Tales of a Pioneer

Alfred Saunders

First published by L. M. Isitt in 1927

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

Epub © 2014 Early New Zealand Books Collection

ISBN 978-1-927289-60-0

[TITLE PAGES]

Tales of a Pioneer

EPISODES IN THE LIFE
OF
ALFRED SAUNDERS

SELECTED AND
ARRANGED BY
HIS TWO YOUNGEST DAUGHTERS

1927
L. M. ISITT, LTD., Printers and Publishers
112 Cashel Street, Christchurch, N.Z.

[Page ii is blank]

[CONTENTS]

CONTENTS

DEDICATION

INTRODUCTION.......1-2

I. PARENTS.......3-9

II. EARLY EDUCATORS; WISE AND OTHERWISE.......10-17

III. EARLY BUSINESS TRAINING.......18-20

IV. A HAPPY YEAR WITH FRIENDS.......21-25

V. THE CALL OF THE WILD.......26-29

VI. MY FIRST MONTH IN NEW ZEALAND.......30-36

VII. WORK.......37-43

VIII. AN ILL-ADVISED AND ILL-FATED EXPEDITION.......44-50

IX. HARD TIMES IN NELSON IN 1844.......51-59

X. ALFRED GOES TO AUSTRALIA.......60-62

XI. RHODA FLOWER.......63-66

XII. THREE MONTHS IN A TILTED CART.......67-78

XIII. RHODA'S LIFE IN THE MUD CABIN AT MOUNT BARKER.......79-82

XIV. SOME AUSTRALIAN EXPERIENCES.......83-86

XV. BROTHER EDWARD TO THE RESCUE.......87-94

XVI. BRIGHTWATER MILL & HIS FAITHFUL SERVANTS MAKE ALFRED A RICH MAN.......95-100

XVII. ALFRED ENTERS PUBLIC LIFE IN NEW ZEALAND.......101-108

XVIII. THREE MONTHS IN NELSON GAOL.......109-113

XIX. FROM THE GAOL TO THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES.......114-116

XX. MY FIRST SESSION OF PARLIAMENT.......117-120

XXI. HOME LIFE.......121-124

XXII. SUPERINTENDENT OF NELSON.......125-129

XXIII. SOME PERSONAL REMINISCENCES.......130-135

XXIV. SEARCHING FOR A BRIDLE PATH.......136-142

XXV. A DARK CLOUD HANGS OVER NELSON.......143-150

XXVI. ALFRED SEES HIS MOTHER AGAIN.......151-158

XXVII. ALFRED RETURNS TO NEW ZEALAND AND BUILDS THE ASHBURTON MILL.......159-163

XXVIII. AN ADVENTURE IN AMERICA.......164-167

XXIX. FINANCIAL RUIN.......168-173

XXX. UNPOPULAR WORK.......174-180

XXXI. DAILY LIFE AT BROOMFIELDS.......181-184

XXXII. IN PARLIAMENT AGAIN.......185-189

XXXIII. ALFRED'S WORK FOR WOMANHOOD SUFFRAGE......190-193

XXXIV. ALFRED WRITES A HISTORY OF NEW ZEALAND.......194-196

XXXV. DEATH OF SIR GEORGE GREY.......197-199

XXXVI. THE PARTING OF THE WAYS.......200-204

XXXVII. THE CALL OF THE HOMELAND.......205-206

XXXVIII. ALFRED'S THIRD VISIT TO ENGLAND.......207-209

XXXIX. WITH CHEERFUL COURAGE ALFRED SETS FORTH ON ANOTHER LONG JOURNEY.......210-214

XL. A PERSONAL REMINISCENCE.......215-218

XLI. NOT FORGOTTEN.......219-228

[DEDICATION]

DEDICATION

In Loving Memory

OF

ALFRED SAUNDERS

BORN JUNE 12th, 1820

First landed in New Zealand, January 17th, 1842

Passed Beyond, October 28th, 1905

"A cause might be despised, obscure, rejected, he not only helped it all the same, he helped it all the more, and in the dark and stormy days of the unfriended Truth, he was always in the front."

[FRONTISPIECE]

ALFRED SAUNDERS
REPRODUCED FROM A MINIATURE PHOTOGRAPH, TAKEN IN 1861

ISITT-WILDEY PRINTERS AND PUBLISHERS

CHRISTCHURCH

INTRODUCTION

TALES OF A PIONEER

INTRODUCTION

WHEN Alfred Saunders left New Zealand for England in June, 1899, neither he nor his children ever expected to meet face to face again, and his two youngest daughters earnestly begged him to write for them an account of some of the most remarkable and interesting episodes of his long life. During the five years he spent in England (1899-1904), he employed his leisure in gratifying his daughters' wish, and, from time to time, sent them books filled with manuscript containing the story of his life.

From these manuscript books the following pages have been compiled. Throughout the Memoir, unless otherwise specified, everything reported in the first person is the work of Alfred Saunders. For everything else in the book, e g., arrangement into chapters, headings of those chapters, etc, etc, the compilers, Ellen and Ann Saunders, are solely and entirely responsible.

In the case of every incident included in the Memoir, it has, after long and careful consideration, been selected from many others for the following reasons: –

1. Because it is of interest to any student of New Zealand history, or,

2. Because it illustrates, better than could be done in any other way, some important point in our father's life and character.

In the case of the numerous letters here published for the first time, cordial permission for their publication has been received from each one of their writers who is still alive. In the case of those whose writers have passed onward, we have made the rule of not including any letters except those whose writers have, either on the public platform or in the public press, spoken or written in similar language to that which appears in their letters.

In the case of anecdotes and personal reminiscences of New Zealand rulers and statesmen, we have followed the rule of not including anything that could give pain to anyone concerned who is now alive, or to the descendants of those who have passed onward.

Our grateful acknowledgments are due to the Editor of the Christchurch "Press" for permission to reprint here the following articles that appeared first in the "Literary Column" of that paper, – "My First Month in New Zealand," "Hard Times in Nelson in 1844," "Three Months in a Tilted Cart," "My First Session of Parliament," and "Searching for a Bridle Path;" to the Editor of "The Lyttelton Times" for allowing us to include in this Memoir the article written for that paper on "Sir George Grey;" to the friends who have lent letters from Alfred Saunders; to Mrs W. S. Lovell-Smith and Mr F. J. Alley for personal reminiscences of our father's life and work; and to Mrs William Rolleston, Professor J. Macmillan Brown, Sir Robert Stout, Miss Jessie Mackay, Mrs W. C. Smith of Tauranga, and Mrs John Withell of Otipua, for permission to publish the letters given in our last chapter.

ELLEN SAUNDERS.
ANN SAUNDERS.

Lavington Cottage,

69, May's Road, Papanui.
August, 1927.

CHAPTER I. PARENTS

TALES OF A PIONEER

CHAPTER I

PARENTS

Born of a sturdy race,
Blue-eyed and keen of face.
– – DORA WILCOX.

AS the traveller descends from the bleak Salisbury plain into the village of West Lavington, he passes, at some distance on his right hand, a little lake called Knowland's Pond. From this lake a little stream takes its course, in a westerly direction, to the Avon at Bath and the Severn at Bristol, turning a number of useful little mills in the first part of its course.

At the time I was born, and I don't know how long before, the first mill on this stream, which was very near to the lake, was called Garratt's Mill; the third, about a mile down the stream, was called Saunders' Mill. At Garratt's Mill was born my paternal grandmother, Sarah Garratt; at Saunders Mill, my paternal grandfather, James Saunders.

My father, Amram Edwards Saunders, was born on the 3rd of November, 1779, at what was then known as Saunders' Mill (in Lavington, Wiltshire), but has since been named by himself "Russell Mill" in admiration of the conduct of Lord John Russell when passing the Reform Bill of 1832. As Amram was for some years the only son of his mother, he was much indulged by her, and being so early put forward as the business man of the family, owing to his father's death when he was only eleven years old, he was greatly petted by his mother and his five sisters, so that his high combative spirit probably never knew what it was to be much under control.

On his father's death, Amram seems to have taken his place almost at once, as he was soon found to be absolutely steady and trustworthy. Thus, at the age of eleven years, he regularly attended Devizes Market, and seems to have gone with all the steady perseverance of manhood into both the commercial and the manufacturing part of the business.

His personal appearance when much past the prime of life, is well represented in an oil painting by Darby. He was five feet, ten and a half inches, in height, with erect carriage and a very broad chest. His forehead was high, he had a florid complexion and a beautifully clear skin. His walk was quite a military one. Energy and determination were stamped on every movement. A friend, who knew him well, used to say that he walked as if nothing could turn him aside, and so as to give the impression that a castle must come down if it came in his way. His strength and resolution were so evident that no one seemed inclined to test or to question them.

On the lst of August, 1808, he was married to Mary Box, and, in her, found one of the best wives that was ever bestowed on man. Father loved her as he never loved anyone else, his home was no home to him without her, he appreciated and valued all her excellencies, she was the one person whom he believed to be faultless, his fiery spirit recoiled abashed before her supreme gentleness; but he could never estimate the immeasurable distance between her susceptibilities and his own, between the strongest of men and the most refined and sensitive of women.

Whatever fondness father may have felt for his children, it was most effectually concealed from them, and his affection for anyone was never of a demonstrative character. He used to talk of us as prodigies of awkwardness and stupidity, though he evidently did not like or expect anyone to agree with him in that opinion. His threatenings were frequent and by no means mild, though generally given in stereotyped language which we of course soon learned by heart and knew what was coming. It might be supposed that such conduct taught us to pay little attention to his words, and even to venture some disobedience, but it was not so. There was something in the appearance, manners, and actions of father that made no human being disposed to trifle with him.

In matters of conscience, his ideas and practice were exceedingly liberal, and he would carefully avoid coercion or interference without sincere convictions.

His punctuality and regularity were something almost incredible, and clocks might safely be corrected by his movements. On every alternate Monday, he

started, at exactly half past eight, for what we called his Bristol journey, including Trowbridge, Bradford, Bath, and Bristol. Each of his customers could tell, within a few minutes, the time he would be at his door. One of his Bath customers used to say to his wife, "Here is Mr Saunders coming, see if our clock is right."

At the Devizes Market on Thursday, exactly at noon, he commenced to examine each sack of wheat in the Market, and generally made a bid for every good sample, which was hardly ever taken at the time. I have been with him, sometimes, when it was of the greatest consequence that we should have a large quantity of wheat, and, at twenty minutes before the close of the Market, I have thought that he was not to get a single sack. But, at a quarter to two, he would take out his pocket-book and turn his back to the Market Cross, and farmer after farmer would come up and accept his offer, most of them saying they had many times been offered the same price by other millers but had given him the preference.

To his servants he was just and generous as far as his deliberate conduct went, though he often spoke to them provokingly and unadvisedly. Yet his old servants never left him, and he succeeded beyond most employers in making them act and feel as if they were dealing with their own property – a feeling that greatly adds to the happiness and interest of both employers and employed. In planning out his horse work, he would often say, "If John will let me have a horse," or of the garden, "I think James might let us have some new potatoes now." Such language was not without its good effect, although John and James, and all around him, knew that their master's plans must and would be carried out.

As a public man father was far more faultless than in domestic life. Irritable as he was over trifles, impatient of the smallest delay, and complaining of the most insignificant inconvenience or loss, he met great dangers, losses or injuries with magnanimity and wonderful imperturbability. In all avoidable, unnecessary dangers, he displayed a vigilance that might give the idea of positive timidity; but, in great demands for necessary moral or physical courage, he was so well known to be never wanting that everyone expected him to go to the front as a matter of course. The greater the danger, the more certainly could his temper, coolness

and clear judgment be relied upon. He often incurred great trouble, expense, and odium to see justice done to his poor neighbours, and never counted any cost or consequence in resisting any act of oppression on himself or others.

Soon after 1820, he commenced an agitation against the numerous turnpike gates that were so thickly studded around his neighbourhood, though only kept up to pay the interest on an old standing debt. After years of active effort, he was successful. The gates were pulled down and burned in a bonfire on Lavington Hill on February 8th, 1825. The inhabitants of Lavington and its vicinity were so gratified with the result of my father's exertions that they soon afterwards presented him with a silver dessert-service, bearing the following inscription:

"Presented to Mr A. E. Saunders on the 5th October, 1825, by the inhabitants of Market Lavington and its vicinity, as a token of regard for his exertions for the removal of nine turnpike gates in the Lavington district of Roads which was effected 8th February, 1825."

Some time after his death, the Rev. R. Brindley, Rath, thus wrote of my father –

"He was quite a Solomon in his own neighbourhood, a fact of which I received abundant confirmation in a visit I recently paid to the scene of his whole life. Throughout the district there was not a man more respected or who had a greater influence with all classes of the population. The rich respected and the poor revered him. Of fine stature and somewhat lofty bearing, united with a character that was upright as a palm tree, he inspired a feeling of reverence, sometimes approaching to awe, amongst the people of the village."

My mother, the youngest daughter and youngest child but one in a family of seven, was born at Hilcott, in Wiltshire, on the 13th August, 1788. Her father, John Box, was a farmer. He died when my mother was about sixteen years old. He was a warm-hearted, genial man, jovial and hospitable to a fault, so that his wife had to keep the purse and to see that the rent and all other liabilities were punctually paid, which she never failed to do.

At the earnest request of her brother William, my mother was sent, when fourteen years of age, to a boarding school at Melksham for fifteen months. There she made a most conscientious use of every hour, and acquired such a thorough knowledge of English grammar that, even seventy years afterwards, she was regarded by her children and friends as the highest authority they could consult on that subject.

When still in her early teens, she felt impelled to join a small and despised band of dissenters, and her religious views were long the subject of no small ridicule in a family where wit was not a scarce article. Her eldest brother John once said to her, in the presence of the whole family, "Now, Mary, I will have nothing to do with that Methodistical cant." Her unguarded reply was, "Then, John, you will have nothing to do with Heaven." The tall, intellectual man waved his strong hand toward the earnest child, and said, "There sits my judge." This unwonted piece of presumption on her part and its severe rebuke were never forgotten by her.

I have been told by her seniors and contemporaries that my mother was a beautiful young woman, with gentle blue eyes, a very fair complexion, a pretty expressive colour that came and went, and dark hair which curled on the top of her head and hung down behind in the fashion of those days. When I knew her, she never had much colour, and I have no wish to paint her, as I should be sorry indeed to exchange my recollection of that pale, spiritual face for that of any mere beauty. Such a character must always have been accompanied by a pleasing countenance, and, in very old age, every one spoke of her as beautiful. She looked small and fragile by the side of her big husband, and at no time of her life did she ever carry a pound of surplus flesh.

Few brides have ever come to a prettier spot than the Russell Mill valley, with its home, mill, garden, and shrubberies, and many an old playmate envied the lot of little Mary Box. But there was less exultation than apprehension in the heart of my mother as she succeeded, twelve days before she had completed her 20th year, to the duties of the notable old housekeeper that her husband's mother was so well known to be. She knew that she had married the favourite son, and that it would not be easy to come up to her mother-in-law's idea of how his house ought to be kept.

But even the experienced mother's jealous love could find no fault with the young wife, and, indeed, so fond did she become of her daughter-in-law that, when her end was drawing near, she asked and obtained permission to spend her last days in her home and under her care. That such a mother-in-law was sometimes a trying guest may be inferred from one of her last acts which showed the ruling passion strong in death. Mother's brother, Dr. William Box, had told his sister that his patient could not live many days longer. My mother was not satisfied with the dying woman's religious state, and, after spending a short time on her knees, she thought she had summoned up enough courage to talk to her on the great change that so soon awaited her. For this purpose, she drew a chair to her bedside, and, with serious face, was about to sit down without even her busy needle in her hand, when the object of her solicitude said, "You need not sit idle, Mary, there are stockings to mend in that drawer."

I question if one of mother's ten children ever deliberately disobeyed her; but of course we often did so through forgetfulness or carelessness, and then came the inevitable punishment which no excuse, or pleading, or interference from anyone, could set aside. For, unlike father, mother never threatened punishments that she had no intention of inflicting. I remember, one summer evening, being met at the back door, where I had evidently been waited for. After dusting my shoes, shaking my pinafore, and hanging up my cap, I was taken gently by the hand and led to the clock;. Then, in the kindest tone and manner, the clear, firm voice said, "Alfred, I have told you that you must always be in by a quarter to eight. You see it is now five minutes past eight. Go to bed, and you must not leave your room till two o'clock to-morrow afternoon." That was one of her shortest sentences, and they were always understood to include bread and water fare. How merciful those thoughtfully given, deliberate, never retracted sentences were.

Mother's reputation as a mistress gave her a wide choice in the selection of her servants, and of these servants I never heard her speak an unkind word. Their reputation was their only wealth and was a sacred thing in her estimation. She expected no miracles from them, but she made it pleasant and easy for them to do their

best, and they did it with wonderful regularity. She knew intimately the family history of each one of them, and, though her sympathies with the poor were very wide, she always felt that her old servants had the first claim upon her.

To the day of my dear mother's death, in her 87th year, she kept her mental faculties and her loving unselfishness and consideration for every one about her absolutely unimpaired, and every one of her children had reason to say of her, in the words of Whittier,

The Gospel of a life like hers
Is more than books or scrolls.

For one of the mottoes on her funeral card my brother William chose the words, –

"We cannot but remember such things were
As were most precious to us."

CHAPTER II. EARLY EDUCATORS: WISE AND OTHERWISE

CHAPTER II

EARLY EDUCATORS: WISE AND OTHERWISE

"Write injuries in dust, and kindnesses in marble.

S. PROUT NEWCOMBE.

OF the happy home of our childhood my sister Ann thus writes, –

"The Mill, at that time, was a paradise for a child, and especially for a boy. There was the extensive copse, in the springtime full of catkins, bluebells, violets, and birds' nests; in the Autumn, of nuts, blackberries and wild raspberries. There was fishing, rabbit-catching, snow-balling, and no end of amusements.

"The greatest fun we had was with the grass-cart – a large, square frame on low wooden wheels – a better toy for children could not be devised. We wheeled each other about in it; we were horses and riders by turns. We took it up the hills, and then we all got in and let the thing run down the steep hill of itself. Shockingly dangerous it really was; and how, up in those hills, we shrieked and screamed and laughed, and nobody came to silence or molest us.

"The few rules that it was necessary to establish we were required implicitly and promptly to obey, but we were not wearied and distracted with incessant mandates. A raised voice was seldom heard. Taking advantage of some little lull in the storm, as she sat at her work, mother would call distinctly 'Alfred,' or whoever she might want, and then, when she had got the ringleader by her side, looking inquiringly into her face, she would quietly communicate her wishes."

Ever since the fifth year of my life, I have had upon my forehead a deep scar, and, whenever my attention has been directed to this, it recalls to my mind an early friend to whom I owe a deep debt of gratitude.

When I was about three years old, to my great delight, a Newfoundland dog, named Nelson, was purchased. It was long before the faithful animal could be persuaded to stay anywhere away from his first

master, so that he had to be tied up, for many weeks, close to the straw-yard which was our much frequented play ground, and, as I was the little three-year-old toddler supposed to most need his friendship, to me was awarded the great honour and pleasure of taking his food and water to him. Thus he naturally became attached to me before he cared much for anyone else, so that, for more than a year before he so cleverly managed to save my life, we were seldom far apart.

"We were playing together, one fine summer afternoon, on the road bridge over the stream that separates East from West Lavington, when I fell off the bridge into rather shallow water about nine feet below, pitching on my head, and driving into my forehead a pointed stone which stunned me and caused me to bleed profusely.

Poor Nelson must have been puzzled what to do with me, as the banks of the stream were too high on both sides of the bridge to make it possible for him to drag me out of the water there, and they continued high all the way down on the side nearest home, towards which he would have dragged me if he could. A little way down the stream, there was a low water meadow which was the only possible place where he could find a landing place for me, and here he contrived to drag me up the low bank and to lay me high and dry on the grass.

His next business was to give the alarm, and to get someone to come to me, and this required even more sagacity than getting me out of the water had done. He was about five hundred yards from the mill door which he was never allowed to enter. It was a double door, the lower half of which was always shut. Galloping furiously back to this door, and despising all rules and regulations, he jumped over the half door into the mill, from which he was immediately and sternly ordered out by my brother Edward. Seeing that he was not understood, Nelson jumped back over the door again, and galloped, with all the antics he could think of, towards me, and then back as near to Edward as Edward would allow. Edward now noticed the blood on the white hair of the dog, and concluded that he had better follow him. Satisfied that he had at last succeeded in obtaining help, Nelson took the nearest cut through the stream, and galloped back to lick my forehead.

Unfortunately, my dear mother had been excessively alarmed by seeing and hearing the frantic dog from her bedroom window, and she was at my side before I had recovered any degree of consciousness. Soon after she had bandaged my forehead, I proved that I was not dead by a severe attack of sickness.

After that adventure, no one ever scolded me for making such a pet of Nelson, and it was generally conceded that I had a right to think as much as I did of my preserver.

Although the power to swim would not have saved me from the accident whose history I have just related, it naturally made my mother very anxious that I should learn that accomplishment. I could soon gratify this wish of hers, and, before long, had the pleasure of taking our miller's daughter, Matilda Hancock, out of the water just in time to save her life. How many times, in after years in New Zealand, I have owed my life to the fact that the happy hours spent in playing with my brothers and Nelson in the stream at Russell Mill, had made me a strong, confident swimmer.

Both father and mother valued courage in their boys and did all they could to cultivate it, and one thing that kept Nelson in favour with mother, and every one else, was that I was always willing to go anywhere, at any time of night, as long as Nelson was with me. The road from the mill to Lavington lay alongside a dreary wood which was, of course, said to be haunted, and injudicious servants and neighbours would often express surprise that so young a boy would go there alone at night. My brother Samuel, who was the most truly courageous boy I ever knew, had done the same before me. He had also introduced me to a great evening attraction at Lavington, which was Uncle Thomas's malt house, where our cousins and other boys congregated of an evening, and kept up tales and fun of all sorts. After Samuel left for boarding school, I sometimes went there by myself, and, on one of these evenings, ghost stories formed the chief topic of conversation, and I was asked if I was not afraid to go home alone. I replied that I was not alone, and pointed to Nelson, which caused a laugh at the idea of a dog being able to act as a protector against a ghost. When, on my homeward way, I had reached one of the celebrated ghost haunts, I saw a big boy come through the fence with a white shirt over his

clothes. Nelson would always take off anyone's hat when I gave him a certain signal, and, in doing so, often gave a great scare to the person on whom he operated, so that I could not often practise him in that accomplishment. I thought this would be the best way to meet my friend in the white shirt; but, when I gave the usual signal, instead of taking off his hat, Nelson took him by the collar and pulled him down on his back, whereupon the ghost began to cry for mercy in a voice that was very familiar to me. When the blubbering boy was restored to his legs, he said, "I'll tell your vather that you zet that gurt zavage dog on me." I feared that he might do so, so I said nothing about this adventure at home; but, at the malt house, it created quite a sensation in favour of Nelson and against the would-be ghost.

The first governess employed in our household was Miss Lyndall, an aunt of Olive Schreiner, the author of "The Story of an African Farm." My mother was much attached to her. She married the Rev. Mr Holland, a missionary, and went out to Africa. She was a brave, energetic woman and did great service in the cause of African regeneration. In the history of this work her name is one of the foremost.

The governess who had the task of taking me seriously in hand was Miss Stoneham, a lady whom I must always remember with veneration. She was a bright, lively, clever, high-principled woman, whose pleasant, well-featured face was very deeply scarred as the result of small-pox. It would take volumes to give an idea of all that I owe her, or of all the provocation she received from me; but one little story will show what we both were, and will explain why I was so early removed from her splendid tuition.

It was on a fine evening in May, 1829, that Miss Stoneham took us all to pay a visit to mother's sister, Aunt Willett (the grandmother of Mrs Cunnington whose philanthropic work is well known in New Zealand), who, having experienced reverses of fortune, had opened a mental hospital in the town of East Lavington.

Whilst Miss Stoneham and the girls talked to aunt, John Willett, a boy a few years older than myself, took me round amongst the patients, including one in a padded room whom we saw through the bars of his door. This unfortunate man was giving utterance to the most

horrible oaths. I had always a good verbal memory, and, on this occasion, I carried off two or three of this man's sentences that seemed to haunt me quite as correctly as I had ever learned Watts' hymns. I often repeated them to myself in a voice that I thought no one could hear. Mother was a little deaf, but Miss Stoneham's ears were very sharp.

A few days after this visit, I was turned back with my lessons, and sat down to relearn them in no very amiable mood. I ventured to mutter a sentence that I had learned so much better at the mental hospital. Miss Stoneham overheard me, and was horrified, as well she might be.

She at once sent me to my bedroom, and communicated with my mother. I was sentenced to some days on bread and water, in my bedroom, and was absolutely forbidden to again enter the stable where my mother always disliked to see me because she suspected that from it I brought bad language into the schoolroom.

Though I never could understand what fascination was on me to repeat words I had first heard with a shrinking horror, I felt angry with Miss Stoneham's sharp ears for hearing them. My bedroom window was just over the front door, out of which Miss Stoneham usually strolled after school. On my wash-stand there was an old half-pint cup, the handle of which was cracked at one end. I put a little water in it, and watched for her appearance, intending to throw the water over her and then disappear. But the handle of the cup broke off in my hand, so that cup and all went down at her feet. The cup broke to pieces on the path, and I saw her stoop and pick up every particle of it, which I had no doubt she was collecting as evidence against me. But nothing more did I ever hear of it. In the evening, one of my sisters brought in another cup, which she said Miss Stoneham had told her to do; but she did not know why nor where the new cup came from. That cup secured my heart and confidence for Miss Stoneham. She might have done anything she liked with me afterwards; but, unfortunately for me, I was not left under her care.

As soon as my eldest sister, Sarah, was able to take her place, Miss Stoneham left us to become Governess in my Aunt Willett's family.

During Sarah's reign as preceptress, the life and interest of the school-room were greatly enhanced by the presence of two very juvenile and extremely pretty pupils who came daily, at first in the "bauble coach" drawn, not by "the gardener Robin," but by a stout nursemaid, and afterwards on donkey-back, managing their little steeds with much ease and grace. These were Uncle Richard's two daughters, Ann and Sarah Box. Ann's very pretty ringlets would perhaps have given her the palm for beauty; but she was altogether too correct and cautious to afford us much fun, whilst Sarah's irrepressible tongue was our constant amusement. Their education had been far less repressive than ours. Their father was no object of awe to them, and had never convinced them that "children should be seen and not heard." Sarah was most outspoken in her opinions of persons and things, and the quaintness of her remarks was heightened by a difficulty she experienced in the pronunciation of the letter r, and by the wonderful amount of righteous indignation her face could express. Her strong and voluntary expressions of opinion with regard to our various merits and demerits were long afterwards used as household words amongst us.

After it had been decided that I could no longer be taught by Miss Stoneham, I was sent to a day-school at West Lavington kept by a Congregational Minister without a charge, who used to set our tasks without note or comment, and then employ himself in writing sermons, whilst we employed ourselves in cutting his desk or drawing his likeness. In this way I should have entirely lost two years, only that my mother, finding that I learned nothing at school, taught me a great deal in the evenings at home.

After losing about two years at the Rev. J. P. 's school, that gentleman gave up the business, and I was transferred, as a boarder, to the care of another Congregational Minister at East Lavington. I don't know why I was sent as a boarder, but I believe that it was, firstly, to keep me out of the stables, and, secondly, to increase the small income of the Rev. T. S.

Mr S. was an active, persevering, systematic, passionate man, who would have succeeded in most occupations, though he was unfit to preach the gospel or to be trusted with a child. Still, as a teacher, he was

a great improvement upon Mr P. Most of Mr P.'s scholars were transferred to him at the same time as myself. We came with very slovenly habits, and Mr S. resolved to drive them out of us.

At first, he was a great believer in not sparing the rod, and, as he struck passionately, there was a great consumption of hazel sticks, so that he was sometimes without a stick to use. This was the case one day when I was reading the Bible to him in class. I said "saith" when I ought to have said "said." He said to me, "You will find a great curse at the end of this book, sir, on those who alter any part of it." This set me off in a reverie as to how a minister could make such a profane use of those solemn words that conclude the Book of Revelations, and, soon afterwards, when I should have said "saith," I said "said." Mr S. jumped from his desk, closed his Bible, and, holding it with both hands, struck me a violent blow on the head with it. I fell to the ground. I was stunned for a moment, but soon staggered to my seat, and, without orders or leave, the rest of the class went to theirs, giving no uncertain expression of their opinion of the use he had been making of his Bible. The stunning had alarmed him. He was evidently ashamed of what he had done, and would have made it up with me there and then, but the attitude of his audience prevented him.

The next day was Friday, and I was to go home, for the first time, to spend Saturday and Sunday. When school was over I went home, but we never carried any tales there. In the evening of the same day, Friday, I was learning my lessons in a shady lane near the house, when Mr S. came suddenly upon me. He made an ample apology, and said he was sure that we would get on better in future; and so we did. He never struck me again, but taught me all he could, and I learned far more from him than from any other master.

