Part 1 (2/2)

You felt as if your lungs could never weary of inhaling deep breaths of such an air. Warm without oppression, cool without a chill. I can find nothing but paradoxes to describe it. As for fatigue, one's muscles might get tired, and need rest, but the usual depression and weariness attending over-exertion could not exist in such an atmosphere. One felt like a happy child; pleased at nothing, content to exist where existence was a pleasure.

You could not find more favourable specimens of New Zealand colonists than the two men, Trew and Domville, who stood before us in their working dress of red flannel s.h.i.+rts and moleskin trousers, ”Cookham”

boots and digger's plush hats. Three years before this day they had landed at Port Lyttleton, with no other capital than their strong, willing arms, and their sober, sensible heads. Very different is their appearance to-day from what it was on their arrival; and the change in their position and circ.u.mstances is as great. Their bodily frames have filled out and developed under the influence of the healthy climate and abundance of mutton, until they look ten years younger and twice as strong, and each man owns a cottage and twenty acres of freehold land, at which he works in spare time, as well as having more pounds than he ever possessed pence in the old country, put safely away in the bank.

There can be no doubt about the future of any working man or woman in our New Zealand colonies. It rests in their own hands, under G.o.d's blessing, and the history of the whole human race shows us that He always has blessed honest labour and rightly directed efforts to do our duty in this world. Sobriety and industry are the first essentials to success. Possessing these moral qualifications, and a pair of hands, a man may rear up his children in those beautiful distant lands in ignorance of what hunger; or thirst, or grinding poverty means. Hitherto the want of places of wors.h.i.+p, and schools for the children, have been a sad drawback to the material advantages of colonization at the Antipodes; but these blessings are increasing every day, and the need of them creates the supply.

The great mistake made in England, next to that of sending out worthless idle paupers, who have never done a hand's turn for themselves here, and are still less likely to do it elsewhere, is for parents and guardians to s.h.i.+p off to New Zealand young men who have received the up-bringing and education of gentlemen, without a s.h.i.+lling in their pockets, under the vague idea that something will turn up for them in a new place.

There is nothing which can turn up, for the machinery of civilization is reduced to the most primitive scale in these countries; and I have known 500 pounds per annum regarded as a monstrous salary to be drawn by a hard-worked official of some twenty years standing and great experience in the colony. From this we may judge of the chances of remunerative employment for a raw unfledged youth, with a smattering of cla.s.sical learning. At first they simply ”loaf” (as it is called there) on their acquaintances and friends. At the end of six months their clothes are beginning to look shabby; they feel they _ought_ to do something, and they make day by day the terrible discovery that there is nothing for them to do in their own rank of life. Many a poor clergyman's son, sooner than return to the home which has been so pinched to furnish forth his pa.s.sage money and outfit, takes a shepherd's billet, though he generally makes a very bad shepherd for the first year or two; or drives bullocks, or perhaps wanders vaguely over the country, looking for work, and getting food and lodging indeed, for inhospitality is unknown, but no pay. Sometimes they go to the diggings, only to find that money is as necessary there as anywhere, and that they are not fitted to dig in wet holes for eight or ten hours a day. Often these poor young men go home again, and it is the best thing they can do, for at least they have gained some knowledge of life, on its dark as well as its brighter side.

But still oftener, alas, they go hopelessly to the bad, degenerating into billiard markers, piano players at dancing saloons, cattle drivers, and their friends probably lose sight of them.

Once I was riding with my husband up a lovely gulley, when we heard the crack of a stockwhip, sounding strangely through the deep eternal silence of a New Zealand valley, and a turn of the track showed us a heavy, timber-laden bullock-waggon labouring slowly along. At the head of the long team sauntered the driver, in the usual rough-and-ready costume, with his soft plush hat pulled low over his face, and pulling vigorously at a clay pipe. In spite of all the outer surroundings, something in the man's walk and dejected att.i.tude struck my imagination, and I made some remark to my companion. The sound of my voice reached the bullock-driver's ears; he looked up, and on seeing a lady, took his pipe out of his mouth, his hat off his head, and forcing his beasts a little aside, stood at their head to let us pa.s.s. I smiled and nodded, receiving in return a perfect and profound bow, and the most melancholy glance I have ever seen in human eyes. ”Good gracious, F----,” I cried, when we had pa.s.sed, ”who is that man?” ”That is Sir So-and-So's third son,” he replied: ”they sent him out here without a s.h.i.+lling, five years ago, and that is what he has come to: a working man, living with working men. He looks heart-broken, poor fellow, doesn't he?” I, acting upon impulse, as any woman would have done, turning back and rode up to him, finding it very difficult to frame my pity and sympathy in coherent words. ”No thank you, ma'am,” was all the answer I could get, in the most refined, gentlemanly tone of voice: ”I'm very well as I am. I should only have the struggle all over again if I made any change now.

