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The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout: Volume 68

§ 9. Of an Inking-table and Imposing-stone

§ 9. Of an Inking-table and Imposing-stone.

I had found it a difficult matter to get on without an iron Inking-table, but the want of an Imposing-stone was a far more serious one. For the former, I had substituted a small wooden table (14 x 28in.), the top made out of a broad plank of a hardwood tree that grew on the cliffs nearby, (Pohutukawa = Metrosideros tomentosa;) for the latter I had no other alternative than to use the iron "table" of the Printing-press; this was anything but pleasant, but there was no help for it! On my early rowing up the Kerikeri river, I had noticed the many black basaltic boulder-stones of various sizes, fantastically scattered and piled and even ranged in natural rows in many places; and J thought that one of them might be made to serve and do good service if it could be cut. This was eventually done by Mr. Edmonds, (a Catechist of the Church Missionary Society, residing at the Kerikeri Station, who, at Home, in England, was a stonemason by trade,) although when a fitting size block was found at last, and conveyed to the Station, it took him a long time to cut it into two parts (after having been trimmed and squared) through the stone itself being so excessively hard, and his not having any proper appliances for the purpose. And when cut and their surfaces smoothed they were found to possess several scattered vesicular cells, which had to be filled up with cement. Still, they were a useful pair of stones, and when, at last! (in March, 1837,) I got them brought down in our little Mission page 12 Cutter (Te Karere) from the Kerikeri Station, and also got them mounted on frame with drawers, made at Kororareka (now Russell) by my joiner, I felt happy and thought I was rich! This is the first, perhaps the only, instance, of a pair of large Imposing-stones made out of a boulder of basalt, and therefore I relate it. I often heard the remark, that the cutting alone of those two stones cost the Church Missionary Society, on the lowest calculation, considerably more than £20; of course they were both from one block sawn asunder, and roughly squared and trimmed on their outsides, and very thick!—