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Variety In Brief

A Hardy pioneer, of Toko, Taranaki, Mr. D. Maxwell, has sent the following note, recalling days lang syne, to the writer of the “Famous New Zealanders” series regarding the late Professor Macmillan Brown:—

“Your articles on New Zealand generally touch me at some point—someone I have known. But you have followed me to Scotland. I was playing marbles with Professor Macmillan Brown at the Irvine Academy in 1855.”

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It is popularly supposed that New Zealand was discovered by Tasman in 1642. Learned historians have suggested that Juan Fernandez anticipated Tasman and touched on New Zealand during a voyage in 1576; but even Fernandez is put out of the running if a note I encountered the other day in an old volume of the Transactions and Proceedings of the New Zealand Institute has any basis in fact. This note, to be found in a paper read before the Otago Institute in 1870, states that the Editor of “The English Mechanic,” answering a correspondent in the issue for December 3, 1869, p. 279, pointed out that in various Arabic geographical works of the 13th and 14th centuries, which are to be found in the main libraries of Vienna and Paris, there are references to New Zealand as “a very large and mountainous country in the farthest Southern Ocean, beyond and far south-east of Ray (Borneo), and Bartailie (New Guinea), and as being uninhabited by man, and containing nothing but gigantic birds known as the ‘Seemoah’.” It would be interesting to have a look at those old Arabic books. So far as I know there are no copies of them in New Zealand. The reference to the gigantic birds was obviously inspired by the moa. In the old days, of course, the Arabs were the geographers of the world and intrepid explorers.—D.J.C.

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Greece has been slower in railway development than any other country of the Old World, with the possible exception of Persia. At the dawn of the Twentieth Century the railway had secured only a slight foothold in the Hellenes; there were not more than 700 miles in operation. Whilst the construction of the steel way was pushed forward with all haste in practically every country, to bring the respective capitals into overland touch with each other, railway communication with Athens was not established until the year 1916! The reason for this backwardness is somewhat inscrutable, but after taking into account the mountainous character of the country, it is generally recognised that political perplexities, peculiar to the Balkan States, played a more important part in scaring away the capital necessary for railway construction.—Pohutu.

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For several years past it has been the custom of the United Friendly Societies of Dannevirke to organise an annual railway excursion from that town to Napier. By most residents, and especially by those school children less fortunately situated in regard to holidays, the event is eagerly anticipated as a welcome relief from the inevitable hum-drum of life in a provincial town. Business people declare a general holiday, and the town presents a deserted appearance when the two heavily passengered trains have left for Napier. For most, the seaside presents the greatest attraction, while all with an eye for exquisite beauty will pause a while to contemplate the charming layout of the Marine Parade. The return trains are packed with tired but happy people, and small children doze over pleasant reminiscences of bathing in the brilliant sun of the “Nice of the Pacific.” As one lad was heard to remark on alighting at Dannevirke, “Gee, but it was great riding in on them big breakers.”

Perhaps not a few of the more seriously inclined think of the troublous times, four years ago, when Dannevirke lodged and fed its quota of a thousand refugees from the north. So she stood by Napier in her hour of need. And so each year as January draws to its close does Napier stand by Dannevirke in its need of the health-giving tang and pure air of the sea.—“Alpha.”

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Although it is seventeen years since the Great War ended, the New Zealand soldiers who were stationed at Bulford have not been forgotten. The New Zealand soldiers cut in the chalk on Salisbury Plain a huge kiwi, and recently some English soldiers were employed in removing the turf which had grown over it. Other regimental badges there of English forces have not received the same careful attention as the New Zealand one, and they will soon be completely obliterated if steps are not taken to preserve them.—F.D.T.

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