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Contents
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2/12/37.
New Zealand
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Registered at the G.P.O., Wellington, N.Z., for transmission by post as a Newspaper.
”
“For Better Service.
Service Copy.Vol. XII. No. 10.
Wellington,
New Zealand
January1, 1938.
Railway Internationalism
One of the features of railroading that helps the brotherhood of those engaged in the industry is its international character, which makes, as between the lines of any one country and those of another, for rivalry of the most friendly kind.
From the fact that the railway transport service of any country is something which cannot be exported, comes the position that in this industry, at least, there is no competition for markets in other parts of the world. All the railway transport “manufactured” is consumed at home, and the only international rivalry is to induce people from other parts of the world to come and share it.
This fortunate situation generates an attitude of helpfulness towards each other between the railways of all countries that has no counterpart in the intensely competitive fields of international commerce.
All information regarding methods of construction, procedure, experiments and so on, is freely handed on from one to another, and the two great long-established international railway journals, “The Railway Gazette” of London, and “The Railway Age” of New York, convey, week by week, news of railway developments in other parts of the world that stimulate the imagination and fortify the enterprise of railway executives in all countries. Incidentally, it may be noted that the stability of journals that deal with the “permanent way” appears to be as assured as that of the railways themselves. This is strikingly seen in the case of “The Railway Gazette” which, on the 29th October last completed a hundred years of weekly publication.
Recently, accompanying the London notes in this Magazine, we published a photograph of a new vehicle introduced on one of the British railways. Within a few weeks an American railway sent us an enquiry for further information. This we were able to supply through the courtesy of the British line concerned. An incident such as this is typical of what is going on behind the scenes between the railways of all countries, not only by correspondence, but by personal contact through interchanges of visits from time to time by technical and professional experts.
When the same commodity has to be handled in two countries, the identity of interest between the railways concerned is, of course, intensified. This was noted very aptly by the “London and North Eastern Railway Magazine” recently when describing “the quickest public run of the ‘West Riding Limited’ from King's Cross to Leeds that has so far been attempted.” Referring to the fact that one of the Coronation locomotives, “Dominion of New Zealand,” worked the train, it remarks: “What better choice could have been made … as so much of the great staple export of that Dominion finds its way to the West Riding?”
As the annual wool sales are now in progress in New Zealand, this reminder from the home of “Bradford tops” that in railways as well as in wool we have common interests is particularly timely. It is also pleasing to find that the railways there bring imagination to bear on an eminently practical outlook by linking the names of their locomotives with the countries from which their principal trade is derived —a happy association that serves as a visual indicator of the mutually beneficial two-way trade carried on between the West Riding of England and the Dominion of New Zealand.
“The heavenly forest, dense and living green.”
—Longfellow
The glory of the forest in the Tangsa rakau Gorge, North Island, New Zealand
(Rly. Publicity photo.)
Railway Progress in New Zealand
General Manager's MessageThe New Year
With the closing of another year, I am pleased to have the opportunity both to review the more important events of 1937 and to record the prospects for the year upon which we are just entering.
Of outstanding national importance was the opening of Wellington new station and the vacating of the old Head Office and Thorndon and Lambton Stations, probably the most important events in the history of the Department. The new station provides a remarkably convenient and efficient new centre both for the administration of the system and for the handling of our passenger and goods business. Its architecture, beauty, capacity and central situation are also emblematic of the true position the railways occupy as the largest and most frequently used organisation for the carriage of passengers and goods within the Dominion. The standard of convenience and amenities set in the new building imposes obligations upon the railway staff in the quality of the service they provide for the public, and to the extent that this service equals or excels the quality of the amenities available will it be possible to justify the expenditure involved in their provision.
The year has seen a further development of transport co-ordination in road passenger services taken over by the Department, which include those operating between Auckland and Hamilton, Hamilton and Rotorua, Rotorua and Opotiki, Rotorua and Wairakei in the North Island, and between Culverden and Westport and Rimu and Hokitika in the South Island. A tourist service ex Auckland has also been added to the increasing activities of the Department's Road Motors Branch.
During the year the new suburban twelve-trip weekly tickets were introduced to supersede the workers' weekly tickets previously used in suburban areas, a change which removed the distinction in rail transport conditions as between 8 o'clock and 9 o'clock workers and which has proved entirely successful from all points of view.
The tour of the Springboks was also an event of interest and pleasure to the Dominion. The services of the Railway Department were used for the whole of the tour, to the advantage and complete satisfaction of the visitors and the New Zealand Rugby Union.
Other events worth mentioning in this brief review are the opening of the railway to Wairoa for through goods transport, the extension of the double line from Horotiu to Ngaruawahia, the opening of the Lewis Pass Road, and the issue of “New Zealand Railways Illustrated.”
The revenue position of the Department has reflected the marked increase in passengers and goods carried and will, it is anticipated, establish for the current financial year a record in the history of the Department.
The Coming Year. To meet the increased business which the Department will be called upon to handle, the programme for the coming year provides for additional passenger rolling stock, with airconditioning as a main feature, as well as live-stock wagons, goods wagons, chilled beef wagons, locomotives, cars, and vans. The duplication of the line between Papakura and Ngaruawahia is being pushed ahead. There will be many more houses built for the use of employees and a further installation of the hot-water system in railway homes.
Additional buildings and plant are being provided at workshops, the modern signalling apparatus between Stratford and Okahukura will be completed, and many other improvements will be made at various stations throughout the Dominion.
Electric operation of the Wellington-Johnsonville line, with the introduction of multiple-units, and the running of electric locomotives between Wellington and Paekakariki through the Tawa Flat Deviation, will also be commenced. Additional rail car services (using the new standard type of rail car) will also be inaugurated.
The extension of the railway system in the not distant future includes the taking over of the Putorino-Wairoa portion of the Napier-Gisborne line, and the pushing on to completion of the South Island Main Trunk, the Inangahua-Westport and the Wairoa-Gisborne lines, as well as other important works, such as the Turakina-Okoia and Palmerston North deviations, the Paeroa-Pokeno railway and the Christchurch new station.
With a year of solid achievement to look back upon and a year of progressive development ahead of us, railwaymen may look forward with confidence to 1938
General Manager.
(By
G. G. Stewart
“And then the trains that cried at night, the ships
That mourned in fog, the days whose gift was rain.”
— (Conrad Aiken.)
Have you dream places? Where are they—what are they like—who peoples them—do you ever try to tell or write about them? What is your ideal place of dreams? We, surviving souls of the “Thirteenth Clue,” were gathered round, celebrating the conclusion of that co-operative effort in griefless murder and clue-strewn mystery, the Matamata Signal Cabin Story—a tolerant, good-humoured jibe at the prevalent crime-detection tale—a lucky shot in the dark that happened to get home with the public. Some one said, “What about another?” and after the host had complied, the proposer explained he really meant another co-operative competition in the “Railways Magazine.” Brisk bidding on “subjects” followed, and the suggestion that found most favour was “Dream Places.” So here you have the first of the series. Other writers will follow on as the fall of the lot and circumstances decide.
It is not often that one has the chance to go into cold print with an unfettered hand to deal with a subject that is of interest to everyone and yet that crosses no contentious trails—that touches neither economics nor politics, religious predilections nor psychological inhibitions —“Dream Places” that are different for each one of us, but towards which all can be tolerant, intrigued, but undisturbed.
One place of dreams that stays in my mind had its genesis in a bout of typhoid. The fever chart was not looking too good when I fell asleep at the turn of the tide and found myself in a void of great darkness, walking carefully along a powerful linked cable, like those used to draw ships from the sea. But my cable was leading upward on a gradual inclined plane through the fathomless air.
And I thought, “This is a pretty tough test, and I'm no Blondin !” But all the while I felt more excited than fearful.
And then I was conscious of a hint, from someone near who could not be seen, that if I kept my thoughts square, dealing in absolute justice with every affair that crossed my mind. I could keep my balance, walking forward and upward on the almost invisible cable; but if I allowed a thought to deflect to left or right of the line of fairness, then I would take a tumble, a wingless nose-dive, into the vast void of the bottomless abyss.
And just then, away ahead of me, I saw one link of the cable that appeared to be a large and bright electric bulb. It was this which provided all the light available in that immensity of darkness, except for the glimmering of some dim and distant stars. It was laid upon me that I must reach and cross the light-bulb to the section of cable beyond.
As I neared that lonely beacon on the narrow swaying line, my steps became even more careful than they had been. Then, just as I reached it, and was about to step across, there was a crash and blinding light-flash.
And immediately I was on a hillside, where there was light but no sun—I suppose the kind of light “that never was on land or sea.” And the air held an intoxicating freshness. It filled my lungs and I felt the pure joy of living. Down from the hill before me sloped a very lovely country, with a sparkling river running through its undulations.
In the distance appeared some signs of a city—I could just note suggestions of spires and building shapes of purest harmony against an agate skyline.
The urge came on me to go down to the river among the lovely flowers of that smoothly-contoured, trackless, and unscarred place, and to find some company; for there was no sign of man or beast, and I longed to have others there with whom to revel in the joy of the place—its glory of colouring — pastel-tinted but so thoroughly restful and right—the shapeliness and justly-proportioned symmetry of its hills and valleys, and, above all, the delightful feeling of its light and air.
But just as I made to move from off the slope on which I stood, I woke from sleep to the early morning sounds of the hospital ward—and I felt fine! The temperature had gone —and did not come back to any extent—and I was filled with sweet contentment, for I had a new “dream place” fixed in my mind, a place of living delight, to which thought would always bring me back if the ways of the days grew dull. It is a legacy that almost made typhoid worth-while.
* * *
Other dream places of my own I have a-plenty, but I like to look, when possible, at those seen by other eyes; and there are an infinity of these spread through the pages of literature and found in the good talk of friends who speak their minds. For they sometimes disclose “those secrets that are known in the profound interstices of time.”
The poets, of course, are the greatest fellows for dream places.
It was the voice of the Nightingale that:
for Keats—lines that many regard as the Everest of pure poetry, telling of a dream place infinite in extent and of indefinable enchantment.
Poe had a dream place:
But when the moon shone, came lighter moments and things were different: “For,” said he, “the moon never beams without bringing me dreams of the beautiful Annabel Lee.”
Kipling said that his visualisation of the Empire was “in the shape of a semi-circle of buildings and temples projecting into a sea—of dreams.”
Who would not like to go, with Tennyson's King Arthur, to that other dream place—
And then, for a change, and a chance to review “all the adventures of his discontent” to the valley of James Thomson's trance, where:
But to dismiss the booming sea and breaking sky as among the discomforts of dreams, who would not be in Xanadu when Kubla Khan was King? For, as Coleridge tells it:
There, too, was “the deep romantic chasm.”
If we are to believe Henley (which, of course, nobody does) that:
how much more bracing it is to make the best of what we have, and remember R. L. Stevenson's opinion:
And analyse them how we will, every dream place of the imagination is based on that device, from the poet who could “hear the spectral singing of the moon” to the summarising Arthur Symonds who declared that:
These were impressed—perhaps unduly, or it might have been faulty digestion—by
—(Wheelcock)
But dream places must occupy the mind of every thinking person now and then until, as Francis Thomson puts it:
“A savage place; as holy and enchanted as e'er beneath a waning moon was haunting by woman wailing for her demon lover!”
(By
E. Marsden
It is particularly appropriate that from the pen of Dr. Marsden, head of the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research of New Zealand, should come the following biographical summary of Lord Rutherford's life and work. Not only is Dr. Marsden particularly well qualified to deal with the scientific side of the subject, but he had the inestimable advantage of working with Rutherford at Manchester, and so gaining personal knowledge of his human attributes.
The life work of Lord Rutherford ot Nelson was, paradoxically enough for such a great man, devoted to the realms of the Infinitely small. So small indeed were the particles with which he daily dealt that he had to set up a new, and fantastically small unit of measurement to appraise them—a millionth of a millimicron—a measure now known as the “Rutherford” unit. In plain English this length is the millionth of a thousandth of the millionth of .3937 of an inch, and if any discrepancy arises in measurements scaled with this unit, they are probably due to the fact that it is difficult to measure .3937 of an inch exactly.
Rutherford was by all standards a very great man; physically the replica of an English hale and hearty sporting squire, mentally the genius who foresaw the disintegration of the atom and the negation of the molecular theory of matter, technically the greatest experimental scientist the world has ever seen, socially a commanding personality who swayed all those with whom he came in contact, and withal a big-hearted, red-blooded man full of simple kindliness and natural affections. Not the least tribute that followed on his passing was that from the Jewish men of science expelled from Germany, whose lot he had laboured and organised so hard and so successfully to ameliorate. His self-imposed task of finding positions for these unfortunates in colleges and seats of learning throughout the world was one of which New Zealanders should ever be proud.
Baron Ernest Rutherford of Nelson, O.M., M.A., D.Sc., F.R.S.
(From a painting by Oswald Birley, R.P. in the National Art Gallery, Wellington.)
On 19th October, 1937, Lord Rutherford passed away at Cambridge, England, after a brief illness, brought on by the strain from undue exertion in chopping trees at his cottage at Chute. To the outside world, he was New Zealand's greatest and best known citizen; to the scientific world, he was the greatest experimental physicist of all time. His death, at the relatively early age of 66, and the removal from Empire counsel and from world science of his inspiration and advice, is a most grievous loss.
He was the most simple and lovable of men, and it is therefore doubly fitting that we should pause, not only to render our homage but to consider the significance of his life and work. Already, in this age of rapid development, there is enough perspective to appreciate a little of the great unfolding of Nature's truth involved in the scientific discoveries which he pioneered, for, like Newton and Faraday, he was a pioneer on a new frontier in science, and his work brought in such a wealth of new conceptions as to usher in a new epoch in scientific thought.
Like Faraday, he rose by sheer force of will and innate ability from small beginnings and humble surroundings to the highest position in the scientific world, and it is a tribute to our free democratic institutions that it should be possible for one born in the relatively humble and limited cultural facilities of a New Zealand countryside to rise to the world's foremost scientific position and to obtain by sheer merit, courage and industry, all the distinctions which have been so freely bestowed upon him by every civilised country, and in the end to be given the final homage of burial in the National Valhalla—Westminster Abbey.
Rutherford's early years were linked with the heroic and hardy days of our pioneers. His childhood was spent in that atmosphere of dogged perseverance, combined with initiative which characterised the days of the foundation of New Zealand's nationhood. Rutherford and his parents typify New Zealand's noblest traditions of uprightness, integrity and vigour. He inherited high qualities from both his parents; from his father, a balanced and fertile mind, and a rich physical endowment; from his mother, a high mental equipment and a culture which rose superior to the relatively primitive and rough but simple environment of the early days.
Lord Rutherford's parents both arrived in New Zealand as young children in the early 40's. His father, James Rutherford, arrived in Nelson in April, 1842, at the age of three, with his grandfather, George, who had been engaged to come to New Zealand to erect a sawmill for Captain Thoms at Motueka.
Lord Rutherford's mother was Martha Thompson, who arrived in New Plymouth at about the same year, with her widowed mother and the parents of the latter, the Shuttleworths. Martha Thompson's father, Charles Edwin, was said to have been a brilliant mathematician, employed in a counting-house, but, unfortunately, he died in his thirty-third year in Hornchurch, Essex, just prior to the departure for New Zealand of his wife and children. His father was an iron-founder.
James Rutherford and Martha Thompson were married in 1866, and they had, in fairly rapid succession, twelve children, of whom Ernest, afterwards Lord Rutherford, was the fourth. He was born in Spring Grove on 30th August, 1871.
The whole family possessed high mental capacity. Under the influence
Rutherford's father was a man of great character, of fine, quiet disposition, straight and honourable. His mother was a truly remarkable woman of high education, very musical, a good organiser, thrifty, and hard working. She had a true appreciation of the value of education and had a practical ambition for her children. For instance, she exercised them in the evenings by spelling bees and arithmetical exercises. In common with many of the early pioneers, the parents, even in adversity, denied themselves to give their family a good education. It is not improbable that much of this urge came from their memories of the educational facilities of the Old Country and the desire that their children should not suffer in comparison.
For the first five years of his life, Rutherford lived at Spring Grove, and the next six years at Foxhill, some ten miles away, where his father earned a living as a wheelwright and by small-scale farming; also as a bridge contractor or builder in connection with the railway then in course of construction. At one stage also, along with his uncle, he operated a flax mill.
Ernest Rutherford attended the local primary school at Foxhill, and his school record is still available there showing how, at one stage, he passed through two standards in one year. His teacher was Harry Ladley, evidently an inspiring master. It is not improbable that under Ladley, Rutherford's attention was first drawn to the studies in science which he was afterwards to make his life work. There has been preserved by his mother, his first science text book inscribed in his name, at the early age of ten. It was a small text book on physics by Balfour Stewart, Professor of Natural Philosophy at the University of Manchester, and it is an interesting coincidence that Rutherford was destined afterwards to fill so worthily the same Chair.
In the preface to this book, the author stated: “The book has been written, not so much to give information, as to endeavour to discipline the mind by bringing it into immediate contact with Nature herself, for which purpose a series of simple experiments are described, leading up to the chief truths of each science, so that the power of observation in the pupils may be awakened and strengthened.”
When the scientific methods by which Rutherford afterwards pursued his work are considered, it is remarkable to find how the aim of Balfour Stewart's text book was realised, for observation and appeal to simple direct experiment were outstandingly apparent in his methods of work.
To continue his early history, however, in 1882 his parents gathered up their belongings and removed by boat to Havelock at the head of Pelorus Sound. There his father set up a flax-mill, at which he gradually milled the naturally growing flax in the neighbouring swamps, and, not content with this, his natural progressiveness and engineering ability led him to erect a saw-mill where he produced railway sleepers (7ft. by 8in. by 5in.) from black and brown birch under contract at 2/8d. each for shipping to Lyttelton by sailing ships. It was a grand sight when sometimes a dozen vessels were held up at the head of Pelorus Sound by adverse winds and the race afterwards to be first to the landing boat. Ernest, in the meantime, attended the Havelock primary school where he came under the influence of an enthusiastic teacher, particularly of boys—Mr. Jacob H. Reynolds who, not content with the ordinary syllabus, taught some of his pupils Latin for an hour each morning before school. Here, at the age of 15, Ernest won an Education Board Scholarship, value £52/10/per annum, for two years, obtaining the astonishing total of 580 marks out of a possible 600. Thus he went to Nelson College, and such was his grounding that he was immediately placed in the fifth form and soon justified this classification.
In the meantime, his family had suffered two serious hardships. In the first place, his two younger brothers were drowned in an accident in the Sounds. The father and brothers scoured the shores for three months in a vain effort to find the bodies. This accident so seriously affected his mother that she, for a long time, lost her sunny, cheery nature, and never again did she turn to her favourite music or play again her cherished Broadwood piano. A little later, his father had a serious accident on the small jetty from which he loaded his sleepers, unfortunately fracturing five of his ribs. Shortly after his recovery, the Atkinson Government cancelled orders for railway sleepers, and the family perforce looked round for fresh avenues of occupation. His father crossed to the North Island and proceeded north from Wellington on horseback, looking for suitable areas of flax. Eventually he arrived at Pungarehu, near the coast, 30 miles south of New Plymouth. Flax milling had not started in this area, so Rutherford was able to obtain suitable land at £3 per acre, near other flax swamps which he was afterwards able to cut under royalty. Returning to Havelock he chartered the Murray. under Captain Vickerman, and loaded it with his whole family, three extra operatives, and all his household furniture, his horses, his flaxmilling machinery and a quantity of timber. The charter cost him £100. It took three days to get to New Plymouth, where the whole outfit was unloaded and the effects transported by the rough track to Pungarehu. Leaving his wife and younger children at New Plymouth, he proceeded to carve out a home and establish his mill. Soon he was relatively prosperous, although his flax was sold in Melbourne at only £13 per ton and had to be transported to New Plymouth for shipment over a road which took nearly two days to travel, with a five-horse team drawing only three tons.