It is the truest kindness to leave me alone.” He would not even shake hands with me; so I rode back; discomfited, to hear from F---- that he had made many attempts to befriend him, but without success. ”In fact,”

concluded F----, with some embarra.s.sment, ”he drinks dreadfully, poor fellow. Of course that is the secret of all his wretchedness, but I believe despair drove him to it in the first instance.”

I have also known an ex-dragoon officer working as a clerk in an attorney's office at fifteen s.h.i.+llings a week, who lived like a mechanic, and yet spake and stepped like his old self; one listened involuntarily for the clink of the sabre and spur whenever he moved across the room.

This has been a terrible digression, almost a social essay in fact; but I have it so much at heart to dissuade fathers and mothers from sending their sons so far away without any certainty of employment. Capitalists, even small ones, do well in New Zealand: the labouring cla.s.ses still better; but there is no place yet for the educated gentleman without money, and with hands unused to and unfit for manual labour and the downward path is just as smooth and pleasant at first there, as anywhere else.

Trew and Domville soon got over their momentary shyness, and answered my inquiries about their families. Then I had a short talk with them, but on the principle that it is ”ill speaking to a fasting man,” we agreed to adjourn to the clearing, where they had built a rough log hut for temporary shelter, and have our dinner. They had provided themselves with some bacon; but were very glad to accept of F----'s offer of mutton, to be had for the trouble of fetching it. When we reached the little shanty, Trew produced some capital bread, he had baked the evening before in a camp-oven; F----'s pockets were emptied of their load of potatoes, which were put to roast in the wood embers; rashers of bacon and mutton chops spluttered and fizzed side-by-side on a monster gridiron with tall feet, so as to allow it to stand by itself over the clear fire, and we turned our chops from time to time by means of a fork extemporized out of a p.r.o.nged stick.

Over another fire, a little way to leeward, hung the bushmen's kettle on an iron tripod, and, so soon as it boiled, my little teapot was filled before Domville threw in his great fist-full of tea. I had brought a tiny phial of cream in the pocket of my saddle, but the men thought it spoiled the flavour of the tea, which they always drink ”_neat_,”

as they call it. The Temperance Society could draw many interesting statistics from the amount of hard work which is done in New Zealand on tea. Now, I am sorry to say, beer is creeping up to the stations, and is served out at shearing time and so on; but in the old days all the hard work used to be done on tea, and tea alone, the men always declaring they worked far better on it than on beer. ”When we have as much good bread and mutton as we can eat,” they would say, ”we don't feel to miss the beer we used to drink in England;” and at the end of a year or two of tea and water-drinking, their bright eyes and splendid physical condition showed plainly enough which was the best kind of beverage to work, and work hard too, upon.

So there we sat round the fire: F---- with the men, and I, a little way off, out of the smoke, with the dogs. Overhead, the sunlight streamed down on the gra.s.s which had sprung up, as it always does in a clearing; the rustle among the lofty tree tops made a delicious murmur high up in the air; a waft of cool breeze flitted past us laden with the scent of newly-cut wood (and who does not know that nice, _clean_ perfume?); innumerable paroquets almost brushed us with their emerald-green wings, whilst the tamer robin or the dingy but melodious bell-bird came near to watch the intruders. The sweet clear whistle of the tui or parson-bird--so called from his glossy black suit and white wattles curling exactly where a clergy-man's bands would be,--could be heard at a distance; whilst overhead the soft cooing of the wild pigeons, and the hoa.r.s.e croak of the ka-ka or native parrot, made up the music of the birds' orchestra. Ah, how delicious it all was,--the Robinson Crusoe feel of the whole thing; the heavenly air, the fluttering leaves, the birds' chirrups and whistle, and the foreground of happy, healthy men!

Rose and I had enough to do, even with Nettle's a.s.sistance, in acting as police to keep off those bold thieves, the wekas, who are as impudent as they are tame and fearless. In appearance they resemble exactly a stout hen pheasant, without its long tail; but they belong to the apterix family, and have no wings, only a tiny useless pinion at each shoulder, furnished with a claw like a small fish-hook: what is the use of this claw I was never able to discover. When startled or hunted, the weka glides, for it can scarcely be called running, with incredible swiftness and in perfect silence, to the nearest cover. A tussock, a clump of flax, a tuft of tall tohi gra.s.s, all serve as hiding-places; and, wingless as she is, the weka can hold her own very well against her enemies, the dogs. I really believe the great desire of Brisk's life was to catch a weka. He started many, but used to go sniffing and barking round the flax bush where it had taken refuge at first, long after the clever, cunning bird had glided from its shelter to another cover further off.