During the last winter that I was a boarder with Mr S. in the parsonage house on the high ground, I often saw hay or corn stacks burning in the evening on the high hills and downs. The poor, hungry, uneducated farm labourers of Wiltshire were suffering extreme want and misery from the operation of the Corn Laws which made food dear and employment scarce and badly paid; and the landlords in and out of Parliament, were too often able to make them believe that the repeal of

those iniquitous laws would lower wages and lessen the demand for labour. The result was that many of the poor men actually believed that the cause of their distress was the threshing of corn by machinery instead of by the hand flail, and, arming themselves with sticks, demanded permission to carry out the threshing machines and burn them. Where that demand was refused, they frequently revenged the denial by burning the farmers' unprotected field stacks. It was only six or seven shillings a week that the poor fellows demanded or hoped to get. How little did they think that their sons would soon be getting fifteen shillings a week, as well as much cheaper food, by the repeal of the Corn Laws, and by the extended use of greatly improved machinery.

On the 29th of March, 1833, my long stay at the parsonage house came to an end, and, on the first Monday morning afterwards, my father drove me with him to Bristol where I was to live in father's Bristol house with my brother Samuel and my cousin (afterwards my brother-in-law) Tom Box, who had lately begun to manage a large Bristol bakery. I was to go as a day scholar to the academy of Dr. Alfred Day, LL.D., where I was to begin learning Latin.

There were fifty-five boys at Dr. Day's school. Many of them were the sons of distinguished citizens, and plainly exhibited pride in their wealth or pedigree, which was something quite new to me, as both father and mother had taught us to lift our hats to worth, not to wealth or pedigree. Most, perhaps all, of the boys were more expensively dressed than I was, and they soon came to the conclusion that I was a baker's son and called me "Doughy." Most of them were older than I was, but I don't think any of them were stronger, so that I was in no danger of any tyranny being practised upon me.

The doctor employed me very often as monitor to teach his Latin learners the English grammar, and I found that not one of them had been taught that most useful science as well as my mother had taught it to me, and this certainly made the big boys treat "the baker's son" with more respect than they would otherwise have done.

CHAPTER III. EARLY BUSINESS TRAINING

CHAPTER III

EARLY BUSINESS TRAINING

Accept your lot as a man does a piece of rugged ground, and begin to get out the rock and roots, to deepen and mellow the soil, to enrich and plant it.

– From "A Cheerful Courage," by J. E.

WHEN my school days in Bristol were ended at the age of fourteen, I returned to Lavington, and my mother told me that I must at once qualify myself to take Edward's place in and out of the mill, as he would soon be called on to manage a much larger mill at Bath.

Six months after I began learning to take his place at Russell Mill, Edward left it and took possession of Bathwyk Mill, on the river Avon, in Bath, which he at once kept going day and night. He soon found that the large city business required his constant attention to buying, selling, collecting money, etc, so that he could spare but little time to attend to the manufacturing part of the business, although this was the part to which he had so long and so successfully devoted himself, and for which my father's brand had become so reliable. So father and Edward decided, without consulting me, that I must go to Bath to attend to the manufacture of flour there.

Edward soon gave me to understand that he looked to me to keep everybody in the mill doing their best; and to see that everything sent out of it was honestly and certainly as good as he had promised it to be; and that it was most important that all the hands in the mill should see in me an example of careful industry.

Edward was more than satisfied with my mill work, but he sometimes pretended that I bossed him instead of allowing him to boss me, and was fond of joking about my pride in the mill, and the importance that I attached to apparently little things. I remember, on one occasion, when father's clever mill-wright came with Edward to look through the Bathwyk Mill, he expressed his admiration of the grinding, and said to Edward, "You surely don't get time now to dress these stones yourself,

Mr Saunders?" To which Edward replied, as he looked towards me, "Dress a stone myself! Bless your heart, I could not tie a sack well enough to please Alfred!" On another occasion, when my sister Sarah said to him, "What a pity it is that Alfred has to get up at twelve o'clock every Sunday night to start the mill," he replied, "Of course it is, but he would not trust anyone else to put all the stones in their right places after they have been stopped for twenty-four hours."

During Edward's second year in Bath, the profits of the milling business reached to £3000, two-thirds of which went to father, besides the interest on his capital, and one-third to Edward. Edward had worked for years at Lavington for £20 a year, and I worked harder and longer than any other man in the mill at Bath for three years at £12 a year. I never asked for more, and I do not remember ever wishing for or expecting it, although my salary was less than half of what was paid to the lowest paid man in the mills. I had entire confidence, which the sequel will show to have been well founded, in the justice and generosity of father and Edward.

Our regular hours were from 6 a.m. to 9 p.m., with never less than one whole night per week. During an epidemic of influenza, in my second year, I worked three whole nights a week for six successive weeks. During the first two years in Bath, I never had my best clothes on except on Sundays and at Christmas when we were all required to be together at the old home. During my last year in Bath, on one occasion I worked all night, taking in, weighing and stacking a large load of wheat which arrived by the canal on the eve of Queen Victoria's Coronation for which we had been promised a holiday. I remember being almost asleep on the following night as I walked through the streets with my sister Sarah to see the illuminations.

This excessive and ill-paid but not unhappy work came to a sudden end after three years by an altogether unexpected demand from father that I should go to Lavington to dress the Russell Mill stones. I hurried off at once, expecting to be back as soon as I had dressed the three pairs of stones; but I was detained day after day, and then told that I must stay altogether and that Samuel would take my place at Bath.

The time that now followed was unhappy for both father and me. I had not Edward's docile, patient

temper, and, though father and I tried to be forbearing towards each other, there was constant daily friction between us. I knew that this was a source of deep grief to my mother, and I came at last to the conclusion that she would be happier if I were out of the way. So I asked father if I might seek for employment elsewhere, and he replied that he had not the slightest objection to my doing so.

In looking back on this part of my life, I feel deeply ashamed that I did not more patiently bear with my father's hasty temper, and that I did not more completely discern and appreciate his many great and good qualities, especially his unflinching courage and truthfulness and his very unusual generosity and magnanimity.

CHAPTER IV. A HAPPY YEAR WITH THE FRIENDS

CHAPTER IV

A HAPPY YEAR WITH THE FRIENDS

O Friends! with whom my feet have trod
The quiet aisles of prayer,
Glad witness to your zeal for God
And love of man I bear.
– -J. G. WHITTIER.

AFTER giving his consent for me to leave him, father never mentioned the subject again, but gave me his directions as usual, as if nothing had been said, up to the very last hour. He never remembered any angry words he had used, and expected no one else to remember them. His own great ability to really forgive and forget was a very remarkable feature in his character. We shall see, a little further on, how kindly he still felt towards me.

I put an advertisement in the "Mark Lane Express" which was at once answered by one of Edward's customers who had just taken a mill and bakery at Congresbury in Somersetshire, and wanted someone to manage the milling business which was a new thing to him. This was a great godsend for me, for a kinder man than John Wilmott never lived, and a happier year I have never spent than the year I spent among the Quakers to whom I was introduced by him. I never joined their Society, but the ordered simplicity and benevolence of their daily lives, their practical good sense and cheerful, unpretentious hospitality, and, perhaps more than all, their freedom from vulgar display and grasping ambition, has remained, throughout my life, my ideal of the practical application of the Sermon on the Mount.

John Wilmott said, when I told him that I should expect £30 a year that he hoped to be able to give me twice as much; and he insisted that I should work much shorter hours than I had done with Edward.

Almost every Sunday, John Wilmott drove me to the Cheddar Meeting House, where we heard Mary and William Tanner preach, and met a very large company of Friends afterwards at their dinner-table, and I have

never enjoyed any other dinner parties as much as I enjoyed those.

John Wilmott often drove me to visit his friends, and, on these occasions, he generally took with him also his wife and his landlord's daughter, Catherine Nash. Catherine was an only child, a pretty, bright girl and an heiress. Her father, Jonathan Nash, an elder in the Society of Friends, owned the mill and many remarkably fertile fields around it, to the value of at least £30,000. John Wilmott's and Jonathan Nash's residences were some little distances above the mill, on opposite sides of the bank, the River Parret flowing between their gardens. When I looked out of the mill windows, I often saw Catherine playing with some of her young friends on her father's lawn. One summer evening, in pursuit of a ball, Catherine ran on the river side of an ornamental bush growing near its brink. The steep bank gave way beneath her, and she was precipitated into the deep and rapid water. The shrieks of her young companions attracted my attention, and I swam across the river and drew her out of the water. Her mother was profuse in her thanks, and her father, ever after, treated me more like a friend than a servant.

John Wilmott employed four horses and spring-carts in his business; but the horse he generally drove for pleasure was a beautiful creature named Smuggler, one of the swiftest and strongest horses I have ever come across. Smuggler had been purchased at far less than half his real value from a quiet, elderly Quaker who was eagerly anxious to get rid of him on any terms, and who gave him a very bad character as a most dangerous runaway. But Smuggler, though a very spirited horse, was really as quiet and intelligent as he was handsome. He had, however, one little peculiarity, which very much alarmed those who were unacquainted with his habits. His first owners had been smugglers who found it convenient for purposes of their own, to teach the horse, by beating it with chains, and other brutal means, to break into a mad gallop whenever it heard a stamping on the bottom of the trap. This lesson, so cruelly enforced, Smuggler never forgot.

One Autumn afternoon, Mr and Mrs Wilmott, Catherine and I drove over to Cheddar in a spring trap with two seats, so that John Wilmott and his wife sat in front, and Catherine and I behind. We reached the

Tanners' house about six o'clock, and were warmly welcomed by Mary and William Tanner, to the long table, with its simple, bountiful provisions, where about forty guests were already seated at tea and where Mary Tanner seemed to breathe a spirit of peace and goodwill upon us all. After tea, we went to the meeting house, and it must have been nearly eleven o'clock when at last we started to drive home. It was a clear, starlight night, with the first suspicion of wintry sharpness in the air. Jane Wilmott, who was complaining of a headache, sat very quietly by her husband's side; but Catherine and I chattered gaily to each other as we drove swiftly along. The first few miles of our return journey led us through country roads, and then the track passed over a wide moor that stretched for some miles in all directions, with nothing to break the monotony of its wide expanse but here and there a stunted tree.

We had driven some distance over this moor when a weary-looking man stopped us and asked the way to Cheddar. Mr Wilmott began to explain, in his kind way, when another man suddenly appeared and took hold of the horse's head. The first man then drew a pistol from his breast, and, pointing it at us, demanded our purses. John Wilmott was trying to soothe his wife, who was clinging to him in terror; but he turned to me, and said, "Now Alfred, thee understandeth that there must be no resistance. I could not think it right for thee to fight these men. Thee seest how alarmed Jane Wilmott is: the consequences to her might be very grave if thee wast to use any violence. So hand over thy purse."

I said, "Yes, I will hand over my purse," and, whilst the men were examining the contents of our purses, I whispered to Mrs Wilmot and Catherine that they would be safer if they would lie down in the bottom of the trap, and this they did very obediently. There was only a crown piece in my purse, and not very much in John Wilmott's; so the pistol was again pointed at us and our watches demanded. The good Quaker gave up his, and, again looking anxiously at me, said, "Now, Alfred, give up thy watch." I said, "No, my father gave me my watch, and he would not expect me to give it up without a struggle. Of course, if they can take it, they must have it, but they will have to get it from me first."

The man who was standing by the trap said to the one who was holding the horse, "Come back here, Jim.

Bring the reins with you and help me take this young fellow's watch." Jim did what he was told; but I had in my hand a good sharp knife which my father had given me when I left home, saying, as he handed it to me, "Always keep that in good condition. Your life may depend on its being so some day." With this knife I cut the reins as they rested on the back of the seat, and, stamping on the bottom of the cart, sent Smuggler off at a mad gallop. A shot passed harmlessly over our heads, and one of the robbers managed to hang on to the cart for a few seconds, but was soon forced to leave go. The pace was rather alarming, but I did nothing to check it until we had left our assailants far behind. Smuggler galloped on until we came to rising ground which caused him to slightly slacken his pace, and then I crept along the shaft, got hold of the short cut reins, and slowed him down again

I was afraid that Mrs Wilmott and some of her Quaker friends would be angry with me for having exposed her to danger; but they never were, and Catherine always laughed heartily about the whole affair. She was wearing a little jewelled watch (somewhat out of keeping with her quiet Quaker dress) which had cost far more than my useful silver timepiece, and which would, no doubt, have been demanded if I had handed over mine.

Such generous, peaceable, easy-going men as John Wilmott are not always very successful in business, and, after I had been with him a little more than a year, the elders of the Friends' Society advised him to sell out and try some other business. Many members of the Society were eager to buy him out and to engage me as their mill manager; but, when I wrote home about it, I immediately received a letter from Edward saying that father wished me to buy the plant and goodwill of both businesses, for which father would find the money and would lend me a thousand pounds capital to carry on the milling business.

That generous offer came too late, as I had never dreamed that such an offer would be made to me, and even if it should be, I felt quite sure that the landlord, Jonathan Nash, would accept no tenant for the mill who was not a member of the Society of Friends. On both these points I had deceived myself. Edward assured me that no one was more desirous to see me take that mill

and business than father was. When I told John Wilmott, he said, "I am afraid, Alfred, that thee dost not trust thy good father as he deserves. Thee knowest that I have accepted Joseph Gundry's offer to take business and plant at a valuation, and, if he comes up to my valuer's estimate, he must have them; but I won't give way in anything, and, if he declines the terms, thee shall have it." When the whole thing was settled, Jonathan Nash came to me and said, "I am sorry that thee shouldst think that I would not let the mill to thee. I know of no man that I would take as a tenant for that mill before thee."

Of course I felt that father had heaped coals of fire on my head, and I declined any offers to stay longer than one month with Joseph Gundry, and held myself bound to fall in with any arrangements that might be assigned to me by what was now to be called the firm of Saunders and Sons, including Edward, Samuel, my brother-in-law Tom Box, and myself.

After my admission to partnership, I was treated as the handy man of the firm, and sometimes took the place of a shopman at Bristol, or of a sick or discharged stone-dresser in Bath, or I was employed in hay-making or harvesting at Lavington. In fact, I did anything but book-keeping, which I always avoided, as both Samuel and Edward were incomparably my superiors at it. But they gave me a foremost place as the temperance orator of the family, so that I had the honour of being elected with that truly great man, the Rev. Thomas Spencer (uncle of Herbert Spencer, the philosopher) as one of the two delegates for Bath at the great Bridgewater Temperance Conference of 1840.

CHAPTER V. THE CALL OF THE WILD

CHAPTER V

THE CALL OF THE WILD

When tides that roll and winds that blow
And man's adventurous heart says, "Go,"
The harbour's word is, "Stay!"
Yet courage is the power that brings
Whatever blessing round us springs,
And ships are waste and useless things
Unless they sail away.
– -SAMUEL VALENTINE COX.

SAMUEL and I worked together a great deal in Temperance as well as in mill and farm work. We both loved to read books of travel and adventure, and my year's association with the Society of Friends made me particularly interested in anything published about New Zealand, as Mr Tuckett, who had been chosen as chief surveyor by the New Zealand Company, was a member of their Society, and was as resolute as George Fox in acting up to the dictates of his own conscience whatever the consequences to himself might be.

The more Samuel and I thought and talked about the subject, the more charmed we were by the proposals of the New Zealand Company with reference to the settlement they proposed to establish under the name of Nelson in the north of the South Island of New Zealand, and at last we both decided to go there, and obtained mother's consent to our doing so.

As we proceeded with our preparations, mother broke down and betrayed what her real feelings were about parting with us. Samuel gave way at once to mother's wishes, but I am ashamed to have to say that I did not. I had paid the first three hundred pounds that I ever earned to the New Zealand Company for land in New Zealand, I had agreed with two young men, one in Bristol and one in Lavington, to go out as steerage passengers in the ship in which I was to sail, and I felt that my arrangements had gone altogether too far for me to draw back. With her usual self-control, mother never said another word against my going, and never again let me see her in tears about it.

It would be quite impossible to give you any idea of what I went through during the last few days that I was

in England, and still more impossible to give any adequate expression to a tenth part of the suffering that awaited me when I came to find myself severed from all I loved – from all who loved me. The desolation of heart was something that no one could estimate who had not gone through something like the same experience. What a cold, black desert all the rest of the world seemed to me as I thought of the many loving, tearful eyes that had rested upon me probably for the last time. What could there be in any country to compensate for all that I had so wilfully given up?

When the last night came, a large deputation from the Lavington Temperance Society was sent to the mill with a large, handsome silver medal and a very heavy silver chain. On the medal were inscribed these words:

"Presented to Alfred Saunders, of Market Lavington, Wilts, by the Teetotallers of his native town, as a testimony of their affection and esteem, and for his efficient and successful advocacy of the Temperance Reformation."

The address that accompanied this beautiful present was said to have been signed by no less than thirty-seven reclaimed drunkards who had become members of the Temperance Society. Both address and medal were, of course, taken to my dear mother, and, after hearing them read, and seeing the deputation from her bedroom window, she came to me in the parlour with dry eyes, kissed me, and said, almost cheerfully, "How thankful I am, Alfred, that you will take with you the blessing of so many who were ready to perish." But that was the last kiss, and those were the last words that I was to hear from her dear lips for twenty-six years. Half an hour later, one of my sisters brought me this message: "Mother wishes dear Alfred many good nights, and good days too, but she cannot trust herself to see him again."

On the following morning, I said good-bye to all the rest of my family except Samuel who came to London and to the ship with me, and tried his best to appear more happy than he really was. We were to attend a farewell breakfast given by the New Zealand Company to the cabin passengers about to sail in the "Lord Auckland," the "Mary Ann," and the "Fifeshire," three sailing vessels that were all to leave the Downs together by the first fair wind, and to race each other to New Zealand. A

ship had sailed for New Zealand early in August carryings the wives and children of the surveyors' assistants and of the boatmen. This vessel should have reached Nelson six weeks before the three first emigrant ships; but it did not arrive there until some weeks after the "Fifeshire," and sixty of the children died on the passage out.

On the day that the three first ships were to sail, a messenger brought our land orders. We found on them none of the conditions under which we had purchased the land; and most intolerable conditions were introduced which we had never heard of before. There was no guarantee that the site of Nelson should be the best available, or in any respect a good one; no time was stated as to when we were to get any portion of the land we had paid for; but we were bound to remain in New Zealand not less than twelve months.

There was no time for anyone to go to the office of the Company to say what we thought of them and their land orders; but I drafted a protest which was copied by one of the "Fifeshire's" passengers. We hired a boat, and took it round to the "Lord Auckland" and "Mary Ann," and I think every land purchaser on board the three vessels signed; but it was never answered, or even acknowledged.

It was Sunday morning, October 3rd, 1841, when at length, after four daily attempts in the face of a head wind, we really did get away and out into the rough English Channel which had its usual effect upon the majority of our passengers.

There were only three persons on board that I had ever seen before, and only one that I really knew. John Sylvanus Cotterell, a Quaker from Bath, shared one of the stern cabins with me; there was a lad of fourteen who had worked in our Bristol bakehouse; and James Draper whom I had known from childhood. James was a fine, strong young man of good habits, and one who, of all the men I knew, appeared most certain to be eminently successful in a new colony. Just before leaving England, he had built a stylish gig for one of his neighbours entirely with his own hands – wood, iron, paint, leather, varnish – without the assistance of any other mechanic. The Captain saw at once that he was just the man he wanted to fit up his new cabin; the ladies found that whatever was wrong, even with their

piano, James could put right; his flute gave them the key for their Sunday singing, on deck or in cabin; so that, although a steerage passenger, he found himself wanted and welcome everywhere, and certainly no man in the ship was more really respected than he. His carpenter's bench was on deck, and there he was generally to be found working in the burning tropical sun, without any of the precautions for the protection of his wonderful brain that more experienced sailors, with far inferior intellectual powers, knew to be necessary.

He generally came to my cabin in the evening to write up his well-kept journal, and usually had something pleasant to tell of his day's proceedings. But one evening, when we had been a little more than six weeks at sea, his conversation assumed quite a different tone, and he complained bitterly of the bad air, and of the screams and other painful noises in the steerage. I obtained Mr Cotterell's permission to let him sleep in my bed that night; but in a few hours it was evident that he was suffering from brain fever. The doctor came and pronounced it a case of sunstroke from which he could never recover, and this became every hour more evident. Mr Cotterell found another sleeping place, and two men came from the steerage to help me, but he would let them do nothing for him. After three days and nights, the doctor said that, unless I wished to be thrown overboard at the same time, I must leave James and get some rest, and he promised to send a regular change of nurses to watch him. I waited for an opportunity to go into Mr Goulter's cabin which was only two doors away from mine; but, before I could close the door, James was inside, dragging his two nurses after him, and, seizing me, he pushed me and hauled them back to our cabin. This maniacal strength lasted only a few hours longer, when he became insensible, and so remained until his death.

James' tragic death made the rest of the voyage a very sad time for me. Apart from the sorrow that all must feel in seeing a useful, talented man cut off in his prime, I knew that James would not have started without me on the journey to New Zealand, and I often felt that, but for my bright pictures of our future life together there, he would still have been pursuing his happy, beneficent way in our dear home village amongst the friends and relations by whom he was so greatly beloved.

CHAPTER VI. MY FIRST MONTH IN NEW ZEALAND

CHAPTER VI

MY FIRST MONTH IN NEW ZEALAND

The obstacles that barr'd our path
We seldom quail'd to dash on
In youth, for youth one motto hath
"The will, the way must fashion."
– ADAM LINDSAY GORDON.

[This chapter is included here by the kind permission of the Editor of the Christchurch "Press." It was published in the "Literary Column" of that paper, under the title given above, on July 5th, 1897.]

I THINK it was on Saturday, January 16th, that we first sighted the mountains of New Zealand and lay to all night ready to enter Cook Strait in the morning.

With very long faces we saw what a fearfully rough country we had come to, and the gloom was not abated by the sight of three small vessels lying wrecked on the rocks, and not a sign of animal life on either side of us. The winds were fair, so that we were inside Wellington harbour about 4 p.m., and about 6 p.m. we were cheered by the approach of a Deal boat coming to our assistance. "Are you the pilot?" asked Captain Arnold. "No, there is no pilot here, but I am a Deal boatman sent by Colonel Wakefield to bring you to your anchorage." "Very glad to see you, or to see anybody in this God-forsaken place," said Captain Arnold. We strained our eyes in the hope of seeing some level land, but could see nothing but the roughest mountains. "What a country to come to!" said Mr Cullen, a Somerset farmer. "But see what a fine harbour we have got " said the Deal boatman. "Dang the vine harbour," said Farmer Cullen, "what's the good ov a vine harbour whar you can't graw nothen?" The wind was dying away, and it was dark before we anchored, after which we went sorrowfully to our beds.

Next morning we received some visits from the nobility, clergy, and gentry of Wellington. We had some Maori pork chops, and the Captain complained

that fresh provisions of all kinds were very scarce and dear.

We visited the Maoris, the Maori pahs, and the plantations, but were very little charmed with what we saw. We had, perhaps, read too much about the fine physique of the Maori race, and those members of it who hung about the town of Wellington were certainly not good specimens. The appearance of the women especially was disappointing. Perhaps the unkempt appearance of badly treated, uncultivated women always is so, and we had then little idea of how much we should afterwards learn of the Maori women's unselfish devotion, their courage, and their unsuspected generosity and kindness. Their pahs, and everything inside them, reeked with tobacco smoke, with a strong suspicion of rum and vermin, and their cultivations were contemptibly small, without being particularly well-fenced or kept. The adjacent steep hills were, for the most part, thinly covered with small trees, which were disappearing both as useful firewood and by careless bush fires. The native birds were fast disappearing, and a few cows were helping to destroy the bush. Everyone seemed to be waiting to receive the land for which the New Zealand Company had so long been paid, and there was a remarkable absence of hopeful, confident, steady industry....

Next morning, eight of the youngest and strongest of the cabin passengers walked out to see Baron Alsdorf's farm at the Hutt, where he had a small piece of good level land, upon which he grew wonderful roots and vegetables, and where he made such early progress with livestock that he was already selling cats and rabbits at £1 each. The old Baron was a very jolly, sociable man, who interested us greatly and showed us where to get a bathe in the river. He was the only man who perished in the great earthquake of 1855, being buried in his own lath and plaster hotel. One of our party was a young man named Trower who was very deaf. He had drawn No. 5 choice for a town acre in Nelson, and was consequently looked upon – especially by himself – as a coming millionaire, and, wherever he went, he was prone to enter into some rather sanguine speculation. On this occasion, tired and sore-footed as he was, he trudged merrily back to our ship loaded with two rabbits, for which he had given the Baron £2. On our way back,

he remarked that a pair of rabbits, in the natural course of their proceedings, would produce half a million in three years, and "if," said he, "I could get only ten shillings a piece for them, see what that would come to!" Soon after reaching Nelson, he discovered that both his rabbits were males, and consequently they made no progress towards the production of the half million they were expected to supply. Mr Trower, however, was not the only young man who parted unwisely with his money on the objects which had attracted us on that day. I gave the Baron twenty shillings for a cat, and had far more trouble in getting her to Nelson than Mr Trower had with his rabbits. I expected that the cat would make a commotion amongst the Nelson rats, but, instead of that, when the rats marched into my house at sundown, they drove the cat to the highest beam in my parlour, and kept her there in fear and trembling all night, whilst they ran over me, chased each other over the table, and even tried to walk off with the lighted candle....

After nearly two weeks' delay, a sufficient number of sailors were mustered to take us on to Blind Bay, where we were told that Nelson was to be, and, to secure our safe arrival there, a pilot named Moore was sent with us. The weather was very fine, with light winds, and our pilot took us between the mainland and Stevens Island. In the narrowest part of the channel, the wind entirely failed, and the vessel was slowly drifting with the current on to the rocky island, when Captain Arnold hastened a kedge anchor to the opposite shore just in time to save his vessel. Next morning, with continued fine weather and light winds, we sailed slowly down Blind Bay until we were met by some of the surveyor's men, who had been sent out to select a site for Nelson, and were expecting their wives and children in the "Lloyds" which had sailed from the Downs six weeks before the "Fifeshire." The poor fellows were dreadfully disappointed when they found that we were "only the 'Fifeshire,'" and had no tidings to give them to account for the non-arrival of the overdue "Lloyds." As there was but little wind, and as the "Fifeshire" could not enter the harbour until high water, they put the pilot, James Cross, on board the "Fifeshire," and took off as many of her cabin passengers as chose to go in their Deal boat. These were Cotterell, Cullen, Drake, Goulter, Kerr, Saunders, Slater, Trower and White.

The boatmen were an intelligent lot of men, and had a great deal of very interesting, although not very cheering, information to give us as they rowed towards the distant harbour. They told us that there was no land ready for allotment, and would not be for some months, as they had only just fixed upon the "Wakatu" as the site for the town of Nelson, having previously spent some weeks in trying to settle down on the opposite side of the bay at a place called Kaiteretere, where there was no harbour and no considerable quantity of useful land. They spoke highly of the unflinching truth and honesty of the able chief surveyor, Mr Tuckett, but with the greatest contempt of some of his assistants, We reached the harbour at low water, and pulled in opposite to Captain Wakefield's tent until the boat grounded, when I walked ashore, leaving my more fastidious companions to be carried through the shallow water by the boatmen. Captain Wakefield met us very kindly, and complimented us on being the first Nelson settlers to arrive.

We strolled on between the hills and the salt water until we reached the spot on which now stands the "Salt Water Bridge," at which we saw some forty or fifty Maoris with eight canoes loaded with ripe tutu berries. We were taking cautious steps towards them when they sent off a woman to meet and to welcome us; but our deaf friend, Mr Trower, unfortunately pulled out an old-fashioned telescope to its full length and levelled it at the woman, upon which she instantly dropped to the ground as if she had been shot, and, for a moment, there was a great commotion among the Maoris. However, after Mr Trower had been duly lectured and his telescope pitched into the high fern, peace and confidence were soon restored, and the woman made as happy as need be. But we soon gave the Maoris another and more real cause for uneasiness by our eagerness to taste their nice-looking tutu berries. They knocked them out of our hands as we lifted them to our lips. They took a handful of the seeds, and turned up their eyes with an expression of horror. They squeezed out some juice through a suspicious looking cloth, and offered us a drink, which was really delicious, at the same time holding the seeds in one hand and fencing us off with the other, which we understood to mean that we must not eat or touch the seeds. We thought that their actions were most likely based on some superstitious

reason. We little knew, as we left them, how much real anxiety we had given them, or that we owed our lives to their extreme vigilance.

We next made our way to the only house in Nelson – a house brought out from England and put together on the Church Hill for the use of the surveyors. Here we stayed until the surveyors came home, and the "improvers" took us to the Maitai River for a bathe, The day had been very hot, and we had been walking through burnt fern; but, until we undressed, we had no idea of what real black fellows we had become. We were all invited to spend the night at "the" house, but I had brought an axe and a spade on shore with me, and preferred to dig out a berth in a sandbank, in which I slept very comfortably and in far better air than could have been obtained in the badly ventilated house. I was also able to purchase a small basket of very nice potatoes from the Maoris for a shilling. These were easily roasted in the wood ashes, and made me quite independent of all other food supplies.