It is interesting to realise the energy and ability which James Rutherford put into his flax-milling operations. He harnessed water power to drive his mill. He experimented and developed a method of soaking the fibre after stripping and subsequently a special scraper to remove the vegetable matter so as to minimise the labour and time of paddocking. He looked ahead and planted specially selected native varieties. Nevertheless, he relied most on ready-grown swamp flax, and such was the success of his operations that the flax he produced was reckoned amongst the best in the Dominion, and he was later able to retire to New Plymouth, all his children having married and settled in different parts of the country.
But to return to Ernest. I have recounted this history of the family fortunes because it shows that his was no sheltered upbringing. Naturally, he always took a part in the family work. Even at Foxhill, he had his share of wood-chopping and earned money in the holidays picking hops. At Havelock he milked his share of the cows each morning, tended the vegetable garden, ran messages to the flax-mill at Ropaka. While on holiday from Nelson College at Pungarehu, he worked in the flax-bleaching paddocks. On one occasion he painted the house; on another, built a tennis-court. During another holiday he built a battery of Grove cells; but this is anticipating. The main thing is that he was not only a diligent and brilliant student, but he took part to the full in the every-day duties of a family engaged in country occupations. If there were space, one could enlarge on the initiative and ingenuity he displayed in these simple duties, and there is no doubt that in this, his father's example must have had a great influence. It is also abundantly evident that he took part in and enjoyed to the full the sports and games of the countryside,
He won four scholarships and his crowning achievement was to win a University Entrance Scholarship in 1889 which took him to Canterbury College, where he commenced his University Course the following year, specialising in mathematics and physics. Compared with the numbers of students in these days, the classes were small and the teaching and student relationships were of a much more personal nature. He was fortunate in his Professors, C. H. H. Cook, who gave him a thorough training in mathematics, and A. W. Bickerton, an original and somewhat unorthodox teacher of physics and chemistry. It is perhaps a coincidence that Bickerton had almost an obsession in regard to his theories of the effects of the impact of stars, and that Rutherford, many years later, drew such important and revolutionary conclusions from his own experiments on the impact of what he showed to be miniature stars, i.e., the nuclei of swift moving atoms of matter. Bickerton, and his later disciple, Gifford, held the idea that in stellar encounters a third body would be produced. Rutherford later showed experimentally that such third bodies were produced by atomic impacts resulting in disintegration of one of the atoms concerned.
Rutherford was fortunate in his student days in having a number of brilliant fellow students. It would perhaps be invidious to mention names other than Marris, who later became Sir Charles Marris, after a brilliant career in the Indian Civil Service.
In 1893, Rutherford accomplished what had been done only once previously in the history of the University. He gained a double first-class honours in mathematics and physics. He had already turned his attention to physical research in spite of the paucity of equipment available.
In 1887, Professor Heinrich Hertz, of the University of Bonn, had experimentally proved the existence of electric waves, the possibility of which had previously been mathematically foretold by Clerk Maxwell. This discovery was revolutionary and already the best scientific minds of Europe had devoted their whole energy to the study. Nevertheless, with home-made equipment and electric batteries. Rutherford attacked the problem of finding a suitable detector of these radiations so that their nature could be studied. He submitted his investigations as a thesis for the 1851 Exhibition Science Scholarship and also published them in the Proceedings of the New Zealand Institute. The selectors for this Scholarship are always faced with the difficult task of comparing students from various branches of science and, in this case, they actually selected J. C. Maclaurin of Auckland for the Scholarship. Maclaurin was a brilliant chemist who afterwards became the New Zealand Dominion Analyst, and did outstanding work in the development of the cyanide process for separation of gold. At the time, however, Maclaurin was not able to take up the Scholarship which was accordingly awarded to Rutherford, and this enabled him to proceed to a British University and start on a scientific career. He wisely chose to study under Professor J. J. Thomson at Cambridge, and entered Trinity College in 1895. At first he continued his investigations of electric waves, and was the first to signal over any considerable distance. Using his own detector he managed to signal over the space of half a mile, full of intervening streets and houses in Cambridge, but he did not continue these studies, his ideas being taken up and developed by Marconi. His search for scientific truth was uncontaminated by any worldly motive, and he did not concern himself with the economic application of his results.
(To be concluded in our next issue.)
Rutherford's Term Report at Nelson College in 1888.
(By
James Cowan
Four Days with Paddle and “Pole.
We made two starts from the punt-side landing-place at Mokau Heads before we finally got away on our long-projected canoe cruise to the head of navigable waters on that great bush stream. The first canoe we tried, after my pakeha companion and I arranged for two Maori mates and a waka for the inland voyage was dubiously low of freeboard when we had stowed our gear and ourselves aboard. The old man Taniora, grey and tattooed veteran of the Hauhau wars, who had come to see us off, looked it over and condemned it. “It won't do,” he said. “You'll be swamped at the first rapid.” Our mates Piko and Hauraki, too, had their doubts, after we had pushed off. So we put back, and Hauraki crossed to his own landing-place and returned with a more substantial and river-worthy craft. This was a new canoe, cut out of a rimu log the previous winter, thirty feet long and four feet beam amidships. Heavy yet, too new in fact. Really, as we discovered, it would have needed six paddles at least to get a move on her, or it. We worked our passage that cruise. But you could stand on her gunwale, almost, without capsizing her. That's the craft for the rapids of the Mokau.
We set out at last, four of us, with our blankets and camp gear and axe, a billy and a frying-pan, a stock of tea and sugar, bacon and sundry hard tack. Our point of departure was the spot where the Maoris gathered in 1869 when the Government steamer Luna, commanded by Captain Fairchild, stopped long enough off the Heads to fire some shells into the Hauhau villages. Old Taniora Wharauroa was there then. He saw us off with the cheerful prediction that we might safely climb every taheke—the rapids—if we were careful, until we came to the Panirau, but that at that notorious spot we would be sure to come to grief. “Haere ra!” he said, with a grin; “farewell; and I'll come down and catch you, maybe, as you go drifting past to sea!”
Piko, lean, muscular, black-bearded and saturnine of visage, had the bow-paddle; Hauraki, round-faced and big-bodied, happy and good-natured, squatted in the stern with his steering-paddle. (We found that Hauraki preferred steering because he could doze sometimes in the calm reaches, while we three paddled like warriors, Piko setting the pace. But when we came to a rapid Hauraki slumbered no more; he was a tower of strength.)
Above us on the left, where the road went up to Mokau's township was the tapu burial-hill Puke-Kiwi, where Wetere te Rerenga lay; he and his brother Te Rangituataka were the last of the great chiefs of Mokau. There was a price on Wetere's head until the amnesty of 1883, because of his share in the Pukearuhe or White Cliffs massacre. But he was a good Maori after his lights, and he made his people work. In Wetere's life-time the Ngati-Maniapoto resident here cultivated largely and industriously, and in the summer time the beach-side was covered with great stages of fish, drying in the sun. The Mokau mouth was a famous place for netting fish with the long flax-seine—the “Kupenga - a - Taramainuku” of Maori proverb and song. But as old Taniora put it: “The industrious days have gone, and so have the great chiefs who ruled their tribes well. We are but a remnant now, and I and all of us here are insignificant—we are but as the torori that grows in my garden yonder.”
On the beach we had seen the smoothly-polished rock, shaped like a dumbbell, that was reputed to have been the ancestral canoe Tainui's anchor. It was the stone to which the canoe was moored here; it was far too large and heavy, of course, to have been carried in the canoe. “It is our mauri [talisman],” said Hauraki; “it holds the fish here, otherwise they would desert this river-mouth. When I was young we never failed to take the first mullet or kahawai we caught when we were out fishing in our canoes and offer it with a prayer to the atua. the god who sent us the fish. We laid those offerings on the tapu sandbank, between the Stone of Power and the Heads, the holy place Te Naunau. But now no one makes offerings and first-fruits. We are like the pakeha; we don't trouble about the tapu now.”
But I fear Hauraki doth protest too much; for only an hour before we left the beach, when he showed me the enchanted log called “Te Kauri” (it is not a kauri but a totara), which lies there, the log which used to sail along the coast, between here and Kawhia, working wizardry as it went, he was careful to take the pipe out of his mouth and hold it behind his back as he approached, for fear of offending the tapu. And he would not touch the magic tree, but stood off and bade us mark that axe-cut in its side and beware, for the young man who made the cut in impious defiance of the tapu. died the very next day. His body was found here on the beach close to the vengeful tree!
(Photo. by R. J. Gowan.)
Mokau Heads, looking south. Mt. Egmont in the distance, fifty miles away.
The first bend shuts off the heads, and we are well into the Mokau, the
Here is a silent Maori cultivation and village-site, the old kainga of Oika, gone back to the wilds, overgrown with a thicket of young forest and ferns. Let the traveller come here and see the fern trees, the feathery canopy of the ponga and the korau or mamaku, upheld by lofty, slender pillars, each as graceful as the trunk of a tropical coco-palm. Just round Oika, and we paddle up a long glimmer-glass, walled on either side by a soft wall of foliage that dips in the water, concealing every vestige of earth and rock and swelling up in fold after fold of blue-green forest. Every tree, every fern-frond, is painted on the glassy floor. This indeed is the wai-whakaata. the “looking-glass water” of Maori song. There is a frequent whirr of wings in the air, and the deep flute notes and the liquid chuckles of the Iui come in echoing melody from the deeps of the bush.
The heaviness of our waka Maori sets us longing for the Canadian cedar or the Indian birchbark, though I know that nothing but a solid dug-out like ours would survive the Mokau snags. The steady dip of our four paddles goes on mile after mile. Harder work than rowing this, for all the strain comes on the shoulders and arms; there is no leg-work to help, as with an oar. The shoulders and back, in place of rowlocks, are the fulcrum. But there is the advantage that we face ahead and can see where we are going; and there is something in the very feel of a paddle that makes the toil a pleasure. A well-made Maori hoe is a beautiful thing. Mine is perfectly balanced, with just the right crook of the handle and the right—very slight—degree of elasticity in the blade. It is a wide-bladed paddle of hill-manuka, with the markings and veinings in its grain that the Maoris call pipi-wharauroa, because they remind them of the plumage of the shining cuckoo.
Little stories of old Maori days came from Piko and Hauraki, as we worked leisurely along. Often enquiry as to a place-name brought out some war-tale, some incident of the cannibal or the missionary era, sometimes a song or a local proverbial expression. At the nightly camp-fire such stories were amplified, and many a chant and many a poetic or barbaric tradition was noted down from the lips of men whose lives from childhood had been passed on the river and in the wild woods.
The Tainui mooring-stone, Mokau Heads. (This sacred relic has been removed to the tribal burial-place at Maniaroa, north of the Heads.)
A deserted sawmill fifteen miles from Mokau township was our camping-place for the first night. Our long canoe swung to the sucking current at the landing-place. The morepork called to us, all night long, as was fitting considering the name of this lonely spot—Puke-ruru, which means “The Hill of the Bush-owl.”
Up in the morning early, we are aboard again and under way, after a billy of hot tea and a meal of bacon and ship-biscuit and fried bread, before the sun has topped the eastern ranges. A long ribbony swathe of fog rising above the tree-tops marks the course of the curving river flowing so silently between its dark palisades of pines. The dip of our paddles, the low chant of Piko in the bows, and the occasional chink-chuk-choo of the tui in the bush, are the only sounds. Round a sharp bend, and wild ducks scutter up from our bows, with alarmed quacking and clacking. Ahead a high range is catching the sun through the haze, and the veil of morning makes it a mountain of faerie enchantment fit home for the Turehu and the Patu-paiarehe. the children of the mist. This morning paddle is a joy. The air is just cool enough, for the sun has not yet reached the water, although every hillside is lit by its rays, and every tree and every fern have their own colour values in the pearly light. The birds are out; pigeon and kaka and tui fly over our heads in search of their favourite breakfast trees.
At about twenty miles the current becomes perceptibly swifter and the scenery increases in beauty, for the hills begin to close in, forested everywhere, and the river promises to become a gorge. Piko points with his paddle to two knob-like fern-covered rocks, jutting out from the trees on the cliffy southern bank, and says, “See, those are the Children of Tumaro.” The Maori legend is that more than a century ago a canoe-party of Ngati-Maniapoto men, paddling down the river, found two newly-born infants, twins, a boy and girl, lying exposed at the riverside beneath the rocks. They had been deserted—twins are unlucky, triplets a curse, in Maori belief—and as their parents could not be found, the chief of the party, a man named Tumaro, adopted them as his own and gave them the names of Te Kaka and Hineuru. Hence are these rocks called Ngamahanga-a-Tumaro (“The Twins of Tumaro”).
The sawmill down the river and a little coal-mine twenty miles from the Heads were the only breaks in the forest. The coal mine settlement on a shelf of land at Wai-ngarongaro (“Hidden Creek”) was a sylvan place all among its ferns and rata trees. Small steamers used to come up here and load at the staiths that were overhung by tropic-looking korau ferntrees. But the rapids made the upper parts of the river out of navigation bounds for them.
Unusual characters, original types we shall not see again, one met in these semi-primitive corners of New Zealand. At the little coal-mine camp I came across a man of whom I had heard some strange stories. He was an old bushman, with bowed back, deep-sunken furtive eyes and overhanging bushy brows. He had lived for forty years with the Maoris, ever since he deserted from the Colonial forces in the war-time (1865) and took to the
taurekareka or servant. His name was David Cockburn. The Maoris called him “Rewi” (Davy). He told me something of his bush life. This now lonely waterway was lively enough in his day. He came up the Mokau once with a flotilla of five war-canoes, packed with Maoris of the Ngati-Tama tribe from south of the Mokau, bound for King Tawhiao's great camp at Tokangamutu, where the town of Te Kuiti now stands. The largest of the great carved canoes held forty or fifty men each. Those waka crews cut out the pace with paddle and pole; they went right up from Mokau Heads to Totoro, the head of canoe navigation, in one day. Good going that; forty-five miles and nearly two score rapids to climb. It took us four days of hard work.
The old pakeha-Maori died a few years after I met him, and he was laid beside his chief Wetere on Pukekiwi, that woody hill above the Mokau landing. In death, as in life, he was Wetere's attendant. But when the Maoris removed their chief's bones to the tribal cemetery at Maniaroa they did not trouble to shift the taurekareka Davy's. It wasn't worth while.
Up to the time of our cruise no boat of pakeha construction had ever floated above this place; from here to the river head all was rough and wild. The river now ran very swiftly over its snaggy bed, in a narrowed channel, and our arms began to ache, for it was well into the afternoon, as we edged the canoe up foot by foot. The first rapid was but a small taheke. We were soon up to the formidable Mangapohue. It was a down-curve of water ending in a line of foam where fallen trees obstruct its swift run. The river here was jammed and dammed with snags, and our canoe, borne back, nearly capsized on a slippery log and sent a wash of cold spray over us. But big Hauraki in the stern with a quick heave of his pole righted the waka. and with a long push all together she was soon on the crest of the little fall of bottle-green water.
“Puritia!” (“Hold her!”) cries Piko in the bow, and as he releases his pole Hauraki holds her firmly with his until Piko gets another long heave on. We are up in a few moments, and in smooth water, and poles are laid inboard and paddles come out again.
The trees overhang us here; we can touch them with our upraised paddles. At our next big rapid the water is too deep to pole, so we keep close in to the southern bank, where the clear-green current swirls past the base of a perpendicular cliff, where enormous old rata trees stand, their branches thick with mosses and lichens and bearded with hanging epiphytes. We lay down our paddles and haul our canoe along by gripping the low branches and digging our fingers into the crevices of the rocky wall, and clutching the kiekie that grew tenaciously just above the water level. The river in mid-channel foamed with tremendous fuss and froth over its cheveaux-de-frise of fallen trees, but here under the bank it is fairly smooth, though running very swiftly.
We were paddling up a long smooth reach between two rapids, when we saw two black objects on the surface of the stream ahead of us. These were an old boar and his consort swimming across the river. The boar landed first, and, though we were close up, he turned and stood there champing his jaws and grunting defiantly at us until the sow scrambled safely up the bank. Then the loving couple turned and dived into the depths of the bush.
“You chivalrous old hog!” said my pakeha mate.
“Good feller that poaka for his missus,” said Piko.
But our pig-dog—no Maori travels without a hunting dog on such an expedition—if he heard these compliments, disregarded them. He ripped out a fearful howl, and flew overboard, swam ashore and bounded into the bush after the Captain Cooks. The futile chase led him up on to a mountain-top. We had to draw into the bank and patiently await his return.
(Photo. by W. E. Spencer.)On the Lower Mokau: the home of the fern-tree.“Other roads do some violence to Nature, and bring the traveller to stare at her, but the river steals into the scenery it traverses without intrusion, silently creating and adorning it, and is as free to come and go as the zephyr.”
—Henry Thoreau(“A Week on the Concord and Merrimac”).
Now we passed black, glistening walls of solid coal; dripping with water from the runlets above, and overhung with ferns and mosses and long weepers of flax-like habit. On both sides of the Mokau, these great seams occur, bisected by the river. There are huge coal measures, in this part of the Mokau; their extent is only imperfectly known as yet. A waterfall tumbled over a mossy cliff into the river. It was on the northern bank, and its spray sprinkled us as we paddled past; a panel of flashing white, set in a framing of dripping fern-trees. Its name, Hauraki said, was Te Mimi-a-Maroa; it preserved the memory of a chieftainess of long ago. One gathered that the lady so complimented must have been somewhat of a giantess; the waterfall was sixty or seventy feet high, we judged.
That afternoon, after mounting a difficult rapid, poles were laid inboard, and with our four paddles going again, we swept into a long and lovely straight vista of deep water, the reach called by the natives Kahurangi. The beauty of the place calls forth expressions of admiration from even our dour boatman Piko. Indeed, the Maoris of old admired it, when they gave it this name, for the word signifies perfection, flawlessness; it is the term used to describe the most treasured (Continued on page 49)
byArthur L. Stead
A Year of Progress
Sleeping Compartment on the London-Paris Service, via Dover-Dunkirk Train-Ferry.
A Happy New Year to all! At this season comes fresh hope and inspiration, and railwaymen in both New Zealand and Great Britain start the New Year in the cheerful knowledge that never was the transportation machine in better shape than at present. A wonderful year, indeed, was 1937, with the Coronation as an outstanding event. For the Home railways it was a period of progress in every branch. Both passenger and freight traffic showed marked improvement, and on the passenger side, in particular, there were recorded many spectacular developments, notably under the head of streamlined express operation, on the north-going lines out of London.
Normally, passenger train services are cut to a considerable degree on the Home railways during the winter months. This winter, however, the cuts have been much less drastic than in previous years—a sure index of the return of more prosperous days. Fast running, too, is a feature of the winter schedules. To take as an example the London, Midland & Scottish line, the winter time-tables show some 62 passenger trains making regular journeys at start-to-stop average speeds of 60 m.p.h. or over, these trains covering an aggregate daily distance of 6,145 miles at such speeds. These figures compare with 29 trains and 2,633 miles per day the previous winter. Actually, the L. M. & S. Railway this winter inaugurated the biggest speed-up on record of its services between London (St. Pancras), Leicester, Nottingham, Sheffield, Leeds and Bradford. Wholesale cuts—up to 42 minutes per train—have been effected in the running times between these places, the time-table reorganisation involved being the largest of its kind ever undertaken.
The Home railways continue to pin their faith to the steam engine for long-distance haulage, and in this connection it is significant to note that the L. M. & S. and L. & N.E. Railways are jointly establishing a new steam locomotive testing plant at Rugby—pretty well in the centre of England—following the lines of the well-known Vitry locomotive testing house near Paris. The plant will enable valuable experiments to be conducted, and the data secured in the course of the various tests will no doubt be circulated for the benefit of locomotive engineers throughout the world. For many years relatively small locomotive testing plants have been maintained by each of the Home railways, two typical examples being the plants of the L.M. & S. and G.W. lines at Crewe and Swindon respectively. More elaborate machinery, however, than that previously available is being installed at the new Rugby station, which will, in many ways, be a sort of British counterpart of the famous Altoona testing plant of the Pennsylvania Railroad in the United States. The steam locomotive still has many years of useful service before it, and the new Rugby testing plant is certain to help enormously in its future development.
Leicester Passenger Station, L. M. & S. Railway.
