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The New Zealand Reader

The Christmas Feast

page 97

The Christmas Feast.

One hot and blazing Christmastide we invited all the married people that lived within anything like reasonable distance to visit our shanty—"Bachelors' Hall," as the ladies termed it. Such an entirely novel and unusual event as the visit of some of the gentler sex to our shanty was an occasion of no light moment. Old Colonial determined to banquet our visitors in the superbest possible style, and vast preparations were at once undertaken.

Two days before the expected arrival, all hands set to work in the arduous and unavailing endeavour to render the shanty approximately clean and respectable. Such a turnout as that was! Such an unlooked-for bringing to light of things that must be nameless! We broomed and we scrubbed, we washed and we sluiced; we even tinkered and mended. We cleaned and we grumbled and made our lives temporarily miserable; and yet, with all this, how grimy, and dirby, and mean, and wretched that shanty of ours would continue to look! Never has our household property been subjected to such a cleaning-up as that was.

Gradually some order was introduced into the chaos, and at last we began to think we should convey a favourable impression after all. But our chief concern was in the matter of table equipage. One of us was sent over to the township with orders to beg, borrow, or steal all the crockery and table-cutlery in the place. Another was despatched on horseback through the bush somewhere else, and on the same errand, that something like proper table furniture might grace the feast.

Then our wardrobe underwent inspection. Some one had to go over to the township and buy new shirts for all of us, with sevçral pairs of trousers and other things. O'Gaygun stormed and wept at this outrage, but our boss was firm for the proprieties, as he estimated them. The worst of it was we had to contemplate frightful expenditure. And more, it was humiliating that our previous condition should be made known to the mayor, who, with his wife, was to be among the guests. But what matter? The mayor is a good fellow, and a friend; and what can be too great a sacrifice to make for "England, Home, and Beauty"?

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We all had our tasks. There was the path between the shanty and the landing-place to be put in proper condition; various muddy places in it to be coveted with fascines; a certain watercourse we were in the habit of jumping to be newly bridged; and so forth. Then there was the catering. Two of us were out with guns, shooting turkeys, pheasants, pigeons, fowls, and anything else that was eatable. Others were butchering the fairest and fattest pig in our drove, and doing the same by a lamb. Two were out on the river diligently fishing, or collecting oysters and cockles. Some, too, were employed in the garden, picking fruit, gathering vegetables, and so forth, and so on.

All day and all night the stove was red-hot, while a supplementary fire blazed outside the shanty. Between them oscillated Old Colonial, pipe in mouth, hirsute and unkempt, grimy, and naked to the waist. His two aids, the Saint and the Fiend, had a bad time of it. They were his scullions, marmitons,* turnspits, or whatever yon like to call it. They had to keep up the supplies of firewood, to prepare the fowls and fish, and generally to do all the dirty work; and the way Old Colonial "bossed them round" was an edifying sight to see.

The preparations were stupendous. Victuals enough had been laid in to feed a regiment, and the variety of them was endless. But Old Colonial, having once given way to the mania of extravagance, was determined to lay under contribution every conceivable thing, and to turn out more dishes than even an American palace hotel would put on its bill of fare.

Finally, it was discovered that the shanty was far too small a place for our banquet, so on the appointed morning we were up at sunrise, and from then till noon we laboured at the construction of a bower, while Old Colonial was busy with his hot meats and confections. The bower was an open shed, running all along the shadiest side of the shanty and beyond. It was a rude erection of rough poles, latticed and thatched—Maori fashion—with fern-fronds and flax. Under it was the table, supplemented by another of loose boards on such supports as we could fabricate; and round it planks, resting on kegs and boxes, made sufficient seats.

page 99

Hardly were our preparations finished, when the first boat was descried coming through the mangroves from the river down below, and a parasol was visible in the stern. Then there was a hasty stampede down to the gully to wash, an agonized scuttle into the new shirt, and a hot and anxious assumption of restful calm. And so we welcomed the guests as they came.

What a feast that was, and how it astonished everybody! And such a party as our shanty had never witnessed before! For curiosity brought half a dozen ladies—all there were in the district; and fully a score of masculine friends honoured our establishment with their presence. It is not to be supposed, of course, that all our neighbours inhabit rude shanties like ours. Some are further forward, or had more capital at the start; and men do not bring wives into the bush until they can manage to furnish forth a decently comfortable house for them. Our married friends live in respectable comfort. Still, the ladies living in the bush get to know its more primitive ways, though they may not experience them themselves. So our domestic arrangements, though made the occasion for a great deal of banter and fun, were neither unexpected nor novel to our lady visitors. But the banquet that was provided for them made them open their eyes indeed. It was something altogether new to the bush. Such a miracle of catering; such marvellous, unheard-of cookery! It surpassed anything any one of them had ever seen before anywhere.

The table was covered with white linen, borrowed at the township, and all the equipage we could muster was displayed upon it. Plates, forks, spoons, and knives were there in plenty; but we had not been able to collect enough dishes and bowls for the profusion of viands Old Colonial had provided. Some parts of the service were therefore peculiar, and caused much addition to the merriment: there was always such incongruity between the excellence of the comestible and the barbaric quaintness of the receptacle that happened to contain it. Soups in billies, turkeys in milk-pans, salads in gourd-rinds, custards in cow-bells, jellies in sardine-boxes, plum pudding in a kerosene tin, vegetables, fruits, and cakes in kits of plaited flax! Anything and everything was utilised that possibly could be.

page 100

High enthroned upon a pile of potato-sacks, Old Colonial presided over the feast he had created; while, as Vice, sat O'Gaygun, his barbaric conservatism laid aside for the nonce in favour of grace and gallantry. What glorious fun we had! What a flow of wit beneath the august influence of ladies' smiles! And we were cool in our ferny bower out of the strong, hot sunshine. And in the intervals of eating and drinking we could look about us on the splendid perspective of bush and river across the clearings, where the air shimmered in the heat; where the crickets whistled and hummed, and where the cattle were lazily lying among the stumps.

It was a magnificent picnic, so everybody declared. There never was anything to match it in all New Zealand! I can fancy that in the days to come, when the full tide of civilisation has overtaken this fair country, some of those ladies will be sitting in boudoirs and drawing-rooms talking to their children. They will tell them of the early pioneering days. And one of their best-remembered stories will be that of the Christmas-time when they were banqueted by Old Colonial and his chums at our shanty in the bush.

W. Dalish Hay

("Brighter Britain," 1882).

* [French word.—Inferior kitchen-servants.]