At this season, the Maitai River was easily fordable, so that we little felt the necessity for a bridge, and it was the 12th of June before we saw what a formidable barrier it could present in a flood. It very distinctly and sharply divided some fifty acres of densely wooded land from the mainland of fern on the other side. It also practically divided the successful from the unsuccessful early cultivators. The Cockneys, who dug up the unshaded fern land and sowed their imported seeds in the blazing heat of the late summer, soon came to the conclusion that nothing but fern would grow in New Zealand; but our Somerset farmer, Mr Cullen, fenced in a piece of the shady skirt of the heavy bush, and, in a marvellously short time, had all his seeds and apple trees growing as if they had been sown in a Somerset garden in April. Even the chief surveyor, who had a few weeks' start of Mr Cullen, and his choice of land, soon had to take off his hat and bow to the Somerset man as the wisest of the Nelson gardeners.

At first, the wild pigs were troublesome, but they were not troublesome long. Pig dogs were soon introduced, and the pigs quickly learned to seek a home where pork was less in demand. The short-winged quail, which were at first abundant and delicious, very soon entirely disappeared before the dogs. The wonder is

how they had ever held their own against the rats and the woodhens.

Early in the morning, I chose a place in the high fern on which to build a fowl-house, as I had on board some very valuable Minorca fowls, which were in as fine condition as when they left home. I did not spend much time over the house, but went off as soon as possible for the much prized fowls, and came away from the ship with six heavy birds in a case on my back. My organ of locality was never very large, and two or three hundred acres of high fern was a sort of wilderness far more intricate than I had calculated on, so I wandered about for hours with the fowls on my back searching for their house, which I never found, and I had to build another without my axe and spade, which were, however, found for me a few days later.

No working cattle had yet been brought to Nelson, so that my first work was to build a wheel-barrow, in which to convey my worldy goods to my second house. I had fortunately brought out two barrow wheels and axles, so that I was able to supply myself and my neighbours, and the barrows were kept going day and night.

I very soon entered into partnership with three of my fellow passengers, two of whom were Quakers, and all were teetotallers and non-smokers. A division of labour naturally followed, in which Isaac Mason Hill was the cook, I was the carpenter, John Sylvanus Cotterell was our man of business, and Cyrus Goulter was our forester. At first, however, we all had to take our turn to keep the wheel-barrows going, as it was some weeks before all our imports were delivered from the "Fifeshire." Some time before they were all delivered, three working bullocks were imported from Wellington, and Mr Cotterell paid £11 for carting the balance of his imports, whilst my mill stones were simply pitched into the salt water from which they were not rescued for some months.

On our first Saturday afternoon in Nelson, we found that our cook had made us a splendid pudding from tutu berries. When I came in the other three had had their dinner, and all were praising the cook and his pudding. I was intensely hungry, but I said to our Quaker cook, "I thought these berries were poison, Isaac," to which he replied, "Oh, but thee must know, Alfred, there

are many things that are poison raw that are not poison boiled." "Oh, that's it, is it?" said I, and my share of the really delicious pudding soon disappeared. After dinner, we lounged about and held a consultation as to how we should spend our first Sunday in Nelson, and finally settled that we would put on our best clothes and visit some of our shipmates. Soon after this deliberate conclusion, Cyrus Goulter began to conduct himself in a most improper manner, and Sylvanus Cotterell cried out, "Run, Isaac, to the river for some water – here's Goulter down in a fit." Isaac seized the bucket and ran towards the river, but he tumbled over and began to imitate Goulter so exactly that we were all reminded of the tutu pudding. I suppose I came next, but I am not a competent witness for anything that occurred during the next twenty-four hours. It was getting late on Sunday evening when I lifted myself from the ground and, resting on my elbow, dreamily surveyed the confused condition of our teetotal cottage. Three prostrate, heavily-breathing, dirty looking drunkards appeared to be lying near me. Everything had been knocked about, but tutu pudding was in evidence everywhere, and I was so much bruised, so weary and exhausted, that I lay down again to try to remember what it was all about. It was very evident and very fortunate that we had not put on our best clothes for that Sunday's work, and it was highly probable that none of us would ever eat any more tutu pudding. No one had come near us, and we did not feel quite up to making calls even on the next day; but when we did relate what little we knew of our novel experience, we were told that one of our neighbours, who had eaten only a single bunch of tutu berries, was lying dead from its effect.....

CHAPTER VII. WORK

CHAPTER VII

WORK

The comforter of sorrow and of care;
The shortener of way prolonged and rude;
The lightener of burden hard to bear;
The best companion 'mid the solitude.
From "Work," by EDWIN L. SABIN.

DURING the hot, dry weather of our first autumn in Nelson, we built our temporary shelters near the Maitai River. It was then a harmless little stream bridged over by a fallen tree; and, with our English ideas about rivers, we thought it would continue so, never dreaming what it would be like when the first heavy rain poured hundreds of mountain torrents into it. I built my residence in the forest on one of its banks, my carpenter's shop on the other, crossing the river many times a day on my easily constructed bridge. It was not until nearly the shortest day, on my birthday morning, that, rising at the first peep of dawn from my blanket on a bench, I stepped up to my knees in ice-cold water, and saw, in the dim light, a deep yellow torrent, five hundred yards wide, carrying down uprooted trees from the mountains, rolling between me and my carpenter's shop. I remember trying to console myself with the thought that it must have drowned seme of the rats that had become an indescribable nuisance in our flax-walled houses.

Soon after this, we came into possession of our town acres; but the number of my choice for a section was 954 out of 1100, so that I had to take one far from the business part of the town, and with no timber growing on it. I tried my hand at a wattle and daub house, but was quite new to the work and getting on very badly with it, when a splendid Irish labourer, named William McGowan, who thoroughly understood what he was about, and left me only the carpenter's work to do, came to my assistance. Between us, we built a really good, comfortable house, which he and his wife lived in, taking me as their boarder. I started a bakehouse, but, the price of bread going down, I very soon gave it up, and

bought two of the very wild cows that had been imported by a Mr Tod. Cullen and another Somerset man also bought cows, for which we paid £40 each, at the same time. These animals were soon left entirely to me, and a long, rough job I had with them. They were never quiet enough to milk; but, with infinite difficulty, I taught them to work, and, when this was accomplished, three of them died after eating tutu berries. It would have saved me a lot of trouble if they had done so three months earlier.

As I had taken a contract for hauling timber with the cows, I bought a cart mare for £80, gave £40 for an unbroken filly to work with her, and started carting timber to town from across the Wairoa River, a distance of thirteen miles. It was rough, dangerous work, and, for a long time, mine was the only two-horse team on the road, so that I was rarely without some passenger needing a lift on top of the timber, and thus learned a good deal about my neighbours, hearing many a sad tale of poverty and starvation after the New Zealand Company stopped payment.

Opportunities to send letters from New Zealand to England were, in 1842, so exceedingly few, so roundabout, and so slow, that it was nearly a year before my first letters reached my home in Lavington, telling my family of my safe arrival in New Zealand, and of the wreck of the "Fifeshire" on the Nelson rocks as she was attempting to leave the harbour on her return voyage. By the first ship that left England for New Zealand after receiving my letters, father kindly sent me a Leicester ram, two Southdown rams, a boar and sow of the large Berkshire and a boar and sow of the small Berkshire breed of pigs, and some Cochin China fowls. Our old nurse, Eliza Carter, sent me a splendid rat-catching cat, which had done so much good on board the ship that the captain begged hard to have her left there. She was the first cat to resolutely face the audacious swarms of New Zealand rats. The Berkshire pigs were exceedingly good, and, with their wonderful fecundity, soon supplanted the long-legged, coarse animals left by Captain Cook, whilst the Leicester ram was the first to prove the great value of crossing that breed with Merino ewes.

The ship "Tyne," in which my livestock came, arrived first at Wellington, where she stayed for some

weeks. Mr Tuckett, who was at this time both Chief Surveyor and the Company's agent, asked me to go to Wellington in a whale boat to take charge of some despatches he was sending to Colonel Wakefield, and I was glad to do this, as I was impatient to see my sheep, pigs and poultry. A boat's crew was hastily mustered, and proved to be by no means a trustworthy one, although the helmsman, Barney Miller, was said to be a most skilful boatman. We spent the first night on D'Urville Island; the second at Jackson's Bend, where we were most amusingly entertained by Jackson himself; and the third in Queen Charlotte Sound.

The next day's work was well known to be a dangerous one, and proved more so than we had expected. We were caught in a north-west hurricane, which filled the boat with water, forcing us to bail out for our lives. It was impossible to keep our course for Wellington, as we had to fly before the wind, which took us out of Cook Strait to where the cliffs of the North Island sheltered us somewhat from the violent nor'-wester. We passed a miserable night, with, at one time, little hope of living till morning in such a sea; but, the wind moderating towards the evening of the next day, with very hard pulling we managed to get into Wellington Harbour, where I delivered the somewhat wet and soiled despatches to Colonel Wakefield.

Of course, we were all much exhausted, and I told the boatmen that we would take two days' rest, and start on our return journey on the third morning, if fine. The weather was bright enough when the time came to depart; but the boatmen did not appear, and, when at last I found them, they were all drunk. They continued in this state for several days, until a small schooner was sent to Nelson by Colonel Wakefield, and I was instructed to take the despatches in her, which I was not at all unwilling to do.

As Nelson grew to be more like a town and less like a feeding ground for my horses, I found that it was not the right place for my home, and that I ought to live at the other end of my work where the timber I carted was sawn. Here a village had sprung up upon what was called the "Teetotal Section"; so that, letting my house to a wood-turner named Robinson, with whom I was destined to be much associated a few years later, I went to lodge with a Mrs Allen, the mother of William and

Joseph Herrick, my life-long friends. From this time I began to prosper financially, very, very slowly, but steadily.

There was something terribly depressing in all the circumstances of the deaths of twenty of our neighbours and friends, so suddenly and unexpectedly, at Tua Marina. To this sad tragedy I will refer more fully a little later on; but even the calamity at the Wairau, terrible as it was, depressed me less than the loss of fourteen fellow-settlers, one after another, within a year of that event. These neighbours met their deaths by drowning in the unbridged and dangerous rivers on whose banks they had settled; but it would make my story too long and too sad to describe all the circumstances of these tragedies.

During this same year, I myself had three remarkably narrow escapes from drowning. In one case, I was driving in a cart a timid young horse I was breaking in. I met a friend who was tramping along with a pig he had just bought, and offered him a ride, which he gladly accepted. Between us, we hoisted the pig into the cart, but my passenger soon became much displeased with my nag's manners, and, when I started to cross the river on a temporary plank bridge with no side rails, he jumped out behind, saying that he was not going to risk his life crossing over a bridge like that. A few seconds after, my horse took fright at something, and, suddenly jumping to one side, fell ten feet into a stream of water some four feet deep – both cart and horse turning exactly upside down in the fall. By some means which I could never understand, I contrived to jump clear of the cart as it turned over, and was so little hurt that I was able to save the horse from drowning by lifting his head out of the water and holding it there. My passenger, meantime, had ventured on to the bridge, and shouted to me to let that dangerous brute drown, and lift the cart off his English pig. I shouted back that I could not right the cart whilst the horse was upside down in it, but that, if he would come to my assistance, we would cut the traces and save both pig and horse. To this he replied that I wanted to drown him as well as his pig, and he continued to abuse me roundly until a passer-by arrived who jumped in and helped me, too late, however, to prevent the pig being drowned.

On another occasion, when attempting to ford a river

that was flooded with snow water, I was washed off the ford and carried down a mile, in a muddy torrent, amongst uprooted trees, until one of the trees fortunately grounded near the bank. I had just enough strength to enable me to climb on to it, but was so completely benumbed with the ice-cold water that I could not creep along the tree to the land; but my good friend, William McGowan, saw me and came to my rescue. On that very same day, a notoriously good swimmer, named Burke, attempted to cross that river, but became benumbed in the snow-water, and was drowned in the presence of a number of spectators.

A few weeks later, in another snow-water flood, my horse was washed off the ford, and I had to force him to swim more than a mile down the river before we could find any bank low enough to scramble out on.

For some two years, my neighbours seemed to look upon me as the water-spaniel of the district who could cross the river whenever he pleased and could never be drowned. There were no Maoris living in the Waimea, or I should never have been promoted to that honour.

But I am sure you will be asking long before this why I did not build a mill at once, and get to work with the machinery that I had brought from England. To that question I can give half-a-dozen answers, any one of which would be quite sufficient to account for my not doing so. In the first place, no one was growing any wheat that would want grinding; secondly, it was not possible to procure any site upon which to build a mill, much less to secure the many rights usually necessary to obtain the undisturbed use of a water-fall; thirdly, there was no good water-power to be obtained in or near the town of Nelson, without going far beyond the surveyed and sold town acres, and no one could give or sell me any right over land extending beyond that, as the country land had not been surveyed or chosen; and, fourthly, there was no really good water-power to be obtained in any accessible position that would not cost far more than I could afford to utilise and secure. Before I could see any security for going to work, two companies and two individuals had started building flour-mills, two in the town and two in the country, none of which proved remunerative.

I must not close this account of my earliest years in Nelson without some mention of one of New Zealand's

most successful temperance workers, the most valuable temperance convert I ever made, with, perhaps, the exception of Sir William Fox. I cannot tell you anything about his birth, his education, or his childhood, as he was thirty-two years of age when I first saw him. He came to Nelson in charge of the first working-cattle brought to that province; and, on the arrival of the "Fifeshire" in Nelson Harbour on February lst, 1842, he and his master earned £11 in one morning by carting the goods of the twenty-two cabin passengers. I was then struck with his fine head and honest face and manners; his good English, so entirely free from any county dialect; and the skilful way in which he managed his oxen.

I wondered how it was that the ox-driver was such a very superior man to the ox-owner. In the afternoon, I was still more surprised to see their much valued oxen turned out into what we had named the Toi Toi Valley, whilst master and man lay helplessly drunk under their dray in what is now the principal street of Nelson. This proved to be the order of the day for several weeks, as they had no difficulty in earning enough money every morning to enable them to get gloriously drunk every afternoon, and I used to think that the oxen had a better chance of life than the men at such a game. Their dray was always left on Sundays in what is now the centre of the city of Nelson, and I selected it as the best platform I could find from which to give a temperance address every Sunday afternoon, nor did I consider it any the less suitable on account of the specimens of the victims of drink who so often lay beneath it. On one occasion, when they were less helpless than usual, they tipped up the pole of the dray, and said they would have no such nonsense talked on their premises. On the following Thursday, there came a heavy knocking at my door before four o'clock in the morning. Rising somewhat reluctantly, I opened it, and who should be there but the man that was always known as Ben the Bullock Driver.

"Have you your pledge book here?" he said.

"Oh, yes, " I answered.

"Well, let me sign it, and you shall never again see me making such a fool of myself as long as I live."

"Come in," I said. "I will make a fire, and we will have some breakfast together and talk it over."

I was surprised to find him quite sober, and he soon brought tears to my eyes, as he wept over all he had suffered, and made others suffer, by his mad craving for drink. He soon, naturally, became the great object of attraction at all our temperance meetings. He asked me to let him take charge of the first New Zealand Temperance Pledge Book, and he greatly prized it as long as he lived, taking every opportunity to exhibit it. He started a Band of Hope in Nelson, and had a wonderful power of persuading even publicans' children to join it, so that he became a great power for good in Nelson. He was never ranked among the rulers and honourables of the province, but many a sincere and deserved blessing has been pronounced upon his head. His fifty-seven years of unselfish work in the cause of Temperance will be remembered when the name of many a more conspicuous pursuer of wealth and distinction has faded into oblivion.

CHAPTER VIII. AN ILL-ADVISED AND ILL-FATED EXPEDITION

CHAPTER VIII

AN ILL-ADVISED AND ILL-FATED EXPEDITION

"Hast thou been on the field? Art thou come from the host?" –
"From the slaughter, Lady! – All, all is lost!"
– -MRS HEMANS.

WE had heard so much about the Maoris' ferocity; of the white men that they had killed and eaten; of Hongi's blood-thirsty career; and of the diabolical cunning and cruelty with which Rauparaha had pursued his cannibalistic career through both islands, that we regarded the Natives with some suspicion when first we landed in Nelson, and were quite prepared to find them dangerous neighbours. Both the Motueka and Wakapuaka Maoris, however, had received some teaching from the missionaries, and welcomed in a very friendly spirit the white men who had come to settle so near them. They seemed much interested in all our proceedings, helping us to build some rough shelters with a very good will, and being especially useful in cutting toi-toi for thatching purposes, understanding much better than we did how to handle its sharp edges without injury to their hands. They also supplied us with some very good potatoes and nice fresh fish, which they brought into the harbour in their canoes, and then hawked about on their backs in small rough flax baskets they had made, proclaiming as they went that the price was "One a backet, one a herring."

Even our women and children soon ceased to fear the Maoris, whilst one very youthful and particularly timid member of our small community became quite an adept at understanding and responding to the very clever signs that they employed in carrying on their communications with us, so that she was often called upon by the Nelson housewives to purchase for them their supplies of fish and potatoes. This same timid maiden (who, some years afterwards, became my wife) watched with wondering delight, quite unmixed with fear, the dusky warriors who occasionally brought their elaborately carved canoes into Nelson Harbour, and I have seen her sitting on a fallen tree in a lonely part of

the forest singing to a group of Maoris who clustered round her, listening with great attention to her melodious strains.

But all this happy confidence between the two races disappeared after the massacre at the Wairau, where so many of our friends and neighbours lost their lives in such a tragic and wholly unexpected manner. It is impossible, when writing of my first years in New Zealand, to pass over in silence an event of so much importance, and few people, I think, have had so good an opportunity as I to know the truth of all that occurred on that dreadful day.

Sylvanus Cotterell (my cabin mate on the "Fifeshire") employed, for more than a year before his death, a very bright, intelligent Maori whom he used to call "Man Friday." This man was usually with him both day and night. He accompanied Mr Cotterell on his exploring and surveying journeys, and a portion of each evening was systematically spent by them in acquiring each other's language, so that probably no other man at the tragedy understood both languages so well as did Cotterell's "Man Friday." He was honestly faithful to his master, and would have saved his life if he had had the power to do so. But the vengeful Rangihaeata hated Friday because of his association with Cotterell, who was marked out for destruction as the one who was known to have given the evidence that had brought the armed men to the Wairau. With his thorough knowledge of the country, Friday easily found his way from the scene of the massacre to the Wairau Mission Station, and gave to the Rev. Samuel Ironsides the information that enabled him to so bravely effect the burial of those slain. Friday then made his way to Nelson, coming straight to me, and staying with me for several weeks, in order to help me to collect his master's belongings. This mournful duty devolved upon me as the most intimate friend Cotterell had in the Colony. It also fell to my lot to write and tell his relatives of his tragic death. Friday greatly lamented that his master had not returned to the brig with Mr Tuckett, Mr Barnicoat, and those who left with them, and spoke of these persons as the only ones who had given no provocation to the Maori chiefs, but had acted throughout with judgment, coolness, and good sense. And, listening to Friday's cool, logical account of all that had occurred, I could not but agree with him.

It was with a heavy heart that I heard the faithful Maori's mournful story. Perhaps it was more dreadful to me because I had been asked to join the ill-fated expedition, and had, without a moment's hesitation, absolutely refused to do so. I had two very strong reasons for this refusal. Firstly, although I knew Captain Wakefield to be a man possessed of exceptionally large physical courage, I had not entire confidence in his justice or discretion as the leader of such an expedition; and I had far less in that of the terribly excitable police magistrate who accompanied him; and, secondly, I thought it was reckless folly to imagine that exceptionally brave and intelligent men, as the Maoris were admitted to be, would be overawed by a vastly inferior force, armed with weapons that were well-known to be defective.

For weeks, and even months, after the Wairau tragedy, when we gathered round our camp fires after our day's work was done, it formed the chief subject of conversation, and many a thrilling tale of their sufferings was told by the survivors who had struggled back to us. I have no wish to dwell on those horrors, and shall make my account of what occurred as brief as possible, referring those who wish to know more about the Tua Marina Tragedy to the first volume of my "History of New Zealand."

Unwilling to admit that it was unable to consign to the settlers land that had been paid for by them before they left England, the New Zealand Company attempted to take up land at the Wairau to which its claim had not been definitely proved, and which Rauparaha still regarded as his own property. Three surveyors, with forty assistants, were sent to the spot, and, after building some whares for shelter, proceeded with their surveys as if quite assured of their title. But trouble was at hand. Rauparaha and Rangihaeata appeared on the scene with a fleet of canoes and a large body of armed followers, and calmly forbade the surveyors to continue their work. The Maori chiefs told the surveyors to remove everything that belonged to them to their boats on the river. They then burned down the whares that the surveyors had built, Rauparaha saying, as they did so:

"Do not be angry. This toi-toi belongs to me – it grew on my land. You might be angry if your houses – which I shall burn – were built of boards brought from

England; but this toi-toi is mine. I have a right to burn it."

As this interruption made it impossible to go on surveying the land, Mr Tuckett sent Cotterell, who, like himself, was a Quaker, to Nelson, with a note to Captain Wakefield describing what had happened. Cotterell, who was accompanied by Friday, delivered the note to Captain Wakefield on Sunday, June 11th, 1843, and gave him all the information he could. He was instructed to appear at the Magistrate's Court the next morning, and, after his evidence and that of one of his boatmen, John Burton, had been taken, the Magistrate issued a summons for Rauparaha and Rangihaeata on a charge of arson. The following day, Captain Wakefield, the Police Magistrate – Mr Thompson – and sixteen constables and special constables, boldly started off in the Government brig "Victoria" to arrest the two dauntless, triumphant conquerors of New Zealand. Nearly all the Englishmen carried defective muskets and rusty cutlasses, which had been purchased from a Nelson merchant for a mere song, the sight of which was supposed to be quite enough to intimidate the Maoris. Captain Wakefield's party had not gone far when they met Mr Tuckett coming from the Wairau with Mr Patchett and Mr Bellairs, their boat and boat's crew. It was known that Mr Tuckett would not carry arms, and it was not expected that he would accompany an armed party; but he said to Captain Wakefield and Mr Thompson:

"I will go with you if you will do what ought to be done. Go unarmed, and get a quiet talk with Rauparaha and Rangihaeata alone."

This they promised to do, and so the brave Quaker was betrayed into the greatest mistake of his life. The party was soon afterwards joined by Mr Barnicoat and by several of the surveyors' men. Early next morning, the whole company arrived on the bank of a narrow, deep stream called the Tua Marina. On the opposite bank of this stream, the Maoris were camped in a position well sheltered by bush. The Natives were armed and numbered about a hundred. I will let the chief Rauparaha recount what then occurred, as his story is brief and to the point, and generally agrees with that told to me by Friday. It was translated by Mr Clarke, Protector of Aborigines, and officially published. Rauparaha says:

"Early in the morning, we were on the look-out,

and one of our scouts, who caught sight of them coming round a point, called out, 'Here they come.' Our women had kindled a fire and cooked a few potatoes, and we were hastily eating them when they came in sight. They called out, 'Where is a canoe for us to cross?' Thompson, Wakefield, and some others, crossed over with a constable to take me, but the greater number stopped on the other side of the creek. Thompson said: 'Where is Rauparaha?' I answered, 'Here.' He said: 'Come, you must come with me.' I replied: 'What for?' He answered: 'To talk about the houses you have burned down.' I said: 'It was nothing but a hut of rushes, the materials were cut from my own ground, I will not go on board, neither will I be bound. If you are angry about the land, let us talk it quietly over.' Mr Thompson said: 'Will you not go?' I said: 'No,' and Rangihaeata, who had been called for, and who had been speaking, said so too. Mr Thompson then called for the handcuffs and held up the warrant, saying: 'See, this is the Queen's book, this is the Queen to make a tie, Rauparaha.' I said: 'I will not listen either to you or to your book. I had rather be killed than submit to be bound.'

"He then called for a constable, who began opening the handcuffs and to advance towards me. Mr Thompson laid hold of my hand. I pushed him away, saying: 'What are you doing that for?' Mr Thompson then called out: 'Fire!' He called out once and then Thompson and Wakefield called together: 'Fire!' The Europeans began to cross over the creek, and, as they were crossing, they fired one gun. After this they fired a volley, and one of us was killed, then another, and three were wounded. I cried out: 'Friends, stand up, and shoot some of them in payment.' We then fired; three of the Europeans fell. They fired again, and killed Rongo, the wife of Rangihaeata.

"We then bent all our energies to the fight. Captain Wakefield and Mr Thompson were brought to me by the slaves who caught them. Mr Thompson said to me: 'Rauparaha, spare my life.' I answered, 'A little while ago, I wished to talk with you in a friendly manner, and you would not; now you say save me, I will not save you.'

"It is not our custom in war to save the chiefs of our enemies. We do not consider our victory complete unless we kill the chiefs of our opponents. Our passions were much excited, and we could not help killing the chiefs."

Thus ended Rauparaha's account of the Tua Marina tragedy, an account which I should have found it difficult to credit if it had not been for the fact that the grief-stricken Friday had already given me a similar history of this foolhardy attempt to arrest New Zealand's two most powerful chieftains whilst surrounded by their devoted followers and entrenched in their carefully selected, well-sheltered encampment. Friday's affection for his master, and his sympathy with the Europeans generally, had caused him to be regarded with great suspicion by his own people, yet he none the less told me that the Maoris had received the greatest provocation at the Wairau, and had conducted themselves throughout with dignity and self-restraint until they were fired upon, and Rongo, the wife of Rangihaeata and daughter of Rauparaha, was killed. This devoted woman is said to have thrown herself in front of her husband, and thus given her life to save his. What wonder that the infuriated savage sought to be avenged upon those who had slain her?

Even after this, if the settlers had retained their guns and retreated, they might have saved their lives. They would, at least, have had a chance of selling them dearly, as, in order to pursue them, the Maoris must have abandoned their well-sheltered position. This would not, of course, have been an heroic course to pursue, but it would have been a more sensible and less humiliating one than surrendering to the Natives after having provoked them to madness. Thompson, however, thought otherwise, and shouted to his followers to throw clown their arms and lie down defenceless in the fern, whilst Brooks, the interpreter, waved a white handkerchief, and shouted: "Kati" (peace). One old soldier, however, named Richard Painter, whose fierce, bold bearing caused him to be generally known as Dick the Panther, swore freely at the command to lay down his own good, much-valued fowling piece, and shouted to his comrades not to keep in a heap for the Maoris to shoot at, but to climb the hill, shoot every Maori that came near them, and die a thousand deaths before surrendering to a pack of hot-blooded savages. This advice was certainly not sentimental, nor was it the best that might have been given; but it was practical, and it soon divided the leaderless men into surrendering Royalists and retreating, protesting Independents – every man of the

former to die without resistance, the latter to make a desperate, but generally successful struggle for life, and, after much suffering, to reach Nelson in safety.

Meanwhile, the cool-headed Quaker, Tuckett, seeing that all hope of a peaceful settlement of affairs was at an end, called Mr Barnicoat and two wounded men (Samuel Gapper and John Bamforth), and with five others, walked off in the direction of the brig which they all reached in safety. Friday told me that his Quaker master was preparing to join this party, but was stopped by Captain Wakefield who said:

"For God's sake, Cotterell, don't run away."

So Cotterell remained, and was the first man killed, the Maoris saying, as they tomahawked him:

"Ha, you don't fight yourself; but you go and get other men to fight for you."

Though the Wairau was only seventy miles distant from Nelson, it was nine days before the news of the tragedy reached us there.

So all the leaders of that ill-advised expedition perished, and, of the forty-six men who were led like sheep to the slaughter, nineteen were killed, five were wounded, and twenty-two escaped. Many of those who escaped found their way back to Nelson with the greatest difficulty, struggling over the mountains through boisterously cold, wet weather for nearly a fortnight, without blankets and almost without food. All suffered greatly, one poor fellow perished on the way, another became a mental wreck, and several reached Nelson with frost-bitten toes and fingers.

One of the many sad results of this unfortunate expedition was that the happy relations that had previously existed between Maoris and Europeans were destroyed for many, many years.

CHAPTER IX. HARD TIMES IN NELSON IN 1844

CHAPTER IX

HARD TIMES IN NELSON IN 1844

Hardship is the native soil of manhood and self-reliance. – J. NEAL.

[This Chapter is included here by the kind permission of the Editor of the Christchurch "Press." It was published in the "Literary Column" of that paper, under the title given above, on April 11th, 1898.]

WHEN, early in 1842, the New Zealand Company's immigrants demanded the fulfilment of the Company's promise to employ them, if required to do so, at twenty-four shillings a week, the Company's agent denied the responsibility. Whereupon the immigrants produced the printed circulars containing the promise, and marched through the town with clubs in their hands to show that they had the power to enforce their claims. In this way they not only compelled the recognition of their claim, but, like a badly-handled colt, they also learned the superiority of their own power, and compelled the New Zealand Company to employ stratagem where mere force must so evidently fail. The stratagem adopted was expensive and disastrous, both to the Company and to the immigrants.

The money the Company's agent was thus compelled to pay was handed to the men with a bad grace, bad judgment, and a bad result. To pay wages without any consideration of value received was as ruinous to the employer as it was demoralising to the employed. To pay a puny cripple for pick and shovel work the same wages as were paid to a strong, hard-fisted navvy, was to ensure that the ablest man in the gang would soon take care that he did no more than the weakest cripple, and the aggregate result soon proved that nothing useful could be expected from the whole force. In vain the Chief Surveyor advised the Company's agent to put all the men upon piece-work. Captain Wakefield only said:

"What could I find for them to do? I have the greatest difficulty to think of anything for them now."

