a hundred pounds is a hundred pounds.
(Photo., Elsie L. Thompson.)
The popularity of “Mystery Train” hikes still continues in the Canterbury province, South Island. This picture shows hikers enjoying a tramp over the mountains in the Staircase Gully district.
I was told to stop hauling driftwood logs, and make channels in the sand, letting the water seep away from the wheels. Hauling driftwood was a fool to this. The more industriously I channelled, the better the water seeped. I felt like a beaver, and the tide came in.
“Can't jack her any higher. Where's the tarpaulin?”
Sir Walter Raleigh's cloak went down before and under the car once more. I looked at my blistered hands and thought, “Of course it won't start. At midnight to-night, I'll be sitting in front of a driftwood fire, eating toheroas and wishing they were steak.”
She started. It was a somehow glorious moment, a triumph of mankind over the sheer, dumbheaded, reasonless, bulldoggy, big-Swede obstinacy of the machine. She slid the length of the tarpaulin, gasped, hesitated, and made the higher sand, where the water didn't seep. I looked back at my pile of driftwood, and thought, “Good-bye, fire.”
After that nothing mattered any more. A happy voice said at intervals, “There's chocolate under that flap,” “Look in the back seat and I think you'll find the glasses,” “Look, those people are digging toheroas—want to get out and take a look?” I didn't care what toheroas they dug, though later we had a dozen wrapped up in batter and tossed into fritters—can be recommended. But there wasn't anything real except a few blurred faces, Maori and white—the huge surfs pounding in, white plumes in their hair—a beetle dropping off his driftwood home and beating it away, for the lick of his life, into sands that are whiter, shapelier, lonelier than anything filmed at Hollywood.
(By
Hunter
A Way down in the Southern part of the province of Otago, farther south even than the Bluff, is a little settlement named Waikawa. Near here, about an hour's steady walk along the coast, is one of the most wonderful spots in New Zealand. It is known as Curio Bay, and is the site of a submerged and petrified forest.
At high tide practically everything is under water, but when the tide recedes one can walk over what seems to have been, in some bygone age, a standing forest. Nothing stands now except the old stumps, but in all directions trunks of trees lie around, varying in size from what were tree ferns, to trunks almost two feet in diameter. In some cases the rings that indicate annual growth can be seen, and the bark distinguished from the more solid “wood.” Some of the trunks show half their circumference above the rock in which they are embedded. Others have been broken away flush with the surface. Yet again, semi-cylindrical depressions in the rock would make it appear that trees had been lifted out bodily. In the heart of one trunk I noticed a black, brittle substance closely resembling coal.
One can get some general idea of the spot, by recalling the appearance of paddocks from which standing bush has been cleared sufficiently long for all branches and small wood to have decayed and disappeared, with many of the tree trunks commencing to sink into the ground, the old stumps of the big trees still standing, and, dotted round in numbers, the small conical-shaped stumps of tree ferns. Imagine this, but everything of solid stone instead of ground and grass and trees, and the whole a yellowish-brown colour, and one has a pretty fair idea of the appearance of the submerged forest at Curio Bay.
Times change and we change with them! In Victorian days if the head of the household wanted to “blow a cloud” he usually retired to the back garden, or even the coal house! As for smoking in the streets it simply wasn't done! Of course women didn't smoke at all, and would have been horrified at the idea. And there were no smoke rooms. Think of that the next time you go to your club and enter its luxuriously appointed lounge for smokers. And for every man who smoked fifty years ago a hundred smoke now! But your modern smoker is not so easy to please as devotees of the weed used to be. The present demand is for tobacco of choicer quality than of yore. Hence the widespread popularity of the five famous toasted brands: Cut Plug No. 10 (Bullshead), Cavendish, Navy Cut No. 3 (Bulldog), Riverhead Gold and Desert Gold, which are not only extraordinarily pure (owing to the elimination of nicotine in them by toasting) but possess a flavour and bouquet delicious as heart of smoker can desire.*
But there are other wonders. The area in which the forest is now situated was apparently at one time very much higher. It appears to have subsided bodily for a space of about half a mile between two bold headlands, and in the steep face thus exposed at the headlands can be seen further examples of petrifaction and coal deposit. Then the ground seems to have sunk again in a lateral direction, dividing the bay into a series of small plateaux standing one above the other, sometimes as much as eight or ten feet. Through the solid rock, from the sea up to the shore, run huge chasms filled with long golden-brown kelp, which the sea keeps in constant motion. Truly a weird place. I was alone when I visited it, and the dusk was approaching. All at once I became aware of a disturbance in the kelp near me, and presently a penguin emerged, waddling along the rock. With memories of those interesting pictures of Shackleton's Polar expedition in my mind, I gave chase with the intention of heading off the stranger and holding converse with him, but he disappeared into the kelp where I dared not follow, and struck out into deep water.
On the fringe of this remarkable freak of rock, can sometimes be found small boulders which were obviously at some stage of their existence pieces of wood, the texture of the wood being clearly visible. Then again boulders can be broken open, and inside are perfect impressions of fern leaves. Curiously enough, these impressions are all black in colour, while further inland upon the hills similar impressions can be found in white. The scientist attached to Scott's expedition made several visits to this spot, and students from the American Universities have been regular visitors. It is stated that the petrified vegetation at Curio Bay belongs to a period of fourteen million years ago, before such things as the grasses now familiar to us were in existence, yet the imprints of the ferns embedded in these boulders are remarkably similar to some of our commonest ferns of to-day.
We are accustomed to think of our little country as still too young to have either history or tradition, and yet geologically speaking, it seems it is regarded as one of the oldest countries of the world. From time to time discoveries of profoundest interest are made, and some day these scraps of evidence will be pieced together and a knowledge gained of matters which today we can only guess at.
