Part 4 (1/2)
At first, perhaps, after we had left our own fair valley behind, the track would wind through the gorge of a river, with lofty mountains rising sheer up from the water side. All here was sad and grey, and very solemn in its eternal silence, only made more intense by the ceaseless monotonous roar of the ever-rus.h.i.+ng water. Then we would emerge on acres and acres of softly rolling downs, higher than the hillocks we call by that name at home, but still marvellously beautiful in their swelling curves all folding so softly into each other, and dotted with mobs of sheep, making pastoral music to a flock-owner's ear. Over this sort of ground we could canter gaily along, with ”Hector,” F----'s pet colley, keeping close to the heels of his master's horse,--for it is the worst of bad manners in a colley to look at a neighbour's sheep. The etiquette in pa.s.sing through a strange run is for the dog to go on the off side of his master's horse, so that the sheep shall not even see him; and this piece of courtly politeness Hector always practised of his own accord.
A wire fence always proved a very tiresome obstacle, for horses have a great dread of them, and will not be induced to jump them on any account. If we could find out where the gate was, well and good; but as it might be half a dozen miles off, on one side or the other, we seldom lost time or patience in seeking it. When there was no help for it, and such a fence had to be crossed, the proceedings were, always the same.
F----dismounted, and unfastened one of his stirrup leathers; with this he strapped the wires as firmly as possible together, but if the fence had been lately fresh-strained, it was sometimes a difficult task.
Still he generally made one spot lower than the rest, and over this he proceeded to adjust his coat very carefully; he then vaulted lightly over himself, and calling upon me to aid by sundry flicks on Leo's flank, the horse would be induced to jump over it. This was always a work of time and trouble, for Leo hated doing it, and would rather have leaped the widest winter creek, than jumped the lowest coat-covered wire fence. Helen had to jump with me on her back, and without any friendly whip to urge her, but except once, when she caught her hind leg in the sleeve of the coat which was hanging over the fence, and tore it completely out, she got over very well. Upon that occasion F---- had to carry his sleeve in his pocket until we reached the neat little out-station hut, where Jim Salter lived, and where we were pretty sure to find a housewife, for shepherds are as handy as sailors with a needle and thread.
I shall always believe that some bird of the air had ”carried the matter” to Salter, because not only was he at home, and in his Sunday clothes, but he had made a cake the evening before, and that was a very suspicious circ.u.mstance. However we pretended not to imagine that we were expected, and Jim pretended with equal success to be much surprised at our visit, so both sides were satisfied. Nothing could be neater than the inside of the little hut; its cob walls papered with, old Ill.u.s.trated London News,--not only pictures but letter-press,--its tiny window as clean as possible, a new sheep-skin rug laid down before the open fireplace, where a bright wood fire was sputtering and cracking cheerily, and the inevitable kettle suspended from a hook half-way up the low chimney. Outside, the dog-kennels had been newly thatched with tohi gra.s.s, the garden weeded and freshly dug, the chopping-block and camp-oven as clean as scrubbing could make them. It was too late in the year for fruit, but Salter's currant, raspberry, and gooseberry bushes gave us a good idea of how well he must have fared in the summer. The fowls were just devouring the last of the green-pea shoots, and the potatoes had been blackened by our first frosts.
It was all very nice and trim and comfortable, except the loneliness; that must have been simply awful. It is difficult to realise how completely cut off from the society of his kind a New Zealand up-country shepherd is, especially at an out-station like this. Once in every three months he goes down to the homestead, borrows the pack horse, and leads it up to his hut, with a quarter's rations of flour, tea, sugar and salt; of course he provides himself with mutton and firewood, and his simple wants are thus supplied. After shearing, about January, his wages are paid, varying from 75 pounds to 100 pounds a year, according to the locality, and then he gets a week's leave to go down to the nearest town. If he be a prudent steady man, as our friend Salter was, he puts his money in the bank, or lends it out on a freehold mortgage at ten per cent., only deducting a few pounds from his capital for a suit of clothes, a couple of pair of Cookham boots for hill walking, and above all, some new books.
Without any exception, the shepherds I came across in New Zealand were all pa.s.sionately fond of reading; and they were also well-informed men, who often expressed themselves in excellent, through superfine, language. Their libraries chiefly consisted of yellow-covered novels, and out of my visits in search of a congregation grew a scheme for a book-club to supply something better in the way of literature, which was afterwards most successfully carried out. But of this I need not speak here, for we are still seated inside Salter's hut,--so small in its dimensions that it could hardly have held another guest. Womanlike, my eyes were everywhere, and I presently spied out an empty bottle, labelled ”Worcesters.h.i.+re Sauce.”