Rough shunting is an affair which all concerned in freight handling seek to guard against. On the L. M. & S. Railway, a batch of one hundred “shock-absorbing” goods wagons of 12 tons carrying capacity is being constructed, which may ultimately revolutionise goods wagon design. In principle, the body of the shock-absorbing wagon “floats” on the chassis by means of an ingenious springing arrangement, shock-absorbing buffers affording additional protection. Two sets of horizontal, indiarubber springs form a buffing arrangement between the wagon body and the chassis on which it rides, four sets of horizontal rubber springs attached to the chassis acting in the same manner. The effects of any longitudinal shock delivered to the wagon are largely absorbed in compressing these springs, and to that extent do not reach the body and the load. The body is supported and connected to the chassis
A new 12-ton “shock-absorbing” goods wagon.
The employment of welding to secure extra long rails is growing in Europe. As was pointed out by Dr. Muller, of the German Railways, in a paper prepared for the International Railway Congress, the practice of welding rails together to secure longer lengths originated in 1906, when tramway rails were first welded. By degrees, railways took up the idea, and at present Germany has about 3,852 miles of track laid with welded rails, some being as long as 272 feet. It would seem that welded track stands up satisfactorily to heavy, high-speed working—a point about which some doubt was at first expressed. Welded track, too, is suitable for use on curves of even relatively small radius, while from the viewpoint of the passenger it is a valuable adjunct to travel comfort. As regards the expansion gap to be left between the ends of two welded rails, this necessarily largely depends upon local climatic conditions. Most railways, apparently, take no special steps to prevent rail creep, regarding as the best preventive of this and of track buckling the secure fastening of the rails to the sleepers and the employment of broken stone ballast.
Big changes have been introduced in the French railway world, commencing Ist January. By Government decree, the whole of the railways of the country have been amalgamated, and a new National Railway Company set up, in which the State holds 51 per cent, of the shares, efficiency and economy in railway operation, with the ultimate aim of placing the industry on a profitable basis. The various individual transport concerns have put all their assets into the new company, and on the expiration of the company's charter in the year 1982, its assets will revert to the State without payment. The individual undertakings forming the new concern are to receive from the National Company annual payments to cover interests, guaranteed dividends and share redemptions. They are also being given shares in the new company in proportion to their contribution thereto of rolling stock, buildings, and other property. A Board of Directors is being set up, consisting of the Vice-President of the Council of State, the Governor of the Bank of France, the Director of Public Trust Funds, twelve representatives of the State, twelve representatives of the railway companies, two persons who have rendered eminent service to railways, and four employee representatives. Altogether, the French railways have a route mileage of 26,447, the Paris-Orleans-Midi system running to 7,365 miles; the Paris-Lyons-Mediterranean to 6,350 miles; Etat, 5,690 miles; Eastern, 3,207 miles; Northern, 2,400; and Alsace-Lorraine, 1,435 miles.
The striking improvements introduced on the French railways in recent years were admirably brought to public notice in the transport section of the great International Exhibition recently held in Paris. The transport exhibits were housed in what was formerly the Invalides Railway Station, remodelled to form a large hall on ground level, a second hall beneath, and a third hall on what was formerly track-level below the concourse. Entering the exhibition, one noted a fine display of the various social services of the railways, among which were camps for workers, playing centres for children, and sports grounds. A much-admired technical exhibit was a full-scale model of a 4-6-4 type steam locomotive in section, with an arrangement of coloured lights, showing the flow of water, smoke, steam, etc. The Dover-Dunkirk train-ferry exhibit took the form of a passenger coach, equipped with a moving diorama illustrating points of interest seen on the Paris-London trip. Many passenger and goods vehicles of all types were on show, including the latest desigis of Renault and Micheline railcars. Container transport was specially covered. Foreign exhibits were well to the fore. A striking display was that of Poland, which included a streamlined 4-6-4 type locomotive for fast passenger service, a dance car furnished with refreshment bar and cinema, and a toilet saloon car with barber's shop, bathrooms and showers.
(
Photo., French Railway Collection).
(By.
H. M. Hirst
“Teddy was in attendance on Gloria Martia, a woman whom Margaret cordially loathed.”
Margaret Wayne flicked away her cigarette butt with an impatient gesture, and shook her head.
“How often must I tell you that I will not marry you, Teddy? I'm really awfully fond of you, but I shan't go on even being fond of you if you pester me like this!” Her hands dropped wearily in her lap. “If you want to prove, in a practical way, that you love me, get me out of this somewhere where it's cool and quiet.” Her low voice had developed a shrill edge and she spoke through her teeth.
A cool hand closed firmly over hers.
“Margaret, you're being very silly. You've got to control those ridiculous nerves of yours.” The man's voice was stern. “I'm not ‘pestering’ you and it's childish of you to use such a term. I honestly believe, when I ask you to marry me, that I am offering you the peace and happiness that you say you crave. Your nerves are abominable; the life you lead can't improve them. You say, ‘Get me out of this’; who got you into it? Where will you be this time to-morrow night? Oh, Peggy, Peggy,” weariness crept into his voice, “I despair of you.”
The woman's hand clenched under his and her voice quivered.
“Teddy—”
Hammond's tone changed. “And please don't bore me with explanations of your self-pity,” he said curtly, “because I assure you that I shan't understand.” He stood up abruptly and offered his arm. “I think perhaps somewhere cool and quiet will be better after all.”
He led her through the smoke-hazy lounge, the brilliantly-lighted dance-room, out to his luxurious car and opened the door silently. Margaret stepped in resentfully, aware of his disapproval, and left him to tuck in the shinging folds of her gown which trailed carelessly over the running-board.
They drove a long way in silence and the cool night air quieted the jangling in Margaret's fevered nerves. Gradually she relaxed and her breathing became deep and steady. Edward Hammond noticed this but gave no sign. Presently he drew in to the curb, choosing a spot where the road ran high above the moonlit sea. Silently, still, he gave her a cigarette and lit it.
She swayed lightly against his shoulder and sighed.
“Cool—and quiet,” she breathed contentedly.
The man's arm slipped behind her shoulders. His calm strength seemed to flow into her, soothing, healing,—
“At peace?”
“Yes—oh, yes.”
“Happy?”
“Yes.”
“It can be like this always—if you marry me. Too high a price?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“I don't love you.”
“I suppose your idea of ‘love’ is a species of emotional delirium even more wearing and less lasting than the sort of synthetic gaiety that you spend your futile life pursuing?”
“You are abominable. You've spoiled everything.”
“Yes. You said you were happy, a minute ago. I am teaching you to appreciate me as I can be.”
The big car slid forward.
A few minutes later Hammond was saying good-night at the door of Margaret's dainty flat. He added bluntly:
“And it's no use ringing me and saying you'll go mad if something doesn't happen. You'll have to find another escort, Margaret. I am willing to marry you, but I am no longer willing to assist you towards a prematurely neurotic old age. Goodnight, my dear.”
He was gone and Margaret heard the purr of the powerful engine as it gathered speed.
A full minute she stood, then her lips tightened angrily and she flung her expensive vanity bag violently against the opposite wall. It dropped on the floor with a dull thud and lay winking back the light. Suddenly Margaret Wayne's tense body relaxed and a rueful smile curved her red mouth. She turned her back on the purse which a moment ago had been Teddy Hammond and walked into her bedroom.
* * *
Three days she had waited in vain for a ring from Hammond—an apology; but it seemed that he would keep his word. Margaret sat before her dressing table and critically appraised what she saw reflected there. Sleek chestnut waves, faultlessly set; fine dark eyebrows and big grey eyes set between smoky lashes; delicate regular features enhanced by a pale ivory skin; lips of deep natural red; a slim figure that moved with mature grace. Margaret Wayne saw and approved wholeheartedly of these things, but her deeper perception saw also a woman of thirty-two, a little tired, a suggestion of discontent in the curve of her mouth, delicate shadows about her eyes that almost enhanced her beauty, but tell-tale shadows—the telephone bell rang and she rose quickly.
“Hullo?—yes—oh, yes, Anne?—what, to-night?—no, I don't particularly care for the role of stop-gap, but I've nothing else on—very well, I'll come—at eight? Yes—good-bye.”
She replaced the receiver with a weary gesture. Oh, well, it was something to do—Teddy's words flashed unbidden through her mind—“no use ringing me and saying you'll go mad if something doesn't happen”—she shrugged impatiently.
“This is Margaret Wayne—John Kendall.” Anne smiled charmingly as she introduced Margaret to the “odd man,” and bustled off among her guests, leaving her friend facing a tall, blonde man who smiled rather shyly and asked if she would care to sit down somewhere. He was quite charming, she decided, and certainly unusual. Anne did pick up odd people at times and invariably pitchforked them into the wrong places. She felt that John Kendall would not really appreciate this sort of thing. The atmosphere of smoke and cocktails, too-gay laughter against a harsh background of jazz, appeared rather amazingly to surround him without touching, leaving him, in her strangely altered vision, clearly outlined against the murmuring haze. Margaret decided that any man who could affect her in such an extraordinary way was worth cultivating. She found herself thanking him as he led her to a quiet seat; refusing a cigarette, a drink; unaccountably unwilling to pollute the clear atmosphere that clung to him.
“You don't belong to this sort of thing, do you?” she suggested, curiously.
“I'm not used to it,” he conceded with a smile, “but I suppose it's rather fun if you know people.”
“Not really—not if you get too much. Years ago I got a kick out of it—now it's a drug; just something to do that I shan't stay at home and hate the pictures on the wall and want to smash them.” Her voice was tired, and she looked into his eyes unsmilingly. She saw that he was a little shocked and asked, “Don't you ever feel like that?”
“N—o,” he answered uncertainly, “but I suppose I am not as highly strung as you.”
“That's very kind of you,” she thanked him dryly. “I have a friend who is inclined to refer to it as disgusting lack of control. As a matter of fact I rather think he's right”; she paused, looking at him thought fully, then added abruptly, “but I've never admitted it before!”
“Don't admit it now,” he advised her with a quick smile.
“Let's dance a little?”
That night Margaret's sleep was vaguely and pleasantly disturbed by dreamy thoughts of a tall, fair man who smiled kindly and was inclined to condone her outbursts of “temperament.” She remembered with satisfaction that she was to meet him again—
The second time that they met he told her hesitantly, and not without encouragement about himself. They were sitting in deep chairs on a balcony that overlooked the moonlit sea. Gramophone music, laughter and the clink of glasses inside mingled not unpleasantly with the murmur of the waves. John's voice, in pleasant harmony, was low and deep
He was not, he said, very well off. He had a charming home in the country—he showed her photographs of it—and a little land; but he had to live quietly for the most part;—not that he did not prefer to live quietly; he added rather shyly that he wrote a little—it was not very lucrative but a labour of love.
“I'm afraid I'm very fond of farming,” he said, almost apologetically. “I don't suppose you would understand that.”
“Oh, but I do,” Margaret assured him enthusiastically. “It must be wonderful.” Her eyes were alight with interest. Here was someone who really lived, she told herself. How different from this hectic round of unsatisfying gaiety must be his useful country life! Healthy—peaceful—
“Do you know,” she murmured tranquilly, lounging back in her chair and regarding him lazily through half-closed eyes, “just knowing you has done me an enormous lot of good already? I don't want to smash my ornaments now! I think perhaps I shall have to go and live in the country and be rejuvenated.”
“Do you really think you'd like it?” To Margaret he sounded almost eager. “I—I mean,” he went on, “wouldn't the novelty wear off and leave you bored, just as you are with your present life?”
“I'm sure it wouldn't! You see, it wouldn't be bad for the nerves like this is.”
“But,” objected John, with indisputable
“And it's no use ringing me and saying you'll go mad if something doesen't happen—you'll have to find another escor, margaret.”
“You have no ties?” she suggested.
“Not yet,” he answered thoughtfully, “but soon, I hope.”
Suddenly Margaret was leaning forward. There had been something in his tone, a look in his eyes as he spoke.—An unaccustomed thrill ran through, her, leaving her panting softly.
“Yes?” she forced her tone to be casual and sank back again among the cushions, “and they will be—–?”
“A wife,” he spoke very softly, his eyes smiling at her, “later, maybe, a family. I hope,” he paused and looked out over the sea, “to marry the sweetest, the most beautiful woman, that God ever breathed life into.”
A little fear clutched at Margaret's heart. She nerved herself to ask—
Lightly she suggested, “You haven't asked her, then?”
He looked back at her and said, softly, “Not—yet.”
* * *
“Hullo, Margaret,” Teddy Hammond's familiar voice came rather surprisingly over the wire. She had not heard from him for over a week—and oh, what a week! The voice was speaking, politely and casually, “How are the nerves?”
Margaret bit her lip angrily. Funny how Teddy had the power to infuriate her with a few coolly-spoken words.
“Never been better,” she answered cheerily. “I have had no one to annoy me and I have not been to bed before two for a week!”
“Ah! Then I see that you won't need my escort to the Peal Club to-night?”
“No. Sorry to disappoint you—but I'll be there!”
They exchanged polite platitudes. Margaret, as she hung up, felt her newly-acquired serenity ebbing from her body as blood from a severed artery. She saw him; tall, dark, not handsome but striking, distinguished-looking; always changeable; now mocking, now stern, now tender, with a knack of provoking her to madness.
She turned to thoughts of John to soothe her; John with his courteous attentions, his instinctive knowledge of her needs—
It was so annoying of Teddy to be going to-night; it was just a small affair, the Club's annual private Ball; members only—and their guests; of course, Teddy was a member and John was not; John; was only her guest; foolish of her to resent Teddy, but he would be sure to provoke her; maybe through John; dear John—–!
Teddy was in attendance on Gloria Martin, a woman whom Margaret cordially loathed. He was very attentive indeed, the latter noted viciously. He had nodded smilingly at her, absently, as to a casual acquaintance, and had not appeared to notice her since. With a strained feeling in her throat, partly anger, partly something she did not understand (for was she not in love with the man at her side?) she begged John to get her a drink. She felt better for it and would have liked one or two more. But John did not approve of her drinking, so she did without. She would marry John—–
But her eyes followed Edward Hammond, who would not look at her.
John was so kind, so boyish, so considerate. She saw herself mistress of the charming photographed home among the trees, living a peaceful, happy life—a useful life! Her friends would laugh at the thought of Margaret Wayne, a farmer's wife, “bringing-up” a family!
But it would not be Edward Hammond's family.
Silly how he kept obtruding on her thoughts—–
“You're looking tired, Margaret.” John's voice was sympathetic. “Shall we go for a drive? The air might do you good.”
“Yes—yes, let's,” she replied a little breathlessly. She wanted to get this over. Ridiculous, wanting to get a proposal over! But she would be happier when it was all settled—irrevocably. She sat close to John in the car—she wanted to let him know a little how she felt so that he would not be shy and put it off.
He pulled up in a deserted side-road and raised the wind-screen so that the cold air blew in.
John was speaking. Margaret's hands held each other tightly.
“I've been wanting to say something to you, Margaret,—before I go away—”
It was coming! She swayed towards him, to give him courage.
“You've been so jolly decent to me while I've been here—it must be rather a bore being kind to a lonely chap from the country—–”
This was an unusual start for a proposal, surely? But John had always been shy. He was still speaking—–
“—and I wanted to thank you. You see, Stella will be here to-morrow so I shan't be trespassing on your goodnature any more.”
What was this—? Margaret's head felt strangely light, but her voice was casual as, with a faint lift of her eyebrows, she said:
“Stella?”
John stammered a little.
“You know. The girl I—I told you about—the one I hope to marry.”
Margaret heard her own voice, far off, saying politely, “How nice for you. I wish you the very best of luck, of course, and after that,” with a little laugh, “all possible happiness. As for my being kind to you—why, I have really enjoyed it!”
“It's stunning of you to say that,” he said, gratefully.
“I'm beginning to feel a bit chilly.” Margaret spoke no less than the truth.
“I think we'd better go back.”
She had another drink because John and his prudery did not matter any more and it made her feel so much happier.—And Edward was still being charming to the blonde Gloria.
She flirted daintily with John and it seemed to amuse him. Strange that she had never really flirted with John before! She wished Stella luck with the chickens and the babies. All at once she saw vividly that she had nearly made a mistake. She would never have seen it through—never. How wise of John not to fall in love with her! Suddenly she perceived him as a rather solid young man with nice sympathetic manners and very little else. Teddy had provoked her into nearly making a mess of her whole life.
Teddy influenced her every thought, her every deed. And even now he was provoking her into the crowning madness of all; he was being very nice to Gloria Martin—
She said good-bye to John Kendall at the door of her flat with a sense of overwhelming relief. She had been tuned up to a terrific pitch; being charming and frivolous when she felt murderous and hideously unhappy. She shut the door softly enough, then the taut wire of her self-control snapped and she threw herself on the bed, shaken by choking, strangled sobs.
* * *
“Hullo—hullo? Oh, is that you, Teddy?” Of course she knew it was Teddy, but her heart thumped painfully and she could not think of anything else to say.
“Yes, Margaret?” He was speaking very politely, determined, she thought, not to help her out. He could read her like a book, even over the 'phone.
“Oh, you're hateful, Hateful!”
Hammond was pardonably surprised.
“Is that all you rang to tell me?” he asked curiously.
“No, I rang to ask you if you'd marry me!” she gasped with the courage of desperation.
“But, my dear Margaret,” protested the calm voice, “surely that was not necessary? All you needed to do was to accept me!”
“Yes, b—but I don't think you realise what a trial I will be to you,” she wailed miserably.
“I assure you I do,” replied the man who loved her.
(By
Stuart Perry
Stewart Island, we call it; but the Maori has another and more euphonious name: “Rakiura”; fitter for general use than the longer honorific title of “Te Puka (punga)-o-te Waka-a-Maui (The Anchor of Maui's canoe).
As you pass round to the cluster of houses at Half Moon Bay, you realise that this place at least has not been spoilt by man. The little settlement might be a reconstruction made from one of W. H. G. Kingston's descriptions of a mission settlement somewhere where you might catch sight of a frigate or a corvette chasing a wicked looking dhow with rakish masts and a cargo of black ivory. But the hills show a difference—they are pure New Zealand, wooded, and almost uninvaded by man.
Inland are punga tracks, like the corduroy roads the early American settlers constructed so laboriously. The punga logs are split from end to end, and bound together to form a solid way across the Island.
A strange place, this, and a sun-bather's Paradise: too far south to be really hot, but always sheltered. The island gives the impression of a giant starfish. Whichever way the wind blows—and it blows from every quarter—it is always possible by rounding another headland or two to get sun without wind. And just off the point there will probably be a dinghy, with enthusiastic fishermen (or sometimes fishermen bored with success) pulling up blue cod and butterfish as fast almost as their sinkers touch the bottom, and strange gaudy dragon fish like Chinese dolphins.
South, well south, Stewart Island is really “down under,” and in consequence many of the great ocean currents, trying to wind themselves round the world's mythical axis, pass the shores of the Island, leaving wreckage of forgotten ships, lost in far away seas; driftwood from God knows where; golf balls alleged to have floated all the way from St. Andrew's, the Scots' home of the Royal and Ancient Game; ambergris, once so valuable. Stories are told of men camping on the beach at the south of the Island, waiting until a priceless lump of this evil-smelling stuff should drift ashore. Like the pearl, the “splendid sickness” of the oyster, ambergris is the result of a disease, a disease which attacks the whale. Its pungency makes it an excellent base for perfumes, and fabulous prices, until quite recently, were given for it. Even now, although artificial substitutes have made their appearance, ambergris is valuable, and visitors to the Island keep their eyes open for lumps of the grey or black bituminous substance floating ashore or lying on the beach.
Stewart Island oysters are famous throughout the country, and ketches with little auxiliary engines take loads where boats put ashore, and, in season, the oysters are collected in petrol tins—and so the party goes home, in the warm summer evening; for almost every night the Island lives up to its name, Rakiura, the Isle of the Glowing Sky.
