Passages in a Wandering Life [Chapters 3 and 4]

Thomas Arnold

First published by Edward Arnold in 1900

Digitised and made available online by the University of Auckland Libraries and Learning Services.

Epub © 2013 Early New Zealand Books Collection

ISBN 978-1-927289-47-1

[FRONTISPIECE]

PASSAGES IN

A WANDERING LIFE

Edward Arnold

Edward Arnold, London, 1900.

[TITLE PAGE]

PASSAGES IN A
WANDERING LIFE

BY
THOMAS ARNOLD, M.A.
OF UNIV. COLL., OXFORD: FELLOW OF THE ROYAL UNIVERSITY OF IRELAND

LONDON
EDWARD ARNOLD
37 BEDFORD STREET
1900

Printed by BALLANTYNE, HANSON & CO.
At the Ballantyne Press

[PREFACE]

PREFACE

AN old controversy, and one that, I suppose, will never be decided, relates to the comparative wisdom or unwisdom of a father's determining the future career of his son, and bringing him up under the persuasion that he must reconcile himself to that and think of no other; or, on the contrary, leaving him free to make his own choice, down to the very close of the years of education and preparation. My father, Dr. Arnold of Rugby, so far as his judgment may be inferred from his conduct in the case of his two elder sons, – his other sons were too young at the time of his death for the question to have arisen as to them, – was of the latter opinion. He must have seen how strong was the bent of my eldest brother's mind towards poetry, and literary composition in general; and to the best of my belief he never thought of prescribing to him in any way either the field within which, or the aims towards which, he should set his genius to work. Both my brother and I looked forward to a residence at Oxford as the natural close of life at a public school, and my father regarded the matter in much the same light, trusting that, after Oxford, each would find the groove suited

to him. For us, and for all of his children, the precept flowed steadily from his life, still more than from his lips, "Work." Not, work at this or that – but, Work.

In my case, it must be confessed, his confidence was somewhat rash; and there is no telling whether difficulties which I escaped, or was helped through, simply because I bore an honoured name, might not have overwhelmed me under other circumstances.

Through Oxford I passed according to my father's wish and disposal; and what is said in the narrative as to the early unsettlement of my opinions must not be taken for an admission that I had lost all power of self-control. I held on to the Oxford life, though it had become distasteful to me, till I had taken my degree; knowing that an Oxford degree, and a good place in the class-list, were an insurance against future embarrassment and want, which whoever had the power to provide himself with, was inexcusable if he did not do so.

Whether or not I acted foolishly in going out to New Zealand, I declare on my conscience I do not know; those who shall do me the favour to read the following chapters will be in as good a position to form a judgment on that point as I am myself.

T. A.

DUBLIN, February 1900.

[CONTENTS]

CONTENTS

CHAPTER I

Birth at Laleham – Fledborough – Sir Charles Penrose – Rugby – Dr. Arnold – Journeys to Westmoreland – Winchester School – Keble and Hursley – Grisi and Macready – Badger-baiting – Cathedral – Whately – The Stanleys – Mr. Hull – Judge Coleridge – Sir Grey Skipwith – Bunsen – Tom Hughes – Hodson of Hodson's horse . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

CHAPTER II

Life at Fox How – Westmoreland society – Wordsworth, Southey, Hartley Coleridge – Captain Hamilton, Sir T. Pasley, Mrs. Fletcher – North-country clergy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .38

CHAPTER III

Oxford life – Clough and Theodore Walrond – I resolve to emigrate – Voyage to New Zealand – Passengers – Palma – The Dutchman – Kerguelen's Land – Mount Ross – Reach Otago – Proceed to Wellington – Otaki and back – The Makara valley – The Porirua road – Disappointment . . . . . 55

CHAPTER IV

Flaxbourne – Frederic Weld – The earthquake – Port Underwood – The Wairau – Journey to Nelson – The Dillon Bells – The country round Nelson – School there – Nelson settlers – Major Richmond, Mr. Stafford, and others –

CONTENTS

Alfred Domett – His career – His "Ranolf and Amohia" – Bishop Selwyn – Letter from Sir William Denison – Return to Wellington – The Shan van Vocht – Wellington weather – Death of Colonel Wakefield – Epuni – British and Greek civilization – Left New Zealand – Sydney – Melbourne . . 94

CHAPTER V

Arrival in Tasmania – School inspection – The Educational Commission – Illness – Commencement of duties – Marriage – Sir William Denison – Route across the island – Epping Forest – Entally – Orphan school – Tasmanian native children – Extinction of the native race – Efficient schools – Lord Robert Cecil – Road to Richmond – John Frost – Ride to Bream Creek – To Circular Head – Snakes – Dry's Bluff – Bushrangers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125

CHAPTER VI

Religious perplexities – Maurice, Carlyle, and Milton – Pyrrhonism – Conversion – Leave of absence – Arrival in England – William E. Forster . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 149

CHAPTER VII

Newman in Dublin – The Catholic University – He retires to Edgbaston – St. Patrick's Day – Glendalough – Removal to Birmingham – Newman at the Birmingham Oratory – The Church – The Refectory – Rednall – Life in Vicarage Road – Illnesses – Clifton – Home and Foreign Review . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159

CHAPTER VIII

"The Church and the Churches" – Liberalism in politics and Liberalism in religion – Bias of English Catholics towards Conservatism – Influence of women – Primrose Dames – Personal instability . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179

CONTENTS

CHAPTER IX

Settlement at Oxford – 1865 to 1888 – Old endowments – Dr. Temple – Combined lectures – New schools – Faculty teaching – Has Oxford "given herself to the Philistines"? – Wellington in 1847 – Peel – John Bright – Cobden – Monckton Milnes – Death of Cardinal Newman in 1890 – The Irish University question . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 191

CHAPTER X

Journey to Sweden – The Gota Canal – The falls of Trollhattan – Lakes Wener and Wetter – Stockholm – Swedish sculptors – Swedish scenery – Wadstena and St. Brigit – Attitude of Swedish Lutherans towards Catholicism – Vist to Upsala – Its Cathedral – Its University . . . . . . 212

CHAPTER XI

Visit to Rome – Grandeur of the site – The true capital of Italy – Services rendered by the Popes – Necessity for a just peace. § 1. Rome from San Montorio. § 2. The Emissarium and the Capitoline Temple. § 3. The Colosseum; Horace and his Sabine Farm. § 4. San Gregorio and Santa Agata de' Goti. § 5. Rome of the Middle Ages; Campo dei Fiori; Church of St. Brigit. § 6. Return to England; Clusium; the Trasimene Lake . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 234

INDEX . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 263

PORTRAIT OF THE AUTHOR . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Frontispiece

CHAPTER III

CHAPTER III

Oxford life – Clough and Theodore Walrond – I resolve to emigrate – Voyage to New Zealand – Passengers – Palma – The Dutchman – Kerguelen's Land – Mount Ross – Reach Otago – Proceed to Wellington – Otaki and back – The Makara valley – The Porirua road – Disappointment.

MY brother was elected a Balliol scholar in November 1840, but did not go into residence till October in the following year. I was elected to a scholarship at University in 1842. The whole family went up to Oxford in January 1842, when my father read his first course of lectures as Professor of Modern History. My brother, in all the glory of a scholar's gown and three months' experience as a "University man," welcomed his rustic geschwister with an amused and superior graciousness. We visited him at his rooms in Balliol at the top of the second staircase in the corner of the second quod. When he had got us all safely in, he is said to have exclaimed, "Thank God, you are in!" and when the visit was over, and he had seen the last of us out on the staircase, "Thank God, you are out!" But this tradition is doubtful.

Those lectures, delivered with so much power, and received by a large audience with such profound sympathy, who could have thought that they were to be both the first course and the last? Never can I forget

how my heart seemed to stand still, as my father, in the sketch of the concentration of the French Army before the invasion of Russia, uttered the words, "Earthly state has never reached a prouder pinnacle than when Napoleon in June 1812 gathered his army at Dresden . . . and there received the homage of subject kings." We returned to Rugby, and the long half-year of 1842 commenced. For some weeks in the middle portion of it my father was far from well; an eruption broke out on the right side of his face, but I never heard that this was in any way connected with the malady that struck him down. Whatever was amiss, he seemed to have completely recovered from it for some weeks before the end of the half-year. His sermons to the school were – at least seemed so to me, perhaps because I was old enough to understand them better than before – more direct, earnest, and affectionate than they had ever been. Especially was I impressed by the last sermon but two that he ever preached, that entitled "Waiting for God in Christ." 1

The shock of the 12th June, and the very general sorrow with which the tidings of my father's death was received all over England, have been sufficiently dwelt upon in Arthur Stanley's "Life."

From the autumn of 1842 to the end of 1846, my time, and my brother's also, was chiefly spent at Oxford. He was cultivating his poetic gift carefully, but his exuberant versatile nature claimed other satisfactions; his keen bantering talk made him something

of a social lion among Oxford men; he even began to dress fashionably. Goethe displaced Byron in his poetical allegiance; the transcendental spells of Emerson wove themselves around him; the charm of an exquisite style made him, and long kept him, a votary of George Sand. The perfect handling of words, joined to the delicate presentation of ideas, attracted him powerfully to John Henry Newman, whose afternoon Sunday sermons at St. Mary's he for a long time regularly attended. But, so far as I know, Newman teaching never made an impression upon him. After a while he became private secretary to Lord Lansdowne, through whose influence he was appointed in 1849 an inspector of schools, and continued to be engaged in various forms of educational work till nearly the end of his life.

When I went up to University in the October of 1842, it was my good fortune to have rooms on the second floor of the new building opposite to those of the dear Arthur Stanley. Nothing could exceed his kindness; it was like that of a father. In the course of my Oxford time he introduced me to several persons of note who came to call on him, e.g. Monckton Milnes, afterwards Lord Houghton, and Charles Buller. I heard the sermon at Christ Church for which Pusey was "six-doctored," and tramped up and down in the mud of Broad Street on that day of pouring rain on which Ward was degraded. In 1845 I took my degree, after being placed in the first class in Liter & Humaniores. In 1846 I read law for three months in London in the

chambers of Coulson the celebrated conveyancer; but being by this time much interested in the Colonies, I accepted a clerkship in the precis-writing department of the Colonial Office at the beginning of 1847, and retained it till I emigrated to New Zealand at the end of that year.

In the years 1842-47 I was in close intimacy with Arthur Hugh Clough, and by the kind permission of the editor of the Nineteenth Century I quote from an article contributed to the number for January 1898 some passages bearing on this period: –

"After I came up to University in October [1842], Clough, Theodore Walrond, my brother and I formed a little interior company, and saw a great deal of one another. We used often to go skiffing up the Cherwell, or else in the network of river channels that meander through the broad meadows facing Iffley and Sandford. After a time it was arranged that we four should always breakfast at Clough's rooms [at Oriel] on Sunday morning. Those were times of great enjoyment. Sir Robert Peel was in power; he was breaking loose more and more from the trammels of mere party connection, and the shrewd Rentoul [the Radical] who then edited the Spectator, welcomed in the Conservative chief the only true statesman that England had seen since the days of Canning. The Spectator of the day before used to arrive at breakfast time, and the leading articles were eagerly read and discussed. Ireland especially – Rentoul seemed to hold – conciliated by the Maynooth Bill, the Colleges Act, and

other healing measures, bade fair to pose no longer as England's difficulty. With this estimate of Peel Clough seemed on the whole to be in cordial agreement.