”Dear me, Salter,” I cried, ”I had no idea you were so grand as to have sauces up here: why we hardly ever use them.” ”Well, mum,” replied Salter, bashfully, and stroking his long black beard to gain time to select the grandest words he could think of, ”it is hardly to be regarded in the light of happet.i.te, that there bottle, it is more in the nature of remedies.” Then, seeing that I still looked mystified, he added, ”You see, mum, although we gets our 'elth uncommon well in these salubrious mountings, still a drop of physic is often handy-like, and in a general way I always purchase myself a box of Holloway's Pills (of which you do get such a lot for your money), and also a bottle of pain-killer; but last shearing they was out o' pain-killer, they said, so they put me up a bottle o' Cain pepper, and likewise that 'ere condiment, which was werry efficacious, 'specially towards the end o'
the bottle!” ”And do you really mean to say you drank it, Salter?” I inquired with horror.
”Certainly I do, mum, whenever I felt out o' sorts. It always took my mind off the loneliness, and cheered me up wonderful, especial if I hadded a little red pepper to it,” said Salter, getting up from his log of wood and making me a low bow. All this time F---- and I were seated amicably side by side on poor Salter's red blanket-covered ”bunk,” or wooden bedstead, made of empty flour-sacks nailed between rough poles, and other sacks filled with tussock gra.s.s for a mattress and pillow.
The word loneliness gave me a good opening to broach the subject of our Sunday gatherings, and my suspicions of Jim's having been told of our visit were confirmed by the alacrity with which he said, ”I have much pleasure in accepting your kind invitation, mum, if so be as I am not intruding.”
”No, indeed Salter,” F---- said; ”you'd be very welcome, and you could always turn Judy into the paddock whilst we were having service.”
Now if there was one thing dearer to Salter's heart than another, it was his little roan mare Judy: her excellent condition, and jaunty little hog-mane and tail, testified to her master's loving care. So it was all happily settled, and after paying a most unfas.h.i.+onably long visit to the lonely man, we rode away with many a farewell nod and smile. I may say here that Salter was one of the most regular of our congregation for more than two years, besides being a member of the book club. In time, its more sensible volumes utterly displaced the yellow paper rubbish in his but library, and I never can forget the poor man's emotion when he came to bid me good-bye.
At my request he made the rough little pen and ink sketches which are here given, and as he held my offered hand (not knowing quite what else to do with it) when I took leave of him after our last home-service, when my face was set towards England, he could not say a word. The great burly creature's heart must have been nearly as big as his body, and he seemed hardly to know that large tears were rolling down his sunburnt face and losing themselves in his bushy beard. I tried to be cheerful myself, but he kept repeating, ”It is only natural you should be glad to go, yet it is very rough upon us.” In vain I a.s.sured him I was not at all glad to go,--very, very sorry, in fact: all he would say was, ”To England, home and beauty, in course any one would be pleased to return.” I can't tell you what he meant, and he had no voice to waste on explanations; I only give poor dear Jim's valedictory sentences as they fell from his white and trembling lips.
Very different was Ned Palmer, the most diminutive and wiry of hill shepherds, with a tongue which seemed never tired, and a good humoured smile for every one. Ned used to try my gravity sorely by stepping up to me half a dozen times during the service, to find his place for him in his Prayer-book, and always saying aloud, ”Thank you kindly, m'm.”
Chapter IX: Another shepherd's hut.
To get to Ned's hut--which was not nearly so trim or comfortable as Salter's, and stood out in the midst of a vast plain covered with waving yellow tussocks,--we had to cross a low range of hills, and pick our way through nearly a mile of swampy ground on the other side. The sure-footed horses zig-zagged their way up the steep hill-side with astonis.h.i.+ng ease, availing themselves here and there of a sheep track, for sheep are the best engineers in the world, and always. .h.i.t off the safest and easiest line of country. I did not feel nervous going _up_ the hill, although we must have appeared, had there been any one to look at us, more like flies on a wall than a couple of people on horse back, but when we came to the ridge and looked down on the descent beneath us, my heart fairly gave way.
Not a blade of gra.s.s, or a leaf of a shrub, was to be seen on all the steep slope, or rather precipice, for there was very little slope about it; nothing but grey loose s.h.i.+ngle, which the first hoof-fall of the leading horse invariably sent slipping and sliding, in a perfect avalanche of rubble, down into the soft bright green mora.s.s beneath.
Of all the bad ”tracks” I encountered in my primitive rides, I really believe I suffered more real terror and anguish on that particular hill-side than on any other. My companion's conduct too, used to be heartless in the extreme. He let the reins fall loosely on his horse's neck, merely holding their extreme ends, settled himself comfortably in his saddle, leaning well back, and turning round laughingly to me, observed, ”Aren't you coming?” ”Oh, not there,” I cried in true melo-dramatic tones of horror; but it was all in vain, F---- merely remarked ”You have nothing to do but fancy you are sitting in an arm-chair at home, you are quite as safe.” ”What nonsense,” I gasped. ”I only wish I _was_ at home: never, never will I come out riding again.”