Many romances could be imagined about this little triangle of land, so far to the south. Mr. James Cowan, writing of Stewart Island, and familiar with its shape and its names—Port Adventure, Cannibal Bay, Hidden Island, Small-craft Retreat, Fright Cove, Sealers' Bay, Pearl Island, Glory Cove, Shipbuilders' Cove, Chew-tobacco Bay—hit on a pleasant fancy. “The figure and the names of Rakiura would have delighted the man who wove one of the world's greatest romances about a map that he had drawn of a fanciful island. Robert Louis Stevenson has told in his essay ‘My First Book’ how delighted he was with his own first notion of ‘Treasure Island.’ Not then had Stevenson known a South Sea island; he lived to see them in vast variety, yet had he known our own Great Barrier and
A glimpse of Paterson Iniet, Stewart Island, South Island, New Zealand.
There is or was, at the south of the Island, a Norwegian whaling station, and as far back as the time of the “Cachalot” the waters of the Island were known as a great place for whalers to reap their harvest.
The mutton bird does not constitute the whole of the bird life of the Island: the bell-bird's note may be heard over its wooded slopes; the long-tailed cuckoo and the shining cuckoo are both to be found. The albatross, petrel, and mollymawk may be seen, and among the land birds it is said that there are still kiwis, as well as wekas, kakas, parakeets, tuis, robms, tomtits and fantails.
But it is the unspoilt beauty of the trees and the ferns, the heavy silence, which must have given Mr. Cowan his thought of Treasure Island. Down in Caerhowel Arm, or round a point in Paterson Inlet, it would come as a shock but not as a surprise to meet old Ben Gunn; and it needs little effort of the imagination to see the mastheads of the deserted “His-paniola” over the sandspit at the end of any of the points about Port Pegasus. A block-house with a stockade on Hana-nui (Mount Anglem) would be no more out of place than on Spy-Glass Hill. Like Treasure Island, it is the sort of place where man seems an interloper; and an inter-loper who scarcely succeeds in dis-turbing the tranquility and the serenity of innumerable years.
“America has done more for the World than any other Nation,” remarked a speaker at a farewell dinner at Auckland to a well-known American, “She has given us tobacco.” (Loud and prolonged applause). Yes, smokers everywhere owe a debt of gratitude to Uncle Sam; they never can repay for the priceless gift which has done so much to render existence happier and life better worth living. Nor must the credit due to those who have devised better methods of tobacco culture and superior methods of manufacture, be forgotten. And in this connection the name of the National Tobacco Company, Ltd., of Napier, stands out prominently for their toasting process (exclusively their own) not only vastly improves flavour and aroma but makes their tobacco safe for even the inveterate smoker. Hence the ever increasing demand for the famous toasted blends, Cut plug No. 10 (Bullshead), Navy Cut No. 3 (Bulldog), Cavendish, Riverhead Gold and Desert Gold. No finer tobaccos than these are produced. They never vary in quality and are the only genuine toasted blends manufactured.*
(By.
C. H. Gordon
Less than two years ago, few people were aware that Jackson's Bay was on the map of New Zealand; to-day the eyes of many are turned toward it with bright hopes of its coming importance. This is not a new experience for Jackson's Bay. Sixty years ago it was a settlement cheerful in the expectation of becoming a centre of commerce; and long before the settlement was founded, goldminers, following in the wake of explorer and prospector, were seeking their fortunes there.
The history of Jackson's Bay, as far as is known, goes back nearly 200 years, when it was inhabited by the Ngati-Mamoe tribe, whose chief was a famous warrior, well named Te Uira (“The Lightning”). He possessed a particularly beautiful greenstone mere, the pride and inspiration of the whole tribe. The Ngai-Tahus—relentless foes of the Ngati-Mamoes—succeeded by strategy in capturing both Te Uira and the coveted mere. By his great strength, Te Uira burst his bonds; and at nightfall, creeping stealthily to the enemy's pa. he—by an act astonishing in its cool daring—recovered the mere. The angry Ngai-Tahus hurried down the coast to prevent the escape of Te Uira and his people from their pa at Jackson's Bay. But arriving there, they found the pa too well fortified to be taken immediately; and the next day, noiselessly, at dead of night the Ngati-Mamoes stole away into the interior of the country, taking with them the mere, sole relic of their former greatness. Many years later it was rumoured that a remnant of the tribe still inhabited the country between Lake Wanaka and Milford Sound.
That the Ngati-Mamoes should know their way from Jackson's Bay, inland, is not surprising. Mountains formed no barriers to the Maoris, who found passes by which, for trading purposes, they travelled across the South Island from coast to coast. Particularly important was the route now known as the Haast Pass, which from early times has been linked with Jackson's Bay.
In 1863, about the same time that Dr. Julius von Haast discovered the pass that bears his name, courageous men—alone, or in small groups—found their way by sea or overland to Jackson's Bay. Their object primarily was to find gold; but their labours should not on this account be lightly treated. Dr. von Haast pleaded their cause, speaking of them as “pioneers of civilisation,” and those of their number who fought through perils to Jackson's Bay, certainly deserve a place in its history.
In June, 1863, a party reached Jackson's Bay by sea, on board the Nugget. An interesting item in the record of this expedition is that on arriving they met some Maoris who said they had often seen as many as ten vessels in the bay. Probably these were whaling ships. The Nugget party prospected in Jackson's Bay and its vicinity for about seven months.
Several expeditions were made overland from Wakatipu to Jackson's Bay. The most notable—at least of which there is any record—is that, in 1864, of A. J. Barrington and his companions. These men suffered terrible hardships; Barrington becoming so weak from starvation that he had to reduce the weight of his swag, leaving behind many valuable things, including a carefully-drawn chart of the country he had passed through. According to Mr. Vincent Pyke (Gold Fields Secretary), the loss of this chart was deplorable.
In August, 1865, Vincent Pyke himself, accompanied by Mr. Coates (Mining Surveyor) and three men, started from Dunedin with the object of finding a practicable line of road via Lake Wanaka to the West Coast. After a perilous journey they reached the coast but could stay only three days, their food being almost spent. Had they known that miners were then at work in Jackson's Bay and Bruce Bay, probably assistance would have been sought from them.
The same year, 1865, the great rush to the Coast diggings took place; the miners gradually spread down the coast, 80 to 100 coming as far south as Jackson's Bay and Bruce Bay. The year 1869 saw the first gold rush to the Haast.
Thus, through the years, interest in South Westland slowly grew, culminating, in 1870, in a proposal by the county council to establish a special settlement there.
In January, 1871, a select committee was appointed to report on blocks of land suitable for settlement; and after having carefully considered the matter, and having taken evidence from the chief surveyor, the harbourmaster and others who knew the coast well, the committee concluded that the site for such a settlement should be a block of land comprising 50,000 acres, extending from the Haast River to a point two miles south of the Arawata River.
The principal reasons which led the committee to choose this block of land,
(Aerial photo, by Capt. J. C. Merocer).Jackson's Bay, South Westland, New Zealand.
Arrangements in connection with the settlement were not made in a hurry. Not till July, 1874, were details of the scheme completed and made known. Throughout the district the proposal was so well received that it became difficult to make a selection from the large number of persons who wished to settle in Jackson's Bay.
In November of the same year, Mr. Bonar (Superintendent of Westland) went down to the proposed site in order to send a report on it to the Minister of Immigration. Accompanying him was the chief surveyor (Mr. Mueller) and one of the oldest surveyors with a full staff of experienced men. In his report, Mr. Bonar emphasised the point that one of the main features in connection with the settlement would be the exportation of timber; and as the best timber land commenced about four miles from the port, it was of the utmost importance that communication should be opened right through the settlement so that timber might be brought to the port at a moderate charge for carriage. He took pains to make it absolutely clear that the success of the Jackson's Bay settlement would depend largely on a wise choice of settlers; on the construction of an iron rail tramway; and on the making at the port of a jetty running out into deep water.
Subsequent events proved the soundness of Mr. Bonar's judgment.
It was planned to place on the settlement 250 families, equal to, approximately 1,000 adults; the first fifty to be selected from families already residing on the West Coast; the remaining 200 to be sent from Home or selected from immigrants arriving in different parts of the colony.
Mr. Duncan Macfarlane—a man of wide experience—was appointed Resident Agent to control the affairs at Jackson's Bay.
Active interest in South Westland was being shown also by Otago. In 1874 the Provincial Government engaged Mr. D. Hutcheson to superintend the cutting of a track “by which stock could be driven from the head of Lake Wanaka to Jackson's Bay, via Haast's Pass.” In spite of an insufficient number of men at the beginning and bad weather later on, in about twelve months Hutcheson succeeded in making the track from the Makarora to the pass, on the east bank of Hish River and down the Haast Gorge.
In the meantime matters were moving ahead at Jackson's Bay, and on January 18th, 1875, the first 20 settlers left Hokitika for the new settlement. They had been chosen from a large number of applicants, and were all good men wishing to settle permanently on the land. With them was sent timber, already framed, sufficient to erect at once a store and eight cottages, so that the provisions and tools could be housed, and the men provided with temporary accommodation within a few days after landing. So did a vision of a Jackson's Bay settlement begin to materialise.
A town had been laid out at Arawata. The survey of suburban and rural allotments had been completed, and the settlers at once began the hard task of making an idea become a fact. According to the conditions of settlement, the land was to be held by annual payment of rent extending over a period of seven years, the payments entitling the settler to the freehold at the end of that time. For the first two years, also, on three days a week they were to be provided by the Government with work on the road through the block, or such other works as might be undertaken. At the end of the following May, the population totalled 175—60 men, 25 women and 72 children. The majority were entering with spirit into the work of settling, but the agent pointed out that the ultimate success of their efforts would depend on the erection of a jetty and on the speedy opening up of communication with the east coast via the Haast Pass. Only by this route could the majority of settlers obtain stock at prices which they could afford to pay.
Unfortunately, as the year went on, trouble arose. In the “New Zealand Times” appeared letters and a leading article containing grave charges of maladministration in connection with the affairs of Jackson's Bay settlement. Bonar, in a letter addressed to the Minister of Immigration, said he would be glad if the Government would send some independent person to the settlement to report fully on it, and look into the grossly unfair charges levelled against himself. About this time Mr. Charles Woolcock (Secretary of Public Works) paid a visit to Jackson's Bay. He reported most favourably on the settlement, and stated that the trouble was due to half-a-dozen malcontents.
Time passed. The settlement, now more than two years old, was hampered by its isolated position and by the class of immigrants who peopled it. Instead of their being agricultural labourers from England and Ireland, and men accustomed to fishing, from the North of Scotland, it had been an outlet for Germans and Poles unable to find employment
(Aerial photo. by Capt. J. C. Mercer.)Another view of Jackson's Bay showing the Arawata River, South Island, New Zealand.
The population at Jackson's Bay now numbered 367; and in fairness to the settlers, the Resident Agent felt it necessary to state that, without further assistance, the settlement would be a failure. Employers of labour would not come to Jackson's Bay, chiefly because of the lack of wharf accommodation.
In February, 1878, the Hon. James Macandrew, with others, called at Jackson's Bay and was waited on by the settlers, who brought before him the urgent need of a jetty and of overland communication with Otago and Canterbury, also of communication with Hoki-tika via the Paringa Track. With regard to the jetty, Mr. Macandrew approved of the work as far as it had gone, and authorised its continuance; but because of Captain Fairchild's adverse report, the plans and all necessary memoranda were to be submitted to Mr. Blackett (Government Engineer).
In due time Blackett came to inspect the jetty, as far as it had gone, and the result of his report was awaited with extreme anxiety, for a crisis had been reached in the affairs of the settlement. Anticipating the stoppage of Public Works, some of the settlers had induced Mr. Haworth, a sawmill owner, to erect at Arawata a sawmill, of which the settlers were to be part-owners. Haworth had acted on the clear understanding that facilities, for shipping timber would be provided, but as matters stood he was faced with heavy financial loss. Moreover, from the Clark and other runs, fat stock was ready for shipment to Westland. These and other concerns affecting the prosperity of the community were almost entirely dependent for their success on one thing—adequate means of export.
Suspense, at least, was ended when the agent received from Wellington the following telegram dated July 10th, 1878: “Engineers and practical persons advise that a wharf at Jackson's Bay, if erected to stand, would cost two thousand five hundred pounds. Under these circumstances there are no funds available, and the work cannot be proceeded with.”
In the meantime, a growing spirit of discontent, and of animosity against the Resident Agent culminated in a petition containing statements and charges hostile to the management of the settlement. This document, drawn up by two or three of the settlers and signed by 36, was brought before the House of Representatives; as a result, on January, 17, 1879, four years, almost to the day, after the first settlers landed at Jackson's Bay, notification was made of the appointment of a Royal Commission to proceed to Jackson's Bay. In addition to the special objects of inquiry, the Commission were asked to state whether they considered it necessary to erect a jetty, or to carry on other public works—a surprising request, considering the evidence of the preceding four years.
On March 4th, 1879, the Royal Commission began its work of investigation. They made a very thorough inquiry into all the charges contained in the petition, of which about half the signatories were foreigners; probably hardly one of whom had a clear notion of what he was asked to sign. Briefly, this document, which had largely contributed to the appointment of a Royal Commission, had been found upon examination “in every statement which had not been sheltered against contradiction by its vagueness, to be substantially untrue.”
The Commissioners' Report on the state of the settlement itself is rather gloomy. Certainly, deserted homes—so often the sepulchres of dead hopes—are a depressing sight. At Arawata the prospect was more cheerful than at Smoothwater and Okuru; for against great odds some of the Arawata settlers had succeeded in making comfortable homes. The Government Store and the introduction of foreign immigrants—these and other things had contributed to the failure of Jackson's Bay Settlement; but the Report stated that chief above every other reason for its failure was the lack of any local industry.
The one industry immediately available was the sawing of timber, and the main thing necessary to enable the industry to prosper was the erection of a suitable jetty upon which timber could be stacked for shipment. If only the consideration of these matters had come first, the Commissioners believed that in spite of the mill stones round its neck, the settlement could hardly have sunk. Supposing the jetty were to cost £2,500; this ought not to stand in the way of its erection. The sum of £2,500 would be very judicially expended if it made possible an adequate return for the £29,000 which had been already laid out.
Far from bringing this forward as a new idea, the Commissioners pointed out that before ever a settler landed at Jackson's Bay the promoters of the settlement scheme had stressed these very things—the need of an industry and of facilities for export After making other recommendations, they concluded: “If we may be allowed to paraphase an ancient saying, to the question: What is the first requirement of Jackson's Bay? We should answer—a jetty; and to the question: What is the second? We should answer—a jetty; and if asked: What is the third? We should still answer—a jetty.”
Almost five years passed after the Royal Commission sent its Report to
(Aerial photo. by Capt. J. C. Mercer.)Otira Gorge, showing Arthur's Pass (top) and Otira, in foregroun, South Island, New Zealand.
Toward the end of the Report occurs the brief sentence sounding like the last faint toll of an exhausted bell: “I was asked to bring under notice the need for a jetty at Jackson's Bay.”
Nearly 70 years have passed since Jackson's Bay was the subject of golden prophecies. To-day, after many disappointments and much loss, fulfilment is in sight—a wharf is to be built at Jackson's Bay. A short time ago it was noted that the motor vessel, Gael. sailed from Greymouth for Jackson's Bay, in South Westland, “where the Government is to construct a harbour, enabling the opening up of a vast timber country.”
The pioneer settlers of 1875 were almost completely cut off from the rest of the world; but now—aeroplanes fly over Jackson's Bay, and the men engaged in constructing the harbour, will be supplied with a radio receiving and transmitting set.
So opens a new chapter in the History of Jackson's Bay.
Birth of Railways in the East.
The first railway in China was opened 62 years ago, but it was viewed with such repugnance that the Chinese Government decided to tear up the short line. Eleven years later another small railway was built to transport coal to the coast. This venture proved a success from the start, since when railways have extended without opposition.
Japan's first railway was constructed to carry food during a dreadful famine, and when once the Japanese realized the benefits a railway conferred they were not satisfied until they had veined their country with useful lines. In 1877 Japanese railways were being developed and worked by British engineers, mechanics, and drivers, but the Japs are quick to imitate—three years later they were independent of outsiders. To-day Japan not only builds her own railways, but constructs engines, carriages and wagons in her own workshops.
—“Pohutu.”
(By.
Bernard Teague
(Photo., B. Teayue).
The township of Murchison, showing the junction of the Buller and Matalcitaki rivers with the Lyeller Range and Buller Gorge in the background, South Island, New Zealand.
With keen interest I read in the October issue of “The Railways Magazine” of the experience of Mr. R. F. Page who, in the late Samuel Turner's party, saw “The Spectre of Brocken” on the slopes of Mt. Egmont twelve years ago. Mr. Turner himself has left a record of this happening in one of his writings, but with such scant mention that it is indeed interesting to have the details recorded.
The article, however, was doubly interesting, as with a friend, Mr. A. W. Sutherland, I saw a similar phenomenon while climbing on the Lyell Range above the Buller Valley over five years ago. Viewed from the township of Murchison, the Lyell Range dominates the Buller Valley and has, in particular, one very striking peak known locally, as Mount Lyell, which is a little less than 6,000 ft. above sea level in altitude. While resident in Murchison I made enquiries from time to time, but could find no record of any ascent of this peak, although deer-stalkers had roamed the surrounding snow-top country for years. Finally, my opportunity came, and with my friend who had never been above the bush line before, I set out in March, 1932, to climb the peak.
We commenced our climb from Mr. Reid's well-known residence in the Buller Gorge, by following a deer track up a spur through a tangle of typical Buller forest. At 3 p.m. we gladly dropped our packs at a splendid camp site where bush and tussock met, and after a light meal we climbed to the top of Bald Hill to plan our route for the morrow.
I will now quote from my record of the trip written immediately after the conclusion of the climb: “When we topped the ridge, after a scramble over rocks and through tussock, we, were rendered silent as we gazed in admiration at the scene before and beneath us. The whole of North Westland was covered from our gaze by a mighty sea of billowing clouds. Below us was the source of the Mokihinui River, a bush valley stretching away to the north. The valley was filled with clouds which were continually moving, foaming in huge masses below us, while often one would rise to our height to completely enshroud us in mist for a few minutes before passing by. Only the tops of the higher ranges showed above the clouds, looking like tiny islands in a mighty sea.
One view opposite us was striking in its beauty as the clouds, in covering a range top and following the descent of the range sides to the gorge beneath, gave the impression of an amazingly beautiful waterfall. Beauty, almost ethereal, surrounded us. Away to the north we saw Mt. Haystack showing cold and sombre above the clouds, and also the glaciated sides of the Mt. Radiant group of peaks. Mt. Haystack is crowned by a steep gable and very narrow ridge. Local legend has it that it was once traversed by a stalker who was forced to use the tines of a pair of
(Photo., Teague).The Buller Gorge, through which runs the Main Highway between Nelson and Westport.
Beautiful as these scenes were, however we were hardly prepared for that which greeted our eyes as we turned about to look to the east where the whole of the Murchison district was also hidden beneath a sea of clouds. In front, and about 100 feet away from us was a mist of cloudbank. Behind us was the sun, now low down on the western horizon. Our shadows were thrown on to the cloudbank by the setting sun, at about twice life size, and around them was formed a rainbow in a complete circle of glowing colours. Again and again this entrancing phenomenon faded and came into view. At times, it seemed as though our shadows were moving, for the cloudbank itself was moving slowly. Words would fail from either lips or pen to describe adequately the wonderous and mysterious beauty of the scene.
We were astir very early the following morning and were on the march before dawn. We traversed the full length of Bald. Hill to ascend a convenient leading spur which led us to the Lyell Range itself. Shortly before noon we climbed in turn the two domes which vie with the sharper peak for the highest point on the range. We gathered eidlewiss at their base as a memento of our trip.
Following a narrow and ragged ridge we continued along the range to climb the more prominent peak and shook hands on its summit at one o'clock. As we could find neither cairn nor record of any previous party we built a cairn and claimed a first ascent. To the east, through our binoculars, we had a splendid view of Murchison township, while to the west we could see the smoke ascending from the perpetually burning abandoned coal mine at Stockton. A large sheet of water reflecting the sun ray's proved to be the shallow lake used for mining purposes and situated between the townships of Stockton and Millerton, which were approximately 4,500 ft. below us.
