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The New Zealand Railways Magazine is on sale through the principal booksellers, or may be obtained post-free for 6/- per annum.
Employees of the Railway Department are invited to forward news items or articles bearing on railway affairs. The aim of contributors should be to supply interesting topical material tending generally towards the betterment of the service.
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I hereby certify that the publisher's lists and other records disclose that the circulation of the “New Zealand Railways Magazine” has not been less than 23,000 copies each issue since August, 1937.
Controller and Auditor-General.
2/12/37.
The noble mitre towers 5,560 ft. (more than a mile above the water). Here in the Ice Age, many thousands of years ago, huge glaciers had their work and wild play. The great white companies battled against immense masses of hard rock, and made them take strange forms—some superbly beautiful, some fantastic.
(Rly. Publicity photo.)
In the New Year Honours for 1938 the General Manager of the New Zealand Railways was created a Companion of the Order of St. Michael and St. George. This distinction, conferred upon the Permanent Head of the Railway Department, must be particularly pleasing to railwaymen throughout the country, not especially on account of the individual who happens to be General Manager for the time being, but as an indication of the importance placed by the Government upon the work of the Railways, an acknowledgment of the good work done by the members composing this largest Department of State, and a recognition of the great part the Railways play and are destined to play, not only within the Dominion, but also in the affairs of the Empire.
New Zealand has been well named the Empire's farm, a title earned by right of pre-eminence in the production of those things that make for healthy and comfortable living—meat and wool, butter and cheese, fruit and honey.
If prizes were given for the countries of the British Commonwealth of Nations who supplied the Homeland with the greatest quantities of farm products, New Zealand last year would have gained first prize for butter, first prize for cheese, first prize for meat, and second prize for wool.
New Zealand's place in the affairs of Empire is thus well and truly established, and year by year her sons and daughters figure in the lists of those whom it pleases the King to honour.
The historian of the present day, and still more the historian of the future, must pay tribute to the leading part played by the national railway system in enabling this New Zealand record of primary production to be achieved, for the Railways have always been regarded as a national developmental agency and have been operated with this consideration always in view.
That the work done by the men of the Railways, their loyalty and their dependability through all the crises of recent years, should have culminated in this signal acknowledgment bestowed by Royalty upon the Permanent Head of the Department is both fitting and pleasing. It has been hailed as such by the Press of the Dominion, by leading public bodies and organisations, and by the staff of the Department, who have joined together in hearty congratulations to the General Manager of Railways, Mr. G. H. Mackley, C.M.G.
The latest traffic returns to hand show that the Railways have had an exceptionally busy Christmas and New Year period, and it is very pleasing to know that the business in every part of the Dominion was handled throughout the holiday season in a manner that, in the main, commended itself to our patrons.
Before Christmas I sent a personal message to all members of the operating staff asking for their co-operation in attending with care and personal interest to the requirements of travellers. In this respect, also, I am pleased to say that members of the staff as a whole have merited the frequently expressed appreciation of the services they have been able to render to the Department's customers.
I desire also in this message to express my personal sense of loss at the sudden and quite unexpected passing of our late Supervising Artist, Mr. Stanley Davis, an officer whose skilled artistry has been of very great value to the Department in the fifteen years he was with us.
Besides the varied and attractive commercial work he planned and supervised, he will always be remembered for the delightful work he did in decorating the Children's Playrooms and Nursery at Wellington Station, work which will continue to thrill with delight not only the children but also the parents and guardians who have occasion to make use of this modern aid in train travel.
General Manager.
(Concluded).
In the last issue of the “New Zealand Railways Magazine,” I endeavoured to give an account of Rutherford's earlier life in New Zealand, including the time immediately prior to his leaving for England, when he was engaged at Canterbury College on experimentation with a magnetic detector for radio waves.
In the following article, at the risk of being somewhat technical, I would like to summarise some of his achievements. I wish to bring home to his fellow countrymen two things—firstly, that he was a true son of New Zealand, nurtured here and of her pioneer stock, and secondly, that he was a world-famous man for, alas, too often a prophet is not without honour save in his own country.
On his arrival at Cambridge, he spent the first few months in endeavours to increase the sensitiveness of his radio detector, but he had not worked there more than a few weeks before he had convinced the head of the Cavendish Laboratory, Sir J. J. Thomson, that he was a student of quite exceptional ability and energy. This trait of Rutherford's, it is interesting to relate, gave rise to the story that there was a “young rabbit from New Zealand who burrows very deep.” At that time Rutherford held the record for long distance wireless in England, having detected at the laboratory signals which came from the observatory two miles away. However, a remarkable combination of circumstances caused him to change his line of work. Sir J. J. Thomson and his fellow workers had for ten years been engaged on the problems associated with the passage of electricity through gases which they had found to occur in a partially evacuated chamber. The modern Neon light shop signs are an example of this. These experiments had indicated that electricity was transferred through such gases mainly by particles termed electrons, generated within the chamber, and which appeared to be less than 1/1800 part by weight of the elementary atoms or ultimate particles of the gases concerned. In 1895, just as Rutherford had gone up to Cambridge, Rontgen had made the astounding observation that when electricity was passed at high voltage, through such a chamber, with a high degree of vacuum, invisible rays were given off. These rays had the power of passing through the glass walls of the chamber, and also through outside opaque objects and affected, too, a photographic plate. These rays, called Rontgen rays, or X rays, were found to have other interesting properties in that they made the outside air electrically conducting or “ionised.” Rutherford's attention was being attracted to this astonishing phenomenon and he commenced work on it. Sir J. J. Thomson describes this work as follows:—
“Rutherford devised very ingenious methods for measuring various fundamental quantities connected with this subject, and obtained very valuable results which helped to make the subject ‘metrical,’ whereas before it had only been descriptive.”
During 1896, while Rutherford was gaining the inspiration and enthusiasm of a pioneer in this subject, Becquerel, in France, made a further remarkable and allied discovery, namely, that salts of the metal uranium gave out radiations which, like Rontgen rays, could penetrate opaque bodies and affect a photographic plate. This was the start of the subject of “radio-activity,” and Rutherford immediately applied the knowledge and technique of his work on ionisation produced by X rays to the investigation of the radiations from uranium and from other radio-active bodies subsequently discovered. These latter included radium discovered by Pierre and MMe. Curie, thorium, actinium, and a host of other substances produced, as Rutherford showed later, by the natural disintegration of these parent elements.
By 1898, Rutherford had made a careful study of the radiations from radio active bodies. He found that there were three types of radiation which he called alpha, beta and gamma rays, names which still persist. The alpha rays or alpha particles he showed to be atoms of the second lightest known element, helium, expelled with speeds of the order of 12,000 miles per second. The beta rays or beta particles he showed to be particles of negative electricity, i.e., electrons, ejected from the parent atom with colossal speeds of up to 180,000 miles per second. The gamma rays were found to be electro-magnetic vibrations similar to light and to the wireless waves of Rutherford's early experiments, only of a very much higher frequency, higher even than that of X rays (100,000,000,000,000 megacycles per second, a figure which will be appreciated by radio enthusiasts). In subsequent work, a study of each of these types of radiation led him to the unfolding of many of Nature's secrets over wide fields, to give us a vivid, realistic and wonderful picture of the structure of atoms, i.e., the fundamental chemical units out of which all kinds of matter are built up. Well we may pause here to wonder that one man in a single lifetime can have accomplished so much.
