In Shivering Camp.

“Hail, snow an’ ice that praise the Lord: I've met them at their work, An’ wished we had anither route or they anither kirk.”

So wrote Mr. Kipling in “McAndrews’ Hymn.” Mr. Brunner and his party of ragged-kilted Maoris could have said something like that, but with more emphasis, about their Bad Lands journey in the wet and cold. Brunner, indeed, in his diary entries written painfully in shivering camps has left us vivid vignettes of fearful days and nights. Here are notes covering three days in April of 1848; scene somewhere on the Upper Buller:

“Rain continuing to pour down. About midday a stream came rolling down the cliffs above us, destroying the shelter on which we had been working all the morning to render our situation comfortable. The fresh also increased so fast that the natives declared we must find means page 35 to ascend the cliff or we should all be carried away by the flood, which prevented us from going either backward or forward. So we made a sort of ladder and managed to clamber up about twenty feet to another ledge, to which we drew up enough of our old shed to erect a break against the wind, but against the rain we had no shelter; and we were just able to keep the kits containing our food dry during the night and nothing more.”

“… down the valley runs a river
Of pearly water.”—J. S. Robertson.

(Next day)—“Rain and thunder continuing. This was truly a wretched day to spend on a cliff in a black birch (beech) forest. The rain poured down in torrents and loosened the stones of which the hill is formed, and these rolled by us and plunged into the river with a fearful noise. The wind tore up the trees on every side, and the crash which ensued caused a simultaneous shudder by all hands.”

(The next day)—“An increase in the gale; and the fresh in the river exceeding all bounds, having reached forty feet perpendicular. God only knows when we shall be able to proceed; for to ascend is impossible, and we can move nowhere until the fresh subsides.”

However, they pushed along, Brunner limping with a stick, for he felt very ill. One day's diary entry: “It was with great difficulty I could move at all to-day, but want of provisions compelled me. Found two fern trees and made an oven.” The reference is to an item of food, the pith of the fern tree, which is just eatable, but no more. It helped to maintain life. At Matakitaki the party got a little fern-root again.