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The New Zealand Railways Magazine is on sale through the principal booksellers, or may be obtained post-free for 6/- per annum.
Employees of the Railway Department are invited to forward news items or articles bearing on railway affairs. The aim of contributors should be to supply interesting topical material tending generally towards the betterment of the service.
In all cases where the Administration makes announcements through the medium of this Journal the fact will be clearly indicated.
The Department does not identify itself with any opinions which may be expressed in other portions of the publication, whether appearing over the author's name or under a nom de plume.
Short stories, poetry, pen-and-ink sketches, etc., are invited from the general public upon New Zealand subjects.
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I hereby certify that the publisher's lists and other records disclose that the circulation of the “New Zealand Railways Magazine” has not been less than 23,000 copies each issue since August, 1937.
Controller and Auditor-General. 2/12/37.
There is magic in the motion of a locomotive and allure in the ring of metal upon metal as a train steers its course along the rail. Stephenson certainly “started something” when he showed the practicability of the steam locomotive for the efficient transport of passengers and goods. From that time, the genii of the rail have had a great time keeping a constant aura of enchantment over the operations of railways. It is their joy to suggest to engineers and architects, inventors and scientists, school-boys and plain business-men, lovely ladies and little children, ideas that could be put into effect for keeping the magic, the charm, and the romance of the rail up-to-date in every aspect; and railway authorities the world over are worked upon by the genii of the rail to make these ideas into warm and friendly realities.
These thoughts were suggested by finding at 5 o'clock on a recent wet, cold Sunday afternoon, that the only scene of animation to be found in the whole city of Wellington was the Railway Station.
Here may be seen at almost any hour, on almost any day, the following recipients of the blessings brought by the genii of the rail.
Hungry citizens, vying for pies at the highspeed cafeteria, or making a more leisurely meal in the regal Dining Hall.
Satisfied citizens, taking nicely-framed pictures of themselves at a shilling a shot.
Tired citizens, resting in comfortably-seated, pleasantly-warmed, and gracefully-furnished waiting rooms.
Active citizens, looking at illuminated scenes of favourite holiday haunts or obtaining news from “press the button” information machines.
Attentive citizens, listening to radio music or to dulcet-toned announcements of train arrivals and departures.
And last, there are the busy citizens, bustling about tickets, luggage, and the best ways to reach various destinations — for the Railway Station gives choice of train or bus, electric multiple-unit or rail-car, and you only have to step across the road to join a steamer express for the South Island or an ocean liner for the long sea lanes.
This is the real caravanserai that the genii of the rail have conjured up in the New Zealand days of this present time. Here is where you may bathe and shave and have your hair cut. Here you, the average traveller, may leave your children to be fed, and cared for, and amused, by highly trained nursing and kindergarten experts, while you make a care-free round of the city. Here is a resting room for mothers, where willing assistance is given by the attendants. Here you may buy what you desire in tobaccos, magazines, light drinks and sweets. And here the railway staff have the best of quarters for recreation and refreshment, which helps them to give you the best of service.
May the genii of the rail prove as tireless in the future as they have been in the past in happy ideas to add still further to the pleasures derived from the use of the rail.
July, 1938, will be memorable in the history of the New Zealand Railways as the month in which both electric multiple-unit trains, and the standard type of rail-car, were first introduced in New Zealand.
The official inauguration of the multiple unit service, arranged for July 2nd, followed by the commencement of regular schedules on July 4th with fifty-two trains each way daily on the Wellington-Johnsonville seven miles of suburban railway, are important stages in the general development of railway transport to and from the Capital City.
The progress of the Department had been held up for years through the inconvenience and disadvantages associated with the two old and unrelated stations at Wellington. It is just over a year since the new Wellington station was opened and regular traffic commenced via the Tawa Flat deviation. The benefit of that development has already been strongly felt. It has helped in a marked degree to increase the amenities at Wellington itself and to popularise the services on the Main Trunk and Wairarapa lines.
Electric traction for all traffic between Wellington and Paekakariki is the next stage in this movement towards completion of the plans for better railway facilities to and from Wellington, and for through transport between various portions of both Islands.
The new standard rail-cars, now fast approaching completion, will add further to the attractions of rail travel in the localities where they operate as well as in those to and from which they will afford better connections, while certain important duplications now in hand, and additional power units under construction or on order, together with the new and improved passenger and goods rolling-stock being built, will help to speed up general traffic and give greater satisfaction to all railway users.
The Johnsonville electrification is important, not merely for the remarkable improvement it makes possible in the comfort, frequency and speed of transport over this many-tunnelled, steeply graded, short section of suburban line, but as an indication of the improvement in the quality of the service the Department has provided in recent years.
The recent improvements and modernisation at the heart of the railway system is having favourable reactions on the outlying districts, as congestion is removed and the flow of traffic expedited by the improved facilities. The Johnsonville line, for instance, could never have been given the splendid suburban rail service it is now to receive while it was part of the Main Trunk Line; and the fact that, until the Tawa Flat deviation became available, the suburban traffic of the Johnsonville area had to be worked over the single Main Trunk Line, was a constant source of inconvenience to the passengers and difficulty to the Department in dealing with heavy suburban and long distance traffic over the same line.
Railwaymen appreciate the improvements made quite as much as do the public, as the more modern facilities enable the staff to render still better service to the people who look to the Railway Department to meet their transport needs.
General Manager.
Of all the British regiments that helped to make wartime history in New Zealand, none saw so much service as the 65th, known popularly as the Royal Bengal Tigers, because of their long association with India, and their valorous work there. A striped tiger was their badge. The old system of numbers has been abolished and the corps is now the 1st Battalion York and Lancaster Regiment. From first to last, it served for twenty years in this country; the first detachments came from Sydney in 1846 to take a hand in Wellington's little war. By the time the Taranaki and Waikato wars began the 65th was a well-seasoned regiment. The Maoris had a great respect and liking for the veterans of the “Hiketi-Pift,” and the soldiers, for their part, thought a great deal of their tattooed opponents, truly warriors worthy of their steel. The 65th ranks at the time of this story were more Irish than English; this preponderance of Irishmen was the condition in numerous British regiments. The Irishman, while hating the English heartily, hated still more to miss any fighting anywhere, and the easiest way to get into the devil's own row was to join the Army.
Among the Englishmen in this Anglo-Celtic regiment was a young officer named Henry Stretton Bates, of a wealthy South of England family. He came out with new drafts for the battalion in New Zealand in the middle fifties, and he immediately took a great liking to the Maori people, and addressed himself so well to the study of the language that by 1860-61 he could speak it well; presently he was appointed an interpreter on the General's staff. He married in Wellington a chieftainess of the Atiawa tribe.
In 1860 Lieutenant Bates was serving with his regiment in Taranaki. He made sketches of various events in the Waitara campaign, and among these were water colours of scenes in General Pratt's extraordinarily long sap towards Te Arei Pa. This slow and cautious approach, at the rate of a mile a month, and the construction of redoubts every few hundred yards along the Kairau-Huirangi plain towards the Maori stronghold, was regarded as a huge joke by many of the combatants on both sides. It was varied by some sharp fighting, and the most dramatic and fierce incident in the year's work was the Maori attack on No. 3 Redoubt, between Kairau and Huirangi.
A remarkable feature of all this Waitara campaign was the fact that the most vigorous and determined warriors were not the Atiawa, of Taranaki, for whose land the war was waged by the Government, but their allies of the Ngati-Maniapoto, Waikato and Ngati-Haua tribes, from the North. Amor patriae and the clan spirit were strong among the tribes; the Northern clans came to help Taranaki because they were all banded in the Kingite cause against the whites. The pakeha knows about Rewi Maniapoto chiefly because of his valiant leadership at Orakau in 1864. But Rewi (who had taken the name Manga when war began) won fame among the Maoris three years before that for his daring break-of-day attack on No. 3 Redoubt. With gun and long-handled tomahawk he, with two other chiefs (Epiha, of Kihikihi, and Hapurona, of Taranaki) led a storming party of the best fighting blood in New Zealand against that strong field work—three square earthworks placed close together en echelon—garrisoned by the 40th Regiment, with two howitzers.
Here I draw upon a manuscript narrative of this thrilling morning's work sent to me by the late Mr. H. D. Bates, of Wanganui, son of the young officer who became Colonel of the Regiment. Lieutenant “Te Peeti” had a gift of narrative that I have already referred to in the “Railways Magazine,” in describing his adventures on Secret Service work in a canoe on the Waikato River. The story of No. 3 Redoubt is best told in his own words; he was in the thick of it with his Royal Tigers. He begins with a general description of the campaign, on the Waitara and the slow advance towards the entrenched position at Te Arei, overlooking that most beautiful sweep of the river below the famous old fortress of Pukerangiora.
* * *
“It was the greed of the white settlers for the broad lands of the natives,” Lieutenant Bates wrote, “that had brought on the Waitara war. The representative of Her Majesty's Government had been unable to withstand the pressure put upon him by his Colonial advisers, and the Maoris were making a brave but hopeless struggle. We respected and commiserated our antagonists, but duty had to be done. Night after night, as we lay in our tents in the rough field fortifications which protected us, we heard the calls of the natives on all sides of us, the braying of the tetere or war trumpet, and the monotonous cries from the fern around: ‘Kill the white men! Death to the soldiers!’ Morning after morning we stood to our arms ere break of day, the favourite time for Maori attack.
“Day by day the ‘butcher's bill’ slowly mounted up. It was beautiful midsummer weather, and that fair land was wearing its most charming aspect. The forest that bordered the plain on which we were encamped was dotted with the crimson glories of the rata blossom. The Maoris occupied a strong position. Their right rested on the Waitara River, and the pas of Huirangi and Mataitawa, screened by dense bush, were on the left.
“The intervening space of some fifteen hundred yards was a long line of Maori rifle pits, a mode of defence little known at that time to European soldiers,
“General Pratt's plan of attack, a plan conceived with the idea of saving as far as possible the lives of his men, was to drive a sap or trench towards the Maori position, securing his ground as he advanced by the erection of redoubts. That sap was three-quarters of a mile long by the time it closely approached the Maori positions.
“On the 23rd of January, 1861, the Royal Tigers and the two companies of the 12th Regiment which were with them in No. 1 Redoubt stood to their arms as usual an hour before daybreak. Some 300 yards in advance of us was a small earthwork, No. 2 Redoubt, garrisoned by one company, and some 300 yards more in advance again was a larger fort known as No. 3 Redoubt, which we had just finished under a continuous fire from the rifle pits. This advance work, consisting of three redoubts en echelon, was occupied by the 40th Regiment.
“We stood silent and shivering, for even at midsummer the hour before sunrise is chilly, and awaited the appearance of the sun and looked forward in another half-hour to turning in between the blankets for another hour's snooze.
“But see that flash of fire a hundred yards to the right of our redoubt, followed by the whizz of a bullet and the report of a musket. In a moment there is a semi-circle of fire on two sides of us. The fern is alive with Maoris, who have crept up unseen even by the sentries. Our men reply, and for a few moments there is a continuous roar of musketry, with apparently little result on either side, for the attackers are invisible. In a minute or two more the fire of the Maoris slackens and gradually ceases. A false attack to divert attention from more serious business.
“There are sparks of fire round No. 2 Redoubt and the crack of rifles reaches our ears, but that, too, appears to cease. But where No. 3 Redoubt stands the sky is now lurid and the roll of musketry incessant. The whole work is encircled with flame, and jets of fire dart forth and muskets crackle from the fern.
“Now and again there is a greater blaze followed by the loud dull report of a field-piece, and then again we distinguish the sound of hand-grenades exploding.
“'Hullo, Mac, There goes your old girl,’ one of us says, turning to Macnaghten of the Artillery, who had been standing there. We had two field-pieces with us in No. 1 while in No. 3 were two more guns, one of them a 24lb. howitzer, which Macnaghten loved as he never loved woman. The shyest, most silent, retiring of men, it was said of him that when he was in any civilized place he took his walks at night in order to avoid meeting women. Certain it was that if he did meet a lady he was as likely as not to jump a wall and so escape having to return her salutation. None of us, men or officers, wore uniform in its proper sense—blue serge smocks, corduroy trousers, and so forth, constituted our usual get-up, but shabbier than all the other rags was Macnaghten's pea-jacket. But that rusty jacket covered perhaps the most gallant heart of all. Poor lad, you have no length of days before you! Ere two months have passed a bullet is to pierce that brave heart.
“But Macnaghten was now nowhere to be seen. It turned out that when he saw that the real attack was directed on No. 3 Redoubt his thoughts turned to his beloved 24lb. howitzer, and he longed to be with her. So, knowing that if he asked permission to go down by himself to the front, it would be refused, he quietly slipped out of our redoubt and stole away to the beleaguered fortifications, regardless of the risk of encountering Maoris in the darkness, or of being shot by the defenders of No. 2. He reached the rear of it, entered, and assured himself of the safety of the ‘old girl.'
“Now the firing around No. 3 became hotter than ever, and the 40th called for reinforcements. The regimental call of the 65th rang out.
“The great bearded fellows, looking more like bushrangers than soldiers, fell in without a moment's delay. Before the bugle had sounded a third appeal for help, the column of fours was out of the redoubt and, under command of the senior Captain, was off over the plain at a steady double.
“The remainder of the Tigers, leaning over the parapet, watched the drama which was being enacted in front. As the three companies passed No. 2 Redoubt, the occupants gave them a loud cheer, and in a few minutes more the advanced redoubt was reached.
“Day was now breaking, the fire was not so continuous as before, and what there was came from the front face principally.
“Loud cheers rose from the 40th as they saw the Tigers coming. They called out that the ditch in front of the redoubt was crammed with Maoris, but that the thickness of the parapet and want of flanking defence prevented their rifles being sufficiently depressed to reach the attackers.
“There was a hasty consultation, and then the Tigers descended into the wide ditch on the right of the work, and the company of the 12th Regiment into the ditch on the left, and both parties made their way towards the front of the redoubt, where hand-grenades had been hurled among the crowded warriors. Some of the Artillery, unable to depress their guns sufficiently, got shells, and having cut short the fuses, ignited them, rolled them over the parapet, so that falling they exploded, spreading havoc around them.
“In vain the doomed Maoris tried to pick up the sputtering hand-grenades and fling them back. They were packed too closely together, and the horrid things exploded amongst them with grim result. The warriors feared to quit the ditch and retire. This would have exposed them to the fires of the rifles which lined the parapet; besides, amongst them were many of the brave Ngati-Maniapoto and other Waikato tribes, whose motto was ‘Death before dishonour.'
“On came the Tigers along the side ditch. The firing slackened and ceased
“Let me through, men!’ shouts Charlie Broadmayne, in command of the Light Company, as he struggles to make his way through the throng. ‘I'll give you a lead.'
“Private Thomas Bridges was in front, and alongside him Pat Ryan, a great hairy Irishman, one of the smartest soldiers in the field, but the greatest scamp in the regiment, the despair of the Adjutant and Sergeant-Major whenever liquor was procurable.
“'Lead be damned!’ shouts Pat, dashing on. ‘Yer sowls to glory, boys!’ Half a dozen muskets ring out. Down goes poor Pat with a bullet through the forehead. Tom Bridges was by his side, staggers against the counterscarp; a ball has struck him in the face and carried away part of his upper lip and some of his teeth. But on go the Tigers with a wild shout. The garrison deliver a volley, and then hold their hand to avoid hitting the Tigers and the 12th men, who have scrambled up the counterscarp of the ditch and are now scattered in pursuit of the flying foes. There is no time for the Tigers to reload their Enfields. The bayonet does its deadly work. The swifter-footed of the fugitives gain the shelter of the bush, and then the bugles sounding the recall check the pursuit. The repulse is complete.
“Back from the pursuit came a disreputable-looking figure. Young Brown of ‘ours'—Goodie Brown as he was called to distinguish him from another Brown, who was supposed to be not so good.
“An amusing youngster was our Brown. He had lately joined, and was a general favourite, with a fund of dry humour and an enthusiastic way with him.
“'Oh, I say,’ cries the boy, ‘I wish you would come back with me and look at my Maori. Such a lark! I was charging those fellows across there, when I caught my foot and tumbled head foremost into a rifle-pit, and landed in the arms of a noble savage. There we were hugging one another. He could not get away from me and I could not get away from him. My revolver was empty. But I had my trusty sword, ‘Excalibur,’ and luckily the noble savage had not got a tomahawk. So we held on to one another like grim death, I all the while cutting him across his bare head with my sword. I was so close to him that I could only use the part of the blade near the hilt, but I slashed and slashed, calling to mind all that I have read about ‘pleaving the Paynim to the chin.’ I should think that we were five minutes at this game, and I was getting devilish tired, for cleaving skulls for five minutes is hard work, especially when the owner is trying to throttle you. So I was not sorry when Corporal Kearney of Ours rushed up, and with a yell drove his bayonet into him.
“Ugh! see what a beastly mess I am in!’ However, when he was dead I examined his head, to see the result of my hammering him for five minutes with my sword. I give you my honour, that after looking very carefully I could distinctly see a slight red mark on his forehead! An abrasion of the skin. Oh, yes! the skin was distinctly broken! I was never so delighted in my life. And yet they talk of a regimental sword being an unreliable weapon. Well, all I can say is I have not found it so!'
* * *
That touch of comedy was a trifle of relief from the terrible scenes of the defeated forlorn hope. The Maoris lost nearly half their number killed. Fifty men and youths lay dead. Rewi marvellously escaped, though he was foremost in the attack and tried to chop steps in the parapet with his long-handled tomahawk. Of the British five were killed and eleven wounded.
It was another Mahoetahi for the Maoris—that was a disastrous defeat of Ngati-Haua in the previous year. Waikato was a land of grief. “The land is swept and desolate,” the weeping people chanted. “Mournfully roll the waters of Puniu; the waters sob as they flow.”