Rutherford's work during the three years 1895–98 at Cambridge attracted world-wide attention and it is not surprising that, although so young, he was offered a research professorship at McGill University, Montreal. Rutherford accepted this post mainly on account of the laboratory facilities available, through the munificence of Sir
At McGill, although at first without the association of those with direct knowledge of his subject, he quickly settled down to work and attracted to himself many co-workers, for he was far from being a recluse. He “radiated” enthusiasm, interest, and will to co-operate.
For four years, he worked night and day from experiment to experiment, investigating the nature of the radiations from radio-active bodies and the manner in which the substances disintegrated. He discovered, for instance that thorium, the substance from which gas mantles are made, gave off a gas which he called thorium emanation, which was itself radio-active, but whose activity decayed with time according to a definite law falling to half value in about one minute. Contemporaneously, he noticed that substances exposed to this emanation had deposited upon them a new substance which was itself radio-active, decaying to a half value in about eleven hours. The concentration of this new active substance could be increased by deposition on a negatively charged electrode; also he found that it was soluble in certain solutions and could be dissipated or volatilized by heat. With radium he found there was produced an emanation of a half-period of 3.8 days; this emanation (radon) decayed according to a similar law as the thorium emanation, but gave rise to an active deposit which decayed to half value in a few minutes.
At this stage Professor Soddy joined forces with him and together they investigated the chemical properties of these various radio-active substances and ultimately, in 1902, after a review of all the known experimental facts they put forth the bold and startling theory known as the Disintegration Theory. According to this theory atoms were no longer regarded as permanent, everlasting, and indivisible. Radio-active elements disintegrated spontaneously. They broke up according to the laws of chance independently of age or their physical or chemical state or surroundings. The average mortality rate was constant for any one radio-active substance, but varied widely from one type of atom to another. In each case the disintegration took place with liberation of a large amount of energy which showed itself either by the ejection of an alpha particle or a beta particle.
In many cases, the ejection of a beta particle was accomplished by the liberation of further energy in the form of a gamma ray.
At this stage, we may pause to review briefly the history of the conception of the atom. Democritus first put forward the idea of atoms. These he considered as the final stage in the process of breaking down a piece of any substance into smaller and smaller pieces. The atom of Democritus was more in the nature of a general concept than a definite atomic model, and could not be supposed to possess any intrinsic properties.
Over a century ago, however, Dalton, the Father of Modern Chemistry, gave the atom a more specific reality when he showed that for any particular chemical element the atom was a fundamental unit, whose relative mass could be derived with certainty, from the proportions in which it entered into combination with atoms of other elements to form compounds. Subsequently, the chemical “equivalents” of the atoms were ascertained and rough approximations made as to their physical properties such as size, absolute mass and electric charge. Rutherford, from his studies of radio-activity, gave entirely new horizons to the atomic world. Atoms were no longer indestructible and indivisible, but could be broken apart and the parts separated. As we shall see later, he went further and, by counting atomic particles one by one he was able to show how the various parts of the atom were placed relatively one to the other.
Rly. Publicity photo.)
Nelson College, South Island, New Zealand, where Lord Rutherford won a University Entrance Scholarship in 1889.
At Manchester, he gathered around him a large team of workers, representative of over a dozen nationalities. Apart from details of discovery too numerous to mention, he made during this period three epoch-making advances. Firstly, he developed a method of counting helium atoms, one by one, to obtain an accurate estimation of the fundamental constants of the atoms and of electricity; secondly, he put forward, in 1911, as a result of experiment, a theory and picture of the constitution of the atom, beautiful in its simplicity. He pictured the atom as a universe in ultra-miniature; a replica
This same method of experiment led to the third great discovery of this period which was, in effect, the accomplishment of the dream of the alchemists of old, the transmutation of matter. Under certain circumstances of a direct hit on the nucleus of the atom against which this atomic artillery of alpha particles was directed, the atoms could be made to disintegrate artificially with the production of new types of atoms. Thus, for example, it was found that under certain circumstances when firing alpha particles into nitrogen gas, an original nitrogen atom was transformed into an oxygen atom together with a hydrogen nucleus. The author of this article may perhaps be forgiven in mentioning that he was instrumental in making the initial experiments leading to both the discoveries just mentioned. Rutherford's genius was required, however, for their full meaning and interpretation.
The Great War intervened to interrupt this work and the laboratory was deserted. Rutherford himself was summoned to the national war councils in connection with scientific matters, mainly concerned with submarine detection. He also visited the United States to find out what they were doing in this matter and to tell them what we were doing in Britain.
After the War, in 1919, he was called to the Professorship and head of the famous Cavendish Laboratory at Cambridge, vacated by his old chief, Sir J. J. Thomson, and he began to pursue with characteristic energy the paths marked out by his great discoveries at Manchester. The experiments bearing on atomic structure were his main interest, and he and his co-workers elaborated the methods and results of disintegration and transformation of atoms by means under human control. The year 1932 saw the discovering in his laboratory of a new particle, the neutron, the properties of which had been anticipated by Rutherford for many years.
His life, all too short, was neither incomplete in its entity or attainment, yet as Sir J. J. Thomson said: “His death just on the eve of his having in the new High-Tension Laboratory means of research far more powerful than those with which he had already obtained results of profound importance is, I think, one of the greatest tragedies in the history of Science.”
For the last seven years of his life, he was Chairman of the British Council of Scientific and Industrial Research. It was an article of faith with him that the future of Great Britain depended on the effective use of Science by Industry. “It was this faith,” states Sir Frank Smith, “which induced him, a man of the highest attainment in the field of pure research, to devote himself as he did unreservedly, to the work. The development of the industrial research association movement, now taking place, owes much to his foresight, sympathy and advocacy.”
Rly. Publicity photo.)
Portion of the well-equipped and up-to-date Reference Library attached to the General Manager's Department, New Zealand Railways, Wellington. The Library carries a full range of modern works and periodicals dealing with every phase of railway operation.
I have endeavoured to enumerate some of his achievements. I have not emphasised, as indeed he did not himself, all the honours bestowed on him. He was a Nobel Laureate, he received almost countless honours from all countries. He was created Lord Rutherford of Nelson and his heraldic arms bear witness to his New Zealand origin and subtly characterise some of his life work. When informed of his Honour in 1931, he despatched the following characteristic cable to his mother in New Zealand: “Now Lord Rutherford. Honour more yours than mine.” He honoured his father and his mother in the far away antipodes and every two weeks he found time to write in his own hand a letter to his aged mother describing the domestic happenings, descriptions of events, functions and journeyings, in such a way as to give her delight.
I cannot adequately express his personal qualities. He knew his worth, but he always remained inately modest, simple and without pose or pretense. He was loved, with deep affection, by his fellow workers and students and he took constant care of them. He was a shrewd judge of character, forceful in statement and action, clear and honest of purpose, noble and generous. There has never been a man in whom burning genius was so closely associated with kindly common sense, general sociability and the highest human qualities. Truly his was a life service to his fellow men and to the ideals of truth.
Mr. G. H. Mackley, C.M.G.,
General Manager, New Zealand Railways.
In an editorial reference to the New Year Honours, the “Southland Times” makes the following comment on the honour of C.M.G. conferred upon Mr. G. H. Mackley: “Mr. G. H. Mackley stands at the head of those civil servants who have received recognition: but the nature of his task as General Manager of the New Zealand Railways places him in a special category. It is generally known that Mr. Mackley has entered into his work with unusual energy, and an insight into the problems of an essential service which is also the largest single business undertaking in the country. His new honour is a fitting recognition of his work in an exacting task, and of personal qualities which have won universal respect.”
