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Chapter VIII. Looking for a Congregation.

It is to be hoped and expected that such a good understanding has been established between my readers and myself by this time, that they will not find the general title of these papers unsuitable to the heading of this particular chapter. Indeed, I may truly say, that, looking back upon the many happy memories of my three years life in that lovely and beloved Middle Island, no pleasures stand out more vividly than my evening rides up winding gullies or across low hill-ranges in search of a shepherd’s hut, or a cockatoo’s nest. A peculiar brightness seems to rest on those sun-lit peaks of memory’s landscape; and it is but fitting that it should be so, for other excursions or expeditions used to be undertaken merely for business or pleasure, but these delicious wanderings were in search of scattered dwellings whose lonely page 121 inhabitants—far removed from Church privileges for many a long year past—might be bidden, nay, entreated, to come to us on Sunday afternoons, and attend the Service we held at home weekly.

And here I feel constrained to say a word to those whose eyes may haply rest on my pages, and who may find themselves in the coming years in perhaps the same position as I did a short time ago. A new comer to a new country is sure to be discouraged if he or she (particularly she, I fancy) should attempt to revive or introduce any custom which has been neglected or overlooked. This is especially the case with religious observances. At every turn one is met by disheartening warnings. “Oh, the people here are very different to those in the old country; they would look upon it as impertinence if you suggested they should come to church.” “You will find a few may come just at first, and then when the novelty wears off and they have seen all the pretty things in your drawing room, not a soul will ever come near the place.”

“If even the men don’t say something very free and easy to you when you invite them to your house on Sunday afternoons, you may depend upon it that after two or three weeks you will not know how to keep them in order.”

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Such, and many more, were the discouraging remarks made when I consulted my neighbours about my plan for collecting the shepherds from the surrounding runs, and holding a Church of England Service every Sunday afternoon at our own little homestead. To my mind, the distances seemed the greatest obstacle, as many of the men I wanted to reach lived twenty-five or even thirty miles away, with very rough country between. I had no fear of impertinence, for it is unknown to me, and seldom comes, I fancy, unprovoked; whilst with regard to the novelty wearing off and the men ceasing to attend, that must be left in God’s hands. We could only endeavour to plant the good seed, and trust to Him to give the increase. It was a great comfort to me in those early days that F——, who had been many years in the colony, never joined in the disheartening prophecies I have alluded to. Although as naturally averse to reading aloud before strangers as a man who had lived a solitary life would be sure to be, he promised at once, with a good grace, to read the Evening Service and a sermon afterwards, and thus smoothed one difficulty over directly. His advice to me was precisely what I would fain repeat: “Try, by all means: if you fail you will at least feel you have made the attempt.” May all who try page 123 succeed, as we did! I believe firmly they will, for it is an undertaking on which God’s blessing is sure to rest, and there are no such fertilizing dews as those which fall from heaven. The mists arising from earth are only miasmic vapours after all!

But I fear to linger too long on the end, instead of telling you about the means.

It was May when we were fairly settled in our new home at the head of a hill-encircled valley. With us that month answers to your November, but fogs are unknown in that breezy Middle Island, and my first winter in Canterbury was a beautiful season, heralded in by an exquisite autumn. How crisp the mornings and evenings were, with ever so light a film of hoar frost, making a splendid sparkle on every blade of waving tussock-grass! Then in the middle of the day the delicious warmth of the sun tempted one to linger all day in the open air, and I never wearied of gazing at the strange purple shadows cast by a passing cloud; or up, beyond the floating vapourous wreath, to the heaven of brilliant blue which smiled upon us. And yet, when I come to think of it, I don’t know that I had much time to spare for glancing at either hills or skies, for we were just settling ourselves in a new place, and no one knows what that means unless they have tried it, fifty miles away from page 124 the nearest shop. The yeast alone was a perpetual anxiety to me,—it would not keep beyond a certain time, and had a tendency to explode its confining bottles in the middle of the night, so it became necessary to make it in smaller quantities every ten days or so. If by any chance I forgot to remind my scatter-brained damsels to replenish the yeast bottles, they used up the last drop, and then would come smilingly to me with the remark, “There aint not a drop o’ yeast, about, anywhere, mum.” This entailed flap-jacks, or scones, or soda bread, or some indigestible compound for at least three days, as it was of no use attempting to make proper bread until the yeast had worked. Then the well needed to be deepened, a kitchen garden had to be made, shelter to be provided for the fowls and pigs; a shed to be put up for coals; a thousand things which entailed thought and trouble, had to be done.