We are getting through the winter nicely, thank you; and soon spring will be with us prinking and preening in its new green overcoat. What joy to contemplate the annual rebirth of the earth, the ubiquitous upreaching of verdant fingers fumbling the wayward sunbeams—or words to that effect. How good to see life yawning and stretching beneath its lush coverlet, the hills swelling, the streams yelling “it ain't gonna rain no mo',” and birds, beasts and little lepidoptera leaping to Pan's ragtime. Oh, tantivvy and hey-nonny! Also, attaboy!
But how completely the seasons prove the platitude that one man's fortune is another's bad break! For, while we of the south go to Pan those of the north go to pot. In Sascatchewan and Michigan, in Hampshire and Hamburg the frosts of winter tingle the toes and tint the nose of the nomadic northerner.
But this is the time for the annual migration of the wise birds of the north who have the wherewithal to flap their wings. This is the time when Silas E. Scape and Colonel Grouse-Moor consider pegging a claim for a place in the sun. This is the time when we say, “Come to New Zealand!”
We do not command, we do not boast; we offer a plea. We've got the goods; therefore we plea. All the best people do it. In England they plea, “Come to Oogle on the Ooze,” “Come to Catchup cum Mush!” “Come to Woop-Slushing!” Why should we be too high-hat to do it?
There may be no reason why the British public should come to Woop-Slushing; the reasons why they should not may be overwhelming; but they like to be invited. They feel insulted if they are not asked to Little Poshing-in-the-puddle or Bounding-on-the-Lea. They feel neglected if they are not confronted with posters urging them to come somewhere for the summer.
And so we repeat “Come to New Zealand!” and for the benefit of those who are not sure where it is, we explain that it is in the lower right-hand corner of the atlas and can be detected with the naked eye. It's the bit that looks like a fish-hook with the bait half nibbled off.
Some of the more captious may complain that whoever prepared the atlas might have painted us a little closer to the Motherland. Whilst admitting the romantic advantages of being a far-flung outpost, they might submit that New Zealand has been hit to leg for a boundary. But we explain that our apparent surfeit of latitude is the result of our native astuteness and is a tribute to the old pioneers who were more Scotch than scotched against. Well did these exiled scions of Scotia know the advantages of advertising. Well did they wot the truth that “Distance lends enchantment to the view” and “The longer the road the more desirable the destination.”
Being kind of skidded off the earth's bulge allows us to claim the last lamp-post in the world and affords us direct communication with the Bay of Whales, which even the most prejudiced must concede are valuable publicity points. A leaning to lamp-posts is a good old British custom. Many a traveller would feel the journey justified if he could boast in the bar of the Pickled Beagle that he had held up the last post on earth while he waited three hours for a girl from Bluff who personified the old adage, “When in Bluff, bluff as Bluff bluffs.”
Comparative consanguinity to the Bay of Whales is good sales talk too. There's something about a whale that lingers in the imagination, especially when it has been separated from its bath-water for a long time. The word “whale” reminds one of Moby Dick, and also of Jonah (who possessed inside information about whales), and his wife (who possessed inside information about Jonah). There's something romantic about the cry, “Thar she blows!” provided it's not the caliphont. We believe that a stuffed whale hung over the High Commissioner's door would go big and add considerably to our prestige as a fisherman's paradise.
Not that we need it; we have everything else. We are air-conditioned, steam-heated, ice-cooled, sea-soaked, up-ended, rolled out, washed down and copiously clad in Nature's greeneries. We can catch trout in the rivers, shark in the sea and cold on the mountains. We can pluck bananas in the north, oysters in the south and roosters all over. We can get sunstroke at one end and frost-bite at the other. There is more air than we can use, and there are so many mountains that, if they were ironed out, they'd have to shift Australia to give us room.
Not that we want to go flat out. We have to think of our sheep; it's only fair, seeing that we have twenty times as many sheep as human beings. A sheep would rather nibble three blades of grass at an altitude of fifteen hundred feet than a field of turnips at sea level. It may be uphill work, but it saves wear and tear on the neck; and the sheep gets it in the neck soon enough. You have only to try eating asparagus off the carpet to sympathise with the sheep's point of view.
But, to return to our muttons, no visitor need ever feel lonely in our variegated vicinities. We are a vest-pocket edition of the world. We have the steppes of Russia, the streams of Scotland, the cliffs of Cornwall, the jungles of Java, the waterways of Venice, volcanoes as vigorous as Vesuvius, the forests of Sweden, the mountains of Switzerland, the cheese-consciousness of Holland, and the hot-spots of Hades.
Who said “see Naples and die?” We say “see New Zealand and get an eyeful of the earth.” Amongst our mountains the most uppish Swiss can toss a yodel and swallow it again on the rebound. An Austrian may view the trapezic tempestuousness of his native thar—so near and yet so thar! To the canal-conscious Italian our Wanganui river is no Venetian blind. What it lacks in gondolas and bridges and dogs’ palaces it makes up in water—which wanders in pellucid placidity all in the one direction, and, unlike Venice, there is no danger of a bottle being dropped on you out of a top window.
No American need feel homesick with Egmont's sky-scraping proclivities to contemplate. Certainly there is no lift yet, but we believe that it won't be long before the progressive Taranakians bore a hole up the centre of Egmont and put one in to uplift our visitors from the land of Speedom. An American gets dizzy on street level and is liable to topple upwards. For the tourist who is not absolutely tied to Friday night there are the baths at Rotorua in colours to suit all skins, except Hottentots; but even they can get inked at the local hostelries if they crave a black-out.
The far south is replete with curling (which has no connection with the prevailing waves), oysters (both in shells and in offices), threepenny bits, four-penny beers, cold lakes, warm welcomes and skirling (done by forcing a lot of air through small holes until it shrieks with agony).
For further particulars, “Come to New Zealand!” We can't bring it to you because it's in constant use. Anyway, what would the little godwits do if they arrived and found it gone?
New Zealand is approaching its hundredth birthday, and shortly we shall be proclaiming to the world that we have had a century of nationhood. It would almost seem that fortune is with us in demonstrating that in one important respect, we are justifying our claim to have reached the status of a fully-fledged unit of British citizenship. In the last year or two literary development in New Zealand has proceeded with amazing speed.
The sure test of the standard of culture in any country is its development of the creative imagination. One of the final tests of art capacity is the production of sound literature. I claim that New Zealand now is doing rather better in this regard than any other million and a half of British folk. It seems to me to be perfectly natural that this should be so. Added to our heritage of British cultural tradition, we have a standard of economic ease, and an ownership of scenic loveliness which are matchless in the world of men.
When we find a critic who loftily and summarily dismisses some literary work from New Zealand as negligible, we also find that he is helped by a grand old superstition. It is best summed up by the saying that “culture is the product of leisure.” The same idea has also been put this way: “the wall before the picture, the shelf before the book.” We in New Zealand are regarded as still being engaged in the stern task of turning a primeval wild into the “Empire's Dairy Farm.” The facts are, of course, that the average shophand or factory worker in New Zealand has an amplitude of leisure which would delight and astonish William Cobbett or old Francis Bacon if we could bring them back here to see it.
In any case the theory is a false one. Robert Burns could not be said in any sense to be the possessor of spacious leisure, nor the overworked journalist, Charles Dickens, nor the industrious civil servant, Samuel Pepys, and so on through the panorama of the great ones of English letters. It would be good, of course, if we could relieve any writer of genius from the task of winning his livelihood, to enable him to have all his time for the nurture of his brain children.
It is very obvious that before good work can be done in any art, familiarity with the tools to be used, is essential. Burns is a good example of this fact. He sprang from a community of poets. In his small county, books of verse were being produced and printed almost daily, and every inglenook heard the declamation by some earnest Scot of the latest poetry. The standard of general education in Scotland in his time was the highest in Europe, and the pupil at a small Scottish village school had educational opportunities that were hardly possible at Eton or Harrow.
Now, here to-day in New Zealand, illiteracy is for all practical purposes, non-existent. We have the largest ratio of secondary school pupils, and the highest proportion of university students in the world.
However, there is one final factor which is of the essential stuff of history. “Genius comes unbidden,” said Emerson. It cannot be created, or even fostered to growth by Governments or the action of authority. It springs “between the feet of men,” in times and places which are quite unheralded.
I remember the Dominion's editor of the London “Times” saying to me, “You can rest on your laurels in New Zealand now for a long time. One Katherine Mansfield is enough for you to produce every hundred years.”
I think, though, that there are abundant signs that we are on the eve of a Golden Age in New Zealand literature, and that the achievement of the one year just past has been more than an indication that we are on the way to take our place in the sun, high up on the Parnassian slopes.
First of all, I shall deal with the year's work in poetry. Without being didactic, I would like to say that New Zealand poetry is little more than ten years old. It has been said that one in ten of our population has been the standard ration of New Zealand verse writers. Criticism of poetry must necessarily be mostly personal and a matter of sheer individual taste. In my case, for instance, I dislike the use of classic myth and allusion, I appraise verse more from its thought content than its slickness of rhyme or rhythm. I like the music of the lines to be distinctive and easy on the ear. To me, thinness of meaning and poverty of fancy outweigh smoothness and technical perfection. Until very lately we had a vast output of work that was deft, smooth, uninspired and flawless
Refreshing in the last year or two has been the work of the vigorous younger men such as R. A. K. Mason, Denis Glover, A. R. D. Fairburn, D'arcy Cresswell and others. Alan Mulgan has a poem in his slim volume “Aldebaran,” which amounts to an event in New Zealand literature, Gloria Rawlinson is growing up fast, and has the magic touch, and Marris's “Art in New Zealand” annual of verse shows that there are other workers in this field whose achievement is of value.
But, two women now stand alone as creators of poetry in New Zealand, and they have both earned for themselves deserved appreciation in the European and American centres of culture.
These are Eileen Duggan and Iris Wilkinson. Eileen Duggan is doing for us in verse what Katherine Mansfield did in the arena of the short story. Her fame is now world-wide. When, recently, a great prelate, Bishop Kelly, was leaving America for New Zealand, he was taking leave of his friend H. L. Mencken, one of the coruscating literary figures of modern times, a critic of dazzling ability and ruthless independence. Mencken's one thought was that Bishop Kelly should enquire in New Zealand about Eileen Duggan. Walter Delamare says this: “here is the revelation in its own kind and degree of a personal energy and vision, of a unique feeling expressed in a renewed language.” Later he says: “however much she may have nourished her mind on what other poets have written, she tells always of the direct experience of her own body, mind and spirit.”
It is impossible in the space of this article to quote so as to give an indication of the strength and beauty, the boldness and the rapture of her poems. But here are a few lines:
* * *
This is the magic of pure poetry, and we are right to be proud of our own Eileen Duggan.
The pen-name of Iris Wilkinson is “Robin Hyde,” and she has had two collections of verse published in London in the past year. They are of astonishing quality, loaded with rich fancy, and pulsing with feeling. Her emotions are distinctively her own and her facility of self-expression is prodigious. Both as a journalist and novelist she remains a poetess, and her novels both gain and lose for that very reason. However, Iris Wilkinson has made her place in London, and we shall hear more of her when she settles down in her new environment. I am giving two short excerpts of her quality.
And this:
I think we can safely say that the art of poetry has reached its highest expression in New Zealand this year, and that our workers in this field have taken a place of proud distinction.
However, in nearly all reviews of a country's literary work, critics of the older lands, concentrate on the output only of imaginative fiction. I say with confidence that New Zealand has added this year a substantial shelf of major works of fiction to the library of British works.
“The Story of a New Zealand River” has just been re-issued. It is pre-war, originally, and must still rank as the most important work of fiction written in this country. Its reception, on its first appearance in London, was extraordinary. It captured the fancy of the English reading public at once, as well as earning encomiums from the London critics on a scale hitherto denied to any New Zealand novelist. Its re-publication is welcome. Time has not dimmed its brilliance, nor the authenticity of its New Zealand scenes. It is romance of a high order, it is daring, and, best of all, it could only have been made in New Zealand by a New Zealander. It will remain a minor classic. Another re-issue of almost equal importance was that of “The Greenstone Door,” another work written long years ago, possessing the sturdy qualities of a Waverley novel. The complete understanding of the Maori race, the sheer speed of the story itself, and the grave beauty of the prose, make this a work that will endure. These two revivals unfortunately do call attention to the comparative poverty of this branch of New Zealand letters for a long period. But the 1937-38 period in New Zealand has been one of riches of production.
There is the boldly original work of J. A. Lee. Here is a new voice altogether, prose with a pulse in it, and a creative imagination borne of a new vision. One type of Homeland critic was entirely puzzled to find a writer from the Antipodes preoccupied with the psychological reactions deriving from slum life and social injustice. The books were endowed with such power of expression and tenderness of sympathy, that they were acclaimed at once as the work of a notable artist. Mr. Lee also had, for good measure, the unique possession of an amazing visual memory of the things of childhood and the happenings of early youth. “The Hunted” was the successor to “Children of the Poor,” but both of them were exceeded in craftsmanship values by the astonishing “Civilian Into Soldier.”
During the year also, Iris Wilkinson published two novels in England, “Check to Your King” and the fantasy, “Wednesday's Children.” They aroused great interest in England and have all her qualities of opulent imagination and riot of fancy. “Music in the Listening Place” is an extraordinary effort, and Gloria Rawlinson in its treasures of epithet and wandering beauty, furnishes another example of a novelist remaining a poetess.
G. B. Lancaster, after the success of “Pageant,” a large canvas of the Tasmanian historical scene, has produced a splendid large-scale novel of New Zealand's beginnings and called it “Promenade.”
I regard as just as important, in its own metier, the novel of New Zealand life, “The Hedge Sparrow,” written by C. R. Allen. It has notable naturalness and ease of writing, and is a faithful picturing of New Zealand's own distinctive method of life and outlook.
In another vein altogether, the year has been adorned by the steady successes of two Christchurch writers, Miss Ngaio Marsh and Mr. Norman Berrow. Norman Berrow is a maker of adventure stories of the type first perfected by John Buchan, and he has a steady sale and good reception in England for everything he writes. The rise of Miss Ngaio Marsh has been remarkable. Her crime stories are regarded as standard work in England, and she is rapidly joining the little favoured band among whom are Agatha Christie and Dorothy L. Sayers. She has an extraordinary gift of humour, and a facility for making plots. Inspector Alleyne is taking his place along with Lord Peter Wimsey, Inspector French, and Hercule Poirot.
There is another most encouraging feature of this renaissance in New Zealand. The stream of books published locally is steadily increasing in volume. Messrs. A. H. and A. W. Reed, for instance, handled this year a number of books of memoirs and recollections which would do credit to a major English publishing house. I have read thirty or more, and they are even in craftsmanship and well produced. Their value as recorded history goes without saying. The reproach that we know more about the actual ways of living of the Sumerians and early Egyptians than the Englishmen of the time of Samuel Pepys can never be levelled at New Zealand.
Other local houses such as Whitcombe & Tombs Ltd., Thomas Avery & Son, the Caxton Press and others have also helped in the good work. The doyen of our literary world, James Cowan, had “Suwarrow Gold” published in England, and it has proved a brilliant success. He and others of our noble band of delvers into our soil of history have left for us a library of records of imperishable lustre.
In the realm of pure scholarship, I doubt whether any country has produced in one year the equal of J. C. Beaglehole's “New Zealand—a short History” and his “History of the New Zealand University,” Eric Ramsden s “Marsden and the Missions,” and the epoch-making “Littledene” by H. C. D. Somerset. There is also news of the re-issue of that magnificent work, “Tutira.”
It is not over-patriotic to claim that New Zealand has just concluded a golden year of achievement in literature.
(Concluded.)
Not all the recommendations of the Royal Commission of 1880 were adopted. The Board system, however, which was recommended, did have a trial for a few years, from 1888. Despite the shortage of loan funds, the Government continued to construct the Otago Central Railway, and indeed the Public Works Statement of 1888 regarded this, and the Palmerston North—Woodville Railway (through the Manawatu Gorge), as exceeding in importance the Auckland—Wellington North Island Main Trunk.
The Manawatu Gorge line was actually opened for traffic in 1891. The Palmerston North—New Plymouth link was completed in 1885, the Napier—Woodville link in 1887, but the Woodville — Wairarapa link not till 1897. In the Auckland District the line to Cambridge was completed in 1884, to Rotorua in 1894, and to Thames in 1898 (though the Hamilton—Te Aroha connection dated from 1886 and the Hamilton—Paeroa connection from 1895).
With the recovery in the world prices of New Zealand's staple exports that commenced in the middle ‘nineties, loan funds became more readily available. There was a revival in railway construction about the turn of the century, the most notable achievement of this period being the completion, in 1908, of the North Island Main Trunk Railway.
The reasons for the slow progress in the North were several, of which the following are the most important:—
(1) The distance from Wellington to Auckland was 426 miles, from Lyttelton to Bluff only 392 miles.
(2) In the North Island there were numerous gorges to be spanned and other engineering difficulties to be surmounted, including at one point the construction of a lengthy spiral section (with, tunnels) in order to gain height. In the 152 miles from Christchurch to Oamaru there is hardly a cutting, and the only engineering problems of any moment were the crossing of the Rakaia, Rangitata, and Waitaki Rivers.
(3) The North Island Main Trunk Railway could be constructed only from either end; while the South Island Main Trunk tapped five main ports (Lyttelton, Timaru, Oamaru, Dunedin and Bluff)—from each of which construction was commenced and carried on simultaneously.
(4) The South Island contained the balance of population in New Zealand from the gold rushes of the ‘sixties right up till 1900. In consequence it could exercise more political influence to expedite construction, a further point being that its main railway passed through more productive country.
(5) The South Island was only sparsely populated by Maoris; while railway construction in the North Island (and in the South Auckland district in particular) was long retarded by the hostility of the natives through whose lands the lines required to pass.
(6) There was little room for differences of opinion as to routes in the South; while rival claims of the central and western routes caused considerable delay in commencement of vigorous construction in the North.
Auckland was not connected by rail with Whangarei and the Bay of Islands till 1925, Auckland was not linked with the Bay of Plenty till 1928, and New Plymouth and Auckland were joined up via Ohura as late as 1933.
