OTAGO--THE LAKE DISTRICT.
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CHAPTER LIII.
OTAGO--THE LAKE DISTRICT.
I HAD landed at Melbourne on 27th July, 1871, and left that place for New Zealand on the 29th July, 1872, having spent a year and two days in seeing the Australian colonies. From Melbourne we took the steamer for The Bluff, the name given to the southern part of the Middle Island. It may be well to explain to any who have omitted New Zealand from their acquired geography, that the colony bearing that name consists of the North Island, the Middle Island, and Stewart Island, --which latter is a small affair, forming a part of the present province of Otago, and at present only interesting on behalf of its scenery. It must be understood that both the Northern and Middle Island are divided into different provinces. The government is attempting to form a fishing establishment in Stewart Island, and to induce immigrants to come out with the object of following that occupation. That there is abundance of fish, including oysters, is an established fact. The island is at present very thinly occupied, chiefly by Maoris and a half-caste race. The colony of New Zealand in fact consists of the
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Northern and Middle Islands. The southern portion of the latter is now the province of Otago, and is, of all the New Zealand provinces, the first in point of population. Three years ago there were two separate provinces, Southland and Otago, which are now combined. The Bluff, at which we landed, is the seaport of Southland, and hence there runs a railway to Invercargill, --which was its capital when as a separate province it had a capital, --and twenty miles beyond it to a place called Winton. On landing I immediately asked to be shown some Maoris, but was told that they were very scarce in that part of the country. Indeed, I did not see one in the whole province, and it seemed as though I might as well have asked for a moa, --the great bird which used, in former days, to stalk in solitary grandeur about the island. The place at which we landed had a quay, and a railway, a post office, and two inns; --but it had nothing else. The scenery was wild and pretty, --more like the western sea-coast of County Cork than any other that I have seen. The land was poor, and for some distance around apparently useless. There were hills on all sides, and mountains in the distance. It would be impossible to imagine any country more unlike Australia, --a remark which I may as well make once for all, and which may be applied to everything in New Zealand. The two countries both grow wool, and are both auriferous. Squatters and miners are common to them. But in all outward features they are dissimilar, --as they are also in the manners of the people, and in the forms of their Government.
I found myself struck, for a moment, with the peculiarity of being in New Zealand. To Australia generally I had easily reconciled myself, as being a part of the British Empire. Of New South Wales and Van Diemen's Land I had heard so early in life, as to have become quite used to them, --so that I did not think myself to be very far from home when I got there. But New Zealand had come up in my own days, and there still remained to me something of the feeling of awful distance with which at that time I regarded the young settlements at the Antipodes, --for New Zealand is, of all inhabited lands, the most absolutely Antipodean to Greenwich. I remembered the first appearance in public of the grim jokes attributed to Sydney Smith, as to the cold curate, and the hope expressed that Bishop Selwyn might disagree with the cannibal who should eat him. The colony still retained for me something of the mysterious vagueness with which it was enveloped in early days, so that when landing at The Bluff I thought that I had done something in the way of travelling. Melbourne had been no more than
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ANIMALS AND BIRDS.
New York, hardly more than Glasgow, certainly not so much as Vienna. But if I could find myself in a Maori pah, --then indeed the flavour of the dust of Pall Mall would for the time depart from me altogether. Most travellers have experienced the feeling, --have anticipated a certain strangeness which they have never quite achieved. But when I reached Invercargill, the capital of Southland, I felt exactly as I might have felt on getting out of a railway in some small English town, and by the time I had reached the inn, and gone through the customary battle as to bedrooms, a tub of cold water, and supper, all the feeling of mystery was gone. I began to inquire the price of tea and sugar, and the amounts of wages which the men were earning; but had no longer any appreciation of my Antipodean remoteness from the friends of my youth.