So with Curio Bay. What may not those waters hold of which to-day we see only a tiny portion, a small relic of some terrific cataclysm which devastated that part of the country? Or was it only a gradual subsidence, as even now a gradual lifting is taking place of portions of our coastline elsewhere?
(Photo., Thelma R. Kent.)
The Red Birch Avenue on the way to the Routeburn Huts, South Island, New Zealand.
(ByJ. R. .)
Hastings
One of the “New Zealand Railways Magazine's” most valued contributors is Will Lawson who now resides in Sydney. About seven years ago this former Wellingtonian wrote his first novel. Since then he has written others, but did not offer any of them to publishers until 1934, when Angus and Robertson accepted and published “The Laughing Buccaneer.” The first edition of this thrilling book has sold out and motion picture rights have been sought by one producing company.
Mr. Lawson's first job was with the Union Steam Ship Company in Wellington where he occupied the position of office boy. Perhaps this association with the sea accounts for his love of ships which is ever-present in his work. This preference for the sea may, or may not have been the cause of Will's father indenturing his son to the A.M.P. as junior clerk for three years! The change did little to alter his state of mind, and Will dreamed of the sea as he filed papers referring to people who had insured their lives.
One day, a fellow clerk who was an artist by inclination, heard that a new ship called the Ionic had come into port. After a day's toil in the office the two youths went down to the wharves in the hope of seeing over her. They were fortunate in getting hold of a Liverpool fireman who had worked on the Mauretania and other huge liners on the Western Ocean. After showing them over the ship he told them thrilling stories of happenings at sea. Will gave him a half-a-crown—all' that he had—for the man had given him inspiration for his first piece of verse. As he walked homeward these lines ran in his head:
(Rly. Publicity photo.)
The Ohinemutu thermal area, with Lake Rotorua in the background, North Island, New Zealand.
Will missed dinner that night, working on the rest of the verse which he named “Stokin.”' He was very proud of the refrain which went like this:
Very pleased with himself Will sent the verses to the Bulletin and waited with impatience the verdict. It came in the form of a cheque for two guineas. The happy youth thought himself made for life. He continued his writing in spite of the fact that it was a rule forbidding employees to earn money outside of the firm. For several years his verses appeared under the pen-name of “Quilp N.”
Locomotives attracted Will as much as ships, and the sight of a fast train always moved him to exaltation of thought. Then one day the lines of his immemorial verse “The Flyer” came to him. This was inspired by the Night Mail for Christchurch passing a level crossing at which Will stood. One verse is as below:
During the past three years, further novels from Will Lawson's pen have added greatly to his reputation as a writer.
(Perpetrated and Illustrated by
Ken Alexander
the maternal month.
September — Nature's maternal month! The soil is one big bassinette; baby buds are bursting, infant spuds are thirsting, and the horticultural stork is busily bounding from bed to bed. Spring's infantile influence affects the hardest-boiled homo. His mind is in rompers, his tongue lisps the language of the nursery. Strong, silent caliphs of commerce who are usually sound, sane and sombre may be detected gooing at a baby jonquil, crooning over a sprouting spraxia, comforting a shrinking shallot, or fondling the frond of an early onion.
For the hardest heart is melted by the mellifluous magic of Nature's nursery.
This is the time when the gardener's thoughts turn to gardening. You see him sitting in sunny corners turning his thoughts to gardening. He lies on his back in sun-porches turning his thoughts to gardening. His wife discovers him asleep among the hydrangeas apparently turning his dreams to gardening. There are known cases of spring gardeners positively gardening in their garden. But, generally speaking, this is the time for turning the thoughts to gardening.
It is the period of poetic pondering rather than low labour. One marks the unfolding of the pristine petal, the magic of the tender tendril, the plaintive plop of the bursting bud. To profane such poetic passion with sordid spade and rabid rake would be an offence against poesy, lethargy and personal inclination.
So the gardener sits in contemplative calm, oblivious of the wifely “insinuendo,” deaf to the spousely spruik anent the way of the weed, the luxuriance of the lawn and such sordid considerations as mowing and hoeing.
That is the worst of wives. They are prone to mistake man's joyous idealism for bone laziness. Spring produces in them an unidealistic urgency that, to the meditative male, is most indecent. To them a spring hat is a rhapsody in “Oh,” but the multitudinous manifestations of Nature's necromancy only incite them to materialistic notions calculated to put the skids under Romance and the spade into a husband's hand. They read the gardening notes aloud to their bitter halves who fain would toy with abstract ideals unrelated to early cabbages and the propagation of parsley.
“A cabbage that no one but an assassin could bear to cut off in its prime.”
They say with sinister determination: “I see that now is the time to sprinkle potash of perlmutter over the lillium bed.”
“Um,” replies the victim of Spring. “It says here that all dandylion and daisy should be removed from the lawn before top-dressing and replanting.”
“Ah,” replies the marital burden-bearer.
“Rose trees should now be sprayed with deodorised dillwater,” orates the domestic dream-shatterer.
“Woof,” grunts the sharer of family joys and sorrows.
“All ground should be finally turned over and treated with chloride of culpepper for spring sewing,” cries the marital mentor.
“Yah!” fumes the hounded husbandman.
“Climbing roses should be tied back and squirted with a solution of methylated mothballs, daffodils should be—“
“Bah!” snorts the disillusioned illusionist; but he knows what is going to happen to him this spring. It happened to him last spring. He looks forward to the day when he will
Such is the way of the greatest minds. John Ruskin was a devoted observer of Nature's nuances, but it's long odds that he never taught a baby turnip to turn or a spring onion to spring.