"Between 1843 and 1845 there was a small society in existence at Oxford called the Decade. Among its members were Jowett, Arthur Stanley, Coleridge, my brother, Chichester Fortescue, John Campbell Shairp, the present writer, and several others. Shairp has described 2 two speeches made by Clough at meetings of the Decade. The impressions of the future Professor of Poetry seem to have been in unison with my own, that no member of the society spoke in so rich, penetrating, original, and convincing a strain as Clough. He was not rapid, yet neither was he slow or hesitating; he seemed just to take time enough to find the right word or phrase. My recollections have grown sadly dim, but I remember one debate when he spoke to a resolution that I had proposed in favour of Lord Ashley's Ten Hours' Bill. In supporting the resolution he combated the doctrines of laissez-faire and the omnipotence and sufficiency of the action of Supply and Demand, then hardly disputed in England, with an insight marvellous in one who had so little experience of the industrial life, and at the same time with a strict and conscientious moderation. This must have been in 1844 or 1845.

"In August 1845 a party of Oxford men, who

had planned a walking tour in the Highlands, met at Calder Park, near Glasgow, the home of Theodore Walrond, one of the party. The others were Clough, Shairp, my brother Edward, and myself. During the few days that we spent at Calder Park before setting out, Clough talked very brilliantly, being much drawn out and stimulated by the lively sallies of Miss Walrond. Agnes Walrond was then, though not exactly beautiful, a very charming, handsome, and graceful woman. She afterwards married Mr. Henley, son of the well-known member for Oxfordshire, and still, I hope, remembers the pleasant days which her parents' hospitality secured for us southrons at that far-distant date.

"When we returned, 'dirty, dusty, and bankrupt,' as Clough says, to Calder Park, we found Scott's grandchildren, Walter and Charlotte Lockhart, staying there. The grandson, then a lively young officer in the 16th Lancers, was much like military men everywhere. I could not trace in him the likeness to Sir Walter which people talked of. But in the sister it was evident enough. The set and expression of the eyes, the height of the somewhat narrow forehead, reminded one strongly of the pictures of her grandfather. She sang old Scotch songs with an exquisite and simple grace. Both Clough and Shairp speak of the visit to Milton Lockhart [the house of William Lockhart, then a county member for Lanarkshire], where we saw the famous editor of the Quarterly walking on the terrace. Shairp brought up Clough

and introduced him, and Lockhart, though evidently out of health, conversed with him frankly and cordially. . . . Lockhart was a tall, thin, dark-eyed man; his face, though it wore a severe, not to say harsh expression, was singularly handsome.

"In the long vacation of 1847 Clough took a reading party to the Highlands. For several weeks he was established at a large farmhouse – since turned into an inn – called Drumnadrochit, on the north shore of Loch Ness, and not far from the Fall of Foyers. The party numbered, so far as I recollect, six or seven men; among them were Warde Hunt, afterwards a well-known figure in the House of Commons, and Charles Lloyd, son of a former Bishop of Oxford. It was this reading party that gave occasion to the 'Long Vacation Pastoral,' which Clough published under the name of 'The Bothie of Tober-na-Vuolich.' The origin of the name was this: Several Oxford friends – Shairp, the present Archdeacon Scott of Dublin, with a younger brother, Theodore Walrond, and myself – arranged to beat up the quarters of the Drumnadrochit party while making a walking tour, which we were minded to extend to Skye. On the way north, at Loch Rannoch, Shairp and I parted from the rest, in order to explore the western shore of the long and lonely sheet of water known as Loch Ericht. We were to rejoin the others at Dalwhinnie the next day. The path along the lake was winding and rough; and at nightfall we had only walked as

far as the forester's hut, about one-third of the distance. All this side of Loch Ericht was said at that time to be Lord Abercorn's deer-forest; and there was no other human dwelling on that shore but this hut of the forester, which was named on the maps 'Toper-na-fuosich.' The forester and his wife were hospitable enough; such fare and lodging as they had were kindly tendered, and Shairp and I passed the night tolerably well. When we reached Drumnadrochit, Shairp, in his cheery genial way, made the most of the incident of the 'Bothie' at which we had slept, and Clough chose to give the name of the hut to the home of Elspie, his heroine (though that was far enough from Loch Ericht), and to find in the same name a title for his poem. Accordingly the first edition, published at Oxford, bore the title, 'Bothie of Toper-na-fuosich.' Later on it was discovered that the maps were wrong, and that the true name of the hut was 'Tober-na-Vuolich,' to which it has been altered in all later editions.

"The 'Bothie' found me in New Zealand before the end of 1848. The force and variety of this extraordinary poem, the melody of great portions of it, its penetrating dialectic, its portrayal of passionate tenderness, the nearness to Nature in its descriptions and in its whole texture, filled me with wonder and delight. There was one man then in New Zealand, and perhaps only one, who was capable of valuing this treasure aright, and with him I hastened to share it. Alfred Domett, the poet, journalist, and politician – of whom more

will be said further on – was then Colonial Secretary for the Wellington province. A Cambridge man, he welcomed with generous fervour this strange product of the Oxford mind.

"The tempest of the Paris Revolution in February 1848 was heard of in New Zealand soon after I landed in the colony. What a time of boundless excitement for the young and unsteady was that year 1848! Battles in the streets of great cities, constitutions torn to rags, insurrection everywhere, resignations of crowns, Chartist meetings, wars changing the frontiers of states, Italy rising against Austria, Hungary striking for independence, Russia sending her legions across the Carpathians, Rome turned into a republic – this was the sort of 'foreign intelligence' that my friends at home expected to find, and usually did find, in their morning papers. Even I, at the distance of half the globe, having steeped myself in French revolutionary literature before leaving England, watched for the tidings of those mighty events, and seemed to feel the reverberation of those shocks. My brother, to whom literature then and always meant more than politics, wrote two admirable sonnets on the Revolution in France. Yet, with banter irrepressible, in the thick of the wild hubbub, he addressed to Clough a letter with the superscription, 'Citizen Clough, Oriel Lyceum, Oxford.'"

Restlessness of mind, with which the theories and criticisms of Strauss's Leben Jesu had much to do,

beset me from the time of taking my degree. I was elected in 1846 by the college to a foundation scholarship at University, which in no long time would have led, without competition, to a fellowship; and common prudence dictated that this opening to a life career should not be cast aside. However it was not so to be. Discontent with the social institutions of the country seized upon me, and the science of English political economists, engaged with the sole problem of increasing the national wealth, and, to that end, emancipating its industry, seemed to me inadequate to the solution of the formidable questions which threatened to set capital and labour fatally at variance. English socialism, which in those days was represented by Robert Owen and the Chartists, was unattractive, because it lacked culture. French Communism appeared to me to have a far more plausible claim to contain the secret of the future. Some kind of Pantisocracy, with beautiful details and imaginary local establishments such as Coleridge never troubled himself to formulate, seemed to my groping mind to be the thing that was wanted. I suppose, too, that I was a rover by nature. Even before my father's death the colonization of New Zealand, in which he was so interested as to purchase two land sections 3 from the New Zealand Company, caused me to read everything about New Zealand that I came across. The descriptions of virgin forests, snowclad moun-

tains, rivers not yet tracked to their sources, and lakes imperfectly known, fascinated me as they have fascinated many since. And joining the two lines of thought together, my speculative fancy suggested that in a perfect locale such as New Zealand it might be destined that the true fraternity of the future – could founders and constitution-builders of the necessary genius and virtue be discovered – might be securely built up.

All this is crude and boyish enough; nevertheless such was really the staple of my meditations during several years; and if I have gone into the matter at all, it is only to explain in some degree the practical outcome of November 1847, in which month I took a cabin passage by the ship John Wickliffe to Wellington, the settlement where my father's land lay.

A long sea voyage can never be other than tedious, and I do not intend to weary the reader with the petty incidents of mine. Wind-bound for four days at the Downs – encouraged by a transient Nor'wester to escape and face down Channel; driven again to take refuge at the Mother-bank opposite Ryde, and detained there for a week; then making sail again, but met by a terrible gale in the chops of the Channel, which almost cast her on the Scilly Islands, the good ship struggled at last into better weather. As I lay in my berth one morning, exhausted by the mal de mer, I could see that things were improving; instead of the short waves of the Channel, the ship

was riding on long ocean billows, and the wintry gloom of a British December seemed to be suddenly replaced by bright sunshine. I struggled into my clothes and went up on deck, and here I will say a few words about the shipmates with whom for the next three months I was brought into close association.

The John Wickliffe, though she took passengers and cargo for Wellington also, was in fact the first and principal ship of the Scotch colony, which it had been determined to found at Otago Harbour in the south island of New Zealand. The scheme of colonisation was a special one, and an improvement in several respects on the original Wellington scheme. Captain Cargill, who had served with the Connaught Rangers in the Peninsular War, and claimed to belong to the well-known covenanting family of that name, had been appointed Company's Agent for the Otago settlement, and was now going out in the first ship, with his wife, two sons, and two daughters. The eldest son, John, was a manly quickwitted good-natured fellow; he had been for some time at sea, and was clever with his hands; he took a principal part in building up the colony, and is, I hope, still living. The old captain himself was, I should have thought, a case to which the rule of superannuation was justly applicable; yet I can well believe, that with the help of his capable son, he might succeed for some time in getting through the work that fell upon him fairly well.

His glass of toddy sometimes elevated him considerably, and on such occasions he would walk about the cuddy, trolling out with flushed features the burden of some old Scottish song. At other times he would hold forth interminably on the distinction between Church and State – a distinction which, he used to say, an Englishman could never comprehend.

A minister of the Free Kirk – the Rev. John Nicholson – his wife, whom he called "Alison," – and a friend no longer young, Miss Alexander, also went in our ship. Nicholson was an excellent man and, I believe, a good preacher, but more prudent and canny than in those days of the disruption and upbuilding of churches one was prepared to find in men so situated. His wife, Alison, was a sweet child of nature; her pale delicate nervous face breathed pure and innocent feeling; she spoke the beautiful Doric of her native land with a charming accent that made ordinary speech sound commonplace. One felt, too, that she would have gone cheerfully to the stake for the faith that was in her. The good John, being of robuster make and more prudential turn of mind, sometimes gave utterance to sentiments that her loftier nature disapproved; whereat she would fix her eyes upon him, and just say "Nicholson!" in a tone of shame and disappointed feeling, the pointed significance of which no words can describe. At the same time the singular contrast between their two characters – and all the time they were deeply attached to one another – struck one so forcibly that it was difficult to

avoid laughing. I saw much of them later on at Nelson. Whether they, or either of them, be now living I do not know. If they live, may God bless them, wherever they are.

A family named Garrick, the head of which was a solicitor going out to establish himself at Motueka, near Nelson; an excellent young Londoner, named Cutten, who meant to go into business as an auctioneer at Otago; an indigo-planter from India, whose liver seemed to have suffered from the climate; and two young men named Smith, one of whom was going to rejoin his regiment in New Zealand, nearly completed the roll of cabin passengers.