To add some further remarks to the story of our experience of the “Spectre of Brocken,” it is only fair to admit that at that time neither of us had ever heard of such an experience, and indeed it was our elated impression that we were the first privileged mortals to behold such a scene. Later, the writer read of the “Spectre” in Mr. S. Turner's book, but no details were given. Some years ago, fortunate chance added to my library a copy of Mr. Edward Whympers “Ascent of the Matterhorn.” In this book the author tells of the first ascent of the mighty peak with its tragic sequel. While descending the mountain after the accident which had caused the death of his two English companions and their guides, Mr. Whymper, with his two unnerved guides, the Taugwalders, saw the phenomenon over the Lyksamm Glacier. In the book complete details with a diagram are given.
An Appreciation.
In the following letter to the General Manager of Railways, Mr. G. H. Mackley, Mr. J. C. Greig, Secretary, Taita Ratepayers' and Progressive Association, expresses appreciation of the prompt action taken by the Department to meet a recent emergency in the conveyance of bus passengers:—
I should like to draw your attention to the very commendable service given to the passengers from Taita, and onwards to the Lower Hutt station to connect with the 8 a.m. train to Wellington on Wednesday, the 17th November. Due no doubt to the wet weather the usual 7.40 a.m. bus from Cemetery Road was full by the time it had left the V.I.C. corner. Realising that the regular passengers would be waiting en route, and that he would not be able to pick them up, the driver reported the matter at the Bus Office, and the officer in charge there had a second bus out in a very few minutes. Upon arrival of the first bus at the station the train was ready to leave, in fact, the signal was given when the passengers were on board. I thereupon informed the station-master, and without hesitation he stopped the train and waited for the remaining passengers of the second bus. It was felt by those concerned that their appreciation of the quickness of thought, and action, and ability to rise to the occasion of all your officers should be conveyed to you, and I have much pleasure in doing so.
(Rly. Publicity photo.)
The Felors River—a delightful spot on the Main Highway between Blenheim and Nelson, South Island, New Zealand.
(By
O. N. Gillespie
(Rly. Publicity photo.)
Waiwera, a popular hot springs resort near Auckland, North Island, New Zealand.
I listened one evening lately to a man trying to describe the loveliness of an islet on the shining surface of Lake Manapouri. He had the gift of language and he had been deeply moved by what he had seen. Yet I doubt very much whether any of the listeners got even a shadowy glimpse of the vision that was so obviously before him as he spoke. Even his golden voice with all its persuasiveness could not give them his eyes. As I sat there I realised, almost with the shock of a new revelation, the final uselessness of words to make beauty visible.
Now everyone of my readers will have attempted some time or other to make a friend realise what some New Zealand some really possessed in the way of colour and visual charm. Equally, everyone will have felt that the attempt was unsuccessful, and that some other medium is needed to give the necessary understanding. This article tells, briefly, of an answer to this problem, which amounts to a solution that is almost perfect.
There was a festive young Emperor who ruled over Rome in the height of its imperial splendour. His name was Heliogabalus and he did not reign long. In the final flurry of his insane lust for the expression of his unbridled power, he wished that all humanity could be invested with one neck only, so that it could be severed at one operation of his ruthless command.
I have had a similar wish with much milder characteristics. I have desired to discover one single object that would give a stranger from Europe or America, or even from Mars, a comprehensive view of New Zealand. It sounds like a foolish idea, because New Zealand, in spite of its smallness, is, in the words of a well-worn platitude, a “universe in miniature.” Be reminded that Bernard Shaw said that the trouble about a platitude is that it is nearly always true. This description of New Zealand as a pocket world is the exact truth. The fact that our country's dimensions are so small does not dispose of its bewildering variety, its inexhaustible panorama of changing scenes, and its kaleidoscopic profusion of sights and wonders.
“Ao-te-a Roa,” the “Long Bright Land,” extends through fourteen degrees of latitude, and in its one thousand miles or so of length, there occur examples of the very oldest and the very youngest geological formations. The very making of the land composing New Zealand, is an Elzevir edition of the formation of the terrestrial globe. There has been, too, the history of the creation of endless treasures of man-made beauty “Garnered up in record of years that fell like flowers.”
It will be clear how difficult is the search for a medium which will translate, to another mind, this opulence of qualities which decorate New Zealand's distinctive being. A book of the ordinary format, however sumptuous, would not manage the task. The most burning words, lying in black ink on a white page, lose much of their fire and force. An imagination has to be keen and potent to conjure up visions from the printed page.
Writers with extraordinary descriptive facility may go close. The great poets often do succeed in making their lines mean a little more than the mere words, taken by themselves at strict verbal valuation. I gave a line of Swinburne above, but here is word music from him that is finely suited to New Zealand, for our land is sea-girt just as was the island home from which we came.
“The sea, that harbours in her heart sublime
The supreme heart of music deep as time;
And in her spirit strong
The spirit of all imaginable song.”
But poetry is primarily for the ear, not the eye. It is plain that such verse as this is music appealing to the imagination through the ear, and any vision arising out of its reading is from a process of self creation. But seeing also needs the help of the imagination. It operates the laziest of the senses. All that is needed is to keep the eyes open. But, how differently, the same scene appears to different men!
A series of complex operations is required in seeing and appreciating any one scene, or sight. A simple example is that of the experienced sea-captain who, watching a steamer draw to the wharf, gives a start of fear as his trained eye tells him that she has too much way on. I was told the other day of a railwayman who saw the railcar slipping at full tilt into the Wellington Railway Station. His trained
(Rly. Publicity photo.)
The Daylight “Limitd” Express, crossing the Hapuawhenua Viaduct, North Island, New Zealand.
It will be appreciated, then, that there are difficulties by the score, mountainous in size, in getting someone else to share one's visual memories. It is difficult to translate to someone else the vision that seems so bright and clear. How infinitely more difficult, then, was the realisation of the wish to find an object that would give to a complete stranger a general and comprehensive view of New Zealand as a whole.
I wanted a single object that would present the real New Zealand in some form of completeness and in some degree of intelligibility. Now, the problem has been solved. I am not going to say that the solution is integrally perfect, but it is so near to perfection that the rest does not matter.
“New Zealand Railways Illustrated” is the solution. In its essential form, it is simply a handsomely bound volume of coloured pictures. However, of itself and by itself, and solely through its internal perfection of craftsmanship, it will pass to anyone who looks through its pages, a comprehension of New Zealand, as she lies, peerless, beneath the Southern Cross.
Now, it necessarily follows that my description of this treasure trove of a book is going to founder on the very rock which I have been at such pains to describe. I am compelled to explain the beauties of picture and tint in words on a printed page, and the illustrations will have to be pallid imitations of the real thing, in stark black and white.
However, I shall do my best. The cover design is an art creation itself, and no compliments could be too richly phrased for the conceptual originality of the artist responsible. The lettering is in gold, and in the formal intricacy of the somewhat cubist symbolism that adorns the drawing which angles across a graceful fern and the deftly outlined lettering, there is indicated a train on its sightseeing way.
Towards the end of the book are maps of each island. They are marvels of condensation for they each amount to an atlas, a geography textbook, and tourist guide all in one.
The scenic views contained in the main body of the book are indicated by page numbers standing at the head of an indicating line, and as is fitting, each number stands out in the sea. Now, the distinguishing phenomenon of these maps is the regular occurrence of both lines and numbers throughout both main islands, and even the little sister, Stewart Island, has a helping. This means that every few miles in New Zealand contain something beautiful or unique. There are no clusters separated by long distances as in all other lands on earth. Our marching forces in the New Zealand army of scenic beauty are in close formation throughout our land. However, no one can live on scenery alone, and it becomes noticeable on taking even a cursory run through the brilliant pages of this book, that New Zealand is a land of surpassing achievement in practical progress. Naturally, knowing the sponsors of the work, we find that the impressive panorama of our railway building is presented in all its grandeur. It is true in more than one special sense that making the railways made New Zealand. First of all, under the inspired leadership of Sir Julius Vogel, the railways were used as the double instrument of both bringing doughty settlers here and also creating an efficient transport system. In the second place, there are the very facts stressed above, the prodigious richness of our possessions of snowclad
(Rly. Publicity photo.)The Drop Scene, Wanganui River, North Island, New Zealand.
(Rly. Publicity photo.)
The Ward Bath House, Rotorua, North Island, New Zealand.
However, it is perhaps better to saunter through these pages of glowing colour as will be done by the fortunate folk who become owners of this precious record of beauty. The arrangement has been planned by someone who well understands the visual stimulation of the imagination. The first picture is of Waiwera. The colour process folks have caught the exact blue of the Hauraki Gulf as seen from the shores of the North Auckland Peninsula, and they have captured, too, the shining bronze of the rocky islets that stud the gulf. The next page is of Muriwai Beach, one of the world's best speedways, with its characteristic sand in its true tint. There follows the rousing picture of a formal war dance done by Maori warriors in full ritual dress, and the last of the opening quartette shows a mighty “K” engine, head on, hauling the red cavalcade of the “Limited” express.
Thereafter, the book settles down to its official task of dazzling the eyes of beholders with the manifold luxuriance of New Zealand's scenic wealth. The red roofs of Russell peep from semitropical foliage. The dreaming bay is softly flushed with rose and the dainty little place seems to be pondering on its storied past.
Then we are shown the towering kauris of the Waipoua State Forest, a train running over the stately Hamilton bridge over the Waikato River, and the lacy beauty of the Keri Keri Falls—“White rose of the rose-white water, a silver splendour, a flame.”
In swift succession come an aerial view of Auckland, the classic beauty of the facade of the Ward Bath at Rotorua, set in superb grounds, an unimaginably delicate pastel of Lake Rotoma, and the sunlit waterfront of Tauranga, with the symmetrical Mount —a purple cone in the background.
The thermal regions have their array of pictorial gems including Rotoiti, the twin geysers at Wairakei, and the dazzling glory of Pohutu in full play. Set against these is a warmly gay air picture of Whangaroa Harbour. Now, I have seen more of New Zealand than most of my countrymen, owing to the accident of circumstance.
I have been more than once in every city, town and hamlet in the Dominion. But this book startles me, for I found that there were plenty of beauty spots that I had never seen. Just at random let me cite as examples, the Akitio Estuary on the East Coast of the North Island, a picture which I am sure many folks will feel like framing. It has the qualities of a Lamorna Birch water colour. Then there is a pool in the Tokomaru River complete with fisherman and the glow of mountain river-water reflecting dun-coloured rocks. A coastal scene in Marlborough is reminiscent of the South Coast of England, and the Devil's
(Rly. Publicity photo.)The Tangarakau Grave, Stratford, Main Trunk Line, North Island, New Zealand.(Rly. Publicity photo.)The Wakatipu from Walter Peak Station, South Island, New Zealand.
The pictures of the Southern Lakes region are breath-taking. Never before has there been assembled a pageantry so entirely complete as this. The intoxicating charm of southern lakeland is the perpetual and ever-dissolving changes of colour tones. As the letterpress to the most amazing picture in the whole book says: “No craft of man with lights for theatrical effect can compare with Nature's enrapturing illumination of various scenes of the Southern Lakes.”
“The Glory That is Milford” is a triumph of colour reproduction, saturated with azure, and having the feeling of composition that marks a great oil painting. Here, let me emphasize, at once that there are no words capable of conveying to readers, the prismatic splendours of these pages of our scenic wonders. But we can estimate in the terms of human joy, the measure of artistic, scientific, and mechanical skill which has made such a book as this possible.
Here is a work of art that places on record for ever with a reality that is startling, the scenes that even to those privileged to have seen them, are only lovely and inevitably fast fading memories.
This gallery of resplendent pictures contains a composite portrait of New Zealand, the Wonderland of the Pacific. It is a portrait which is satisfying and truthful, and invested with the quality of all great portraits, the power of revelation.
I can say with confidence that, as it exists, it is nearly the perfect medium to make New Zealand known. Eileen Duggan, in her last book of verse, has reached heights in the poetic deliniation of the land she loves, heights never before attained by a New Zealand writer.
(Kly. Pulicity photo.)
The Fox Glacier, with Mts. Cook and Tasman reflected in the still waters of Lake Matherson, South Island, New Zealand.
That is the ultimate in word painting but, nevertheless, with all its beauty and strength, it needs a poetic imagination of high degree to conjure from it a vision of New Zealand. To make the example more pointed I quote from Tennyson, from that word painting, “The Lotus Eaters.”
I compared those lines with the actual prospect of Mount Cook through the Hermitage window, as shown in this book. No more convincing proof is needed of the victory of the medium of visual colour portrayal. There shines Aorangi himself, “his jagged pyramid of flashing ice,” and from the page itself one feels the awe-inspiring emotion excited by that enormous height and pristine snowy loveliness.
Before I close, let me say that the queenly cities and the minor princesses of the provincial capitals are all here, in their several distinct and separate charms.
Lastly, we have the splendour of New Zealand's greatest building achievement, the new Wellington Railway Station. Perhaps we can say of Wellington in her ownership of this splendid edifice in the words of Henley:
“She sauntered by the swinging sea A jewel glittered in her ear.”
This temple of transport is a symbol that we, the human occupiers of this universe of wonders, are showing some true appreciation of our heritage. The scenic magic and the witchery of natural beauty such as we have in this land of ours are meant for the joy of all mankind, not a select few. The practical task of providing the means of transport to these places of enchantment is more than the everyday work of hands and brains. It is the opening of a doorway to God-given beauty. It is the giving of the golden key to Naturs's storehouse of wonder, and the Wellington Station is the finest of our manmade portals to a paradise of scenic loveliness.
Then, as to the book itself, I want to say in conclusion that “New Zealand Railways Illustrated” is, to the best of my knowledge, the best collection of scenic views ever put together in any country in the world. It is the high-water mark of colour-printing, of logical arrangement, of comprehensiveness, of selective taste and of technical excellence. I sit at a task which brings before me all the work of this kind in America, England, and Europe, I have not seen its equal yet.
The book is priceless, for it succeeds in an objective which I had decided was impossible. “New Zealand Railways Illustrated” does actually in pictures hold New Zealand between its covers. It is a matter of pride that in its totality it is the work of New Zealanders and the realisation of a dream, cherished by our own fellow countrymen.
(Rly. Publicity photo.)
Lake Ianthe, South. Island, New Zealand.
(
Rly. Publicity photo.)
Lake Ianthe, South Island, New Zealand.
From Sydney to Nelson
The following is the first instalment of some rough notes of travel, in 1858. These notes are taken from a small, and now very rare, book published in England, by Mr. Robert Scott, in 1860, and submitted to the “N.Z. Railways Magazine” by P. S. Smallfield.
In Sydney, on the morning of the 10th July, 1857, I was awakened by someone shouting “It is past six o'clock,” By the time I had dressed, the morning had come. To make sure I was in time, I had to leave my linen with a washerwoman in Sydney. I do not expect ever to see it again. With the assistance of the “boots” I was standing on the Victoria wharf at the appointed time, and I heard the clock strike seven. We were rowed to the barque Burnell. 137 tons burden, lying in the middle of one of the bays. The sails were unfurled, and we soon passed the flagstaff battery. By twelve o'clock we had passed the Heads. I looked on the spot, just outside the Head, where, in 1857, every soul, except one, perished when within three hours of the end of their journey, in the ill-fated Dunbar. Near this the Anne and other vessels had lately gone to pieces. By two o'clock we were fairly out at sea, bound for Nelson, New Zealand, by way of Wellington.
The sea at this time was delightfully calm and beautiful, the breeze scarcely strong enough to carry us away from the rocky shore before we were wrapped in darkness. Lightning and squally dirty weather came on with the night. The wind rose, and the vessel pitched awfully. She was an Australian-built barque, of “gum-wood,” that sinks like iron when thrown in water. She soon lay on one side and ducked and dipped, and rolled heavily. The stormy weather continuing, the captain was uneasy, and frequently declared that “Some day this vessel will be found like the ill-fated Prince of Wales with its keel upwards.” All hands on board, saving the mate and myself, were some-what helpless through sea-sickness. At 10 p.m. I returned to my bunk, where I lay rolling about till my flesh was quite bruised and painful. Had I been tossed in a blanket all night, I could not have been much more annoyed. At dawn the squally weather abated, and the rolling was a trifle less disagreeable. The three subsequent days the weather was fine, with a good breeze. In the afternoon of the 9th, “land ho!” We now saw the bold snow-capped mountains of New Zealand. On the 20th, while on the poop, we saw astern Terawhiti Cape in a glow of sunshine; and on the opposite side Tory Channel. Right ahead, Port Underwood stood out, with a background of the most dismal dark-purple storm-cloud I ever beheld. The storm advanced, blowing, roaring, tearing and raining furiously. We lay to, “jammed” between two lines of mountain rocks in Cook's Straits. Oh! such bitter cold winds, they soon drove us below for shelter as well as for breakfast. An hour after we visited the poop again, when the weather was perfectly calm; the angry clouds that so lately threatened us bearing away on our stern. With delight we saw the mountain ranges of Cape Campbell, its glittering snowcap soaring high into the sky in the far east. At one o'clock we ran into an infernal windy bay—the Port of Wellington; and, as usual, I was the first to land.
My companions in the cabin had been Mr. B. and Mr. H. They had been to England to see friends near Cheltenam, but became so dull and tired that they were glad to hasten back to the South Seas for ever. They had been to the diggings near Goulbourne in New South Wales, where they had roughed it in common with others, till at last they became disgusted with their abortive attempts. They had been nearly starved several times, and had lost their horses and dogs through want of water and food. Now they were in search of a wilderness away from mankind; their friends in England having promised to join them ere long. But it may be safely predicted that Wellington will not be their place of rest. No horse can with pleasure be ridden over these hills and mountains. An earthquake, some time back, so deranged the springs and deteriorated the water that most of the inhabitants were placed in the hands of doctors. In the valley of the Hutt the floods are rapid and disastrous. On the 18th of January, 1858, houses and bridges, cattle and sheep, two men, four women and seven children were swept away and lost. In September, another flood happened, with destruction to property only.
I accompanied the captain to the valley of the Hutt, he being mounted on a beautiful bay horse, I on a “buck-jumping” iron-grey one. The narrow road from Wellington for nine miles is along the base of a mountain range, and full of ins and outs, which prevented us from seeing more than 400 yards ahead. At the Hutt the hawthorn, originally transferred from England, grows remarkably well. The dwellings are of first-rate character. Commodious wooden bridges stretch over the stream. In passing over one of these long bridges, after we left the valley, we met two bullock drays. The wheels of one rubbed against my horse, which made him run backwards a few paces, when, placing his head between his forelegs, he began kicking, and
(Rly. Publicity photo.)The park-like environs of Taumarunui, North Island, New Zealand.hang by his feet. and then dropped as soon as the dray was gone by.
Wellington is a small, miserable-looking town. The streets look like dirty lanes. Here and there are lumps of earth in round heaps to a considerable altitude. There is a small barracks, and a population of about 6,000. There are eight piers or landing stages. There is no available land nearer than the little bit in the valley of the Hutt. There are almost continually dreadfully heavy winds; or as the inhabitants remark—“all wind or no wind at all.” At the time of my visit the bay contained two steamers, two ships, three brigs, five schooners, and a few little boats.
I believe it was near this place that a converted Maori applied to be married, but the missionary replied that it was not lawful for him to have two wives, and that he must not marry while his present wife was living. He returned home disappointed. A short time after he came again to be married; and on enquiry it was found that he had killed his first wife and eaten her, that there might be no obstacle in the way of a second marriage.
On the 25th I was glad to see the anchor weighed, and to get away from this cold harbour into the open sea. On the 26th we were again in Cook's Straits. The sailors characterise the passage through these straits as being jammed; but it would be more appropriate to describe them as the mariner's pawn-shop; for, once in, it is two to one against getting out. After sailing for about twelve hours we neared Cape Terawhiti. The weather was tantalising; sometimes favourable winds, then a dead calm, then a head wind and fitful squalls. For thirty-six hours we were in “calm and strife,” and made only three miles direct. With the island of Mana at the top, and Cape Terawhiti at the bottom, with mighty upright rocks in the middle, and what are termed “The Two Brothers,” and Wellington Heads with their ugly rocks along the opposite side, with a channel only eight miles wide, we were buffetted about from side to side every hour; and during three days and nights had made only eighteen miles. At last we reached the top of Queen Charlotte's Sound, leaving other ships in the straits behind us. Here we sailed to and fro for twenty-four hours between Koamaru and Cape Jackson, in continual fear of a dangerous sunken wash-rock which lies near to the island of Motuara. Early on the 29th I found we had passed Cape Stephen and Nelson's monument near Port Hardy, and were sailing down Blind Bay. On the 30th we took up Mr. Cross, the Nelson pilot, rounded the boulder bank, like a gutter, glided smoothly into the natural bosom of deep, calm water.
