THIRTY-FOUR YEARS IN NEW ZEALAND.*
THE author of the Christian Year scarcely showed his accustomed insight into the workings of the human heart when, in some of his most beautiful verses, he asks, " When the shore is won at last, who would count the billows past ?" Experience shows us that such retrospects are among the pleasantest results of gaining the shore. Who has not known the man who insists, in season and out of season, on cheering the rising generation with the tale (ex- emplified in his own person) of successful industry, beginning life with or without the emblematic shilling, and rising to opulence and boredom ; or if such experience, happily, fails, the autobiographies of self-made men abundantly testify to the instinct that draws pleasure from past difficulties, and drives us to recount all the billows that tossed and threatened us, before we " reached the haven where we would be."
From this haven—a modest competence—our Old Colonist looks back upon " a sea of troubles," and makes his pleasant " review of past times." In these four words he aptly describes his work. It is simply a review of past times, pleasantly written, in a manly, cheerful spirit, without boasting or false modesty. It has some additional interest as giving a picture of the infancy of the now flourishing towns of Nelson and Christchurch, and from the fact that our Old Colonist was one of the first emigrants to the New Zealand shores, and his story illustrates anew the stale, but too often forgotten fact that, granted health of body and mind, a stout heart can make the most untoward circumstances yield at last the fruit of success. The difficulties and the disappointments that beset the writer of this autobiography were many and serious, but his conclusion is that not only then, but now, "here, in this new and prosperous country, with its immense natural endow- ment of as yet only partially developed resources, there is ample room, for generations to come, for honest labour to meet and find its just reward,—' a fair day's wage for a fair day's work.' "
The scene opens in true pastoral style. We see two lovers hand-in-band on the deck of the Indus,' looking on the paradise which lay before them under the glory of sunrise. For her sake he had crossed the seas (with her father's family), ready to serve, like Jacob, " only too happy," in his own words, " to work and to wait for my Rachel." " To us, the glad vista of the future assumed all the roseate hues of the opening day, which, with
• La Troisieme Invasion. Par bi. Eugene V5ron. Eaux-Fortes par M. Auguste • Colonial E.rperiences; or, Incidents and Reminiscences of Thirty Years in Irmo
hearts too full for converse, we were silently absorbed in wit- nessing, and deeming its splendour in some way prophetic of our future happiness." Paradise had its Serpent, and Eves are frail A fellow-passenger, richer, and able to offer an immediate and less humble home, pursued and carried off the prize. " Alas ! " moralises the forsaken lover, looking back through the softening haze of a happy married life,—
• That hopes so bright and promising should soon prove so fleeting and delusive ; ere many months had passed, the hand then fondly clasped in mine was given to another, and as his bride she sailed gladly away to Old England, bidding, it was supposed, a final adieu to Now Zealand. And yet a few brief years saw her return, with a widowed heart, and for many years the grass has grown green above her, upon one of those sunlit points that we were, all unconsciously, gazing upon that summer morning, thirty-four years ago."
So much for the early morning of romance ; the working day of toil began with the task of dragging the family luggage over a newly-made road, under the intense glare of the sun, and under the broad grins of non-lovers at his smart and singularly un- suitable attire of thin Wellington boots, black-cloth coat, and " bell-topped " hat. These marks of an effete civilisation, as well as white hands and tender feet, were soon got rid of, and perhaps their loss had something to do with the loss of the faithless Rachel. A man who has to work in a gang at road-making is at a disadvantage as a wooer, in comparison with a man who can still keep up something of the refinements of life.
The " E." family, with whom our writer emigrated, were boat- builders, and hoped to continue the same business at Nelson, but work in that line was so scarce that,—
" After a brief period of enforced idleness, or rather of odd jobs about the house, that brought no return, I suggested to ' E.' the expediency of my applying to the Company's agent for work on the roads, until more work in the boat-building line offered, as at this time the weekly wages paid to a single man was 18s. and rations. The family strongly objected, as with their English notions they could not disabuse their minds of the idea of such employment being derogatory. To lessen the unpleasantness I knew the resolve would cause them, if I were employed anywhere in the neighbourhood,I applied to be sent to a working party engaged about eight miles from the town. This involved an enforced banishment from the home from very early on Monday morning to the following Saturday evening, which at that time was to me by far the severest part of tho undertaking, as it left the course clear for the machinations of my rival, whose designs I intuitively began to suepect."