It is true these rough jobs were not exactly in my line, but indoors I was just as busy trying to make big things fit into little spaces and vice versa. We could not afford to take things coolly and do a little every day, for at that time of year an hour’s change in the wind might have brought a heavy fall of snow, or a sharp frost, or a; deluge of rain down upon the uncovered and defenceless heads of our live stock. page 125 The poor dear sheep, the source of our income, were after all the least well-cared for creatures on the Station. A well grassed and watered run, with sunny vallies for winter feeding, and green hills for summer pasturage, had been provided by antipodean Nature for them, and to these advantages we only added some twenty or twenty-five miles of wire fencing, and then they were left to themselves, with a couple of shepherds to look after fifteen thousand sheep all the year round.

But yet, busy as we were, we found time to look up a congregation. The very first Sunday afternoon, whilst we were still in the midst of a chaos of chips and big boxes and straw and empty china-barrels, our own shepherds came over, by invitation, and the only very near neighbours we had—a Scotch head-shepherd and his charming young wife,—and we held a Service in the half-furnished drawing room. After it was ended we had a long talk with the men, and they confessed that they had enjoyed it very much, and would like to come regularly. When questioned as to the feasibility of inducing others to join, they said that it might be suggested to more than one distant, lonely hill-shepherd, but his uncontrollable shyness would probably prevent his attendance.

“Jim Salter, and Joe Bennett, and a lot more on page 126 ’em, would be glad enow to come, if so be they could feel as how they was truly wellcombe,” said our shepherd, Pepper, who prided himself on the elegance and correctness of his phraseology. He added, after a reflective pause, turning bashfully away, “If so be as the lady would just look round and give ’em a call, they’d be to be persuaded belike.”

So the scheme was Pepper’s after all, you see. But this “looking round,” to which he alluded so airily, meant scrambling rides, varying from ten to twenty-eight miles in length, over break-neck country, and this on the slender chance of finding the men in-doors. Now a New Zealand shepherd almost lives out on the hills, so the prospect of finding any of our congregation at home was slight indeed. However, as I said before, F—— stood by me, and although we neither of us could well spare the time, we agreed to devote two afternoons every week, so long as the fine open autumn weather, lasted, to making excursions in search of back-country huts. There are no roads or finger posts or guides of any sort in those distant places. When we inquired what was the name of “Mills” shepherd (the masters are always plain Smith or Jones, and the shepherds Mr.——, in the colonies) the answer was generally very vague. “Wiry Bill, we mostly calls ’im; but I think I’ve heerd say his right- page 127 ful name was Mr. Pellet, mum. He’s a little chap, as strong as the ’ouse,” explained Pepper, who was an incorrigible cockney, “and he lives over there,” pointing with his thumb to a mountain range behind us. “He’s in one of them blind gullies. You go along the gorge of the river till you come to a saddle all over fern, and you drop down that, and follow the best o’ three or four tracts till you come to a swamp.”