Near this bay is the river Waimea, or “water of many springs.” The entrance to it which lies south-west about one mile from the bay is over the Nelson flats, and navigable only for small craft for two miles.
At Nelson the landing place and pier, a small luggage shed and customs house built with wood is three-quarters of a mile distant from the town. I went dashing, slip-shod through the mud, and put up at the Trafalgar Hotel, Mr. L., the landlord, hired a light cart to fetch my luggage. I paid two shillings to be put on shore, two shillings to pass the customs, and now five shillings for the cart-hire.
(To be continued.)
(
Thelma R. Kent, photo.)
The Hooker Valley, Mt. Cook, South Island, New Zealand.
New Zealand Verse
The Gulls.
—Una Auld.
I Wonder.
—Win. J. A. McKellow.
An Apple Tree.
—Hilda Small.
* * *
Cross-Roads Town.
—Joyce West.
The Ferry.
—C. R. Allen.
* * *
Autumn.
—Olga P. Meyer.
By).
V. B. Murray
(
Rly. Publicity photo.)
A picturesque spot on Lake Waikaremoana, North Island, New Zealand.
The most rapid change I have ever noticed in Nature's colour schemes was at Waikaremoana. It was with almost lightning rapidity, or so it seemed.
I shall always remember Waikaremoana as a study in blues—blue water, bluer even than Blue Lake, Rotorua, blue hills and blue sky.
Waikaremoana is a lake of many moods, and visitors come away with one or another uppermost in their minds. I must have struck its blue day.
Guide books tell us that Waikaremoana is the “sea of rippling waters,” and many travellers agree. Others have seen the lake flying with spume in a howling gale, or silent and sullen through a curtain of rain. Others remember it for the tuis and bellbirds, or for its unspoiled virgin bush, or its waterfalls, or its delicious trout, or, in season, its red and juicy cherries.
A lot may depend on the mood of the visitor as well as the mood of the lake, or, perhaps, like the cherries at Lake House Inlet, the blues are only seasonal—the entire blues, I mean.
What I saw when Waikaremoana flashed into my vision was a whole landscape of blues, and nothing else but blue, except a few flecks of white on the choppy water and a small white cloud or two overhead. The scene was so striking that now, a year later, it is just as vivid to me as it was then.
For a long time I was puzzled how any landscape could have been so extra-one colour. I had no thought at first of an illusion. It was not until I was leaving the lake on my return home that I discovered the solution.
Nature had played me a strange prank, demonstrating how quickly she could change her colour schemes. The change was just as rapid as scenes flash off and on the motion picture screen, and it was this rapidity which caused the illusion.
I approached the lake from the Wairoa end. It was mid-summer, and the hill pastures everywhere had turned to gold and brown. The eyes of man become quickly accustomed to the one colour tone, and, unless we speed from a valley of luscious green to parched ridges in a very short space of time, we accept it as the general colour scheme.
So it was with me. Everything, except the red roofs of the homesteads, was tinged with gold or brown, even in the shaded valleys, for the summer had been dry and hot in that part of the East Coast.
The golden browney tinge became more apparent as we began to rise on nearing the Tuai power house, with its attendant village which lives as far as possible on community lines, with its community garden, its community cow and community amusement. The inhabitants pay no rates and no taxes, for they live in Government houses on Government property.
Tuai is a village of ever rushing water, which pounds down the precipitous hill in huge pipes and whirls the turbines in the power house before gushing out, white, to join the river
(
Rly. Publicity photo.)
At the head of Lake Waikaremmoana, North Island, New Zealand.
(
Sketch by J. H. Graham, Rlys. Dept., Dunedin).
The first of the six new “G” class 4–6–2 locomotives constructed at Hillside Workshops, South Island, New Zealand.
As the car rose from Tuai to wind about, we looked down on top of the power house and community village, a bright patch on the landscape of gold and brown. Higher, we saw more of the Tuai power works, the surge chamber at the top of the power lines, the stream that provided the water, the man-made channels through which it had been diverted to fit in with the scheme, and here and there a deep-blue lakelet, mere puddles compared with the big lake above. The shimmering blue of these ponds was the only vivid contrast to the golds and the browns.
Two thousand feet up, we stopped to look back. Nothing but hills stretched away and below, and deep down in the valley past the community village was the ribbon of road we had just traversed.
Everywhere, gold and brown.
The last, short climb took but a minute. Turning a wide bend, we began to descend a little. A second bend, a short row of trees, then ….
Suddenly, rounding a third bend, there flashed before us the vision of blue. It was all the more remarkable because of its sudden appearance so soon after looking at nothing but golds and browns.
Everything in, on, about and above the lake was blue. Only one other colour obtruded, if white is a colour, and that most insignificantly.
A stiff breeze was blowing across the lake from the direction of Hopuruahine Inlet. The broad expanse of water was as blue as that in the blue tub at home on Mondays. The wind whipped the lake into white horses, and made foaming spray on the rocky shore, providing the only sharp conflict among the universal blues. The thickly wooded slopes round the lake were a deep blue in the distance, melting into lighter shades in the hills behind, a bluish hue even extending to the cliffs close at hand and the saw-tooth rocks of the nearest reef, although in reality these were a dark grey, as we saw after our eyes became used to the scene. The sky above was a vivid blue, with only a stray white cloud or two to relieve the monotony of the colour scheme.
The atmosphere, too, had changed. Whereas, on the other side of the hill, it had been still and hot, the stiff breeze from across the lake cooled and refreshed us. We seemed to have been transported suddenly to a different climate.
Man becomes used quickly to his surroundings. During the several days spent on the lakeside eating Waikaremoana cherries and trout, boating and swimming, our eyes became used to the blues.
When we returned home by the same direction as that by which we came, the change back to the golds and the browns was just as sudden and as marked as when we came without warning on the blues.
“Parson?” said the tobacconist to the inquisitive pressman, “Yes, parsons are heavy smokers mostly, and some of them are amongst my best customers. No, they don't bother about cigarettes much, I think, generally prefer the pipe. Keen judges of tobacco, too. Why I started to stock the five toasted brands on the advice of a parson. A good tip, too. My first order was only a small one, but I'm selling more toasted now than anything else. Is it as pure as it is cracked up to be? Rather! If there's any purer (or better) baccy than Cut Plug No. 10 (Bull's head), Navy Cut No. 3 (Bulldog), Cavendish, Riverhead Gold and Desert Gold, I'd like to know. Why is it so pure? You want to know a lot, don't you?—because it's toasted. That's why. How is the toasting done? Ask the manufacturers. It's their secret. It gets the nicotine out of the leaf and at the same time gives these blends their fine flavour and beautiful bouquet. No, there's no other toasted tobaccos manufactured. What—are you off? Well so long! Be good.”*
(
Photo., R. T. Wearne).
Interesting formation at the entrance to a cave at Cape Kidnappers, North Island, New Zealand.
Up the Mokau— ( Cont. from page 15)
variety of greenstone, the rich, deep-green unspecked pounamu. The river, smooth and strong, ripples musically against the rocky banks, enamelled with red moss, and swishes the drooping flax and ferns as it goes. A kingfisher sits on a branch above the river, and looks at himself in the water below, till, hearing the splash of our paddles, he flashes across the river, a streak of blue and white. The afternoon sun gilds the tree-tops; the far end of the reach glistens and twinkles in the golden light.
But not long are we left in peace. Round a bend and before us are the worst rapids on the river, the rushing Pani-rau or “Many Orphans.” The roaring of the waters comes down the gorge, and before us we see a long, crooked down-slant of foam, curling into little waves. Landslips of long ago have piled the river bed with a confused mass of rocks and logs, forming a zigzag of rapids some three hundred yards long. A fearful turmoil this gorge must be in flood-time.
Gripping hold of the slippery snags projecting from the water, and pushing with pole and paddle, we slowly mount the torrent foot by foot. As we near the top Piko jumps ashore from the bows, with the long painter, and tracks the canoe up, clambering along the shelving rocky bank like a wild goat. At last, with paddle-blistered hands and tired shoulders, and aching knees from long squatting in the paddler's position, we came to a little island at the great bend of the river, with the voice of many waters above and below, and went into camp for the night, making fast our canoe in a safe backwater.
Not even on the upper reaches of the Wanganui have I seen a wilder spot than that defile of the “Many Orphans.” Inconceivably solitary, palisaded by wooded ranges rising a thousand feet precipitously above us, rapids roaring below, and the ominous rumble of more rapids higher up, bidding us prepare for more strenuous work; the high crake of the weka in the bush—we heard the kiwi, too, that night; the gloomy tree-arched canyon on our right, where a tributary stream came stealing into the Mokau; the knowledge that we were the only human beings for many and many a mile around, and that the dugout canoe, swinging at the bank, was our only means of reaching the outside world—all these things created a sense of solitariness extreme. But the camp fire crackled, best of all friends in the wilds, and the comforting tea and fried bacon were ready, and when pipes and cigarettes came out and the jovial Hauraki was moved to spin a yarn quaintly humorous—humorous in the Maori sense—about the old Mokau days, it was cheerful on that lone log-piled islet where many a campfire of Maori warrior-bands had blazed in the long ago. The starry sky was our roof, but a narrow roof, the canyon walls rose in black shadow nearly a thousand feet on each side.
Morning on Pani-rau! Glorious on the river, glory of early day on the mountains, as we push off again from our little island, and paddle up into the smooth reach above the grand bend where the Mokau crooks its elbow at a sharp angle in a magnificent forest gulch. The blue ranges lift tremendously above us, the Matuku-mai-uta and Matuku-mai-tai (“Bittern-from-Sea” and “Bittern - from - Inland”) shooting up on either side of the Pani-rau creek, like a knife-cut in the cliffs, and the Ranga-a-Waitara, a straight wall of a mountain, towering over the river on our right. The names of the Bittern Mountains carry a scrap of Maori exploring folk-lore; they were so named because the ancient canoeists camping on Pani-rau heard two doleful matukus calling to each other all night long across the Pani-rau canyon. As we open up the long reach in the Ranga-a-Waitara's shadow, the lights and shadows and tender tints of early morning are beautiful beyond imagining. A shimmer of mist is on the river; and a tablecloth of fog hangs from the range top. As the sun comes over the mountains, cliff and forest and river are suffused with the softest rosy light.
The mist veil melts away; the white forms of the Hau-maringiringi, the phantom figures of the fog drift into the deeper hollows; the mountains lift clear in the pearly light.
All that day we were hard at it with paddle and pole. In ten miles we tackled a rapid at every three-quarters of a mile, on an average. At one place the taheke bore an ill reputation. Two of the children of the King Country chief Tawhana were drowned here by the capsize of a canoe. On some of the higher mossy boulders, piharau or lampreys are often found after floods.
At last round the lovely Matai bend we come upon the first sign of civilisation, a lone pioneer settler's section, “Riddel's Clearing,” cut out of the bush on the northern side of the river. The banks are low now, with much kowhai shrubbery. In the calm reaches the river is smooth and shining, brimming to the woody shores, where the tawa tree and the miro pine grow tall. The half-cleared bush and fern lands of the King Country open out. A long thin column of smoke mounts lazily into the summer air. A slab hut looks out through the thickets.
Our camp this last night of the inland voyage is in a tall manuka grove. A touch of frost in the air, our feet towards a good fire of manuka—how its fragrance tingles in the nostrils even yet!—and there are yarns of fight and hunt and canoe-race on the river. Next morning we land at Kaiwaka, five miles further on, to ride over the hills to Te Kuiti and the railway. We call “Haere ra!” with much regret to good old Piko and Hauraki as they turn the bow of the canoe down stream. Our Maori friends cry their farewells. They bid us go on our journey. The long canoe glides round a bend, and just before it disappears the paddlers turn and lift their shining blades in good-bye, and next moment they vanish from our sight, for ever.
A quiet reach of the Mokau.
Perpetrated and Illustrated by)
Ken. Alexander .Onion is Strength.
Health is wealth above barter. What you've got in yourself can't be counted in coin. The “Kick” of health is not in the “Kick.” It's in the “will-it” and not in the wallet.
Many a millionaire would exchange his wealth for health—a greater possession.
Truly, mind is mortgaged to muscle, mentality is leased to vitality, and health is the handmaiden of happiness.
If the flesh refuses the mind fuses. Body bosses “bean,” and success reposes halfway between brawn and brain.
Mind may illuminate personality, mentality may light individuality and thought redeem existence, but the white light of thought springs from the red corpuscle of health.
The very essence of an onion is its pervading potency. An onion imposes its personality, it lingers in the memory, it swats you in the eye. Why? Because it vibrates virility, it quivers with quality, it gets you like a sergeant-major or an auctioneer, who represent the nearest approach to an onion's strength human nature has yet achieved. Sergeant-majors are the purple patches of physical felicity, and auctioneers never know when they're out-bid. We might take a tip from their technique and—
Of The Body Beautiful.
This is the ageless age of health and beauty—of chesty chaps and athletic Amazons, of evergreen grannies and grappling grandpas. The dietician, the capering calory, the victorious vitamin, the air-minded mind, the sun-soothed body and the spanking spirit of derring-do
“The sergeant-major is the purple patch of physical felicity.”
The search for health, the quest for bounding beautitude, goes on apace.
There are too many brains in the world to-day. They are finding out things so fast that the frame can't keep up with them. The gap between mind and muscle, brain and body, has lengthened until life gallops along in short pants, ten jumps behind Invention. Something has to be done to preserve the balance between horse-power and man-power.
Thus old gentlemen spring about gymnasia like pink tigers, hitting punching balls as though they were knocking spots off rival coin collecters, and generally comporting themselves with the abandon of a jazz orchestra. Thus middle-aged ladies roll about the floors of their compartments to preserve that line of least resistance so sought after by the fear sex.
Thus the tempestuous typiste spends her lunch hour on the roof, limbering up her physique, seeking the answer to the maiden's prayer in athletic ebullience.
Thus the aspiring Adonis airs his graces and paces, peeled to plimsoll at the selvage of the sea, seeking to match muscle with hustle, and fit himself for the catch-as-catch-can of Commerce.
Thus babies bounce in their bassinettes and turn handsprings over the bed-rail, maiden aunts stroll into breakfast on their hands, and octogenerians go for cross-country gallops on Saturday afternoons with the boy scouts.
“The ageless age of health.”
The day of sedentary somnolence is past, the pace grows hot, the world is in shorts, the march of progress has broken into a gallop, and life is a matter of the survival of the flittest. This pursuit of “fizzical” fitness is all to the good. Compare our husky days with the musty, dusty days of wine and whiskers, of crinoline and crochet, and you will realise that the farce of gravity is on the wane; that life has hitched up its jeans and bared its biceps. Health is becoming a protracted industry.
With health and sport joined in hurly matrimony, we may return to the dougthy days of Samson, Herk U. Lees, and the Likely Lad From Bristol. With Fitness organised and Sport supervised, there is no reason why we should not be the Spartan State of the South Seize.
For, if the mind is the light, the body is the lighthouse. The one is inseparable from the other and let no man put them asunder.
If we persevere we may, in time, produce a brand of husky intelligentsia, of muscular mentality. We may breed a species so strong in mind and body that it can bear the burden of enlightenment and progress, and shoulder the blessings of civilisation, without batting an eyelid.
And so let's charge our glasses with the spirit of sport and say “Here's health!”
Leading New Zealand Newspapers.
Leading New Zealand Newspapers—Continued.
—When you think of the richest wheat and wool district in New Zealand
—You think of South Canterbury
—and The Timaru Herald that circulates to 97% of the people of South Canterbury.
(By “
Shibli Bagarag
A Literary Page or Two
To my mind the king of all hobbies is book-collecting. There is the joy of reading, the joy of collecting, and then there is that mercenary pleasure (to be found in most of us) the satisfaction in the monetary value of the books we possess. Book collecting is growing in popularity in this country, and one of the stimulants is the series of book catalogues published by Newbolds, the big secondhand book dealers of Dunedin. Their latest catalogue just to hand shows the impress of a mind well versed in bibliography. It contains copious notes and observations on the many interesting items listed. Quite a scholarly little production. It may be had free on application.
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I would like to devote all my space this issue to Charles Marris's “New Zealand Best Poems of 1937,” but it is impossible. In a few words I will attempt to survey what has become a notable annual anthology, one which is attracting the attention of leading reviewers in other parts of the world. I will not say the 1937 collection is the best of the several issues to date, but it is certainly the most interesting because of the variety and even talent it represents. Personally I am a lover of simplicity in poetry; I lack any enthusiasm for blank verse. For this and other reasons Dora Hagemeyer found an instant response in me in her lines:—
Too often in the mind's most devious ways
With waning strength, a poem strays along,
Till, wandering as a walker in a maze,
The words despair, and fail to bear this song.
These lines could not refer, for instance, to the three striking poems of Arnold Wall's. There are two poems by J. R. Hervey worthy of a place in any anthology. And don't accuse me of bias for Christchurch poets when I mention the name of still another, Helena Henderson. Although she is a singer of the sky and of the heavens above it, she can look down into the streets and sing a song of sorrow, “The Charwoman.” It is good to hear Winifred Tennant once more and Una Auld, and, of course, it is always a delight to see a new poem from Gloria Rawlinson and she has two this year. The most striking poem in the collection is “Cockcrow Thrice,” by Robin Hyde.
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There are so many things to do, and so many books and magazines to read about Christmas time, hence this belated notice of “Tuis Annual.” Warm congratulations to the editor on his finest issue to date. It is a striking example of what may be achieved in the fields of popular art and literature in this country. “Tuis Annual” is not a highbrow magazine, but whatever is in it, is good. Many writers of standing are represented in story and verse and there are a number of names new to me whose work shows promise. The black and white illustrations are good and the photography splendid.
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In these days when publishers appear to be vying with one another in printing the “reminiscences” of juvenile authors (one book of “Memoirs” was recently published from a veteran of fourteen years) it is interesting to see a New Zealand publishing house issuing the life story of a youngster of ninety-seven years. And a most valuable historical record it is—“Pioneering in Otago,” by William Ayson (A. H. and A. W. Reed). The author arrived in Otago in 1853, and has resided there ever since. One can imagine that the memories of the exciting early days of Otago and the later reminiscences of such an ancient pioneer, will be eagerly read by old and young in this country. Collectors will be after this book, as it is being issued in a signed limited edition of 600 copies.
A simple and effective book-plate.
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Another New Zealand book of historical interest, recently published, is “History of the County of Patea,” by C. J. Roberts, a copy of which has been sent to the Magazine by the Patea County Council. That the Patea County is extremely rich in historical associations is evident from a perusal of this book. The author is a member of the literary staff of the Hawera “Star” and, being a trained journalist, we may be sure of the accuracy of the interesting story he has to tell. Collectors will note that it is not intended to reprint the book.
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Reviews.
“Over the Range,” by Ion L. Idriess (Angus and Robertson, Sydney) is as good, if not better, than most of the books written by this supremely popular Australian author. A few years ago Mr. Idriess accompanied a Nor'-West Mounted Police Patrol on a 1,200 mile journey through one of the wildest areas left in the Australian Continent—that north of the King Leopold Range. This is the story of
* * *
“What Ho!” by Richard Connell (Robert Hale, London), introduces us to a delightful hero, Ernest Bingley, a romantic taxidermist. By stuffing enough birds and beasts Bingley manages to stuff his bank account to sufficient dimensions to visit Bingley Castle, to the residents of which he claims an “astronomical” relationship. His subsequent adventures make lively and entertaining reading. I understand that the book has been “talkieised” with Gary Cooper as Bingley.