Yes, alas! There are coarsely materialistic minds that insist that the significance of spring is terrestrial as well as spiritual, who maintain that a beet in the hand is worth two in the heart. Perhaps, of these, wives and seedsmen are the most ruthlessly rampant. In fact, without wives to move the male to unenthusiastic activity, the seedsman would wither and whence. Seedsmen are not romantic. If they dream at all they dream of a seedless existence wherein all the gardens look like asphalt tennis courts. I knew only one retired seedsman (most of them die early of gardener's palsy through having to listen to the horticultural lies of their clients). This retired seedsman spent the evening of his life as happy as a sandboy, in the Sahara Desert. He lived on seedless raisins and weedkiller. He used to sit for hours and hours in rhapsodic contemplation of the miles and miles of howling wilderness that wouldn't grow a thing. But one day he saw a mirage of a bed of spinach and the shock killed him.
But while a seedsman is in business he attends to his vegetables and incites wives to buy cabbages and things for husbands to plant in the spring when the said husbands would far rather dream of the wondrous ways of creation and let Nature take her course.
Seedsmen prey on the artistic and mystic qualities of the unsuspecting
Sweet Nature Pauses Just Before the Spring.“Catalogues calculated to convert a Beef-eater to vegetarianism.”
“Dreaming when Dawn's left hand was in the sky,” he waits for Creation to work its magic on his broccoli bed, cabbage cradle and cauliflower cot. What happens ? Ask yourself! If he has the luck of me and you, his cabbages are like green knob-kerries, you could use his carrots for boot-laces, the spring onions look “sprung,” the children play marbles with the pumpkins, the turnips don't turn up, the cucumbers miss their cue, the peas take one cross-eyed look out of the ground and turn back, and the baby uses the only marrow to cut his teeth on.
No doubt, as the seedsman says, he either put too much and/or too little cyanide of sassafras on them, or was too generous and/or too niggardly with the hydrated essence of ditherums. But, aren't we all? We fell down on the stimulants last spring; we'll come a crash next spring and all subsequent springs. But, so long as spouse, seedsman and catalogue conspire with spring to stir up the ambrosia of ambition—we'll keep on doing it.
leading new zealand newspapers.
leading new zealand newspapers—
continued
By “
Shibli Bagarag
From a sales point of view it must be taken for granted that Miss Nelle Scanlan is New Zealand's most successful novelist. Since “The Top Step,” her first novel was published in 1931, she has written eight books all of which have run to three or four and more editions. Sales are very consoling, but I am sure that Miss Scanlan is aiming at something more than this. In fact this is evident from the steady progress in style in each successive book. Has she developed a distinctive style of her own? After reading her eighth and latest novel, “Leisure for Living,” I may reply emphatically in the affirmative. This is her best and most sincere work to date. Her characterisations have depth. Her observations on nature and on man are worth while. Her dialogue is brisk and her plot construction sound, at times perhaps a little laborious, but this is a minor fault and shows conscientiousness. The story will appeal to all, but most of all to Wellingtonians, for it breathes deeply of the wind and the sun and the hills of Wellington. Uncle Mortimer is a character worthy almost of Galsworthy. This mercenary social climber stands out so clearly from the book. And each of his two nephews and two nieces (the Marions) are etched in deep distinctive lines. Under the presiding genius of their uncle these four and their mother scheme at times successfully, and at times disastrously, for the accumulation of the money that will give them social eminence and the leisure for living. It is such a wholesome story, yet Miss Scanlan can extract the full rich colours of romance from a simple (non lingering) kiss. Herein she displays art indeed.
The story moves from Wellington to London, and finally returns to the
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Big cash prizes are being offered to writers in connection with Australia's 150th Anniversary Celebrations. The competitions which are open to New Zealand writers include £80 for the best short story, £125 for a full length play, £50 for a short poem, £100 for a long essay, etc. Details from Box 3845T, G.P.O., Sydney.
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A literary project dear to the heart of C. R. Allen, the New Zealand poet and novelist, is the publication of the New Zealand anthology of short stories promoted abroad by Miss Edith Fry. Now, after many months of selection the job is in the hands of the printer, George Blows, the Borough Press, Henley-on-Thames. Hugh Walpole has promised to write a foreword. There are eighteen contributors and about thirty stories.
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In the July issue of this magazine I quoted from a remarkable letter
Another bookplate designed by Merv. Taylor, of Wellington.
“This is to acknowledge the receipt this morning of your letter of June 2nd, and to thank you for the appreciative words which you apply to my book exposing the perfidy of Frank Harris and—shall we say?—the imbecility of G. B. Shaw. I am afraid though his motive in abusing Wilde and backing Harris's foul farrago proceeded rather from his characteristic jealousy of his superiors in the art of letters. The extract from his letter to the correspondent in Dunedin is a useful addendum to my dossier about G. B. Shaw. I shall, however, make no use of it as he is an old, old man, and I would not want to hurt his feelings. If (which is highly improbable) I outlive him, I may use it in the sense you suggest in your letter. I enclose copies of two letters, one by Hugh Kingsmill (whose father, Sir Henry Lunn, has just celebrated his golden wedding to Hugh Kingsmill Lunn's mother) to me, and the other written in 1918 to Dr. Williamson by the Sullivan (Sir Edward) whom Harris quoted on Wilde at Portora. I think the paragraph I have marked with blue pencil in this letter would alone have justified my book.”
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A recently published booklet that should be in big demand at home and abroad is “New Zealand's Labour Government—Its First Year of Office.” The author is Mr. James Thorn, M.P., and he is to be congratulated on his 62 page survey of Labour legislative and administrative achievements. A clear, concise and well arranged record. If it runs to a second edition an index would be helpful.
reviews.