Here Pepper paused, in consideration of my face of horror; for if there was one thing I dreaded more than another in those early days, it was a swamp. Steep hill sides, wide creeks, honey-combed flats, all came in, the day’s ride,—but a swamp! Ugh! the horrible treacherous thing, so green and innocent looking, with here and there a quicksand or a peaty morass, in which, without a moment’s warning, your horse sank up to his withers! It was dreadful, and when we came to such a place Helen used to stop dead short, prick her pretty ears well forward, and, trembling with fear and excitement, put her nose close to the ground, smelling every inch, before she would place her fore foot down on it, jumping off it like a goat if it proved insecure. Generally she crossed a swamp, by a series of bounds in and out of flax bushes; and hopeless indeed would a morass be without those green cities of refuge!

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Horrible as a large swamp is however to a timid horsewoman, it is dear to the heart of a cockatoo. He gladly buys a freehold of fifty acres in the midst of one, burns it, makes a sod fence, sown with gorse seed a-top, all round his section, drains it in a rough and ready fashion, and then the splendid fertile soil which has been waiting for so many thousand years, “brings forth fruit abundantly.” Such enormous fields of wheat and oats and barley as you come upon sometimes,—with, alas, never a market near enough to enable the plenteous crop to return sevenfold into its master’s bosom!

I shall not inflict upon you a description of all our rides in search of members for our congregation. Two, in widely differing directions, will serve as specimens of such excursions. In consideration of my new-chumishness, F—— selected a comparatively easy track for our first ride. And yet, “bad was the best,” might surely be said of that breakneck path. What would an English horse, or an English lady say, to riding for miles over a slippery winding ledge on a rocky hill side, where a wall of solid mountain rose up perpendicularly on the right hand, and on the left a very respectable sized river hurried over its boulders far beneath the aerial path; yet this was comparatively a safe track, and presented but one serious obstacle, page 129 over which I was ruthlessly taken. It is perhaps needless to say we were riding in single file, and equally unnecessary to state that I was the last; for certainly we should never have made much progress otherwise. Helen, my bay mare, would follow her stable companion, on which F—— was mounted, so that was the way we got on at all.

A sudden sharp turn showed me what appeared to be a low stone wall running own the spur of the mountain, right across our track, and I had already begun to disquiet myself about the possibility of turning back on such a narrow ledge, when I saw F——’s powerful black horse, with his ears well forward, and his reins, lying loose on his neck, make a sort of rush at the obstacle, climb up it as a cat would, stand for an instant, exactly like a performing goat, with all four legs drawn closely together under him, and then with a spring disappear on the other side. “This wall”, I thought, “must be but loosely built, for Leo has displaced some of the stones from its coping.” Helen, pretty dear, hurried after her friend and leader; and before I had time to realize what she was going to do, she was balancing herself on the crumbling summit of this stone wall (which was only the freak of a landslip), and as it proved impossible to remain there, perched like a bird on a very insecure page 130 branch, nothing remained except to gather herself well together and jump off. But what a jump! the ground fell sheer away at the foot of the wall, and left a chasm many feet wide, which the horse could not see until it had climbed to the top of the wall, and as turning back was out of the question, the only alternative was to give a vigorous bound on to the narrow ledge beyond. Terrified as I felt, I luckily refrained from jerking Helen’s head, or attempting to guide her in any way. The only chance of safety over New Zealand tracks, or New Zealand creeks, is to leave your horse entirely to itself. I have seen men who were reckoned good riders in England, get the most ignominious tumbles from a disregard of this advice. An up-country horse knows perfectly well the only sound spots in a swamp; or the only sound part of a creek’s banks. If his rider persists in taking him over the latter, where he himself thinks it narrowest and safest, he is pretty sure to find the earth rotten and crumbling, and to pay for his obstinacy by a wetting; whilst in the case of a swamp the consequences are even more serious, and the horse often gets badly strained in floundering out of a quagmire.