The Otago Central line was completed to Cromwell in 1921, and the Christchurch—Greymouth line was completed in 1924.
High capital costs per mile relatively to those of other railways of 3 ft. 6 in. gauge might be expected to exist in New Zealand on account of the difficult nature of the country. The longest bridge on the South African Railways (with four times New Zealand's mileage) measures 2,974 feet, as against two in New Zealand of the order of a mile on the Canterbury Plains alone. The longest South African tunnel measures 1,001 yards; the longest in New Zealand 51/4 miles.
It is nevertheless rather staggering to find that the capital cost per mile of the New Zealand Railways to-day is about £16,500, as against £5,000 contemplated
Even on the early constructed lines the capital costs have risen because of the increased density of traffic. This has called for a greater amount of rolling stock per mile, larger buildings, heavier rolling stock, stronger bridges, track duplications, installation of elaborate signalling devices to secure safety in working, and provision of additional equipment on rolling stock to ensure safety and comfort, e.g., Westinghouse brake (installed about 1900), steam-heating on main line cars (installed progressively over the last 25 years), and so forth.
Many of these improvements such as the installation of the Westinghouse brake were not effected before their time; and to judge from some of the official reports of the late ‘nineties locomotive engineers and train crews went in daily fear of a serious runaway.
The early railways in New Zealand—as in most young countries—were designed primarily with a view to rapid opening up of the country at a minimum of capital cost. The rolling stock and the bridges were therefore light in construction and the tracks represented the nearest possible approach to “surface” lines. It follows that they were characterised by heavy gradients and sharp curvature. In Natal practically no heavy earth works or tunnels were needed under this policy, but the result was 1 in 30 grades and curves as sharp as 300 ft. radius. These characteristics served well enough when the main object was cheap and rapid opening up of the country; but they are not good characteristics of a railway carrying a heavy volume of traffic such as the New Zealand main lines during the past 40 years, because they do not make for speed and economy in operation. Sharp curves, for instance, necessitate a reduction of speed in the interests of safety, while, by increasing friction, they also of themselves tend to reduce the speed of trains. Whether the track is single, double, or multiple, also affects operating efficiency and is an important consideration when traffic grows beyond a certain point. If a single track only is provided, frequency of crossing places, the length of loops, and the existence of safety devices such as electric train tablet or automatic signalling (the latter both saves staff and gives a closer headway than tablet between succeeding trains) all have a bearing on rapidity of transport and economy of operation.
Up till well into the present century the only duplicated line in New Zealand was a length of some seven miles in the vicinity of Christchurch; and as recently as 1936 there were only 77 1/2 miles of double track out of a total route mileage of 3,317. Duplication works are, however, in progress on the Main Trunk line north from Wellington, and south from Auckland, which are likely at least to double this figure within the next few years.
Considerable expenditure has, during the past 25 years, been incurred in New Zealand in order to eliminate steep grades where traffic is heavy. This is a proceeding that pays whenever the saving in operating costs is sufficient to meet the interest bill involved, e.g., Mosgiel—Dunedin, Mercer—Auckland, Wellington—Tawa Flat. Between Dunedin and Palmerston South the ruling grade is 1 in 50. This last is rather steeper than is consistent with satisfactory modern working conditions, and in practice in New Zealand anything steeper than 1 in 70 has in recent years been avoided wherever possible. In England it is not deemed good practice to construct railways with steeper gradients than 1 in 100, and the standards of future main line construction are now 1 in 70 in Tasmania, 1 in 80 in South Australia and West Australia, and 1 in 75 in Queensland.
The effects of gradients on the efficiency of railway operation may be readily appreciated if it is pointed out that an engine capable of hauling 686 tons over a grade of 1 in 150, will haul only 494 tons over a grade of 1 in 100, and 249 tons over a grade of 1 in 50. Speeds are affected in about the same ratio; thus a train weighing 220 tons and attaining a speed of 15 miles per hour on a grade of 1 in 50 would attain a speed of 30 miles per hour on a grade of 1 in 100 and 40 miles per hour on a grade of 1 in 150. When the ruling grades between Penrose and Mercer were altered a quarter of a century ago from 1 in 40 to 1 in 100 (at a cost of about £1/4m.), the locomotive that could previously haul only 162 tons over this route could take 494 tons.
There has been a considerable improvement in the equipment of New Zealand passenger carriages, which has somewhat increased the dead-weight in relation to the tractive force of locomotives. The more recent increases have been effected largely in the interests of providing a greater standard of comfort in the face of motor competition. With the opening of the North Island Main Trunk line in 1908, the North Island adhered for many years to standard car types, viz., 50 ft. Main Trunk (8 3/4 ft. wide) and 50 ft. Main Line (7-5/6 ft. wide); but the tares of such rolling stock have progressively increased as a result of (a) fitting electric lighting (run from batteries), (b) provision of steel plates, and angle iron anti-collision ends, and (c) providing separate ladies’ and gentlemen's lavatory accommodation in Main Trunk cars. Later built cars for the Auckland —Rotorua service, the North Island “de Luxe” sleeping cars, and the new North Island Main Trunk ordinary cars show an appreciable increase in tare due to heavier bodies, disc wheels, more substantial design in underframe and car bodies, larger lighting generators (to cover fans, tea and coffee urns, etc.). larger water tanks, and heavier draw-gear.
Thus during the past 20 to 25 years the weight of North Island Main Trunk express carriages has increased almost 20 per cent.; while the increase in the South Island is nearer 40 per cent., as against increases of 15 per cent. in South Africa, 8 per cent. in Queensland, 3 per cent. in Tasmania, and almost stationary tares in West Australia.
Improvements in the design and construction of steam locomotives have been stimulated by the increasing congestion
During the past 20 years the average tractive force of locomotives in New Zealand has gone up 35 per cent., and in South Africa 40 per cent., while the average weights of locomotives have increased by 50 per cent. in New Zealand and 66 per cent. in South Africa. Subsequent to the Boer War a good deal of British capital went into the restoration of Railways, with the result that road-bed standards in South Africa were brought up to those then ruling as British practice. Road-bed and bridges, therefore, have-not hindered locomotive development to the same extent in South Africa as in New Zealand; where bridges, weights of rails, etc., were, at the time they were installed, considered adequate for locomotives then running, but have since considerably restricted locomotive design and have necessitated reboilering. This, in turn, has perpetuated a number of types of locomotive built between 1898 and 1901 (e.g., “B,” “U,” 1901 “Ub,” “Uc”), while numbers of the “F” type built in the ‘seventies have had to be retained to work certain South Island wharves, the Kaihu Valley Railway, etc.
When in 1901 the “Q,” or first “Pacific” (4-6-2) type of locomotive was designed in New Zealand and built in Philadelphia, there were only about 350 miles of line on which the 13 engines of this type could safely run, and then their speed on numerous bridges had to be restricted.
For some years following 1916 New Zealand was practically restricted to building the “Ab” type of locomotive and its variants, “Ws,” and “Wab,” for train operation. The strengthening of bridges between Wellington and Auckland was completed at the same time as the first of the new “K” locomotives was ready to run. (These locomotives have a tractive force of 30,815 lbs., or just over 1 1/2 times that of the “Ab”). On the South African railways (which have the same gauge as New Zealand) just half the locomotives have a tractive force greater than the New Zealand “K” and only one-quarter have a lower tractive effort than our “Ab.”
The building of the new “K” engines was part of a policy to replace in the North Island locomotives that have become obsolete (e.g., “J,” “Wb,” “Wd”), and to release North Island “A” and “Q” class locomotives for South Island use. This rendered unnecessary the reboilering of the older flat valve classes in the South Island (such as 1899 “Ub” and “Wd”) and postponed heavy track work that has not been considered to be justified by present traffic—although even so it has been found necessary to strengthen many of the bridges on the Otago Central Railway to accommodate even the “A” and “Q” engines. These are now considered of insufficient tractive force for the heavy Main Line passenger trains of the North Island Main Line and Branches.
“Yes,” said the wholesaler to the pressman, “new brands are always cropping up, and quite often a heap of money is expended in trying to poularise them. They don't always catch on though, despite lavish advertising. No amount of pushing will push a poor line into favour. As Abe Lincoln used to say ‘you can fool some of the people some of the time but you can't fool all the people all of the time.’ But when a line is really tip-top everybody wants it. Look at our toasted tobaccos—selling like hot cakes everywhere! Why? Because they offer about the best value in tobacco money can buy.” The wholesaler was right. “Toasted” is good. The leaf from which the five renowned blends Cut Plug No. 10 (Bullshead), Navy Cut No. 3 (Bulldog), Cavendish, Riverhead Gold and Desert Gold are made is of the choicest, while toasting frees them very considerably of nicotine. The triumph of toasted may fairly be considered the reward of merit.*
As the height of the summer holiday season approaches in Britain, increasing demands are being made upon the railways in coping with the annual rush to the seaside. Because of the granting of holidays with pay to workers in many industries which hitherto did not offer this privilege, the summer passenger business of the four group railways promises to exceed all previous records. On the publicity side, an enormous amount of telling advertising matter has been put out, relating to train services and the varied attractions of the different resorts, and this year's official holiday handbooks have enjoyed record sales.
These holiday handbooks form, as it were, the backbone of Home railway passenger publicity. They are issued annually by the four main-line systems, and are priced at sixpence per copy. The current London, Midland and Scottish holiday guide consists of 976 pages. It describes more or less fully no fewer than six hundred resorts of all types scattered throughout the system, and includes over 7,000 addresses of hotels, boarding and apartment houses. The London and North Eastern Handbook, with its beautiful coloured cover from a design by Frank Newbold, is an equally comprehensive publication, covering all the East Coast resorts. It contains a complete list of hotels and other accommodation, with tariffs, and its value is greatly enhanced by the inclusion of twenty-one maps of different holiday districts, as well as many fine new pictures in photogravure. Pleasing holiday handbooks also are distributed by the Great Western and Southern lines. The former company's guide is divided into seven geographical sections. It contains about three hundred illustrations in sepia photogravure, seven hundred descriptions of Great Western resorts, and 8,000 holiday addresses.
Even in these enlightened days, not every worker is able to indulge in a week or a fortnight at the seaside. For the benefit of these unlucky folk, the Home railways run an enormous number of week-end, day and half-day excursions to the more popular beach resorts, and excursion travel forms a most valuable source of revenue. It is not generally known, but the pioneer of the railway excursion was Thomas Cook, founder of the travel house which bears his name, and which to-day has ramifications throughout the world. Away back in 1841, Thomas Cook conceived the idea of running a cheap excursion from Leicester to Loughborough, on what is now part of the L. M. & S. system. This was the first public railway excursion organised by a private individual and personally conducted by the organiser. The total distance was 24 miles, and 570 passengers were conveyed, at a fare of one shilling for the double journey. In 1845, Mr. Cook determined to conduct the business on a regular commercial basis, and with this end in view, he applied to the railway authorities to place trains at his disposal, he to find the passengers. The first pleasure excursion under this arrangement left Leicester on 4th August, 1845, for Liverpool, with visits to North Wales, the Isle of Man, and Dublin. Mr. Cook compiled, printed and issued a small guide describing the places of interest to be visited, and this guide was the forerunner of the mass of passenger advertising literature circulated nowadays by the railways of the world.
Continental holidays are increasing in favour, and this trend is bringing valuable business to the Southern Railway. This line, in association with the Northern Railway of France, provides the shortest and quickest route between London and Paris. Altogether, the Southern owns 48 ocean-going steamships, and last year these vessels conveyed 4,500,000 passengers, 310,000 tons of cargo, and 57,200 motor-cars, between Britain and France and the Channel Isles. One service, increasing in popularity, is the train-ferry linking Dover with the French port of Dunkirk. This ferry in 1937 conveyed no fewer than 74,000 passengers, 57,000 tons of cargo, and 1,600 motor-cars. Dunkirk, is a convenient point of departure for all corners of Europe.
Home railway revenues are considerably swelled through the subsidiary activities of the four groups. Train and
For general utility purposes, the G.W. Company has recently commenced the construction in its Swindon shops of twenty 4-6-0 locomotives of a new type, known as the “Manor” class. The engines have driving wheels of 5 ft. 8 in. diameter, a tractive effort of 27,340 lb., and weigh in complete working order with tender 109 tons. The tapered boiler has a barrel 12 ft. 6 in. long. Cylinders are 18 in. by 30 in.; boiler pressure 225 lb. per square inch; total heating surface, 1,615 sq. ft.; grate area 22.1 sq. ft.; total engine wheelbase, 27 ft. 1 in.; tender water capacity, 3,500 gallons; and coal capacity, 6 tons. On the neighbouring Southern Railway, the latest locomotive contribution takes the form of ten new 0-6-0 goods engines, built in the Eastleigh shops, and having a tractive effort of 26,157 lb. The locomotives are fitted with Belpaire type boilers, pressed to 200 lb. per sq. in., grate area being 21.9 sq. ft. A “Sinuflo” superheater is fitted, with an area of 185 sq. ft. The 19 in. by 26 in. inside cylinders have pistons operated by Stephenson valve gear through rocking levers. Total heating surface is 1,432 sq. ft.; total weight of engine and tender in working order, 90 tons; water capacity of tender, 3,500 gallons; and coal capacity, 5 tons.
According to recent official statements, electrification is proving an immense success on the Southern Railway. The Southern, of course, is fortunate in serving territory lending itself admirably to electrification, and the authorities have never sanctioned any conversion without first having assured themselves that the cost and working expenses of electric traction, less the working expenses of the steam service to be withdrawn, would be greatly exceeded by the value of the increased traffic which would result. So far, the results of electrification have greatly exceeded the estimates. The increase in receipts resulting from the London-Brighton conversion, for example, has amounted to a return of 22.6 per cent. upon the outlay. In the London suburban area, the total cost of electrification has resulted in a return of approximately 27 per cent. on capital expenditure, and 16 per cent. on the total expenditure. While on the subject of electrification, it is interesting to note that, with a view to forming an opinion as to the potentialities of main-line conversions, the Great Western Railway has arranged for expert advice to be given concerning the suitabliity or otherwise of electric traction over its trunk routes between Taunton and Penzance.
Very great changes have been witnessed in Germany in recent times, but the railways centred on Berlin have not been affected to any degree. Rumours were current some time ago that Germany proposed to withdraw from traffic the high-speed “Flying Hamburger” and similar express trains which aroused such immense interest when first introduced. Actually, some of these streamliners were withdrawn for a brief period, and their place taken by steam trains. The reason for this, however, was to allow of adjustments and renewals, and quickly the flyers were restored to regular schedule, providing some of the world's fastest passenger runs.
Photos By The Author
Between the last ramparts of the Mackenzie Country in the south-west corner of Canterbury and the Waihao basin of fertile downlands south-eastwards, lies the broad valley of the Hakataramea, 25 miles in length. Today this is practically a closed valley. But when the other 20 miles of road across the Hakataramea Pass is made, it will link not only the lovely country of the Waihao with the great sheep district of the Mackenzie basin, but it will also be a direct route for tourist traffic between Lake Tekapo and the scenic area round the new Lake Waitaki which feeds the hydro-electric station.
The Waimate and Mackenzie Counties have recently joined hands across this pass to draw the attention of the Government to the ease with which the new route could be opened up. The gradient is easy and there are few streams to be bridged. Even now, in the unroaded condition of the pass, given dry weather, it is possible to take a car across the saddle, and the feeling of high adventure of the journey is inspired more by the beauty and altitude of the country than by the risks of travel.
As one stands on the saddle between the Dalgety Range and the Grampian Mountains one can dip down on either side into bleached sheep country where the beauty of the rugged hills and mountains changes with every hour, as the lights of the day of nor'west breezes—travelling past a clear meridian—fill the ranges with black clefts and then wash out their harshness in opal haze.
In writing of this district one's pennaturally trembles a little towards the western side of the pass, with its grandeurs in all that tourist country from Lake Tekapo to Mount Cook, and towards that old tale of Mackenzie, the sheep stealer, whose hideaway was in the great inland plain which took his name and his story forever into its geography and history.
But that story has often been told: how Mackenzie and his dog drove thousands of stolen sheep over the Mackenzie Pass into his great basin and out again across the Waitaki River and through the Lindis Pass into Otago, and how he was captured, dramatically enough, in the Mackenzie Pass, tried at Lyttelton, broke gaol repeatedly, and was eventually shipped out of the country.
His accomplice at the Otago end was supposed to have staged a suicide beside a stream. His clothes were found, but not his body. “Yet,” said Mr. L. Lang-lands in a letter in the “Otago Witness” about 40 years ago, “Had they thrown the grapnel in Princess Street, Dunedin, they might have been more successful, as that is where he serenely bobbed up, very wealthy, after that memorable dive, having divested himself of his name and heavy liabilities, as well as his clothes in the process.”
It is a good story when fully told, and it brushes very close to this saddle, for the Mackenzie Pass is only about a dozen miles from the Hakataramea Pass. But it has recently been written again by Mrs. Woodhouse in her book on the Rhodes family. And the country of this article lies to the eastwards of Mackenzie's dishonest journeys. The Grampian Mountains and the Kirkliston Range divide them.
It lies also to the eastward of the present tourist road which crosses the lake-fed tributaries of the Waitaki, and goes via Omarama into Otago.
At present travellers on the trip from Mount Cook or Tekapo to Queenstown do not see the fierce majesty of the Waitaki metamorphosed into that vast artificially created lake which breaks over the great spillway of its dam in awesome release. The Waitaki hydroelectric power station is one of the notable engineering achievements of New Zealand. And yet the distance from Lake Tekapo to Lake Waitaki is only about 60 miles by the suggested new route.