When I appeared on deck the ship, being then somewhere in the mouth of the Bay of Biscay, was plunging up and down huge rollers of bright purple sea, on the tops of which were little wavelets sparkling and breaking in the sun, while between them was deep shadow. Young Cargill came forward, and seeing that I was still far from well, recommended a glass of Bass. The composing and invigorating effect of this was wonderful; I lost all feeling of sea-sickness, and have seldom been troubled by it ever since.

After some days, the weather continually changing for the better, one morning land was in sight to port. It was the island of Palma, the westernmost of the Canaries, a mountain rising out of the sea. All day we sailed along it at a distance of about three miles, admiring its great beauty, and ready to envy the lot of

its inhabitants. Snow rested on its top; then apparently came a tract of rocky ground; forest succeeded, and below the forest the broad flanks of the island were clad with a vesture of scattered trees, green grass, and cultivation, amidst which white houses with red-tiled roofs were everywhere visible. Clearly, when colonies were first served out to the nations, Spain had the pick of them! New Zealand might be as beautiful, but it was on the other side of the globe; here were islands forming an earthly Paradise, not a thousand miles from Cadiz. In the evening we saw distinctly a great part of the outline of the Peak of Teneriffe, though it was not less than a hundred miles distant.

The fine north-west wind that had wafted us along for many days at last merged in the north-east trade. Then for weeks we held on, almost without touching a brace or hauling on a sheet, with stunsails set alow and aloft, delighting in that swift yet steady motion, for the manifestation and full enjoyment of which the planet seems too small. For who would be tired of sailing for a whole month before the north-east trade-wind? But in fact, and as things are, it must be a slow sailer that would not run them down in a fortnight. Flying-fish in their curious droves began to start up from the sea, and Spanish men-of-war cruised over the blue waves, and albatrosses, careering to and fro, haunted the stern, and whales spouted in the distance. But the friendly trade-wind gradually faded away, the sky became more and more overcast, and we entered

the Variables – a region of calms, tornados, and waterspouts. Light airs rose, now from one quarter now from another, and grew sometimes into smart breezes; to which our vigilant captain carefully trimmed his sails. For two or three days a large barque, the green copper on whose huge hull glistened as she rolled, had been sailing near us on the port side. One morning chance threw her into our near neighbourhood, within half a mile certainly, and the captain of the stranger put out a boat and paid our skipper a visit. He was an intelligent, agreeable little man – Dutch, but spoke English well – bound to Batavia for a cargo of coffee. Several of us cabin passengers accompanied Captain Daly on the return visit that same afternoon. The beautiful neatness and comeliness of everything on board the barque surprised us. After we had been regaled with schnapps and biscuits in the cabin, the captain took us down to the main deck to see the quarters of the crew. Each man had his comfortable curtained berth, with bed-clothes spotlessly clean, two or three little pictures hanging beside it, and plenty of light admitted through large port-holes. One could not but think of that dog-hole – the forecastle of the John Wickliffe – with its hammocks, griminess, and gloom, which was the sleeping and living quarter of our poor fellows.

After slanting across the south-east trade, and entering the zone of variable winds to the south of it, the captain, who was convinced that, by adhering to the principle of "great-circle sailing," it was in his

power to shorten the voyage considerably, steered boldly towards the South Pole. About 50 deg. S. latitude, and 1500 miles east of the Cape, the weather grew chilly, and the evening of the 25th February closed in dark and lowering. The sea was generally calm, but now and then a great wave would gather and break without any apparent reason. Suddenly we heard a distant roaring, and, straining our eyes in the pitchy darkness, we could see white shifting objects ahead, moving their place and apparent size continually. "Breakers ahead!" "Breakers on the port-beam!" was shouted. The captain gave instant orders to put the helm to port, so as to head the ship off the danger. We kept on the same course all night, but the wind was very light, and the ship made little progress.

When the morning broke, the peril of the previous night was apparent. We had gone blunderingly on towards the cliffs that line the southern coast of Desolation Island, but by great good fortune had been warned of our danger before striking on any reef, or shoal, or sunken rock. Seven or eight miles north of where we lay the whole, or nearly the whole, northern horizon was occupied by steep land, apparently about 800 feet high, descending in cliffs or screes to the sea-level, and seamed with gullies, down some of which water poured in thin white cataracts. The summits of the land could not be seen, being shrouded by a horizontal band of heavy grey cloud. But as the sun rose in the sky, a marvellous transformation took place. The cloud-band parted, lifted, melted away;

just in front of us appeared a grand mountain mass, apparently about 8000 feet high, 4 the upper part of which rose in a peak somewhat like that of the Matterhorn, with huge vertical ribs of black rock, alternating with falls of glittering ice. Below the peak the mountain flattened out considerably, and became the receptacle of an enormous glacier, descending unbrokenly to the sea. To the east of the mountain the coast range did not seem to be more than a few hundred feet higher than it had appeared when we first saw it, but it was covered by a heavy robe of snow, which overlay all the country behind, so far as we could see it. Between us and the foot of the mountain, and extending to the left of it, there appeared to be a large bay or harbour.

Desolation Island, (better known as Kerguelen's Land, from the French captain who first discovered it in 1772) was often visited by Captain Cook for the sake of the excellent remedy against scurvy – the Kerguelen cabbage – which grows abundantly about Christmas Harbour, on the north side of the island. But Cook does not appear to have ever visited the southern shore, and therefore could not have seen the mountain off which we lay becalmed. Sir James Ross, who was at Kerguelen's Land with the Erebus and Terror in 1840, but was kept a prisoner in Christmas Harbour by stress of

weather for forty-five out of the sixty-eight days of his stay, appears never to have seen the mountain which was to be named after him. The Challenger's visit was not made till 1874, so that the account which the writer sent to Fraser's Magazine for August 1861 of the visit of the John Wickliffe was perhaps the first notice of Mount Ross that ever appeared in print.

The day remained fine, but in the afternoon it turned very cold. This was soon explained by the appearance of icebergs, one of which, of minute size for an iceberg, was visibly and audibly breaking up within half a mile of the ship. Away to the westward was a berg which had the appearance of a long white cliff. From this date the voyage was without incident till we approached New Zealand. The captain kept to the south of Stewart's Island, the mountains of which we saw through mist; farther south were the Auckland Islands, with their famous harbour, called by the whalers "Sarah's Bosom."

"Coasting along the middle island, we came up on the night of the 20th March with the latitude of Otago. In the morning we were becalmed off the land, near enough to see the surf breaking on the white beach, and to distinguish the individual trees of the virgin forests that clothed the hills. A wind sprang up in the afternoon, but it was from the wrong quarter. We were beating to windward all that afternoon and all through the night. By sunrise we had weathered Cape Saunders, and were close in to land. The captain was scanning anxiously

every point that we ran past, trying to make out the heads of the harbour. At last a tiny sail shot out from behind a steep bluff that bore on our port bow, and revealed the passage that we sought. The whale-boat, for such she was, was alongside of the ship in twenty minutes."

5 In her were Mr. Kettle, the company's chief surveyor for the Otago settlement, two whalers, and a Maori. The steep bluff aforesaid was Tairoa Head, one of the heads of the Otago harbour; and as soon as we came up with it, the ship was anchored under its lee, because a strong south-easter was at the time blowing down the harbour right in our teeth. Some of us went on shore and climbed to the top of the head, on which was a small Maori settlement, housed in low mean wares, and dependent on its potato patches and on fishing. Among the bones of huge whales ran about dirty pigs and children. The scene was cheerless, and the human element in the picture discouraging. Next day the wind changed, and the ship was brought up to Port Chalmers, the anchorage to what is now Port Otago. The length of the inlet is about thirteen miles, and on the right, or land side, halfway up, was Port Chalmers. There is plenty of water here, and good holding ground; but the violence of the gusts and squalls that came off the land was astonishing. The month was now March; it was the autumn of the Southern Hemisphere;

and equinoctial gales were therefore en regle. These furious squalls are called by the whalers "willi-waughs"; they could be seen coming from some distance, turning into foam the waters of the bay, and when they reached the ship, they forced her down to leeward, sometimes almost on her beam ends. Once the stern of one of the heavy cutters that hung at the davits on either side of the poop was lifted by the force of the wind off the hook which upbore it, and the boat's stern fell into the sea, the side of the boat being stove in. After that the hooks were "moused." In such weather, as the shores of the inlet were tame and uninteresting, New Zealand scenery was not seen to advantage.

The baggage and personal effects, and other property of the Otago colonists, had to be transferred to the head of the bay, where the town – the future Dunedin – had been laid out; and this was by no means an easy or expeditious business. Everything had to be moved by boat seven miles, and landed at the head of the bay, where there were no wharfs, no sheds, no roads, no piers. An attempt was made, under the initiative of John Cargill, to construct a pier, on which a derrick would have been placed, for lifting heavy cases and crates out of the boats. Trestles were made of the unseasoned wood which the neighbouring bush supplied, and several of these were put in position, but they proved to be neither strong nor stiff enough, and the attempt was given up. Every package, cask, and box that was sent up

in the boats was heaved on shore by the sheer main strength of the sailors. Meantime the two Smiths, Cutten, and I lived on shore in a tent which, made of sailcloth during the voyage owing to the shrewd foresight of John Cargill, was now pitched beside a clear stream that ran through a grassy, lightly-timbered glade into the bay, a little to the left of the landing-place. Thus we lived al fresco; at the present day the stream must have become a sewer, and learned to content itself with the honour of draining the business quarter of the city of Dunedin.

One day, desirous of knowing what sort of country was at the back of the coast ranges, I climbed the high ground to the south-west, and walking some distance over a flat covered with rough yellowish grass, came to its edge, and looked down over a wide and singular plain. Far to the left front for many miles, in a south-south-westerly direction, stretched away from the foot of the hills on which I stood a vast swampy plain, bare of trees, except that in the middle of it there was a small wood of dark pines which might be guessed to cover about 400 acres. A low coast range parted the plain from the sea, and through a gap in this range the Taieri River (which gives name to the plain) makes its obstructed and difficult way to the ocean. This one knew from maps, for the river was not visible from where I stood. Higher ranges bounded the plain on the north-west, from the ravines in which, and especially from two or three mountain

valleys to my right, the issuing waters all lost themselves in the plain. Similar swampy flats succeed each other for a distance of 120 miles along the coast; they are valueless now, but, as was the case with the fen districts of England, the time will come when it will pay to drain and reclaim them, and they will be converted into fine agricultural land.

While we were at Dunedin, assisting in the landing of our friends' impedimenta, the Philip Laing, the second ship despatched under the Otago scheme, arrived at Port Chalmers. She carried many more emigrants in her steerage than the John Wickliffe, but had fewer cabin passengers; among those few was the Rev. Mr. Burns, whom the Free Kirk had appointed minister to the colony. He was a nephew of the poet, and already a grey-haired man; a pair of large, dark eyes, without fire, gave him a certain resemblance to his great kinsman, but his mild bearing showed that he had never been

"Misled by fancy's gilded ray,
By passion driven."