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“White Poppies,” by Carl Warburton (Angus & Robertson, Sydney) combines fact and fiction in a manner most interesting. Fact is provided in the gripping picture of life and of nature in the Northern Territory of Australia, which the author knows so well. Fiction is wrapped up in the exciting story of two young cattle raisers who, discouraged by ill-fortune and State apathy, are tempted by a wily Chinaman into growing white poppies for the manufacture of opium. They select a hidden land beyond mysterious mountains. Their guide is a lovable old aboriginal T'Kala. A thread of love interest runs through this exciting and finely written story.
* * *
“Hauhauism,” by S. Barton Babbage (A. H. & A. W. Reed, Dunedin and Wellington), is an important addition to our national historical library. The author's account of this religion, or cult, one of the most interesting episodes of the Maori wars, is embellished with copious quotations from historical documents. The book also includes an extensive bibliography, and is illustrated with maps and pictures. Every student of New Zealand will want a copy of this valuable little work.
* * *
“The Enchanted Kiwi,” by Alice Kenny (the Hand-Craft Press, Wellington), is a charming, delightfully written phantasy, with an atmosphere redolent of this country. It will appeal to young and old. Miss Kenny is a well-known New Zealand writer, being the author of two novels and a contributor to many journals at Home and abroad. The booklet is illustrated by Lindsay M. Constable.
* * *
“Shibli” Listens In.
Mr. Johannes C. Andersen has been appointed organiser for New Zealand Authors' Week, which is to be held some time in April.
The New Zealand Journal of Agriculture is to be modernised into a big farming journal, Mr. H. I. Forde, a well-known New Zealand journalist, is editor.
Victor Lloyd has been asked by Angus & Robertson, Sydney, to prepare a volume of New Zealand one-act plays. Such a collection has not yet been published from New Zealand writers although one was recently published in Australia from Australian authors.
Two new editors of periodicals published in Wellington who have proved their worth are O. White (“Radio Record”) and Jock Gillespie (“The Monocle”). Both publications have made big strides in reading and illustration appeal and general lay-out.
“Murder By Twelve,” the composite detective story on which a dozen Wellington writers have been engaged for several months past, has been completed. It will probably be published abroad.
Thomas Bracken's “Not Understood” (1906 edition) failed to bring even a bid of one shilling at a recent auction sale in Wellington.
A good copy of the first edition of Satchell's “The Greenstone Door,” brought only 6/- at a book auction sale in Wellington recently.
Kind Friends Made Her “Sick”
They Would Keep Saying “How Fat You Are.”
Now She is 36 Ibs. Lighter—Thanks to Kruschen.
Bad enough to know that you are getting fat, without “kind friends” telling you so! That is how this woman felt. So she decided to put a stop to it, and in three months she took off 36 lbs. of surplus fat. Read how she did it:—
“Three months ago, when I was suffering from very bad pains in my back, I began to put on weight. I reached 15 st. 8 lbs. I got sick of people remarking on how stout I was getting. I decided to take Kruschen Salts, and it has brought my weight down to 13 stone. I feel much better, and my kidneys, which were in a very bad state, are much improved. I am 55 years old, and shall continue to take Kruschen Salts.”—(Mrs.) Y.
Taken every morning, Kruschen Salts effect a perfectly natural clearance of undigested food substances and all excessive waste matter. Unless this wastage is regularly expelled, Nature is liable to store it up in the form of ugly fat.
Once Kruschen gets into the blood, watch that roll of fat leave the waist, that double chin disappear, those ungainly arms grow slimmer, that stout figure become firm. Kruschen is a saline—not a drug. It is an ideal blend of mineral salts found in the aperient waters of famous European Spas.
Kruschen Salts will not reduce you over-night. But taken regularly every morning, half a teaspoonful in a glass of hot water will slowly but surely take away unwanted fat, and restore your figure to its normal weight.
Kruschen Salts is obtainable at all Chemists and Stores at 2/6 per bottle.
By
Helen
Timely Notes and Useful Hints.
For “Don't-Dress” Evenings.
I Have studied this business of informal summer evenings, and the criterion of dress seems to be skirt length. Otherwise, your frock has the makings, at top of an evening gown, your material is “dressy,” your sleeves are bouffant. Your flowers, however, are smaller and neater than for “real evening.”
A charming fashion, sponsored by one of the Paris houses, is carried out in black net. The very full skirt comprises three shirred flounces. The slip is black, with a pink top dipping to a point in front. The black net collar fastens demurely high. It is just too dressy for street-wear; but with an all-black slip, a black halo hat, black bag and white gloves, it is right for afternoons in sultry weather.
Chiffon, marquisette, georgette, mousseline, are suitable for this full-skirted fashion.
Depending for its appeal on its smartness, is the taffeta tunic, worn with a pleated georgette skirt. A huge cascading jabot, for instance, sulphur with brown, or pink with navy is striking.
Another smart “dual” frock is of sheer acetate crepe in navy blue. There is a soft lace frill at the throat. Imagine this for afternoons with a navy hat, white flowers bunched tightly in front, a navy veil and navy and white gloves.
A plain silk frock may have a brightly-embroidered vestee and collar, and embroidered bands on the below-the-elbow sleeves.
With a printed frock, try the effect of a waist-band of grosgrain ribbon in effective colour contrast. Or have a neck-ruffle tied with a ribbon bow.
Frills of organza for the essentially feminine! The more tailored type may prefer a plainer frock of fine linen painted with faintly iridescent designs.
Perhaps you have a black silk suit. Make use of it for evenings by discarding the coat and showing a black-embroidered white georgette blouse. Or you may prefer a heavy black gold-shot crepe tunic touched with gold lamé. This is definitely smart, but the younger people would do well to favour the simpler, and cooler, georgettes and nets.
* * *
School Holidays.
A Problem for Mother.
Harking back to the December issue, to the problem of the woman who dreads holiday-time, one can suggest methods of making the holiday, at home or away, pass pleasantly for both parent and child.
Once the mother realises how easy it is to rouse and direct the interest of her children, a new relationship will begin. Mother will no longer be regarded as the person who says “Don't!” with father in the background as a menace to the disobedient. Billy and Mary will no longer be regarded as naturally obstreperous and permanently out-of-hand.
To this end, mother must plan for the holidays, just as school-teachers do for the term, with due regard for the varied interests of the child. We will assume that rest, clothing and diet present no difficulties, but that the problems are occupational.
Just as a school-teacher encourages all children to have tidy desks, to put away apparatus neatly, and to help with dusting, flower-arrangement and room decoration, so the mother in the home assumes that the child is interested in his environment and willing to make it tidy and attractive. That is where the possession of individual drawers, table and wardrobe helps a child. The wise mother, especially with older children, encourages the child to help plan any change in these surroundings. Perhaps the room is to be repapered, the furniture painted, or new curtains and bedspread chosen. That is the time to allow the child to help choose—and not merely nominally. Take note of the child's preferences and show that you value his or her opinion. A thing self-chosen induces pride of ownership, and the problem of “tidying the bedroom” becomes simple.
In holiday time, especially, a child needs space for himself and his belongings. If possible, allow a child space, and facilities in the way of table and/or drawers, in bedroom, workshop or shed, where he may keep his “things” in his own way without danger of interference from adults. Of course, if bits of Billy's meccano set or Mary's paper dolls stray into the drawing-room or kitchen, then mother has every right to tidy them away; but if they are where they should be—in the child's own corner—no adult must interfere. Recognition by both parent and child of the fairness of this division of space goes a long way towards mutual understanding.
The next important step is to realise that the children like doing things, and that they don't have to be forced to “do.” The only difficulty is to keep them supplied with material sufficient for their avid interest and busy fingers. Most children, if given space in a house, soon collect all sorts of interests round them. The clever
You will notice that all the gifts mentioned lead to the development of the children. The “toys” are not “dead-ends.” The young modeller, if encouraged and helped, may reach the stage where he wishes to have his efforts properly baked in a kiln. The painter, after happily daubing for a while, wants to know a bit more about it, and “Mother couldn't I possibly take my paints with me when we go to the beach next Saturday? And will you show me about clouds? The sea's easy.” The big sister is probably ready to share, and help with the youngster's hobbies, while continuing with her own dressmaking efforts. Big brother is well on the way to an absorbing interest in photography. Where is the boredom of the holiday period? Gone! When school starts, they'll be hurrying home in the afternoons to carry on with their spare-time hobbies. And if each child has been presented with a garden of his own, home happiness and busy-ness will be complete.
Of course, the bored child does not respond to treatment right away. There is the problem of the child who plays with his new “toy” for a few minutes and then comes to mother.
“What'll I do now? I'm tired of that.”
The unwise mother says, “Your beautiful new paints! Be a good boy and go away and play with them some more. Mother's busy.”
The wise mother says, “What have you been doing? Show me. Oh, yes. That's the tree in the garden. Look, we'll put the shadow on the trunk like this. How about trying the willow-tree? Peter has some paints, hasn't he? Why not call Peter (Peter lives next door) and ask whether he would like to paint, too?”
The two resultant very weepy willow-trees receive due praise, and it is suggested that the boys bring their painting materials along on an afternoon walk to a nearby reserve. The boys try various kinds of trees, and Peter suddenly discovers that the painting in of a small boy he has seen playing round his tree, adds to the interest of the scene. The mother suggests that the boys keep a folio of their holiday paintings. Perhaps they can even interleave their paintings with a written record. The boys are engrossed in a worth-while hobby for the rest of the holidays.
It sounds easy, doesn't it? All that is required is a little understanding and consideration, and the provision of simple facilities for child activity.
Health Notes.
A cherry stone or other small smooth object that has “gone the wrong way” may often be expelled if the child is immediately laid over one's knees, face downwards, and smacked smartly on the back. If, however, the stone does not appear very soon, a doctor should be sent for—in fact, the safest way is to perform the home treatment whilst awaiting the arrival of the doctor.
A child may suffocate by drinking scalding water, owing to the inflammation in the back of the throat caused by the injuriously hot water. This swelling prevents the air passing through the vocal cords.
The Scrap Book.”
Never handle pastry more than is necessary. A light hand with the rolling pin is also essential.
A very hot oven is required at first. Later, the heat can be reduced.
Do not place cooked pastry, after removing from the oven, in a cold or draughty place, as the condensing of the steam is apt to make the pastry heavy.
Don't forget the basting—roasts are basted with fat and dripping as they roast. Makes them juicy and helps on the “finish.” Eggs are basted while frying, and fruits are basted while they glaze.
Fruits—currants particularly—which are small and shrivelled, may be improved considerably by steaming. Place in a colander and put over a saucepan of boiling water. A few minutes are sufficient to cause the fruit to swell.
For the Holiday Season.
.
RecipesRock Cakes.
Quarter lb. butter, 1 egg, 1/2 lb. flour, 2 oz. currants or sultanas, 1 teaspoon baking powder, 1/4 lb. sugar, sufficient milk to mix.
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Four lbs. sugar, 6 ozs. butter, 1 egg, 2 cups bran, 2 cups flour, salt to taste, 1 teaspoon baking power, 1 tablespoon golden syrup dissolved in hot water, little milk to mix—roll out thinly.
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Four cups flour, 4 teaspoons baking powder, 1 cup sultanas, 2 large tablespoons golden syrup, milk to mix. Bake one hour.
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Half lb. butter, ½ lb. sugar, 4 eggs, 2 breakfastcups flour, 1 dessertspoon golden syrup, 1 dessertspoon vinegar, ½ teaspoon soda dissolved in little hot milk, ½ lb. raisins, ½ lb. sultanas, 2 ozs. currants, 2 ozs. cherries, almonds, and 2 ozs. lemon peel, pinch nutmeg, mace, spice, ginger and cinnamon (to taste).
Half lb. butter, 5 ozs. sugar, 3 eggs, 1 breakfastcup flour, ½ cup sultanas and preserved ginger, 1 teaspoon cream tartar, ½ teaspoon soda in little milk.
Cream butter and sugar, then add eggs one by one unbeaten. Bake in sandwich tin for 20 minutes. Coffee icing on top. When adding eggs beat well.
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To a kerosene tin of cold water, put 4 tablespoons ginger, 2 tablespoons cream of tartar, 8 cups sugar, 2 ozs. fresh yeast, whites of 2 eggs beaten to a froth.
Put all together and allow to stand over night. Bottle when ready in the morning.
It is a good idea to dissolve sugar in boiling water or bring to the boil.
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One oz. gelatine soaked in 3/4 cup cold water for ½ hour, 2 lbs. sugar soaked in 3/4 cup cold water for 1/4 hour. Put sugar and water on to boil for 5 minutes, add gelatine and simmer for 5 minutes. Take off the fire and cool. When skin forms—about 10 minutes—beat well, and add lemon juice for flavouring (or nuts if liked). When thick and foamy turn out on buttered dish.
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Dissolve 3½ lbs. sugar in 3 quarts boiling water. When cool, stir in 4 ozs. tartaric acid and whites of 4 eggs (well beaten). Add essence lemon to taste. Bottle the liquid.
When ready for use, a wineglass of liquid to a tumbler of cold water and 1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda. Stir well to fizz.
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One lb. butter, 6 eggs, 3 large cups flour, 1 cup sugar (large), 1/4 lb. almonds, 1/4 lb. cherries, 1 teaspoonful baking powder, little milk, 3 cups sultanas. Bake two hours—slowly.
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One and a-half teacups sugar, 1 large cup water, 1 tablespoon gelatine. Mix 1 tablespoon flour and gelatine with little water and add to other ingredients—bring all to the boil, then allow to cool and beat well for 20 minutes or until fluffy. Add juice of one lemon and passion fruit—or any other fruit preferred.
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Two pints raspberry crystals dissolved in 1 cup hot water—put on to boil—2 pints milk; mix 2 tablespoons cornflour in little milk and add the boiling milk with half cup sugar. Beat up 2 eggs and, when the milk is absolutely boiling, pour over the eggs, then add the jelly and mix well together. Allow to set over night.
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Six eggs, 1 oz. gelatine, 6 tablespoons sugar, 2 cups boiling water, vanilla to flavour.
Soak gelatine in water for ½ hour—beat the whites of eggs, then the yolks with sugar. Add to the gelatine then the whites and stir slowly until the mixture is of the consistency of thick cream.
Peel 3 large oranges, slice, put into a glass dish and sprinkle with sugar. Beat yolks of 2 eggs, with 1 tablespoon of cornflour, 2 tablespoons sugar and pinch salt. Stir one pint boiling milk into the eggs, etc., cook till it thickens and then pour over the oranges. When cold, put meringues on top filled with cream.
* * *
½ cup sago, 1 cup milk, 1 cup water, 1/4 cup sugar. Boil all together, stirring all the time till sago is clear. Stir in the pulp of one dozen passion fruit; put into mould and when cold turn on to a glass dish and pour whipped cream over. Decorate with sliced cherries.
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Mix asparagus tips with thick white sauce flavoured with grated cheese.
(By
Aroha Bruce
A Short Story for Children.
If Michael had not fallen asleep under the old gum tree, late one October afternoon, this story would not have been written.
“Take the dogs and go down to the far paddock, and bring the cows home,” his father had said. And calling Frisk and old Ben, Michael set off, the two dogs racing ahead.
Although the afternoon was advanced the sun was still hot, and by the time Michael reached the far paddock he felt very tired, and he threw himself down to rest in the shade of the old gum tree that grew by itself in the paddock.
“It really won't matter if the milking is five minutes late,” thought Michael, as he lay on his back gazing up at the sky.
Presently he fell asleep; how long he slept Michael did not know, but he woke with a start to hear voices close by.
“Don't forget to-night, at twelve in the old barn,” said the first voice.
“You bet your tail, I won't” said the second.
Michael sat up and looked around him; there was no one in sight—only the two dogs by his side.
Could he have made a mistake; surely they would have barked if anyone had been near? Then Michael remembered his neglected task, and jumping up he set off to where the cattle stood grazing in the corner of the paddock. What he did not notice was that as he got up he stepped out of a large ring of toadstools that grew at the foot of the tree.
Now, everyone knows that if one falls asleep in a ring of toadstools on the last day of October, something queer is bound to happen!
But Michael had forgotten the date, and it was not until later that evening when he was having his tea, that his father happened to catch sight of the calender on the kitchen wall.
“To-day is the last of October,” he said.
“Yes,” said his mother, “and to-night is the evening of Hallowe'en.”
“Tell me about it,” begged Michael.
“Well, it's the most magic night of the year,” she said, “and the Scottish folk say that on this night the witches ride down to earth on their broom sticks to feast with the gnomes; and the animals all have speech, and dance in the meadows.”
Michael's eyes grew round with interest.
“When I was a little girl,” she continued, “my brothers used to get pumpkins and hollow them out, cutting eyes and a nose, and a mouth in each one, and when it was dark place a candle inside.”
“Fiddlesticks!” growled father.
“Children don't believe in such nonsense nowadays; and what is more, if I find any little boy monkeying round with my pumpkins, there will be trouble!”—This with a meaning glance at Michael.
Mother just smiled, but said nothing more, and shortly after tea Michael was sent off to bed.
He lay for a long time alone in the dark—thinking—could it really be true what mother had said?
Then it must have been Ben and Frisk he heard talking. “Twelve o'clock in the old barn,” Ben had said.
“What could it all mean?”
Michael meant to find out.
Slipping out of bed he crossed to the open window, and stood looking out into the darkness. Away in the village a clock started chiming.
“Ten, eleven, twelve,” Michael counted. Now was the time to slip out to the barn. But dare he go? It takes a lot of courage to creep into the garden
(Thelma R. Kent, photo.)The well-known tortoise in the gardens at Nukualofa (Tonga), given by Captain Cook about 160 years ago.
The gravel made crunchy noises under his feet, and Michael ran very fast—outside in the dark he felt a little afraid. No small boy likes the thought of meeting a witch on a broomstick riding out of the sky. In the old barn it would be quite safe, he thought.
Rounding the end of the house Michael stood still in astonishment!
A light shone from the barn, and the door was wide open, and father's prize pig was just trotting inside. Close on his heels walked two of the cows, followed by Billy the goat, then the door closed to with a click: Michael ran over to the door, opening it just enough to allow himself to slip inside, and hid behind a pile of old sacks. There he could see, without being seen, and what he saw made him gasp with surprise. The barn was lit by five orange pumpkins, each made in the form of a lantern, with eyes, and a nose, and a mouth that gave out a queer yellow light, while seated on top of each was a huge black cat, with glowing green eyes, and a stiffly arched back, and standing-up tail.
Gathered together in the barn were all the four-footed folk of the farm; the cows and the pigs, and the dogs and the sheep, all talking and laughing together, and making a terrible din, and, in a far corner, a witch's black cauldron was bubbling and sending up steam. Stirring the cauldron and chanting strange words was a wizard, wearing a blue velvet robe all spangled with stars, and his white, flowing beard reached right to the ground. Presently he stopped chanting, and bending down, made a sign on the floor with his short magic wand; and before you could wink there sprang up a table all laden with Hallowe'en food.
There were cheese cakes, and haggis, and porridge, and pasties, and roastnuts, and rosy red apples, not to mention a huge dish of white mashed potatoes, stuffed full of small lucky charms.
Just then there came a rush of cold air, and in through the window came flying a dozen old witches riding their broomsticks, followed by a crowd of brown bats, with wicked red eyes. The witches flew twice round the cauldron, then coming to rest on the ground, piled their brooms in one corner. Then the feasting began, each animal helping himself, and everyone eating too much.
After that the dancing began; they froliced and pranced, the cows with the pigs, and the sheep and the calves; old Ben and Frisk dancing together. And then there were games of ducking for apples floating in buckets of water. And when one of the pigs was having his turn, and the apple kept bobbing away from his nose (for only the teeth could be used), Billy the goat came up from behind and butted him into the water.
He soon scrambled out, none the worse for his bath, and set off in chase of the goat.
Now, unfortunately, Billy decided to hide behind the old sacks by the door, and thus he discovered poor Michael. Seizing him by his pyjama coat sleeve he dragged frightened Michael into the middle of the floor.
Everyone stood still with surprise.