The country in the region of the dam is full of interest. Downstream on the south side, just beyond a picturesque glimpse of Duntroon—white houses and a church tower uplifted on a green hill—the fringe of the Otago goldfields juts
The sheep stations about here are famous. Robert Campbell and Sons, Ltd., was a spacious name at the beginning of the century. They owned the Otekaike station which stretched from the top of Mount Domett to Duntroon and east to the Maerewhenua river. On the north bank of the Waitaki, another holding of theirs, Station Peak, extended for ten miles up the river to its junction with the Hakataramea and then for 30 miles along the tributary. The old limestone shearing sheds are still to be seen from the Waitaki road, mellowed and over-shadowed by aged trees beside the modern homestead.
In summer green this stretch of the Waitaki is beautiful with willows which soften the harsh edge of the landscape. In autumn there is a glory of leafy colour. But in the bleak places above the lake, about Otematata, the scene may become terrifyingly dramatic merely with the movement of the sun among the stark hills.
The heat pulses on the steep slopes in heavy waves. Nothing breaks the monotony of the sparse tussock except the gullies of the shingle slides. Cutting the yellow flat, yellow with Maori onion, the bend of the river is blue, and cold as glacial springs.
It is late afternoon, and soon the solitary clump of poplar trees around a lonely house is like the shadow of swords in the dusk. The declining sun makes the hills a screen of flat jagged partitions, two dimentional against the pale green arch of the nor'west sky. A silver light hangs between each serried ridge. But where the mountain tops lie towards the westering sun the colours blaze and change in terrible harmonies, through deepest ochre dyed with red madder, then cooling to a cobalt blue.
I have dipped south-eastwards and north-westwards after the Hakataramea joins the Waitaki. Now come back with me into the wide, but much less frequented valley of the Taramea, or rather the high, enclosed harbour of the Taramea, as the Maoris thought of it. Haka in the south is the same as the aka of Akaroa, the hill enclosed harbour of Banks Peninsula, and the same as the whanga of the North Island.
It has been erroneously supposed in the district that Hakataramea meant “the dance of the prickly grass.” And that is a pretty enough fancy. But the taramea is the stiff, bold wild Spaniard with leaves like a sheaf of bayonets falling out from the centre. There is, however, in this region still more of the snow grass, which dances, indeed, in the wind when light with flower. Beside the gully streams the plumes of the toe-toe wave more stately, and where these two grow the slopes have a gay motion.
The stiff taramea was prized of the Maoris. It gives up a gum which they valued for its scent. Maidens only could collect it, and their time of gathering was the early dawn after the tohunga, the priest, had said certain prayers and charms.
Urutane, near Waimate, on the far side of the Hunters Hills, which enclose the eastward side of the Hakataramea valley, got its name because on one occasion the men did the gathering.
For a joke one morning, they rose secretly, earlier than the maidens, and gathered all the taramea gum. When the girls came they were afraid. They thought it had been spirited away, and talked of witchcraft.
But the men had undertaken what was properly women's work, and after that those slopes were called Uru-tane—“gathered by men.”
Laing and Blackwell, quoting Colenso and his translation, give a fragrant little Maori lullaby, which ascends in beauty of expression towards a tender conception of the taramea.
To-day, however, the valley is a great grazing harbour divided into flourishing sheep stations.
Past the Government fish hatcheries it opens out in wide, clean, gentle slopes to the sharp upthrust of the Kirkliston Range. On the Hakataramea Downs Station, a block once more extensive than the present holding, owned by the New Zealand and Australian Land Company, as much as 3,000 acres, were at one time sown in oats for winter feed for the sheep, and to-day one can still see what is probably the largest consecutive acreage of oats anywhere in Canterbury.
The sun falling brilliantly in this air across the range, and flood-lighting the twenty or more stacks in one paddock, makes a fine, keenly sharp and prosperous picture that fixes itself for all time photographically upon the mind.
And one carries away another very clear impression. The floor of the valley has so gentle a slope towards the river, and it is here so interspersed with trickling streams whose water goes unutilized that it appears, and is, an ideal place for irrigation. Round an occasional homestead where the water has been coaxed across a paddock or a garden, the luxuriant and vivid green is like a banner proclaiming fertility.
Perhaps I have betrayed the beauty of this valley, in that in the midst of panoramic landscapes broken along the road by near views of picturesque ruggedness, as suggested in such names as “Rocky Point” or “Cattle Creek,” I have descended into the utilitarian.
The fact is I do not wish to drown the ears in rhapsody—though the grand strains are here—nor to take any sort of gasping exclaiming traveller over the next turn, which leads off
This pass is an interlude. It is neither in the expansive mood of Hakataramea nor the tender richness of the Waihao, although here, still, the steep hillsides dance with the snowgrass, and the gully streams are glad with toe-toe. Along the road the thin groves of cabbage trees are the last relics of the cabbage tree forests of the Waihao, which, 40 years ago, contractors earned 3d. on each tree, uprooted. And only in lightness of spirit does one soar across the pass. The interlude is delayed by eight gates across the wide, well-built road.
On the lip of the bowl of the downs one overlooks Waihaorunga and then slips down into the Waihao. The downs flow about one, rippling out in wide circumferences, not cramping, but flowing from downs to hills and from hills to mountains. And the colour of it cannot be caught by the pen, nor its hospitable loveliness embraced by a sentence. One holds it only fleetingly and, inadequately —the curve of a ploughed down, plumcoloured as winter soil is in gentle light, and beside it the bright green of the autumn sown wheat, then all the tawny velvet shadows of arable gullies cleanly fenced. The dotted trees and warm plantations are melodious with the songs of the birds that come out of the bush.
The earth moves not only with the movement of the seasons, but with the rhythm of its own forms. But at Waihao Forks, the junction of the north and south branches of the Waihao River, these forms are cleft. The river flows out of the Waihao between ragged limestone cliffs which are like white scars in the green.
This river gets its name from the small, clear eel which the Maoris call the hao, and the story of its naming is a pretty tale. That authority on the South Island Maori, Mr. H. Beattie, when he told me, half dismissed it from sheer familiarity, though he enjoyed it again as he went back into genealogies which I omit. Yet I doubt if too many have heard even the following bare thread of the story.
A great many centuries before the Maori had settled permanently in New Zealand the people of the tribe of Waitaha came to the South Island.
“Now,” said Rakaihautu to his son Rakihouia, “I will take half of the tribe with me down through the centre of the land and you sail straight round the coast. We shall surely meet again sometime.”
This they did. Rakaihautu went down through the centre, discovering the big lakes and exploring Otago. He found the country very difficult and mountainous and saw many moas. Tradition does not specify that Rakihouia went right round the island, but he is connected with Kaikoura, Banks Peninsula, and the Canterbury Plains. After exploring these places he fished in the rivers till he came to the river that flows out of the hills onto the southernmost edge of the plain.
Here Rakihouia found the small clear eel, the hao, and his wife, the little Tapu, Tapu-iti, liked to eat this eel very much. They stayed beside the river for some time, and called it Waihao, “eel stream.”
Here, indeed, Rakaihautu found them. They had a great re-union and a great feast. Afterwards they went down to the shore and hung seaweed about their bodies, and pawa shell and any other decoration they could find. They thought very well of themselves.
Rakaihautu had had a hard time travelling, but Rakihouia told him of the easy going on the plains and the good eel rivers. So re-united all of the tribe thrust out their chests, stamped their feet, and turning northward, marched singing for two days up to Timaru.
They gave to the Canterbury Plains a fine name. They called it Ka pakihi whaka tekateka a Waitaha—“The plains where pride was shown by the tribe.”
There are two ways to the plains from the Waihao basin. One is along the river valley, and the other is the way the railway takes through the Gorge to Waimate. But if one is travelling to go south, one ascends the Deviation Road from Waihao Downs and comes out near the lower reaches of the Waitaki River, thus to Oamaru.
Nowadays every hotel and nearly every large private residence boasts its smoke-room, and many seem to think this is a comparatively modern idea. As a matter of fact the provision of a special apartment for the use of lovers of the weed dates back for centuries. All the spacious and beautiful English Manor houses of Elizabeth's time had their smoke-room. What kind of tobacco they smoked then is not particularly recorded, but it is said to have been “coarse and strong” for the most part. Comparatively little was known in that day about tobacco culture. Modern methods of manufacture were unheard of and brands like our famous toasted Cut Plug No. 10 (Bulls-head), Navy Cut No. 3 (Bulldog), Cavendish, Riverhead Gold and Desert Gold were unheard of. Toasting is a very complex process. It not only effectually purifies the leaf but helps to give it its exceptionally fine flavour and wonderful aroma. The blends named have now been for many years before the public and each year has seen an increased output to meet increased demand.*
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There are three kinds of dream places—the places you go to when you dream in bed; the real places you travel to in day dreams; and the imaginary castles you build in your mind. For places seen in my real dreams I have no affection. They are connected with being chased by bulls, a frequent dream of my childhood, falling from precipices, and finding myself in a position of acute embarrassment. It is perhaps a legacy of the days when, though I loved cricket, I suffered agonies in anticipation of going in to bat, that I have several times dreamt I was playing for my province. Seeing that I never made as many as thirty runs in my cricketing days you may imagine that I do not feel happy when I go to the wicket in a dream.
The bright death quivered at the victim's throat; Touched; and I knew no more.
In other words, happily I awake before the bowler becomes the executioner. Worse still is the frequent dream of being about to take part in a play in which I have not rehearsed, and of which I do not know a line. Before my trip to England made real a day dream, I dreamt several times that I was sailing off in a liner full of joy, only to find the ship taking to dry land and steaming up a road. The other night I found myself working a machine gun on a bridge in China, not an experience I care to remember.
The real places of my day dreams? I don't want to see all the world, but I do want to see a large part of it. In India the Khyber Pass, and the Aga Khan—I mean the Taj Mahal—by moonlight, and the Vale of Kashmir and the high country up to the Thibetan border; in America the Blue Ridge where Stonewall Jackson kept guard, and the rest of Virginia, and New England; in Europe, Vienna (though not so much now that Hitler has laid a heavy hand on its gaiety); and the Austrian Tyrol in spring, and the Illyrian coast, which must be odorous with the beauty of “Twelfth Night”; and Roncesvalles, where Roland blew his last horn; and Paris in springtime, not the Paris of red-hot July that I did see. These for a start. In England I want to visit places I had not time to see: Norwich and Boston and the Lincolnshire country of Tennyson; the Yorkshire moors; the Lake Country: Tintagel; Clevedon Church, where Hallam is buried; and Hadrian's Wall. I want to walk the whole length of Hadrian's Wall, from the Tyne to Solway Firth, taking my fill of history in the sun-drenched solitudes of the Northumbrian hills. And in Ireland, especially the west, where the unbroken Atlantic shoulders its strength against a maze of cliffs and bays. There I might meet ghosts of the Wild Geese —“For faith and hope and honour, and the ruined hearths of Clare”—and hear the speech of Synge's folk, and talk with J. J. Meldon.
Some of this may come to me. Meanwhile I must cultivate my garden. I have a dream garden. It lies in a composite spot, the sort of place I would like to live in when I retire. It is on a small secluded bay, a crescent whose horns are tipped by giant pohutukawa leaning over the water. Park land slopes up from the water through groves of pohutukawa and puriri with kowhai here and there to thick bush. From my house I can look out across my garden, over the water to blue hills on the other side of the harbour. Around me at Christ-mast time is the glory of pohutukawa in every shade from deep to brick red; the sky is brilliant above and the drowsing water is the heart of blue. In my garden the scent of roses mingles with the tang of tea-tree. There is very little tide; the channel is close to my shore; the sea-floor of hard clean sand shelves gently; I can bathe when I want to. And ships go by close in, coming and going, big ships and little ships; Home liners with passengers lining the rail to look at a land familiar to most, strange to some; cargo ships from ports not in our far-off geography books; tankers with funnels that look as if they were trying to escape over the stern; little coasters of steam or diesel that have tumbled over bars; scows whose combination of sails and engines prompts the question, which is the auxiliary, the sails or the engines? My bedroom faces the sea, and when I wake in the morning I can see the traffic go by, framed
in my trees, and almost check my watch by some of it. The big brass bell of an historic coaster hangs on the verandah, and sometimes very early on a still summer morning I get up and ring appropriate “bells” on it. (I have the bell to-day). A bridge waves in reply.
Our dream house is built of stone. We are tired of wooden houses, with their decay and paintings. The stone is perhaps like the grey stone that mellows the Queenstown landscape, or the dark stone of Auckland, which is so little used. There is a wide and deep verandah, where we can live in all weathers. In my study, which is panelled in some dark New Zealand wood, puriri perhaps, I am surrounded by my books and pictures. There is room for everything I shall ever have—shelves for books, enclosed pigeon-holes for letters and manuscripts and all the miscellana of remembrance. Everything is reasonably in its place (by which you may know, especially if you know me, that this is a dream house) but there is nothing “faultily faultless, icily regular, splendidly null” about the room. It has an air of being lived in and loved. There is a fireplace big enough to take a log, and we have piles of rata, tea-tree and driftwood. About the room are great arm-chairs, padded with bright cushions. There I go at my leisure in the mornings—perhaps, like Malvolio, “calling my officers about me, in my branched velvet gown,” the said officers being a gardener-chauffeur—or in the afternoons if I like, to write the books I want to write. There is a postal delivery every day (and, of course, newspapers daily), and publishers write politely to know when they may expect my next manuscripts, and even suggesting an increase in royalty rates.
This is near town. My chauffeur-gardener drives me there when I so desire, in a modest car of respectable lines, not one of the bulbous nouveau-rich
My friends all live within easy distance. They come and see me when they wish to, which, so they seem to know instinctively, is when I wish to see them. There are no gaps in this old company. No bores bother me. No acquaintance drops in of an evening to tell me at length droll legends of his infancy, or to seek my support for the foundation of a Society for the Abolition of Tea-drinking. My friends come, and we talk, and talk, and talk. We talk about H—–, our master fifty years ago, and wonder what happened to him; of favourite books; of life and death; of the tries George Smith scored when Auckland beat Wellington in 1897, and the catch Richardson achieved at Eden Park, when?—of what Gladstone said in 1878 and what Mr. Eden, who may be Prime Minister, said yesterday; of the younger generation, our children and grandchildren. We compare these youngsters with ourselves when young, and the comparison is by no means all in our favour. They never stay too long, these friends of ours. I am always to bed in reasonable time, with a book—I am at last reading Boswell—thinking now and then of a long useful but unhurried day on the morrow—I'll miss the bus? No, I won't. There it is, just coming round the bend. Goodbye. What did you say you wanted in town? Tea and reels of cotton? Right-O.
A recent article in one of our daily papers on hedges reminded me of an interesting one I know of in the north. When I was little I used to go to Russell School, and every day used to pass this big hedge of hawthorn growing round two sides of a property near the school. Many a bunch of hawthorns I've nibbled off it—youngsters will eat anything! I have every reason for believing this to be one of the oldest hedges in New Zealand—Russell, once the capital of the Dominion, naturally claims a lot of “oldests”—for in the old whaling book, “The Cruise of the Cachalot,” the narrator tells of going for a walk in the little town, and describes the lovely hawthorn hedge in bloom not far back from the waterfront. Further proof that it must be the same hedge mentioned is that he goes on to tell of continuing up the same road and coming to a little brick house covered with wild roses in the shade of two enormous pine trees growing close together, branches entwined. The trees, which still stand, are on a section just opposite my own home, and are now owned by the widow of a well known Railway Stationmaster, Mr. H. Arnold, late of Morrinsville.
Until Mr. and Mrs. Arnold acquired it, the section was vacant, and we used it for a playground after school, and we used the bricks, odd ones left from the ruins of the little brick house, lying in the tangle of wild roses, periwinkles and gorse, for building the fireplace in our play house.
Some years ago the hedge was cut down, owing to the prevalence of fire-blight, but to my delight on my last visit home, I noticed that it is growing up again quite fast.
It is to be hoped that it is not to be cut down again, for there are few things more beautiful than a hawthorn hedge in bloom, to make no mention of the pity for the loss of a historic landmark.—“Huia.”
To most people the words “West Coast” suggest a wild and wooded region somewhat difficult of access, with a people of boundless hospitality and considerable unconven- tionality. This is the picture which the words suggested forty years ago, and, because tradition dies hard, there are many people who still do not realise that the wildness, the isolation, and “easy- goingness” of the early days no longer exist.
Those who know the West Coast must often have marvelled at the patience and persistency, the foresight and fortitude of the early explorers and surveyors, and the engineers and builders who followed them. We can scarcely imagine the formidable task with which they were confronted. The magnificent Southern Alps slope rapidly to the sea, so that what is defined as the West Coast is a narrow strip of land between the majestic mountains and the Tasman Sea, a strip of seldom even a score of miles wide. Innumerable streams tumble down the mountain sides, rush down the valleys, roaring on the brief and stony journey to the boundless ocean only a few miles away. The mountain slopes and a great part of the stretches of flat land between the rivers were, in the early days, covered with almost impenetrable bush, closely matted with thick undergrowth. Early travellers, who made their way from Nelson, had therefore to wend their way along the beaches or the few Maori tracks, and, when they wished to go inland, they followed the river beaches towards the range of noble mountains.
Captain Cook wrote of this land in 1770—“An inhospitable shore, unworthy of observation, except for its ridge of naked and barren rocks covered with snow. As far as the eye could reach the prospect was wild, craggy, and desolate.”
Had Capt. Cook landed he would certainly have modified his statement, though he would never have visualised the district as likely to become a centre of activity, where wealth immeasurable was to be taken from the very bowels of the earth, and from the river-beds, and where the fertile surface would feed large herds of sheep and cattle.
The earliest surveyors, Messrs. Brun-ner and Heaphy, reported the country as unfavourable for settlement, and said that the rivers were unfit for even the small coasting vessels to enter. They journeyed from Nelson by way of the sea-coast, as far as the Arahura, and at Teremakau found the few survivors of a once powerful Maori tribe, busily engaged in working at greenstone, either sawing, grinding or polishing.