Mr. Stanley Davis, Supervising Artist of the New Zealand Railways Outdoor Advertising Branch, died suddenly on 10th January at Tauranga, where he was on holiday. His brilliant life ended in mid-career, for he was only in his forty-sixth year.
He was born in Gloucester, England. After some years of zealous study of art in London he completed his training in Paris. After active service in the Great War, he came to New Zealand, and was engaged by the Railways Advertising Branch in 1922. Here he put a new original impress on commercial art, and quickly won his way to the front. His bold, striking treatment of many subjects has been highly praised by well-qualified critics of the British Empire and America. His designs have also been importantly helpful in successful campaigns of the Railways Publicity Branch.
* * *
Stanley Davis rests on the hill of Taita, in the peaceful green valley of the Hutt River, where he wished to be when the time came for the final farewell. A pohutukawa tree will rise as a living monument by his grave, but his best memorials are his friends, for he built himself into their hearts. The sudden ending of a bright life left them with more than a sense of loss; rather with a feeling of grievance against the scheme of things where “hearts as dry as summer dust burn to the socket.”
Never have I seen a more heart-touching group of grief than the young comrades (who were pall-bearers) as they stood with bowed heads by the open grave. It was the deep sorrow of youth at parting from a loved one, whose soulful personality had grown in their hearts as a flower in a favourable garden. They were as stricken as branches wrenched from a tree.
A chant came from one of Stanley's well-loved “little people,” a lark high up in the sunny blue sky, a salute of song while the clergyman spoke the last words of farewell.
Stanley Davis was a real artist in the widest and deepest sense of that much-misused word, art. He had a power of expression and interpretation far beyond the ordinary range of skilled technique with pen, pencil or brush. He had a sense of the eternal principles of art which enriches life. He had the right insight and inspired outlook. He could see into the heart of things.
His touch of pen or brush had strength and sureness—quickness with quality. To see him at a task was to see a master craftsman, easily able to achieve his purpose. Yet he was very modest and sensitive. He could be troubled by stupid blurts of critics, very limited in understanding and very clouded in vision. To him one could well apply the couplet of wise old Dr. Johnson:
Fate never wounds more deep the generous heart
Than when a blockhead's malice points the dart.
To New Zealanders Stanley Davis is best known by his posters, some of which are worthy of the walls of any art gallery in any country, but one of his main specialties was portrait-painting. A remarkable specimen of his skill is the big oil-painting of the official group and some of the public at the opening of the electrified Lyttelton—Christchurch railway.
Stanley Davis yearned to see the world happy. He had the Wordsworthian ideal of “joy in widest commonalty spread.” His was not a vague aspiration, not a dreamy hoping for better things. His quick, agile mind had constructive thoughts for improving the average standard of living.
One can truly say of him: “Once met, always met.” He had a radiant personality which left a good impress even on a casual acquaintance. I have seen him in moods which reminded me of Wordsworth's lines:—
The body that was called Stanley Davis stays on the Taita hill, but the spirit of Stanley lives on with his friends.
Here is the tribute of Mr. G. H. Mackley, General Manager of Railways:—
“In the untimely death of Stanley Davis, the Railways Department has lost an officer who was as faithful as he was efficient. Indeed, the passing of such a gifted artist is a loss to the whole country. He was remarkable for his keen cheerful zest in his tasks. He never looked upon his daily round of duty as one of mere routine. He had an untiring eagerness to put distinctiveness into ordinary things. He never swerved from his conscientious spirit of service. Truly he was a man who lived for his work. I feel that my deep regret at his death is shared by the whole of the railway service. Our heartfelt sympathy is given to Mrs. Davis and relatives.”
Track-side County Boundary Sign, L. & N.E. Railway.
Because of increased costs, and the difficulty of securing materials, certain big development schemes on the Home railways are, for a time, being held up, examples of these schemes being big electrification works and expensive track diversions. The peculiar conditions at present existing, however, are not being allowed to interfere with the main programmes for new equipment prepared by the four group systems. In the immensity of these new equipment programmes we have a most encouraging index to railway prosperity.
Space will not permit our reviewing the current new equipment programmes of each of the Home lines, but we may consider the 1938 new equipment plans of a typical system—the Great Western—as furnishing a clear picture of the general situation. On this progressive railway, direct employment for about 5,000 persons is being given in the Swindon shops, to handle the annual renewals programme. The work includes the replacement of obsolete passenger carriages by those with improved seating, large observation windows, “no draught” ventilation and modern upholstery. Standard types of goods and coal wagons replace those of smaller types, and larger and more powerful locomotives than those being condemned.
The Great Western is building some 381 new passenger carriages, on the principle favoured by the company for some years. They all have massive steel underframes, and are entirely encased in steel, with a timber framework and a steel roof. Five restaurant and five buffet cars are being built. The buffet cars have a snack bar counter with eight “stand-up rest seats,” and seats for twenty more persons at small tables. Some 3,600 new goods and coal wagons are to be built this year. These include 300 open trucks for container conveyance, and special types for fruit and vegetables. New steam locomotives to be built total 100. Ten will be of the well-known “Castle” class for express passenger working. Approximately 5,340 tons of metal will be required for the locomotive programme, including 4,270 tons of steel, 740 tons of iron castings, and 230 tons of copper.
The handling of enormous quantities of coal traffic is a feature of Home railway activities at this season. The London, Midland & Scottish, and London & North Eastern lines are the biggest coal carriers. On the L. M. & S. as much as 74,000,000 tons of coal, coke and patent fuel is conveyed in a year, and of this vast tonnage no less than 62,000,000 tons actually originates at coal mines in L. M. & S. territory. Immense yards at Willesden and Cricklewood, just outside the metropolis, receive the long coal trains from the mines, with their loads intended for the London markets. In these yards the trains are broken up, and distributed to the suburbs, docks and other destinations. A great deal of the coal handled travels in privately-owned wagons provided by the mines and merchants. The balance is carried in railway-owned trucks, many of which are high capacity vehicles.
Traffic between Britain and Denmark has been steadily growing for some years, and now, through working between London and Copenhagen has been greatly speeded up following the opening of a new Danish railway bridge, ranking as the longest over-water structure of its kind in Europe. Known as the Storstrom Bridge, it links the islands of Falster and Masnedo, and thence, by another bridge, the island of Zealand, upon which is located the Danish capital, Copenhagen. The complete length over the sea from Falster to Zealand is 2¼ miles. The main contractors for the structure were Dorman, Long & Company, of Middlesbrough, the steelwork being fabricated in the
Denmark consists largely of islands, so that railway operation there presents many peculiar problems. Ferry working is, of course, a well-known feature. One interesting development of recent times is the employment of Diesel railcars in high-speed services. The latest type of Diesel equipment to be introduced takes the form of a semi-articulated Diesel-electric railcar train, consisting of two articulated two-coach sets permanently coupled together, and moderately streamlined. The overall length of the train is about 280 feet, and there are seats for 222 passengers. As is now usual, a driving compartment is provided at each end. The train has four 275 b.h.p. Frichs “Scandia” Diesel engines, arranged in pairs with their generators at each end. Each engine and generator can be worked independently of the others, affording useful power variation. All controls are arranged to enable the train to be run in sets of four, eight or twelve cars. The coaches are of all-steel construction, electrically welded, and the electrical and other apparatus built in the underframes is enclosed in sheet steel housings as part of the streamline plan. A kitchen and dining saloon is included in the design, and the trains are capable of as high a speed as 87 m.p.h., while refuelling is only necessary every 1,000 miles.