A man who under such circumstances could prefer honest and hard labour to " enforced idleness," deserves all the ease and happiness that may have crowned his retirement from active life into the enjoyment of domestic calm and " judicious investments."
At the end of a year, our Colonist made his first start in colonial life, by settling on some waste lands at Riwaka, on the opposite side of Blind Bay. Here, in companionship with another fellow- passenger, he " endeavoured to improve the present" (and his land also), "and as far as possible to ignore the past." Here he had still to work on the roads for immediate support, tilling his land at over-hours ; and here he soon found, to his disgust, that as a single man, his weekly wages were reduced to ten shillings, and that after a short time road - making would be given up altogether. When this untoward event occurred, our Colonist lived for some weeks on the stray potatoes left in the soil he was digging over by the former Maori proprietors. The description of this band-to-mouth period of his life is very entertaining. The shifts and expedients of a handy and in- dustrious man are manifold, and the bad time was soon tided over. The " E" family (minus the faithless Rachel), joined him on his land, and accompanied him to Nelson, where leaving them comfortably settled, he entered a store as book-keeper at Wel- lington. While in Wellington he came in for several severe shocks of earthquake lasting for five days, and causing the greatest alarm and considerable loss of property :-
" At noon, on Tuesday, the 17th, a customer was settling an account at the store, and I was just handing him the receipt, and remarking about the earthquake and its effects, when a violent shock occurred that caused us both to rush out of the store, from its violence ; his dray and bullocks, which had been left standing in front of the store had gone tearing down the inclined street, the animals having been frightened by the strange movements of the earth. Upon my returning to the desk, where I had been writing, I found the floor strewed with loaves of sugar, and the desk much indented by their falling upon it from the top shelves. All the bottles and goods in the lower shelves had been made secure by passing a wire along the front of them, but the heavy goods upon the high shelves had been thought quite secure. Brick walls and chimneys that had only been partially damaged were mostly shaken down by this one. The barrsckmaster of the 61ith Regiment and his two children were killed at this time. He had been walking about the town with his children, surveying the mischief that had re- sulted from the shocks on Monday, when a large brick wall near which they were standing when the second shock occurred fell upon them, killing them instantly."
In 1847, the settlement of the province of Canterbury offered a
good opening for adventurous spirits, and our author determined to open a store on his own account at Port Lyttelton. Here he carried on a thriving trade, baking the only bread to be bought in the town, in an oven scooped by himself out of the side of a solid bank in the rear of the store. It was no matter that he was utterly ignorant of the art of bread-making—such slight difficulties are made to be overcome—and soon, on the loss of his journey- man, he baked the bread of the town alone, working at it after his day's work in the store was over. A wife was now added to his establishment, and settled life was fairly begun, after all his wandering experiences. Owing to the delicacy of his wife's health, he, after some years, sold the business at Wellington, and bought land in Riwaka Valley. Here many happy years were spent, when the care of a growing family of sons sent the retired trader again into business, this time at Christchurch, " just then in an ecstacy of loyalty, celebrating the news of the marriage of the Prince of Wales." At Christchurch fortune again smiled upon her determined votary, and on his sons declining to enter into the business he had established, he again sold it, and retired into the ease and leisure of country life, and the enjoyment of that respect and consideration among his fellow-colonists which his long and active participation in the rough work of the earlier and the brain-work of the later stages of the colonisation of New Zealand had so well earned. We shall not enter at all into the politics of this book ; the policy of suc- cessive Governors and their acts are freely criticised in it, and the origin of the unhappy war with the natives fills many of its most interesting pages. Our Old Colonist is an ardent Constitu- tionalist, and if his indictment against the successive govenaments and governors is sustained by facts, New Zealand has reason to rejoice in the day when her Constitution Act conferred the government of the country upon its inhabitants.
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