Mr. Brunner, with two Maoris, later explored the sources of the Buller and followed it down to the sea. He travelled along the coast to the Grey River. He passed up the Grey River, discovering the seam of coal at what is now the township of Brunnerton. He continued his journey up the river, crossed the watershed to the Inangahua River and followed that to its junction with the Buller River, along the upper reaches of which he travelled towards Nelson.
The explorer whose name should live longest, however, is James Mackay, for he it was who purchased the West Coast from the Maoris, on behalf of the New Zealand Government.
James Mackay (after whom Mackay Street in Greymouth is called) came as a boy of fourteen to Nelson. He learned to speak Maori fluently, was friendly towards the Maoris and understood them, so that, while quite a young man, he was often called on by the Government to settle Native disputes with the Europeans at the gold diggings, near Collingwood and, in turbulent times, n the Waikato. When he was about twenty-four Mackay began to explore in the mountainous country near the headwaters of the Karamea and, two years later, went down the coast from Karamea to the Buller or Kawatiri River. The bars at the mouths of West Coast rivers, as is commonly known, are not always navigable, but on this occasion, the weather being fine, Mackay was able to sound the bar and to pronounce it navigable for coasting vessels. He continued along the coast to the Mawhera or Grey River, up which he went in a canoe with a Maori guide, as fas as Ahaura (20 miles).
Mackay's guide was a chief, Tarapuhi. (Tarapuhi Street in Greymouth is named after him). Together they explored the sources of the Grey River and then returned to its mouth. Mackay took soundings of the bar, finding that it, too, would permit coasting vessels to enter the river mouth. He was, of course, able to give much valuable information about the economic possibilities of the district; he took back to Nelson samples of coal from the seam discovered about a dozen years earlier by Brunner, and he was able to report on the splendid stretches of flat land, on either side of the Upper Grey, which would be suitable for pasture lands.
After this journey, young Mackay
was appointed Assistant Native Secretary, and his official duties kept him busy in other districts for some time. Yet Mackay was to see much more of “the Coast,” as its inhabitants affectionately call it.
The Maoris had refused to part with the West Coast lands, except under one condition—this was that all the land between the Grey and Hokitika Rivers, from the sources to the sea, should be reserved for the Maoris. This district contained the famous greenstone area of the Teremakau and Arahura Rivers, a district which had been the scene of many and many a raid when Maoris from the present Nelson and Canterbury districts, came to demand or steal some of the much-prized greenstone.
Sir George Grey was most anxious to complete the purchase of the West Coast lands, but, as the Maoris wanted this large tract halfway down the Coast, Sir George realised that the buying of the Coast was likely to prove extremely difficult, and to require prolonged negotiations.
Young Mackay had negotiated the purchase of the East Coast lands from the natives at Kaikoura. He was now commissioned to negotiate the purchase of the western country from Cape Farewell to Milford Haven. His party proceeded from Christchurch over the Alps into the Teremakau, which he followed to the sea, proceeding a few miles north to the settlement of Maoris at Mawhera, the site of the town of Greymouth.
The Mawhera Maoris, under their chief, Werita Tainui, were obdurate. They were willing, for the amount of £200, to sell the district, except that portion between the Grey and Hokitika Rivers. Negotiations failed, for Mackay felt that it was much too extensive a reserve. As quickly as he could, he made the then really arduous journey to Auckland to report to the Governor. Col. Gore Browne, who instructed him to return with an offer of 10,000 acres of reserve, and £300 or £400.
Thus, in February, 1860, Mackay returned to the Coast with £400. His journey was made overland from Nelson, to the source of the Grey or Mawhera River, which he followed to the Mawhera Settlement, a tiny pah, for at this time, as a result of war raids innumerable, there were scarcely more than a hundred natives on the Coast, other very small settlements being near Okarito and in the heart of the greenstone region, and some still further south. The journey was an arduous one. For seven weeks, Mackay tramped on, forced at times to live on weka and fern root, and arrived at Mawhera, footsore and almost in a state of collapse.
A Government schooner, loaded with Government supplies, arrived at almost the same time and the welcome change of food, with rest and care, soon restored Mackay.
A meeting of Maoris was called for, to be held at Okarito (which still bears that name), 139 miles further south.
Mackay, Mackley (his friend—the first to introduce sheep to the Coast), and a surveyor named Burnett, were accompanied by the Mawhera Maoris, led by old Werita Tainui, and as they passed the tiny settlements other Maoris joined in the procession.
Mackay explained that the Governor felt that the reserve asked for was too large for so few Maoris, and made an offer of £300 cash, with a number of small reserves. The offer, after much discussion, was accepted.
The next task for Mackay was to fix reserves which would satisfy the Maori people before the deeds of sale were drawn up.
A further march was made to Bruce Bay, which was to be held as a reserve. Then, still proceeding south by sea coast, or Maori track, they went to Jackson's Bay, where another reserve was to be allowed.
Now began the long tramp back to Mawhera, a few smaller reserves being made further north of Okarito. At Mawhera, on the present site of Grey-mouth, the deed was signed, each of the Maori chieftains giving “his mark,” and Mackley and Burnett, the surveyor, acting as witnesses, as well as some Collingwood Maoris, who had acted as guides to Mackay. Thus, about 7 1/2 million acres came into the possession of the Government for about £300 cash.
Little did Mackay realise as he tramped his often weary and hungry way, of the untold wealth that lay beneath his aching feet, and of the “yellow, glittering, precious gold.” Prob-
(Continued on page44.)
” ‘I may want you,’ he said softly.”
The names of people in this story are wholly imaginary, though the incidents referring to some of the employees as being refugees from the Law are true. In the early days the remoteness of some of the mills made it quite possible for “wanteds” to hide in seclusion for many months.
Kingswell was somewhat surprised to find that all had changed into their best clothes for dinner. There was a running fire of conversation during the meal. Everyone seemed to be on an equal footing. Lynn noticed that Wynder directed most of his attention to Cushla. She sat next to him, Lynn opposite, and her father between, at the head of the table. Occasionally Wynder's eyes wandered across to Lynn. Once their eyes met. Lynn smiled, but Wynder's face assumed a cynical expression, and a hard glint came into his eyes which Lynn could not fail to notice. “This man does not like me at all,” he thought to himself. “I wonder why?”
“Did you have any adventures, Lynn, on your way here?” asked Cushla.
“None whatever. It was the loneliest ride I think I have ever had, and it seemed the journey would never end. Then when I met you and you offered to show me the way, the dreariness all vanished and I would not have minded had it been longer.”
“That is a very pretty compliment, is it not, Mr. Wynder, and we do not have many thrown about down here?”
“Well, we are more circumspect and would like to know first if they were acceptable,” Wynder replied.
“Then you do not know much of ladies. They appreciate compliments if they are not nonsensical,” replied Cushla. “Dad is the only one who says nice things to me.”
“Your father is privileged,” returned Wynder.
“I'm afraid the odds are against me, Cushla, but I don't retract,” said Lynn. “What is your opinion, Mr. Jasper?”
“Compliments, when sincere, are heaven-sent recognition of various attri-butes, but the devil's snare, when in-sincere.”
“Good for you, Jasper,” said Mr. Hawkins.
“Now, Lynn, you heard Mr. Jasper's verdict. Were you sincere, or insincere ?”
“I generally mean what I say, replied Lynn. “And I do think that people would be grateful, when they had earned some recognition, if the fact were mentioned, as Mr. Jasper says, with sincerity. After the dismal ride I had had, any one of you would have welcomed, when nearing the journey's end, the presence of Miss Kay. Don't you think so, Mr. Wynder?”
“I can't say I ever had the opportunity.”
“That's your fault, Mr. Wynder. I've asked you several times to come for a ride, haven't I? Dad said it would do you good after being shut up in the office so much.”
“You never asked me, Miss Kay,” put in Jasper.
“I thought you could not ride, and the horses are ridden so little that they are pretty fresh.”
“I would have taken the risk, anyhow, if you had asked me. A few tumbles would not hurt me,” said Jasper.
“Well, we will leave it at that. You are certainly all right. What about the sitting-room? Do you play the piano, Lynn?” asked Mr. Kay.
“No, I'm afraid not. I used to try and sing, but the household objected so strongly that the attempt was given up.”
“Do you play cricket?” put in Mr. Jasper.
“Yes, I can oblige you there. I played a good deal in Australia.”
“And billiards?”
“Yes., Have you a table here?”
“Rather. Two. What do you say to paying the saloon a visit?”
“Coming, Mr. Hawkins?”
“No, thank you, Jasper. I've got a good book.”
“Do you play for stakes, Mr. Jasper?”
“He can beat every one in the place, Lynn, and then give them points, too,” said Cushla.
“You will meet some of the mill hands, Mr. Kingswell,” said Jasper. “Many of them play, but the marker only lets the best players use the table
we'll play on, and it's jolly good, too. Anyhow, it'll give you a chance to meet some of the hands, and by Jove! they are mostly a fine lot of men.”
Lynn was glad to have the opportunity of making himself known to as many as possible. Jasper, who apparently held their respect, was greeted with: “Good evening, Mr. Jasper. Have you come to clean us all up?”
“No, friends. We really came down so that you may meet Mr. Kingswell, who is the son of Mr. Kay's best friend. I don't know what duties are allotted to him beyond to help where he is wanted and to hear and adjust any complaints you may have to make.”
“I'm glad to meet you all,” said Lynn. “An it won't be my fault if we are not friends. So far as I can see you have good quarters, and though you are so far away from the outside world, Mr. Kay has done all he can to make you contented.”
“Quite right. No better boss ever lived,” answered one of the men.
Lynn shook hands with most of them. They were struck with his fine physique and manly bearing, and his pleasant, open face. Lynn was pleased with this reception and thought it augured well for the future.
“Are you going to have a game with Mr. Jasper? You'll find him a tough proposition, Mr. Lynn—25 and 30 is nothing to him in a break,” cautioned one of the men.
“What about some points for a start, Mr. Jasper?”
“I never buy a pig in a poke. Play a game first, and I'll be better able to judge,” said Jasper.
“What will we have on it, anyway?”
“The usual,” said Lynn.
“Right Oh! Toss for break. Heads I win.”
Heads it was, so Lynn led off and managed to put the two in balk. A nice up and down the table shot started Jasper's first break for 20. Lynn followed with a break of 25.
“And you wanted points. I'm afraid I have met my Waterloo,” said Jasper, as Lynn continued to increase his lead. “I'll have to put Mr. Wynder on to you.”
After the game was finished, and Jasper had paid his debt, the pair left the saloon. Lynn suggested that they go for a stroll.
“As a matter of fact, Mr. Jasper, I wanted to have a chat with you, and I want you to regard our conversation as absolutely confidential.”
“Readily, if it is not against Mr. Kay's interest,” replied Jasper.
“I can assure you that what I have to ask you is entirely in Mr. Kay's interest,” said Lynn. “And I wouldn't be speaking to you on a grave possibility without I felt I could thoroughly trust you, and I had to take into my confidence someone who knew the run of the ropes and on whom I could rely in the event of anything untoward happening.”
“What may happen, Mr. Kingswell?”
“That I can't say yet, but you'll agree with me that this mill is a long way from other settlements. It employs a large number of people whose weekly pay sheets must run into considerable sums, necessitating a large amount of cash always being on hand. This may be a temptation to some men whose honesty is not above suspicion.”
“I've thought that myself, when the boss takes on new hands who spring from God knows where,” said Jasper. “And lots of times I get up in the middle of the night and take a cruise round.”
“I'll be perfectly frank with you. I'm here to keep a special watch over this outfit. I've served some time with the Mounted Police in Australia and through my father's anxiety for Mr. Kay and knowing his thoroughly trustworthy nature, he brought me back to New Zealand and had me sworn in as a mounted special, with a fairly roving commission.”
“By Jove! it's funny, but when you came into the office I took you for something of that sort. Well, I'm glad anyhow,” continued Jasper. “You can count on me, but you'll have to alter your walk a bit, otherwise the very men you want will grow suspicious.”
“Thanks for the suggestion,” replied Lynn. “Now tell me, are there any here you don't altogether trust?”
“Well, Mr. Kingswell, there are one or two I would not like to meet on a dark night, or in a lonely spot.”
“I suppose I'll get a glimpse of them tomorrow. Just tell me who receives the money for wages and pays all hands,” asked Lynn.
“I do,” replied Jasper. “Some of them bank the cash here and it is deposited every week at the Bank, so that about £400 is sent away and roughly £400 in cash brought back for payment the following week. All payment for timber is lodged by your father in the Auckland Bank.”
“Who else knows of the amounts kept in hand?”
“Mr. Wynder, of course. He makes out the cheque for Mr. Kay to sign for the weekly drawings as per wage sheet which I prepare,” replied Jasper.
“Who does the conveying?” asked Lynn.
“Jacques Martin. You'll meet him tomorrow and like him, too.”
“Thank you very much, Mr. Jasper. I think I have the lay of things, but I'll have to walk fairly circumspectly and see which end of the concern requires assistance most.”
“The office end,” said Jasper.
“Suits me, but I think it advisable to avoid any familiarity, except when by ourselves.”
They shook hands on their agreement and then betook themselves to the house.
The following day Jasper found plenty for Lynn to do. Some large special orders had to be got ready and these he entrusted to Lynn to take to the yard foreman. It took Lynn some time to find that gentleman, who turned out to be one of the men he had spoken to in the billiard room.
“Mr. Jasper asked me to bring these
(Continued from page 39.) sheets to you. The timber is required to be shipped with the next scow load and to be marked with white paint.”
Desmond looked at the order sheets.
“All first-class totara and matai flooring. We use four colours. White for first-class, blue, rough heart, red, second class, black, shakey.”
“I know the marks quite well, for my father handles all the timber from here and I worked in his yard for some time,” replied Lynn.
“So you are not a new chum at yard work, Mr. Kingswell?”
“Just know enough to be of some use to you if you get jammed. I had no idea that you kept such a lot of timber in stock.”
“It takes a good while to season,” replied Desmond. “This order is for 15,000 feet of first-class, and with other orders for the same quality, will reach 25,000 feet to ship. The second-class has got to dry also, so there must be close on a million feet in the yard.”
“Are you not afraid of fire?” asked Lynn.
“Of course there is always a danger, but since Mr. Kay had the water laid on, every row of stacks has one or two connections with a good length of hose, so we don't worry so much. There is also a night watchman.”
“Have you many hands in the yard?” asked Lynn.
“About 33. Good men, too, with the exception of one or two who came on about six weeks ago. The latter are rough-looking and don't get on with their mates.”
“It's very good of you, Desmond, to explain things to me. A fellow—a new hand, too—won't feel such a fool. I must go now, else Mr. Jasper will think I'm lost.”
“My little office is just over there,’ replied Desmond. “Come down any time, and we can have a chat.”
“Only too glad,” replied Lynn. “So long!”
* * *
“Well, did you find Desmond?” asked Jasper, when Lynn returned.
“Yes. A jolly decent chap, too.”
“One of the best, Mr. Kingswell. How are you at working out quantities? These are the tail-end of orders for the scow load. I'd like them finished up to-day, so that it leaves me clear with the wage sheets to-morrow.”
“How do you work it, Mr. Jasper?”
“Well, every hand is paid in cash weekly, and signs for it. Some pay their wages back into their credit, for which they get a slip. Some, a few days later, then pay in various amounts. There are others who pay in a good deal more—the fortunate ones who have either won bets at cards, snooker or billiards. A few change their cash for cheques to send their wives or relations. On payday they come in at the rate of five an hour. Each lot know their hour, so there is not much rush. You'll have a chance to see the performance to-morrow. The staff manager and foreman are paid monthly, by cheque, which is due next week.”
“For the life of me, I can't see how you and Mr. Wynder can keep up with the clerical work of this mill,” said Lynn.
“Fortunately, Miss Cushla comes to our assistance when there is any typing to do—I'm not much good at it,” returned Jasper.
After dinner that night Wynder excused himself, saying there was some work he wanted to finish at the office. He certainly went there, but came out in about ten minutes, leaving the light burning. He looked cautiously around and then walked across the railway lines, leading into the bush. He gave a low whistle which was immediately answered. Then out of the gloom ap peared a man. Wynder said nothing until he was sure who it was—Sam Higgins—who was the first to speak.
“Anything doing, colonel?”
“Don't speak so loudly, you fool. No, nothing so far. The safe business won't do. I can't see how we could get away with the boodle. It would be a far better plan to stick the car up, dispose of Martin, and get away with the lot. The most it will be is £500 or £600, but it's cash. If we cut the telephone wires we can get a long way before the trouble begins.”
“That suits me, colonel. We'll have to take Holt, else he'll ‘blow the gaff’,” Higgins replied.
“That divides up the profits. Anyway, we could take him and dump him somewhere on the way,” said Wynder. “In the meantime, I'm just a little worried about the new hand they call Kingswell. I've seen that stamp of man too often not to be wary. At any rate, it will be as well to keep in touch with me here every night, in case we may have to bring off the coup a bit sooner, but if all goes well, it will be the trip after next, and I think I can add a bit to the venture by copying the Old Man's signature. Good night, Higgins.”
Wynder sauntered away, keeping in the shade of some standing bush until opposite the building. In a short while he regained his office. “I wonder what I'm going to do with Higgins?” he thought. “Anyhow, this item can wait till time and opportunity arrive.
No one had noticed Lynn as he quietly left the sitting-room. He made no attempt to follow Wynder, but took a straight course to the office buildings, and in the shelter of a narrow division between the office and the mill, he waited. He heard Wynder go out, and seizing the opportunity he bored a three-quarter of an inch hole through the walls which consisted of T. & G. lining and weatherboards. He had brought
(Photo., courtesy J. H. Kemnltz.)
Lynn waited no longer. Adjusting the plung in the hole he went straight to the billiard room hoping to see Jacques Martin.
Espying Desmond, Lynn went up to him. “Is Martin in the saloon?” he asked.
“Yes,” replied Desmond. “See that man in the corner—reddish moustache?”
“Yes,”
“That's Martin.”