I can hardly explain how it is that Invercargill, and indeed all New Zealand towns, are more like England, than are the towns of Australia; --but so it is. When one gets into the country the reasons for this are apparent. The everlasting gum forests do not belong to New Zealand, and the trees which are indigenous to the soil are brighter in hue than the dull-coloured foliage of the eucalyptus tribe. And "the bush," at any rate in the Southern, -- or so-called Middle, --Island is not sempiternal, as it is over so vast a proportion of Australia. At first it struck me that there was an absence of timber, and in some places I found that fuel was terribly expensive, in consequence of the distances over which wood had to be carried. Again, no animal is now seen in New Zealand different from those which are familiar to us in England. There is, I believe, a rat in the country whose ancestors are said to have existed there previous to the coming of the English, --though some naturalists cast a doubt even upon the rat, --but there is no other four-footed animal that has not been imported and acclimatized. There are a few native birds, but those which are commonly seen are to the eye in no way different from English birds. The moas have left their skeletons, which are to be seen standing in the museum at Christchurch from 11 to 13 feet high, --but the last moa died some say more than 1,000 years ago, while others contend that they existed down to the coming of the Maoris, who were supposed to have eaten the last of them not more than 250 years since. In Australia there is a whole class of animals very strange to British eyes, -- kangaroos, wallabies, and paddymelons, running about on their hind legs, and carrying their young in their pouches; --and there are parrots and cockatoos, laughing jackasses, and native-companions,
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lyre-birds, and bell-birds, --all of which savour of a strange land. But I found nothing strange in the province of Otago. All English animals have not only acclimatized themselves, but seem to thrive with a prolific increase beyond that which we know at home. The hens lay more eggs, the bees swarm more frequently, the rabbits breed more quickly; --the ewes are more certain with their lambs than they are with us. This is, no doubt, the case in Australia also, --but then in Australia there is an animal life of its own. In New Zealand everything is English. The scenery, the colour and general appearance of the waters, and the shape of the hills, are altogether un-Australian, and very like to that with which we are familiar in the west of Ireland and the highlands of Scotland. The mountains are brown and sharp and serrated, the rivers are bright and rapid, and the lakes are deep, and blue, and bosomed among the mountains. If a long-sleeping Briton could be awaked, and set down among the Southland hills, and told that he was travelling in Galway or Cork, or in the west of Ross, he might be easily deceived, though he knew the nature of those counties well, --but he would feel at once that he was being hoaxed if he were told in any part of Australia that he was travelling among Irish or British scenery.
We were unfortunate in the time of the year, having reached the coldest part of New Zealand in the depth of the winter. Everybody had told me that it was so, --and complaint had been made to me of my conduct, as though I were doing New Zealand a manifest injustice in reaching her shores at a time of the year in which her roads were all mud, and her mountains all snow. By more than one New Zealander I was scolded roundly, and by those who did not scold me I was laughed to scorn. Did I imagine that because August was summer in England, therefore it was summer at the other side of the world; or did I think that I should find winter pleasant in Otago, because winter might be preferable to summer in Queensland? I endeavoured to explain that I had had no alternative, --that I must see New Zealand in winter or not see it at all; but one always fails in attempting to make one's own little arrangements intelligible to others, and I found it better to submit. I had come at the wrong time; --was very sorry for it, but would now make the best of it. Perhaps the roads would not be so very bad. I was assured that they could not possibly be worse.
Nevertheless, as I had come to see scenery, I determined to see it as far as my time and strength would allow. I had learned that Lake Wakatip was the great object to be reached, --Wakatipu is
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MISFORTUNES OF TRAVELLING.
the proper name, but the abbreviated word is always used. From Invercargill I could certainly get to Wakatip, as the coach was running, and from Wakatip I might possibly get down to Dunedin, --but that was doubtful. If not, I must come back to Invercargill. I hate going back, and I made up my mind that if the mud and snow were no worse than British mud or British snow, we would make our way through.