“Civilian Into Soldier,” by John Lee, is the most arresting and most individual novel yet written by a New Zealander. It is also one of the greatest in the world's field of war novels. After reading it one can never forget it. It is so different, but not different in style from the two earlier novels by the same author, for John Lee has created a style of his own, and it is a fine rhythmic style, full of rich red corpuscles circulating round the strong literary heart-beat of his novels. The story is of a young idealist from New Zealand, John Guy, who carries under his tunic through the hell of battle a copy of old Omar and the lock of a girl's hair. John Guy loathes this terrible military machine, but often is inebriated as it were by the blood around him, and lusts only for carnage and plunder and for the wine and women of the aftermath. His initiation at Sling Camp is a powerful indictment against militarism, but surely such a loathsome figure as R.S.M. Angley could never have existed? Then comes the gradual transition to the front line leading up to the terrible tragedy of Messines. Here the author rises to literary heights. The massing of the terrific word pictures is a triumph. In parts it is unforgettably horrible. In fact, it must be stated plainly that great and all as the book is, it is not one for everybody. In parts it is raw meat—dripping red. But to give a faithful picture, and John Lee's innate sincerity could not permit otherwise, one must call a spade a spade, or, should I say, an R.S.M. a blank, blank. John Lee lifts the lid off hell and throws the lid away. And let all who look into the ghastly cauldron pray that another war may never come to the Empire.
The book is published by T. Werner Laurie, Whitcombe and Tombs, Ltd., being the New Zealand agents.
“How to Win Friends and Interest People,” by Dale Carnegie (Angus and Robertson, Sydney) is described as “the world's No. 1 best seller of 1937.” The book is succinctly described on its jacket as being “the direct result of a lifetime's research and experience, and is the only genuinely practical manual of its kind ever written to help people to solve their daily problems in human relationships.” Certainly this should be a most helpful book for thousands of people. It tells in a simple practical fashion how to “get on with people,” and how to make them like you. Because the author shows you how to win people over to your ideas the motive behind the idea is not one of selfishness, rather one of diplomatic or tactful selflessness. And for husbands and wives there is a section of such rock bottom commonsense advice that if it were acted on, half of the world's divorce court judges would be out of their jobs to-morrow. The business man is especially catered for. The chapter “Letters that Produced Miraculous Results,” should be a small gold mine for many businesses. The book should have a big sale in these parts.
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“Shanghai,” by Edmund Barclay (Angus and Robertson, Sydney) had me expectant as soon as I saw the author's name, for I remembered the thrill I was given by his earlier book, “Khyber.” Barclay takes us to China in his latest book and shows a knowledge of the wonderful East equal to the knowledge of India that he displayed to us in his “Khyber.” Leaving aside the fictional aspect of the book, the author's pictures of Shanghai and other parts of China should capture everybody. Wrapped up in a truly thrilling story the book has a twofold appeal. Love, adventure and intrigue revolve with almost bewildering rapidity round the central characters, “Jerry,” his sweetheart, Shaio Pao, the beautiful and mysterious Chinese princess, and Dr. Sheng, who loves beauty more than the multitude of evil schemes he is engaged in.
“Shibli” Listens in.
Two successful New Zealand novels now available in cheap editions of 4/6 are Robin Hyde's “Passport to Hell,” and John Guthrie's “The Little Country.”
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Miss Eileen Duggan's poems will be published shortly by Allen and Unwin.
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“Man Marches On,” by Mr. A. E. Mander, of Wellington, is due to be published shortly.
headaches nearly drove him mad
He Was Liverish—and Weighed 16 Stone.
Now Completely Changed by Kruschen.
After spending some years in the tropics the writer of the following letter returned home suffering from liver trouble, constant headaches which nearly drove him mad, and an unhealthy load of excess fat. Read how he cured his headaches—toned up his liver—and lost 36 lbs. of fat—all with the same remedy. Kruschen, he says, completely changed his whole being:—
“I was so stout that my general health was completely undermined. I had constant headaches that almost drove me crazy, and I suffered from a continual feeling of liverishness. I weighed 16 stone 5 lbs. I began to take Kruschen Salts, and, after 10 or 12 days, my whole being was completely changed. My liver does not bother me any more. I feel younger and more active, my headaches are gone. In one month my weight went down to 15 stone 1 lb., and yesterday, to my great delight, I found that I now weigh only 13 stone 11 lbs. I am continuing the treatment, to the very great advantage of my health.”—M.A.L.
Headaches can nearly always be traced to a disordered stomach, and to the unsuspected retention in the system of stagnating waste material which poisons the blood. Remove these poisons—prevent them forming again—and you'll never have to worry any more. And that is just how Kruschen Salts brings swift and lasting relief from headaches.
Kruschen cleanses your body completely of all undigested food substances and excessive waste matter. Unless this wastage is regularly expelled, Nature is liable to store it up in the form of fatty tissue.
Kruschen Salts is obtainable at all Chemists and Stores at 2/6 per bottle.
HelenSpring in September.
For sports wear, style change is not so swift, but the “town” hat shows those subtle variations which mark the new season. Even the sailor, smart still with straight or upcurved brim, may be startlingly new with a high crown. Another “high” hat is the inverted flower-pot. The pancake hat, with small or medium brim looks distressingly unsuitable for our spring weather changes. More useful are the turbans, berets and toques. One very smart turban was of bands of grosgrain ribbon in deepening tones. Toques of shiny straw, with flat plaques of many-tinted flowers, and wisps of veiling, or flutings of ribbon, possess appeal even for the woman who always feels happier in a felt.
For those who can wear it, the new brim, pulled sharply off the face, is flattering.