After a detention of nearly two months, we sailed from Port Chalmers on the 18th May. On the 19th we could steer our course; it was a glorious day; the mountains bounding the Canterbury plains on the west were in full view; ahead, the mountains of Banks' Peninsula had all the appearance of an island, for nothing could be seen of the low land joining

them to the plains around Christchurch. At nightfall there was a sudden change; the wind veered round to the north-west and rose to a gale, which continued for two days and three nights. But the good ship, which sailed very well on a wind, battled sturdily through it, and by dusk in the evening of the 23rd May, the wind having again changed, we were within three miles of Wellington heads, with the wind and sea setting us right on shore. The captain, who was unacquainted with the coast, began to show signs of anxiety; but after we had been firing guns and burning blue lights for some time, a hearty seaman's hail was heard, and a minute later Calder the pilot was on board and the ship in his charge.

At Wellington I was most kindly and hospitably entertained by the Rev. Mr. Cole, the Anglican clergyman. Captain Collinson of the Engineers, one of those

"animae quales neque candidiores
Terra tulit neque quis me sit devinctior alter,"

became my friend at once, by a sort of elective affinity. With Alfred Domett, then Colonial Secretary of the Province of New Munster, Godfrey Thomas, step-brother to Governor Grey, Frederic Weld, and several others, besides the officers of the 65th Regiment, then quartered at Wellington, I soon became acquainted.

Mr. Cole had a horse at grass at Otaki, a native settlement fifty miles up the coast, and he proposed that in the interval, before making up my mind as to

what I should turn to, I might walk to Otaki with a note to Mr. Williams, the Anglican missionary there, and ride the horse back to Wellington. I was glad to accept this offer. On the 5th June I left Wellington by the Porirua road, with Captain Collinson, – who had to visit Pawhatanui (the pah out of which Ranghihaieta, Rauperaha's fighting man, had been lately driven by the troops) on some professional errand, – for a companion. It was almost midwinter, but the air was mild, and during the few days that this little excursion lasted there was little rain. A good road had been made for fourteen miles as far as Jackson's Ferry, on the shore of Porirua harbour; about midway, where the watershed between the streams running to Port Nicholson and those going to the harbour was crossed, there was a large clearing, on which stood a poor hamlet, like Chaucer's "Bob-up-and-down," occupied by small settlers. Following thence a rather narrow ravine, from the sides of which rose tall tree-ferns, fifty and sixty feet high, we arrived at Jackson's Ferry, where, at that time, the road stopped. Collinson here left me, turning to the right to reach Pawhatanui. My way led to the left, for I had been advised to cross the harbour near its mouth. I passed the night at a miserable cabin, a few miles beyond Jackson's Ferry, and as the weather next morning (June 6) was detestable, I proceeded no farther that day. On the 7th, walking to the shore of the narrow inlet which admits the waters of Cook's Straits into the harbour, I crossed at the ferry, eyeing

and eyed by an officer from the Paramatta barracks close by, where was stationed at that time a detachment of the 65th Regiment. On the other side of the inlet the path entered the Pukerua bush, and brought me to the village of Hurui. I had been recommended to the fisherman there; when I knocked, the door of his cabin was opened by an old man. "What! Jenkins; is that you?" "Why it's Mr. Arnold, I do declare!" The speaker was a steerage passenger on board the John Wickliffe; the fisherman was his son; and the old man had found him out, and had been made heartily welcome. I stayed at the house that night, and was greatly pleased and touched by the talk of the old man, who was overflowing with contentment at the improvement in his lot since he had come to the colony; no dinning for rent, no calls from the tax-collector, no yellow fogs, and no cold weather.

Next morning (June 8), after gaining the sands, I had a firm straight track for twenty or thirty miles before me. Coming to the Waikanae River I was put over it in a boat by a policeman. After walking for many miles along the beach I knew that I must be near Otaki, and finding at last the place where, as I had been warned, the track to the settlement turned off on the right into the bush, I followed it. A merry group of about twenty Maoris, male and female, habited in mats and white and red blankets, among whom was a very beautiful dark-eyed girl, passed me soon after I entered the bush. The last man of the party turned

and followed me. He poured forth a flood of words as he walked beside me, of which I understood very few. Presently the path descended, and there appeared a broad stream flowing strong and clear over a pebbly bottom. The Maori came and stood in front of me, presented his broad brown back, held up two fingers, and said, "Two hering." This was the meaning of all his eloquence by the way. I assented, climbed on his back, and was carried dry across the river. After payment of the two shillings I walked on, but to my surprise the native still followed me. A hundred yards through the bush, – and then appeared what was evidently another branch of the Otaki river, as broad as the first. The cunning Maori wished to bargain with me as before, but angry at his tricks I exclaimed, "Kahori, kahori," (No, no), and after taking off shoes and stockings marched in. The current was strong, but the water in the deepest part barely reached my middle.

"Safe on the farther side, I stopped to look around me. The country was a Paradise. For miles to the north and east the land was nearly level, richly grassed and thinly timbered; gentle wooded rises succeeded; and behind these rose a chain of mountains of noble outline and delicious colouring, pierced by the deep gorge through which descended soundingly the beautiful river."

6

I soon came to the settlement, found out the mission house, and was kindly received by Mr. Williams. He promised to send for the horse, which

was running out in the bush, and that it should be ready for me the next morning. Meantime he took me to see the mission church, which was approaching completion.

The design and the builders were Maori, and a more singular, and, in a sense, beautiful building I never saw. The walls of the church, which were about 120 feet long, were composed of the trunks of immense straight totara-trees, about 100 feet high; these were skilfully split in half, and the halves were then set up vertically next each other in the line of the walls, the flat sides being of course turned inwards and reduced by adze and plane to a sufficiently smooth and regular surface. These surfaces were then painted crimson and white, in broad bands, with very striking effect.

Next morning (June 9) I set out on my return to Wellington. I was advised to follow the new road, which turned up from the beach somewhere opposite to the end of Kapiti Island, to the head of the Horokiwi valley, and followed that valley down to Pawhatanui. The height reached was considerable, not less than 700 feet probably, and at this point there was a magnificent view. Below lay the islands of Kapiti and Mane, gemming the blue waters of the Strait; to the south, in the direction of Wellington, forest-clad ranges seemed to be huddled one upon the other; while to the west, across the Strait, appeared capes and bold headlands, showing or concealing the entrances to many well-known sounds and bays (Queen

Charlotte's Sound, Pelorus Sound, Admiralty Bay, Wairau Bay, &c.), and behind all these, and beyond them to the eastward rose the sharp summits of the Kaikoras, 10,000 feet high, of which the eternal snows glittered in the afternoon sun.

I had ridden thus far from Otaki on an unshod horse; while the way lay along the beach this might be safely done; indeed, there was no choice about it, for there was then no farrier at Otaki. But now that the remainder of the journey was to be chiefly over metalled roads, the case was different, and having heard that there was a blacksmith's forge at the bottom of the Horokiwi valley, I turned up thither on arriving opposite to it. While I was waiting outside the forge, an officer came up and entered into conversation. After a while he introduced himself as Captain Russell, in command of the detachment of the 58th Regiment at Pawhatanui, and invited me to dine and sleep at the pah. This I was of course glad to do, although dependent only on the contents of a knapsack for any improvement that might be requisite in my personal appearance.

Captain Russell, Lieutenant Garstin, another subaltern whose name I forget, and Surgeon Montgomery, were the officers of the 58th then quartered in Pawhatanui. The wives of those named were with them; all three were young, and possessed, each in her own way, considerable, and more than considerable, personal charms. All too had those easy, straightforward, and agreeable manners which are so

characteristic of good military society. Under such circumstances the time, for me, could not but pass pleasantly. But I noticed with regret that within this pah (in the defence of which blood had been shed the year before, and where civilized life had only just been made possible by the erection of neat weather-boarded huts, painted slate colour, with guard-room, mess-room, and all complete), the demon of ennui was plaguing terribly all the officers except the commandant. There was no hunting, no shooting, only poor fishing; and for exploring the country leave would not at that time have been readily granted, besides that it would have been scarcely safe. Still one would have liked to see them more inclined to take advantage of the ample leisure at their disposal by pursuing some one of the studies, historical, scientific, or technical, which belong to their profession, and which, since a new Maori war might break out any day, became for them largely practical. To kill time, they were in the habit of rowing down every day to Paramatta at the mouth of the harbour, to visit the 65th detachment.

Next day (June 10) I bade farewell to my kind hosts, and returned via Jackson's Ferry without further incident to Wellington.

I now lost no time in ascertaining the situation of my father's country land. The two sections, each of 100 acres, were in the Makara valley, about eight miles due west from Wellington, in the peninsula which separates Port Nicholson from the main channel of Cook's Strait. For about half the distance there was a good

road; for the rest of the way only a bridle path which had been recently cut through the bush across the steep ridge which bounded the Makara valley on the east. The sections were near one another, but on opposite sides of the valley; about half of each was pretty level; the rest lay on the slopes of the bounding ridges. If I remember right, not an acre of land on the Makara had as yet been cleared; a dark bush, consisting mostly of red pine, everywhere obstructed the sight. I fell in with a wood-cutter, who helped me to find the boundaries of the sections. He said that "the sawyers" had been all over the valley, and "picked out the best trees." Returning to Wellington, I explained to Colonel Wakefield, the company's agent, how matters stood. He was very kind, and said that the company had still several sections in its own hands, one of which adjoined the Porirua road, about ten miles north of Wellington, and was as good land as either of the Makara sections, besides having the advantage of lying on a good and much-travelled road. This section, he added, I could have at once in exchange for one of the Makara sections; what should be done with the other section might remain for the present undetermined. I told him, of course, that my father's property was in the hands of trustees; but as it was merely an exchange, and one manifestly for the advantage of the estate, he did not think any legal difficulty would be raised at home. I wrote without delay to one of the trustees, explaining the arrangement proposed, and urging its acceptance.

With my friend Collinson I walked out the ten or eleven miles along the Porirua road, and had no difficulty in finding the section on which Colonel Wakefield offered to place me. Certainly the allotment was not undesirable. The frontage of the section on the road was twenty chains, and it ran back into the bush sixty chains; this equals an area of 120 acres; but in this liberal fashion most of the 100-acre sections about Wellington were surveyed. Between seven and eight miles from Wellington there was a hamlet – already mentioned – in the occupation of small settlers. Here, in the house of a Kentish peasant named Barrow, within three miles of the section, I found that I could obtain board and lodging; and I came to an agreement with him, or rather with his wife, accordingly. I had not the means of entering into large clearing operations, but I was resolved to clear at least a few acres, so as to let in the sunlight on a valley where only a narrow road pierced the gloom of the forest, build some sort of tenement where a man could live, and make a slight beginning of cultivation.