Attracting the traveller to the rail route is an affair to which attention must constantly be paid. There are many ways of adding to the interest of railway travel. Recently, the London & North Eastern Railway has hit upon the happy idea of erecting conspicuous signs alongside the track, indicating to passengers that they are approaching one of the larger stations, or directing attention to the fact that they are passing some particularly interesting point, such as the summit level of the railway, the boundary between two counties, or the half-way point on some long-distance through run.
The “Coronation” express out of King's Cross is undoubtedly one of the most remarkable passenger trains ever put into service. Actually, the L. & N.E. Company now have three regular streamlined services in operation daily—one in each direction between London and Edinburgh, one in each direction between London and Newcastle-on-Tyne, and one in each direction between London and the twin Yorkshire cities of Leeds and Bradford—making six daily streamlined trains in all. The “Silver Jubilee” express (London-Newcastle) was the first of these streamliners to be introduced, some two and a quarter years ago. Then came the “Coronation” flyer—the Empire's fastest daily passenger train—between King's Cross and Edinburgh; and, in the autumn of last year, the “West Riding Limited” streamliner linking King's Cross with Leeds and Bradford. Consisting of eight specially constructed carriages, built on the articulated principle, the “West Riding Limited” seats 48 first-class and 168 third-class passengers.
Looking on the Human Side of the Glamour.
It comes with the dawn, and brings jungle sounds into the sleeping town, a 500-ton circus train of sixty-seven ordinary carriage lengths, eighty-seven persons and a freight of wild animals. Mild burgesses turn over in bed and go up tropic rivers while the leopards, tigers, bears and baboons of their dream adventures pass beyond their natural latitudes into the local railway station two blocks away.
The dew is still damp on the rails and the folk of the small town yawn towards another day, hardly conscious yet of the dim thoughts or remembrances which are soon to tremble in staid minds and grow in the sunlight, until, when the dew falls again, they will come back with the full force of an old marvel renewed. In the summer night the stars will look down on the shadows of trapeze artists swinging up on the canvas walls. Death defying acts will be a moving silhouette against the tent roof, and under the big top there will be an intimate refreshment of the wonder that has lingered on through childhood into manhood.
The spell which brings young and old along the station yard fence in the early morning to watch the circus train unload is drawn out partly by the shadowy remembrance of such nights, and in part it is born of our own longings and dream fantasies. Our eyes are touched with it until even the decent homely domesticity of the wandering community of the circus is lustred into something strange.
For this train transforms the morning activity of the station, and particularly of the small town station, giving it the familiar unreality of a tale that is read and re-read and still fascinates. There are Indian pictures in the mind when the harnessed elephants curl their trunks about the railside cocksfoot. The immeasurable haulage power of the elephant competes with the train itself, like ancient tractors that cannot be superseded.
The town's main street stirs too, but with a furtive envy for the adventure it has not the courage to take.
It is easy to write thus of the romance of the circus, for the circus fosters the spangled thought. It is harder to make the pen put down the bald facts of the organisation within the station yard.
The cooks have a painted box of a kitchen to get breakfast ready for sixty men by eight o'clock, and while they work there is a chain of awakenings.
The agent calls the foreman who sleeps only, he says, on Sundays and Christmas days. The stud groom collects his staff of men to unload the horses—those horses which are trained even to parade formation when they go up for a drink to the town water trough, and the elephant keeper and the transport foreman and their men harness the elephants and unload the heavy vehicles.
The town agent and the foreman inspect the location—often a difficulty there, to get a well-drained paddock—and by nine o'clock the tents are measured out and the erection of the camp begins. That is a three or four hours’ job, according to the weather.
But who thinks of this? The elephant looks too large, and little stories, simple and vaguely familiar, run from lip to lip.
I heard the stories again in a sunny little place on the edge of the Canterbury plains. The town is sheltered by a half circle of hills and has made soft its skirts with English oaks. The branch line into the town curves round in a half-circle too, on a slight gradient before it ends under oaks, and to compass this bend the circus train had to be broken into four “bites.” It took an hour to get it placed, but then it rested happily, almost idyllicly in the morning shadows of the trees.
While on the one side of the train load of adventure the elephants and animal cages drew the crowd, on the other side a domestic routine began to creep out. The arrangements of the train are designed as near as may be for the comforts of a home and touched with the minute signs of domestic life. Although the sixty men of the labour staff are fed in a separate cookshop (the train carries two kitchens, one for the men and one for the Wirth family) the artists have their own individual primus stoves and provide for themselves. And it is remarkable what excellent meals are cooked on these small stoves. For behind the curtained windows family life is ordered with a pride
I confess that so firmly has the glamorous fantasy of circus life seemed a thing apart that the twist in perspective made it strange that people who dare so greatly to give us a moment's thrill should live just as you and I do in humdrum hours.
After breakfast a trapeze artist, modest, almost shy, “Straight from
She was not one of the regular circus troop, but a vaudeville artist, specially engaged. When I asked her if the films had limited the opportunities in vaudeville, she said with a soft assurance in her pleasant English voice, “Oh. Not our act.” Not their act; it was true. And because the morning was lovely and it was friendly scrubbing at her husband's shirt cuffs in the shade, she asked her little daughter to do a turn for us. The child's stage was the platform first, and again a trolly. She was a performer, too, but she was put to bed every night at 9 o'clock, and allowed to sleep in o'mornings.
Of course circus home life differs from the normal in this, that it is more adaptable. Yet the adjustments to local conditions which have to be made at each station are so casually accepted as the normal that the community which comes for a day and a night, might seem to an onlooker who had escaped the town's thrill, to have lived there for a year.
An Oriental tight rope walker in brogues, plus fours and a blue striped blazer, mends his Japanese umbrella on the shingle by the door of his carriage, not thinking at all how unusual it is to do that there. Between the unused rail tracks a European burns the scraps of paper, for there is never any litter. The circus gives the stationmaster the assurance of clean station yards and a guarantee of indemnity.
This power of adaptability, and the appreciation of small local conveniences extends also to the elephants. Cardie strolls back to the platform and himself turns on the tap for a drink.
Once when this great laconic fellow was travelling on a thirsty, all-day journey between Rockhampton and Brisbane he pulled (they say) one of the safety chains with which the Australian carriages are fitted, and the train stopped. His car drew up beside the engine water tank. Coincidence and opportunity united for Cardie's moral downfall, for his trunk was lifted out of the wagon, over the edge of the tank, and he almost emptied that tank.
In the inquiry into the stopping of the train the Australian officials were eventually satisfied that Cardie had actually pulled the safety chain with criminal forethought to get the drink. And they who tell the story let it go at that. Cardie has a thick hide and apparently he bore no grudge.
But the elephant does remember. A practical joking seaman on the Hobart-Bluff run scooped out an apple, filled it with pepper and gave it to Cardie. The man had the laugh then, but when Cardie was coming back to New Zealand again on the same ship, he recognised the seaman, picked him up and threw him down the hold.
The small boys who run and gape as the elephant does an engine's job with a string of trucks, hush each other to solve the mystery of the keeper's elephant language. But his “bulumphs” and “mollups” are not what they were.