An interesting “new” style is flattopped and brimless, rather like a mortar-board with the points cut off. The brow line is attractively curved and the sides are shaped to show off the coiffure.
New colours? Mainly the yellow to brown and red to brown sequences. Sharp new colour contrasts have been studied rather than new shades. Remember that in planning new outfits!
Paisley designs are rampant for scarves, tunics, frocks and even for blouses and jackets. Patterns may go round and round you like the hoops of a barrel pushed closely together, but don't let them unless you're not only slim but soigne.
Sports frocks are mostly shirt-frocks with neat pleats in back of bodice and accompanying jacket. There are pleats or gathers in the front of the bodice and neat pleats, usually knife pleats, in the skirt.
Other frocks are softer, more flower-like. This effect is achieved by the flare of skirts, by the fulness of sleeves and by tie-sashes used instead of belts. Two sleeve-lengths are important, the first covering half the upper arm, and the second reaching to just below the elbow. In each case the fulness released at the shoulder is brought in by clever seaming and tucking to fit the arm closely for a couple of inches before the sleeve finishes.
Most flower-like frock of all is a spring print copying in its style the Tyrolean dirndl. The very full skirt is gathered into a neat bodice.
Most bodices have fulness gathered either to the shoulders or to the yoke.
‘Tween season frocks, smooth woollens or heavy silks, well-cut and of plain material, may be cleverly trimmed with contrast stitching, plain or of simple design, in bright, coarse embroidery threads. Or again, a flattering dark frock is brightened and given distinction by huge metal clips and bracelets.
A jacket frock is a useful acquisition for spring. The frock will probably have brief sleeves for summer wear. In a light woollen, gay embroideries will be featured at neck
Of course, the jacket need not match. If you like continuity, have the lining and revers of the jacket of the same material as your frock. This mode is unusual in a floral design.
A striking jacket for a plain frock is in Paisley design; or how about a tartan swing-back jacket for pepping up things in your immediate neighbourhood.
Utility coats are mostly plain and belted with moderate collars and revers, and a slight shoulder fulness in the sleeve. Some styles with front closing from neck to hem, are collarless. Popular, too, will be the top-coat with swinging lines and loose sleeves set in deep armholes.
The tie-sash, so popular in frocks, is seen also in coats. A dressy coat, with tie-sash and front closing, has very wide, stiffly-stitched revers which stand out straight along the shoulder line, and are cut straight to a point at the waist, giving a triangular bib effect.
When choosing a spring suit, study suitability for cool summer days and for the autumn. Have a light woollen jumper, high necked, as well as blouses to go with it.
Perhaps you have a grey flannel suit which you wore successfully last year with a navy, blue blouse. This spring, experiment in colour. Very successful with a grey suit is a geranium blouse and a geranium band on the grey slouch hat. Remember the colour “kick” that can be given to a matching outfit by a contrast hatband.
A neat idea for a blouse is to have an under-collar matching the suit colour.
If you look distinguished in black, whispers Paris, wear a black blouse with your black pin-stripe suit and depend for accent on a large gold or silver lapel clip. I saw one spray of leaves, in gold, quite six inches long.
Shoe materials are mainly glacé, calf-skin, suede or patent, or combinations of these.
Popular styles are the court and buckled court; the wide-bar buckled shoes, perhaps with cut-outs; two or four-eyelet tie shoes. All these usually have a medium Spanish heel. The monk shoes, with fringed or tucked flaps neatly buckled across, and the shoe seamed up the front have Cuban heels—or lower. The ghillie and the derby, shoes for walking comfort, have definitely low heels.
Individuality is given to shoes by clever combinations of materials, by cut-outs, by punching and by outlining seams in a different colour.
Shoe styles are so varied that shoe selection should present no problems.
The clothes you have may be quite suitable, for the season, but you may be more than a little tired of them. Rip off the accessories from your dark, tailored frock, and give it a large metal clip at the neck-line; try a two or three-toned tie-sash; or twist narrow grosgrain ribbons in bright colours round your waist and let the ends fly free.
Perhaps a new hat will perk up your street outfit. At least discard the dark gloves worn through the winter and wear chamois or oyster, or the new sun-tan—something light and careless.
If you love magpie effects—dare you?—yes!—outline the wide revers of your black jacket with white piqué an inch wide. And have shoes and bag agleam with patent leather.
Look critically at your handbag. Yes; those old letters, your savings-bank book, your glasses case, the cigarette case that fights for room with the compact—all these have bulged your bag too long. You must be ruthless—discard, or buy a bigger bag. In any case a new handbag, at a moderate price if you wish it, is necessary. A tip for bags—look at your shoes and then choose your bag.
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Just a Memo. Book.
The Andersons are coming to dinner! What shall you have? A plain roast is always nice, but then—how about something different?
It won't do to experiment for an “occasion.” You ransack recipe books. You've been cooking all these years— and yet you're stuck! Whatever have you served in the past? There was that mutton en casserole the night the Webbs stayed over on their way south. And you had soup. Somehow that dinner went well. What soup was it? And a steamed pudding—or was it a cold sweet? You're getting more and more muddled, and you'll probably end by having the usual roast. The guests will enjoy it, for you can cook a dinner, but that little glow of satisfaction at having served an appetising and unusual meal, will be missing.
Try keeping a memorandum book! Try it on the dog—if the family won't eat it—I mean, of course, any experiment that isn't a success. But if it is a success, note it in the memobook.
Index the book to suit yourself—successful menus, quickly-prepared dinners, luncheon dishes, summer drinks—table decorations—just those things you find difficulty in thinking up when a special occasion arises.
