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Chapter XV.
The Forests of North New Zealand.

With the failure of the German preparation, my hopes of being made manager to the Fish Preserving Company vanished. I cannot say I had built much on it, so did not take the matter very deeply to heart. If the industry had been fairly started, the post of coroner in the Waikato might have been worth looking after. The ultimatum of the Waikato partner, however, nipped the business in the bud, and probably saved some lives.

No prospect of getting professional work had yet shown itself; and the only post I had succeeded in obtaining was that of correspondent to the Auckland weekly paper, an appointment of not a very lucrative nature.

Time, however, by no means hung heavily on my hands. There was plenty to do about my place, which had been much neglected. The weeds were disputing possession with the fruit page 108trees, and had they been left undisturbed much longer I think would have gained the day. A peculiar kind of thistle, called the "cow thistle," grew everywhere luxuriantly, and docks with roots as thick as a man's arm were abundant.

I became familiarised with hoeing, digging, pruning fruit trees, and the use of the axe. The latter is a most necessary accomplishment in this part of the colony, as to the axe every one trusts for his supply of fuel. When I first attempted to wield it, each blow struck jarred my hands and arms tremendously, and at the same time made little impression on the wood; but at last I caught the trick, and am now a fairly good axeman.

Small tea-tree, or "Manuka," to use the native name, is principally used for firing. The wood is hard and close-grained, and gives out a great amount of heat. It grows in large and dense patches called "scrub." The trees in the scrub generally stand about a foot apart, run up straight for some twelve feet, and then break into a small bunch of branches. If a tea-tree happens to be isolated, it becomes a spreading tree of fair dimensions, though it never grows sufficiently large to be employed much in carpentering. It is always more or less in flower page 109—a beautiful small white flower—with which at some seasons of the year it is completely covered. Not only is tea-tree universally used for firewood, but it supplies the material of which most of the fences up here are composed, and is preferred to any other wood for wheel-spokes. It is, therefore, one of the most useful natural productions of the colony.

North New Zealand boasts of a great variety of splendid timber, of which the Kauri pine (Dammara australis) takes the lead. These giants of the forest attain a girth sometimes of between forty and fifty feet, and grow up perfectly straight for sixty or seventy feet before throwing out branches. They reminded me when I first saw them of the toy trees with little round stands that used to be sold with boxes containing wooden animals. If the reader can imagine one of these toy trees magnified some six or seven hundred times, he will have a fair idea of what a Kauri looks like. Its foliage resembles somewhat that of the ornamental shrub known as the "Monkey plant," the leaves being stiff and glossy.

The Kauri is used more extensively than any other New Zealand wood for building purposes. It is a magnificent timber, and if properly page 110seasoned, neither shrinks nor warps. Very few of the bush owners, however, can afford to let timber lie idle for any length of time, and therefore the majority of the Kauri used is not seasoned, and shrinks very much both ways. So much is this the case, and so unreliable is the timber considered through insufficient seasoning, that a clause has been inserted in the specification for the New Auckland Custom House, now about to be erected, which states that Baltic timber, and not Kauri, is to be used for sashes, architraves, mouldings, &c. As Kauri is very easily worked, and admits of a splendid polish, it is greatly to be regretted that with such timber in the province the architect should have deemed it necessary to specify Baltic timber. It is nevertheless true, however; and the cause may be summed up in six words, "High wages and want of capital," the great bane of New Zealand, felt not only in the timber trade, but in all other industries that have been established.

In getting out the Kauri, an immense and at times reckless destruction of young trees takes place, and for this reason the time is not far distant when the Kauri pine will be a tree of the past.

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From an official report of Mr. T. Kirk, F.L.S., Chief Conservator of State Forests—for a copy of which I am indebted to the courtesy of Mr. S. P. Smith, Assistant Surveyor-General—it appears that the total extent of available Kauri forest now existing does not exceed two hundred thousand acres, and placing the average yield at the high rate of fifteen thousand superficial feet per acre, the Kauri at the present demand will be exhausted in twenty-six years. If, however, the demand increases in the same ratio as it has shown during the last ten years, it will be worked out in fifteen years. When we consider that the Kauri timber trade is one of the mainstays of the North Auckland district, this is a most alarming statement. The export trade amounted last year to the value of £136,000— more than five times as much as the timber trade of all the rest of the colony put together; and it is difficult to see what is to take its place when the last Kauri has been felled. In Mr. Kirk's report no allowance is made for probable loss by bush fires, which in the dry weather are constantly breaking out, and which are generally ascribed, rightly or wrongly, to the carelessness of gumdiggers or to vindictiveness. Fires in the heavy Kauri bush last a long time when page 112they once get hold, and do an immense amount of damage. There is a Kauri bush at the present time on fire in this riding of Matakohe which has been alight for the last five or six months. A large quantity of timber must be destroyed in this way, and the contingency of fire further lessons the probable duration of the Kauri forests of North New Zealand.

The task of felling and getting the timber out of the bushes is a difficult and dangerous one. The country north of Auckland, where Kauri abounds, is usually very broken, and seldom admits of a tramway being laid down to carry the logs on. When the timber is on high ground, the usual method adopted is to cut the logs into suitable lengths with cross-cut saws, move them by means of timber jacks and immense teams of bullocks to the brow of a convenient incline, and let them slide down a well-greased shoot composed of young Kauri trees, a great number of which are thus annually destroyed.