“Thanks,” said Lynn, and strolled across the room.
“Are you Mr. Martin?” asked Lynn, as he approached the young man he sought.
“Yes! What can I do for you? You're Mr. Kingswell, the new hand, aren't you?”
“Yes,” replied Lynn. “Do you mind coming outside? I want to have a chat with you about an intending passenger.”
“Certainly.”
With that the two went out.
“Well, now, to come to the point. I want to make the trip with you, and I don't want anyone to see me leave. Is there anywhere you could pick me up? I'll guarantee to get there without being seen.”
“What's the game—clearing out? Sick of the job already?” queried Martin.
“No. I'm coming back, but I wish to accompany you on this and perhaps the next trip. I don't want anybody to know about it except Mr. Jasper, and if I think it is necessary I will tell Mr. Kay. But I must have your confidence also.”
“I shall want yours too,” replied Martin.
“Well, if I say it is solely in the interest of Mr. Kay, and I may add, in yours, will you believe me?”
“I don't quite know, you are springing it a bit suddenly, and I can't see an object.”
“Supposing I told you that there are some suspicious characters about here—men who are wanted—would that satisfy you?” asked Lynn. “The photographs I have may or may not be useful in identifying them—men of that sort shave, or let their beards grow, but I will have formed a far better opinion by to-morrow night and if I am wrong, then you can take your lonely trip by yourself. In any case I think it would always be safer for you to carry a six-shooter.”
“I always do, Mr. Kingswell.”
“That's good! If you are satisfied then, just tell me where you will pick me up, and how I can get to the spot without being seen.”
“If you are in Mr. Kay's confidence, go with him a little way on the train line, and then make a straight cut through the bush, until you reach the fence, follow it until you come to the gate. I can pick you up there. I leave at 7.30 a.m.”
“It isn't necessary for me to ask you not to speak of this matter, is it Martin?”
“Good Lord, no. If there are some twisters about, let's get them, Mr. Kingswell.”
“Of course there's always a chance of their getting us,” replied Lynn. “Anyhow, keep a watch on the car.”
“I hardly think it will come that way—more likely to stick the car up, blot you out, and drive away with the whole box of tricks. However, it may be all bunk, but I'm taking no risks. Now we had better go down to the billiard room and have a game.”
(To be continued.)
The Golden West—
Where Mackay (now an almost forgotten name) saw an expanse of land, either heavily timbered, or open Kakihi lands, now lies many a snug farm or prosperous township, and where once he heard the whirr of a bird and its fleeting song, is heard the throb of engines, the sound of wheels, and the shouts and whistles of men at work, for, with its coal and gold mines, its sawmills, its farms and its busy wharves and railways, the West Coast is now a thriving, bustling centre of almost ceaseless activity.
The forthcoming centenary will bring before us the names of many who are in danger of being forgotten. James Mackay is one of these. The Westland Committee proposes to erect a statue in his memory, or to mark in some dignified and worthy fashion New Zealand's appreciation of his work. The memorial will be in the little township of Okarito, where the deed of transfer was signed on May 30th, 1860. Now that transport is becoming so quick and simple a matter, there will doubtless be many a visit paid during the celebrations to Jackson's Bay and to Bruce Bay, two places at which reserves were set aside for the Maoris.
Some years after Mackay's visit, a settlement of Europeans was established in South Westland, under a scheme arranged by Sir Julius Vogel. The settlement was a settlement of foreigners, including many Germans, Poles and Italians, but only loneliness, poverty and despair proved to be their lot, in spite of the fact that many of them were highly educated, wise and self-sacrificing men. There was no really workable harbour, no proper roads, and the unfortunate people, who had with difficulty arrived there, found themselves with the wide Tasman Sea before them, the lonely and mighty Southern Alps behind, and on either side, thick forests, with only a few often-flooded paths leading through them. Then, too, with so much bush, the weather was wetter then than now.
With rain, isolation, hunger, and hopelessness, this little settlement had a dreary, indeed heart-breaking time. Eventually, the Government had to remove them to other and more congenial parts of New Zealand.
A harbour has quite recently been made at Bruce Bay, and, already shipments of timber (and Westland is indeed the home of fine timbers) have been sent from there. With the new Coast road now running to Milford, and with the regular air-service, the last of the isolation has been removed.
When Barbara, Michael and June arrived home late that night and told their parents where they had been and about Peter's disappearance, they received a severe scolding. Every day after school they were told to come straight home and were forbidden to go outside their gardens. The search for Peter continued. When no answer could be got from the cottage, the door was broken open, but of Mr. William Wiggins there was no sign and nothing could be found in the cottage which told the searchers whom he was.
Peter's father and mother would not listen to the story told by the children that Peter had been captured by goblins. Instead, they notified the police, but though the police searched through the countryside, in each town, large and small, no trace of Peter could be found. The police put forward the idea that Mr. William Wiggins was a clever criminal who had captured Peter to hold him for ransom. They were quite confident that Peter would be soon found. The police could not find out the real name of the mysterious little man, so the name of “Wiggins” bestowed on him by the children was being used by the people in the neighbourhood, when they spoke of the disappearance of Peter.
Late one night after a fruitless search for Peter, Barbara and Michael were preparing to go to bed when Michael said, “There must be some way we can find Peter.”
“Couldn't we put a notice in the paper,” suggested Barbara, “You know like June's father does sometimes, asking Mr. Wiggins to please return Peter and say that he was awfully sorry and didn't mean to catch the goblin.”
“No, that's no good,” said Michael, and pulled the bedclothes round him.
“Why?” asked Barbara, jumping into bed.
“Because Mr. Wiggins is not here and so he wouldn't see the notice.”
“Where is he, then?”
“Oh, how should I know,” Michael replied rather rudely.
“Then, don't say such silly things!” retorted Barbara.
But before Michael could think of a suitable answer their Mother had entered the nursery. “Lights out, children. No more talking.” She bent over each bed. “Good-night, Barbara. Goodnight, Michael.”
“Good-night, Mummie,” they chorused. “Now, don't forget, no talking.” She closed the door softly and in a few minutes, the children were sound asleep.
The moon came up out of the sky and sent her silvery beams through the window. Barbara stirred in her sleep. Tap! Tap! came at the window. In an instant Barbara was wide awake.
“Michael! Michael! Wake up! There's someone tapping at the window!”
Michael sat up in bed, sleepy-eyed. “What did you say, Barbara?” he asked.
“I heard someone tapping at the window. Listen! There it is again! I'm going to see who it is.” Barbara jumped out of bed and went over to the window. Michael followed, her quickly. Barbara threw open the window and there on the window-sill was a fairy boat with white sails and in it were two elves dressed in red.
“Ooh! Look! Look!” exclaimed Barbara, her eyes alight with excitement. “It's two elves in a fairy boat.”
“Well,” said the first elf, “I'm glad you've come, we've, been here for ages.”
“What have you come for?” asked Michael.
“Before I tell you,” answered the first elf, “Let me introduce myself. I am Tiny Toes and this is my brother, Dimples.”
They both took off their tiny red caps with long white feathers at the side, and bowed low.
“We are awfully pleased to meet you,” said Barbara timidly. “Do tell us what you want?”
“May we come in?” and without waiting for an answer, Tiny Toes jumped out of the boat, onto the window-sill, from there to a chair and then to the floor.
“We can't talk to you from here, it's too low,” said Tiny Toes. He looked round the room. “I know!” he exclaimed. He jumped lightly onto Barbara's bed and then to the railing at the foot. Quickly Dimples followed him.
“Now, you can sit on the bed and we can see you,” he said, and he and Dimples sat on the railing and dangled their legs over the side. Barbara and Michael sat on the bed.
“Now,” said Tiny Toes, “I will tell you why we have come. There has recently been built here a yellow cottage—
“Why, yes!” broke in Barbara, “that's where Mr. William Wiggins lives!”
“Mr. William Wiggins?” Tiny Toes looked puzzled. “Why, you mean—” he stopped and then went on, “Mr. William Wiggins is not his name.”
“Then, what is his name?” asked Michael.
“I can't tell you,” answered Tiny
Toes, “for if I once mentioned his name to a mortal, our Fairy Queen would die. All I can say is that he is a very wicked man and he has built that cottage to trap little elves and, fairies who may be flying over his way. That's why there is a window in the roof instead of in the side of the cottage and that funny shaped balloon on the long pole is put there so that our people will think it quite safe to fly there. We have them in different parts of our country. Yes, that horrible Mr. Wiggins, as you call him, has caught hundreds of our people.”
“But,” asked Michael, “what does he want with them?”
“He wants them for slaves in his own country,” answered Tiny Toes. “His people are very lazy, they won't work. Isn't that right, Dimples?”
Dimples nodded agreement.
“And that's not all he's done,” said Barbara, “he's stolen Peter, our friend, who lives next door.”
“Yes,” answered Tiny Toes, “our Queen heard about that and she said to us, ‘Tiny Toes and Dimples, I want you to return Peter safely to his home. This time that wicked man has gone too far.’ And we said, ‘Your Majesty, we will do our very best.’ So we've come to you for help.”
“We would be pleased to help you,” said Michael, “but we don't know where Peter is.”
“Oh, but we do,” put in Tiny Toes, “and we can take you straight there in our fairy boat.”
“Oh, goody!” Barbara clapped her hands excitedly, “Will it take very long? And can we go now?”
“No, it won't take very long,” answered Tiny Toes, “and you may come this very instant.”
“Can we bring June, Peter's sister?” asked Michael.
“No, I'm afraid not,” answered Tiny-Toes, “because her Mother might be angry with us if we took her, and it would rather overload the boat. Have you anything belonging to Peter that we can take, for you know we cannot rescue him without that.”
“Rather!” exclaimed Barbara, “We've got his, pen-knife that he left on the roof of the house when he was captured. I'll get it.”
She went over to the little dressing-table and opened a drawer. She came back with the knife in her hand.
“Take it with you,” said Tiny Toes, “and I think you had better get dressed, for you may be cold.”
“I forgot we were in our sleeping suits,” said Barbara.
The children dressed in their outdoor clothes, with warm woolly scarves and berets. Barbara placed the pen-knife carefully in her pocket.
“We are all ready now,” said Tiny Toes, “First of all, I must sprinkle Fairy Reducing Powder over you so that you will fit into our boat.”
He and Dimples jumped off the railing onto the floor, then to a chair and so to the window-sill.
The children came over to the window. Tiny Toes took the Fairy Reducing Powder out of his pocket. “Shut your eyes,” he said. He sprinkled the Fairy Powder over the children's heads and gradually they became smaller and smaller, until they were no larger than the elves.
The children found it quite easy to jump onto the window-sill and they stepped into the tiny boat where they sat on seats at the far end. “Pull up the sails, Dimples,” ordered Tiny Toes. The sails were hoisted and Dimples hauled in the tiny rope that had held the boat tied to the window-sill. They glided away into the sky.
“Isn't it fun, Michael!” exclaimed Barbara, as the cool breeze fanned her face. “Where are we going, Tiny Toes?” she asked.
“We are going,” answered Tiny Toes with a mysterious smile on his tiny face, “to the Magic Island!”
(To be continued.)
Last summer, spectators on New Zealand sporting fields witnessed a strange game being played. It was baseball—the fast-moving national pastime of the Americans. Attempts have previously been made to introduce the game in different centres of New Zealand, but not until the present year has it become firmly established in both islands. Enthusiasts claim that next summer it will attract thousands of spectators, as does our national winter game, rugby.
There is no need to mention that it is the summer sport in the United States. It may come as a surprise to some, however, to learn that it is the national pastime in Canada and Japan, besides being played extensively in England, South Africa,. Europe and Australia. The sport is in its infancy in New Zealand, but the support accorded it in the main centres indicates that there is every prospect of this million-dollar game challenging cricket for popularity.
Authorities agree that the game is fundamentally a development of the old English pastimes of rounders, and cricket, but the characteristics of both have been submerged beneath the speed and accuracy which marks the game among American professionals. The only game which has been played in New Zealand is the softball game, which is identical with true baseball, except that the bases are further apart, the ball is smaller and the rules are slightly different. However, there is no difference in the actual playing, so softball will be described in detail as it is the Canadian game and, in America, is threatening hardball, which is tending to slow up because of the padding used by the players. The differences in the two games may be readily ascertained by reference to a rule book.
The game is played by nine players on each side, one team fielding while the other players take their turn at bat. The baseball field is a square with a side of sixty feet, at the corners of which are the four bases. The ball is delivered from the centre of the field to the batter, who stands at home base. He attempts to hit the ball so that he may run one or more bases. The fielders attempt to put him out by the methods described later in this article. The bases are canvas bags 15 inches square, with the exception of home base, which is a rubber plate measuring 12in. × 12in. On both sides of the home plate rectangles are marked out in which the batter must stand when striking. The bat is made of any hardwood 34in. long and 2in. in diameter at its largest part. The ball is of simliar composition to a cricket ball, 12in. in circumference and weighing 6oz. Wearing apparel consists of a wire mask for the catcher and gloves for both catcher and first baseman. Of course, these safeguards are not necessary, but for those who prefer their bones in one piece, they are strongly recommended.
Forty feet in front of home plate on a line to second base, is the pitcher's plate, of wood or rubber, measuring 24in. × 6in. The pitcher is the player who delivers the ball to the batter. When pitching, he must have one foot on the plate, and he must not take more than one step. He must deliver the ball so that the hand is below the hip, and the wrist not further from the body than the elbow. As is the case of the bowler in cricket, the art of pitching is to deliver the ball so that the batter is unable to hit it.
The most important member of the team is the catcher, who stands immediately behind the batter and catches all balls which pass him. He must, therefore, be able to take balls which fly off the bat at an angle, while he must also be able to throw quickly and accurately. He conspires with the pitcher in various signals, so as the latter may know which type of ball will deceive the batter. There is one player stationed near each of the bases, so as to be able to touch the base with
The remaining three players constitute the outfield, and their duties are to field and return balls which pass beyond the reach of the infields. Besides being reliable catchers, they have to be able to throw fifty yards, with accuracy, and they should also be very quick to back each other up.
The function of a batter in baseball is identical with that of his cricket counterpart, but he is required to show much more “hustle” in running. He has to attempt to hit all balls which pass directly over the home plate between the height of the knee and shoulder, as these count as strikes against him whether he hits them or not. He must also decide quickly whether the ball is a strike, because any ball at which he swings, whether a strike or not, registers as a strike. If, after three strikes, he has not attempted to run to first base, he is out. He must run on the first ball he hits which settles within the diamond, or passes over the diamond on its flight. A ball which he hits and which settles outside of the right-angle formed by the lines from home to first and third bases, is a foul hit ball. A foul ball counts as a strike against him unless he has had two strikes previously, after which a foul ball ceases to register. As soon as the batter has made a fair hit, he runs to first base or further if he thinks he can make it. If the pitcher delivers four balls which do not pass over the home plate at the correct height before the batter has had three strikes, the batter is allowed to walk to first base without liability to be put out. A ball which touches the batter is counted as one ball against the pitcher, but the batter is not allowed to walk to first base as is the case in hardball. That provision was necessary, as a batter may be intimidated by a pitcher who was allowed to throw the ball straight at him without penalty. This used to be particularly the case if the batter was up against a pitcher who would make Larwood look like a beginner, and we can scarcely blame the batter for not desiring the outline of the “body beautiful” altered by a hard ball travelling at sometimes 160 m.p.h., even though, when he was hit, he was permitted to walk to first base, if not permanently disabled. However, to return to the batter. When he makes a hit and the ball is caught by any fieldsman, or is thrown to first base and held there by a player in contact with the base, before the runner arrives, he is out.
After a runner has made a base or is put out, the next player in the team batting order becomes the batter. When he makes a hit, the runner on first base must vacate that base and run to second, as no two men may be on the same base, nor may one runner pass another. When a runner is not in contact with his base, he may be put out by being touched with the ball by any fieldsman. Thus it is necessary that a runner be able to stop dead when he arrives at a base, for if he overruns, he is liable to be dismissed. Thus players coming into a corner at top speed hurl themselves at the base in all types of spectacular dives. It is this race between man and ball, with a diving climax, which arouses the crowds to a tremendous pitch of excitement, particularly when a runner is coming into home, and a run may mean all the difference between victory and defeat. It is comparable to the race between a rugby player running down the line with the ball, and another player coming across field to tackle him, and it seems likely that the tremendous enthusiasm an incident of this type arouses on a football ground will be duplicated on the baseball diamond, where it occurs many times in the one game. Already spectators in New Zealand have confessed themselves thrilled by the resemblance between some plays in the ball game, and those of the rugby field. However, to return to base-sliding. It might be remarked that opportunities for headfirst sliding are more likely to occur in softball than hardball, as the baseman is not shod in solid shoes with vicious spikes against which even the keenest of base runners might hesitate to dive his head. The feet first slide was largely practised in hardball because a baseman objected to having his shins dented by the spiked shoes of the incoming runner, and thus he kept clear of the base until the last moment, giving the runner a better opportunity. However, that advantage has ceased to exist in softball, so that spectacular head-first sliding, which is losing favour in America, should gain prominence here.
The only remaining point in baseball is the method of scoring. Each team has a definite batting order, and when a player has completed a circuit of the diamond and returns home, he scores a run. There are seven or nine innings in the game, and an innings closes when there are three men out. Unlike cricket, a player may be put out more than once in each innings, when the other eight men have batted, and it is
A brief summary of the rules under which a player may be put out, should be of interest. Firstly, if he makes a foul hit which is caught by a fieldsman, except when it does not rise above the height of the shoulder. Secondly, immediately after three strikes have been called. Thirdly, if a fairly batted ball is caught before it touches the ground. Fourthly, if the ball is securely held by a player contacting a base before a runner arrives. Fifthly, if he is touched by the ball in the hand of a fieldsman when he is not in contact with a base. Lastly, if, when a hit ball is caught, a runner who had attempted to run a base while the ball was in flight must return to the base before the ball is securely held there, or he is tagged by a fieldsman.