You'll find yourself, too, turning to the memo, book for suggestions on ordinary days—when you think a bowl of soup for lunch will warm the children up (you know two or three quick soups; what are they? memo, book knows), when you simply can't think of a pudding, or when the family is going out at the week-end and you want to have something savoury and substantial ready baked. You'll bless your memo, book warmly.
* * *
You know how wearing it is to be ruffled. Perhaps you have trained yourself to approach life, and the many little tasks necessary to living, with a calm spirit. To have gained so much control over yourself and your environment is a wonderful thing.
But do you treat human beings with the same calmness with which you treat things? You have taught
Probably you frown mentally, and endeavour to subdue a human-being, to put him or her in place, as you would a book or a dish-towel. Don't try it! If you do, it is the result of over-regimentation of yourself. Be the master of things, but not of men. Realize that each individual makes his own surroundings and that no outsider has the right to apply other ideas of order.
Of course, if you are occupying the same house, or sharing the same interests, there must be a certain relaxing or tautening of habits to suit the other person. No rational being objects to compromise in the interests of peace.
But watch yourself! Don't regard your methods and your outlook as the only ones conducive to peaceful living. Don't be your own apostle and preach your own perfection, even in thought —or you'll be a horribly prickly person to have dealings with. Remember that the finest people have been, not the exponents of methods, but the lovers of mankind.
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Prelude To a Perm.
After deciding it is time to make an appointment for a “Perm,” it is advisable to give the hair special treatment before the actual date of the operation. If the hair is dry, massage it well with warm olive oil, being sure that the scalp is massaged and not the hair merely rubbed, which tends to injure rather than to improve it.
There are numerous hair lotions, too, which are very beneficial, but care must be taken to use the one most suitable for your own particular scalp. The main thing is, to have the hair in good condition in order to get the best result.
Probably all women with straight hair have a hankering for curls, but if you look a fuzzy poodle with your hair curled, wear it straight. Treat it well, and it will repay you one hundredfold. Massage a good tonic into the scalp and brush the hair until it has the glad-to-be-alive look.
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The Art Of Washing Gloves.
Wash gloves on the hands. Wash quickly, in two soapy waters (lukewarm), and remove badly soiled spots
Rinse twice in clear, lukewarm water and gently squeeze the water out, working from the fingertips to cuff to avoid breaking the seams. Do not twist or wring. Soft skins and some synthetic yarns become weakened when wet, and tear if handled roughly.
Roll gloves in a towel to take out the excess moisture. After squeezing blow into the glove, straighten the fingers and lay flat on a towel with the fingers pointing towards you. Roll up in the towel, beginning with the fingers, and using a kneading motion to remove the moisture.
Dry slowly. Take the gloves from the towel and puff them again by blowing into them. Lay them flat on a towel and ease gently into shape. Do not expose to excessive heat while they are drying. If a glove is of two contrasting colours, place tissue paper on the inside while it is drying.
Press with the fingers. When the gloves are nearly dry, work them with the fingers to soften them and remove the wrinkles. Should they become too dry to work easily, make them pliable again by rolling them up in a slightly dampened cloth, and then finger press them immediately.
Important: Do not attempt to wash other than the gloves marked “Washable.”
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Miscellaneous Hints.
A simple and safe way of cooling an oven which has become too hot, is to place a pan of cold water on the upper shelf.
A tiny pinch of bicarbonate of soda added to the water is said to prolong the life of cut flowers.
Cold water is the simplest and quickest way of removing the smell of onions or fish from dishes.
A simple gargle—a pinch of bicarbonate of soda in a tumbler of water.
Water in which vegetables with the exception of cabbage and silver beet) are cooked, should be used for soups and gravies.
Recipes.
Four kidneys, one teaspoon each flour, onion, Worcester sauce, lump butter, bacon.
Mince kidneys, bacon and onion and stew gently with other ingredients in about three tablespoons of cold water. Serve on hot buttered toast.
Two cups grated raw potato, two tablespoons flour, two tablespoons milk, two well-beaten eggs, four strips minced bacon, one teaspoon salt, and a dash of pepper.
Blend the ingredients and cook the pancakes on the girdle (or equivalent), brown both sides and serve for luncheon or a light supper.
Dip small squares of bread into melted butter; sprinkle with grated cheese. Place on a greased dish and cover each with minced ham; sprinkle thickly with grated cheese and pepper and little chopped parsley. Put in quick oven.
Melt one ounce of butter in a pan and add one teaspoon curry powder and a little gravy. Beat two eggs and add a tablespoon of milk. Stir until mixture sets; then pile it on rounds of fried bread. Garnish with slices of hard-boiled egg.
Quarter pound minced liver, one teaspoon lemon juice, six rashers bacon, seasoning, one gill stock, one ounce flour, one ounce butter, one gill frying batter.
Make a thick sauce with the butter, flour and stock, add the minced liver, lemon juice and seasoning. Cool on a buttered plate. Form into cork-shaped pieces. Roll each in a rasher of bacon, dip in the batter in deep fat in a frying basket.
Cut some slices of bread and butter them. Then sprinkle a little dry oatmeal on a sheet of paper and just brown in the oven. Next spread some honey on alternate slices of the bread, being careful not to apply it so thickly that it runs over the edges of the bread. Then sprinkle the browned oatmeal over the honey, and close up the slices of bread.
These sandwiches should be made very carefully.
Beat up cheese with a very little butter, and so make into a paste. Then take a pickled gherkin and cut it into thin rings, discarding the top and tail. Butter some slices of thin brown bread, and arrange the gherkin rings to cover the butter, using the cheese paste as a filling.
Well cooked beans, potato, tomato and beetroot cut into slices; pour over good salad dressing and garnish with hard-boiled eggs.
Wit and Humour
Mrs. McMurphy (pointing to dilapidated looking giraffe): “And phwat animal is this thin?”