All this time the leading horse was slowly and carefully edging himself down hill a few steps to the right, then a few to the left, just as he thought best, displacing tons of loose stone and even small rocks at every movement. Helen, nothing daunted, was eager to follow, and although she quivered with excitement at the noise, echoed back from the opposite hills, lost no time in preparing to descend. Her first movement sent such showers of rubble down upon F---- and his horse, that I really thought the latter would have been knocked off his legs. ”If you _could_ keep a little more to the right, so as to send the stones clear of me, I should be very grateful,” shouted F----, who was actually near the bottom of the hill already, so sharp had been the angles of his horse's descent. I felt afraid of attempting to guide Helen, lest the least check should send us both head over heels into the quagmire below, and yet it seemed dreadful to cause the death of one's husband by rolling down cart loads of stones upon him. It could not have been more than five minutes before Helen and I stood side by side with Leo, on the only bit of firm ground at the edge of the mora.s.s. I believe I was as white as my pocket handkerchief; and if fright could turn a person's hair grey, I had been sufficiently alarmed to make myself eligible for any quant.i.ty of walnut pomade.
Fortunately the summer had proved rather a dry one, and the swamp was not so wet as it would have been after a heavy rain-fall. The horses stepped carefully from flax bushes to ”n.i.g.g.e.r heads” (as the very old blackened gra.s.s stumps are called), resting hardly a moment anywhere, and avoiding all the most seductive looking spots. I thought my companion must have gone suddenly mad, when, a hawk rising up almost from beneath our horses' feet, he flung himself off his saddle and cried out, ”A late hawk's nest, I declare!” And so it proved, for a little searching in a sheltered and tolerably dry spot revealed a couple of eggs, precisely like hens' eggs, until broken, when their delicate pale green inner membrane betrayed their dangerous origin. It is chiefly owing to this practice of laying in swamps that the various kinds of hawk increase and thrive as they do, for if it were possible to get at them, the shepherds would soon exterminate the sworn foe of their chickens and pigeons. They are also the great drawback to the introduction of pheasants and partridges, for the young birds have not a chance in the open against even a sparrow-hawk.
Although it is a digression, I must tell you here how, one beautiful early winter's day, I was standing in the verandah at my own home, when one of our pigeons, chased by a hawk, flew right into my face and its pursuer was so close and so heated by the chase, that it flung itself also with great violence against my head, with a scream of rage and triumph, hurting me a good deal as it dug its cruel, armed heel into my cheek. The pigeon had fluttered, stunned and exhausted to the ground, and, quick as lightning I stooped to pick it up; so great had been the impetus of the hawk's final charge that he had never perceived his victim had escaped him. The cunning of these birds must be seen to be believed. I have often watched a wary old hawk perched most impudently on the stock-yard rails, waiting until a rash chicken or duckling should, in spite of its mother's warning clucks of terror, insist on coming out from under her sheltering wings. If I took an umbrella, or a croquet mallet, or a walking stick, and went out, the bird would remain quite unmoved, even if I held my weapon pointed gun-wise towards him.
But let anyone take a real gun and hold it ever so well hidden behind their back, and emerge ever so cautiously from the shelter of the shrubs, my fine gentleman was off directly, mounting out of sight with a few strokes of his powerful wings, and uttering a shriek of derision as he departed. Nothing is so rare as a successful shot at a hawk.
We consoled ourselves however on this occasion, by reflecting that we had annihilated two young hawks before they had commenced their lives of rapine and robbery, and rode on our way rejoicing, to find Ned Palmer sitting outside his but door on a log of drift wood, making, candles. In the more primitive days of the settlement, the early settlers must have been as badly off for light, during the long dark winter evenings, as are even now the poorer inhabitants of Greenland or of Iceland, for their sole subst.i.tute for candles consisted of a pannikin half filled with melted tallow, in which a piece of cork and an apology for a wick floated. But by my time all this had long been past and over, and even a back-country shepherd had a nice tin mould in which he could make a dozen candles of the purest tallow at a time.
Ned was just running a slender piece of wood through the loops of his twisted cotton wicks, so as to keep them above the rim of the mould, and the strong odour of melted mutton fat was tainting the lovely fresh air.
But New Zealand run-holders have often to put up with queer smells as well as sights and sounds, therefore we only complimented Ned on being provident enough to make a good stock of candles before-hand, for home consumption, during the coming dark days. After we had dismounted and hobbled our horses with the stirrup leathers, so that they could move about and nibble the sweet blue gra.s.s growing under each sheltering tussock, I sat down on a large stone near, and began to tell Ned how often I had watched the negroes in Jamaica making candles after a similar fas.h.i.+on, only they use the wax from the wild bee nests instead of tallow, which was a rare and scarce thing in that part of the world.
I described to him the thick orange-coloured wax candles which used to be the delight of my childhood, giving out a peculiar perfuming odour after they had been burning for an hour or two,--an odour made up of honey and the scent of heavy tropic flowers.
Ned listened to my little story with much politeness, and then, feeling it inc.u.mbent on him to contribute to the conversation, remarked, ”I never makes candles ma'am without I thinks of frost-bites.”
”How is that, Palmer?” I asked, laughingly. ”What in the world have they to do with each other?”