A peculiarly American flavour is given by the behaviour of the spectators, who thoroughly “let themselves go” with the spirit of the game. Every hit, slide or catch is greeted by a tremendous shower of wild cheering. Hats and cushions are tossed into the air, and every decision of the umpire is received with vociferous acclamation or disapproval. In fact, contrary to all our English ideas of sport, a man is considered lacking in enthusiasm if he does not abuse the umpire when a doubtful decision goes against the team he supports. The duties of an umpire are extremely arduous. Every pitch must instantly be declared “strike,” “ball” or “foul,” and he must decide whether a runner is safe on a base or not.
The terrific excitement when a runner is sliding into a base, or dodging a fieldsman, when he attempts to tag him out, has to be experienced to be appreciated. Actual players must be excellent throwers and quick thinkers, as will be seen when a player fielding finds there are three opponents running between bases, and he has to decide which runner is likely to be most easily put out, and to throw the ball accurately to the baseman. This pronounced ability required has led to the professionalisation of the game in America, because no ordinary person could cultivate in spare time the skill and speed required. Baseball is an excellent pastime, and one which should challenge cricket and tennis as a summer sport for the people.
From the District Manager, Department of Industries and Commerce, Tourist and Publicity, to Mr. G. H. Mackley, General Manager of Railways, Wellington:—
At the special request of the Cruise Directors of the Hamburg Amerika vessel “Reliance,” I wish to convey to you an expression of the grateful thanks of the “Reliance” staff for the kind action of the Railways Department in providing special transport on their return from Rotorua to enable the members of the staff to make their shipping connection in Auckland.
The cruise staff have travelled round the world several times with various parties, and are in a position to state that this action on behalf of the Railway Department is entirely without precedent in any country of the world. In any other country the Railway authorities would leave the passengers to their own devices to make any shipping connection, and the staff sincerely appreciate this prompt service rendered to them.
— When you think of the richest wheat and wool district in New Zealand
— You think of South Canterbury
— and The Timaru Herald that circulates to 97% of the people of South Canterbury.
One of the most interesting events in the local literary world this year is the appearance of “Tales by New Zealanders,” an anthology published by the British Authors’ Press. C. R. Allen, who has edited the collection, has every reason to feel pleased with the results of his long labours. The volume is nicely produced, it has a flattering foreword by Sir Hugh Walpole and has an imposing list of contributors. The last-mentioned include Hector Bolitho, G. B. Lancaster, Eileen Duggan, Will Lawson, John H. Lee, Nelle Scanlan, Alan Mulgan, Edith Howes, and “Robin Hyde.” Now all this sounds impressive, but how do the stories line up to it all? Generally speaking they are of a high standard, two or three are exceptionally so, and only a few are just ordinary. There is a freshness and sincerity about most of the stories that must impress everybody. They have been drawn from many sources—“The Bulletin,” “The Triad,” “Art in New Zealand,” The “New Zealand Artists’ Annual,” “The Sydney Mail” and other journals known for their encouragement of short stories of quality. “The Truce,” by Una Craig, impressed me greatly. It is a fine piece of writing and almost a model short story. John Lee's “Of a Broken Heart” could take its place in almost any short story anthology. There is a fine dramatic touch about “Trails End,” by C. H. Fortune. “Rain From Heaven,” by Eileen Duggan, a strongly-welded story with an historical foundation, is also well worthy of mention. Two stories, one by Jean Bradwell and the other by Eric Bradwell, are excellent in their way but are spoiled in that they have an anticlimax built on the same theme and are unfortunately placed side by side in the collection. Young writers who stand out favourably in this collection are Gloria Rawlinson and Constance-Player Green. Any contributors not mentioned in this brief notice are omitted, not because of lack of merit, but owing to space limitations.
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Although it was published a few months ago it was not until recently that I had an opportunity of reading Dr. A. J. Harrop's “England and The Maori Wars,” a book of great importance and interest to this country. It is an imposing looking book of over 400 pages, is well illustrated and indexed, and contains a map of the Maori War areas. The jacket design, the work of F. H. Coventry, a young New Zealand artist who has found success abroad, is a striking piece of work. All this is very interesting when we know that the book is the first product of New Zealand News, London. It is certainly a most impressive beginning. Dr. Harrop is the right man for this important literary undertaking. His style is clear and concise and his facts carefully presented. He examines England's policy during the Maori Wars and presents and analyses many important documents relating thereto. Theories of Imperial defence and colonial self-government are outlined, and we see the gradual development revealed. As the author inquires in his introduction—was it possible to throw on the colonists the onus of self-defence without cutting them off from the Motherland? Was it possible to include in Colonial self-government control of native races protected by Treaty with the Government? Was it worth while to retain colonies at all if they were to be almost entirely independent? These and other important questions are examined in the light of the historical evidence. The whole story, so well told, is a most interesting one.
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A strange book about strange people with a strange fascination about it all—this is Gloria Rawlinson's first novel “Music In the Listening Place.” At times the story is happy and at times wistful and occasionally sad, but it is always beautiful. Early in the story we glimpse the strong mind of Aroha Park as she regards the dead body of the village grocer swaying gently beneath the water below the six elderly willows by the river bank. To Aroha's fantastic mind the body doesn't seem at all sad or sorry for itself, “flapping its arm or dabbling its face in the water.”
Aroha is the daughter of the “mad Parks,” and as she wanders on through the pages studded with the beauties of Nature, we meet the oddest folk imaginable, from Calcutta Jim and his donkey to Jim Yen, Dr. Bird, Eagar, the funny little people who live in the mountain, and last but by no means least, Ranata, the irresistible Maori. They are all queer but lovable people. This is the most unusual book ever written in this country, and though it may not bring Gloria Rawlinson as many sales as her books of poems it will certainly add to her reputation as a writer of brilliant fancy.
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“With the Cameliers In Palestine,” by Major John Robertson (A. H. & A. W. Reed, Wellington and Dunedin), is one of the most interesting and valuable war books yet published in New Zealand. It tells the story of the New Zealand Companies of the Camel Corps during the campaign in Sinai and Palestine, and also contains much interesting information about the Holy Land. John Robertson, B.A., was Inspector of Schools in Otago when he joined the New Zealand
This section of the Great War is fascinating history and in this case has been ably and most carefully recorded and yet in a thoroughly readable style. There are many interesting illustrations and the general format a credit to the publishers. General Sir Harry Chauvel and Col. the Hon. Sir James Allen have written introductions.
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“Australian Marketing Problems,” by Professor D. B. Copland and C. V. Janes, is companion volume to Australian Trade Policy, published some time ago. It is a bulky volume overflowing with facts, figures and their analyses, all being supplemented with documentary lists and an index. It is really a book of documents from 1932 to 1937, several of which are made public for the first time. They are so complete and so clearly presented that the reader is in a position to view all sides of the problem. The operations of internal marketing schemes and the steps taken to discover a constitutional method of marketing are analysed. The joint authors are well fitted for the task they have so admirably completed.
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“Poems In Praise of Practically Nothing,” by Samuel Hoffenstein, is an American book of light verse of which Angus & Robertson Ltd., have produced an Australian edition. It is a very nicely produced book, it has run to nineteen editions in U.S.A. and certainly on a basis of lineage weighs out good value to the buyer (poets are not usually so liberal), yet in spite of this I cannot go into one edition of rapture over it, let alone nineteen. I must be wrong, for look at the tens of thousands of buyers in U.S.A., but I must be sincere. For your own information let me tell you that if you like that cute and obviously smart light verse that you would like to ripple off odd lines of at a cocktail party, then by all means buy this book. Samuel Hoffenstein is a deft and adroit rhymster and no doubt will appeal to many on this side of the world.
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“Derelict,” by Joseph Shaw (Angus & Robertson, Sydney), is one of the most exciting stories I have read. It is wildly improbable but the art of the author makes one forget this. He just carries you along in a headlong race of mystery, of violence, of romance and hairbreadth escapes. “Whizbang” Halliday, the leading character, is on board the s.s. “Maricopa.” One morning he awakes to find that he is apparently alone on a derelict ship. Four other people appear, two sinister figures and the others a beautiful girl and her mother. Tragedy looms over the ship and shortly threatens them all. Excitement piles on excitement until the reader is left almost breathless with the fierce pace of it all. One is left wondering how the author has kept up the amazing tempo.
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“Whaleman Adventurers,” by W. J. Dakin (Angus & Robertson, Sydney), is a new and revised edition of a work that is probably destined to remain the authoritative story of whaling in Australia, New Zealand and other Southern seas. While the book will be read with interest by everyone the world over, it has a particular interest to New Zealand. It shows that whaling was one of the biggest forces in those several influences that helped to lay the foundations of British colonies of the Southern Hemisphere. That the visits of whalers to New Zealand in the early days were not always a desirable factor in this development is evident from this book. Indeed, it gives rise to a most interesting line of thought to those who wish to study the history and development of New Zealand. The adventures of the whaleman make a story stranger, sometimes, than fiction. Also there is a detailed account of the technical side of whaling, while the historical side provides immense food for thought and speculation. It is always a colourful story full of adventure, of romance and the rich atmosphere of the early days of Australia, New Zealand and the South Seas. The volume is beautifully produced and contains many wonderful pictures. The publishers are to be congratulated in producing this outstanding edition in its revised and enlarged form.
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The first book of essays by a New Zealander to be published in England is “Remembering Things,” by J. H. E. Schroder, of Christchurch. Dents are the publishers, and it is due in September.
Gloria Rawlinson has broken into print in the London “Mercury,” a story and a poem of hers having been accepted, with a request from the editor for more.
The striking jacket design for “The House of Templemore,” mentioned in last issue as due for publication shortly, has been designed by Russell Clark.
Should Take Kruschen Salts
Whether they know it or not many thousands of people who are fat have high blood pressure.
Your Doctor can explain all that.
And he can also tell you that if these thousands of fat folks would lose a goodly part of their excess fat they would also lose their dangerous high blood pressure.
Take the case of this woman, for example—just one of thousands that have lost fat by taking a daily dose of Kruschen Salts.
In a grateful letter she writes:— “I have had trouble with my back and high blood pressure. I was always tired and was twenty pounds overweight. I tried taking Kruschen Salts, and lost five pounds in one week. The pain has stopped and blood pressure is 20 points down, and now I can get around much quicker and feel 100 per cent, perfect, thanks to Kruschen Salts. I will always recommend them.“—(Mrs.) D.W.
To lose fat the safe, inexpensive way. take one-half teaspoon of Kruschen in a glass of hot water every morning before breakfast—cut down on fatty meats, potatoes, cream, butter, and sweets.
Furthermore, millions of people the world over—lean people—thin people—all kinds of people take Kruschen Salts for constipation, dizzy spells, sluggish liver and headache—it helps to put vigour and ambition into the indolent and makes those who take the “little daily dose” gloriously alive and active.
Kruschen Salts is obtainable at all Chemists and Stores at 2/3 per bottle.
I Want to come straight back to New Zealand to plan the perfect house! I've just spent a long and absorbing day at the Ideal Home Exhibition and I'm bursting with ideas. My young Canadian friend and I went on an exciting tour during which we collected loads of “literature,” snatched time for a buckrabbit (poached egg on welsh rabbit) and coffee at a snack bar, collected more literature and still more ideas, had a free make-up (which wasn't so free, as I was induced to buy new skin tonic, foundation cream and face powder- “Peach flatters your skin, Madame”), saw more stalls and demonstrations, somehow escaping minus the vacuum cleaners, water-softeners, etc., and finally tore home just in time to prepare a snack dinner for our respective husbands. It was just as breathless as that last sentence!
Here are a few of my impressions: As we entered the exhibition, we were faced with a street of houses, life-size. Even so early in the day we had to queue up outside each garden entrance (yes, proper gardens with lawns, rock- eries, flowers), but by perseverance we managed to see through each of the model houses. Planning, on the whole, was excellent-large living-rooms, well-fitted kitchens, luxurious bathrooms and charming bed-rooms. We adored the “thatched” house, wavered in our allegiance when we studied the Tudor house, sighed for the cleanliness of the all-electric house, considered how the bungalow would just about suit us, gazed with awe at the “glass” house- and fell in love with the bride's house! Why? In my case, because of the living-room. It wasn't heavily carpeted and fatly upholstered! It cried out to be lived in, to have ping-pong played in it to have cushions cast on the floor and sat on at informal parties. It was that kind of a room.
The bride's bedroom was white and luxurious, especially in its cupboard fittings. In most houses the chief bed-room was spacious, and the single rooms “built to fit.” One single room, planned for a young man, had a divan bed, and built-in shelving and drawer-space-a room any sister would envy. Other single rooms were charmingly chintz or pastel. The main bedrooms were spoilt for me by their over-elaborate furnishings. The spreads, for instance, one of quilted cream satin, were fit only for wrapping in cellophane and exhibiting to favoured guests. But I did approve of fitted basins in bedrooms. Perhaps some day civilization will demand a bathroom for every bedroom.
Entrance halls are no longer treated casually. In the larger house they are worthy of the name “lounge-hall.” Staircases do not shoot up suddenly as an afterthought, but are part of the house design, as in the delightful circular oak staircase leading to a gallery above. The hall in most houses has one or two hanging cupboards and its own cloakroom with wash basin.
Bathrooms, as I remarked, are luxurious. The walls are faced with tiles, glass or vitrolite. Bath and basin are matched to the colour scheme. Mirrors are placed right. An adjustable shaving mirror I saw was affixed to an extending bracket and had its glass rim illuminated-perfect lighting for shaving or “make-up.” Shower-sprays are fitted over the bath or, better still, in an adjoining alcove. Water-proof curtains continue the colour scheme, or the shower end of the bath may be enclosed in plate glass. Towel rails are heated.
The floor is covered with soft-toned rubber.
Kitchens! They roused more interest than any other rooms. Kitchen cabinets were luxuriously fitted. Some had an enamel-topped slide for use as extra table space or for pastry making. In some, a pull-out table and fitted or folding seats were easily accessible for meals. The ironing board folded up into a cupboard. There was a well-ven-tilated larder and ample cupboard space for china and stores. Even the broom cupboard was well thought-out; shelves had slots so that brooms could hang up and the rest of the shelving be left for dusters, etc. Stove and refrigerator were built in.
Sinks require a paragraph to themselves. The sink and draining boards were, in most cases, built all in one of stainless steel, which gives the following advantages:
Easy cleaning with a damp soapy cloth-scouring powder if necessary.
There is no “surface” to wear off.
No awkward corners where dirt can collect.
Resilient metal surface to reduce crockery breakages.
An excellent idea is to have a double sink, the smaller one being specially useful for the cleaning of vegetables, or the dipping of washed dishes in clean hot water. Over a double sink can be fixed a “mixing-tap.” One turns on “hot” or “cold” or both together and the pipe attachment swivels to deliver the water into whichever sink is to be used.
Special fitments have been planned for utlizing the spaces under sinks. Suggestions are drawers and cupboards, storage cabinet with space for wash-
A space-saving sink was set across a corner, with a narrower bench extending to the right. A plate rack of stainless steel was rubbercoated where chipping might occur. A kitchen stool, convertible into steps, is a useful unit.
One most interesting kitchen, that in the glass house, was of corridor type, long and narrow, with one end fitted as a working kitchen and the other end as pantry and china section. A specially wide window gave plenty of light. Walls and table-tops were covered with easily cleaned vitrolite. The kitchen cabinet had an extra-large pull-out work-table just below the roller front food stores section-no walking backwards and forwards for flour, sugar, nutmegs, etc.!
As befitted a glass house, oven glassware was the choice; I saw also a beautiful dinner service of glass.
Furnishings! I am so overflowing with ideas that I will need a new article for them. Furnishing ideas in the August Magazine will help those who plan to set up house in the near future.
Towards the end of the afternoon we wandered into the garden section. The air was cool and overhead there was a blueness which was almost the sky. Here, inside a building, were gardens with lawns, rockeries, pergolas, fountains. Famous landscape gardeners had reproduced here, on a smaller scale, gardens they had planned for well-known literary people. There was Beverley Nicholls's garden at Allways, with the facade of the thatched cottage showing at the end of it; there were charming gardens, each in a distinctive style, planned for Sir Hugh Walpole, Clemence Dane, Gilbert Frankau, Francis Brett-Young, Rebecca West, Agatha Christie, Dr. Cronin, Lady Eleanor Smith, A. E. W. Mason, Rafael Sabatini. A terrace, a flagged pathway, a pergola in Grecian style, a tulip bed, a flowering creeper-each in turn took the eye. We were loath to return to the comparative noise and warmth of the exhibition proper.
A wonderful exhibition! So varied, and so interesting was it that, even at 4.30 p.m. I felt able to go on looking- a marvellous testimonial from one who usually tires of such things in an hour. My only regret is that I did not return another day to see the many items I missed on my first visit.
In preparation for brighter days, it is well to plan, and perhaps make, the blouses which we will wear when sweaters are discarded. Perhaps we have a dark winter costume which, with suitable blouses, will carry over into early spring. A formal suit calls either for soft lace (flesh, beige, dove or oyster) with perhaps a jabot finished with satin piping; or a tailored shirt, blouse of white tucked organdie, white crepe de chine or linen, or, more in tune with the young season, plaid surah or tie silk.
A delightful blouse for wear with a dark green jacket suit is of tartan in two shades of green and pink. There is a flat band for collar, and three flat bows down the front. Look out for novel fastenings with which to refurbish your cardigan jacket-perhaps you may spy leather buckles in an unusual shade such as wine. Plan a blouse to match your buckles and your suit will appear of the newest.
If you have a light-coloured spring suit, plan for it a plaid blouse or a deep-coloured shirt in a heavy crepe material. When choosing blouse designs, pay attention to the longer waistline.
The stitching of blouses will probably turn your thoughts to new lingerie. Step ahead of fashion by choosing crepe de chines or ninons in lime green, light strawberry pink, warm orange pale tawny gold, rust or brown. If you are dubious about too much colour, lime or strawberry pink is quite conservative.