Mr. McM. (with air of superior knowledge): “Why, an ostrich, sure.”
Mrs. McM.: “An ostrich! Then where are its feathers?”
Mr. McM. (contemptuously): “Don't bethray ignorance, Biddy. Don't ye know that ostriches moult at this toime o' the year?”
* * *
Voice on Telephone: “Your mother-in-law has been sent to prison for a month for dangerous driving.”
Meier: “Don't make me laugh, my lips are cracked.”
* * *
Doctor: “Did the sleeping powder do any good?”
Patient: “I scattered it over the whole bed but it did no good.”
* * *
Dublin boss rushed into the shop at eight o'clock one Monday morning, and yelled at all the workers, “To-day is Monday, to-morrow is Tuesday, and the next day is Wednesday. Half the week gone and you've not started work yet.”
* * *
A young lady has a vivid memory of rural courtesy.
She was struggling with a hot cup of coffee in a small town railway station, trying to gulp it before the train pulled out. A youth, standing a couple of yards away, noted her plight, and seeing the guard looking anxious, came to the fore.
“Here, ma'am, you can take my cup o' coffee. It's already saucered and blowed.”
* * *
Customer: “I want a tube of tooth paste, please.” Chemist: “What size sir?” “Oh, just enough for a couple of teeth.”
“My father had a scarecrow that was so effective that not a bird settled on that field the whole year.”
“Mine had one that was so effective that the day he put it up, the birds brought back everything they had stolen the day before.
* * *
Willie (to his father who had recently married the second time): “There's a shop in the High Street just like you, Daddie.”
Father: “Shop like me? What do you mean?”
Willie (getting near to the door): “Why, it's under entirely new management.”
* * *
“Poor ole Bill! ‘E's so short-sighted ‘e's working ‘imself to death.”
“Wot's ‘is short sight got to do with it?”
“Well, ‘e can't see when the boss ain't looking, so ‘e ‘as to keep on shovelling all the time!”
(By courtesy of the “Storyteller.”)
“A trifle over-zealous are we not Ramsbotham?”
Mrs. Jones (to husband who has ventured to assert himself): Now Henry, understand once and for all, just because you've been on a ten days' tour in Italy don't get the idea you're a second Mussolini!
* * *
“My husband is so miserly that instead of going out and getting drank he sits all the evening on the piano stool and revolves hour after hour.
* * *
“My dear, it was frightfully interesting at that dinner last night. I was talking to a Pole most of the time.”
“Oh, John! And you promised you wouldn't have more than one drink.”
* * *
Jane: “My Scotch boy friend sent me his picture yesterday.”
Joan: “How does he look?”
Jane: “I don't know yet, I haven't had it developed.”
* * *
Hubb: “Haven't I always given you my salary cheque on the first of every month?”
Wife: “Yes, but you never told me you got paid on the first and the fifteenth, you embezzler!”
* * *
A man stood on the street corner playing a cornet. When he had played one refrain, a little urchin went up to him and said, “What was that tune, mister?”
“That, my boy, was the ‘Death of Nelson,”' answered the player.
Urchin: By cripes! what a ‘orrible death.
* * *
Dad wrote to his son at college: “I'm sending you the £10 in addition to your regular allowance as you requested in your last letter; but I must again draw attention to your incorrect spelling. ‘10’ is written with one nought, not two.”
(Specially Written for “N.Z. Railways Magazine,” byW. F. .)
Ingram
If prizes are ever given for inconsistency, the New Zealand cricketers who toured England this year must surely be eligible for high ranking. When they left these shores it was hoped that they would acquit themselves well in most of their games and, perhaps, give the representatives of the Old Land some bother in Test matches.
But, some demon of mischief seems to have played havoc with all these high hopes. Matches anticipated to cause the New Zealanders more than a little trouble have been taken without any distress, but against teams which should have been easy for the tourists collapses have been the order.
Wallace and Moloney will return to New Zealand with experience of doing really well against class players; Tindill has established a reputation as a wicket-keeper much above the average, and Cowie has been referred to as the best fast bowler seen in England during the season. That, in effect, is the summary of play in England. The team members have proved popular because they put the game above the result, but New Zealanders will feel a little disappointed that more impressive performances were not established.
However, the tour has had the effect of the Australian Board of Cricket Control extending an invitation for the team to play a series of matches in Australia while en route home. In return it is hoped that an Australian team will visit New Zealand in the near future. The time for a visit by a strong Australian team is long overdue.
Precept and practice make for better performances in all branches of sport, and New Zealand cricketers need plenty of high class matches to raise the standard of the game in this
Twelve months ago Jack Lovelock won the 1,500 metres track event at the Olympic Games in Berlin and so brought to New Zealand its first Olympic track crown. In that Olympic race was a young, inexperienced American athlete, Archie San Romani, who ran into fame a few short months later by defeating Lovelock when the New Zealander was en route to New Zealand.
San Romani's win was “written down” as a victory over an athlete who had achieved the success he had sought—the Olympic crown—and had no great incentive to run the race of his life. But San Romani is no ordinary miler! Competing under atrocious weather conditions on the Princeton track a few weeks ago San Romani defeated Don Lash and Glenn
A tribute has been paid New Zealand by the invitation issued for a New Zealand surf team to visit the Commonwealth to participate in competitions and give displays on Australian beaches.
When the Australian team visited New Zealand last summer—(by the way, did we have a summer?)—bad weather prevented the general public from attending the displays in the numbers worthy of such outstanding watermen. Those who were fortunate enough to see the Australians “riding the breakers” saw something they will remember for years to come, and, although it is not expected that the New Zealand team will extend the Australians, the benefits to be derived from competition with the best teams in the world must be of inestimable value when the team returns to New Zealand and the individual members impart the knowledge gained in Australia.