In Wirth's circus the legend of the language arose thus. Years ago the head elephant keeper of that period was a man who had actually spent considerable time in India and could speak Hindustani, in which language Toby and the others were trained. The other keepers copied him, but the commands were handed down in corrupted form. Something like “fidjut” means back, “doll” is push, and “mile” means come on. “Mile” developed into “mile up,” and from that it fell to “mollup.” But sometimes you will hear English unashamed.
This Indian captain, as he called himself (they sometimes suffer a sea change) fell under the eye of the police in a minor thing, the too frequent lifting of an elbow or some such thing. But when they tried to arrest him he sat down between the elephant's legs.
“Come on and get me, then,” he shouted. “Come on!”
But when the police began to come on the keeper murmured something to Toby which made the elephant wave his trunk so threateningly that the law was discomforted and its purposes defeated.
Is it not to catch these little marvels and to enlarge the least that is unusual into a free show, that the banker halts his car and calls the land agent across? The grocer leans on his bicycle by the yard fence, and the butcher tucks his apron into his waist and keeps some housewife waiting for her morning joint. The children are as thick as ants.
The little town which stirs unusually in its summer greenness has heard a lion roar where once the stationmaster's cow was wont to graze. In the station reserve the dog daisies are white in the grass about the tents. The wild animal cages are pushed into the menagerie, and the big top catches the breeze as it is hauled upwards.
Wirths have a couple of performing tigers which were born of jungle-bred
In the first year of the Great War six lion cubs, emblematic of the great effort, were born near Cambridge. But nature makes provision for the mother to feed only four. Two of them were, therefore, fostered on to a bull bitch.
They had been parted for two years when the bitch rejoined the circus, and a scene of excited mutual recognition took place. Naturally she was not put in with them again. But one of the circus staff with thirty-five years of the wonders of the show behind him, declared almost scripturally, that if she had been the lions would have lain down with the dog—and the dog alive.
Miss Doris Wirth tells a little story, too, which reveals the affection in which the kiddies were held by an old lion tamer, and this sentimental touch is quite in the old tradition. Its setting is Herterton, in North Queensland, where the peanuts grow. An hotel keeper there received the following note:
“Consigned to Mr.—one female child, aged twelve years, with two £1 notes and one pony. Will Mr.—kindly feed and stable the horse, pay for child's entrance to the circus, give her bed and breakfast, keeping the change out of the £2 for expenses, and return child and pony to her grateful parent next morning.”
The lion tamer had probably talked with the little girl or else he had a soft heart for the thousands of children whose eyes had grown round with his bravery, for he cajoled the hotel keeper into giving up that letter to him, and until he died he could never be persuaded to part with it.
The circus dares more than physical risks. It is an uncertain financial venture, and the business man who thinks of the door takings with a vagrant envy can go back to his ledger contented. There are good years, but there are also bad ones. If a five-year period yields a five per cent. profit, that is lucky.
The flap of the circus tent is rolled up after the show and the feet of mild burgesses swish home through the long grass of the paddock, home to peaceful dreams again. But sixty men are already reloading gear on to the trucks by torchlight. There are little stabs of flashlight in the dark and the prosaic magic of the refolding of the tents. But strip it of glamour and consider the cost. One expense item alone runs to four figures.
In the dark the 500-ton train is packed up again—sixty-seven ordinary carriage lengths, eighty-seven passengers, besides wild animals. With the dawn it is gone.
Snuff-taking is coming into vogue again in London's smartest circles, according to a special correspondent. Gold snuff-boxes, the lids sometimes encrusted with gems, are often seen at society functions, it seems, members of both sexes indulging in the new-old habit. West End tobacconists consider this is just a passing craze and will soon be forgotten. Snuffing, a hundred years ago, or more, was universal. But there were comparatively few smokers then. To-day it takes countless thousands of tons of tobacco every year to keep the world's pipe alight—to say nothing about cigarettes. Here in New Zealand the brands credited with the largest sales are the “toasted” ones, Cut Plug No. 10 (Bullshead), Navy Cut No. 3 (Bulldog), Cavendish, Riverhead Gold and Desert Gold. The first three are the choicest of all pipe tobaccos; the other two make cigarettes of rare fragrance and most delicious aroma. The purity of all these famous blends is one of their outstanding merits. Toasting it is that rids them of most of their nicotine. They're as safe as they're enjoyable.*
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Peita Kotuku.
(From a photograph by the author at Taringamutu, 1921.)
Of all the “human documents” I have met in the course of history-gathering — not so-called research in libraries—there was none that yielded me a greater reward for patient enquiry than a certain sturdy old Hauhau by the name of Peita Kotuku. He was a man who helped to make history. A great English historian, in writing of Garibaldi's war, said that human documents have a value that written or printed records do not possess, because you can cross-examine them. How true and important this was I proved again and again in taking evidence, while there was yet time, from men of both races who were prominent figures in the most adventurous and momentous period of our history.
Peita Kotuku was a man of nearly eighty when I first met him, at Muru-para, on the Rangitaiki River; it was in “Tangiharuru,” the carved meeting-house of the Ngati-Manawa tribe, his wife's people. It was a crowded meeting, and there was little opportunity of extracting a story from the man whom the other elders present described as Te Kooti's chief scout. Later on, in 1921, I had several long talks with him in a more secluded kainga, near his birthplace on the Taringamutu River, in the King Country. He was the last survivor of the exiled Maori fighting men, prisoners of war, who escaped from Chatham Island in the captured schooner Rifleman. The veteran scout and carbineer was a man of rather small and compact and wiry frame; of middle height, with small, well-cut features and a short sparse white beard. He was not unlike his famous chief, Te Kooti, as I remembered him in the late 'Eighties. His very keen, quick-roving eyes were some index to his character. He bore the reputation among his countrymen of having been one of Te Kooti's best shots. He followed his chief during nearly two years of the most arduous bush warfare, and fought in scores of engagements and skirmishes. But long before that he was on the war path, for he fought in Taranaki in 1860, and at Orakau pa in 1864. I give Peita's story here in a connected narrative; we returned to this passage and that frequently to amplify certain points.
“I was born,” said Peita, “up yonder at Petania, near the rapids of the Taringamutu. My tribes are Ngati-Maniapoto, of this district, and Patu-heuheu, my mother's tribe on the border of the Urewera Country. I was born a little before the time of the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi, so I am a very old man now; I have outlived all my old comrades and relatives. My first fighting expedition was to the Taranaki war. I joined a war-party of Ngati-Maniapoto. We all gathered at the Mokau River, and, going down to the heads in canoes, we marched along the coast to the Waitara, where the first Taranaki war had just begun. We met the British soldiers in battle at Wai-kotero and we defeated them there. We pursued them into a swamp and there we killed many; some of them were bogged up to their armpits and could not travel through the marsh like us, who wore little clothing. The tomahawk was the principal weapon used by the Maoris in this combat in the swamp. I was armed with a hakimana, a single-barrel percussion-cap shot-gun.”
(This was the engagement better known as Puke-ta-kauere, on June 27th, 1860, in which the 40th Regiment was badly cut up in the swampy ground below the Maori pa. The British casualties were 29 killed and 33 wounded.)
