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The New Zealand Railways Magazine, Volume 4, Issue 2 (June 1, 1929.)

Hounded by Hunger

Hounded by Hunger.

Until, in the days before the war, I sojourned for a few months in a whare overlooking the native pa at Ohinemutu, Rotorua, I had never realised the full significance of the term “race suicide.” As a warning against indiscriminate mixing of racial characterstics, the dogs of Ohinemutu were without parallel. They reminded me of the nocturnal illusions engendered by the consumption of a muscle-bound crayfish and an especially vivacious piece of antique Stilton. Their pedigrees must have been as tortuous as Chinese politics, and they were all so closely connected by marriage that they were almost afraid to bite one another for fear of biting themselves.

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There were dogs wearing a blood-hound's head at one end, a greyhound body in the centre and the merest suggestion of a rudder aft. There were dogs that were mere canine enigmas, dogs that only thought they were dogs, and dogs utterly incapable of proving their “bona fidos.” There were dogs that loped like a rheumatic llama, dogs that bounded like a football, dogs that appeared to be guided solely by their olfactory prescience, dogs that howled, dogs that growled, and dogs that seemed rapt in thought. All the colours in the spectrum were represented in this herd of hounds. Some were the hue of sunburned liver, some were fish-belly white, some flaunted more colour variations than a country football club, and others were so involved that it was necessary to wear smoked glasses to see them at all. In the chilly watches of the night they would advance in close formation on my dust-bin, little realising, poor misguided wretches, that it belonged to a Scotsman, and there they would engage in bloody warfare over nothing more substantial than the vertebrae of a defunct trout. The call of duty demanded that I should be up and doing before the gibbous moon had set and the sun had said “good morning.” At this time of the day the vicinity was usually as devoid of life as a meeting of the clans when a collection is about to be taken. The pa provided a short cut to my place of daily endeavour, and for some time I used it. But one morning I stumbled over a tin. Immediately, the air was rent with horrid noise. With the baying and barking of a thousand hunger-maddened hyenas, dark forms dashed through holes in fences and from beneath a score of whares. For a moment I experienced all the sensations of a piece of doomed dog's meat, and the next I took unto myself the wings of an Avro, and the horsepower of Mercury. Youth and fear are a great combination to develop speed. I had either to outstrip the pack or to be stripped. The fact that I have been spared to write my memoirs proves that I gained my objective, but it was a close call—so close that I could feel the hot breath of the leaders scorching my calves. That, I might add, is not the closest I have been to going to the dogs—but enough.

“Look int his eyes and read there the message of his soul”

“Look int his eyes and read there the message of his soul”

Speaking of speed reminds me that I started to write about steam power and trains. Allow me to mention, therefore, that last Sunday I conducted the twins round the block in the “week-end special” and that the night before I witnessed the weekly spectacle of Uncle Henry Fitzgaily, in a rotary condition, coming home by rail.

“the Week-end Special” and “Coming Home By Rail.”

“the Week-end Special” and “Coming Home By Rail.”