The newest chiffons are spotted, so here again one can revel in colour. Close your eyes and think of peach and blue, peach and nigger, peach and cherry, lavender and purple, turquoise and brown.
Chiffons, of course, call for feminine styles, so, for nightgowns, we ruch our dainty material for a band round the top, or for a charming Peter Pan collar, or for bands down the side fronts of the bodice; we gather huge puff sleeves into a deep frill above the elbow; where a gown has shoulder ties, we add our enchanting sleeves by means of a tiny jacket with a wide frill of ruching round it. Bought models are ruched onto las-tex yarn which gives permanency.
Vests, pantees, camiknickers, slips, are dainty wisps of chiffon and lace; or for harder wear we choose crepe de chine or the ubiquitous “locknit” which nowadays combines with lace or satin, has silk or embroidered motifs, or is woven in a decorative stitch.
I have seen the most beautiful negligé, of baby-blue satin, with huge puff sleeves composed entirely of little frills. It was the essence of youth, but will probably be bought by an older woman with a longer purse.
When considering lingerie, one can't omit the breakfast gown. For the first warm days, plan one now of gaily printed cotton, perhaps with revers, or demure collar and zipping or buttoning down the front, perhaps with a three-colour waistband, but certainly with huge puffed sleeves and a billowing skirt. One charming model I saw had its collar, cuffs and slanting hip pockets trimmed with white clipped cotton fringe. It reminded me of the “candle-wick” bedspreads, with their delightful fluffy tufts, which have conquered the bedrooms of North America, and are now appealing to the housewives of the world.
Yours,
Retta.
Many people complain of suffering from insomnia and appear to be grateful for only four or five hours’ sleep every night. Habits are easily formed and one may soon get into the habit of sleeping for only the four or five hours, as the case may be. By accepting their lack of sleep philosophically they are acquiring the habit of sleeplessness and do not realise that they are depriving themselves of the additional hours necessary for perfect health. They do not look for the root of the trouble but patiently do without the sleep necessary to recharge completely the human battery.
Do not do brain work right up to the moment of going to bed as the brain takes some time to settle down. We are all well advised not to partake of a meal when feeling hot and tired after strenuous exercise, as the digestive organs protest against such treatment. Our brain protests, too, about being treated ruthlessly, and has its revenge by making it difficult to get to sleep.
Sleeplessness is sometimes caused by a heavy meal just prior to bedtime. An early and light meal may sometimes banish the trouble. A few simple stretching exercises before retiring will help one to get into the condition of readiness for sleep.
There are many simple remedies, such as a glass of hot milk or water, a very light supper, that are worthwhile.
If insomnia continues despite our efforts, a doctor should be consulted before we are “a bundle of nerves.”
The bed should be a comfortable one and the best that one can afford. If expenditure has to be studied, do not economise on the mattress. Have only enough bedclothes for warmth-heavy bedclothes cause fatigue because of their weight. Warmth, of course, is essential and if we feel we need nice loose bed-socks and a hot-water bottle, well, let us have them, for, after all, we spend about a third of our lives in bed.
If you can spare the time take your 40 winks of an afternoon, warmly wrapped in a rug by the open window. If you have no stated time for these 40 winks, when the opportunity occurs succumb to the desire to sleep. This extra sleep is most beneficial and greatly assists in the building up of strength to withstand the seasonal changes.
When threading a rod through lace or fine net curtains, cover the rod with a finger-stall and prevent any tearing or splitting of the material.
When cooking cauliflower, hollow out the stalk to allow the water to penetrate the flower. Place two skewers in the stalk to rest on the saucepan and keep the head down during cooking.
Do not use too much water when cooking vegetables-just sufficient to cover them.
Add a little sugar as well as salt to the water, as the sugar not only improves the flavour but also assists in preserving the green colour.
New bread can be cut as easily as stale if the knife is dipped in hot water.
Rub over new tin oven-ware with lard and put it in the oven for an hour. This prevents rust
When boiling fish, remember to add lemon juice to the water. This preserves the flavour.
For slicing tomatoes thinly use a hread saw.
Ioz. butter, £1/2lb. boiled rice, 2 hard-boiled eggs, £1/2lb. any cooked fish (tinned salmon may be used), salt and pepper, chopped parsley to garnish. Melt butter, add boiled rice, whites of eggs. Cut into small pieces flaked fish and seasoning. Heat thoroughly and pile on a hot dish and shape like a pyramid. Garnish with chopped parsley and egg yolks rubbed through a sieve.
4 ozs. flour, I egg, £1/4 pint milk, salt. Break the egg into a well in the flour, add the milk slowly, gradually stirring in the flour. Beat until smooth and allow to stand for one hour before using.
Smoked blue cod, milk, butter, pepper. Open the fish, divide into two and place skin downwards into a dish. Pour over about a cup of milk. Put a few pieces of butter on top, sprinkle with a little pepper, and bake in a moderate oven for about twenty minutes.
I onion, I1/2ozs. flour, 2 pints milk, whipped cream, I1/2ozs. butter, £1/2 small tin salmon, salt, pepper, nutmeg. Peel and slice the onion and put into a pan with the milk. Heat this very slowly, then let it stand on the side of the fire, until the milk is well flavoured; then strain it. Drain the salmon, remove the skin and bones, and rub through a sieve. Melt the butter in a pan, add the flour and when they are well blended stir in the milk gradually, and bring the sauce to the boil. Let it boil gently for a few minutes, then stir a small quantity of it at a time into the sieved salmon. Return the salmon and sauce to the pan, season with salt, pepper and a grating of nutmeg and re-heat it. Serve individually with a teaspoonful of whipped cream on the top of the soup.
Boil or steam as much fish as required, place a small piece of butter on each, and serve with the following egg sauce: two hard-boiled eggs cut into rounds or small pieces, add these to a nicely flavoured sauce of milk and melted butter.
Steam as many fillets of fish as required in fireproof dish. Pour over a good white sauce, adding grated cheese. Bake till brown and serve at once.
Heat I1/2 cups of milk and I1/2 cups of cream just to the scalding point. (All milk may be used if you don't like it so rich.) Don't let it boil. In another saucepan, melt 4 tablespoons of butter, adding I1/2 teaspoons of salt and a dash of cayenne. Add 2 dozen oysters and the liquor to the butter. Cook just I minute, in which time the edges of the oysters will have begun to curl. Combine the oyster mixture with the milk and cream and serve at once without further cooking. This last is important.
The popularity of the Air Force in New Zealand is having an interesting-effect on New Zealand sport. Virile young men, representing the cream of the nation are linking up with the Service and will sooner or later go to England to complete their training. With their departure will go some of the most promising sportsmen in the Dominion.
J.’ D. Carmichael, one of New Zealand's outstanding sprinters, Colin Cameron, the most promising miler I have seen since Jack Lovelock, and Johnny Hamilton, a hurdler rapidly nearing the top-flight, have left for England in recent months, and more are to follow. M. V. Blake, New Zealand pole vault champion a few seasons ago, has been in England for eighteen months and has already won the pole vaulting championship of the Royal Air Force. Of Cameron I have high expectations-if he finds time to train for the one mile. A product of Timaru, as yet not a tactician, Cameron appealed to me as a fine prospect when I saw him training last season, and it will not surprise me if he takes up Lovelock's mantle before another three years have passed.
In Christchurch the Air Force Rugby team is a force to be reckoned with in the senior competition. Coached by New Zealand and Wellington representative, J. A. Mackay,’ the team of young aviators is moulding into a formidable combination. Few of these players will be left in New Zealand by the time the next season comes. Our loss will be England's gain.
After several shaky starts the boom in boxing seems at last to have arrived. At the present time there are more visiting boxers in New Zealand than there have been for many years, and with the rapid advancement made by our own boxers the standard of boxing is high. Filipino boxers have ever appealed to New Zealanders, who remember the fistic ability of Jamito and Young Gildo. The arrival of another Filipino, Dommy Ganzon, was timely. In his first two matches-for a win and a loss-he impressed by clever boxing and an ability to hit with terrific force. He is the right weight to test out New Zealand's novo-professionals.
Clarrie Marshall, George Allen and Jack Davis, are three of this season's professional boxers who seem destined to go a long way in the ring sport.
By the time this article appears in print New Zealanders will have seen the Indian and British Women's Hockey teams in action. Although the Indian team comprises men from one State, and is merely a club and not a national representation, the early indications were that the standard would be up to the high one set by the other two teams sent from India. Hockey is a sport at. which Indians excel and in Olympic hockey competition India has never suffered defeat-nor have her teams been hard-pressed.
With this knowledge in view it might be possible to get a comparison of New Zealand's chances in Olympic hockey competition. Should New Zealand teams, with little or no team practice, hold the present team of Indians to close matches, or defeat it, there is reason to anticipate New Zealand hockey players doing well at the Games. Hockey-as is the case in other team sports-is a game where combination plays a big part, and whenever New Zealand hockey teams have played in Australia they have done so with credit. Should New Zealand decide to have hockey representation at the Olympic Games in 1940 I would suggest that a preliminary selection be made next season, and that the “possibles” be brought together for match play. At the worst it seems to me that New Zealanders could take second place to India-there does not seem to be a nation capable of extending the players from that country.
Hockey for women is not included in the Olympic programme, but in the limited opportunities the women players of New Zealand have had against visiting teams the local standard has been high. It is the ambition of the New Zealand Women's Hockey Association to have representation in the International Hockey Tournament. Last year this tournament was held in America, and the showing made by the Australian team proved that New Zealand has the right type of players to put our hockey skill on the roll.
Reference to the fact that there is no hockey for women on the Olympic programme brings up the discussion recently held by the New Zealand Amateur Athletic Association over the question of sending mixed teams abroad. In the past New Zealand has sent six women to Olympic Games and from a competitive point of view there have been no complaints. The difficulty of managing mixed teams-when no manager has been sent in special charge of the feminine section-has been obvious, but at the Empire Games, when Mrs. E. G. Sutherland was sent as a chaper-one-the first occasion the Olympic and Empire Games Association has been financially responsible for a chaperone- the difficulties were not caused by the feminine members. The difficulties, it is understood, were caused by the relatives who were not officially attached to the team.
Women competitors in swimming and track and field sport are the means of attracting large attendances, and rightly claim the equal right of selection in New Zealand teams. During the progress of the Empire Games it became obvious that the principal attraction at that great gathering was Miss Decima Norman. In a slightly smaller degree, Miss Shona Oliphant was the outstanding personality at the New Zealand track and field championship meeting last season. Should such an outstanding competitor be denied representative honours it would be a penalty not deserved by the excellent type of feminine athletes New Zealand possesses. The
Popular New Zealand Rugby representative, B. S. (“Joey”) Sadler, who earned the name of the “Pocket Battleship” for his gallant play while abroad with the All Blacks of 1935, has had several operations in an effort to repair the injured leg he sustained while playing a club match shortly before the trial matches last season. A delicate operation, necessitating the cutting and rejoining of nerves in the leg, was performed in May, and Sadler's legion of friends hopes that a complete recovery will be effected. Rumour hath it that Sadler is to join the Air Force.
Preliminary plans have already been made for the staging of monster sports attractions in conjunction with the N.Z. Centennial Exhibition. Committees have been formed to arrange dates so that there will not be any clashing of fixtures and valuable spade work has been put in to ensure the success of the sporting side of the celebrations.
Visiting athletes and swimmers are certain to be featured, and there is a possibility that a combined Oxford-Cambridge Rugby team will also be visiting New Zealand. The Californian Rugby Football Board has contacted the New Zealand Rugby Union and has suggested that a team from California visit New Zealand in 1940. Unfortunately, the standard of Rugby is not high in California and such a visit might not be a success.
Confirmation of the proposed visit to New Zealand of Dean Detton, former holder of the world wrestling title, has been received. With Detton assured, Steele returning to New Zealand, and the winner of the Ngurski-Londos world title match being contacted with an offer of £7000 for a title match in New Zealand the indications are that New Zealanders are going to see wrestling of an exceptionally high standard. Original plans called for a title match with Lofty Blomfield, New Zealand champion, as one of the principals, but with the talent available it will not occasion any surprise if the Dominion of New Zealand Wrestling Union orders an elimination tourney, with the winner to meet the champion.
When an Englishman says that a thing “is not cricket,” he epitomises something that cannot be expressed in columns of space.
“It's not cricket,” has become part of every true Englishman's creed in life, but … the good old game of cricket is in danger of falling from its high place.
The headmaster of Wellington College (England) speaking on School Speech Day stated that cricket was not an ideal game because too many participants spent the greater part of the day sitting in the pavilion watching other players scoring runs, and then went on the field to disgrace themselves by missing an easy catch!
Many cricketers will agree that the headmaster has summed up the game in a few words, but has overlooked the team spirit which makes or mars a cricket eleven.
“Play up, play up, and play the game!“-that's as British as the Empire and it's cricket.
The world's record for the longest stretch of straight railway belongs to the Transcontinental Railway of Australia, which is dead-straight for 328 miles across the Nullarbor Plain, but not dead-level. Next in order, probably, comes the Junin and McKenna stretch of the Buenos Aires and Pacific Railway of Argentina, which is dead-straight for 205 miles and level also. In the United States the longest straight section of the New York Central lines is 70 miles. There is also a 70 miles straight stretch in Rhodesia. In England there is no straight longer than 18 miles.
New Zealand's principal straight length of railway lies on the Canterbury main line. Between Lyttelton and Rolleston there is a double line. On the up line from Islington to Rolleston and continuing on the single line from Rolleston to Dunsandel there is an unbroken straight run of 18 miles. Further to the south there is a straight run of 151/2 miles from Rakaia to about a mile north of Ashburton. There are twenty-three other stretches of straight track of five miles or more in length, of which eighteen are in the South Island and five in the North Island.
These 25 straights have a total length of 1851/2 miles, a fraction over 51/2 per cent, of the total number of miles open for railway traffic.
There are, of course, numerous short lengths of straight, of varying sizes, under five miles; but, after taking these short sections into consideration, it will be realised how curved or deviating is the contour of our rail-road track and the adverse effect such a physical condition has on operating costs.
Then, too, there are 581/2 miles of bridges and viaducts on the New Zealand Railways which add to the difficulties encountered in train-running in the Dominion. Tunnels, also, are a disability, more or less. Of these subterranean passages, there are 96 in the North Island with a total length of 21 miles 73 chains; and 56 in the South Island with an aggregate distance of 16 miles 15 chains.
Tommy came out of a room in which father was tacking down a carpet. He was crying lustily.
“Why, Tommy, what's the matter?” asked his mother.
“P-p-p-papa hit his finger with the hammer,” sobbed Tommy.
“Well, you needn't cry at a thing like that,” comforted the mother. “Why didn't you laugh?”
“I did,” sobbed Tommy, disconsolately.
* * *
Convict 99: “No, cards, no draughts, no dominoes, no——!”
Warder: “No-no games at all!”
Convict 99: “Why, a bloke'd be better off at ‘ome!”
* * *
Two Lancashire acquaintances met while holidaying at the seaside.
“How long art tha stayin’ ’ere, ’Arold?” asked one. And Harold answered:
“Ah doan't knoaw as I can tell you in days. But ah'm stayin’ ‘ere another thirty bob.”
* * *
Labourer's Wife (to village chemist): “You'll be sure to write plain on the bottles which is for the ‘orse and which for me ’usband. I don't want nothin’ to happen to the ‘orse.”
* * *
“Poor ole Bill! E's so shortsighted ‘e's working ‘imself to death.”
“Wot's ‘is short sight got to do with it?”
“Well, ‘e can't see when the boss ain't looking, so ‘e ’as to keep on shovelling all the time!”
* * *
Professor: “I won't begin to-day's lecture until the room settles down.”
Voice (from the rear): “Go home and sleep it off, old man.”
Magistrate (to prisoner): “You will be fined 10s., and don't let me see your face again.”
Prisoner: “I cannot promise you that, sir!”
“Why not?”
“I am still barman at the Club.”
“Your people haven't sent the things I ordered yesterday.”
“Dear, dear! The fact is, madame, my right hand is away with a swollen foot!”
Like most tales of concealed gold resources-that type of story which relates how somebody has found the key to the vault of gold at the bottom of the rainbow and dies before he can pass on the information-the following is true to type.
Not many years ago, in a sparsely-settled portion of the back country of the Bay of Plenty, there lived an old -very old-Scotsman, a bachelor. Within a radius of about 15 miles there were only three other farms. “Old Bob,” as he was known, had a holding of about 1,200 acres, mostly scrub and bush, but he and his small flock of sheep and an Arab horse managed to make a living. Being spare hand on a farm within five miles of his homestead I often used to pay him a visit during the week-end. So isolated and uninhabited was the district that for both he and myself this visit was the highlight of the week.
After a few months, as the friendship developed, my curiosity prompted me to ask him why he persisted in retaining an obviously unproductive farm. He gave a slight grin, and groping around the floor under the sack and manuka structure which served him as a bed, he produced a canvas bag and spilled the contents on a sack in front of the open fire. Several pieces of light-coloured quartz caught the glow of the flames. And that quartz was well streaked with gold.
Now, gold had never been found within miles of the district, and when I asked him from where he got the quartz he smiled, and said: “On my farm, laddie.” He explained further that he first came across gold-bearing quartz many years before, when he was one of two settlers in the valley, but that he had never located the mother vein. He had, in latter years, he said, ignored the development of his farm in his search for gold and that he was now on the eve of complete discovery.
He never made his “complete discovery” because “old Bob”-to reiterate, all stories like this finish up the same way-died a week or two later without divulging his secret. With the exception of one piece which he gave me, the quartz he had in his possession when he died was missing when his house was searched, but I have reason to believe he changed the hiding place the same evening that he revealed the canvas bag to me-the last time I saw him alive. However unsatisfying this tale may seem, I am convinced that 15 miles inland from the Pikowai Siding in the Bay of Plenty “there's gold in them thar hills.” -“Flint.”