Then one of the witches rushed forward and shaking her long bony hand in his face demanded in a shrill voice,
“What are you doing here, brat?”
“Please, I just came to look,” gasped Michael.
“Look, indeed!” growled the old woman.
“Spying, I call it. I'm in a good mind to turn you into cobweb and sweep you up to the moon.”
“Not so fast, old witch,” said the wizard, who had a kind face.
And addressing Michael, “Are you kind to all animals, my son; give them water to drink, never tease or neglect them?”
“Oh, yes,” cried Michael, “I love them too much to treat them unkindly.”
“That is true,” said Frisk and old Ben together.
“Well, if that is the case,” continued the wizard, “we will give you a pardon, and just turn you into a little brown mouse till the dawn, and send you back to your bed.”
And he waved his wand and Michael found himself getting smaller and smaller—and there he was a little brown mouse!
He ran out of the barn and across the garden, and in two minutes was through the window, and scampering up the bedclothes, where he hid himself under the pillow.
He must have fallen asleep; for when he woke up it was day, and the sun was streaming in at the window, and once more he was a boy.
Michael decided to say nothing about his midnight adventure, for sometimes the grown-ups don't quite understand.
“Billy the goat came up from behind and butted him into the water.”
(By
Joyce West
An Impression in Contrasts
Almost at the summit of the road over the Kaimai … that rock-ribbed and implacable blue range which bars the green plains of the Waikato from the sun-steeped and broken country of the Tauranga coast … there is a spring which must be almost the coldest in the world, and if you stop to drink from its icy waters you will think you have partaken of some potion of the old alchemists, a magic draught which changes the scene before your very eyes.
You have left Hamilton perhaps in the soft white gloom of a morning fog, with only a glimpse of the misty-opal breast of the river, with the broad, straight road running before you into white nothingness. You pass through tranquil farm lands washed with the pastel colours of the mists. The early green of English elms and weeping willows is pale and tender, the hawthorn hedges, the very grass-stems by the roadside shine with dew-drops. There are gleams of placid water by unseen farm houses; dairy cows move slowly, tranquilly, through the changing mist.
Translate the scene into music, and it would be called a pastorale. In a field close to the road an early ploughman turns a furrow which gives a curious impression of placidity and permanence, of rich damp earth, and gentle rainfall, and comfortable homes, and generous pasture. His horses' breath, like steam, mingles with the mist.
Now the morning is wearing on, and the fog blowing thinner, the sun beginning to shoot it through with gleams of blue and gold. Now you may see the crest of the Kaimai, blue and clear across the east, rising above the fog like a rock from the foam of a breaking wave.
As the fog thins, the mountain range appears an impregnable barrier. But there is no turning aside. The road leads you straight into the foothills, and up. The climb is abrupt, uncompromising. The cuttings rise in whiteslashed, zig-zagging bends, turning back one upon the other, lifting always upward through the bare foothills and the stern bush-clad height toward the overhanging rock peak which marks the pass.
It is cold, and the icy wind, fogtinged, sweeps in melancholy fashion up through the bare foothill valleys.
Below and behind, the plains have dropped back in a patchwork blanket of gentle colours. The chequered squares of the farms spread themselves in brown and green and grey and russet, tawny gold and misty emerald, ploughed earth and maize and wheat, root crops and millet, pasture and fallow, all just pale colours in the mist, crossed and recrossed by the thin dark lines of shelter belts. Tiny towns make mosaic patches; a thread of smoke rises from a miscroscopic railway. The thinning mist spreads an uneven net of iridescence.
But now the scene is gone in a flicker, for you have crossed the divide, and you look out to the Pacific coast. The cold wind is shut off; the atmosphere is calm and warm, as of summer evening. So swift has been the change that it takes some little time for you to grasp the scene which lies before your eyes.
You look down on blue and slategrey hills lowering by great gulf and gorge and wave-crest, split up by ridges of timber country where the smoke of early burns hangs pearlgrey in the sunlit air. The horizon is a ribbon of burnished silver that is half the sweep of the Bay of Plenty; between ocean and hills is the gentler country of the Tauranga coast, Mount Maunganui humped and grey, the harbour thrusting shining silver fingers among the sunlit hills.
The green grazing country goes up hill and down dale, and is threaded by twisting loops of white roads, and split by blue-shadowed defiles and watercourses, by wedges of untouched bushland.
Down at your feet … or thirty miles away … is Oropi, the old, old, Europe Road, built as a sporting gesture by hostile Maoris for the use of the Queen's fighting men; Mount Misery, where the fallow deer graze; there the gorges, those great blue clefts that split the waterless uplands between the fertile coast country and the pumice lands of Rotorua. To the interior of the island the weather is unsettled; the lakeland hills rise grey and slate and smoky blue, cloud-shadowed, stabbed with the downward-piercing shafts of rainstorms and passing sunshine.
But the country of the coast is steeped in sunshine, and on the shimmering horizon of the east the islands lie … Mayor Island, the attendant Aldermen, the Slipper, and the homely Hen and Chickens, Motiti where the maize grows, from one point an instant glimpse, far to the south-east, of White Island, the terrible.
Now the road, plunging downward, has dipped into the bushclad foothills of Lower Kaimai, and the changing scenes have vanished, and there is left only the impressions of them.
(Rly. Publicity photo.)
A nice catch, with three rods during a recent week-end fishing at Waikaremoana, North Island, New Zealand. That the scenery of Lake Waikaremoana can hold its own with anything in the world is becoming increasingly well known, but its attractions as a fishermen's paradise are not so commonly realised. This action picture of a catch by Mr. G. H. Mackley (General Manager of Railways) and party tells its own story.
Wellington's Athletic Coach
(Specially Written for “N.Z. Railways Magazine,” by W. F. Ingram.)
A New era in amateur athletics in New Zealand began with the arrival, late in November, of Alfred Fitch, an American athlete, who was engaged by the Wellington Centre of the New Zealand Amateur Athletic Association to coach the athletes in their district.
Fitch comes from the University of Southern California, a seat of learning in Los Angeles from whence also comes great athletes. As a member of the American Olympic team in 1936—he ran in the relay race of 1600 metres—Fitch has seen most of the world's leading track men in action and has competed against most of the sprinters and quarter-milers.
Apart from A. K. G. Brown, of England, it is doubtful if there is another athlete in the world, to-day, capable of defeating Fitch in a contest over 100, 220 and 440 yards. It is claimed for Fitch that the only star American sprinter he has not beaten in competition is Jesse Owens, the triple Olympic champion. But Owens is a sprinter in a class of his own!
Fitch was not in Wellington twelve hours before he had started in his work of coaching. He arrived at 9.30 a.m. on Saturday, November 27, and at 2 p.m. the same day was at the athletic meeting at Petone showing the young athletes how to do the right actions.
Credit for bringing Fitch to New Zealand belongs to one man—an ex-railway man! To Mr. Ben Sutherland, of Wellington, is praise due for possessing the vision and action which was culminated by Fitch's arrival here. Mr. Sutherland was in Japan on a holiday visit, and saw the visiting American athletes competing against the sons of Nippon. He was impressed with the bearing and capabilities of the American athletes, and took the opportunity of meeting several members of the team. From Dr. Campbell, of the University of Southern California, he received much helpful advice and he asked the American to approach Dean Cromwell, a prominent American coach, to select a suitable coach for Wellington.
On returning to New Zealand, Mr. Sutherland lost little time in informing the Wellington Centre of his action and offered to act as guarantor for the amount involved. A canvass was made for funds—a sum of £600 is needed—and at the time of writing, Mr. T. W. (“Dorrie”) Leslie, the Olympic starter, had collected more than £300. Fitch has settled down to training the athletes and the athletes are unanimous in voting him to be a really good chap!
It is his popularity that has impressed me as being an attribute possessed by most American athletes seen in New Zealand. Jackson Scholz, Harlow Rothert, George Simpson, George Krogness, Leo Lermond, Rufus Kiser, Lloyd Hahn, Jack Merchant and Maurice Kirksey had that mystical “crowd appeal” which made them stand out in any company. It may be the result of concentrated practice in track and field sport, or it may be a legacy of the “American Independence,” but American athletes certainly give the impression of being able to do what they set out to do. There is an air of quiet confidence in their own ability to beat the other man. It is a feeling that was lacking when the quartette of British athletes competed in New Zealand a few years ago. American athletes, when wearing the Stars and Stripes fear none—and race accordingly. If Fitch can impart some of this same self-confidence into our athletes, he will have achieved something.
But I am inclined to believe that Fitch's best results will come from the field events, in which New Zealanders have never had the opportunity of receiving coaching. Track sport is, after all, a somewhat natural form of sport. We first of all learn to crawl, then to toddle, then to walk and later to run. There are right and wrong ways of walking and running, and once Fitch has corrected the minor faults his work will probably centre more in coaching jumpers, discus, hammer and javelin throwers.
The standard of track sport in New Zealand is high! I make this statement and am prepared to produce figures to prove it. In few parts of the world are there so many sound performances returned by athletes, who have to work from 8 or 9 a.m. to 4.30 or 5 p.m. and then do their training. In America, and in England, too, the outstanding athletes are University students who are able to adjust their training syllabus to train at a time of the day when the body is in the best state to do training. At 11 a.m. or 3 p.m. the body is mentally and physically adjusted to stand violent exercise. Try running a mile after a day's work, or before breakfast, and compare it with the mile you have covered at 11 a.m. or 3 p.m. There's a marked difference! And it is this difference
(Rly. Publicity photo.)
The first bulk wagon of motor spirit consigned from Wellington for transport over the new East Coast line to Wairoa.
But what a different story there is to be told in the field events in New Zealand! Our field men do not understand the mechanics of their sport and performances suffer accordingly. There has never been a New Zealander to clear 12ft. in the pole vault; the world record is nearly 15ft.! There has never been a New Zealander to clear 6ft. 2in. in the high jump; the world record is over 6ft. 10in.! This is where Fitch is going to prove valuable to our athletics and, after having met and conversed with the young American, I am confident that his work will be worthwhile.
The present boom in business has been reflected in the Secondary Schools of New Zealand by the number of senior boys who have left to take up positions.
This was expected to have an adverse effect on the standard of competition in the Secondary Schools' Athletic championships held at Wellington a few weeks ago. Strangely enough, the reverse was the result! No fewer than nine records were broken and a number were equalled. Records that had stood the test of years were unceremoniously broken by one, two or even three young athletes!
During the past twelve years I have seen all the leading Secondary School athletes in action in Wellington, but I have never seen one to impress me so much as did A. K. H. Brown, the Scots College hurdler. This lad covered the 3ft. hurdles in the 120 yards event in 15 sec. and hurdled like a champion born. If this athlete is not lost to competition—as so many are—I predict that he will develop into New Zealand's most famous hurdler. That's a big job, but I am confident Brown has the necessary qualifications.
Another athlete who took my eye was Bill Hocquard, of St. Patrick's College. This lad, only 15 years of age, cleared 5ft. 1 1/4in. without hitting the bar at any stage. Using the “western roll”—as yet far from perfect—he made easy work of each succeeding height as the bar rose to 5ft. 1 1/4in. to break the record by 2 inches. For a fortnight prior to the meeting, he had been laid up with a badly sprained ankle! Of such stuff are champions made!
I had a caller the other day. He asked me if I was the person responsible for the “Panorama of the Playground” in the “Railways Magazine.” I pleaded guilty and he extended his right hand. “I'm glad to meet you; but I thought you'd be a much older man! My name is Hannan. I used to do a bit of rowing.” It was one of those unexpected pleasures which occasionally fall to the lot of sports writers, and I felt honoured by the visit of Paddy Hannan, formerly world champion professional sculler. He thought I was an older man…. I thought him to be in the early forties when I saw him; but was told he was 53 years old! Good living and participation in a fine sport, had helped Hannan to retain his youthful carriage. Hannan is a credit to New Zealand, and with half-a-century behind him Paddy is stroking a steady oar towards the century. He is the type of man who could be used to New Zealand's advantage in the scheme for the improvement of the physical welfare of New Zealanders.
Not a week goes by but I meet an old-time athletic star, and, in nine cases out of ten, they carry themselves erect and are clear of eye. Paddy Hannan's visit was followed by the visit of that old-timer, Jack Chase, who is also known as a boxing trainer. It was fifteen years since I had seen Jack Chase—at Wairoa, where I was held up by impassable roads—but he hadn't aged a day in the interim. A few months earlier, I had renewed acquaintances with George Muhleison, a 74-year-old veteran cyclist, who once held the Brisbane to Sydney cycle record of 5 1/2 days; I had been chatting to Bill Thomson, New Zealand's premier road cyclist of 40 years ago, and had been chatting to Jack Cusacks, now over 70 years old, but still an active referee of hockey matches. I wondered—do these athletes never grow old?—The answer is that they have all learned the great lesson of sport.—Sport is only a means to an end. Sport is only useful to the community, and the individual, when it teaches the human being to appreciate the value of good health. Clean living is essential for athletic success and the clean habits formed during the athletic careers of the old-timers have stood the test of passing years.
Wit and Humour
A friend met a cheerful Irishman who had plainly suffered some hard knocks.
“Well, Pat, how are you getting along now?” he inquired.
“Oh, Oi'm still hard up, but Oi've a fine job in Honolulee, and fare paid. Oi sail to-morrow.”
“Sure, man, you'll never be able to work there. The temperature is a hundred in the shade.”
Pat had endured cheerfully too much to be discouraged.
“Well,” he replied hopefully, “Oi'll not be workin' in th' shade all th' toime.”
* * *
Ephraim: “Dat child o' yourn am mighty slow learnin' at school. How does yo' all account fo' dat?”
Ezekial: “Well, de school am two miles from heah, an' dat chile done fo'gits all de teachah tells him fo' he git half way home.”
* * *
Mrs. Newrich was fond of flowers and especially liked the salvia, but was not very reliable in getting the names right. She was giving directions to her gardener. “On this side of the walk,” she said. “I want you to put out some salivas. Now what would you suggest for the other side?”
“Well, madam,” answered the gardener solemnly, “maybe it would be a good idea to put some spitoonias there.”
* * *
Debt Collector: “Is your master at home?”
Servant: “No, he isn't.”
Debt Collector (suspiciously): “But I can see his hat hanging up in the hall!”
Servant: “Well, what's that got to do with it? One of my dresses is hanging on the line in the back garden, but I'm not there!”
“You remember when you cured my rheumatism a year ago, don't you, doctor?” asked the patient, “and told me not to get myself wet?”
“Yes, Ephraim,” replied the doctor.
“Well, I just wanted to ask you if you think it's safe for me to take a bath now?”
“I couldn't find a parking place; so I've taken it to pieces.”
(Reproduced by permission of “Punch.”)
She was an ardent film fan, and used to drive her long-suffering husband nearly frantic by insisting on reading out snippets from the papers about her favourite “stars.”
One day, after reading about six of these bits of information aloud, she went on: “I see here that there is a Hollywood film star who has never been divorced.”
“Really?” answered the bored husband. “Who is it—Shirley Temple?”
A Swede was touring America in a motor car. One day it broke down as he drove along a country road, and he found his tool box had been left behind, and he was badly in need of a monkey wrench to tighten some bolts. He saw a cabin down the road. In the yard was a stout coloured woman labouring over a steaming wash tub, and the yard was literally filled with laughing, tumbling, playing negro youngsters of all sizes and sexes. The Swede said to the coloured woman:
“Missus, Ay vant to know have you got har a monkey wranch?”
The coloured woman straightened up from her work, indignation showing plainly on her face.
“Go on along, white man,” she said, truculently, “You know mouty well dis ain't no monkey ranch. Dem is all mah own chilluns, dey is.”
* * *
An Irishman obtained leave from work to attend a wedding. He returned with two black eyes.
The foreman asked him what had happened.
“When I got there,” replied Pat,” I saw a fellow all dressed up like a peacock. ‘An’ who are you?' says I. ‘I'm the best man,’ says he; an' begorra, he was, too!”
* * *
“Well,” remarked a married man, after examining his friend's new flat. “I wish I could afford a place like this.”
“Yes,” said his friend, “you married men may have better halves, but we bachelors usually have better quarters.”
* * *
Second: “Go in and finish him this time.”
Fighter: “I can't see him.”
Second: “Then hit him from memory.”
Variety in Breif
The bird life of New Zealand, while not very extensive, contains at the same time some very interesting species that are both unique and striking in appearance. One specimen remains in my mind's eye very vividly after the lapse of years. My recollections leap back to the fateful year of 1916 when as one of many “Pieces of wreckage” out of the “Somme” maelstrom I was receiving welcome relief in the “Tintown” section of the New Zealand General Hospital at Brockenhurst. Those “Diggers” who remember Sister Pengelly's ward will recollect “Frank,” the orderly, and his able and kindly attention. Two beds away from my own was that of a full-blooded Maori “Pioneer” from Awanui in the north, known as Graham. He was a fine specimen of his race, and stoical, but owing to a serious wound in the knee he was, when in pain, very moody. Frank and he were good “cobbers,” but as the old orderly with his long lank frame, long nose, rather retreating chin, and mop of grizzly hair brushed back, hurried up and down on his duties, the Maori boy, watching the life of the ward so keenly, was evidently reminded of something familiar in the thrust forward head and somewhat peculiar gait of the old man. “Frank,” he would call, and as often the answer was “Just a minute now,” he would grow impatient, and as the orderly passed again intent on service to another, a low voice would say, “Pukeko,” “Pukeko.” Always this got under Frank's skin a little, and he would protest, “That's not fair now Graham,” but it usually brought him to the Maori's side.
Years passed, and in South Otago I caught my first glimpse of the pretty blue body, long neck, thrust forward bill, and long high-stepping red legs of this interesting bird, and like a flash came back the hospital ward and the petulant Maori voice with its “Pukeko,” “Pukeko.”
—“Tenbar.”
* * *
A story used to be told in Patea of a Maori who, before setting out on a long, dangerous journey, buried a very valuable mere on his land, saying that if he died, his spirit would return to it and help guard his family and tribal fires. He did die, and the mere reposed in its hiding place so far as Maoris were concerned. But Maori curios were bringing high prices in overseas markets, and before long a pakeha raided the place and took the sacred relic. It disappeared from his house soon after, and, guessing that some member of the dead man's family had taken it, either to avoid the wrath of the deceased or to retain the mana the mere carried with it, he returned to the spot and dug. Sure enough, there it was. Again he took it, and was preparing to send it to Wellington for sale or sending overseas when it disappeared again. A third time he went to dig, taking care it was a dark night. As he began to dig, a well-known Tohunga stepped into view and said in effect, “I think maybe better you not dig this place, or something bad happen you. This place very strong tapu.” He took the hint, as the Maoris at that time were often ready to take the law into their own hands.—C. McB.
* * *
At some time or another each one of us is confronted by the difficulty of choosing a suitable gift for a relative or friend. There are so many occasions upon which this problem arises, Christmas perhaps being the climax, although it crops up at such events as weddings, birthdays, leaves-takings, also at Easter, Mother's Day, Father's Day, and so on.
I suggest that a very welcome present—suitable for all seasons—would take the form of railway travel stamps to the value of whatever sum the giver desires to spend. As the prices range from 1/-, 2/-, 2/6 to 5/-, and any number can be purchased, there is no limit to the outlay, and being interest-bearing gives an added value.
Now that the forty-hour week has placed opportunities for taking trips within the reach of more and more New Zealanders, travel stamps must be the ideal modern gift in the Dominion.
—“Pohutu.”
* * *
Between 1870 and 1880 a Maori chief at Waitara, New Plymouth, was undertaking the long journey to Auckland, walking overland. Before leaving, he consigned all his European wealth—two pickle-bottles of sovereigns—to the usual Maori hiding place—the ground.
He died on the journey and the coins became tapu—no Maori would touch them. This did not prevent them from telling about it to pakeha friends who were not worried about tapu. Several stories are told of efforts to locate the money, two trees on the bluff above the Mokau river serving as a guide, but all tell of failure. The Maoris were not surprised, claiming that the spirit of the owner prevented the marauders from recognising the money when they saw it. No doubt local gossip still speaks of the hiding place, but I cannot say. I have not been back there for thirty years.—Katiti.