The Man With a Story.

Writing of old-timers sets one's thoughts back on the trail that is most fascinating, and often elusive, of all pursuits, the search for the veteran who could tell a story. But really in one's own experience it was not a search; the best stories of strange and dramatic happenings came unsought, unexpected.

There was a man who was a particular friend of mine in the Rotorua country, where he anchored after long years of roving, who had in his time seen a vast amount of wild hard life, before he used his theodolite in the New Zealand hills. The son of a professor of mathematics in a Swedish University, he went to sea and before he was eighteen he had endured enough to last most people a lifetime.

Somehow he drifted into a Brazilian slaving schooner, which was captured by a British brig-of-war when carrying a load of negro slaves from the West Coast of Africa. The slaver was taken to St. Helena, condemned and sold, and the crew were turned adrift. The youngster was marooned there with nothing whatever beyond his shirt and trousers and an old straw hat; he was barefooted. Presently he found his way, in one craft and another, round Africa to Zanzibar; there he took a job navigating an Arab dhow, a slaver again, to the South Coast of Arabia. He was as near as anything being captured again, in the Red Sea this time.

That was enough of slaving for Carl. He served in whaleships and traded with the Kanakas in the Pacific; when he came to New Zealand he was wrecked in a brigantine on the Kaipara bar. Then began his life in these parts. He was a mathematician and an expert navigator. He soon obtained a position as Government surveyor. He had a natural gift for languages; he lived with the Maoris to acquire the tongue, and he became the most learned Maori scholar I have ever known. He had learned Arabic and Hebrew besides the principal European languages, and he acquired several Polynesian dialects.

What didn't he tackle, that many-tongued (and musical withal) adventurer? He built a vessel; he was for many years Maori land purchase agent for the Government, a trusted and successful official; he managed a geyser-land publichouse; he died on his little farm on Pukekohe Hill.