When Young Gildo, the Filipino boxer, arrived in New Zealand a few months ago it was not thought that there would be sufficient opponents for him, but a revelation was in store for New Zealanders. Gildo is a “top liner” in the boxing world, and it is a feather in the cap of New Zealand boxers that two local lads, Billy Aitken and Jack Jarvis, have scored wins over the redoubtable visitor. Gildo, too, has done his share in bringing about a revival to the gloved sport.
At one time it was thought that there was not room in New Zealand for boxing and wrestling at the same time, but recent weeks have proved the inaccuracy of this assumption. Two nights of wrestling and one of boxing in the one week drew an attendance of over 4,000 enthusiasts in Wellington recently.
Alastair Cameron, the young Otago athlete, holds the “best New Zealand” performance at discus throwing with an effort of 139 ft. 3½ in., a performance good enough to win a British Empire title were Cameron eligible to represent New Zealand, but it pales into significance alongside the throw made by an eighteen-year-old American negro athlete, Archie Harris. Competing at Passaic a few weeks ago, Harris threw the discus to 175 ft. 8 in., to beat the world record of 174 ft. 2½ in. held by Willi Shroder, of Germany. Because Harris was not registered with the New Jersey Association his throw will not receive official recognition.
Until recent years negro supremacy in track and field sport had been limited to sprinting and long jump, but at the Olympic Games at Berlin last year the coloured athletes triumphed in the sprints, long jump, quarter-mile, half-mile and high jump, and now a negro athlete has broken the world record in a new branch of the sport.
The world record for 100, 200, and 800 metres is held by coloured athletes who also hold world marks in the high jump (6ft. 10 in.) and long jump. And a negro is heavyweight boxing champion of the world!
Wherever the Springbok Rugby team plays, new attendance figures are being set and fresh problems are being faced and solved by the authorities responsible for the efficient staging of the big matches. Too few of us realise the organisation necessary to carry out a tour of this nature.
Catering for the influx of visitors to see the more important matches has meant the engagement of extra staffs at hotels, and restaurants, while purveyors of pneumatic cushions and thermos flasks have reaped a rich harvest. But, somehow, the day of big sales in souvenir ribbons seems to have gone. In catering for the travelling public, the New Zealand Railway Department has good reason to feel
variety in brief
In Mr. Ernest E. Bush's excellent article on the Southern Lakes in last month's “Railways Magazine,” a reference (p. 45) to my writings on Lake Manapouri calls for a slight correction. I did not give “Lake of a Hundred Islands” as the translation of the name Manapouri. The ancient and original name of the Lake, as I have frequently explained, was Moturau, which I translated as above (motu = island; rau = a hundred, or many). Manapouri, of course, does not bear any such interpretation.
When I obtained the original name from the old men of blended Ngai-Tahu and Ngati-Mamoe in Southland in 1903, they explained that Manapouri was a pakeha corruption of Manawapopore, meaning the violent throbbing of the heart, as after great exertion or under intense emotion. Moreover, the name, they said, did not rightly belong to the lake at all, it was mistakenly transferred to Moturau by an early surveyor from the North Mavora Lake, lying in the mountains between Lakes Wakatipu and Te Anau. Manawa-popore was in the first place the name of an ancestor, and was given to that hill-girt lake in ancient times. Some of the pioneer surveyors misunderstood the Maoris they questioned.
Many of the names of lakes and mountains in the South Island were really personal names in the beginning, and are not descriptive of the places. Moturau is one of the exceptions. It should be kept in mind as a supplementary name to Manapouri, which for all its garbled construction is a name of music and beauty, perhaps the most euphonious lake name in New Zealand.
I gave up the effort to tally the islands in Manapouri, but I believe the number is thirty-four, besides half-a-dozen which are really only rocks.
* * *
As Picture Collectors See It.
The change-over at Wellington terminal of the N.Z.R. will be a milestone to railway picture collectors everywhere. For months past overseas collectors have bombarded their fellow collectors in this Dominion for pictures of the old and the new.
Local enthusiasts will complete their sets of construction photos, and mount them.
Considered as one unit the station, yard and deviation has offered the cameraman a wider scope then any New Zealand undertaking has done before. There was the old layout—two stations with a past, and a cluttered-up yard. Our next interest was the Tawa Flat tunnel, a work easily demonstrated pictorially. Then came the big steel bridges, double tracks and overhead equipment. Things started looking like a Union terminal job at an American metropolis. On top of that came a series of dramatic changes in track layout—all completed at the week-ends. Now we just need electrics and the web of steel.
Old prints will have more value. We will prize those pictures of express trains “doubleheading up the bank” out of Thorndon because they cannot be repeated. And many other photos, will benefit in historic value.
Fans at the other end of the Dominion will rely upon fellow collectors to supply prints. We have developed an organisation that works well. Real railway hobbyists are as rare in New Zealand as flies in winter time and they are widely scattered. But when a good photo, of something new comes along its existence is quickly known to other collectors, and a long series of exchanges ensues.
I was the only New Zealand collector in a position to supply photos, of rail-car trials on the Wairarapa line in August, 1936, and as a result I have supplied ninety prints to addresses scattered all over the globe.
The pictures that come back in exchange convince me that our old N.Z.R. is not behind the bunch even if our geography does make things awkward. My railway friends look the foreign pictures over and glance at the accompanying data. They usually say, “Not much different from our own, you know.” …“We have something as good as that.” … “Not necessary here.”
So collectors thank the Department for a long series of modern photographic subjects and also for the ready assistance that any true student enthusiast always gets.—R.J.C.