And this in a country where roads, bridges, rivers,

and public buildings were all demanding the hand of labour, and the community verging on starvation for want of cultivating the virgin soil.

Very few wealthy men had come to Nelson, and still fewer farmers with capital; but, if there had been ever so many, they could not have employed labour; as it was twelve months before the fifty-acre suburban sections were open for selection, and some five years before the hundred-and-fifty acre rural sections, paid for in 1841, could be found, and then only in what was soon to be altogether another province. But the Company's agent could, at any time, have occupied a large reserve, and have put the men he was obliged to pay, to work at growing the food that must necessarily be wanted by all classes. As soon as the fifty-acre sections had been selected, which was at the beginning of the year 1843, Captain Wakefield made another effort to force the men away from the employment of the Company. He at once gave a week's notice that, after the close of the following week, the wages would be reduced to eighteen shillings for married men, and sixteen shillings for single men.

When the Monday morning came upon which the reduction was to commence, which was the 18th of January, 1843, the streets of Nelson were paraded by the greater part of the men who were in the employment of the Company, or rather, in receipt of the Company's wages. Many of the best men had not joined the procession, and the conduct of the paraders was more aggressive and alarming than it had been on a former occasion, and many of them carried loaded guns. After parading the town, they assembled round a large stump, and listened to orators who advised them to go and break open the Company's store and help themselves, and to give notice to all the other holders of stores that they would do the same by them if their wages were not continued without abatement, according to the Company's printed promise. On the second day, this was agreed to; but, before the men started for the Company's store, one of their fellow-workers, previously unheard, mounted the stump, and said, in a calm, clear voice:

"You know well that, as one who had never handled a pick and shovel in my native country, I should never have come from Birmingham had I known that I must attempt such rough work here. You know that I have

been as much deceived as any of you, and that I have helped you to prove the deception practised upon us; but is that any reason why we should injure, or allow the holders of property to be injured – many of whom have been even more deceived than ourselves? And, as to the Company, you are proposing to do just what they would like to see you do. Have they not, all along, wanted some excuse for not keeping their engagement with us, and what excuse could they have better than that which you now propose to give them? If you make it unsafe to bring property to Nelson, how are you going to live? The wild pigs are all killed or driven away. The quails are all caught by the dogs. No one has, so far, had any land that they could cultivate. We might catch an eel now and then, but we should soon eat all the wild cabbage, and what are our children to do? No one doubts your power to shut my mouth, or to take all the moveable property in Nelson; but what we want to do is to prove that we are as honest as we are strong, and that it will never be unsafe to import food for our use."

This speaker was John Perry Robinson, who, eleven years afterwards, was elected Superintendent of Nelson, and continued to hold that office, with constantly increasing satisfaction to all classes, for ten years, when he was drowned at the Buller.

"By George! he's right. I'll not go to the Port." said a powerful voice from a powerful frame. A dispute followed, a division took place, and only a small, desperate party went to the Port, which was about a mile distant. There Captain Wakefield met them as cheerfully as if they had come to make him a presentation. They told him they had come to break open the store, and he replied:

"Oh, you need not do that. Here is the key; you can take what you like. I have only been keeping the stores for you. It will save me a lot of trouble if you will take them and get more for yourselves. Of course you won't expect me to get any more?"

This was a good practical illustration of what their friend and comrade, J. P. Robinson, had just told them. They took a little time to consider, but soon gave back the key, and all hands returned next day to their work.

But their action was not without its consequences to themselves. Their resolution, although never acted on.

had set its mark on their proceedings, and it was soon as well known in Australia as it was in Nelson. The usual vessels did not call at Nelson. The Company's stocks were lowered. No one wanted to hold or to leave stocks in Nelson, and many of the common comforts of life were soon scarce. Too conscious of their own strength and of the ridiculous incapacity of all the guardians of the peace in Nelson, some of these restless spirits seized on a well-dressed man named Valle, who had been appointed an overseer of their work, and ducked him in a deep ditch of clean water which they had dammed up for their own ablutions. Poor Mr Valle was not a hero. Although supposed to be a music master, his cries were far more piteous than melodious, and he evidently thought that he had very narrowly escaped with his life. He made the best of his way to the eccentric Police Magistrate, Mr Thompson, ten miles distant, and described the case as one of attempted murder. The Police Magistrate would have been most happy to assist Mr Valle; but he did not want a cold bath himself, and thought that it would lessen the dignity of his constables if they were sent back in the same drowned-rat condition that Mr Valle now presented. He thought it would be desirable to wait until one of H. M. ships came to New Zealand, and then perhaps the whole gang might be arrested. From causes, and with objects, not then foreseen, a British man-of-war did arrive in Nelson Harbour, much sooner than Mr Thompson could have expected; but, when it came, Mr Thompson and his constables were lying under the sods on the high banks of the Tua Marina; and a wiser head than Mr Valle's was in command of the "North Star" with her twenty-eight guns. The men Mr Valle would have so much liked to see captured had already been arrested in their follies by the potent hand of well-directed industry, and by their gratitude to, and respect for, a wiser controller of their energies. They were, however, soon to be punished for their past folly, without the aid of any man-of-war, by the stern, inevitable reprisals of those social, political, and economic laws which they had so unpardonably violated.

Very soon after Mr Valle's immersion came the Tua Marina tragedy, in which Captain Wakefield and several other leading men, the Police Magistrate, and all the constables of Nelson were killed. This threw the control of the men for a few weeks into the hands of

Mr Tuckett, and then into the hands of Mr (afterwards Sir William) Fox who was now appointed the New Zealand Company's agent. Mr Tuckett at once put the men on piecework; but, after consulting with Mr Tuckett, Mr Fox, who probably knew more about the Company's financial condition and intentions than any one else, arranged a system of piecework under which the men could spend most of their time on land working for themselves, and yet do more for the Company than had ever been done under the day-dawdling system. The men were allowed to do what was called, or what was paid for as, a month's work as soon as they could, and were then permitted to work for themselves for the remainder of the month. The ablest men accomplished their month's work in four days, and many a ton of potatoes so soon to be so much needed, was procured by this indulgence, and many a good settler provided for for life on a well-kept farm. The men were allowed to make their own bargains, and to take land how and where they pleased; but, unless they did take land within a reasonable time, they were not to be employed. Under this system, indulgent as it was, these really good, although misguided, men soon showed that there was plenty of good working power in them, and Satan was no longer occupied in finding "mischief for idle hands to do." Mr Fox had the pleasure if seeing an entirely new spirit come over the majority of these rioters, and they ever afterwards treated him as their trusted friend and adviser.

On the lst of January, 1844, the first wheat harvest in Nelson was commenced on a small experimental farm which Captain Wakefield had employed a Mr Kerr, one of the Scotch labourers from the first immigrant ship, the "Fifeshire," to conduct on good fern land adjoining the small forest in the Waimea West district. If the same experiment had been made on flax land, a good crop might have been expected; but even the best fern land would grow very little upon the first furrow, or until the land had been thoroughly pulverised, so that the crop obtained was very little, if any, more than Mr Kerr's own large family could eat. A similar result was achieved on an adjoining farm worked by the Tytler brothers, who had not pickled their seed, so that their very small crop was also very smutty.

A fine Somerset farm labourer named Charles Best, although he obtained possession of his land much later,

had been more successful. He had landed in Nelson from one of the early immigrant ships with three shillings and sixpence in his pocket, and, as he worked for the Company, he saved enough to buy two steers and a cow calf. With his Somerset experience, he soon went to work on a fifty-acre swamp section, which he rented with a purchasing clause, and thus grew wheat enough to secure his own bread and to cheer the heart of many a starving friend and neighbour in the days of trial.

Just as these very small crops had been secured, and just as a crop of 100,000 bushels of wheat would have been secured if Captain Wakefield had been as wise as Mr Best, the crash came. On Thursday, the men were told that the New Zealand Company was bankrupt, that the Union Bank would advance money enough to the bankrupt Company to pay the wages of the current week; but after that, all employment would cease...

What a change now came over the spirit of these once rebellious men! What a gulf seemed to open between those who had saved their earnings and spent their time and labour on land, and thus had their little crops to live upon, and those who had despised thrift, lived up to or beyond their weekly income, and expected the sun to shine forever.

Long afterwards, Mrs Best told me:

"Our little heifer calved soon after that crash, and she made twelve and a quarter pounds of butter a week. We sold twelve pounds and kept the quarter pound for ourselves; and so were still able to pay our rent without selling the steers, which were so handy in the plough. I drove the bullocks for Charles, or helped him clear the flax from the land, or cut the sods for the fence, all day, and then we both came in and did the cooking and housework at night. In the following year, we had fifty bushels of wheat to the acre, so that we paid for our fifty acres, and agreed to buy three more sections. We also bought two more cows, two more bullocks, and some sheep. After that, we could eat as much butter as we liked, and give away plenty of flour too."

I need hardly say that Mrs Best, of Appleby, was soon the mistress of one of the best provided and most notoriously hospitable houses in the Province of Nelson, a house in which, long before you trod the soft carpets,

or listened to the grand piano, you saw and appreciated the richly stored and brightly polished Somerset kitchen. And no man could exclaim with greater pathos and. greater sincerity than Mr Best:

"Ah, gie me, if I wur a Squire,
The zettle and the gurt wood vire."

Mrs Duncan, residing at Riwaka, who was one of my fellow-passengers in the "Fifeshire," says:

"The New Zealand Company promised us two years' work, but that promise was not kept. It was then that we had hard times indeed – no work and no money. For some time we had nothing to eat but potatoes – morning, noon and night – and were very thankful to have them. Our neighbours were not better off and were often in a worse plight than we were. Fortunately we had a heifer which calved soon after the crash, and we considered milk and potatoes quite a royal feast. Mr S. Stephens kindly gave us as much work as he could at half-a-crown a day, and glad enough we were to get even a little at that price."

Her son wrote:

"Then came the crash. The Company broke, and what little was in the store was divided amongst all hands. The people did not know what to do; they had neither money nor food. Some of the people had a little flour, and made flour gruel of it to make it spin out. Some gathered sow-thistles and boiled them; others dug up the potatoes they had planted, peeled them to eat, and planted the skins; others planted only the potato shoots. Clothes were very scarce. Mother made me a suit of clothes, trousers and all, out of a three-bushel sack, and many others were dressed in the same manner."

Mr Thomas Butler (afterwards a member of the Nelson Provincial Council) wrote:

"I had nothing to eat all day yesterday, but I got a feed of Maori greens this morning, and caught an eel coming home; so that I feel quite strong again now."

Mr Butler was one of those compassionate individuals who, like Father Matthew, would give away his own bed, and who, at such a time, suffered far more from sympathy than from hunger. He would often go without his dinner to have the pleasure of giving it to a neighbour more hungry than himself. As a mechanic, he was a universal genius; so that,

although brought up as a stonemason, he was a good carpenter, and even a good millwright. But what gave him most fame at this time was the taste and ingenuity with which he adorned the poor girls around him with fashionable and really very pretty and durable bonnets made from goats' or kids' skins, fringed with the skins of the goats' short tails.

I was, at this time, living about thirteen miles from the town of Nelson, near the south bank of the Wairoa river, on what was called the Teetotal Section. My nearest neighbour was Mr William Andrews, the grandfather of Mr George Andrews, who is now living at Ashburton. Mr William Andrews had very early distinguished himself as the largest proprietor of goats in the province, and could now be seen struggling at the end of a plough drawn by eighteen goats, who, however, never looked very happy at their task. He also had a windmill, in which he undertook to grind wheat; but, little wheat as there was to grind, the mill – like the goats, or like Lord John Russell, as described at that time by "Punch" – was "not strong enough for its work."

I usually drove once or twice a week across the river and over the half-made roads to the town of Nelson, in what was, at that time, the only two-horse cart in the province. I rarely made the journey without picking up some weary, foot-sore travellers, who could tell me a good deal about the privations of themselves and their neighbours, and the tale often ended with the production of my lunch bag, which was always emptied with much evident reluctance, so that I soon learned to provide more than one lunch bag for that journey.

Yet, taken as a whole, I very little regret passing through those days of privation either for myself or for my neighbours. There is so much to remember about them that is pleasant and instructive. No one who witnessed the scenes of those days could ever make the great mistake of supposing that valuable sympathy and self-denying generosity are either the privilege or the duty of the rich alone. The poor men and women who had grown only enough potatoes for themselves and their children seldom tried to forget that there were poorer, or weaker, or, it may be, less industrious neighbours who were not so well supplied as themselves. Not a crumb was wasted, not a rag was burned, not a

ribbon was worn that would lessen their power to feed the hungry. Even the prodigals had enough to suffer for the present, and there was no need to reproach them for the past, as there was no temptation before them at the time being. Cases of concealed and patiently borne privation and distress – the starving mother resolved to feed her children though it should be at the cost of her own life, and the stricken father reproaching himself for the past – may be hidden even from the benevolent rich, but are sure to attract the first attention of the poor, who also know how delicately such cases must be handled if the anguish is really to be lessened and not aggravated.

But the extended existence of grinding privation had its softening and humanising effect, even upon those who were safely removed from any fear of the loss of their own daily comforts. Not a few good Samaritans were now discovered for the first time. In my road gossips I heard of many unparaded and unsuspected acts of efficient relief; nor do I remember a single instance in which the general poverty of the community was insulted or aggravated by any wanton display of wasted wealth. Neither men nor women were to be seen extravagantly dressed – any parade of wealth in such a community was instantly recognised as bad taste, and not a few well-to-do men took to wearing sack trousers and blue shirts, or the coarsest tweed cloth, with an evident wish to make their poorer neighbours feel that the coarsest dress implied no degradation. Dear old sunny Nelson never felt more dear or more homelike to me than when I was daily charmed with such indications –

That man to man, the wide world o'er,
Shall brothers be for a' that.

It is difficult to say how far Sir George Grey's extremely economical and thoroughly successful seven years' government, which immediately followed upon these two years of struggling privation, were made so exceptionally happy and prosperous by the habits of thrift and the dread of ostentation which the two previous years' experience had burned so deeply into the memories of some of the members of his Executive Council. Nor could they be without their restraining influence upon the many other future public leaders of the Colony, who, during the hard times I have described, were residing in the Province of Nelson.

CHAPTER X. ALFRED GOES TO AUSTRALIA

CHAPTER X

ALFRED GOES TO AUSTRALIA

O land of the gold-garnished reef
And the sheep-studded plain.
– -DOUGLAS B. W. SLADEN.

TOWARDS the end of 1846, I decided to go to Australia. Two very trustworthy young men named James and Thomas Magarey (one of whom had worked for me during the short time I had a baking business in New Zealand), who had come out as steerage passengers in the "Fifeshire," and, who, like myself, had been brought up to the milling business, had gone to Adelaide, where they had found it very easy to make money. They wrote to me, strongly advising me to follow them. This I made up my mind to do, and my friend, Isaac Hill, decided to go with me. We took our passage in the "Star of China," one of the very small ships that traded between Sydney and New Zealand, and were so fortunate as to reach Sydney in nine days.

Directly I stepped upon the wharf at Sydney I met an engineer named Ryder, who had been employed in Nelson by the New Zealand Company's agent to put up a flax-mill. He told me that he was now employed by the wealthy owner of a large steam-plant-mill who was most anxious to get a first-class stone-dresser who was not a convict. I said that I was on my way to Adelaide, but meant to spend a few months in Sydney, and should be glad if I could get some employment whilst I was there. He replied that Mr Barker would give £38 a month to a first-class stone-dresser. He asked me to go with him to see Mr Barker, and I did so at once, as he was to be found in his counting-house only between twelve and two o'clock. Up to that time, I had not seen much of very sharp business men, but I knew that I had one before me now. I can best picture him by relating the dialogue that passed between us.

Mr Barker: You are a stone-dresser, I believe?

Alfred: Yes.

Mr Barker: Have you dressed stones in any first-class mill?

Alfred: My father owns the two largest mills in Bath, and two smaller ones, and I have dressed stones in them all.

Mr Barker: In Bath – but you have just come from New Zealand, haven't you?

Alfred: Yes.

Mr Barker: Have you dressed stones in New Zealand?

Alfred: There are no stones there to dress.

Mr Barker: How long have you been in New Zealand?

Alfred: Nearly five years.

Mr Barker: Then you have not dressed a stone for five years. Have you any character, or what we call a discharge?

Alfred: No; I could hardly get that from my father. I have letters of introduction to the Governor of New Zealand and from the Chief Surveyor of Nelson (and I presented these letters to him).

Mr Barker: I wonder how much they know about stone-dressing!

He held the letters in his hand without looking at them, and said:

"Ah, well! You had better come over to the mill."

In the mill, we found a stone lying on its back, all ready for dressing, the tools for doing so lying beside it. Pointing to the stone, he said:

"Just dress a few harps of that stone, and I will be back again in a little more than an hour."

Then, putting the letters down on the stone, he walked away. When he came back, he put on his spectacles and looked carefully at what I had done. Then, taking up the letters, he handed them to me without reading a word of them, and, pointing to the stone I had dressed, he said:

"That is the best letter of recommendation to me." Mr Barker was very kind to me, and put me up to

all the tricks that he knew the convicts employed by him would try to play upon me. I stayed with him about two months, and then told him I must leave, as I had a great deal to do in getting fitted out for an overland journey to Adelaide. He asked me if higher wages would induce me to stay, and, when I answered "No," he begged me, as a special favour, to take the night work for a few weeks before I left him. He said he would make it well worth my while to do so, and that I could get what I wanted in Sydney in the daytime, if I would remain in the mill between 6 p.m. and 6 a.m. To this I consented, and he helped me a great deal with my preparations, and paid me very liberally.

On the first night that I went to the mill, I found the overseer there, prepared to lock me in. I told him that I was not a convict, and would not be treated as one, to which he answered:

"I can't make fish of one and flesh of another."

"All right," I said, "lock up if you want to; but, if you do, you will lock me outside."

In high dudgeon, he hurried me off to Mr Barker, and laid the facts of the case before him. That gentleman said, very severely:

"Of course the door must be locked as usual; but," he added, looking at me with a smile, "if I ask Mr Monteith to give you the key, perhaps you will be kind enough to lock yourself inside the mill instead of out of it."

Before very long the preparations for my journey were complete, and it was time for me to say good-bye to Mr Barker. I was sorry to leave him, as there was a great deal to be learned from such a man.

CHAPTER XI. RHODA FLOWER

TALES OF A PIONEER 63

CHAPTER XI

RHODA FLOWER

(By Ellen and Ann Saunders)

The days of youth are joyful in their way;
Bare feet tread lightly, and their steps are gay.
– -WILL CARLETON.

AMONGST the passengers that Alfred not infrequently carried in the "two-horse chay," referred to in a previous chapter, was a slender, dark-eyed girl, named Rhoda Flower who, with her parents and sister, had arrived in Nelson from England only a few weeks later than he.

Rhoda was thirteen and her fair-haired, grey-eyed sister Susan rather more than three years older when they landed in the Colony, and when Nelson, with its bush-clad hills, shining waters, and deep blue sky, was reached, it seemed to the two town-bred girls fairer than anything they had ever before seen, read about, or even imagined. With far different eyes did their mother behold its wild beauty. Her heart sank at the prospect of making her home in such a desolate spot, and, when she found that she must pass her first night in New Zealand in a rude flax whare, she sat down in silent despair. Susan and Rhoda, however, clapped their hands with delight at the thought of sleeping in such a really Robinson-Crusoe-looking place, and busied themselves in cleaning their rough shelter and making it as comfortable as they could. They decided that a big packing case would be just the thing for a table, and gaily dragged it into position, arranged their few belongings, and made up their beds, before they sat down to their evening meal of milkless tea, stale ship's biscuit, and delicious fresh potatoes baked in the ashes of their bush-wood fire.

William Flower, meanwhile, had been trying to repair the thatch of the whare, which was in a very

dilapidated condition. He did not, however, succeed in making it watertight, which was unfortunate, as, during the night, the rain came down in torrents, and Susan and Rhoda had to take it in turns to hold a big umbrella over their mother's bed.

Rhoda, who had brown eyes with unusually long and thick black lashes, a clear sun-browned skin, and small, white, even teeth, used often to say laughingly that she thought she must have gypsy blood in her veins, because she always so dearly loved an outdoor, gypsy life. With all its trials and privations that first year in Nelson was a very happy time to her. To the two young sisters it was a source of never failing joy to wander at their own sweet wills through the native bush. Their beauty-loving natures delighted in all they saw. They loved to track some stream with fern decked banks to its source; to listen to the bell-like notes of the birds; or to gather hitherto unknown blossoms with which to deck their cabin home. When their careful mother complained that they wore out their boots on their long, rough rambles, they took them off and went about with bare feet all through the summer and autumn months.

On fine nights it was the custom of the pioneer Nelson colonists to kindle a big fire in the open air and to gather round it together to eat their evening meal. Everyone who could do so contributed to this communal repast, some bringing game they had shot or fish they had caught; others, potatoes, bread, or any other eatables they might possess. After this simple meal was concluded, there were always plenty of stirring adventures to relate. Speeches were made by some of those whose names were afterwards to figure in the history of the Colony, or the young folks sang gay choruses, played games, or danced to the music of William Cullen's flute. Both Susan and Rhoda had beautiful voices, and their sweet singing of such quaint, old-fashioned songs as "The Soldier's Dream," "The Mistletoe Bough," "The Gypsy Countess," etc, was always a very popular feature of the evening's entertainment. Strange to say, no one listened to these melodious Strains with more rapt attention than the unmusical, blunt, intensely practical Alfred Saunders. He constituted himself the sisters' adviser and defender, and his thoughtful gravity never relaxed so much at any other time as when he was in their gay company.

So weeks and months passed quickly away. The bush fell before the fires and swinging axes of the men who were opening up the country. Buildings went up, and the old free, unconventional life in Nelson came to an end. Rhoda went with her parents to live on the Teetotal Section, and Susan was married to the first mate of the vessel in which she had travelled from England.

Home seemed strangely quiet to Rhoda without her merry sister. Heavier responsibilities devolved upon her, and life assumed altogether a more serious aspect. It was a time of much depression. The necessities of life were difficult to obtain. Nearly all the settlers were very poor, and all were more or less depressed and discouraged. Rhoda often pondered over ways and means of helping her parents, and at last, one day, hearing a neighbour lament that there was no dressmaker at hand to make up a piece of wincey she possessed, Rhoda timidly offered her services. They were accepted, and the precious material was carried home, cut out in fear and trembling, made up and unpicked, and remade again, before the little dressmaker was at all satisfied with the result. However, when the work was at length completed, the lady who had entrusted Rhoda with, it was quite delighted with her work, and sang her praises to all her friends. Many of them wanted Rhoda to sew for them, so that she soon had her hands full; and the little barefooted gypsy, who had danced along the seashore, and scrambled through the bush, became the trim young needlewoman of the small community. She made not only dresses, but shirts, trousers, and coats out of all sorts of materials – sometimes even the roughest sacking. Of course these garments were made entirely by hand, as there were no sewing machines then, and the modest charge for the making of each garment was half-a-crown.

When Rhoda was sixteen years old, her only brother was born, and to this brother she became very devoted. He was a strong, healthy, contented child, and wherever Rhoda went little Tom went too, even when it was for a walk or a drive with Alfred Saunders. When Alfred came to see Rhoda, the child was usually tumbling about the floor at her feet, whilst his sister's fingers flew over some garment she was making; and perhaps the eager willingness with which Rhoda put her girlish shoulder to the wheel, in the endeavour to do what she could for

her helpless family, may have had as much to do with winning Alfred's affection as the wistful beauty of her soft brown eyes or her gift of sweet song.

Whatever the source of attraction between this timid, romantic girl and her fearless, matter-of-fact lover, they certainly did become so much attached to each other that, on the eve of Alfred's departure for Australia, Rhoda promised that she would follow him there as soon as he had made arrangements for the honeymoon journey they proposed to take through part of that continent's rough, wild interior. A few months later, with many bitter tears, for Rhoda's strong adhesiveness made partings an agony to her, she said "Good-bye" to her parents and went on board the "Star of China" with an old acquaintance who was travelling to Australia and who promised to take good care on the voyage over of the "Little Gypsy" as it was the old man's fancy to call Rhoda. She was received in Sydney by one of Alfred's friends, who showed her much motherly kindness, and in whose house she was married, a few days later, just twelve days after she had completed her eighteenth year. Of the wedding trip that followed, Alfred has written a full account which forms the substance of the following chapter. Rhoda always regarded it as the most delightful outing she ever had, and she continued, for more than fifty years, to give vivid accounts of its various happenings, to the great delight of the long succession of children and grandchildren who loved to cluster round her to listen to her graphic stories of days "long, long ago."

CHAPTER XII. THREE MONTHS IN A TILTED CART

CHAPTER XII

THREE MONTHS IN A TILTED CART

In lands where bright blossoms are scentless,
And songless bright birds;
Where, with fire and fierce drought on her tresses,
Insatiable summer oppresses
Sere woodlands and sad wildernesses
And faint flocks and herds.
– -ADAM LINDSAY GORDON.

[This chapter is included here by the kind permission of the Editor of the Christchurch "Press." It was published in the "Literary Column" of that paper, under the title given above, on November, 8th, 1897.]

ABOUT the same time as my preparations for an overland trip from Sydney to Adelaide were completed, the "Star of China" came in again, bringing with her quite a young woman, who, although abounding in caution of the less useful kind, had, under one of those mysterious influences which I am not bound to explain, been so reckless as to leave father and mother in Nelson, and go amongst the mosquitoes and serpents and blacks and convicts of Australia with no protection but that of one strong young man, to whom she decided to entrust her future weal or woe for better or for worse. So we were married on January lst, 1847, and away we went in a tilted cart, with five unbroken horses, for a journey of twelve hundred miles across rivers, deserts and mountains, where our bread was not given, and our water was by no means sure.

For three months I had been preparing for the journey. I had a double-shafted tilted-dray made, with harness for four horses, and heavily-woolled sheepskin rugs for bedding. I made the acquaintance of a first-class horse-breeder residing about thirty-five miles from Sydney. He drove me out to his place in four hours

with one of his light cart mares which was not the least distressed by the pace on that journey. He sold me five unbroken fillies of the same strain of blood as this mare at £9 each, and, when in condition, they proved to be equally capable. He lent me a yard in which to handle them, and honestly told me that one of them was such a nervous creature that she had nearly killed him and would require great caution in handling. But, though this was true, they were all remarkably teachable, and soon enabled me to get on the road and break them to their work as they went on. This was the more easy as they would not willingly be separated from each other, and I could leave one or two loose to follow those at work. The man from whom I purchased the fillies kindly lent me two quiet horses to take into Sydney to bring out our dray and all that we thought necessary for the long picnic we proposed to take. With these old horses and our well-stocked dray, we finally left Sydney on our wedding day, and picked up our uneducated fillies when we were thirty-five miles away from the dangers of the city. Besides the dray, harness and bedding, we had two sacks of flour, one of potatoes and two of oats, some large tin water-bottles, a bag of sugar, a box of tea, a bucket, a double-barrelled gun, a revolver, a dagger, a Maori club, a coil of rope, an American axe, carpenter's and smith's tools, a spade, a pocket compass, a butcher's knife, a camp-oven and tea kettle, knives, spoons and forks, powder, shot and balls, and 56 lbs. of horse shoes. What there was in the way of dresses and needlework, I don't know, but there was nothing extravagant, although there always seemed to be something to do in that line. We certainly did not pay much attention to the fashions; but my wardrobe had, for the previous five years, been very distinctly neglected. We did not take the oats with the view of feeding the horses on corn; but it was necessary to teach one mare, whom the rest would follow, to find her way to the daily shifting dray when I got on her back, as I often depended upon her superior organ of locality to take me to our last sleeping ground after I had found the horses in the morning. Indeed, it was not always morning, or even the same afternoon, but sometimes the next day, and even longer, before I did find them.

We knew that, on many parts of the road, water would be neither plentiful nor good; but we had formed

no idea of what abominable stuff was called water in this dry and thirsty land. As the water shrank from day to day with the parching heat, the insects crowded round the scattered water-holes, and the sheep left their droppings several inches thick, mixed with dead carcases, old bones and hides of all descriptions. With our large water-bottles, we were not often obliged to drink from the worst of these reservoirs; but the poor horses were, and it was a really painful sight to see their muzzles covered with leeches as they lifted them from the nauseous draught. Sometimes we obtained more wholesome water by digging in a half-dried swamp and putting the softest mud in a bucket, when a little water would rise to the top. In some very few situations, we could get a few buckets of water for the horses from a deep hole that had been previously dug in a swamp, and there were some tree roots from which we could get a pleasant drink for ourselves. One of our horses – the nervous mare – would not drink out of a bucket, and she had, in consequence, on one occasion, to go nine days without water. But, when feeding on grass only, a horse can do this without much serious injury. However, if the water was the worst, the firewood was the best I have ever seen, as nothing could excel the she-oak for that purpose.