We were accompanied by a gentleman from Invercargill, whose kindness I shall never forget, and whose fortitude in adversity carried us on. After staying two days at Invercargill, --which is a thriving little Scotch town without any special attractions, but which boasts a single cab, and a brewer who was very anxious that I should take a barrel of his beer home to England in order that the people there might know what New Zealand could do in the way of brewing, and who generously offered to give me the barrel of beer for that purpose, --we started on our journey by rail to Winton. Although I know how utterly uninteresting to the general reader are the little trials of a traveller's life, I cannot refrain from explaining that we, --I and my wife were "we,"--were constrained to send the bulk of our luggage on to Dunedin by steamer, as it was impossible to carry overland more than one or two leather bags, and that it was long before we regained our boxes. As in Australia, so in New Zealand, locomotion is effected chiefly by means of coasting steamers. The boat in which we had come from Melbourne to The Bluff, would pass in its usual course up the eastern coast, touching at Port Chalmers, the port for Dunedin; at Lyttelton, the port for Christchurch; at Wellington, the capital, which lies at the extreme southern point of the Northern Island, through Cook's Strait which divides the two islands to Nelson, and down the western coast of the Middle Island to Greymouth and Hokitika, and from that place back to Melbourne. This is done every fortnight, and in the alternate weeks another steamer takes the reverse course, reaching Hokitika direct from Melbourne, making its way round to The Bluff, and returning thence to its home at Melbourne. There are also smaller boats plying occasionally from port to port, --and in this way the New Zealanders travel from one province to another; --but of all the conveyances with which I have had dealings, these New Zealand steamboats are the most regularly irregular, and heart-breaking. If a would-be traveller should be informed that steamboats would start from a certain port to another, one on the 1st and another on the 15th of the month, his safest calculation would probably be to
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make his arrangements for the 8th. Of course travelling by sea cannot be made as certain as that by land, --and equally of course boats which depend for their maintenance chiefly on freight must be dependent on the incidents to which freight is liable. I make no complaint; --not even on the score that I never could be at any place at the same time with my clothes. I used to be unhappy, but accepted my misfortune as a part of the necessity of the position. But it is right to say that travelling in New Zealand was uncomfortable. We could not carry our portmanteaus overland, and therefore trusted them to the steamers with copious addresses, with many injunctions to persons who naturally were not quite so strongly interested in the matter as we were ourselves. After a long and painful separation we and our luggage did come together again; but there was much of intermediate suffering. A hero, but nothing short of a hero, might perhaps sit down comfortably to dinner with the full-dressed aristocracy of a newly visited city in a blue shirt and an old grey shooting jacket.
I will endeavour to say no more on a subject which at the time occupied too many of my thoughts. With great misgivings as to the weather, but with high hopes, we started from Invercargill for Lake Wakatip. Our first day's journey was by coach, which was tolerably successful, though fatiguing. A Swede drove us who owned the coach, and kept an inn half-way, at which we got a very good dinner. He was married to a half-caste Maori woman, --and I made a note that the mixture of the breed on the female side seemed to be favourable to cookery. A better boiled turkey and plum-pudding were never put upon a table. I did not like the Swede himself so well, as I entertained a suspicion that he made us pay double fare, as strangers to the country. I fancy that this practice is prevalent in Otago generally, which is a canny province, colonized by the Scotch, given to thrift, and prosperous accordingly. Indeed it was impossible not to remember the story of George III., who when charged a guinea by some innkeeper for a boiled egg, suggested with gentle sarcasm that eggs were probably scarce in that part of the country. "No, your Majesty; --but kings are." Travelling strangers are scarce in Otago, especially in winter, --and therefore it answers better to make something of the bird in the hand than to allure birds out of the bush by reasonable charges. For the present, perhaps, the practice may be prudent; but as the scenery of the country is both lovely and magnificent, as it has had bestowed upon it by nature all those attractions which make Switzerland the holiday playground of Europe, and as it is near enough
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NEW ZEALAND SQUATTERS.
to the growing cities of Australia to offer the same allurements to them, it may soon be well for the innkeepers up the country to consider whether it may not answer their purpose to establish some fixed rate of charges, and to look to what may be got from the public generally rather than to the individual victim of the moment. Again I make no complaint. It is better for the traveller to pay high prices for poor accommodation than to find none at all. In New Zealand the prices are no doubt very much higher than in Australia generally; --in Otago they are perhaps double the Australian prices; and in Australia they by no means startle the traveller by their lowness.