“When our Ngati-Maniapoto war party returned from Taranaki, I went to the territory of the Patu-heuheu and Ngati-Whare, on the Rangitaiki. These were my mother's and my wife's people, and I lived there at Tauaroa (later Troutbeck's sheep station) on the Urewera border, until I joined the main Urewera war-party formed to assist the Waikato Kingites. I and seven other men of the Patu-heuheu and Ngati-Whare tribes joined the Tuhoe (Urewera), and we marched to the Waipa country by way of Waotu and Aratitaha. Two or three women were with our section of the war-party. Rewi Maniapoto (Manga) met us at Aratitaha (where the road to Arapuni now passes over the southern spur of Maunga-tautari) and tried to dissuade us from giving battle, as the pakeha troops had successfully fought their way up to Te Awamutu and Kihikihi. But all our people insisted on the continuance of the war. We therefore built the pa at Orakau; all of us shared in the work—Ngati-Maniapoto, Waikato, Ngati-Raukawa and Ngati-Te-Kohera and Tuhoe. I helped to dig the trenches and build the parapets. We used European spades, from the native village at Orakau. Our food in
pa consisted chiefly of potatoes. The women in the pits within the parapets also ground flour with which they made bread, baking it in the dug-in shelters. They ground the wheat, from the Orakau plantations, in small steel hand-mills.
“The women worked under fire, like the men; some were killed and others wounded in the three days’ battle. Two bullets struck me; they did not penetrate my clothes—shirt and trousers and a pora (rough shaggy flax mat for the shoulders). On numerous occasions in other fights, bullets struck me but glanced off. The firing was continuous day and night. Rewi would have made peace, I believe, but certain of the chiefs of Ngati-Maniapoto, Waikato and Tuhoe would not consent.
“The shells from the big guns killed several of the garrison; one, two, three would fall, killed by the bursting of the shells. I saw one Waikato man cut in two by a shell. Four of our Patu-heuheu people were killed in the fighting; Peita (my mother's brother whose name I took in memory of his death), Te Taniwha, Hohepa, and another. One of our women, Rawinia (Lavinia), belonging chiefly to Ngati-Manawa, was wounded by a shell, which just snipped off the tip of her nose in its flight. She was the wife of Takurua, the young chief of Ngati-Manawa, who fought there; after his death (at Tauaroa) she married Hare-hare, the present chief of Murupara. Piripi te Heuheu, one of our Tuhoe chiefs, was killed outside the pa, near the swamp, when we were making our retreat to the Puniu. We fugitives all gathered at Waotu, on the upper Waikato, and then marched home to Tauaroa, Te Whaiti and Ruatahuna.
“My next battle was at Omarunui, near Napier (in 1866). I became a convert to Pai-marire, the new religion from Taranaki, and joined the Ngati-Hineuru tribe at Te Haroto and Titiokura, on the mountain track between the Rangitaiki and Napier (the present main road). Here I lived for a time in the kainga of Panapa, the prophet of this tribe. It was a small tribe, but fond of war. An armed party of about eighty marched over the ranges to Hawke's Bay; our chiefs were Te Rangihiroa, Kipa, Kingita, Panapa, and Petera Kahuroa; and there also came with us the chief Rangi-tahau, of Taupo. At Omarunui we were attacked by the Napier Militia and volunteers, and after a short fight we were defeated; more than twenty of us were killed, and the rest of us were taken prisoner. Nearly thirty were wounded; the whole of us prisoners, wounded and unwounded, numbered about fifty.
“At the beginning of the fight on the river-bank at Omarunui, I had no gun, but when one of my comrades fell I took his double-barrel gun and his cartridge belt nearly full, and fired at the pakehas advancing to surround us. I expended all my ammunition there. A bullet struck me in the stomach, but its force was strangely stopped by my clothing, and it did not injure me beyond inflicting a heavy blow; it entangled itself in my shirt. Another bullet thudded on my chest just over my heart, but my waistcoat and shirt stopped it from penetrating, or else the angle at which it was fired caused it to glance off. This was at a range of about a hundred yards. I saw Nikora shot in the body; two bullets struck him. A number of us retreated to the hills, but we were surrounded there by the cavalry and were forced to surrender. On the same day a small detachment of our people, Ngati-Hineuru, was cut off in the valley at Petane; twelve were killed and the few survivors were captured. Only one man of all our warriors succeeded in escaping to Te Haroto; his name was Maniapoto. All the rest of us who could walk were marched to Napier, and the wounded were taken to hospital there. Then we were shipped off to Chatham Island in a steamer. Nikora and other wounded men were sent after us when they had recovered in hospital.
“We prisoners of war,” Peita continued, “were kept on Wharekauri (Chatham Island) for two years. We were compelled to work for the Government. Some of us built a large stone house there. We cut the stone and carried it up and placed it in position. The house was used as part of the barracks. For a long time I worked as shepherd for a European sheep-farmer on a distant part of the island, and because of this I was not one of those who assembled for worship after the ritual set up by Te Kooti, who had been shipped down from Turanganui (Gisborne).
“There were many of the Tangata-whenua or original people of Wharekauri, the Mai-oriori, living on the island. They were a strange people as to customs and language and their skins were very dark. When we first went there we could not understand their tongue.
“When the schooner Rifleman came into Whangaroa Bay, Wharekauri, from New Zealand with stores for the prison station (in 1868), I was away on the sheep station inland, and so I did not witness the actual seizure. As soon as the vessel had been captured Te Kooti immediately sent messengers out to bring in all the exiles who were working in various outside places. Then until the vessel was ready to sail, I and a number of others did duty as guards to prevent the Europeans of the principal settlement communicating with those living in other parts of the island, who did not as yet know of the successful rising of the prisoners. When Te Kooti was ready we went on board, and we took a supply of water in casks from the shore. The Rifleman had plenty of stores in the hold, which had been intended for use of the station; there were about twenty tons of flour, biscuit, sugar and other provisions. Our ship of deliverance was a three-masted schooner, painted black; she not only had square topsails on her foremast, besides carrying a large lower squaresail for running, but she had double topsails on the main; for the rest she was fore-and-aft rigged.
“Our voyage to New Zealand after putting back once owing to head winds, occupied four days. As the captain had been seized and left on shore, the mate of the schooner was the navigator. I and several other Maoris were sailormen during the passage, and helped the white crew in setting and trimming sail. There were about two hundred of us on board, men, women and children.
“I witnessed the throwing overboard of one of our people, an elderly man named Te Warihi. He was an elder relation of Te Kooti, but it was on our leader's order that he was cast into the sea. The principal reason for the execution was that Te Warihi had given information to some of the European people about the secret Karakia, or religious worship, practised by Te Kooti and, his mysterious exhortations to the prisoners. The vessel was hindered by head winds on the voyage, and on the third day she was not making any progress. We were tacking frequently. Te Kooti had resolved that Te Warihi must suffer death, and he told the people that he was desirous of taking him to New Zealand and executing him there, but his (Te Kooti's) atua, his god, was not willing that the offender should be taken to the mainland. The schooner, the atua told him, would not reach the shore so long as Te Warihi was kept on board. Therefore, he must be cast into the sea.