But it was not all danger and difficulty, and the many varieties of scene in the course of a long ride page 131 constituted some of its chief charms. At first, perhaps, after we had left our own fair valley behind, the track would wind through the gorge of a river, with lofty mountains rising sheer up from the water side. All here was sad and grey, and very solemn in its eternal silence, only made more intense by the ceaseless monotonous roar of the ever-rushing water. Then we would emerge on acres and acres of softly rolling downs, higher than the hillocks we call by that name at home, but still marvellously beautiful in their swelling curves all folding so softly into each other, and dotted with mobs of sheep, making pastoral music to a flock-owner’s ear. Over this sort of ground we could canter gaily along, with “Hector,” F——’s pet colley, keeping close to the heels of his master’s horse,—for it is the worst of bad manners in a colley to look at a neighbour’s sheep. The etiquette in passing through a strange run is for the dog to go on the off side of his master’s horse, so that the sheep shall not even see him; and this piece of courtly politeness Hector always practised of his own accord.

A wire fence always proved a very tiresome obstacle, for horses have a great dread of them, and will not be induced to jump them on any account. If we could find out where the gate was, well and good; page 132 but as it might be half a dozen miles off, on one side or the other, we seldom lost time or patience in seeking it. When there was no help for it, and such a fence had to be crossed, the proceedings were, always the same. F——dismounted, and unfastened one of his stirrup leathers; with this he strapped the wires as firmly as possible together, but if the fence had been lately fresh-strained, it was sometimes a difficult task. Still he generally made one spot lower than the rest, and over this he proceeded to adjust his coat very carefully; he then vaulted lightly over himself, and calling upon me to aid by sundry flicks on Leo’s flank, the horse would be induced to jump over it. This was always a work of time and trouble, for Leo hated doing it, and would rather have leaped the widest winter creek, than jumped the lowest coat-covered wire fence. Helen had to jump with me on her back, and without any friendly whip to urge her, but except once, when she caught her hind leg in the sleeve of the coat which was hanging over the fence, and tore it completely out, she got over very well. Upon that occasion F—— had to carry his sleeve in his pocket until we reached the neat little out-station hut, where Jim Salter lived, and where we were pretty sure to find a housewife, for shepherds are as handy as sailors with a needle and thread.

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I shall always believe that some bird of the air had “carried the matter” to Salter, because not only was he at home, and in his Sunday clothes, but he had made a cake the evening before, and that was a very suspicious circumstance. However we pretended not to imagine that we were expected, and Jim pretended with equal success to be much surprised at our visit, so both sides were satisfied. Nothing could be neater than the inside of the little hut; its cob walls papered with, old Illustrated London News,—not only pictures but letter-press,—its tiny window as clean as possible, a new sheep-skin rug laid down before the open fireplace, where a bright wood fire was sputtering and cracking cheerily, and the inevitable kettle suspended from a hook half-way up the low chimney. Outside, the dog-kennels had been newly thatched with tohi grass, the garden weeded and freshly dug, the chopping-block and camp-oven as clean as scrubbing could make them. It was too late in the year for fruit, but Salter’s currant, raspberry, and gooseberry bushes gave us a good idea of how well he must have fared in the summer. The fowls were just devouring the last of the green-pea shoots, and the potatoes had been blackened by our first frosts.

It was all very nice and trim and comfortable, page 134 except the loneliness; that must have been simply awful. It is difficult to realise how completely cut off from the society of his kind a New Zealand up-country shepherd is, especially at an out-station like this. Once in every three months he goes down to the homestead, borrows the pack horse, and leads it up to his hut, with a quarter’s rations of flour, tea, sugar and salt; of course he provides himself with mutton and firewood, and his simple wants are thus supplied. After shearing, about January, his wages are paid, varying from 75 pounds to £100 a year, according to the locality, and then he gets a week’s leave to go down to the nearest town. If he be a prudent steady man, as our friend Salter was, he puts his money in the bank, or lends it out on a freehold mortgage at ten per cent., only deducting a few pounds from his capital for a suit of clothes, a couple of pair of Cookham boots for hill walking, and above all, some new books.