The first night we stayed at a squatter's house, and I soon learned that the battle between the squatter and the free-selector, of which I had heard so much in the Australian colonies, was being waged with the same internecine fury in New Zealand. Indeed the New Zealand bitterness almost exceeded that of New South Wales, --though I did not hear the complaint so common in New South Wales that the free-selectors were all cattle-stealers. The complaint made here was that the government, in dealing with the land, had continually favoured the free-selector at the expense of the squatter, --who having been the pioneer in taking up the land, deserved all good things from the country of his adoption. The squatter's claim is in the main correct. He has deserved good things, --and has generally got them. In all these colonies, --in New Zealand as well as New South Wales and Victoria, --the squatter is the aristocrat of the country. In wealth, position, and general influence he stands first. There are no doubt points as to which the squatters have been unjustly used, --matters as to which the legislature have endeavoured to clip their wings at the expense of real justice. But they have been too strong for the legislature, have driven coach and horses through colonial acts of parliament, have answered injustice by illegal proceeding, and have as a rule held their own, and perhaps something more. I soon found that in this respect the condition of New Zealand was very similar to that of the Australian colonies. The gentleman who accompanied us was the government land commissioner of the province, and, as regarded private life, was hand and glove with our host; --but the difference of their position gave me an opportunity of hearing the land question discussed as it regarded that province. I perceived that the New Zealand squatter regarded himself as a thrice-shorn lamb, but was looked upon by anti-squatters as a very wolf.
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Lake Wakatip is about seventy miles from Invercargill, the road to it being fairly good, --for a "bush" road. The name must be taken in its colonial sense. There was hardly a tree to be seen throughout the journey, but the word has made its way over from Australia, and the traveller when he is out of the town is in the bush; and a country road which is merely formed and not metalled is a bush road, though it pass across an open plain, or up a treeless valley. We passed up such a valley, broad, with mountains on each side of us, some of which were snow-capped. We crossed various rivers, --or more probably the same river at various points. About noon on the second day we reached the lake at a place called Kingstown, and found a steamer ready to carry us twenty-four miles up it to Queenstown, on the other side. Steamers ply regularly on the lake, summer and winter, and afford the only means of locomotion in the neighbourhood. But no sooner were we on board than the rain began to fall as it does only when the heavens are quite in earnest. And it was very, very cold. We could feel that the scenery around us was fine, that the sides of the lake were precipitous, and the mountain tops sharp and grand, and the water blue; but it soon became impossible to see anything. We huddled down into a little cabin, and endeavoured to console ourselves with the reflection that, though all its beauties were hidden from our sight, we were in truth steaming across the most beautiful of the New Zealand lakes. They who cannot find some such consolation from their imagination for external sufferings had better stay at home. At any rate they had better not come to New Zealand in winter.
Queenstown is probably the biggest and most prosperous of the Otago gold-field towns. The greater portion of the province is divided into different gold-fields, which are being worked with more or less success. The process at present is chiefly that of alluvial washing, which always goes before quartz-crushing. I had visited so many Australian gold-fields that I determined not to devote myself to similar inspection in New Zealand; --and as I have written so much about Australian gold, I will say but little as to that of New Zealand. I found, however, that miners' wages in New Zealand were considerably higher than those in Australia, averaging as much as 10s. a day for eight hours' work, and running sometimes as high as £4 a week. I was assured that the miners, at any rate in Otago, do not themselves embark in speculation so constantly as do their brethren at Sandhurst and Ballarat. Surface gold-seeking, the work of washing the dirt extracted from gullies
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QUEENSTOWN.
and river-beds, is of course carried out by the speculation of the seekers and washers themselves; and at this a man may earn nothing for three weeks and 20s. or £20 in the fourth week. In this work speculation is of course a necessity to the worker. But the men employed on deep sinking at weekly wages are not so commonly given to gambling as they are in Australia, The opportunities for doing so are probably not so readily afforded to them. But if they do not gamble so much, they drink more.
Queenstown on Lake Wakatip is a town of about 2,000 inhabitants, --looking, as is the case with all these towns, as though it were intended for more than double that number. It is built close down upon the water, and is surrounded by mountains, --on all of which the snow was lying. There are many towns so placed in Switzerland, and on the Italian lakes, --which in position this New Zealand mining borough much more closely resembles than anything at home; but the houses, and something in the fashion of the streets, the outside uses and bearings of the place declare it to be unmistakably English. The great drawback to New Zealand, --or I should more properly say to travelling in New Zealand, -- comes from the feeling that after crossing the world and journeying over so many thousand miles, you have not at all succeeded in getting away from England. When you have arrived there you are, as it were, next door to your own house, and yet you have a two months' barrier between yourself and your home.