“At this time it was late afternoon, and the sun was setting over the windy ocean. I was on deck helping the sailors with the ropes. We saw a great wave, a billow like a mountain, rolling towards us. It would surely overwhelm us when it reached us. It was about as far from the spot where we are sitting to those kakikatea trees on the bank of the Taringamutu [about 300 yards away] when the condemned man was brought up on deck from the hold, where he was sitting with his old wife, and marched aft by Timoti te Kaka. The wave towered up like a mountain range; it looked on the sea-line like Hikurangi mountain yonder [the crest of a range on the north of the Taringamutu]. Te Kaka, pushing Te Warihi to the rail, attempted to lift him over, but he was not strong enough. Then a powerful Maori standing by, a man from the Wairarapa, seized the offender, lifted him over the rail and dropped him into the sea. Te Warihi did not make any outcry, nor did he struggle. He fell into the water and went down like a stone. He did not swim after the ship. And we who were in fear that the great wave sweeping along towards us would roll over us and sink us, saw in that moment that we were saved. The billow subsided and the schooner rode safely on the sea. The sun shone out from the clouds for a few moments before it set. Te Kooti told us we would sight land next morning.
“It was early in the morning that we caught sight of the east coast of New Zealand. There were nine of us on deck at the time—six sailors and three of us Maoris (Rawiri, Turei and myself) who were helping the crew. The wind had come fair after Te Warihi went overboard; it was blowing strongly and the schooner was going along well with all sail set. Many of the Maoris had been making bets in pakeha fashion as to when land would be sighted; some would stake five pounds, some six pounds, some ten pounds. A considerable sum of money had been secured on the Chathams at the time of the rising, and some of the Maoris had received money from New Zealand. The mountains of the North Island were seen just after the sun rose, and there was loud rejoicing among the people.
“The place selected by Te Kooti for our landing was Whare-ongaonga (‘House of the Nettles’), a small cove between Gisborne and the Mahia Peninsula. We unloaded the vessel there and boated some water off to her in the ships’ casks, which had been emptied on our voyage with so many people on board. The white men had their money restored to them. Then they set sail for Wellington, and Te Kooti and all of us marched inland. Te Kooti did not wish to fight, and had he been left in peace he would have remained quietly in the interior. But the Europeans of Poverty Bay endeavoured to intercept us. We fought an engagement with them at Paparatu and defeated them, killing two. The Europeans left their equipage and some arms on the field, and it was there that I obtained my first rifle. We fortified ourselves in a stronghold at Puketapu; and it was from this position in the ranges that we marched out on our expedition against the settlers and Government Maoris of Turanga-nui (Poverty Bay). It was at night (November 8th) that our war-party left Patutahi on the hills above Turanga-nui and attacked the settlements at Pipi-whakao, Makauri, and Matawhero.
“Te Kooti's attacking force (about a hundred men) was divided into several kokiri, or raiding parties, as the settled country on the Poverty Bay flat was approached. I was in a party of about fifty men, led by Petera Kahuroa, of the Ngati-Hineuru tribe. I was armed with a rifle and bayonet. We first attacked the European settlers and the Maoris at Pipi-whakao. The prisoners we took there were all executed by one man, belonging to the Ngati-Kahungunu; he had been appointed to slay the prisoners. He killed them by stabbing them with his fixed bayonet. They had fled as we surrounded them, but were brought back and bayoneted one by one.
“We next attacked the house of Te Piiki [Major Biggs]. Te Rangi-tahau and Nikora were the leaders in this slaying. Volleys were fired into the house, after the door was broken in, and Biggs was shot down and his family also.
(Drawn by A. H. Messenger, from a sketch by the late Captain M. T. Clayton, Auckland).
patu-pounamu, a sharp-edged greenstone club. Te Kaka used a patu-paraoa, a whalebone club. In these expeditions such men were told off specially to slay those taken prisoner. Some used the tomahawk. As for myself, I never liked killing men with the tomahawk; I preferred the gun. After the night and morning of killing, we returned to the high country, and we fortified ourselves at Makaretu, on the Wharekopae River. There was much fighting there.
“At length the Ngati-porou stormed Makaretu, and drove us out of it and killed many. When the assault was made I was in a tent. I hastily filled all my pockets with cartridges, and rushed out, with a rifle slung over my shoulder and another in my hands. I ran to the edge of the cliff; the pa was on the edge of the precipice above the Wharekopae River. The cliff was lofty—it was quite as high as those trees in the field yonder [about 60 feet high]. It was no use attempting to fight then; the fort was in the hands of the enemy. I jumped from the brink of the cliff into a deep pool of the river. As I fled I was fired at. A man named Nama, who was near me was also fired at and was shot and wounded; he was captured and killed afterwards.
“I escaped from the river but many of my comrades were shot in the water or on the banks. I crept into the thick manuka on the other side of the Wharekopae. There I was seen by
“We next gathered in the mountain fort Ngatapa. It was an ancient stronghold of the Maoris, and we fortified it afresh, and occupied it for several weeks. In the defence of this pa I used a rifle. The fall of the fort was due to the fact that the Government Maoris (Ngati-Porou) cut us off from the spring which was our water supply. The stronghold fell because of the lack of food and water.
“When our position became desperate and it was decided to escape to the forest under cover of night, we let ourselves down the cliff in rear of the pa by means of aka or forest vines, cut from the trees just outside the fort. The lowest part of the cliff where I went down on an aka vine was about sixty feet high. I escaped from the bush pursuit made by the Ngati-Porou, but many of our people were captured and shot. One of our men killed by Ngati-Porou was Nikora te Whakaunua, who had been severely wounded.
“We who had escaped from Ngatapa made our way through the forest ranges, pursued for some distance by the Ngati-Porou, and assembled again in the Tuhoe country. We remained for a little while at a pa in the Waimana Valley, and then we made an expedition down into the Whakatane Valley. Te Kooti recruited many men among the Tuhoe, and we laid siege to the Ngati-Pukeko pa Rauporoa, a large entrenchment on the left bank of the Whakatane, about five miles from the mouth of the river. At the same time a detachment of our force attacked the flour-mill and small redoubt at Te Poronu, on the opposite side of the river (about a third of a mile from Rauporoa). From the hills above the road we fired into the redoubt—which was held by a very few people of the Ngati-Pukeko, who were on the Government side—and also at the mill, where Hoani te Wiwi [i.e., “John the Frenchman”—Jean Guerren] worked this water-driven flour-mill for the Ngati-Pukeko. Hoani held the mill for some time, but at last he was shot in the gateway of the redoubt by Eru Peka, the half-caste, Te Kooti's bugler. All the positions of the Ngati-Pukeko were taken by us. Then some of our force attacked Whakatane, and the men of Tuhoe looted and burned the store of the trader [Mr. Simpkins]. The Government force [a column under Major Mair] followed us inland, when we retired from the Whakatane Valley with much loot. From the Whakatane we crossed to the Rangitaiki Valley and there was some fighting at Tauaroa. Thence we marched back into the mountains of the Urewera Country.
“Now Te Kooti led us on a very rapid march right across to the East Coast, by way of Waikaremoana and down the Mohaka Valley. His object was to work vengeance upon the Ngati-Pahauwera tribe, because they had opposed our march inland after we landed at Whare-ongaonga from the schooner. I took part in the fighting at Mohaka. We attacked two pas there; one surrendered to us, the other held out. Many men, women and children were killed after being captured in the undefended open kaingas. It was the Tuhoe chiefly who killed these people, who were imprisoned in a woolshed, because they and Ngati-Pahauwera were ancient enemies. A number of Europeans also were killed. There was a hotel in Mohaka, and this was looted. Three of our men got very drunk on the rum in the hotel, and when they joined in the attack on the pa near the mouth of the river, they behaved so recklessly, heedless of cover that they were shot dead. Te Kooti was very angry at his men getting drunk while they were fighting. But after the return march was commenced, with our looted horses and other plunder, we halted a few miles inland to enjoy the liquor from the hotel.