With Barrow and his two sons, of whom one was a grown man, the other a youth, I contracted for the felling and burning off of five acres, at what price per acre I now forget. A two-roomed hut was also to be put up by them, for which, of course, I was to buy the timber that was necessary. The streamlet whose course the Porirua road here followed ran close by; the hut was to stand a few feet beyond the stream; and the

clearing was to be at the back of the hut. Five acres are equal to 50 square chains; in other words, a piece of land was to be cleared 110 yards one way and 44 yards the other. The trees that grew upon it were not remarkable for height or size; but their variety probably indicated a fertile and available soil. The largest trees were the ratas, whose scarlet flowers and strange parasitical mode of growth are well known. The rimu (red pine) was abundant; also the kaikatea or white pine, the bukatea, and the tawa. The last-named tree bears a fruit about as large as a small damson, and is, I believe, the only native fruit-tree in New Zealand; but the berry has a strong and disagreeable flavour of turpentine. The most curious and beautiful tree on the section was discovered by an accident. I had agreed with a settler living a little farther down the road for the running of one of the side lines of my section to the depth of forty chains. There is little difficulty about this; the surveyor's post at the corner of the section is found if possible; a number of straight sticks of supplejacks are collected, and the upper portion of each peeled; a second point in the boundary line is then found – I forget in what manner – and its direction thus ascertained. The bushman then begins to clear the boundary line, making a path about two feet wide for the purpose. As he proceeds, he fixes the supplejacks in the line that he has cleared from a dozen to twenty yards apart, and brings the peeled tops of at least the last three that he has fixed into the same line before proceeding

farther, thus removing, or at any rate minimising, the risk of deviation. Having a chain with him, he can at any time assure himself as to the distance that he has come from the corner-post. As far as possible, unless a real timber tree should be standing in the very boundary, he cuts down everything in the path that he makes level with the ground, so that the line of supplejacks may not be interfered with. This long introduction is only for the purpose of explaining why a certain rare tree which we came across while we were marking the side line was not spared. When we had worked back about thirty chains, we came upon a tall and graceful nikau palm, growing on the very boundary line. If we had left it there, much trouble and time would have been spent in taking the necessary precautions against deviation; and I therefore reluctantly allowed the bushman to cut it down. In its head was a large lump, as big as a child's head, of the edible nutty substance for which the tree is noted.

The site of the hut was so determined as to leave a thin fringe of trees, among which, if I remember right, a fine rata was included, between it and the clearing. It measured about 20 feet by 12, and contained two rooms, in one of which was the entrance door. The walls were made of pretty thick upright slabs or posts, the interstices between them being filled with what colonists call "dab." I settled with Barrow the amount and kind of "sawn-stuff" that would be required for wallplates, door, rafters, ridgepiece, and

roof; this last was to be both weather-boarded and shingled. Nothing gave us so much trouble as the chimney, from the difficulty of finding stones of a respectable size anywhere in the neighbourhood. But this difficulty was surmounted, tant bien que mal; the felling of the trees on the five acres was finished, the burning-off being deferred to the summer months; and the little clearing enterprise on the Porirua road was so far completed.

I fancy that I can hear readers of a practical turn exclaim, "What folly and absurdity! What could he expect to make out of five acres? What were his ulterior objects, if he had any?" I confess that ulterior objects were but mistily conceived; but, to the best of my remembrance, I thought that I might raise some tons of potatoes and a little wheat, besides garden vegetables, on the land cleared, and gradually become the possessor of a cow, a horse or two, and a few sheep. To this extent I might fairly expect, and should doubtless have received, had things gone differently, assistance from home; for certainly neither the trustees nor any one else could quarrel with the way in which I had expended much the greater part of the small sum of money which I had brought out to New Zealand. That is to say, it could not be said to have been wasted, having been mostly spent in paying wages; it is the utility of the expenditure that will be questioned. As to this I offer no defence; but that I was very earnestly bent on carrying out my clearing project is proved to myself, and may appear probable

to others, from a circumstance which happened about this time.

Governor Grey had come to Wellington, and was actively informing himself as to the state of the country and the temper of the Maoris. One day as, in bush attire of straw hat and blue serge shirt, I was walking into Wellington from the section, I was overtaken, on the short cut which, avoiding the tedious curves of the Porirua road, descended steeply into the Hutt road, by three horsemen, two of whom were unknown to me, while the third was my friend Godfrey Thomas. Of the two others the elder and taller was a middle-aged man of striking and intelligent countenance; the other was an aide-de-camp. Thomas introduced me to the elder man, naming him as "His Excellency Governor Grey." The Governor, who had heard about me from Archbishop Whately, a distant relation, dismounted, giving his horse to the orderly, and walked with me down the hill. He said that he had called at the section on his way into Wellington, but not finding me there, and hearing that I had gone on myself in that direction, had come after me. After a little conversation, he made me the offer of his private secretaryship, which I respectfully asked for time to consider, but eventually declined. "More folly!" it will be said, and perhaps it was. But for a special reason, I cared little at that time about "getting on"; to throw up my work on the land would have troubled me exceedingly; lastly, the radical idea influenced me that men of independent character ought not to have

anything to do with the Colonial Government so long as it was carried on by means of nominee, not representative assemblies.

The outlook on the Porirua road had up to this time been cheerful, if not bright; but now there came, "a frost, a killing frost." I have mentioned that at the time of accepting from Colonel Wakefield the section on the Porirua road in exchange for one of those in the Makara valley, I had written to one of my father's trustees, asking their consent to the arrangement.

Now, towards the end of September 1848, the answer came. The trustee, who was my uncle, wrote that they could not legally give their consent to any arrangement of the kind, and that any steps that might have been taken in pursuance of it must be cancelled. So the acres had been cleared, and the hut (which I had actually intended to call "Fox How" after the house built by my father in Westmoreland) had been built for another! The disappointment was bitter; and though I could not quite say "Barbarus has segetes!" the soreness and distress of the beloved poet at seeing his friends turned out of their Mantuan farms were in some degree my portion. However, I did not allow myself to despond; but after calling on Colonel Wakefield, and informing him of the refusal of the trustees to allow the exchange, took counsel with my friends Domett and Collinson with regard to my future movements. Some will say, "Why did he

not take up the Makara sections and recommence clearing there?" But against this there were several reasons: in the first place, I had spent nearly all my money; and after such an excellent reason, perhaps I need give no other. But it was also true that the Makara valley was out of the way, and hard to come at; also, from what I had seen of the two sections, I was pretty certain that the land at the Makara was much inferior to the land on the Porirua road. If I had been brought up to farming, I suppose I should have stuck to the land, having still the opportunity of doing so, in spite of the temporary discouragement; but as this was not the case, I paused and considered. Domett showed himself a very true and kind friend. Being one of the original Nelson settlers, he was well acquainted with their scheme, which included the foundation of a college or superior grammar-school as soon as the colony was sufficiently developed. The appointment to the headship of this college he thought he could obtain for me; but meantime, as his Nelson friends were continually writing that their boys were growing up without any proper education, he proposed that I should go to Nelson at once and open a school there, the prospect being that such school would merge in the college when the fit time for founding this last arrived.

To comply with this proposal seemed to me the best thing that I could do; and having, I hope, duly expressed my gratitude to Domett for his

kindness, I began to look out for an opportunity of crossing to Nelson. In those days there was no regular communication between the two places, and very little trade. Frederic Weld being at Wellington, and hearing of this difficulty, proposed to me to take passage with him in his cutter to his sheep-station at Flaxbourne, near Cape Campbell, whither he was returning in a day or two. At Flaxbourne I should be on the right side of the straits, and the best way of proceeding thence by land to Nelson could be found out on arriving there; but he hoped I should not hurry away from the station. This kind proposal I gladly accepted.

1 Arnold's "Sermons," vol. v.

2 Clough's "Poems," i. 25; Macmillan.

3 Each section consisted of 100 acres of country land, and one town acre.

4 That was the judgment of the officers of the John Wickliffe; but in the narrative portion of the report of the Challenger (vol. i. Part I. p. 332) the height of Mount Ross, which is evidently identical with the mountain seen by us, is stated at 6120 feet only. It does not appear on what data this estimate was based, nor when and by whom the name Mount Ross was given.

5 From an article entitled "Reminiscences of New Zealand," contributed by the author to Frasers Magazine, August 1861.

6 "Reminiscences," Fraser's Magazine.

CHAPTER IV

CHAPTER IV

Flaxbourne – Frederic Weld – The earthquake – Port Underwood – The Wairau – Journey to Nelson – The Dillon Bells – The country round Nelson – School there – Nelson settlers – Major Richmond, Mr. Stafford, and others – Alfred Domett – His career – His "Ranolf and Amohia" – Bishop Selwyn – Letter from Sir William Denison – Return to Wellington – The Shan van Vocht – Wellington weather – Death of Colonel Wakefield – Epuni – British and Greek civilization – Left New Zealand – Sydney – Melbourne.

FREDERIC ALOYSIUS WELD was the son of Mr. Humphrey Weld of Chidiock, in Dorsetshire, and the nephew of Mr. Joseph Weld of Lulworth, owner of the famous racing yacht, the Arrow. The family was Catholic, and had always been so; but ever since the Reformation they had lived in much retirement and obscurity, contentedly accepting their exclusion from the public life of England, and devoting themselves to the management of a large estate and the care of numerous dependants of the same faith. If I was rightly informed by a priest of great intelligence and large experience – Father Bond – whom I met in Tasmania and afterwards in England, the Welds, owing to the obscure life which they led, did not mix much until recent years with the Catholic gentry and aristocracy – the Petres, Cliffords, Stourtons, Jerninghams, &c. – and hence, living simpler lives, remained sounder and stronger in

physique than they. Latterly, Father Bond said, (in a conversation held nearly twenty years ago), the Welds had intermarried with all these families, and brought to them fresh blood and a kind of constitutional renewal. However this may be, Frederic Weld, with his clear blue eyes, curly light-brown hair, lithe well-knit figure, and honest resolute expression of face, was, when I knew him, a fine sample of the best type of Catholic aristocrat. He had, I think, no taste for controversy, though I remember hearing of an earnest argument on religion one evening between him and another friend, in which, according to Domett, Weld did not come off the worst. Also, if the conversation ever touched on the sufferings and disabilities of Catholics in time past, he was wont, seriously but without heat, to give his opinion on the injustice of the persecuting laws. Not long after I left Flaxbourne he bent his mind vigorously to the exploration of the province; discovered the pass at the head of the Wairau valley leading to the Canterbury district – Lake Tennyson and other lakes – and thus became known to the colonial and also to the home government. He was a sturdy Liberal, and would not accept from Governor Grey a seat in the nominee council of 1848; but when representative institutions came, he was elected by the people of his own district, and sat in the assembly for some years. In 1864, being raised to the premiership under Sir George Grey, he took the bold resolution, as is mentioned

at a later page, of dispensing with the aid of British troops in the conflict with the Maoris; and his policy met with complete success. His merit was now recognised; he was nominated governor of Western Australia in 1869, and afterwards promoted to the charge of Tasmania: posts of no great difficulty, indeed, but highly honourable for one whose family had emerged, not so long before, from the dark shade of the penal laws. He was created a Knight Commander of St. Michael and St. George, and the last public appointment which he held was that of the Straits Settlements, from 1880 to 1887. So long a stay in an unhealthy tropical climate must have been harmful to a constitution already severely tried; and Frederic Weld was taken from us in July 1891, leaving a name that in New Zealand at any rate, which he served so well, will surely never be forgotten.