Although the roads were at first good, it was risky work without one old quiet horse; but we had only one serious mishap, and that was after we had been going more than two weeks. I had taken every precaution to make the young horses good staunch pullers, but I had not yet paid any attention to teaching them to hold back downhill. I had a brake that would hold the cart back, but it was a brake that screwed from behind, and was not within reach of the driver. My wife was busy with her needle in the body of the dray as we reached the top of a hill that we had to descend with a long ascent beyond it. I had hitched up the reins and jumped out to screw up the brake; but, before I could reach it, the shaft horses ran on to the leaders and sent them off at a gallop. So away went all my worldly goods – including my wife – and I looked likely to be left behind. But, fortunately, the best broken and most quiet of the fillies was following and feeding behind, and, just as she was taking alarm, I managed to turn her round for a moment, jumped on her back, and rode helter-skelter after the runaways. My fear was that my wife would jump out.

I could not have stopped if she had, as I had no bridle, and, like John Gilpin, must have gone on, because my horse would go; but the young woman was neither screaming nor jumping out, and I rode on, thinking, "what a brave child that girl must be, although she pretends to be so timid." As we all went on, very fast but still unharmed, my admiration increased, and I had no doubt that my wife had taken the reins, and would keep the road until the horses slowed down as they went up the opposite hill. Still there was no screaming, and none of the scolding that I expected and deserved; but, when I looked into the dray, I found that the brave girl had been so wise as to go off in a fainting fit, and lay still and senseless on the floor of the dray. Not a scratch was on my wife nor on our horses, although the long, rough gallop made them both rather suspicious of my coachmanship for a time. The forty miles, were, of course, accomplished more quickly for this unwonted speed.

When we happened to know that we had a good road and not a long day's work before us, we sometimes yoked only two horses to the dray, leaving three horses to graze and follow us as they pleased; but we usually drove four and left only one at liberty. The loose horse, or horses, soon got so used to this treatment that they would sometimes stay out of sight, on some tempting feed, for hours together, and then come galloping after us. On one occasion, the loose filly was out of sight most of the day, and did not come up after we had stopped at night, nor did she come the next day, so that we had given her up for lost, under the conviction that she must have fallen in with some bad company – either equine or human. But, on the third day, to our great surprise, she came galloping and neighing after us, and seemed quite as much delighted to meet us again as we were to see her.

So long as we were within 200 miles of Sydney, the road was much like other roads, with accommodation houses every five to ten miles, although these were of little use to us except to sell us a joint of meat now and then, which they did not always do with a good grace. We met, or overtook, an occasional wool-dray, now and then a horseman, and, more frequently, a swagger, who seldom asked us for bread but almost always for tobacco. We could have supplied good damper, but we had no

tobacco, and we had been well cautioned never to have a sixpence of money. Our conversation with these travellers was often of a most amusing character, and strangely at variance with the simple ideas of safety and society that we had acquired in New Zealand. In enlarging upon the dangers before us, they generally thought it their duty to point out where we should have to avoid stations or public houses that were occupied by immigrants, and where we could find a harbour of safety in the dwellings of "old lags." They would sometimes ask us, not with the slightest intention of insulting us, but merely with a view of establishing a sure basis of confidence between us: "What were you lagged for so young?"

But the most embarrassing result of an unusually kind and obliging conversation would sometimes be a request that I would write them out what they called "a discharge," or a good character, and sign it with the name of some well-known large employer.

As long as we were within three hundred miles of Sydney, we trusted entirely to our own resources, and avoided stopping for the night near any station or other dwelling; but, after that, we felt that such independence was resented and regarded with suspicion. Indeed, it would be difficult for anyone, who has travelled in the same localities since the discovery of gold, to form any idea of the pleasure and the unbounded hospitality with which a traveller, and especially a woman, was received by these isolated settlers before the year 1850. We sometimes met with a woman who had not seen any other white woman for years, and, as for hospitality, we might often have loaded our dray with all the luxuries the station could command, and, at some stations, there were some very real luxuries, although at others there were very few. At many of the out-stations, which almost invariably consisted of a rough mud hut with two shepherds and one cook, or hut-keeper, we found that we were very frequently betrayed into the crime of eating stolen mutton, and for this we could hardly plead ignorance, as, after supper, we generally received a good many confidential confessions from the trio who explained with some pride what they had been "lagged" for, and generally added:

"We are supposed to live upon beef which they send from the head-station, but we generally prefer

mutton or lamb, and surely there's plenty of it in this country. We always call it 'white kangaroo,' and it's very good, isn't it?"

I was ambitious to be the first to drive a horse dray over the gap in the Grampians. Horsemen commonly went that way, and one or two bullock drays had gone; but I was told that it would be madness to attempt to take a horse dray over. My young horses pulled the dray up as well as any bullocks or mules could have done; but I dared not ask them to take it down the almost perpendicular descents, hemmed in as they were by rocks and deep pits and precipices, down the worst of which I had to lower the dray with ropes, and afterwards take it on with the horses with both wheels tied securely. This was a good piece of exercise and experience for my young needlewoman.

Soon after this, we overtook a Mr Jones, who was driving a herd of cattle to Melbourne, and we kept with him for a few days. He and his men were doing their work well. Their stock horses were well educated, and – what was most unusual – Mr Jones himself appeared every morning with his boots polished, and dressed as smartly as if he were about to figure in a hunting field at Badminton. He had with him a native lad, about eighteen years old, who cleaned his boots, attended to his clothes and horses, and rode by his side as a kind of aide-de-camp. This boy was dressed in scarlet, and had two revolvers conspicuously attached to his belt. He was very obliging and useful, and supplied the leader of the party with a pair of eyes such as no white man ever possessed. Mr Jones used to assert that this lad could track a horse over a pavement and see through a stone wall. But my horses did not like so much competition when looking for their supper, so we passed on, and left our dandy friend behind....

We passed on to the north of Kilmore, leaving Melbourne some fifty miles to the south, and drove through a pleasant, open, undulating, thinly-wooded country, much of which, we were told, was occupied by "Hungry" Simpson. We had stopped at several of his out-stations, and had been very kindly and generously treated; but we intended not to stop at his home station, as we expected that a man so far and wide called "Hungry" Simpson would be a man whom we had better have nothing to do with. We were not allowed to carry

out this intention. We had been duly reported from his out-stations, and, when we were attempting to pass his home-station without stopping, we were absolutely taken possession of. Our horses were put into a well-grassed paddock, and we were told that we must spend at least a week at the mansion, which was surrounded with all the luxuries of a splendid fruit and vegetable garden. There was, too, a lot to see in the way of first-class horses and other stock, and all the appliances of a first-class station. No one could have been more hospitable or generous than its owner; but the "Hungry" had been applied to him in consequence of the immense quantity of land he had taken up as a run. We accepted his hospitality for two days and nights, and then we were compelled to load the dray with far more luxuries than we could possibly use. We had to beg to be let off occupying the luxurious beds of the mansion, as in them we should have been like Nansen when first taken out of the snow.

As we passed on and came to poor, sandy land, we sometimes saw small parties of natives, who were evidently not very civilised, but always appeared to be very timid. On one occasion, a native threw a spear at our leading horses, but its force was spent before it reached them, so that it passed harmlessly between their legs. The native would not come to pick up his spear whilst we were there, although we waited for him to do so. The Australian aborigines' complete lack of anything like courage, or of anything approaching to confidence in each other, is almost as remarkable as their wonderful eyesight.

When we were 200 or 300 miles beyond Melbourne, the country was said to be quite unsafe for unprotected travellers, and we were persuaded to keep in company with a Mr Clarke, who was taking 600 wild cattle from Murrumbidgee to Adelaide. Mr Clarke was a dark, heavy-looking man, about forty-five years of age, too fat to be a good rider, too merciless to be a good horseman, and too mercenary to be an interesting companion. His wife was under twenty years of age, and her baby, who formed one of the party, was under twelve months. She was not refined, but was a brave, clever, useful woman, who kept the men well up to their work and in a good humour under all dangers and discomforts. Her best assistant was a wiry, wakeful old

man called "Old Ned," who watched over his employer's interests day and night. He had been transported for smuggling; but he was a wonderfully honest, vigilant servant, and could do more with one horse than his master could do with a dozen. He rode his own horse, and used no other, but he rode it only when speed was wanted, so that it was the only horse in good condition, and, bridled and saddled, was generally feeding amongst the cattle whilst its master was waiting behind them. There were three young stockmen, who had three horses each, which they rode on alternate days; but, on the days that they did ride them, they rode and starved them from morning till night, so that all their backs were sore and they were all in miserable condition. Mr Clarke did not often ride, but generally drove his travelling bedroom with two fine Cleveland bays, which, in swamps, mountains, or rivers, had sometimes to be assisted by the strong bullock team. The bullock-driver had also brought his wife with him. She was about forty years of age and a useful, strong worker; but both husband and wife were prone to listen to every alarming tale, and they eventually declined to go a step further into the unknown country. In this emergency, Mr Clarke persuaded me to drive his bullocks for him, as my own horses were now sufficiently civilised to be controlled by the young woman they had conveyed so safely and rapidly in her fainting moments. She managed them very well, and was soon called on to conduct them over what we called the "Seventeen-Mile-Desert" of deep, shifting sand, where all the cattle dogs died, although we attempted to keep them supplied with water. I drove sixteen strong, active bullocks across that desert, and they had quite enough to do with their comparatively light load. The sun and the sand were painfully hot, and it was an exhausting day for us all. We all agreed that we would not like to go through that desert again under such a sun. As soon as we could reach good grass and water, we took a few days' rest.

After this, we had no more real dearth of water, and no more disgusting water-holes, but passed a variety of lakes, more or less beautiful, with flocks of water fowl upon them, and often came to abundant grass which had never yet suffered from a sheep's tooth. In all these lakes, the water was more or less brackish, but the cattle and horses took to it very well, and, with the help of tea, we managed to do so too. Mr Clarke had a

bullock killed about once a week, and we were now getting to salt lakes, where we could find plenty of salt. We were very extravagant with beef, and left behind us all the coarse parts of the bullock; but Mr Clarke had not provided enough flour for the journey, so that we had to give up all that we could spare from our little stock, and we were all put upon a short allowance of bread. We had no potatoes, and we could find nothing to take the place of green vegetables. This beef diet, in such a warm climate, did not improve our health or our tempers, and not a few of the horses suffered in consequence. At last, things got so bad that it was decided that some one must take the two best horses we had and ride on fifty miles to beg or bargain for flour. We all highly approved of the plan, but no one volunteered for the service; so, at last, I had to consent to go, although no one could be more conscious than I was that to find a small station, fifty miles away, with a pocket compass, would not be a pleasant task, nor one for which I possessed any special qualifications.

Starting at daylight, and riding each horse in turn for about five miles, I made what I thought about fifty miles, then tethered the horses and lay down for the night, as I had come to no fence or track to guide me to a station. At daylight next morning, I was delighted to see smoke rising from the top of a hill, and, although it did not look a likely place for a station, I thought it must at least be the abode of some one who would tell me where a station could be found, so that I was very soon on my way to it. The smoke still continued to rise, and my spirits rose with it, as the horses laboured up the hill; but, when I reached the top, I heard, not the barking of dogs that I had expected, but an unearthly yell from about fifty naked blacks, who at first seized their spears and ran, but soon stopped and looked round to see how many more horsemen were coming after them. I stopped too, and, for a moment, hesitated as to whether I should try to reach and question them. I soon saw, however, that this would be impossible, as they were evidently afraid of a white man, and would be sure to meet me with a shower of spears. I was glad to find that they did not come after me as I rather slowly retraced my steps down the steep, rough hill, from which I could see no indication of any human habitation. After reaching the level ground, I took

again to my compass, and rode slowly and doubtfully on, fearing that I had passed the station. In about two hours I came in sight of some horses, and, on riding up to them, I found that they were not wild and that one of them was shod. So I drove them before me in any direction they chose to take, in the hope that they would find a track, which they eventually did, and I followed it up until I came to a fence, which I followed round until I saw a road which led me to my destination. I found only poor men in a very rough habitation, but they received me with great kindness and without a sign of suspicion. They gave me all the flour my horses could carry, and even offered me the loan of a horse to carry more, which, however, was not at all necessary, as we were so soon to pass their abode. I lost no time in getting back to where the flour I brought was received with three cheers.

Two or three days after my return, some natives rushed shouting amongst the wild cattle, and alarmed them so much that they became quite uncontrollable and rushed off in all directions. Even my working bullocks ran away with the dray, and it was long before I could stop them. My strong bullock team was leading; our horse team, driven by my wife, came next; and Mr Clarke's two-horse team, driven by Mrs Clarke, followed it. Mr Clarke having gone to help collect the scattered cattle – twenty of which were never found – I soon found a good camping place, and stopped. In the absence of any other man, I worked hard with the bullocks all the afternoon, collecting heaps of firewood to surround the cattle at night, and I lighted the heap nearest the drays for Mrs Clarke and my wife to go on cooking. Just as I had finished this work, and had hobbled and unyoked my bullocks, some fifty or sixty natives, unusually well armed with spears, came boldly to the fire. Our two young cooks, of course, retired to the tilted dray, whilst I lighted a more distant heap of firewood, and asked the natives to make use of that instead of the fire so close to our drays, but they took no notice of my request. I therefore went to my dray, got under the tilt and fussed about, loading my double-barrelled gun and my revolver, well knowing that their wonderful eyes would see all that I did. I then put the revolver in my pocket as if I had expected to hide it from them; and, getting out of the dray, I stood with my back to it and my face to the fire. Every eye was directed to my pocket as the

natives walked backwards to the more distant fire to which I had before vainly directed them- We afterwards learned that all these armed men had come with no intention of frightening our cattle or of molesting us; but to meet and fight a hostile tribe on the very spot that I had chosen for our camp. This fight came off the next day in the sight of us all, but no one was killed, and but few wounded. Their eyes were so good that it was almost impossible to hit them with a spear, although ten or a dozen spears would often be thrown at the same time at one man. Meantime, they had acquired such confidence in our women that the wounded made use of our dray as a hospital, and came to my wife and Mrs Clarke to bind up spear wounds that would have killed a city alderman, but seemed almost harmless to these dwellers in the roofless desert. One of them, who had a spear through his arm, brought the skin of a dingo's tail to Mrs Clarke for her to use as a bandage, and seemed surprised that she preferred to use linen instead. My wife and Mrs Clarke had never been very much alarmed about the natives; but, after these two days' experience, they were as ready to joke about them as any of the rest of us. For some reason, which appears to be connected with their sense of smell, wild cattle – and even horses – are terribly afraid of a collection of Australian aborigines.

At one beautiful lake, we were tempted to stop nearly a fortnight, during which our live stock were completely recruited after all their toils and privations, and were well prepared for the good sale that they were so soon to command in the Adelaide market. Soon after this rest, we had to cross the great Murray River for the second time, and here there was no bridge and no punt. It took us some days to get all the cattle rushed through, and our drays dragged across by main force; but only one animal was drowned and nothing very valuable was lost. The drowned bullock was a great godsend to the poor natives, who kept us well supplied with fish whilst we were detained on the banks of the river.

After crossing this river, we were, at once, in the land of comfort and civilisation. A day's journey farther on, and about thirty-five miles from Adelaide, I obtained from the Copper Company a load of copper ore, which my good horses took over the Mount Barker ranges that were really fit only for strong bullock teams.

They were seen to climb over those rough, steep mountains in such style that the mares which I bought for £9 each in Sydney, were eagerly purchased in Adelaide for £35 and £40 each, and my originally timid young woman wanted us to go back to Sydney for another such a lot. as she was sure that we could do nothing better than get a good living by such a long, pleasant picnic.

We soon settled down in a mud hut with nothing but home-made furniture, on 200 acres of first-class land in the Mount Barker district, twenty-five miles from the city, and 2500 feet above sea level, where I worked as a contract ploughman in the winter, a copper-ore carter in spring, and a grain carter in autumn.

CHAPTER XIII. RHODA'S LIFE IN THE MUD CABIN AT MOUNT BARKER

CHAPTER XIII

RHODA'S LIFE IN THE MUD CABIN AT MOUNT BARKER

(By Ellen and Ann Saunders.)

"One little hut among the bushes.'
– -NEGRO MELODY.

DURING the honeymoon trip described in the last chapter, an incident occurred that Rhoda always regarded as one of the most narrow escapes of her life. One evening, before she and Alfred joined forces with Mr and Mrs Clarke, they came at dusk to a lonely hut in which they found three men who welcomed them cordially, and insisted on putting them up for the night. Their hosts were admittedly convicts, but Alfred and Rhoda had already received so much kindness from men of this class, who, in those days, had sometimes been transported for no greater crime than taking game for a starving family from some neighbouring lord's preserves, that this fact caused the young couple no anxiety. Before starting on the long drive, Alfred had urged Rhoda to have her hair cut short and to assume the dress of a boy; but, eighty years ago, this would indeed have been a startling innovation, and Rhoda, who was much more conservative than her husband, would not consider the idea for a moment. Now, for the first time, she was to bitterly regret not having done as Alfred wished.

On this evening, Rhoda and Alfred were shown the kind hospitality to which they had now become quite accustomed; but, in the middle of the night, Alfred, who was always a very light sleeper, was aroused by hearing the window of the room in which they were sleeping cautiously raised, and, on going to investigate, found one of his hosts standing outside. With gestures indicative of the necessity for silence and caution, he said, in very low tones:

"What I am telling you now, I am telling at the risk of my own life. You will find, in the morning, that all your horses have disappeared, but, whatever happens, don't leave your wife alone in this house for one moment."

At break of day, Rhoda and Alfred went together to look for the horses. No trace of them was to be found anywhere, and Rhoda often used to say that never before had she prayed so fervently for help as she did during that long day whilst she and Alfred searched in vain for the missing horses. Her prayers were answered. Before nightfall, a thick cloud of dust appeared on the horizon, and soon Rhoda's quick eyes descried a huge flock of sheep coming steadily towards the hut. Nearer and nearer it came, until, at length, with grateful joy, the young couple greeted a kindly-looking, elderly man, the owner of the flock, who was accompanied by a goodly array of stockmen and dogs. Alfred managed to convey to him their predicament without betraying their informant, and the old gentleman promised that at dawn the next morning he would provide him with a horse, and would send with him one of his best stockmen to assist in finding the horses' hiding place. At the same time, he guaranteed that, however long the search lasted, he would not leave Rhoda until her husband returned.

The horses had been most cunningly hidden and secured so that they could not return, and, even with the help of the stockman, who knew the country well, and where they could be most effectually concealed, the search for them was a long and arduous one. But at length they were safely recovered, and, with many heartfelt thanks to their kind deliverer, Alfred and Rhoda proceeded safely on their way.

Another incident of the trip, not included in Alfred's account, Rhoda remembered remorsefully ever afterwards. One evening, when she and Mrs Clarke were sitting chatting together, as they often did, beside the camp fire, a native, accompanied by several of his wives, joined them and sat down to revel in the warmth and brightness. The two English girls were horrified at the scars and bruises on the bodies of the poor Australian women, and formed a very low opinion of the savage-looking husband who had inflicted these wounds. But what particularly interested Rhoda was a beautiful little pickaninny that one of the native women was carrying.

She took it from its mother, and she used to say that the way in which the poor creature trembled as she unresistingly gave it up was one of the most pitiful sights it is possible to imagine.

The girls took the baby into the dray, and dressed it up in a complete outfit of Mrs Clarke's baby clothes. This was such a delightful occupation, and the black baby, with his large, wistful dark eyes, was so good and quiet, that Rhoda and her friend made the operation as lengthy as they possibly could. When, at last, they took the little fellow, decked out in all the finery that Mrs Clarke could spare, back to his mother, they found her crouched over the fire with her eyes streaming with tears – a picture of patient, hopeless misery. Her overwhelming surprise and rapture when the baby was restored to her arms showed the two girls the misery that they had thoughtlessly inflicted by what they had intended to be a perfectly harmless bit of fun.

In the mud cabin at Mount Barker to which Alfred has referred in a previous chapter, Rhoda took her full share of all the hardships and privations. Perhaps more than her share; for, whilst Alfred always enjoyed danger and adventure, and hardly knew what fear of any kind meant, his wife was constitutionally exceedingly timid. Although Mrs Cumack, the wife of their landlord, was a kind, motherly friend to the shy, sensitive girl, Rhoda often wept bitterly, during Alfred's long absences, for her own mother far away in New Zealand. She had had no opportunity, during her busy dressmaking days in Nelson, of learning how to manage a house and cook for a husband. Kind Mrs Cumack was always willing to help and encourage her in any of her housekeeping difficulties; but the homestead where she lived was some miles distant from the hut; and cream half churned into butter, or dough rising to the top of the pan, left to its own devices whilst Rhoda saddled the quiet little mare, on which she took daily rides, and cantered over to her friend's house to ask what was the next thing to do, was often hopelessly spoilt before the little housekeeper returned. She persevered, however, until she became quite a remarkably good cook and especially efficient in the making of both bread and butter.

For Rhoda's protection during his many absences, when her only companion was a fourteen-year-old boy

who helped about the place, Alfred purchased a beautiful collie dog whom Rhoda called "Bob," and to whom she felt she owed as deep a debt of gratitude as did Alfred to his early friend Nelson. He was her faithful and efficient guardian during the four lonely years at Mount Barker, and though his savage fury at the slightest attempt at familiarity with his mistress made him somewhat of a terror to her very few and far between visitors, she always felt complete confidence in his protection. Rhoda often used to say that Bob was the most trustworthy nurse she ever had for any of her ten children. He taught her first little son, born some eighteen months after the arrival at Mount Barker, to walk, and showed quite human pride and pleasure in surprising the young parents by one day gently leading their baby up to them, hanging on to his rough coat with both hands, and actually walking for the first time.

CHAPTER XIV. SOME AUSTRALIAN EXPERIENCES

CHAPTER XIV

SOME AUSTRALIAN EXPERIENCES

Gold! Gold! Gold! Gold!
Bright and yellow, hard and cold,
Price of many a crime untold;
Gold! Gold! Gold! Gold!
– -T. HOOD.

THE landlord of our mud cabin at Mount Barker was a Mr Cumack, a hard-working, honest, trustworthy man; his wife was a model of a perfect manager, and they had six interesting children. Mr Cumack carried on a large cattle-breeding farm, and they usually milked about fifty cows.

Soon after we settled here, a sad accident happened to our good landlord. When I reached home from town one Saturday afternoon, my wife told me that Mr Cumack had been thrown from a runaway horse and had broken the thigh-bone and both shank-bones of his right leg; and that the doctor had just galloped by on his way to the Cumack's house. The doctor was said to be a clever surgeon, but he was a drunkard, so I thought I had better hurry over to our neighbours and see if there was anything I could do.

Mrs Cumack came to the door in tears, and said:

"Oh! I am so glad you have come. The doctor is drunk, and is ordering the men to pull my husband about; but he cannot stand the pain that they are causing."

Mrs Cumack asked me to come into the bedroom with her. I did so, and, going up to Mr Cumack, felt his pulse. This roused the doctor, who was lolling back in a chair. He got up, and, staggering towards me and placing his violently shaking hand on mine, he inquired:

"Are you a duly qualified surgeon?"

I raised his hand and rested it on the table, and, placing my own beside it, said:

"Which of these two hands do you think is best qualified, just at present, to help this poor sufferer? If you will sit down quietly here, I will go to work with my steady hands, and try to get the leg straight and the bones in their proper position; and if your head is clear enough to give me any advice that sounds right and reasonable, I shall be very glad, and will try to follow it." Then, getting a good supply of strong sheets from Mrs Cumack, I passed one between the patient's legs, and fixed it securely to the head of the bed. I then fastened a double sheet round his foot and ankle, and brought the other end of it to a strong ring which we secured into the wooden wall beyond the foot of the bed. I put my most trustworthy assistant to twist the sheet with a short stick, so as to slowly and strongly draw out and hold the shattered leg as straight as possible. I then felt for the bones, and put them as near right as I could, securing them in position with such splints as I could improvise, receiving some advice from the doctor as I did so. When I had finished, the doctor got up and stumbled towards the bed, and Mr Cumack said, with a shudder:

"I can't stand your shaking hand, doctor. Mrs Cumack has got a bed ready for you. Go and get a good sleep, and come and see me in the morning."

When he was sober enough to examine it in the morning the doctor pronounced the setting of the leg to be all right.

But it was a long while before our landlord was able to be about again, and he did not then embarrass me with profuse thanks or expensive presents; but he showed me by many kind actions how grateful he really was. He sold me the best pair of leading bullocks I ever drove, and the three best cows in his dairy, although he would not have let anyone else have them for double the money I gave. He advised us never to keep any money in our house, or on our persons, and invested for us all we could save at 10 per cent, interest. I took a contract to build twenty rough timber bridges at £40 each, and he let me take all the growing timber I wanted for them off his land. And so, for four years, he never missed an opportunity of doing me a kindness.

After selling the mares, I bought twelve steers – six quiet ones from Mr Cumack, and six large wild brutes that had never been handled. The hand-fed steers

were made tractable and useful in a few days, although it took several weeks of light work to harden their necks to the yoke. The wild ones were dangerous and troublesome, but I got quite fond of the taming business, and made a little money every year by buying wild steers at the beginning of the ploughing season for £3 each and selling the worst of them at £6 per head when I abandoned ploughing for carting.

Our eldest son, William (called after his mother's father and my youngest brother), was born at Mount Barker about eighteen months after we settled there, and no old nurse could have kept the child in a higher state of health and happiness than did his inexperienced young mother.

Our simple method of living enabled us to save rather more than £100. a year whilst we were at Mount Barker, and this money Mr Cumack borrowed from us and paid on it ten per cent, interest.

As we could buy a fat steer for £3, we lived far too much on smoked beef and German sausages, so that, after four years of hard work and high living, I quite broke down with pains in my back and neck. I went to a doctor, who cupped me, leaving ugly scars on my neck, and making me worse than ever. I struggled through the last grain season with some difficulty, and we then decided to go back to New Zealand, under the impression that it was the heat, and not the beef, that was giving me so much pain.

Our little boy was two years old when we sailed from Adelaide to Sydney in a large sailing vessel that was going to England via Sydney. An enormous plank of South Australian timber, 400 feet long, two feet wide, and six inches thick, reached from her stem to her stern. She was taking this to the Great Exhibition of 1851. It formed quite a convenient gangway for the officer on watch to walk upon at pleasure from one end of the large ship to the other.

As soon as we reached Sydney, I bought a saddle mare and rode to Wollongong, where I bought five cart mares to take to New Zealand, having taken passage for ourselves and the mares in a brig bound for Nelson. Before I had driven the mares into Sydney, I learned that gold had been discovered near Bathurst, and that all the sailors had run away from the ships to go to the

diggings, so that no one could say when our brig, or any other vessel, would be able to sail for Nelson.

Oats had risen in price from two shillings to twelve shillings per bushel, and hay to £12 a ton. As it was quite out of the question to keep the mares idle in Sydney, waiting for the brig to sail, I accepted an offer of £20 a ton from Mr Barker to take a load of flour and canvas to Bathurst. I bought a strong dray and harness, harnessed the mares to it, and went to Mr Barker's mill for the canvas and two and a half tons of flour, and then joined the excited crowd that were cutting up the unmetalled road of a hundred and twenty miles to Bathurst.

Never before nor since have I driven good horses over such a road. It was winter, and the soft, unmetalled roads had never previously been called upon to carry a hundredth part of the traffic now crowding upon them. All the specially bad places were blocked with drays sunk nearly up to the axle, and it was sad to see the cruelty of the wildly excited gold seekers to their poor suffering beasts.

All the horses were jibbing, and the men swearing, or praying for help, and especially for the loan of a team that would pull at a dead lift, whilst thousands of horses were being ruined for life by the senseless, ignorant manner in which they were being ill-treated. Never in my life before had I been so tired as I was then, for there was no peace, day or night. The horses had not only to be securely tied, but securely watched too, as there were hundreds of men hard up enough to have stolen – or, what would have been the same thing, to have forcibly borrowed – a horse that would carry them home; whilst bank notes would have been far less temptation to the men around me than the horse feed so indispensable to carry me to Bathurst.

However, after ten days and nights of incessant watching, I reached Bathurst with the flour and canvas. It took me five days to get back again with my empty dray, when I found that our brig had procured some sailors and was just ready to sail, so I drove straight on to the wharf and got all on board. I had earned £50 in the fifteen days and had spent £20 on horse feed.

CHAPTER XV. BROTHER EDWARD TO THE RESCUE

CHAPTER XV

BROTHER EDWARD TO THE RESCUE

And as a noble and a watchful hound
Will drag thee on to where the drowning die,
Or where, all helplessly upon the ground,
The wounded and the faint untended lie, –
So oft a Providence will grasp thee tight,
And bring thee where the Lord hath need of thee,
Where want awaits thy fullness, gloom thy light,
Some maze thy clue, or cipher asks thy key.
– From lines written by Alfred's sister ELLEN.

OUR captain was a most agreeable, obliging man, so that we had a pleasant voyage back to New Zealand, and, when we reached Nelson, we found a number of old friends waiting on the wharf to receive us. They gave us a right royal welcome, though they did not fail to chide us for having ever left them. I was soon able to get the mares landed and harnessed to the dray, and, with my wife sitting beside me, our little son in her arms, and our various belongings piled around us, we drove straight back to my old quarters on the Teetotal Section, where we found a brick house that we were able to rent at once. It was not very large, and it had no modern conveniences, but it seemed almost like a palace to us, after our little mud cabin amongst the South Australian mountains.