A steamer from Queenstown generally runs up to the top of the lake one day, returning the next, making the journey once or twice a week; but the good-natured captain, who, I believe, was also the owner of the boat, on being asked, at once consented to take us up and down in one day. The distance is about thirty-six miles, making the entire length of the lake about sixty miles. It was a bright clear cold day, with the temperature at freezing-point from morning to evening. There were two ladies in the party for whom cloaks and opossum rugs were very necessary. I myself spent a great part of the day within the genial influence of the funnel. But I enjoyed it greatly. I do not know that lake scenery can be finer than that of the upper ten miles of Wakatip; --although doubtless it can be very much prettier. The mountains for the most part are bare and steep. Here and there only are they wooded down to the water's edge, --and so much is the timber in request for fuel and building, that what there is of it close to the water will quickly disappear. As the steamer gradually winds round into the upper reach, which runs almost directly north and
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south, one set of peaks after another comes into view. They are sharp and broken, making the hill-tops look like a vast saw with irregular gaps in it. Perhaps no shape of mountain-top is more picturesque than this. The summits are nearly as high as those of Switzerland, that of Mount Earnshaw at the head of the lake being 9,165 feet above sea-level. The mountains themselves, however, do not look to be so big as the Alps. There is no one peak which strikes one as does the Matterhorn, no one head like the head of Mont Blanc; --no one mountain which seems to be quite so much of a mountain as the Jungfrau. But the effect of the sun shining on the line of peaks was equal to anything I had seen elsewhere.
The whole district around is, or rather will be in coming days, a country known for its magnificent scenery. Among the mountains there are vast glaciers, --but the means of reaching them are not yet at the command of ordinary travellers. To the south-west of Lake Wakatip, and nearer the coast, are Lake Teanau and the Manipori Lake, of the beauty of which I was told very much. The woods come down to the water's edge, and in summer all is green and sweet, secluded and soft. To the north-east is Wannika Lake, running into the province of Canterbury, insight of which stands Mount Cook, over 13,000 feet high. About forty miles to the northwest of Wakatip Martin's Bay may be reached, on the western coast, at which place when I was in Otago a few settlers were struggling to make a home. I was assured that unless the government would do something for them, --would make them a road across to the lake, or send occasionally a ship to. them with provisions, the place must be abandoned. Down the coast, south from Martin's Bay, there is a series of so-called sounds, which are said to resemble closely the Norway Fiords. They are very numerous, and are at present desolate, without inhabitants, and almost unknown. The late Governor of the colony visited them in the spring of 1872 in H. M. S. "Clio," and I publish in the appendix his account of the voyage. Dr. Hector, whose words Sir George Bowen quotes, is curator of the Wellington Museum, and a Fellow of the Royal Society. This part of New Zealand is so little known, and is at the same time so remarkable for that wild landscape beauty which during the last fifty years Englishmen have gone over the world to find, that it may be well to let some English tourists know where they may discover new fields for picturesque travelling and Alpine climbing. At present these lakes and fiords are difficult to reach, --and New Zealand is very far from London. But that very difficulty will to many enhance the charm, --and from year
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IRON HOUSES.
to year the distance, as computed by time, will become less and less. It may be as well to remind travellers that the English winter, -- or perhaps the English spring as late as March or April, --is the time of year in which the scenery of New Zealand should be explored. I was there in the New Zealand winter, and could not reach the sounds on the coast or the lakes either to the north-east or south-west of Lake Wakatip.