On the 4th October 1848, leaving Port Nicholson, and launching out in the little cutter, the Petrel, which was navigated by two of Weld's men and himself, on the turbulent waters outside, we had a grand view of the snowy Kaikoras facing us across the straits. We steered for Cape Campbell, the headland of the north-east point of the south island, and then coasted along to Flaxbourne Cove, about eight miles to the southward. The station, a wooden building in two wings, with a kind of veranda connecting them, painted white, with stables, sheep-yards, &c., stood about a quarter of a mile from the beach. The surrounding country, which was well

grassed and almost bare of trees, showed everywhere a white rock, much resembling chalk. At that time there were about 12,000 sheep on the run, which was the joint property of Weld and his cousins, Clifford and Vavasour, who were just then in England. In two small rushy lakes near the house there were teal; on the hills the small quail of the country (exactly like the quail of Europe, Weld said, only smaller) were fairly abundant, and in the swamps and lagoons near the sea were Paradise ducks of brilliant plumage, grey ducks, which resemble the English wild duck, spoon-bill ducks, and "earthquake birds." 7 These last three were difficult to shoot, being shy; but Weld, and I to some small extent, replenished the larder fairly well with teal and quail. And, indeed, the larder needed replenishing: the fare consisted of mutton chops and damper for breakfast; ditto for dinner, and ditto for supper. There was no milk or butter, but plenty of tea and claret, and abundance of sauces and pickles. The teal, therefore, which were superior in flavour, I think, to the English teal, were always acceptable.

The 16th October was a memorable day. The account of it given in the "Reminiscences" already quoted may here be extracted: –

"On the night (or rather 'morning') of the 16th October, between one and two A.M., the whole household was roused from sleep by the shock of an earthquake.

It seemed to me in my dreams that a storm of wind was blowing – that it blew harder and harder – that it shook the very house – under which impression I awoke, and found myself being rocked violently from side to side in bed, like an infant in the cradle; not, however, by the powers of the air, but by the mysterious forces pent up within the breast of the earth. The bottles on a loft above our heads kept up an insane dance and clatter; every timber in the house creaked, groaned, and trembled; the dogs barked; and the shepherds (who slept in one wing of the house, Weld and I occupying the other), imagining the end of the world was come, rushed out of the house, and did not venture to return till daylight. Weld and I remained in the house, but could sleep little for the remainder of the night, owing to constant quiverings and slight movements of the earth. The sensation produced was singular and awful, its chief element being the feeling of utter insecurity, when that which we familiarly think of as the firm and solid earth was thus heaving and rolling beneath us. When it was light, we found that little or no damage had been done to the house; but outside, particularly near the banks of streams and in other low situations, there were long and deep cracks. It was not till some days afterwards that we learned how destructive the earthquake had been at Wellington. Two persons had been killed, and every house of stone or brick was thrown down. The shakings did not at once subside. On Sunday, six days after the earthquake, we walked to the top of

the Hummock, a hill about 1000 feet high. Seated on the narrow conical summit we gazed on the sublime appearance of the lesser Kaikora entirely covered with snow. While we were thus intent there came a shock of earthquake, and we distinctly saw the top of the hill on which we sat heave to and fro."

My stay at Flaxbourne had now extended to three weeks, and although this visit to Nelson was only preliminary, and serious approaches were to be made later on, I felt that Domett might be surprised if week after week should pass without his hearing of my arrival, besides that inconvenience might possibly be caused to Weld. Hitherto the intercourse between us had been of a most friendly nature; we exchanged ideas and experiences on university subjects – we talked about yachting – we lent each other books. One of his text-books which he had brought with him from Fribourg was a history of philosophy by the Jesuit professor Freudenfelt. This book seemed to me to be more genially and lucidly written than any similar work that had been put into my hands at Oxford. However, the time was come when we must part. For me, the object was to be put on the Nelson track, and to follow it up to Nelson. Weld wished to help me in this, and at the same time to do some business of his own – what its nature was I forget, if I ever knew – with an old whaler of the name of Doherty living at Port Underwood. We embarked in the little Petrel on the 26th October, and after a fine-weather run of six hours and a half, entered Port Underwood. This

is a well-sheltered harbour, and the town of Blenheim now stands there; but it is hemmed in by steep and barren hills, and there is no good land nearer than Waitohi or the Wairau Plain. Captain and Mrs. Doherty received us very hospitably, and we slept at their house. Next day we were taken to "Captain Cutter's Bay," where all the signs and tokens of a bad whaling season were apparent. On the 28th, resuming the direction of the Wairau, we crossed Port Underwood to Oyster Bay. Here Weld sent the Petrel round into Queen Charlotte's Sound through Tory Channel; he and I climbed the mountain facing us, and all the loveliness of the Sound came at once into view. Descending upon Moturangi we rejoined the Petrel, and coasted along "through bewitching fairylike scenes" 8 to Waitohi, or Picton.

Waitohi is at the extreme end of Queen Charlotte's Sound, the hills of which are everywhere abrupt, and the gullies everywhere V-shaped; here alone at Waitohi there is a piece of level land of about 600 acres, sufficient for the site of a small town. There was a Maori pah here, and the natives duly honoured us with their company; scarcely any houses of white people had yet been erected. On the morning of the 29th it was almost a dead calm. Weld and I, who both wished to visit the scene of the Wairau massacre, walked by the Tua Marina pass – steep hills bordered by deep swamp – into the Wairau valley. When nearly through the pass we were guided by the Maoris

to the spot. It was merely the top of a green hill to the left of the path; no trace of conflict was visible. Here Captain Arthur Wakefield, the agent for the Nelson settlement, and Mr. Thompson, a magistrate, while endeavouring, supported by seventy Nelson settlers, to arrest the chiefs Rauperaha and Ranghihaiata for interrupting the surveyors, encountered resistance; shots were fired, most of the settlers ran away, and the lives of the gallant Wakefield, Mr. Thompson, and some twenty others were sacrificed. This was in 1843. From Massacre Hill we struggled through the deep swamps of the Wairau plain to the pah. Captain Doherty had come up the river from Port Underwood in his whale-boat, in which, next day, he rowed us some miles up the river to the "Big Bush," where there was a wretched ware. I think Weld's intention must have been to save me some walking. On the next day (31st October) Captain Doherty, as it was rainy, advised me to defer my start, but my friend could stay with me no longer; probably he had important business with Doherty at Port Underwood.

On the next day (1st November), being put on my way by a Maori called Enoch, I left the Big Bush, and gaining the higher and drier ground, strode with elastic step along the track. The sun shone brightly, my knapsack was on my back, and the great beauty of the valley cheered and excited my spirits. The river, which was about as large as the Rhone at Visp, and rushed, a violent torrent, along its stony bed, was in one respect

more beautiful than the Rhone, in that it was bright and clear, not sullied by glacier mud. For several miles from the Big Bush the valley remained from three to four miles wide, afterwards gradually contracting. The mountains on each side, apparently of metamorphic rock and between two and four thousand feet high, were of noble and varied outline, and through the winding valleys which rent them large streams flowed down into the main river. The track sometimes passed through woods, in which the routing and grunting of the wild pigs were audible, but I did not see any. Proceeding thus for about twelve miles, I came to Dillon's 9 sheep station. The shepherd gave me tea, and I met in the house a Mr. Sweet, a Nelson settler, with whom I entered into conversation. He had just driven 1200 sheep from Nelson through the Black Bush, and established them on his run, twenty-seven miles higher up the valley. Presently he said that he was himself going back to Nelson the next day but one, and that if I would go with him he would be glad to show me the way, adding that he could lend me a horse. This friendly offer I was glad to accept.

On the next day (2nd November) we rode twenty-seven miles to Mr. Sweet's run. But he desired to search in the neighbouring gullies for timber, to use in the building of his new house, and from this and other causes we did not make a start till 6th November.

After passing a deserted station of George Duppa's (thirty-nine miles) we came (forty-one miles) to the Branch River, and forded it, and at forty-seven miles reached the Wairau, and forded that also. Eight miles more brought us to Morse's upper ware (fifty-five miles), where we slept. Here the valley came down more from the eastward, and as this was not in the direction of Nelson, and the river besides emerged some miles higher up from a tangle of rough mountains, it was necessary to leave it and to strike off to the right. From Morse's upper ware, therefore, we plunged into the Black Bush, a wood consisting only of black birches, a dismal tree with small olive-green leaves, and black or dark-grey bark. The surface of this region was not hilly, but undulating, traversed by numerous small streams, each of which, there being no bridges or culverts, was converted by the traffic and the rain that had lately fallen into a deep bog or slough, which the horses disliked entering, and from which they sometimes dragged out their legs with great difficulty. After ten miles or more of this work the wood ceased, and we came out into the open valley of the Motupika, a tributary of the Motueka; which crossing, we entered a strip of bush, much less obnoxious than the former, and bringing us in about three miles to the Motueka valley. This, where the track crosses it, is open and grassy, but two miles higher up the mountains close in on either hand; their sides are clothed with a dark, continuous forest, and the river seems to lose itself in the tremendous

depths of the "Blue Glen." If, as is likely, a good highway road or railway now runs through the Black Bush, the present Nelson settler will think I have been telling him a "traveller's tale"; but I can assure him that I have adhered strictly to facts. 10 After passing through the villages of Fox Hill and Wakefield, the second of which is in the Waimea valley, we descended that valley, where most of the Nelson settlers at that time had their country lands, to Blind Bay, at the head of which stands Nelson; and I was hospitably received at Mr. Sweet's house. This was on November 8, 1848. The Nelson people welcomed me among them with a heartiness and warmth which I could not have expected. Those who knew nothing about me seemed willing to help me to the best of their power, no less than those whose acquaintance I had already made. Among these last I have to include Mr. and Mrs. Dillon Bell. Francis Dillon Bell, who was at that time agent for the New Zealand Company at Nelson, was a man of charming and delightful manners, for which, I suppose, he was a good deal indebted to a French education. His position was difficult; for the Nelson settlement had been planted on a site which did not contain nearly enough good land to fulfil the company's pledges. This made some of the settlers restive and full of complaints; and all the excuses and promises which the agent's ready tongue

and ingratiating ways could invent were required to pacify them. A measure of relief ad interim, by which the company gave up its own sections and other reserves, was carried out while I was at Nelson, and at Bell's request I assisted him in the manipulation of it. Ultimately, I believe, when possession could be had of the Wairau valley, all land claims upon the company, so far as Nelson was concerned, were fully satisfied. To the adroitness and untiring patience of Dillon Bell this happy result was largely attributable. His wife, Margaret Hort, whose father was the Rabbi at Wellington, performed, for an amateur, remarkably well on the piano, and had a voice of great richness and sweetness. I was much at their house when business or pleasure brought me to Wellington. She was not less intelligent than she was amiable, and to talk to her was a real pleasure. Margaret made an excellent wife to Dillon Bell; she followed him to Victoria and London; and preceded him to the grave about two years ago.