Back in our old home again, I was not long in finding out all the changes that had taken place during our absence. One of the things that naturally interested me most was that no less than five mills had been built in the province of Nelson – not one of which was paying interest on the money it had cost. There were a watermill and quite a large wind-mill in the town of Nelson; and, on our old Teetotal Section at Waimea South, a small wind-mill and another water-mill, whilst, close to the sea beach at Richmond, was a very expensive mill

using both wind and steam. This last mill had been built by a Mr Eliot (descended from the Admiral Eliot who defended Gibraltar with red hot shot). He was a highly educated man and an engineer, and, unfortunately, he thought that these qualifications were sufficient to enable him to build a mill without advice from anyone. The water-mill that was built on the Teetotal Section had no water in summer, and a useful supply only when the river was high in winter. It was owned by a farmer named Stratford, who knew nothing about milling, but employed a Scotchman who had once worked in an oatmeal mill. The one pair of stones was grinding only half a bushel an hour when I first saw it at work, and even that half bushel was very badly ground. I told Mr Stratford that, if his stones were properly dressed and furrowed, they would grind six bushels an hour. He said:

"If you can make them do that, I will pay you £3 a week."

I accepted his offer and spent three or four days getting the stones as they should be, when, to his great satisfaction, they ground nine bushels an hour. But, after I had been with him a few months, his mill had to stop, as there was no longer enough water to drive it. So I went to Mr Eliot who had begged me many times to come and see what was the matter with his costly mill. The total failure of all that he had attempted had taken all the self-confidence out of him, and I found him in a highly nervous state, and, with all his culture, toiling at manual work harder than any slave. He entreated me, with tears in his eyes, to tell him what was wrong with his mill. He could grind nothing properly with it, he said, and was ashamed to see his customers when they came to take away their flour and bran, as they did nothing but abuse him. I am afraid no one but a miller will understand what I have now to relate; but, as it was a very extraordinary thing, and also marked something like a turning point in my life, I cannot pass it over.

When I reached the mill, Mr Eliot and his assistant were driving two pairs of stones with a nice breeze of wind. The stones were being driven a great deal too fast, and the flour-dressing machine a great deal too slowly, but hardly any progress was being made with either. The wheat from the hoppers had filled up the eyes of the

stones and was being thrown over their backs, and very little could, by any device, be persuaded to go through between the two stones to be ground. I said at once:

"I cannot see the furrows of the stones whilst they are going, but there must, I am sure, be something very wrong with them."

Mr Eliot gave me a look of great disappointment as he replied:

"Ah! that cannot be. I did not furrow the stones. They were done by one of the best mill-wrights in England, from whom I bought them, and I can show you that they are furrowed just as the latest book on the subject directs."

So we marched into the house, and he showed me the book, which I found directed the furrows to be just as his were. I said to him:

"I still think your stones would grind as other persons' do, if they were dressed and furrowed properly, but I cannot examine them whilst they are going. If you will get the stones taken up, I will come again to-morrow and tell you what is wrong with them."

He replied despondently: "I have had a dozen persons here who, like you, call themselves millers, and none of them has made anything go better. I am sick and tired of struggling to improve things myself, and, if you will give me £300 for the mill and house that have cost me more than £3000, I will sell them to you."

"I wont buy your mill until I have shown you what is wrong with it, whatever it may be," I said, "but if you still wish to sell it then, I will accept your offer."

I went eagerly to the stones when I reached the mill next morning, and looked carefully over them, and Mr Eliot watched me anxiously as I did so. I felt my face and ears grow hot when I had to tell him that the furrows were too deep and too much behind the centre, but that would only make the wheat go through them all the faster, too fast indeed, and I could find no reason why it did not do so. The face of the weary mill-owner changed from a look of eager expectancy to one of supreme contempt. He spoke never a word, but I could see that he would like to have said:

"Then you are no better than all the other fools who have come here thinking they could put me right."

He turned on his heel and went away, while I sat on the stones like Cowper's spaniel who

Puzzling, set his puppy brains
To comprehend the case.

After a time Mr Eliot came back, and asked me somewhat shortly what I proposed to do next.

"I am very much puzzled to know what to do," I said. "The furrows are, as you say, all right, and I can see no reason why the wheat does not go through them even too fast. But there is evidently something very wrong, and find out what it is I must and will, if I stay here for the next month, so I will just dress this pair of stones whilst you drive the other."

Mr Eliot soon got up steam and started one pair of the stones, and the moment he did so I saw what was wrong. The stones were furrowed to go round in one direction, and they were being driven round in the other, so that, as the furrows passed over each other, they pushed the wheat back towards the centre instead of pushing it towards the circumference. When I told Mr Eliot this, he sat down on the hoop of the stone that was going, and groaned aloud. He uttered some very harsh maledictions upon himself and upon all the millers and books he had consulted for the last three years. As soon as he was composed enough, I suggested that he should alter his machinery so as to drive the stones in the direction for which they were furrowed. He said that it would cost a great deal to do so, and that he had no more money to spend. It was, therefore, agreed that I should take a quarter of an inch off the face of one pair of the stones, and put the furrows in the right way – which meant ten days of very unpleasant work for me.

When this was accomplished, I left him easily grinding six bushels an hour, and I promised to come again when the stones wanted dressing. When I did so, I found that he had been grinding all the wheat in his mill at a great rate; but he had not succeeded in dressing any of it; and looked more worn out and dispirited than ever. I told him what was wrong with his dressing machine and how to alter it, but he said:

"If you would only buy this hateful place, I should have enough money to put up a sawmill, which I do understand, at Massacre Bay."

I offered to work for him for a while and see if I could get things to go any better; but he was quite determined to leave, and, when he had signed the conveyance and received his cheque, he went out of the mill with the air of a prisoner escaping from some foul and loathsome dungeon, remarking, with heartfelt fervour, as he said good-bye:

"God grant that I may never see the inside of a flour-mill again!"

It was the very next day, when I had been trying the wind-mill to see if it was of any use, and had been looking most intently up at the sails, that I turned round and saw my brother Edward standing close behind me. I had no idea that he had left England; but he had gone to Adelaide, expecting to find me there, and, failing to do so, had come on to New Zealand. He could not have arrived when his advice and assistance would have been more valuable to me, and it seemed almost as if my guardian angel must have directed him to come to my help.

My wife was greatly surprised when I led Edward in, and I think regretted that she was not wearing her best gown to receive him in; but he won her heart by his commendation of her beloved babies (besides William, we now had a little daughter, Elizabeth, born about a year after our return to New Zealand), and, as we chatted together, even Willie, who was a very shy child, forgot his fear of the strange uncle, and contributed items to the conversation in his unintelligible English. Edward was not a robust man, but his tastes were all very simple, and he had a great dislike to anything approaching display or extravagance, so that he not only approved of, but really seemed to thoroughly enjoy, our simple mode of living.

I was anxious to show him my purchase, and he soon put on a suit of my mill clothes, and went through that jumble of ridiculous mistakes as systematically as though it had been his investment instead of mine, whilst he laughed very heartily at the history of the backward-driven stones, the slow-driven flour-dresser, the overdriven wind-mill, and all the innumerable blunders made by poor Mr Eliot. It was not to me altogether a laughing matter, as my hurried and almost accidental purchase gave me a great deal of hard mental and physical work for very little pay. Edward seemed to

look upon it as his mission to try to solve the hard puzzle of that remarkable mill for me, and he stayed within its walls almost as closely as I did. He hastily went through the other badly constructed mills in the Nelson Province; but he really saw very little of New Zealand. It happened to be very unusually wet whilst he was with us; so that, when he had to hurry back to his own never-before-neglected business, he always retained the idea that New Zealand was a terribly muddy country, where it rained almost incessantly; where every man was a jack of all trades, and where unpractical gentlemen built large houses which they filled with perfectly useless machinery, and called flour-mills.

The wind-mill proved quite useless, and was never tried after the first few days; but I struggled on with the flimsy, old-fashioned, six-horse-power steam engine that would drive only one pair of stones at full work, until the supply of cheap, inferior coal, picked up on the surface of Massacre Bay, was exhausted. I had then to buy English coal, which was so dear that, to make a living wage, it was necessary to charge one shilling and threepence per bushel for grinding, which gave great offence to my customers.

About five miles from Richmond, on the south side of the Wairoa River, some half mile below a large building, known for many years as "the waterless mill" (because it had been intended for a mill, but its owners never got sufficient water to work it), were twenty acres of poor stony land which I made up my mind to purchase. I felt sure that it would give me all the rights and boulder banks that were necessary to secure some control of the river in a flood, and I knew that if I started a water-wheel there, though it would be sometimes under water, it would not be carried away in a raging flood, because the tail water would rise more than the head water. To control and secure that splendid water power, I had to send for the £300 left on interest with Mr Cumack, and even to borrow money from William Cullen.

Friend Cullen was quite a character. He was, even then, a wealthy man; but he spent so little on his own comfort that his neighbours regarded him as quite a miser – an idea that he encouraged, as he had very little approbativeness and a good deal of a certain dry sort of humour. He readily consented to lend me the money I required, and I got a lawyer to draw out a deed of

mortgage for him over my property. When I carried this to him, I found him cooking his evening meal in a frying-pan over a small fire. It did not look very appetising, being a dough made of flour and water; but he was so hungry after his long day's work in the open air that he scarcely waited for it to be warm before he began putting pieces of it in his mouth; and it seemed probable that it would all have disappeared before it was anything like cooked. He still kept the handle of the frying-pan in his grasp, as, in his slow, careful, shrewd fashion, he looked over the deed of mortgage I had given him, and then crumpled it up in his hand and threw it on the fire, saying:

"I want no mortgage on your mill; you'll pay me right enough without that."

And so I did, in less than six months after the mill started, and never again was I forced to ask for borrowed money from anyone.

I spent nearly all my time on my new property, overseeing the workmen, digging, carpentering, and doing all I could to help things along, so that I went home only for the Sunday. Just as the building was completed, the machinery ready to start, and the bottom floor crowded with grists, an event happened that had a very solemnising influence upon the population of Nelson, and was such a shock to my wife's nerves that I think it had an injurious influence upon the whole of her after life. She had been brought up in the belief, more often preached in those days – when so many believed in an angry and vengeful God – than it is now, that the end of the world was at hand; and, when the great earthquake of February 23rd, 1855, occurred, she never doubted that the Day of Wrath had indeed arrived. The first violent quake shook down the high steam chimney of the Richmond mill, and also the chimney of the dwelling house there, and the bricks of this latter chimney fell upon the bedroom floor just over the room in which William and his mother were sitting. For three years before the birth of his little sister, William had been the constant and very often, for days at a time, the sole companion of his young mother. He inherited her peculiar gift of keeping babies good and happy, and, as each new sister and brother arrived, welcomed them with almost maternal tenderness, so that, at a very early age, he became more of a friend and companion to his

mother than would have been thought possible for such a young child. On the occasion I am now referring to, he and his mother were alone in the house with the exception of a young nurse girl (Louisa Dron), Elizabeth, and the year-old baby Edward (so called by his mother in honour of my eldest brother.

I hastened home as quickly as I could, and was with my family within half an hour of the main shock; but minor shocks, preceded by low, deep rumblings, continued at intervals during the whole night and through the next day. When I arrived, Rhoda was trembling all over, shaken with hysterical sobs, whilst poor William was clinging to her with a look of terror that I can never forget.

The terrors of that long-continued earthquake were never forgotten by those who experienced them, and I often think that if the capitalists, who have of late years built six-storey brick houses in Wellington upon the very ground that was lifted two feet on that occasion, had only seen its effect upon one or two-storey brick houses in 1855, they would not so recklessly have tempted loss and destruction. But seeing and feeling an earthquake is a very much more impressive experience than only hearing about it.

Though my new mill was the highest building in the district, it was not much injured by that commotion of nature. A few split braces had to be repaired; but the cuttings and strong boulder banks that conducted a portion of the river to the mill were uninjured, and, on the 5th of March, 1855, I started that useful mill to which I am so much indebted.

CHAPTER XVI. BRIGHTWATER MILL AND HIS FAITHFUL SERVANTS MAKE ALFRED A RICH MAN

CHAPTER XVI

BRIGHTWATER MILL AND HIS FAITHFUL SERVANTS MAKE ALFRED A RICH MAN

Our good servants, who work for wages – how much more their help is worth to us than anything people could give us.
– ELISABETH BOYD BAYLY.

WHEN struggling with the costly, dangerous, and inefficient steam-engine at Richmond, I used often to sing and say, from the bottom of my heart

"Bright water, bright water,
Bright water for me,"

so that it was natural enough for me to give my mill the name of "Brightwater," a name that has since been extended to the pleasant, industrious settlement that so soon grew up around it. And a bright life that fine water power gave me for twelve prosperous years – happy years for an old man to look back upon – when, with my family around me in health and contentment, and everything I turned my hand to prospering, I fought my most enjoyable political battles, and received so many flattering tokens of the esteem of my fellow colonists.

After my heavy outlay in bringing in the valuable water-power, buying machinery, and building a good mill, I had far too little money left for the purchase of wheat, and I owed Mr Cullen money too, so I determined to keep the two pairs of stones going day and night, with no help but that of my wife's young brother, who came to live with us soon after we returned to Nelson, and remained a member of our household until we left for England in 1867.

I built a small, three-roomed cottage only fifteen yards from the mill, and brought a wire into my

bedroom attached at the other end to the casing of one of the stones. This always told me the pace of the mill-wheel, and I had long ago learned to wake at any alteration of that pace. In this way I avoided the expense of a miller until my debt was paid off and I had enough money to purchase all the wheat that I was offered. Money came in so much faster than I expected that I really need not have been afraid to employ all the help I wanted. I ground considerably more than a thousand bushels a week at one shilling and threepence a bushel, so that I earned over £1600 during the first six months in which there was wheat enough to keep me at full work. I did not intend to charge more than one shilling per bushel for grinding, and this would have been a great deal too much; but I found that, if I charged only one shilling, the farmers would not sell me their wheat, but would have it ground and sell the flour. I could get more than one shilling and threepence per bushel by buying their wheat and selling the ground produce, more by buying wheat from Canterbury, and still more when I imported it from Adelaide or Valparaiso; so that, although I felt almost like a robber when I found that I had earned £1600 in six months, I felt quite easy when, with four pairs of stones going day and night all the year round, I was able to earn £3000 a year against all opposition on the Free Trade principle of buying in the cheapest and selling in the dearest market. I was the only miller in Nelson who was in a position to send money to Adelaide or Valparaiso for a cargo of wheat. The first cargo of wheat that I imported was from Adelaide. It was most honestly and ably purchased for me by my old friend Thomas Magarey. The Adelaide wheat makes very much stronger flour than the New Zealand wheat does, so it enabled me to raise the character of my flour still higher than it was before, and the gold-diggers would not risk carrying flour of any other brand over the mountains on their backs, even though it was given to them.

After the first six months' work, we were in a position to build a nice house, not quite so near the mill, and to lay out and plant a good garden and orchard.

When I bought the steam-mill from Mr Eliot, I sold my horses and dray, and lived, very much against my will, without a horse for some three years; so that, when I started Brightwater Mill, I had to employ one of our

neighbours to take the flour to town with his plough horses. But that did not last long, as I soon found myself rich enough to order a good two-horse flour waggon, and paid £140 for a well-broken horse and an unbroken mare. My friend, William Wilkie, rated me soundly for that piece of extravagance; but it did not prove a very ruinous proceeding, as the mare, for which I gave £60, bred two foals for which I refused £140 each at four years old; and I took first and second prizes with them at the Richmond Horse Shows for three years in succession. Notwithstanding Mr Wilkie's rebuke, I soon spent another £100 in the purchase of a saddle mare for myself and a pony for William, and few events in our lives ever gave us all so much pleasure. But the greatest joy our access of wealth gave me was that it enabled me to send £100 home to England to my mother every year, which I did until her death in 1874, when I found that she had not spent a penny of it on herself, but had saved it all to leave to her devoted daughter Ellen.

I was able to select, from numerous offers, three first-rate apprentices, who soon learned to give me all the assistance I wanted. Up to the time that I was elected Superintendent of the Province, I made a point of always dressing the millstones myself, and I then taught my senior apprentice to do them better than any other miller I could obtain.

My three apprentices soon understood their work sufficiently well to leave me free enough to manage a farm of a hundred acres, five miles distant from the mill; and, like my father, to have a mill for profit and a farm for pleasure. A good settler, a member of the Provincial Council called Otterson, was drowned whilst attempting to cross the Wairoa River on horseback, so that his farm and residence were offered to let by public tender. I bid a pound an acre rent for it, and got it for seven years.

It was about this time that an old man named Jordan came to see me in Brightwater Mill, bringing with him a letter of recommendation from the Baptist Minister of Nelson, Mr Dolamore, who had received a very good character of Jordan from his friends in the Old Country. He looked very frail and old, and was wheezing with asthma, as he told me that he had worked since boyhood in a small, damp, dusty mill in the north of England, until his health had completely broken down, and he had come with his wife, and a son and daughter, to what he

had been told was the best climate in the world, in the hope of recovering his health. He asked me if I could give him some employment.

I liked his fine, honest old face, and the frank way in which he answered my questions. I tried him on the millstones, but saw at once that his eyesight was not good enough for him to take my place there. Moreover, I knew that he ought not to be working inside a mill at all, so that I offered him the driving of a pair of horses in one of my flour waggons. He had not been much used to horses, but he soon learned to manage them remarkably well, and kept them always in the pink of condition. He was very truthful and honest, and watched over my interests in every way. He took orders from my customers, and saw that they were carefully and exactly executed. He kept accounts which were always correct to a penny: indeed, in that department, he was much more thoroughly reliable than his master.

Old Jordan, as everyone called him, was soon known all along the road, and was a general favourite with all who had to deal with him. My memory recalls only one occasion when he had the slightest disagreement with any of my customers. This was with a lady who regarded herself as quite a leader in Nelson society. She had directed Jordan to bring her a bag of flour. His orders were that he was to receive ready money for any goods delivered on the road, and he very respectfully told her this when he delivered the flour. Her reply was:

"My good man, you have quite mistaken your master's directions. It it all right to insist on receiving ready money from people like the Smiths or the Browns, but from any one in my position it is simply ridiculous to ask it."

Jordan said: " My master has not one rule for the rich and another for the poor, and, if you don't pay for the flour, ma'am, I can't leave it."

She replied, very angrily: "You're a most impertinent fellow, and I shall tell your master of you."

To which Jordan answered, as he carried the flour back to the waggon: "All right, ma'am, you can tell my mistress too, if you like."

My business increased so much that I soon had sixteen horses fully employed in hauling wheat to, and flour from, the mill, so that carting alone became a rather

important part of my business. Jordan's supervision of this part of the work, and the good influence he exercised over his fellow servants, were very valuable to me. On one occasion, when he was finding fault with an under-carter for neglecting his horses on Sunday, the young fellow said flippantly:

"You seem to think a good deal more of your horses than you do of your chapel."

To which Jordan replied: "If my chapel don't teach me to do justice to my master, and to my horses too, there isn't any use in my going to it."

Just one other record of his faithful service among his fellow workers must suffice. He used to get a little can of milk from our house every day. On one occasion, he brought the can back, and waited patiently about until he had an opportunity of seeing the young maid servant who had given it to him, when he said, in his kind, fatherly way:

"My girl, you have made a mistake. It was not milk you gave me this morning, but thick, rich cream, and I have brought it back for you to change it."

To which the girl replied: "Oh! Mr Jordan, it wasn't a mistake – I meant you to have it. There's such lots of cream comes off the milk here, Missus would be none the wiser if I had given you twice as much."

Jordan was so grieved, and spoke so earnestly to her, that he deeply impressed the kindly, light-hearted young girl with the dishonesty of her conduct, and she came to my wife with tears in her eyes, and told her all about it.

When Jordan had been with us some two or three years, he had a very serious illness. The doctor drove up to our door, one very wet afternoon, and asked to see Rhoda. He said:

"Mrs Saunders, your old carter is dying. He has evidently something on his mind, and is very anxious to see you. It is a disagreeable day to take you out, but I am sure you would like to gratify his last wish."

Of course Rhoda went. Mrs Jordan came to the door, but said, in answer to their inquiries:

"I am afraid it is too late. He takes no notice of anything and will not know you."

They all went into the bedroom together, and the doctor tried various methods for the purpose of rousing him, but without success. Directly, however, that Rhoda put her hand on his and spoke his name, he opened his eyes, and managed, with great difficulty, to tell her that his account for some buttons that she had asked him to get for her in town was wrong, and that he had, by mistake of course, charged her sixpence halfpenny too much. This sum he directed his wife to pay Rhoda. Then, with the air of a man whose earthly affairs were all settled, he sank back exhausted on his pillow. But, with his conscience relieved from the burden of that sixpence halfpenny, he recovered, and before long was going about his work again in his old earnest, careful fashion.

As Jordan looked so well after my interests, I was naturally anxious to promote his, and suggested that, when he was not forced to bring a load back from town for me, he should bring out goods in his tilted waggon for the storekeepers on the road, and I also authorised him to do business or errands in town for them whilst his horses were resting. In this way, he made quite a little fortune for himself, so that, when I gave up business and sold out, he was able to buy the dwelling-house and land that I had bought with the steam-mill.

One thing that amused and very much pleased Rhoda and me, was the way that Mr and Mrs Jordan guarded our property with just as much care as if it had been their own, and, in speaking of our possessions, they always said, "our mill," "our horses," and "our children." There can be no doubt that, by thus devoting himself to my interests, this humble, uncultured old man did much to bring about the success that followed all my undertakings at Brightwater Mill; for my large concentrativeness, whilst it has sometimes helped to carry me through difficult undertakings, has led me to neglect the little everyday affairs of life so important to the success of a business man.

CHAPTER XVII. ALFRED ENTERS PUBLIC LIFE IN NEW ZEALAND

CHAPTER XVII

ALFRED ENTERS PUBLIC LIFE IN NEW ZEALAND

(By Ellen and Ann Saunders)

An old Quaker gentleman once said to me: "I need not ask thee if thee is interested in politics, for it would be the same as asking if thee is interested in thy fellow-creatures."
– ELISABETH BOYD BAYLY.

THE Editor of the Christchurch "Press" wrote of Alfred, after he passed onward, in 1905: "Mr Saunders was absolutely fearless in carrying out any course that he believed to be right, caring nothing for any unpopularity it might bring him," and those words supply the keynote to the history of his public life. His public service was uniformly painstaking, devoted, and unselfish, and as such it has been recognised even by those who were most bitterly politically opposed to him. He never sought power nor popularity for the sake of any personal advantage to himself. It was never any temptation to him to "prophesy smooth things, to prophesy deceit," and many a despised and rejected cause found in him a gallant and untiring champion. But he never realised how much he inherited from his father of what his niece, Elisabeth Boyd Bayly, used to call "the Saunders' impulse to rebuke the erring." The large concentrativeness to which he has referred in the last chapter made him sometimes fail to see that "every shield has two sides, and it is possible to maintain the one side to be golden, without denying the truth of the champion who asserts the other side to be silver." Like his father, whom he resembled in many ways, and perhaps in nothing more than in his absolute indifference to the consequences to himself of doing what he believed to be right, he readily forgave and forgot hard knocks himself, and he expected everyone else to do the same. There was something commanding about his appearance, and

his clear blue eyes seemed to have a sort of magnetic power of compelling attention. He delighted in meeting a foeman whom he thought worthy of his steel in a political debate, was very quick at repartee, and knew well how to turn a laugh against his opponent.

The following pages of this chapter give, perhaps, as good an idea as anything could of Alfred's strength and weakness as a public man; but of course no written or printed report gives quite a true idea of a speaker's powers. He had a clear, melodious voice, which he just as easily made audible to a thousand as to a single person, and an impressive and dignified delivery.

Towards the end of the year Brightwater Mill was started, Alfred was elected a member of the Nelson Provincial Council for the electoral district of Waimea South, after a contest in which he defeated Mr Travers, a well-known Nelson lawyer. The Council met at 5 p.m., and usually sat until midnight, after which Alfred had thirteen miles to drive home. He was returned for the same seat for ten years, and then he was elected by the whole Province to be its Superintendent. At the beginning of his public career in New Zealand, he laid down for himself the following five principles from which he never swerved throughout the rest of his life, during most of which he was actively employed in public service:

1. Taking care of the public money as if it were his own.

2. Trying to get unimproved land taxed, and all industrial improvements exempted.

3. Liberally supporting primary education by the State, but leaving religious instruction entirely to the voluntary support of the many various denominations or individuals.

4. Always opposing what Mr Gladstone so well describes as " the pestiferous practice of anticipating revenue, " and

5. Discouraging mere land speculation by a substantial progressive tax upon large landed estates.

Some thirty years after the events now to be recorded, Mr James Wilkie wrote of Alfred in a Wellington paper:

"The phrase, 'an extinct volcano,' has lately caught on with the public; not that I think for a moment that

Mr Alfred Saunders has arrived at that stage yet, for when he, on not very frequent occasions, catches the Speaker's eye, there are others, with myself, who recognise that a giant is on his legs. But Mr Saunders to-day, compared with him I knew in the early fifties, is a changed man. Now, he is listened to for the solid wisdom consequent on his experience and acknowledged talent. Then, his speeches bristled with witticisms and criticisms which made his hearers roar, and his natural born enemies, the early squatters, shake in their shoes. He, who trod on the soil of the colony as far back as 1842, would, if for no better reason, claim respect for the part he acted as a pioneer; but he has far greater claims on our gratitude than that. When constitutional government was granted to the colony, and crystallised into a workable form by Sir George Grey, through the medium of Provincial institutions, it was Mr Saunders who first sounded the keynote of 'the land for the people.' As a bold and aggressive enemy of the squatter policy of alienating the lands to wealthy immigrants for a nominal price, such as Cheviot and other estates were sold for, he and a few sturdy colonists in concert with him, fought, inch by inch, the endeavour of the squatters to obtain the land in large blocks to the exclusion of the real workers. In those days he was a flour-miller, and, in trenchant articles signed 'Molarius Dusty,' he exposed the wrong then being done to the colony by the policy adopted. Things came to a crisis in Nelson in the year 1856, when Mr Stafford gave up the Superintendency and accepted the Premiership of the colony. Then Dr. (after-wards Sir David) Monro was selected by the governing party as the embodiment of gentility, and as the only fitting ruler for the Nelson Province. Up till the nomination day, it seemed as if no move was to be made by the people, who felt that an injury was being done by their quiescence, but knew not how to combat it. Suddenly, Mr Saunders in concert with the late W. Wilkie and Isaac M. Hill, conceived the idea of running a bona fide working man against the autocratic Monro for the chief office in the province. A man was selected, who was not within reach at the time, and, late on the same night, one of the conspirators left in a whaleboat, for Massacre Bay, and after some difficulties on the voyage, a sawyer he was in search of, named J. P. Robinson, was caught. He had acted as librarian of the Mechanics' Institute in Birmingham, knew John Bright

well, and was exceedingly well informed on all political questions – his opinions were half a century too advanced for British ideas, so he left Birmingham in November, 1842. Mr Wilkie succeeded in getting him from Motupipi to Nelson, just in time to get on the hustings to speak, where he was proposed by Mr Saunders, whose speech carried the electors with him and secured Mr Robinson's election. I mention this fact because it was the first time in the history of the colony that the masses came in contact with the classes, and because the victory was more due to Alfred Saunders than to anyone else."

Up to the nomination of Mr Robinson, Dr Monro's only opponent for the Superintendency was Mr W. T. L. Travers, who stood as the friend of the working classes. He was a clever, fearless, eloquent public speaker, and was known to freely and fearlessly punish anyone who crossed his path. He had even horse-whipped one of his late opponents.

When the day arrived for the public nomination of candidates, the largest concourse of electors assembled that had ever hitherto met together to attend the nomination of any official in Nelson. Mr Charles Elliot, the proprietor of the only Nelson newspaper, proposed Dr. Monro. Mr Robert Burns, a Wesleyan local preacher, proposed Mr Travers. Alfred Saunders proposed Mr Robinson.

It is not the intention of the compilers of this memoir to quote largely from Alfred's public speeches. They may be read in "Hansard" and in many newspaper reports that still exist by anyone who cares to do so. But as the speech made by him on this occasion perhaps did more to sway the opinions of his fellow-colonists than any other public utterance of his ever did, a report of it is given in full. After Dr. Monro and Mr Travers had been proposed by their nominators, Alfred spoke as follows:

"Mr Returning Officer and Brother Electors, I am much pleased to see such a large number of the electors of this province attending here to-day. It shows that we have some public spirit still left in Nelson; and there never was a time when we had more need of it than on this highly important occasion. It is not, indeed, the first time that we have been called upon to elect a Superintendent; but it is the first time that we have met to do so with a full experimental knowledge of the

extremely important powers which our Constitution Act has conferred upon our Superintendent, who is indeed our leader, guide, and law-enforcer.