From Queenstown we journeyed overland to Dunedin, the capital of Otago, and the journey was one which to me will ever be memorable. It is generally performed in three days. It took us six, --during the first five of which we travelled in a buggy with a pair of tired horses. Our average daily distance was about twenty-five miles, our pace about three miles an hour, and the cost of travelling about 3s. 6d. a mile. When I think of the road which we traversed I feel that the pace was good, and the price reasonable. But the tedium was great, and the inns at which we stopped were not delightful. The scenery, however, was grand almost throughout the journey. We came down the course first of one river and then another, crossing them now and again by means of double punts, which are fastened to ropes and carried over by the effect of the stream, --as is done on different bridgeless rivers in Italy. We journeyed on from one gold-field town to another, finding the people always in a state of prosperity. Ordinary labour throughout the country receives 5s. or 6s. a day, --or 4s. with rations. The little towns seemed to be well to do, all having banks and numerous hotels. The life is rough; but is plenteous and comfortable. Things are ugly to European eyes, but are neither poor nor squalid. There have been three successive styles of architecture in these towns, indicating different periods. The first is the canvas style, -- in which men live in tents. That had passed away from the Otago gold-fields before our arrival. The second is the corrugated-iron period, and that style was flourishing at the time of our visit. The third is the wooden period, beyond which no advance has as yet been here made in many of the New Zealand towns. Corrugated iron does not make picturesque houses. Probably my readers all know the thin fluted material of which I speak, drawn out so fine that it can be cut like cloth with a pair of shears. It is very portable; very easily shaped; capable of quick construction; and it keeps out the rain. It is, however, subject to drawbacks. The rooms formed of it of course are small, and every word uttered in the house can be heard throughout it, as throughout a shed put up without divisions. And yet the owners and frequenters of these
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iron domiciles seem never to be aware of the fact. As I lay in bed in one of these metal inns on the road, I was constrained to hear the private conversation of my host and hostess who had retired for the night. "So this is Mr. Anthony Trollope," said the host. The hostess assented, but I could gather clearly from her voice that she was thinking much more of her back hair than of her visitor. "Well," said the host, "he must be a-fool to come travelling in this country in such weather as this." Perhaps, after all, the host was aware of the peculiarity of his house, and thought it well that I should know his opinion. He could not have spoken any words with which at that moment I should have been more prone to agree.
On the fifth day, --the worst of all, for the snow fell incessantly, the wretched horses could not drag us through the mud, so that I and the gentleman with me were forced to walk, and the twelve miles which we accomplished took us five hours, --we reached the town of Tuapika, whence we were assured there would run a well-appointed coach to Dunedin. Tuapika is otherwise called Lawrence, --and it may be as well here to remark that in this part of New Zealand all towns have two names. The colonists give one, -- sometimes, as in the case of Tuapika, taking that of the natives, -- and the government gives another. We had come through Dunedin alias Clyde, through Teeviot alias Roxburgh, through Beaumont which had some other name which I have forgotten, and at last reached Tuapika alias Lawrence. The rivers and districts have been served in the same way, and as the different names are used miscellaneously, the difficulty which travellers always feel as to new localities is considerably enhanced. At Tuapika we found an excellent inn, and a very good dinner. In spite of the weather I went round the town, and visited the Athenaeum or reading-room. In all these towns there are libraries, and the books are strongly bound and well thumbed. Carlyle, Macaulay, and Dickens are certainly better known to small communities in New Zealand than they are to similar congregations of men and women at home. I should have liked Tuapika had it not snowed so bitterly on me when I was there.
On the following day we got on board the well-appointed coach at six in the morning. It certainly was a well-appointed coach, and was driven by as good a coachman as ever sat upon a box; but the first stage, which took us altogether six hours, was not memorable for good fortune. There was a lower new road, and an upper old road. The former was supposed to be impracticable because of
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COACH ACCIDENTS.
the last night's snow, and the man decided on taking the hills. As far as I could see we were traversing a mountain-side without any track; but there was a track, for on a sudden, as we turned a corner, we found ourselves in a cutting, and we found also that the cutting was blocked with snow. The coach could not be turned, and the horses had plunged in so far that we could with difficulty extricate them from the traces and pole-straps. The driver, however, decided on going on. Shovels were procured, and for two hours we all worked up to our hips in snow, and did at last get the coach through the cutting. But it was not practicable to drive the horses down the hill we had ascended, and we therefore took them out and brought it down by hand, --an operation which at any rate kept us warm. We had hardly settled into our seats after this performance, before one of the wheelers slipped into a miner's water-run, and pulled the other horse under the pole atop of him. The under horse was, as it were, packed into the gully and buried, with his brother over him, like a tombstone. So we went to work again with the shovels, and dug out first one animal and then the other. We were wet through, and therefore a good deal the worse for our task, but the horses did not seem to mind it. At last we reached the town of Tokomairiro alias Milton, where comforts of all kinds awaited us. In the first place, there was a made road into Dunedin, and a well-horsed coach to take us. We had descended below the level on which the snows were lying. My wife found a kind hostess who took her to a fire and comforted her with dry stockings, and I got some dinner and brandy-and-water. About eight in the evening we reached Dunedin, alive, in fair spirits, -- but very tired, and more ready than ever to agree with that up-country innkeeper who had thought but little of the wisdom of one who had come travelling by winter in Otago.