Without any exception, the shepherds I came across in New Zealand were all passionately fond of reading; and they were also well-informed men, who often expressed themselves in excellent, through superfine, language. Their libraries chiefly consisted of yellow-covered novels, and out of my visits in search of a congregation grew a scheme for a book-club to supply page 135 something better in the way of literature, which was afterwards most successfully carried out. But of this I need not speak here, for we are still seated inside Salter’s hut,—so small in its dimensions that it could hardly have held another guest. Womanlike, my eyes were everywhere, and I presently spied out an empty bottle, labelled “Worcestershire Sauce.”

“Dear me, Salter,” I cried, “I had no idea you were so grand as to have sauces up here: why we hardly ever use them.” “Well, mum,” replied Salter, bashfully, and stroking his long black beard to gain time to select the grandest words he could think of, “it is hardly to be regarded in the light of happetite, that there bottle, it is more in the nature of remedies.” Then, seeing that I still looked mystified, he added, “You see, mum, although we gets our ’elth uncommon well in these salubrious mountings, still a drop of physic is often handy-like, and in a general way I always purchase myself a box of Holloway’s Pills (of which you do get such a lot for your money), and also a bottle of pain-killer; but last shearing they was out o’ pain-killer, they said, so they put me up a bottle o’ Cain pepper, and likewise that ’ere condiment, which was werry efficacious, ’specially towards the end o’ the bottle!” “And do you really page 136 mean to say you drank it, Salter?” I inquired with horror.

“Certainly I do, mum, whenever I felt out o’ sorts. It always took my mind off the loneliness, and cheered me up wonderful, especial if I hadded a little red pepper to it,” said Salter, getting up from his log of wood and making me a low bow. All this time F—— and I were seated amicably side by side on poor Salter’s red blanket-covered “bunk,” or wooden bedstead, made of empty flour-sacks nailed between rough poles, and other sacks filled with tussock grass for a mattress and pillow.

The word loneliness gave me a good opening to broach the subject of our Sunday gatherings, and my suspicions of Jim’s having been told of our visit were confirmed by the alacrity with which he said, “I have much pleasure in accepting your kind invitation, mum, if so be as I am not intruding.”

“No, indeed Salter,” F—— said; “you’d be very welcome, and you could always turn Judy into the paddock whilst we were having service.”

Now if there was one thing dearer to Salter’s heart than another, it was his little roan mare Judy: her excellent condition, and jaunty little hog-mane and tail, testified to her master’s loving care. So it was all happily settled, and after paying a most unfashion- page 137 ably long visit to the lonely man, we rode away with many a farewell nod and smile. I may say here that Salter was one of the most regular of our congregation for more than two years, besides being a member of the book club. In time, its more sensible volumes utterly displaced the yellow paper rubbish in his but library, and I never can forget the poor man’s emotion when he came to bid me good-bye.

At my request he made the rough little pen and ink sketches which are here given, and as he held my offered hand (not knowing quite what else to do with it) when I took leave of him after our last home-service, when my face was set towards England, he could not say a word. The great burly creature’s heart must have been nearly as big as his body, and he seemed hardly to know that large tears were rolling down his sunburnt face and losing themselves in his bushy beard. I tried to be cheerful myself, but he kept repeating, “It is only natural you should be glad to go, yet it is very rough upon us.” In vain I assured him I was not at all glad to go,—very, very sorry, in fact: all he would say was, “To England, home and beauty, in course any one would be pleased to return.” I can’t tell you what he meant, and he had no voice to waste on explanations; I only give poor dear Jim’s valedictory sentences as they fell from his white and trembling lips.

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Very different was Ned Palmer, the most diminutive and wiry of hill shepherds, with a tongue which seemed never tired, and a good humoured smile for every one. Ned used to try my gravity sorely by stepping up to me half a dozen times during the service, to find his place for him in his Prayer-book, and always saying aloud, “Thank you kindly, m’m.”