"The lively, good-tempered speech we have listened to from Mr Elliot is a capital specimen of that gentleman's power of adapting himself to the varying circumstances of his New Zealand life, in the newspaper and the Provincial Council, on the platform and the hustings. I have heard this able gentleman speak before, and felt my heart beat faster as he exposed, in his clear, convincing way, the weakness of the man whom Dr. Monro put forward as a candidate for the immensely important office of the first Superintendent of this province. Even after I went to Australia, the stirring words of that impressive speech would often recur to me as I drove my bullocks through the Gap in the Grampians, or ploughed up the soil with them at Mount Barker, and I felt glad to think that my fellow-labourers in New Zealand had amongst them such an able and ardent defender of their rights. When, after some years, I returned to New Zealand, I looked forward with pleasure to meeting Mr Elliot again; but I was busy building and starting my new mill, and saw nothing of him until to-day, when he rose and advocated in his old able manner – What? Why! – the sale of the land to the runholders at one shilling an acre, and the election to the Superintendency of this pioneer province of the Prince of the Original Land Purchasers, the Prince of the Nelson Supper Party – Dr. David Monro. How strange to hear Mr Elliot speak thus! But perhaps I am more surprised and bewildered at the complete change of all my old colleague's views than are those of you who have been meeting him from day to day –

Minutely trace man's life; year after year,
Through all his days let all his deeds appear,
And then, though some may in that life be strange,
Yet there appears no vast nor sudden change:
The links that bind those various deeds are seen,
And no mysterious void is left between.
But let those binding links be all destroyed,
All that through years he suffered or enjoyed,
Let that vast gap be made, and then behold –
This was the youth, and he is thus when old;
Pain mix'd with pity in our bosoms rise,
And sorrow takes new sadness from surprise.

"If, like Mr Elliot, I wanted to see the little good land we have in this province all monopolised in large sheep-runs by a few wealthy individuals; or held by them without taxation until poor farmers had made roads to it, and through it, for them; if I wanted to see New Zealand a land of sheep rather than the home of thriving settlers; if I wanted industry and improvements taxed, and land speculation set free, then I, too, should be here to-day to support Dr. Monro; for we could not desire to see the highest position in our Government occupied with more grace and dignity than it would be by him. But I do not want to see such a state of things in this fair land we have made our home, and I mean to work and fight against it. I want to bring grists to my mill. I want to see our farmers growing wheat. I want to see their sons able to get land and settle down on their native soil, instead of being driven elsewhere in search of a home. I want to see a thousand men, women and children settled on Cheviot, instead of twenty, and I want no man to be able to say that he cannot find well-paid employment in a country as large as England with less than an eightieth part of her population.

"I have told you what I think about a good many things, but I shall not tell you my opinion of Mr Burns' candidate. If I were to do so, I should perhaps get a horse-whipping, and I might not, you see, find that forcible argument as convincing as the last gentleman he tried it upon did.

"Mr Burns tells us that Mr Robinson is not qualified for the position of Superintendent, and that we want a gentleman, a highly educated man, one who will adorn the head of the supper table when the Governor is present, and one who is fitted to associate with the highest classes of society."

"What does Mr Burns want in the shape of a gentleman? And why is Mr Robinson not one? Is it because, like most of us here to-day, he does not boast of his descent from loins enthroned, but from honest, sober, hard-working folk? Has Mr Burns ever heard of his using abusive language, or uttering profane oaths, or failing in courtesy or kindness? Has he ever horsewhipped anyone? And why would he not adorn the head of the supper table when the Governor is present? Is it because he does not order his attire from a fashionable London tailor? And how does Mr Burns know that Mr

Robinson is not highly educated? He may, very possibly, not know as much Latin as Mr Burns' candidate, but do we want our Superintendent to talk Latin to us? I am sure I don't, for I sometimes find it difficult enough to understand what our candidates really mean even when they are addressing us in ordinary, everyday English. Mr Robinson is a friend of John Bright – a man who, I think you will admit, is fit to associate with any Governor we are likely to have in New Zealand. Mr Robinson worked on John Bright's committee in the Birmingham Institute, and has probably obtained more political knowledge than any of us here. It was because his opinions were far in advance of those generally held in Britain that he left the Old Country in 1842 and came to New Zealand, and I think we are fortunate to have the opportunity of electing such a man for our leader.

"But I do not wish to represent Mr Robinson as more clever or more highly educated than either of his opponents. I only claim for him that his interest is not the interest of a class or of a monopoly, but the interest of the province as a whole, and of all classes, so far as they are working for the general good, with no exclusive or selfish objects. He has never betrayed nor disappointed those who have trusted him; and what he has done in the past is the best guarantee we could possibly have that, without the slightest class animosity in any direction, he will earnestly and honestly seek the welfare of us all, if we are wise enough to choose him for our Superintendent."

As Alfred had perhaps expected and hoped, Mr Travers was so provoked by this speech that he said nothing about Mr Robinson, but at once replied in a speech which he devoted entirely to a counter-attack upon Alfred.

When the nominations were over, the leading supporters of Dr. Monro gathered round Alfred and thanked him for his speech. They said to him:

"You have settled Travers at any rate, but you surely do not think that anyone in the province could beat Monro?"

To which Alfred replied: "I expect a very close contest between Monro and Robinson."

The mill saw nothing of Alfred for the whole of that

week. All day long he drove about with Mr Robinson visiting all the centres of population. Every evening, an electors' meeting was held at which both Mr Robinson and Alfred spoke and answered questions. Afterwards, as the distances were often too great to drive home, the two friends usually spent the night with one of Mr Robinson's good supporters.

And great was the triumph of those supporters when the news reached them that Mr Robinson had beaten Dr. Monro by sixteen votes. It was a small majority; but, as it proved, Mr Robinson was elected for life. Three times Alfred had the pleasure of nominating him for the Superintendency, and the longer he was known, the larger the majority by which he was returned. He was never defeated, but was drowned nearly nine years afterwards whilst in the active, conscientious discharge of his duty.

Mr Robinson appointed Alfred the unpaid, unofficial member of his Executive Council, and, during his occupation of the position of Superintendent, never took any important step in opposition to his advice.

In 1858, Mr Stafford's Government appointed Alfred a Justice of the Peace, and Mr Barnicoat and he held a weekly Court at Richmond. Of Mr Barnicoat Alfred wrote:

"I never saw another man who took so much pains to be right as Mr Barnicoat did; but he saw so much to be said on both sides of a question that he had the greatest difficulty in coming to any decision at all. I have often worked with him, and still oftener against him; but I have never failed to respect him as a conscientious, painstaking administrator of Justice. When the Provincial Council- was sitting, it was my custom to leave the mill at 3 p. m., pick up Mr Barnicoat at Richmond, and put him down at the Council Chambers at 4. 30 p. m., so that, on the way, we had a good deal of conversation upon the work that was to come before us."

CHAPTER XVIII. THREE MONTHS IN NELSON GAOL

CHAPTER XVIII

THREE MONTHS IN NELSON GAOL

Defeat shall then be victory,
Your loss, the wealth of full amends.
– J. G. WHITTIER.

THE year 1859 was, to me, a very trying one in business. I came out of it with a good deal of profit, but that profit was gained in a very risky, dangerous, unsatisfactory way. The unnatural price to which wheat attained made it dangerous to hold it, yet it was necessary to offer a very high price for it to prevent the whole of the Nelson crop from being sent to Australia six months before the new wheat would be coming in.

In the year 1856, I had, at the request of many farmers, introduced a system of advancing money to them to meet their harvest expenses three months before their wheat could be delivered to me. I was well known to be ready to purchase any given quantity of good wheat to be delivered to me not later than the first of the following March, and to advance half the price not sooner than the first of the previous December – January being the principal harvest month. These advances should have been secured to me under printed forms of agreement; but, instead of that, I only took the farmers' acceptances for the money advanced. The farmers were, as a rule, very honest, and I could afford to be very easy and liberal with them. In fact, it was usually more convenient to me that they should not all send in their wheat before March lst. But, in 1859, I met with an exceptionally dishonest farmer whose conduct brought about one of the most remarkable episodes in my life. This farmer had sold me one of the largest lots of wheat, and had delivered rather more than half the quantity bargained for, when the price of wheat suddenly rose. Before he knew how much it had risen, another miller offered him sixpence a bushel more for it than I had done,

if he would deliver it to him instead of to me; and this he accordingly did. I was bound to show all the farmers that they could not treat me thus; so, when he came to settle with me, I refused to pay him any balance due to him until he delivered the full quantity of wheat sold to me.

He at once consulted Mr Travers' partner, who advised him to summon me for the balance, and to claim the advanced price for all the wheat he had previously delivered to me. This he did, and obtained all he claimed in the District Court of which Mr Travers had recently been appointed Judge. Mr Travers then reported the case in the "Nelson Examiner." I went to the Editor of that paper, and, after ascertaining from him most positively that the report was "obtained from no less an authority than the Judge himself," I wrote the following letter. The concluding words of it formed the libel for which I was prosecuted:

To the Editor of the " Nelson Examiner " –

"Sir, – I am sorry to trouble you to state that what appears in last Wednesday's "Examiner" as my deposition in the case of Eden v. Saunders, is a mere fabrication, containing very little that I did say, and much that I did not say; neither is the evidence of any other witness in that case correctly reported.

"I can readily believe, Sir, that you are not to blame for such a misreport. I have no doubt that your publisher obtained it from what ought to be the highest possible authority; and that you regret as sincerely as I do that that authority is entitled to so little respect.

"If it does not suit his Honour the Judge to give a verdict according to evidence, he can hardly expect that a number of Englishmen will allow him to distort their evidence to make it accord with his verdict."

I am, etc,
Alfred Saunders.
Brightwater Mill.
November 30th, 1859.

Mr Travers at once sent me a letter demanding an apology. In reply, I ridiculed his demand and concluded my letter with these words:

"Mr Travers knows me too well to imagine that he can frighten me into a retraction or denial of any statement which I believe to be perfectly true."

After such a reply, Mr Travers had no alternative but to go on with his prosecution of me for a criminal libel on a Judge; but I think he really hoped to the last that I should give him some chance to withdraw the prosecution.

Judge Johnstone, before whom I was shortly to appear, really knew nothing about me, and the passionate abuse to which I was subjected by him was attributed by my friends to the fact that, on his arrival in Nelson, he was exclusively entertained by Dr. Monro and his supporters. Of course I do not know that this was so; but when the Superintendent of the Province, the Speaker of the Provincial Council, and several of its members, called upon Judge Johnstone to ask him to support a petition to the Governor for my release, he said:

"Gentlemen, before the trial, I heard nothing that was good about Mr Saunders; but now I hear everyone shouting about his fine character and great virtues."

The date of the trial was January 26th, 1860, and, on the previous day, I was summoned to a kind of preliminary examination, at which Judge Johnstone gave me a specimen of his peculiar method of conducting the business of the Court.

The language in which Judge Johnstone pronounced sentence upon me was really amusing. If I had been

"The greatest demon to be found
In fire, earth, sky, or underground,"

who had been proved to be guilty of numerous cowardly murders, he could not have characterised me more forcibly as "a pestiferous scoundrel whose malignant influence was the worst that any community could possibly be cursed with." He added that I was ten times more dangerous because I had been allowed to make laws and nominate rulers, and that he must put a stop to my corrupting influence over my fellow-settlers, and so sentenced me to six months' imprisonment, a fine of £150 and to be struck off the Commission of the Peace.

A petition to the Governor for my release was at once circulated; but, as it took some weeks to collect signatures in such a widely scattered district, and, when this was done, there was no steamer to Auckland for several weeks, it was not possible to get a reply until very nearly three months after I had been committed to prison, and then only by not consulting the Judge in Wellington on the subject. The order for release came to Nelson on a Sunday. It was at once sent to me, and I drove home in the carriage in which several members of my family had driven in to spend the day with me.

I must say, in justice to Mr Travers, that the harsh sentence was no fault of his. When asked what he thought of it, he replied:

"Too long! Too long! – by five months and three weeks. A week would have done him good; but now they have made a martyr of him, and he will be ten times more conceited and popular than ever."

Mr Travers' whole conduct during the trial rather raised than lowered him in my estimation. He certainly tried to be as conciliatory as he could. He was a man who could forgive and forget very hard knocks. Years afterwards, when, as old men, we were both in the House of Representatives, he sought me out there, and said, as he shook my hand very heartily:

"You and I did many foolish things when we were young, for which I am sure we are now both very sorry."

As to Judge Johnstone, four years after the trial, he had the pleasure of meeting me as the Superintendent of the Province, on whom he depended for his court arrangements and police support. Had I been an angel dropped down from heaven, he could not have lauded more, both in public and in private, the man whom he had once called "a pestiferous scoundrel whose malignant influence was the worst that any community could possibly be cursed with."

NOTE BY COMPILERS

Mr James Wilkie, who was present at Alfred's trial, sent the following account of it to a Wellington paper some thirty years afterwards: – "In those days (1860) lawyers were not as plentiful as sparrows, and the only members of the fraternity then in Nelson were the Provincial

solicitor (this gentleman, Mr Henry Adams, had been engaged as his counsel by Mr Saunders but Judge Johnstone refused to allow him to act in that capacity), the plaintiff and the plaintiff's partner. And, in that remote period, no man dreamed of sending elsewhere for a lawyer. Wellington then was, through the means of travel, more distant from Nelson than Sydney is now, so that Mr Saunders elected to plead his own cause. When he stated this in Court, the Judge asked him, in a manner anything but reassuring, whether he appeared in that Court as 'a pauper.' As fortunes were counted in those early days, Mr Saunders was a wealthy man, and he replied that 'he relied upon his own sense of British justice, and if no quibbles are raised' – 'Quibbles,' roared the Judge, 'let me tell you, prisoner at the bar, there are no quibbles in the English law; what you, in your ignorance, call quibbles, are the bulwarks of British liberty.' – This was not encouraging, and the verdict found by the special jury, with the owner of Cheviot as foreman, was 'guilty'; and the Judge awarded the prisoner six months' imprisonment and a fine of £150. Mr Saunders was removed to gaol, but, on the unanimous petition of the inhabitants of Nelson, was released by Governor Gore-Browne without reference to the Judge."

CHAPTER XIX. FROM THE GAOL TO THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

CHAPTER XIX

FROM THE GAOL TO THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

His State-craft was the Golden Rule,
His right of vote a sacred trust;
Clear, over threat and ridicule,
All heard his challenge: "Is it just?"
– J. G. WHITTIER.

SOME few months after I was released from prison, a general election for the House of Representatives took place. I was strongly urged to oppose the sitting member who had been one of my jurymen. I did so, and, without spending sixpence on the election, I beat him by more than two to one.

My sudden transition from the gaol to the House of Representatives was rendered all the more conspicuous by the chain of circumstances that surrounded me from the very first day that I entered on my Parliamentary duties. I was not in quite the same position as any other member of the House, as I had been elected entirely on personal grounds without making any political pledges. I was thus free to use my own judgment as to how I would vote on a no-confidence motion, and I took care to keep free until I could see the ground upon which the vote was nominally based. Without me, the House was exactly evenly divided, so that my vote would give a majority to either side. Bad as I have always thought Party Government, the evils of it never came home to me so forcibly at any other time as they did during my first four weeks in the House. I was occupying a terribly responsible position for a young member, and every trick of the trade seemed to be concentrated upon me. The Governor and his wife were among the most ardent partisans in Auckland at that time, and Lady Browne and Lady Stafford were my most dangerous persecutors. It was fortunate for me that my blunt awkwardness at

their well-planned entertainments, my home-made clothes, and my inability to dance or to accept the great honour of playing cards with them, made them regard me as a fool whom they could safely flatter as clumsily as they liked, and thus I was enabled to see through them.

Both parties invited me to their caucus meetings, and I went with the very distinct understanding that my doing so should not be considered any pledge of support. I also undertook to be no spy or reporter of their proceedings.

After two weeks loose skirmishing in the House, in which I took no part, although both parties strongly urged me to do so, Mr Stafford tried to get something definitely settled by sending down a message from the Governor, asking the House to pass a resolution letting him know whether it would, or would not, pledge itself to vote "whatever men or money he might think necessary to bring the Maori war to a successful conclusion."

Of course, Mr Fox's friends held a caucus to decide upon how the Governor's message should be answered. At this meeting, Mr Fox read a resolution that he intended to propose in opposition to the one that Mr Stafford had put on the order paper. I agreed with the purport of Mr Fox's resolution and said so, but added that I did not quite like the wording of it. Mr Fox said at once, in his usual kind way:

"Well, put it in your own words, Saunders, no one could do it better."

I did so, and after turning over what I had hastily written on to a sheet of white blotting-paper, I handed it to Mr Fox.

Mr Fox and his supporters said that my wording of the resolution was an improvement, and at once accepted it in the form I had written it, voting for it unanimously, and I thought no more about it. But Mr Herbert E. Curtis, who was then member for one of the Nelson electoral districts, knew my handwriting, and, by inspecting the white blotting paper on which I had dried the resolution, he was able to inform the Government that, though it was proposed by Mr Fox, it had been written by me, and therefore I was sure to vote for it. Upon this information, Stafford's Government resolved

to vote for the amendment, and to proclaim it as mine, to avoid a present certain defeat. This incident has made me very careful ever since of how I use blotting-paper, and especially white blotting-paper.

Five days after the Government had avoided a defeat in this way, Mr Fox forced a division by proposing a direct vote of no-confidence, which was carried, as he knew it would be, by a majority of one only – twenty-four members voting for it and twenty-three against it. The motion was carried on Friday night, and, on Saturday afternoon, Mr Fox was sent for by the Governor. It was, of course, Monday morning before he could possibly call a meeting of all those who had voted for him. At 11 a.m., he announced his Ministry, and, to my astonishment, proposed me as his Colonial Treasurer. This office I at once declined, and Mr Reader Wood, to whom it was then offered, accepted it.

But I have written an account of my first session in Parliament for the Christchurch "Press," so I will not say any more about it here. I was not sorry when the time came to leave Auckland, and I was able to get back to my home, my mill, my farm, and the far more congenial public work in the Provincial Council and on the Executive Cabinet. My constituents could not have received me more kindly than they did, and they seemed well pleased that I had returned to them instead of accepting an appointment that would have retained me in Auckland.

CHAPTER XX. MY FIRST SESSION OF PARLIAMENT

CHAPTER XX

MY FIRST SESSION OF PARLIAMENT

We've gut all the ellerments, this very hour
Thet make up a fus'-class, self-governin' power:
We've a war, an' a debt, an' a flag; an' ef this
Ain't to be inderpendunt, why, wut on airth is?
– J. R. LOWELL.

[This chapter is included here by the kind permission of the Editor of the Christchurch "Press." It was published in the "Literary Column" of that paper, under the title given above, on December 28th, 1896.]

THE House of Representatives in 1861 was very different from what it now is. The members were different, the library and buildings were different, the pay was different, the holder of the Government purse was very different, and the way of getting there was something to be remembered by a bad sailor.

Our payment, called our honorarium, was twenty shillings for each day that the House actually sat and we were present; but, as the House did not always sit even four days a week, we received something less than £50 for the ninety-seven days during which the session of 1861 lasted. In addition to this, our grog scores, contracted on the passage each way, were paid by the Government, and mine, on this occasion, was a very stiff one. Mr T. Dick and I were the only total abstainers on board, and we were most eagerly assured by Mr Barney Rhodes and others that champagne was the best alleviation for sea-sickness. We did not try it, and I have never yet tasted champagne; but our fellow-passengers seemed to think it a good joke to put down to us all the champagne they drank, so that our grog bills charged to the Government during that long and unpleasant voyage were the largest on record.

But, if we received little payment, we received a vast amount of entertainment and attention. Several of the Auckland members were wealthy and hospitable; all the members were expected to attend at Government House - every Monday night; and the Speaker gave a dinner to about a third of the members every Saturday night. Whilst the vote of no-confidence was pending, the member for Ellesmere, Mr Thomas Rowley, who came up some weeks after the session had commenced, was driven straight from the wharf to Government House, where he was "taken in and done for." Most of the Wellington members lodged together, and I found it convenient, and very pleasant, to lodge with them; so that our retreat was soon recognised as the Opposition lodging-house, and politics were not always excluded even from our dinner table.

The member for Hutt, the stalwart, hardy, thick-skinned and dauntless Alfred Renall, used to take the delicate little Dr. Featherston under his special care, and was always ready to say or do anything that would relieve his too sensitive friend from any unpleasant task. But, whilst the Doctor's little body was so feeble, his massive head always seemed to contain all that we needed to guide us – he knew everything that had been done, and everything that should be done, and yet he treated each one of us as if he stood in special need of our advice and assistance. Although he appeared to know a concealed enemy by instinct, he treated his friends as if deception on their part were an utter impossibility. But his frequent physical suffering and the very doubtful alleviations he prescribed for himself both indicated that his brain could not long serve to guide and direct the friends who valued him so much......

The accommodation for strangers was railed off on a level with the House, and was chiefly occupied by Maoris. Ladies were not much interested in our proceedings, and there was no "Hansard," so that members were not so much tempted as they now are to talk for the mere sake of being heard or reported. But the reports in the Auckland newspapers in those days, although confined to a few favourite speakers, were vastly better than any newspaper reports of the members' speeches have ever been since the introduction of "Hansard." The House was then less tolerant than it is now of men who multiply words without knowledge; or perhaps I should say that

the speakers were more sensitive to the scorn and rebuffs of their fellow members, which seem to have so little effect upon them now. The only exception to this rule was Mr F. Dillon Bell, who talked like a book, and - seemed to think it his duty to enlarge, with the utmost impartiality, on the merits and demerits of every proposal. On one occasion, after he had talked for an hour, and appeared likely to talk on indefinitely, a large number of the members left the House together and went for a long walk. After some two hours' absence, they came in again in a body and found Mr Bell still speaking. Turning to the Speaker, with a kindly smile on his face, the irrepressible orator said:

"As a number of members who were absent when I was dealing with the most important part of this subject have now returned to the House, you will, I am sure, pardon me, Sir, if I now go over again the arguments which I then used."

"Oh Lord! " said Sir Cracroft Wilson, and out went the same party again in a body.....

The orator who invariably charmed both sides of the House was the Superintendent of Wellington, Dr. Featherston. Every word he uttered seemed to come from his inmost soul, to be dictated by an ever-vigilant conscience. His voice, although clear and pleasant, was not loud nor far-reaching. His action, though appropriate, was very quiet, and there was nothing striking about it; but his habitual manner, both in private and public, was earnest and warm-hearted. Even the always blunt Sir Cracroft Wilson, who bitterly hated the Doctor and all his works, was obliged to admit that no man in the House ought to be called on to speak immediately after such an orator, "as, for half an hour after listening to him, I hardly know whether I am standing on my head or my heels." His most applauded speech was that which he made in Wellington on the 28th July, 1862, in which he pleaded for the acceptance of Sir George Grey's proposals as to the responsibility of the Colony in Native affairs. But a far more bold, more effective, more noble and more powerful speech was that which he made in condemnation of the cruelty and injustice practised upon Wiremu Kingi by Governor Browne and his Native Minister. As an oratorical effort, the Wellington speech was perhaps the more remarkable, and it was the only speech that ever caused the House to adjourn for half an

hour in daylight because no one dared to rise to speak immediately after it. But there was something more and greater than mere oratory in the Auckland speech. It was most remarkable for the daring, unselfish boldness with which the speaker disregarded all consequences to himself as he defended his old friend who had saved his life and the lives of his neighbours in Wellington in 1843. The Governor, and all the powers who acted with and defended him, were arraigned as effectively and as impartially as if they had been prisoners at the bar. The loyalty, the humanity, the patience and the forbearance of Wiremu Kingi were contrasted with the impetuosity and foolish, futile bombast of the Governor. Undisputed and indisputable facts were arranged with a masterly hand, and then came the appeal for justice, for forbearance, and for inquiry: –

"I thus believe the war to be as precipitate and uncalled for as it is unholy and unjust, and is it not revolting to be told, in this Legislative Chamber, that we must go on shedding innocent blood in order that we may produce amongst those we have injured the impression that the white man, whether right or wrong, can never be effectually resisted?"

But the Maoris never appreciated their friend Featherstone as they prized and enjoyed their friend Fox. There was an animated stir amongst them whenever he rose and a mutter of "Kapai Foxey." Whether they understood him or not, they could join in the laugh he was sure to raise, whilst they could only hold up their hands and nudge each other as they observed the admiring attention that the House gave to Featherstone. In 1861, Fox's wit was not too refined to be generally appreciated; but it was too pungent to be carelessly provoked.....

CHAPTER XXI. HOME LIFE

[Inserted unpaginated illustration]

MOTHER OF ALFRED SAUNDERS
REPRODUCED FROM AN OIL PAINTING BY DARBY

CHAPTER XXI

HOME LIFE

We need love's tender lessons taught
As only weakness can;
God hath His small interpreters;
The child must teach the man.
– J. G. WHITTIER.

SOON after my return from Auckland, our little son Edward, who was then seven years of age, met with a terrible accident. He was passionately fond of horses, and, one afternoon, he encouraged some thoughtless boys to place him, without saddle or bridle, on the back of a large cart-horse and then, with shouts and blows, to start the creature off at a lumbering gallop down a hard metalled road. Taking fright at something, the animal shied violently and threw Edward off. When he was carried into the house and laid upon his bed, he remained for more than forty-eight hours without showing any sign of life, and he probably never entirely recovered from the effects of this accident. It interfered a good deal with his education; but it did not lessen the cool, intrepid self-possession with which from babyhood he had always met any danger that might befall him. When he was only seven years old, I often trusted him to drive my fast thorough-bred mare thirteen miles home in the gig, though he had to cross a large river, and it was difficult to persuade the livery-stable men that it was safe to trust such a lively horse to a mere infant. At nine years old, he rescued, with remarkably cool judgment, his brother Alfred from the horns of an infuriated cow. At eleven, he was jumping his little pony over hedges and water courses that would have stopped many men in the hunting field. At sixteen, he amused himself by assisting to reef topsails in a gale of wind on the ship "Charlotte Gladstone." Between his thirtieth and fortieth years, he often led the bold riders of the Ashburton Hunt Club over the wire fences of that

district. And, at forty-eight, he led the van of the 8th New Zealand Contingent in their capture of six thousand cattle, which were goaded on by six hundred Boers to break the line it was his duty to defend, and that he did defend in a style that called forth the special commendation of Lord Kitchener.

But another and a graver trouble than Edward's disabling accident fell upon our home. We suffered the loss of our dear little daughter Mary, and oh! what a difference the loss of that child made to all our hopes and anticipations for months and years afterwards. Rhoda mourned for her as one who would not be comforted, whilst I, who had hitherto felt confident that our careful diet and sensible hydropathic treatment would keep our children in good health, could no longer feel that any of our little ones were safe.

Soon after Mary's death, our only remaining daughter, Elizabeth, went to board with Captain Deck and his wife who had lately come from India and taken up land in the Waimea Valley, Moutere. Their daughter, who was a highly cultured woman, started a boarding-school there. Would that all boarding-schools were like hers! Miss Deck so entirely won the affections of the truthful and generous but high-spirited and wilful little tomboy we had entrusted to her care that the child would obey her slightest word or glance. She kept her high spirits and fine health too, as she took her own pony with her and got plenty of riding, and plenty of scampering about the hills on her own feet as well. Elizabeth was by far the tallest of any of our daughters, and, as a girl, the most light-hearted and full of fun too. I think she hardly knew what fear was, and she was as daring a rider as her brother Edward.

NOTE BY COMPILERS

This little daughter was the only one of Alfred's children who never felt the least fear of her sometimes awe-inspiring parent. Rhoda used to tell her grown up children the following story about Elizabeth, whose mother had been so often remonstrated with for threatening punishments that she did not intend to enforce, that she would have been hardly human if she had not enjoyed seeing Alfred for once forced to do the same.

When she was five years old, Elizabeth developed a great liking for the honey of the New Zealand flax (phormium tenax), and was constantly being found with her lips stained from having

partaken of it. Rhoda considered the honey very unwholesome, and again and again forbade her daughter to eat it. In vain. So at last she said, "I shall tell your father." This also had no effect, so the matter was referred to Alfred, who at once proceeded to give a demonstration of how children should be quietly, kindly, and firmly taught to instantly obey their parents. He told Elizabeth what he should do if she ever again ate the forbidden sweet, and the very next day she came in with her face stained with it. This was about four o'clock in the afternoon. Alfred shut her up in a room by herself and told her that she must remain there until she promised never to eat the flax honey again.

After she had been in solitary confinement (a confinement that she enlivened by singing a selection of her favourite songs at the top of her voice) about half an hour, her father opened the door of her prison, feeling sure that she would now be willing to give the required promise. Not at all. She cheerfully refused to do anything of the sort, and, in spite of almost prayerful demands for submission from her father, there the child remained until bed-time, when Alfred informed her that he was going to bed, to which she, still cheerfully, replied: "All right. Good night."

Rhoda used often to describe how Alfred went upstairs, took off his coat, and sat on the edge of his bed looking the picture of misery for about half an hour, when he descended to the foot of the stairs to hold another parley with the young prisoner, from whom all the satisfaction he received was the remark:

"Why! Aren't you in bed yet? You said you were going long ago."

Alfred held out a little longer and then got a terrible fright, for, the next time he asked if she was now ready to be a good girl, he received no reply. With visions of his little daughter lying fainting on the floor, he hurriedly unlocked the door, and found that Elizabeth had arranged some warm garments in the form of a bed, and was lying upon them, peacefully asleep. Her father carried her to bed and the subject of flax honey was not again referred to by him. Nor did Elizabeth ever again attempt to eat it.