The country round Nelson is of singular loveliness. Like Athens, the town slopes towards the sea and the midday sun. "Blind Bay," though our coarse British perceptions have invested it with that ugly, even calumnious name, is hardly less beautiful than the Saronic Gulf. 11 Standing on the Fort Hill in the middle of the town, and looking westward, one saw a range of mountains stretching for twenty miles or

more from south to north, apparently about 2000 feet high, and forming the western boundary of the bay. Through gaps in this range could be seen higher peaks beyond, usually capped with snow. Another such high peak appeared to the south-west; but the southern horizon was mostly filled with the ferny spurs and terraces which blocked seaward the greater part of the opening of the Waimea valley. East and south-east were seen the streets of the little town, and beyond them, generally glowing in sunlight, the turfy sides of the dome-shaped Dun mountain, 3000 feet high, with a few trees on its top, and patches of fern brightening its flanks. Farther south there was a gap, marking the valley of the Maitai, the mountain stream which ran through Nelson into the harbour, and affording, it was said, access to Pelorus Sound, though I never met with any one who had explored it. North of the gap rose two mountains close to each other, of rounded form, like two immense bee-hives, covered from bottom to top with dark forest, the height of which could not have been much less than that of the Dun mountain. The rest of the north-east horizon was filled with rocky and ferny ranges, ending in the cliffs of D'Urville's Island; due north stretched the blue waters of the bay. I have seen panoramas more beautiful, strictly speaking, than this – for instance the Lake and shores of Como from above Menaggio – but never one more humanly delightful and enchanting, when the softness and delicacy of the air, the availableness of much of

the land in view for human needs, and the vastness of the area of vision, are all taken into consideration.

On the top of the Fort Hill there was a large wooden building, which had been used, I think, for a barrack; here it was decided that I should keep school. Hither the sons of the principal residents – the Swans, Elliotts, Martins, &c. – came to me; and I did the best I could for them. As may be supposed, none of them wanted Greek. For myself I lived in a small wooden three-roomed cottage, with an elderly woman, a Mrs. Currin, to keep house for me. But this refers to my later and longer visit. In November and December 1848, I was looking about me and making friends before settling at Nelson finally, which I could not do before returning to arrange various matters at Wellington.

Nearly all my Nelson acquaintances have passed away; but there are some of them for whom I still retain a very warm feeling. If in noticing them it were proper to attend to distinctions of social position, the first to be named should be Major Richmond, the resident magistrate – a benevolent and much respected gentleman. His son, Andrew, was a lad of about seventeen. Edward Stafford, a keen and able politician, one of the original Nelson settlers, living at a good house near the Port, was married to the daughter of Colonel Wakefield. She was shy and silent, but the sweet grave expression of her face, and the delicate hue of her complexion, accorded well with her innate refinement of nature. Stafford afterwards played a

distinguished part in the political history of the colony; was Prime Minister for many years under Governor Grey; on resignation was created a Knight Grand Cross of the Order of St. Michael and St. George; and now, if I mistake not, lives in London.

Dr. Monro, a person of much weight in the colony, was one of the original Nelson settlers. He was the uncle of the present Provost of Oriel. He was a man of much ability, and an effective public speaker; at the same time he was, I think, governed by that absorption in his own life – his own success – which is so common a trait in Scotchmen. Dr. and Mrs. Renwick, both about the same age as myself, were always friendly. The Redwoods were a Catholic family, belonging, I think, to Lincolnshire. The old man's fine countenance and massive frame gave him a look of distinction; but still more the beautiful Anne Redwood drew the stranger's eye. Consumption, alas! had marked her for its victim. Her brother, if I mistake not, is the present Catholic Archbishop of Wellington.

William Cautley, a Cambridge man, had a sheep-farm in the Waimea, eight or nine miles from Nelson. I stayed there with him once during the shearing time, and learned much concerning the less pleasant mysteries of sheep-farming. His black horse, which he called "Blackbird" – an animal steady-going but rather slow – was known everywhere. He mounted me, of course, and I remember one ride into the low moist plain bordering the Waimea River, where I first understood

the magnificent possibilities of growth which are enclosed in the flax plant, Phormium tenax. Each clump of the plant had several tall flower-stalks, bearing reddish-purple flowers; and these, as well as many of the leaves, waved high above our heads as we sat on horseback. I never saw anything like the same exuberance of growth anywhere else.

Richard Newcome, a good-hearted rough soldier who had left the army and taken up land somewhere near Nelson, was a prime favourite with us all.

George Duppa, a handsome dark-eyed man, with a face like a Spaniard – descended from the Bishop Duppa of Charles II.'s time – one of the original settlers, had taken up land for sheep-farming in the Upper Motueka valley, and was said to have managed it with great ability and success.

I have already mentioned Domett's name more than once, nor did I ever meet him while I was at Nelson; but as one of the founders of this colony, and a man in many ways remarkable, he has titles to remembrance which must not be overlooked. He was born at Camberwell in 1811, and educated at St. John's College, Cambridge, where he became the friend of Robert Browning. He was of a passionate, fiery nature; full of suppressed energy, as proud as Lucifer, yet as loyal and affectionate a friend as ever breathed. He seems to have tried his hand at poetry during several years after leaving Cambridge, 12 but not much came of it. Mortified at this – too proud

to complain – resolved that "they shall hear of me" – he bought land in New Zealand in 1842, and silently withdrew himself from amongst his friends to the new land beyond the sea. This silent flitting is what Browning refers to in the well-known lines: –

"What's become of Waring
Since he gave us all the slip,
Chose land-travel or seafaring,
Boots and chest, or staff and scrip,
Rather than pace up and down
Any longer London town?"

Again in "Time's Revenges" the poet speaks of the missing "friend over the sea": –

"I've a friend over the sea,
I like him, but he loves me.
It all grew out of the books I write;
They find such favour in his sight
That he slaughters you with savage looks
Because you don't admire my books."

And yet again, when writing the beautiful stanzas on Guercino's picture of "The Guardian Angel" at Fano, he thought of "Alfred" far away: –

"Where are you, dear old friend?
How rolls the Wairoa at your world's far end?
This is Ancona, yonder is the sea."

Like Clough, Domett had unhappily lost his early faith, but unlike Clough, he was no dreamer, no waverer, but a fiery resolute man of action, capable of making his weight felt and his will prevail. Had the emergency of some desperate peril arisen

in the colony's affairs, Domett would have been the man to grapple with it and to master it. But what emergency could arise? France, though she had been treated with little friendliness at the time of Captain Hobson's proclamation of British sovereignty, yet, with a population not increasing, and considering the distance of Auckland from Marseilles, had little interest in pressing the claims which her great discoverers and surveyors would have entitled her to raise. Germany was not yet in the field; Russia and America were occupied elsewhere. The Maoris were brave; they even won victories over the troops; but the colonial vices were ever corrupting and weakening them more and more, and no man of sense could doubt how the contest would end. The military men blundered, but they must have succeeded in exterminating the Maoris at last. Fortunately that was not necessary; Frederic Weld became Premier of the colony in 1864, and took on his firm shoulders the responsibility of pacifying and dispersing the Maoris without extermination. He asked for no British troops, but opposed to the natives small bodies of picked bushmen, and in this way gradually wore them out. Domett looked upon the Maoris rather with Roman than with Christian eyes; and as the emergency, from what is called the Imperial point of view, was not really great, it was well that the settlement of it should fall into milder, but equally resolute hands.

After having held various offices in the Colonial

service, including the Premiership, between 1848 and 1863, Domett returned to England in 1871. In the next year he published the poem by which he is best known, "Ranolf and Amohia." One might truly say, there is power in every line of Ranolf, but that does not imply unmixed praise. There may be a plethora – an exuberance of power – while a controlling taste, a guiding tact, may be wanting. Description and exposition are the great merits of the poem: the account sent home by the boy sailor of how they took the top-sails in, and how they reefed the stay-sail, is a wonderful piece of word-painting. The hero is wrecked on the New Zealand coast, and having been able to rescue a beautiful Maori girl, Amohia, when attacked by two ruffians of another tribe, he woos her and obtains her love. The ending is tragic. Ranolf after a time yearns for home and those thousand things that life in New Zealand can never give; he even ceases to love Amohia; and the deserted one, whether by a voluntary act or not one cannot tell, is swept away and drowned in passing a swollen river.

During my second stay at Nelson (February to October 1849), the missionary yacht of Bishop Selwyn, the "Southern Cross," came into port. The bishop was good enough to call on me and was very friendly. He was then in his prime, and a remarkably handsome man. Many years afterwards, not long before his death, when he was Bishop of Lichfield, I saw him again; he was then worn and

faded, and the brightness of his face had passed away.

Not long after his visit the Fly corvette, Captain Oliver, looked in. The captain, whom I had known at Wellington, called at my cottage. With him was a young man in plain clothes, with fine regular features and a look of power, whom he introduced as Lieutenant Clarke. Clarke was an Engineer officer, who had lately come, if I remember right, from Tasmania, and was about to return there as aide-de-camp to the Governor, Sir William Denison. Charles Stanley was then at Hobart Town, in the capacity of Sir William's private secretary. Much talk naturally passed between me and Clarke about Charles and his brothers. The Fly went on her way, and I thought no more about the matter; but that visit was to change the whole course of my life.

Towards the end of October 1848 I received a letter from Sir William Denison, offering me the post of Inspector of Schools in the Colony of Tasmania. This was doubtless owing to the good offices of Charles Stanley and Andrew Clarke. I had little hesitation in accepting it, for though I was greatly attached to Nelson on account of its beauty, the prospect of the establishment of a high school was still remote, and my present emoluments were but scanty. Along with that from the Governor came an affectionate letter from the dear Charles Stanley, expressing the pleasure with which he looked forward to our soon meeting again. It would have

been an overstrained refinement to refuse Sir William's offer, because Tasmania – or Van Diemen's Land as it was then called – had no representative government. A community which owed its very existence to the necessity under which the home government lay of transporting great numbers of criminals every year to some distant shore, was not at that time considered by the most fervid stickler for human rights fit to enjoy the blessings of freedom and representative government. There was a political opposition in the colony of course, as there always will be in every British colony, but it did not as yet demand the abolition of transportation and the concession of self-government. I think even Weld would have allowed that a man might serve under Sir William Denison with a politically easy conscience.

My Nelson friends showed me the greatest kindness, and seemed sorry to lose me. They gave me a farewell dinner at the "Wakatu," the principal inn in the place. I desire here to record their names, for few probably are now alive. 13

Some of those mentioned were not at the dinner, and again of some of those who were at the dinner I have forgotten the names.

Embarking at Nelson on the 20th October, in a small coasting vessel, I had a long and stormy passage to Wellington. The skipper, known as French Jack, had been a whaler, and there were probably few things of which he was not capable. A gale came on in the Straits, and he decided to go for shelter into the Wairau. A vessel so small could run up the river and lie at the pah, until the skipper should pronounce that it was safe to put to sea again. A wretched Englishman named W – – – - then lived at the pah; he was a man of education, but a confirmed drunkard, and had a female companion who was called his Maori wife. One day, during the detention of the vessel, a disturbance arose somewhere among the wares, and going towards it, I saw a fight proceeding between W – – – - and French Jack; but as the former was drunk and the latter sober, it soon ended in W – – – -'s being knocked down and put hors de combat. A great korero or talk arose between the friends of the two men, partly in Maori partly in English, the drift of which seemed to be that W – – – -had found out that French Jack had been paying attentions to the Maori wife and had resented it, with the infelicitous result described. To be under the sailing orders of such a skipper was not pleasant, but it had to be endured, for another chance of getting to Wellington might not have offered for weeks. At last, on the 25th October, I reached Port Nicholson.

As this was to be my last stay at Wellington, I will set down here, without regarding the strict order

of time, two or three incidents which occurred there, and add my valedictory remarks of fifty years back.