“After Mohaka, we took shelter in the Urewera country once more, taking some of the looted horses with us (we swam them across a narrow arm of Lake Waikaremoana). Then it was that Te Kooti decided to make for Taupo and the Waikato. We were in the ranges at Heruiwi overlooking the Kaingaroa Plain for some time, and it was near there, scouting down in the valley, that I and a man named Te Makarini, out scouting, killed a European mounted soldier, who, with a companion was riding up the Rangitaiki from Fort Galatea, and took his despatches to Te Kooti. In this affair I was mounted and was armed with a carbine and revolver taken in a previous fight. Besides my pakeha clothing I wore a silver-laced cap; it had been part of the spoil taken at Pipi-whakao in the raid on Poverty Bay.”
Peita went on, when we resumed our talk, to describe the Maoris’ surprise of the cavalry camp at Opepe, when nine out of fourteen troopers were killed (as narrated in a recent story of mine in the “Railways Magazine”). Te Kooti and all his force now were engaged by the Colonial forces in the South Taupo country. Peita fought at Te Ponanga and other skirmishes; then came the sharp action at Te Porere, close to the foot of Tongariro Mountain.
“There at Te Porere,” said Peita, “west of Tongariro and Ngauruhoe Mountains, we built a strong redoubt. It was a massive earthwork—it is standing there to-day—but it had one defect which resulted in our defeat. In making the loopholes (haarahi-pu) in the sod and pumice walls, interlaid with fern, we made them straight (horizontal), and could not depress the muzzles of our guns to fire into the ditch. The Government troops, pakeha and Maori, got up under the parapets and many of them snatched up lumps of pumice and stuffed up the firing apertures with them. We therefore could not see our attackers unless we exposed ourselves over the top of the parapets.
“It was I who shot a pakeha officer as he was leading his men in a charge up to the front of the pa. [This was Captain St. George]. I was just behind the short parapet (parepare) covering the gateway, immediately inside the entrance. My weapon was a breech-loading carbine. When the officer, rushing up ahead of his men, was about twenty paces from the entrance, I fired and shot him dead. It was not Te Kooti who shot him, as some have said. At that stage of the fighting Te Kooti was in a rifle pit in an angle on the left flank of the pa, to the left hand of the kuwaha (gateway) as one looks from within the redoubt. He was sitting there surrounded by a bodyguard of women; he had been wounded in the hand.
“When the Government men rushed the pa, we had to take to the bush which was within a very short distance of our rear and right flank. There we sheltered on the headwaters of the Wanganui River, and at last we marched to the Upper Waikato and across to Patetere. I fought in some of the skirmishing in the Patetere bush, and then marched with Te Kooti's force on his move against Rotorua. It was near Ohinemutu that Tawa [Captain Mair] gave battle to us with his young men of the Arawa, and he followed us up for many miles, and shot Eru Peka and Te Kaka in
(Continued on page 49.)
Another January is gone—peeled off Time's roll to pay the price of Pleasure; a note we barter for a fling of freedom. And what a note! A note that reverberates through the long corridor of the year and titillates the remaining eleven months with mellifluous memory.
January is the rich relation of recollection, the most generous of the genealogical gentry. He rumbles up the stairs with sun in his eye and pleasurable promise on his sun-peeled pan. He pokes his head through the door and chants:
And it's a tin of tongues to a mosquito bite that you did. And though January is now but an echo of a camp-fire croon or an itch on the shoulder blades, there still is much by which to remember him.
He introduced you to the delights of sleeping in a caravan with your feet protruding through the door and the primus stove in the small of your back. He taught you how to strain billy tea through your teeth, what to do when a cow leans against the tent in the stilly watches, how to lose the lilting laugh when you discover that practically all the food is permanently imprisoned because you forgot the tin-opener.
He instructed you in the art of living so close to nature that yards of it dropped into the tea, seeped into the sandwiches and stuck in your hair.
He taught you the freemasonry of the camp where no neighbour minds if you step back into his breakfast or literally drop in to lunch.
January educated you in the ethics of elementary endeavour. He stripped you of the pomps and vanities and vapid vestments of cuticular culture. He encouraged you to wear shorts that were too short and whiskers that were too long.
He shoved you into trains which were going somewhere, anywhere—what did you care? He inspired you with the desire to know your fellow man so that you broke bread and swapped fags and philosophies with perfect strangers in the propitious propinquity of your railway carriage. At January's behest you went a'wooing of nature. You hit the high-spots of humanity and equanimity. You went down to the sea in ships and out on the spree in slips. You took things as they came and if they didn't come you went after them.
And you still have most of the skin off your nose, a face like one of those pink pumpkins which never look quite sober, and lumps on your legs where the mosquitos put the nips in; you have returned reluctantly to the roost and January has retired into some hibernatory hermitage to sleep it off until the gong goes for the next round.
But there's still February. Good old Feb! Not so free and easy as January, perhaps, but somewhat hot stuff all the same. In truth, he makes it so hot that he is unable to keep up the pace for more than twenty-eigght days, with an occasional burst of twenty-nine when he's on the leap.
If January makes the pace in short pants February reduces us to long gasps. He exemplifies the simmer of summer, he is the son and heir of sun and air—a red-hot poppa.
February provides a kind of encore when, soaked in sun and innured to the glorious vicissitudes of the wide open spaces, we spread ourselves all over landscape and seascape whenever we can make a toilscape. We know that if the sandfly bites us he'll get the worst of it. We are no longer a tender target for dancing Diptera as we were when we stepped off the ice in October. Sandflies stagger, moaning away, mosquitos take one look at our hardened hides and fly to the zoo for a nip of hippopotamus. Now we know why there was no mention of sandflies and mosquitos in the Garden of Eden. Adam was too tough, and so are we. Our legs are like a pair of mahogany palm pedestals that have warped in the sun. No longer does the skin on our backs flutter like tattered cigarette papers. We can even wear braces when we have to. The Begum of Bosh has nothing on us for the dark brown outlook. The sun has seeped through our pores, impregnated our interiors and illuminated the refractory recesses of our being until we glow as though we had swallowed an electric light globe.
What a life if the year could be divided into six Januaries and six Februaries with a couple of Christ-masses slipped in! The trouble then, of course, would be to get Santa Claus off the beach to do his song and dance. We can imagine a deputation of The Commercial Travellers’ Association and The Child Welfare Department on the shore with a megaphone striving to get Santa out of the sea where he is playing porpoises with Uncle Neptune and a bunch of mermaids.
Such a seasonal revolution would also influence the sartorial semblances of the man in the street.
Shouldering His Responsibilities
The office boy would be found in the basement boiling the billy for the morning tea and dropping in a few tadpoles for the sake of realism. The cashier would pay out on the roof, up to his neck in a tub of brine. There would be a slump in the clothing trade and tailors would go into the skin and hide business.
The house problem would settle itself because nobody would live in them. All railway trains would be provided with floats, and springboards on the platforms, and would simply keep on going when the supply of land ran out. Passengers would thus be enabled to go in off the deep end without delay. Enginedrivers, of course, would have to hold sea-going tickets and guards would be certificated life savers with a spot of deep-sea diving to their credit.
The main streets would be deeply sanded, with a few rusty anchors strewn about, and the water cart would squirt pedestrians at regular intervals. Policemen would have power to arrest anyone wearing more than 6½ ounces of clothing on the grounds of false pretensions. The board of trade would be a surf board and business would be a picnic if,