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Variety and Brief

Travel by sea, air or land is always an absorbing interest. Here is a true and romantic travelogue of the sea. A screw-top bottle containing a man's photo and an addressed card was thrown overboard from R.M.S. Athenic into the Indian Ocean on February 4th, 1909. Now, here is the astounding part: Thirty-four days later, that bottle was picked up on the beach at Waikawa Bay, near the French Pass, New Zealand. All the evidence is before me as I write. The finder sent the card to the inscribed address and received in reply an interesting letter setting out the circumstances of the bottle's initiation to its journey, and this letter is dated New Zealand, 17th March, 1909. Records show that the R.M.S. Athenic left London on January 8th, 1909, and berthed at Wellington on February 23rd, 1909. The mystery as to how the bottle drifted from the Indian Ocean to Waikawa Bay in five weeks (it came ashore in a storm and did not lie long before it was found) can be explained in part only by the possibility that it became caught in the wake of the ship and was drawn in this manner part or most of the way across the thousands of miles of the Indian Ocean. Obviously it had left “the wake of my ship” before Albany or the first Australian port was reached and had thence drifted across to and down the western coast of our D'Urville Island, somehow clearing the treacherous Paddock rocks and entering the land-locked Waikawa Bay.

Even twenty-five years later, the glass of this romantic bottle is polished bright as crystal. I have no doubt but that some nautically or mathematically minded reader will attempt to explain the bottle's course and the time of this long journey, but I must warn all aspirants to the solution of this “mystery of the sea” that several Naval officers, very interested in the case, have argued and argued and argued … “about it and about …” Did it catch the wake of still another ship Did it …? —“Pumice.”

The town of Eltham, in Taranaki, which recently celebrated its jubilee, has probably the unique distinction of having a Chinaman who earned the proud title of “the father of the village.” Mr. Chew Chong was a very progressive gentleman, who erected the first store in Eltham, and who was the most prominent personality in the business world of South Taranaki. For a time his store was the sole market for the settlers, and he would buy anything they had to sell. Hides, tallow, cocksfoot, butter, fungus, were not only bought by him but were accepted as payment for other goods which he supplied. He was not only the storekeeper but also the financial backer of the district, and many a man owed his prosperity to the start given him by Chew Chong. He was often known to back a man for £50 without any security or prospects of repayment in sight. To Chew Chong also belongs the distinction of exporting the first consignment of butter from New Zealand to England. The struggling settlers used to buy their stores with butter for which Chong allowed them fourpence a pound. So much butter came into his store, however, that he was faced with the burden of an over supply, and so he decided to send two casks of butter to England. He sent instructions that the consignment was to be returned to him at Eltham, and several months afterwards it was received back in perfect condition. He repacked it in new cloths and brine, and again sent it forward to England, where it was placed on the market and sold. Encouraged by this success, Chew Chong built what was probably the first butter factory in New Zealand on the banks of the Waingongoro River, at Eltham. The dairy farmers were allowed twopence halfpenny for every gallon of milk, and had to pay a halfpenny a gallon for the skimmed milk returned. This venture proved so successful that he extended his business and erected branch factories at Te Roti, Rawhitiroa and Hunter Road. Later on, in 1892, his chain of factories was taken over by the Eltham Cooperative Dairy Company.—“Rotia.”