A gentleman named Gisborne, of whom I do not now remember anything, gave a large party on the 20th June, soon after I landed at Wellington. Most of the officers of the 65th were there. The bowl circulated freely, and at a late period of the evening, after other songs had been given, I was called upon for a song. I sang the "Shan van Vocht." It would not be easy to describe the enthusiasm of the meeting, particularly the young Irish officers of the 65th. A subaltern named M – – – - stood up on his chair, and clapped and cheered till he was hoarse. The senior officers present did not look so well pleased, and I heard afterwards that a gray-haired veteran had said to his neighbour, "Twenty-five years ago that young man would have got himself into trouble by singing that song." But, after all, the cheering meant nothing; it was merely the unexpected recall in a strange land to thoughts of home and country which set the young fellows off their balance; besides which, the conviviality of the party had reached an advanced stage.

At the end of June 1848 I stayed for a week with the Swainsons 14 in the Hutt valley, before going to live with my Kentish friends on the Porirua road. It was the dead of winter. So few trees are deciduous in New Zealand that this made little difference in the outward aspect of nature, but the excessive character of the climate revealed itself. During five days out of the

seven of my stay it rained literally every day from morning to night. At the house, which stood in the midst of the thick bush beside the Hutt road, the wind was not very much felt; but it was not that it did not blow. An alternation of gales from the north-west and south-east constituted the ordinary Wellington weather in the winter and early spring. An accident which happened while I was there could scarcely have happened anywhere else. A heavy boat was lying on its side on the beach, and a poor man took shelter under its lee during a south-easterly gale. A blast more than commonly furious blew the boat over the poor fellow and killed him. On the other hand, the constant agitation of the air must produce a fresh and healthy atmosphere. No lingering miasma, no pestilent vapours, can grow to a head where there is never calm. I always noticed that the children born at Wellington were remarkably clear of eye and vigorous of aspect.

Colonel Wakefield, of whom I have already spoken, was a brother of the famous Gibbon Wakefield, and seconded him ably in all his plans for inducing the home government to extend British sovereignty over New Zealand. I have seen it stated that he made treaties with various chiefs for the purchase of 20,000 square miles, for which the consideration paid was, in money or goods, about £9000. This seems rather startling at first sight, but it admits of more justification than would at first appear. Colonel Wakefield knew perfectly well that the right of

property of the loudest and angriest brawler among the chiefs with whom he bartered was of a very questionable character. It often, for instance, depended on this, that the tribe with which he was negotiating had lately attacked and dispossessed of its territory some other tribe, and pretended now to dispose of the same in full ownership, while all the time the dispossessed tribe had never renounced its claims, and was ever on the watch for an opportunity of recovering what it had lost. Yet for a time, say for a few years, the purchase which the Colonel was making might stand good; the emigrants who had come or were coming might be placed upon land; and as to future disturbance in title, the Colonel trusted partly to the natural tenacity of the Briton, partly to the necessity which he foresaw would fall on all governing persons in New Zealand to compromise in some way or other disputed claims between Maoris and settlers. Under such circumstances, how absurd would it have been for the Colonel to pay anything like such a price for the land that he bought as it would have fetched in a settled and law-abiding society! What he might be fairly expected to do was what he did – put into the hands of the negotiating chiefs such a relatively large sum of money as would satisfy them for the time, and induce them to go through with certain formalities which they were told were necessary in order to effect the transfer of the lands. If they afterwards found or thought that they had made a bad bargain, some way

of satisfying them, without too much friction and without bloodshed, would doubtless, he hoped, be found. Regarded in this light, the purchasing proceedings of Colonel Wakefield, if the complicated circumstances of the time are considered, appear to me to be fairly capable of justification.

In September 1848 the Colonel's time was come, and he was struck down on the 15th of the month by a fit of apoplexy. This was

"after a hot bath at the Baron's. He was taken into one of the bathrooms and bled copiously; but the fit returned at intervals, and he lay speechless and nearly insensible. Slight improvement towards night."

15 On the 19th Colonel Wakefield died. The genuine sorrow of many of the Maoris at his loss could not be mistaken. Domett and I, walking that afternoon on the beach, met the old chief Epuni, a fine tattooed warrior of the ancestral Maori type, robed in mats, carrying his spear and his meri; but instead of the mirthfulness and good humour which he usually exhibited, his face now bore the traces not of emotion only but of tears. For some time we stood beside each other and nothing was said; but when Domett made some light remark which would have called forth a smile the week before, Epuni raised his arm and his face skyward, a look of inexpressible grief passed over his features,

and he simply said, "Wideawake! Wideawake!" 16 in a tone of heartfelt sorrow, and passed on.

The Governor sent a message to the Otaki natives requesting them to attend the funeral. They came in great numbers, the women having branches on their heads; a procession was formed, and in a sorrowing crowd of Maoris and Pakehas the good Colonel was borne to his grave.

I left New Zealand without seeing any of the vague hopes of the rise of a regenerated society within its borders fulfilled. Domett, the Wakefields, Frederic Weld, Dillon Bell, Duppa, and a few others of finer mould than the generality of mankind, had each turned to his special line of work, and no association on poetic or ideal lines was dreamed of. But emigration went on more briskly than ever, and in 1875 there were nearly fifteen times as many white colonists in the islands as there were in 1849. Trade had increased enormously; wealth had come, or was at hand; and Mr. Vogel, the Colonial Secretary, published an "Official Handbook" containing the contributions of various writers, and gloating over the picture of "prosperity" which they displayed.

This "prosperity" was not what I particularly cared about, either for myself or for the colony. The ardent poets, the gallant soldiers, the organisers of institutions, the scholars, the explorers of deserts and mountains – classes of English society of which more than a sample had come out to New Zealand

under the auspices of the company – were fast dispersing different ways; and the pursuers of the ideal sought those shores no more. Trade, engineering, the exploiting of land, politics, and many other practical activities engrossed the energies of the thousands who soon flowed into New Zealand from the mother country, and still, though in diminishing streams, continue to flow. Ambition, of course, is not lacking as a motive there any more than in England, but its highest effort is to imitate the – sometimes questionable – imperialism of the mother country; and we have heard of New Zealand proposing to extend her protectorate over the island of Samoa!

In respect of natural beauty, and the general excellence of the climate, New Zealand may be compared with Lycia in Asia Minor. The engraving in Fellowes' "Asia Minor" of the wooded mountains round the city of Xanthus might pass for the beautiful heights behind Otaki, or some of the hills round Nelson. But how different the civilization of the two places! Science thrives in New Zealand; art flourished in Lycia. Two centuries hence, should English civilization and power be overthrown, a few ruined embankments, bridges, fragments of locomotives and dynamos, and ugly buildings of all sorts, would alone testify that here the English empire had been planted. But two thousand years ago Xanthus, with its Boule and its Gerusia, presided over the Lycian cities, and her citizens had such a passion for the beautiful, and

such a reverence for her divinities, that the immortal sculptures in which their feelings were expressed have defied the lapse of time, and the Briton from the distant isle, "which the imperial Roman shivered when he named," 17 can present his capital city with no more precious gift than the exquisite tombs and bas-reliefs of Xanthus – if not for imitation, at least for wondering love. 18

I made no fortune in New Zealand, but as I had not dreamed of making any I was not disappointed. Nor did I in the end regret the time that had been spent. For New Zealand led on to Tasmania, and in Tasmania I was to find the answer to the questions which had never ceased to harass me since I grew to manhood – what, namely, is the ideal of human life, and what the discipline by which that life should be controlled.

It was the 2nd December 1849 before I found an opportunity of leaving Wellington for Australia. A schooner of about ninety tons, the William Alfred, a most uncomfortable vessel – with a propensity to bury her figure-head in the waves rather than rise over them, so that she was always wet forward – conveyed me in ten or twelve days to Sydney. After some trouble in getting through the Straits, we were abreast of Mount Egmont or Taranaki on the 6th and 7th December. The weather was fine, and that magnificent cone, 8000 feet high, seeming to rise almost from the shore, was

a sight of unspeakable grandeur. The rest of the voyage was of no interest. The entrance through the Heads is striking, and the white city covering the banks of Sydney Cove was almost beautiful. It was, however, the hottest season of the year; wherever one turned one's eyes, yellow horizontally stratified sandstone cliffs lined all the indentations of the harbour, and the vegetation had a brown and burnt-up look. I was obliged to remain a fortnight at Sydney – at Petty's hotel – waiting for a steamer to sail for Melbourne. The heat was very great, and one or two "brickfielders" which occurred during the fortnight made it almost unbearable. One day, when I went in a little steamer two-thirds of the way to Paramatta to visit the Beit family, whom I had known at Nelson, I found the windows and persiennes of the house carefully closed; excluding the sun was the only way by which the inmates could gain a comparative sense of coolness. On or about the 2nd January 1850, the steamer sailed for Melbourne, and after putting in at Twofold Bay to take in hides, reached it in three days. Melbourne was then an insignificant town of four or five thousand inhabitants; the goldfields of California and Sydney, which were to lead to the discovery of the famous blue clay of Ballarat, had not yet been heard of. The place is associated in my mind with a very disagreeable "dust storm." I have often wondered whether the Victorians have been plagued with such visitations in later years. I had left the Yarra behind me one fine afternoon, and walked some way into the

bush of thinly growing gum-trees on the north-west of the town. Suddenly the day grew overcast, and thinking that a heavy shower was approaching from the north-west, I began to retrace my steps. The dense cloud soon overtook me, borne on by a fierce wind; but instead of rain, it brought only dust from the interminable plains of the interior. Before I reached the hotel, I was in such a condition that I had to change every single article of clothing that I wore.

7 Weld so named a bird like a grey plover, which he had never seen on the run before the earthquake.

8 Diary for that day.

9 Mr. Dillon – a relation of Lord Dillon of Ditchley – one of the most popular of the Nelson settlers, was at this time in England.

10 Since writing as above, I have read Mrs. Rowan's book on Queensland and New Zealand, which shows that the road from the Wairau to Nelson now follows a shorter and easier line, by Havelock and the Pelorus valley.

11 The name "Blind Bay" ought to be superseded by that of "Tasman's Bay," given by D'Urville.

12 See "Dict. Nat. Biogr."

13 Among them were Major Richmond, Mr. Cooper, Mr. Jollie and his brother of Thackwood, Rev. Mr. Nicholson, Sir William Congreve, Captain Thomas, Mr. Torlesse, William Cautley, George Duppa, E. W. Stafford (now Sir Edward William Stafford), Mr. Poynter, Mr. Shepherd, Rev. Mr. Butt, the brothers Kelling, Francis Dillon Bell (the late Sir Francis Dillon Bell, Agent-General for Victoria), George Wither, a descendant of the poet and Major-General, Mr. Stephens, Dr. Monro, Mr. Moore, old Mr. White, Dr. Greenwood, Mr. Carkeek, and Mr. Brunner, a surveyor.

14 Mr. Swainson was a naturalist of some eminence.

15 Diary. – The Baron von Alzdorf, a tall, handsome Austrian Freiherr, who had been driven by poverty, and perhaps by political complications, to emigrate, was at this time keeping an inn at Wellington. He was fatally injured in an earthquake a year or two later through returning into his falling house to rescue his wife.

16 "Wideawake" was Maori for "Wakefield."

17 Bulwer.

18 The reference of course is to the Xanthian marbles in the British Museum.

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