After dinner was over and Domville had brought back the tin plates and pannikins from the creek where he had washed them up, pipes were lighted, and a few minutes smoking served to rest and refresh the men, who had been working since their six o'clock breakfast. The daylight hours were too precious however to be wasted in smoking. Trew and Domville would not have had that comfortable nest-egg standing in their name at the bank in Christchurch, if they had spent much time over their pipes; so after a very short ”spell” they got up from the fallen log of wood which had served them for a bench, and suggested that F---- should accompany them back to where their work lay. ”You don't mind being left?” asked F----. ”Certainly not,” replied I. ”I have got the dogs for company, and a book in my pocket. I daresay I shall not read much, however, for it is so beautiful to sit here and watch the changing lights and shadows.”

And so it was, most beautiful and thoroughly delightful. I sat on the short sweet gra.s.s, which springs upon the rich loam of fallen leaves the moment sunlight is admitted into the heart of a bush. No one plants it; probably the birds carry the seeds; yet it grows freely after a clearing has been made. Nature lays down a green sward directly on the rich virgin mould, and sets to work besides to cover up the unsightly stems and holes of the fallen timber with luxuriant tufts of a species of hart's-tongue fern, which grows almost as freely as an orchid on decayed timber. I was so still and silent that innumerable forest birds came about me. A wood pigeon alighted on a branch close by, and sat preening her radiant plumage in a bath of golden sunlight. The profound stillness was stirred now and then by a soft sighing breeze which pa.s.sed over the tree tops, and made the delicate foliage of the undergrowth around me quiver and rustle. I had purposely scattered the remains of our meal in a spot where the birds could see the crumbs, and it was not long before the clever little creatures availed themselves of the unexpected feast.

So perfectly tame and friendly were they, that I felt as if I were the intruder, and bound by all the laws of aerial chivalry to keep the peace. But this was no easy matter where Rose and Nettle were concerned, for when an imprudent weka appeared on the sylvan scene, looking around-as if to say, ”Who's afraid?” it was more than I could do to keep the little terriers from giving chase. Brisk, too, blundered after them, but I had no fear of his destroying the charm of the day by taking even a weka's life.

Thus the delicious afternoon wore on, until it was time to boil the kettle once more, and make a cup of tea before setting out homewards.

The lengthening shadows added fresh tenderness and beauty to the peaceful scene, and the sky began to paint itself in its exquisite sunset hues. It has been usual to praise the tints of tropic skies when the day is declining; but never, in any of my wanderings to East and West Indies, have I seen such gorgeous evening colours as those which glorify New Zealand skies.

A loud coo-ee summoned F---- to tea, and directly afterwards the horses were re-saddled, the now empty flax basket filled with the obnoxious teapot and cup, wrapped in many layers of flax leaves, to prevent their rattling, and we bade good night to the tired bushmen. We left them at their tea, and I was much struck to observe that though they looked like men who had done a hard day's work, there was none of the exhaustion we often see in England depicted on the labouring man's face. Instead of a hot crowded room, these bushmen were going to sleep in their log hut, where the fresh pure air could circulate through every nook and cranny.

They had each their pair of red blankets, one to spread over a heap of freshly cut tussocks, which formed a delicious elastic mattra.s.s, and the other to serve as a coverlet. During the day these blankets were always hung outside on a tree, out of the reach of the most investigating weka.

You may be sure I had not come empty-handed in the way of books and papers, and my last glance as I rode away rested on Trew opening a number of _Good Words_ [Note: _Evening Hours_ was not in existence at that time, or else its pages are just what those simple G.o.d-fearing men would have appreciated and enjoyed. _Good Words_ and the _Leisure Hour_ used to be their favourite periodicals, and the kindness of English friends kept me also well supplied with copies of Miss Marsh's little books, which were read with the deepest and most eager interest.] with the pleased-expression of a child examining a packet of toys.

And so we rode slowly home through the delicious gloaming, with the evening air cooled to freshness so soon as the sun had sunk below the great mountains to the west, from behind which he shot up glorious rays of gold and crimson against the blue ethereal sky, causing the snowy peaks to look more exquisitely pure from the background of gorgeous colour. During the flood of sunlight all day, we had not perceived a single fleck of cloud; but now lovely pink wreaths, floating in mid-air, betrayed that here and there a ”nursling of the sky” lingered behind the cloud-ma.s.ses which we thought had all been blown away yesterday.

The short twilight hour was over, and the stars were filtering their soft radiance on our heads by the time we heard the welcoming barks of the homestead, and saw the glimmer of the lighted lamp in our sitting-room, s.h.i.+ning out of the distant gloom. And so ended, in supper and a night of deep dreamless sleep, one of the many happy picnic days of my New Zealand life.

Chapter II: Eel-fis.h.i.+ng.

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