If the bush happens to be on the borders of the Kaipara, the logs are placed behind booms until enough are collected to make a raft. If, however, it is situated some little distance from deep water, the logs are laid in the bed of an adjacent creek, higher up in which a dam is page 113formed and the water stored. When sufficient logs are collected, and sufficient water stored behind the dam, the sluices are opened, and the logs washed down to the Kaipara, where they are gathered, chained together, and towed to their destination.

Ordinary Kauri timber presents, when polished or varnished, a wavy appearance, and is darker in some places than in others; but occasionally Kauri is mottled, and when this is the case it is very valuable for veneering purposes, being worth from £3 to £5 per hundred superficial feet, while the average price of ordinary Kauri is only ten shillings per hundred feet.

The mottling is sometimes caused by the tree throwing out an excessive number of branchlets, and at others by a sort of disease in which the too rapid development of cellular tissue prevents the proper expansion of the bark, and small portions become enclosed in the sap wood, and form the dark mottlings. Mottled Kauri trees are usually found in rocky situations.

The total area covered by forest in the North Auckland provincial district—of which the Kaipara forms a part—is estimated by the chief surveyor to be seven million two hundred thousand acres, about one million six hundred page 114and seven thousand acres being held by the Crown. One peculiar feature in these forests is that while they possess several trees—among others the Kauri—not to be met with in any other part of New Zealand, they still contain all the trees found elsewhere in the colony.

The Puriri (Vitex littoralis), sometimes called the New Zealand oak, is perhaps next in importance to the Kauri, on account of its great durability. It is principally used for railway sleepers, house blocks, framings of carriages, and fencing posts. It makes excellent furniture, and is said to equal the English oak in strength and durability. Sometimes the tree grows to a height of twenty feet in the trunk, and Puriri logs have been cut nine feet in diameter.

The Kahikatea (Podocarpus dacrydioides), a white pine, is a magnificent-looking tree, often reaching a total height of one hundred and fifty feet, with a barrel clear of branches seventy-five feet long. Its timber is highly valued for the inside lining of houses.

The Totara (Podocarpus totara) is employed in making wharf piles, telegraph posts, sleepers, and in the construction of houses and furniture. It occasionally grows to a height of seventy feet or so, perfectly straight, without a knot page 115or branch, and is used by the natives for making canoes, some of which, seventy feet in length, have been hollowed out of Totara logs. It is the only wood that successfully withstands the ravages of the Teredo navalis.

The Pohutukawa (Metrosideros tomentosa) is a very handsome tree, usually to be found growing near the water's edge. At Christmas time it is covered with beautiful red blossoms, and on that account is called New Zealand holly. The trunk is very hard, and is invaluable for knees and timbers of ships and boats.

The Rata (Metrosideros robusta) has until lately been considered by most people to be altogether a parasite, but it has now been proved beyond doubt that its seed is deposited by birds, or the wind, in the fork of a tree, where it germinates and sends forth two or three roots which creep down the trunk to the ground. These roots, as they grow, press on the supporting tree, until they cause its death, and the Rata then stands alone. The wood is very hard, and when not too twisted, may be split into very good fencing rails.

The Rimu (Dacrydium cupressinum) is a very stately pine, with drooping branches like the weeping willow. It grows up straight for about page 116sixty feet, with a slightly tapering barrel some two or three feet in diameter at the ground. The grain of this wood is red, streaked with black, and it makes splendid furniture, balustrades and railings for staircases, panels for doors, &c.

There are a great many other varieties of trees in the North Kaipara forests, which, however, I will, content myself with stating are most of them exceedingly beautiful in grain, and should find places of honour in cabinet and furniture makers' work. In spite, however, of the beautiful woods at command, the furniture-making trade has made but little progress in Auckland, and I presume the high price of labour and want of capital prevent it from being pushed.

The bushman who fells the timber and rolls out the logs receives an average wage of thirty shillings a week, as well as his food, or, as it is called here, his "tucker;" the towing charges are high, and the railway rates from Helensville to Auckland exorbitant; and so by the time the timber has passed through the mills and left the furniture-maker's hands, the excessive payments for labour, railway and towing charges, have made the articles into which it has been converted so expensive, that the trade is killed.

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The annual output of timber in the Auckland district is estimated at about one hundred million superficial feet, and the larger proportion is employed in the construction of houses, bridges, &c., in the colony.

Timber houses are a great deal more durable than many people would imagine: there are some still standing in Auckland—in fairly good condition—built nearly forty years ago. The mode of erection usually adopted is briefly as follows. Puriri blocks, sunk in the ground deep enough to insure a good foundation, and of sufficient length to project above the surface two or three feet, are set up in rows four or five feet apart. On these blocks—the tops of which are sawn off perfectly level with one another—is laid a frame of timber, marking out the rooms and passage, and on this the superstructure is raised. Instead of slates or tiles, thin strips of wood, called shingles, split off small blocks of Kauri, are most commonly used for the roofing, though corrugated iron sometimes takes their place. In the better class of house a brick chimney runs through the structure, but in the smaller and cheaper ones a wide wooden chimney is erected at one end.