Alfred wrote very regularly to Elizabeth during her absence at boarding school and a typical letter from him to her is inserted here:

Brightwater Mill, November lst, 1862.

My Own Dear Little Lass –
I was glad to receive permission from Miss Deck to send you some meal to make brown bread, and I sent immediately half a ton to the Nelson wharf to be forwarded by the first opportunity.

I enclose a locket containing your mother's likeness and mine as a birthday present.

The baby is very well and can talk almost as well as you can, and sings "Old Uncle Ned" all through, remembering nearly all the words.

I am much obliged to you for your last letter, and very pleased with the great improvement in your writing. I hope your pony will behave so as to deserve the favourable opinion which you say has been formed of her. I look forward with pleasure to the time when we shall see you home for the holidays.
Your affectionate Father.

At this time, the Rev. Decimus Dolamore was preaching regularly in a chapel about a mile south of Brightwater Mill. We built a little bedroom on to our house for him, in which he spent the Sunday nights, and which we used to call "the prophet's chamber."

CHAPTER XXII. SUPERINTENDENT OF NELSON

CHAPTER XXII

SUPERINTENDENT OF NELSON

The star of the Unconquered will,
He rises in my breast,
Serene, and resolute, and still,
And calm, and self-possessed.
– H. W. LONGFELLOW.

EARLY in December, 1864, I proposed to use the leisure that the two slack months in the mill gave me in purchasing sheep to stock some land that I had bought at the Amuri. With this end in view, I started to ride from Nelson to Canterbury with my horse-loving son Edward and two trustworthy farm labourers. We reached Mr. Hartland's station at the Amuri in about eight days; but, before I had succeeded in purchasing any sheep, news came to Mr Hartland, via Christchurch, that Mr Robinson had been drowned by the capsizing of a boat on the bar of the Buller river, and that, without my knowledge or consent, my friends in Nelson had put me up as a candidate to take his place. On hearing this, we all scampered back to Nelson just as fast as we could. I had bought no sheep, and now did not want any, as, if I was to be Superintendent of Nelson, I must not take any fresh business on my hands. It would be a financial loss to me, but I felt that I could afford that, and that I owed it to the electors who had brought me forward to do the best I could for them.

We had not gone far on the road home before we heard the news that the strong "Nelson Supper Party" had put up Mr Barnicoat to oppose me, and that he was addressing the electors in all the various centres of population with great success. I knew that Mr Barnicoat was a very popular man, and a good man too, so that I hesitated as to whether I should, or should not, oppose him. He and I were firm friends, and, personally, I did not want to oppose him; but, politically, what

excuse could I give for refusing to do so? Our views on all the most important questions of the day were exactly opposite, and neither of us was prepared to give way an inch about them. Finally, I decided to stand, but felt sure that our conflict would be a very amicable one – and so it proved to be.

The date of the election was March 21st, 1865. I spoke every evening up to that day. But, on election day itself, I stayed at home and would not allow one of my horses to be used to drive electors to the poll. In the evening, when all the returns, excepting the two smallest and most distant, were in, Mr Barnicoat was found to have a small majority; but, when the distant returns came in, the majority was on my side. Mr Barnicoat and I shook hands very heartily after the contest, for, though we had been rivals, we had never for one moment ceased to be friends.

My upright, hard-working predecessor, Mr Robinson, had been kind and good-natured to a fault. The Provincial servants stood in no awe of his authority, but came and went, and worked or did not work, just as they liked, whilst visitors who came on business would stay gossiping pleasantly with him, even when many were waiting outside anxious to consult him on matters of importance. I quite expected that I should have some trouble to alter this slack state of affairs; but no, it altered itself directly I took the Superintendent's seat, and soon made me think what a dreadfully stern character I must appear. Without a word of reproach or warning from me, everyone came at the appointed time, and no one ever offered to stay gossiping with me upon anything but the public business they came for, so that persons were never kept long waiting to see me. Yet I was never intentionally rude, or even stern or short.

I was pleased to produce order out of so much confusion; but when I remember how my children would obey my mildest command, whilst they smiled happily at Rhoda's most alarming threats (although my thunder carried no more bolt than hers), and recollect this effect of my bare presence in the seat of power without using either thunder or lightning, I feel sorrowfully that there must be something alarming in my appearance or manner, of which I myself am quite unconscious, to make even those with whom I am intimately associated feel not thoroughly at home with me.

Of course I put on all the dignity I could muster when I was called on to read my Presidential address to the Provincial Council before a large audience in the gallery. It was well received and was praised in both newspapers. The Council never refused any vote I asked for, nor objected to the large sums of money I thought it desirable to expend without its having been voted.

Just after the Provincial Council was prorogued, and as the winter was coming on, a rush of 20,000 Australians to our West Coast goldfields gave me some very serious and responsible duties to perform. I saw that I ought to go there at once and take the Provincial engineer with me; as roads and bridges must be immediately built; gold wardens, constables, and magistrates appointed; and numerous other responsibilities incurred on the spot. I could get no legal authority unless I waited for another meeting of the Provincial Council, which would necessitate a most dangerous delay. To lessen my responsibility a little, I called a hasty, informal meeting of the nearest Councillors, and explained the position to them. They unanimously agreed that I must go at once and chance getting the sanction of the other Councillors afterwards; and, in the most graceful and handsome way, Mr Barnicoat asked me if I would take him with me. As my late opponent, and as the Speaker of the Provincial Council, this was the best security I could have for all the daring and illegal, but necessary, things I should have to do, besides which, his services as a Magistrate and a Coroner were invaluable.

Over on the West Coast, the bodies of murdered men, whom no one had missed, and whom no one could or would recognise, were coming down the rivers. Grog selling was going on without a license, and men were lying down drunk in the snow, to perish with cold, and then be thrown into the thick scrub to save the trouble of burying them. All day long on Sunday, the grog shops were full, and there was not a woman to be seen anywhere.

Note by Compilers

In referring to this period in the history of New Zealand, Mr James Wilkie wrote, many years afterwards:

"Mr Saunders' administrative abilities were proved to be of a high order, for he did not arrogate to himself the right of interfering in or of controlling every petty detail. He selected good men to do the work, and gave them free scope."

The main trunk of the Grey River formed a very distinct boundary between the Provinces of Nelson and Canterbury. A considerable population had built on the south side of the river, and this town the Canterbury Government had called Greymouth. The settlement on the north side of the river, the Nelson Government had a right to name, and I said to Mr Barnicoat:

"We may as well call this town 'Cobden,' as I think Cobden, by repealing the corn laws, has done more for England than any other man ever did."

In his pleasant way, Mr Barnicoat replied: "Oh yes, that will be a good memento of Nelson's radical Superintendent, and, if you can find a very dirty street there, you might call it 'Bright' Street."

So we named the town Cobden, and its main street, Bright.

Leaving Mr Barnicoat to hold inquests and direct the few helpless constables, Mr Blackett (the Provincial engineer) and I hurried to decide upon the most indispensable bridges that must be immediately erected, either temporarily or permanently, taking a man with us to help carry food, blankets, and a tent. One night our tent was broken down by the snow that fell upon it. Mr Blackett acted also as chief gold warden until I appointed a Mr Kynnersley (principally from his phrenological indications) who turned out a great success.

After staying several weeks on the West Coast, and restoring something like civil government and safety to life and property, Mr Barnicoat and I returned to Nelson, leaving Mr Blackett to push on the public works on the West Coast.

Nothing could have been more happy than my relations with Mr Stafford during my Superintendency and his Premiership. As the first Superintendent of Nelson, he quickly understood every Provincial question referred to him, and always consulted me about anything he proposed to do that in any way affected the Nelson Province. Perhaps we were the more disposed to consult each other because we were both called on to hold the reins of Government at a remarkably critical period of New Zealand's history. But the very evident difficulties by which I was surrounded brought many good, honest men to my assistance, including my able opponent, Mr Barnicoat, who, whilst he could not agree with many

of my more radical ideas, worked heart and soul to help me in any way that his conscience would allow him to do. My best official assistant was Mr John Blackett (my Provincial engineer) who was afterwards appointed Chief Engineer for the Colony. When the Provincial Council voted £20,000 for a water supply for the city of Nelson, I sent him to Melbourne to see what he could learn from what had been done there. I then sent to Ransome and Sims for a complete supply of all that was necessary, and we obtained a supply of excellent water for £300 less than the amount voted. The £20,000 was borrowed on debentures which I advertised to purchase; but I could not obtain one; as the owners considered them too good a security to be parted with.

CHAPTER XXIII. SOME PERSONAL REMINISCENCES BY ALFRED'S SECOND SON, EDWARD

CHAPTER XXIII

SOME PERSONAL REMINISCENCES BY ALFRED'S SECOND SON, EDWARD

It ain't the funniest thing a man can do –
Existing in a country when it's new.
– WILL CARLETON.

MY mother and father have often told me about their early experiences in New Zealand, and my own memory carries me back to seventy years ago, when our surroundings were still very rough and uncivilised and unlike the conditions obtaining at the present day. Roads were bad, dangerous rivers unbridged, and our present splendid system of education not even started, so that schools were few and far between, and the question of how the children were to be educated was a really difficult problem to solve. For more than two years, my eldest brother and sister rode their ponies to a school at Richmond, which was about six miles from our home at Brightwater Mill. To reach this school, in which one of the very few good teachers of those days was working, they had to cross one of the most dangerous rivers in the Province, the much-dreaded Wairoa, which, before it was bridged, took such a heavy toll of the early settlers' lives. It was not only that such a large body of water came down its bed, but that the swift current swept before it all the shingle and sand, leaving only immense boulders at the bottom of the stream, over which it was extremely difficult for a horse to pass and still keep upon its feet. William and Elizabeth were strong, hardy children, and father had taken great pains to make them thoroughly good riders; but, even so, it was undoubtedly taking a great risk to allow them, nearly every day, to cross twice a river that had such a bad reputation as the Wairoa. Mother fully recognised this, and she so strenuously objected to these dangerous rides that arrangements were at length made for sending both the children to boarding-schools – William to the Nelson College and Elizabeth to Miss Deck's.

On one occasion, when I was nearly ten years old, I was sent by my father on an errand to the school where my sister Elizabeth boarded, which was about thirty miles distant from Brightwater Mill. I rode my own much-loved pony and led my father's beautiful hack. These were placed for the night in a paddock adjoining the school, and, in the morning, it was found that they had forced their way through a gap in the hedge and both disappeared into the dense bush adjoining it. I searched high and low for them in vain, and was at length forced to borrow an old horse from Captain Deck and return home without them. I rode along with my head hanging down and feeling very much ashamed of myself; but, as I neared home, father saw me from the top window of the mill, where he had spent many a weary hour looking out for me, and came running to meet me. I could not help crying as I told him that I had lost the horses, but he said, as he lifted me gently down from the lumbering old steed:

"Never mind about the horses, my son, they will probably turn up all right, but, if they don't, I would sooner lose every horse on the place than have any harm happen to you."

Father never expressed any regret for the loss of the horses, although it was many months before we heard anything about them. Then a half-starved, miserable looking animal, whom father recognised as his once beautiful hack, turned up at the mill. My pony was never recovered.

Those early days in Nelson come vividly before me as I sit, pen in hand, recalling some of the most thrilling experiences of my childhood. Father was then in the prime of life, a squarely built, powerful man, with erect carriage and commanding mien; a man whom no difficulty daunted, no danger dismayed, who delighted to measure his mental strength against his political opponents, or to force his way through the difficulties of unexplored wastes; a fearless horseman, and undoubtedly the best and most daring European swimmer in the Province. After he was elected to the Superintendency, he made a practice of frequently taking long journeys into the interior of the island to ascertain what roads and bridges were most urgently needed, and to become better acquainted with the settlers.

I had been early taught to ride and swim, and, when I was about ten years old, father took me with him on one of these expeditions. The particular journey he was taking on this occasion was from Nelson to Collingwood, not a great distance in these days when every facility is provided for travellers, but things were very different then. After we got a few miles out of Nelson, we had rarely even a formed road to ride upon, only rough tracks made by the horses' feet. These tracks often led over hills and steep declivities, whilst in some places it was necessary to force our way through fern, ti-tree, and bush. The rivers were particularly dangerous, and, as some old Irishman once remarked, "the only way to get over them was to go through them."

We rode out of Nelson very early one bright summer morning. We went by way of Richmond, fording the Waimea River, and then over the Moutere Hills, until we reached what was then called the German Village, where a few Germans had settled down, and were trying to get a living off the poorest of poor ground. Here we put up for the night, and I slept with father in a single bed at an accommodation house kept by an old German, named Bensamans. To light us to bed we were given a tallow candle in a big tin candlestick; but no sooner had we blown it out than a regular swarm of rats, eager to devour the tallow, arrived on the scene, and, though father hastened to strike a light, it was only to find that, even in so short a time, every particle of the candle had disappeared. All night long those wretched rats kept running over the bed, so that, tired and sleepy as we were, we did not rest very well. The next day, we rode as far as Motueka, and here we stayed for a couple of days, as father wanted to meet and talk with the few scattered settlers there. After this, the really rough part of our journey began. First of all, the Motueka river had to be forded, no mean undertaking, for I can remember well that, although I was riding a fine mare, some sixteen hands high, the water went rushing past, often right up to the saddle flaps. Then we had a stiff climb up the Takaka Hills, and, after that, slipped and scrambled down our precipitous way into the Takaka Valley. Here, amidst some of the most magnificent scenery in the world, a typical old pioneer and his family had settled down in the bush, and were carving out for themselves a prosperous home. We did not know any of this family, and there was no way in which we could

have sent them any intimation of our coming; but, all the same, we were welcomed with all the delightful, unpretentious hospitality so almost universal in those early days. Our horses were quickly unsaddled and put into a paddock, and a nice clean towel and a big basin of hot water were put outside the door for us, so that we were enabled to make ourselves presentable before we were taken into a big kitchen, so clean that you could have eaten your food off any part of it. Our kind hostess then gave us the most delicious tea I have ever eaten in my life. I had a whole native pigeon, and a bountiful helping of new potatoes, put on my plate, together with a piece of the sweetest home-made bread, followed by magnificent stewed peaches and thick clotted cream. I could hardly keep my sleepy eyes open as we sat round the fire after tea was over. Our dear motherly hostess soon saw how it was with me, and, taking my tired little hand in hers, led me into another room, where she put me into a tub of hot water, covered me with a clean night-shirt, heard my prayers, and tucked me into a snug little bed, so delightfully comfortable that I fell asleep almost before she had time to kiss me good-night. After breakfast next morning, I had to say good-bye to the dear matron who had taken me – a poor, tired child – so warmly to her heart; but, though more than sixty-three years have passed since that visit, my memory still recalls the vision of her kind face as she stood at the gate waving her last farewell.

We continued our journey down the Takaka Valley for some time, finally coming out on the coast not far from the Parapara Inlet. Here the sea runs up into the land for some miles, amongst steep hills, so that to go round would have meant a long, rough detour. Father said at once, in his quiet, decided way, that such a detour would take us far too long, and that we must swim our horses over this branch of the sea in order to get to Collingwood. As the tide in the channel is very strong, and the distance across it fully a quarter of a mile, it was a dangerous undertaking, but father was a man whom it took a great deal to daunt, so we got off our horses and made our preparations for crossing the passage. We took off all our clothes and made them into a firm bundle which father said he would carry. He hoped, by holding them above his head, to keep them dry enough to put on when we reached the opposite shore. Then father took the saddle off his own horse, a magnificent

animal and a notoriously good swimmer, and placed my saddle on it instead. After looking very carefully to all the straps and fastenings, he lifted me up on to it, gave me all sorts of instructions as to how I was to proceed, assured me that the horse would carry me over safely if I trusted to its sagacity, and exhorted me not to be frightened, a very necessary precaution, as the sight of the great sea stretching before me had nearly paralyzed me with terror. Father then mounted my mare, whose swimming powers had never yet been tested, and we went into the water together. With only my featherweight to carry, the splendid animal I was riding soon swam right away from its companion, and although, much to my alarm, the tide carried it a long way down towards the open sea, I reached the other side safely. I did not dare to look round to see how father was faring until I landed on the opposite shore; but, when I did, I saw that he was having a very rough passage indeed. He was a heavy man and carried a large bundle, which he tried for some time to keep out of the water, and the mare he was riding had never had to swim before and was apparently determined not to do so now. She walked along on her hind legs, holding her nose out of the water, until it became so deep as to make it impossible to proceed in that way any longer. Then began a series of desperate plunges and lunges, and complete disappearances under the water, which sometimes lasted so long as to fill my childish soul with terror. At last, after I had lost sight of them for what seemed to me a very long time indeed, the mare's head re-appeared in one place and father's, a considerable distance off, in another, so that I knew that they had parted company. Being a strong swimmer, father could easily have reached the shore if he had abandoned our clothes; but it would certainly have put us in a very awkward predicament if he had done so, as we were several days' journey from home, and it would hardly have done for the Superintendent to ride into Nelson clad only in a Panama hat. So he struggled gamely on with his bundle, fighting with all his might against the tide, but was carried right out to the breakers before he was able to reach the shore. Of course our saddles and everything we had, were sopping wet, and we had to sit down naked in the sun until they dried.

Whilst we were thus employed, it was discovered that, in my excitement, I had left my spurs on the

opposite bank, and father said, as casually as if he had been asking me to hold something for him for a minute: " Just go back and get them, Edward."

I am an old soldier who has seen active service in actual warfare, and, as such, have had to obey many commands that I did not like; but none of them ever tested my courage as did this one of father's. Perhaps some of the terror I felt at again facing that awful passage appeared in my face, or father may have thought that it was not a safe journey for a ten-year old child to make alone, for, to my infinite relief, he said, just as I was starting:

"Wait a minute, my son, and I'll come too. Whilst our clothes are drying, we may as well swim over together." And so we did.

I never forgot the Parapara Inlet, and, forty years after my memorable passage across it, made a special journey there to look at the spot that had been a perfect nightmare to me all my life, thinking that probably my childish imagination had magnified its dangers. I sat down on almost the exact spot on which we had landed after our long swim, and carefully estimated the distance, the strong current, and all the dangers to be faced in crossing the channel, and the conclusion I came to was that even the wisest and most level-headed men occasionally do very foolhardy things; and that, if anyone offered me all the spurs I could carry, and those made of the purest gold, to attempt that passage again, I would not do it. To prove that I am not exaggerating its dangers, I was told during this visit that, shortly before my arrival, two men, who were reported to have been unusually good swimmers, were drowned whilst trying to cross at the same place.

CHAPTER XXIV. SEARCHING FOR A BRIDLE PATH

CHAPTER XXIV

SEARCHING FOR A BRIDLE PATH

To the tough hearts that pioneer their kind,
And break a pathway to those unknown realms
That in the earth's broad shadow lie enthralled;
Endurance is the crowning quality.
– J. R. LOWELL.

[This chapter is included here by the kind permission of the Editor of the Christchurch "Press." It was published in the "Literary Column" of that paper, under the title given above, on December 28th, 1896.]

SOON after my election as Superintendent of Nelson, the gold-fields on the West Coast became a very populous and the most wealthy portion of the province, and demanded bridges, roads, and bridle tracks with an imperative haste that belongs only to gold-fields.

But what we especially wanted was something like a direct road or path across the rugged, broken country between the Grey River and the Marawera Plain, which our Chief Surveyor, Mr Brunner, was sure that it was not possible to get at any reasonable cost. In fact, no one had yet succeeded in getting directly across it even on foot. Mr Brunner, with his famous Maori guides, living on fern root and cooking fern root for him, had failed to do so in his whole year's exploration; and the bushmen we had employed, both from the east and the west, had never succeeded in meeting each other, or in finding anything practicable in the way of a bridle path; but, as Superintendent of the Province, I felt bound to satisfy myself as to whether it could or could not be done. Having left Mr Blackett to perform the duties of explorer, engineer, and chief gold warden on the west side of the ranges, I determined to make a desperate effort from the east side to see what were the insurmountable difficulties in that direction. I took with me Mr George Snow, a strong, active, young man, who was a good bushman and had gone farther than anyone else in the direction we wanted to get; so that we called him our guide, and he served me ably and faithfully. He was

my most constant companion on the journey, as we led the way with a telescope and pocket compass, leaving the others to follow as they pleased. I took also two other strong men to take the place of pack-horses after we should be compelled to send our horses back. Mr H. C. Daniels, who had just succeeded Mr James Crow Richmond as Land Commissioner in Nelson, also started with us from the City. He had long been chief clerk in the Nelson Land Office, and longed to know something about the interior of the island, as he was most conscientiously anxious to learn something of the true value of the land he had to offer to the public. But we all knew that, when we parted with our horses, we should have to part with him, as he had never known the want of a dry and comfortable bed, and had been too long sitting under cover to travel where horses could not go, and where little comfort could be obtained.

Having sent the men and pack-horses forward, Mr Daniels and I started from Nelson, and spent our first night about fifteen miles beyond Fox Hill, reaching Mr Donald McGregor's station the next day. I rode a black thoroughbred mare called "Lucy Glitters" who had distinguished herself by carrying Archbishop Redwood's father, who was, although a superlative horseman, a heavy man, over some very long and rough journeys. She never tired, but it often tired my arm to hold her back when in company.

Mr Donald McGregor's run was one that was too small and too rugged to attract more wealthy men when runs were not scarce. Mr McGregor was a man whom no one would forget who had ever spent a night with him. He was a strong-framed Scotchman, about six feet in height, who sometimes lived by himself and sometimes employed a man or two; but he made a point of spending about one month of each year in the city of Nelson, during which month he was a most ardent politician, and, unlike most other runholders, he entertained a most unlimited admiration of the late Superintendent, whose battles he was always ready to fight, and he was quite an orator in his own way. On the north side of his run was a good-sized valley of fern land which Mr Daniels wanted to see, and we agreed to give our horses a rest, and to go on foot to see it the next day.

The morning came in with a steady, cold rain, so that Donald advised us not to go; but we told him that we were well prepared for rain, and, after breakfast, we

went to our bedroom to dress for the journey. When we returned, Donald stood up and looked at us with a mixture of contempt and compassion in his face, and, after a good survey of our waterproofs, he said:

"Can ye swiem, Maister Daniels?"

"No, Mr McGregor, I have never yet learned to swim."

"Then ye winna hae time tae lairn the day; sae ye'll hae to bide at hame."

"But are the rivers in flood, Mr McGregor?"

"There'll gey likely be a spate in the burns frae the mountains after siccan a rain as this. We might win ower them noo, man; but ye'd nae be comfortable if we hae tae lea'e ye on the ither side a' the nicht."

Then, turning to me, he said:

"I thocht ye war gaen tae walk?"

"So I am. You told me it would not be easy to get a horse into that valley."

"Nae mair it wadna; but it wadna be easy tae get ye intill't, man, wi' a' that oil-skin upon ye."

"But I want something to keep out this cold rain."

"As tae that, I'se wairant ye winna be cauld if ye kep up wi' me; and ye'll find cauld watter a blessin' compairt wi' warm sweat keepit in by a macintosk. Take the blue sark, just siccan ane as thae, and ye'll be glad ye hanna got the tap-coat – a' the mair gin we hae tae swiem."

This sensible advice was soon illustrated by the result, as I tore through the fern that Donald's giant steps trod down for me, and scrambled in and out of the deep chasms that were worn by the mountain torrents.

Next morning we all started to make our way to the last station at which we were to get shelter. It was held by the Hunter brothers who were very sensible, unpretending, sober-minded men, as kind as Mr McGregor, and more anxious concerning the dangers we were about to face. They knew more about the country beyond than anyone else – not excepting even our guide – and they were very much concerned, as they told us that four men had started, three weeks before, to find their way to the Grey River, with only about a week's provisions; and that two sawyers, who had been sawing not far from them, were going to join us without half

enough provisions, and with so little idea of the difficulties of the country that they were going to carry their long pit-saw, and other tools, with them to cut boards for the first diggers they came to. This was a kind of danger that I had not anticipated and that I could not avoid. To have an addition of six men to eat what little we could carry with us for a six weeks' journey could only mean starvation for us all; but I could see nothing for it but to get as much additional oatmeal as the Hunter brothers could spare, and to carry a swag myself at the start. Mr Daniels went no further with us, but returned with the horses that were sent back to Nelson. One of the Hunter brothers kindly came with us for a day or two to show us how far we could go with the horses, and where we must leave the plain. As we were sending the horses back, and apportioning the heavy load that each man would have to carry to begin with, it was evident that our two carriers, after seeing the kind of country we should have to travel, were repenting their bargain, and wanted to return with the horses. The rain above us, and the swamps below, with the evident danger of not being able to keep our provisions dry, or of being compelled to share them with less provident adventurers, gave a gloomy aspect to our contemplated journey, which put a very severe strain on the fidelity of these strong men. But they were thoroughly honest, and, although they would gladly have persuaded me to turn back, for my own sake as well as for theirs, I don't think they would ever have left me. Mr Hunter saw this apparent hesitation, and at once, with admirable judgment and promptness, hurried our horses away, tethered his own, and said he would go on with us another day and carry a swag. This left the two bearers no time to hesitate, and lightened all our loads, as Mr Hunter and George Snow took the heaviest loads on their own backs.

As now equipped, we had with us one small calico tent, one oiled sheet, two large blankets, four flannel night-dresses, one small axe, a flint and steel, one tin billy, four pannicans, 60 lbs. wheatmeal biscuits, 80 lbs. oatmeal, 20 lbs tinned mutton, 20 lbs sardines, 10 lbs ox tongues, 10 lbs sheep tongues, 10 lbs sugar, and 1 lb tea. It was raining heavily, and, as we crossed the moss-covered swamp that had stopped the horses, we sometimes sank to our knees in soft black mud, but that was soon washed off by the wet bushes, two or three feet high, through which we were generally travelling when we were not climbing rocky hills.

On the next morning, we parted with our kind benefactor, Mr Hunter, and, on the following morning, we were overtaken by the two sawyers whose company we had feared so much. But they were much better than our fears, and were, in fact, two strong and brave men who had some three weeks' supply of oatmeal with them. The finer-looking man was an immensely strong Irishman, more than 6 ft. in height, and he appropriately carried the long pit-saw. The other was a stoutly-built Scotchman, about 5 ft. 7 in., who carried his full share of tools and provender, and they soon insisted upon taking my swag from me. I tried my utmost, and so did George Snow, to persuade them to go back, or, failing that, to throw away the heavy tools they were carrying; but they said that thousands of diggers had landed at Greymouth and Cobden, and were scattered all over the country searching for gold, so that it was most likely that some of them would come our way and find paying gold, in which case they would be ready to give anything for the sawn timber they would need, which they would not be able to get without tools. As to their short provisions, they said that four men had gone before us, some weeks ago, with only one week's provisions, and had, no doubt, got through somehow. I told them that I thought it was much more likely that they had starved on the way, and would never be heard of again. But there was no getting them to turn back or to part with one of their tools. They tried every stream we came to, and generally found some gold, which appeared in increasing quantities as we got farther west. They seemed to think that we could never starve as long as we could find gold. They both possessed distinctly sanguine temperaments, and enough of the fibrous to carry them through a very rough road. Their brave confidence and contempt for all hardships were infectious and useful to us all. Nor were they by any means willing spongers upon us, but accepted with great reluctance the slightest addition to their monotonous fare, so that we were rather the better than the worse for their company.

Thus we toiled on, tools and all, for about three weeks, the roads getting drier, but more and more intersected with high, steep precipices, up or down which we wondered to see anyone carry a pit-saw. One afternoon, we saw the tall Irishman emerge from a very high climb without the saw, but the Scotchman immediately went down the cliff for it, and carried it

himself for a day or two, until we came to a cliff which taxed our best powers to surmount, even with our now light loads. At the foot of this, it was quite pathetic to see the Scotchman part from his saw, as affectionately as Mrs Norton's Arab began to part from his steed.

We were all getting dreadfully stiff from being so constantly wet through, so that we were very unfit to climb a precipice, and always fell down, even on the level ground, when we hitched a foot in a twig, as our limbs were too stiff to move quickly enough to save a fall. It was always difficult, and sometimes impossible, to light a fire. There were plenty of green bushes and rotten wood, but never a dry piece of wood or bark, so that it was generally impossible to dry our clothes, and we sometimes had to put them on in the morning as wet as we had taken them off at night. If it did not happen to rain, the wet bushes always kept us wet through. Our flannel nightdresses were kept dry – as well as our matches, biscuits, and oatmeal – by carrying them in waterproof bags; but, after steaming our bodies for eight hours under the blankets in the little calico tent, it was always a painful effort to assume the upright position in the morning. Everything kept so damp, that, when we could get a fine day and a good fire, we often had to spend some hours in drying clothes and provisions. All our luxuries disappeared during the first four or five weeks, after which we were reduced to oatmeal, which we usually drank merely stirred into cold water. No one who has not tried it could believe how nice this bitter stuff appeared to be when we could get nothing else, and only a measured allowance of it; and it would have kept our strength up well enough if we could only have had less constant rain. In the forests we picked up three or four kiwis, and, on one occasion, we caught several unfledged ducklings on a river bed; but there was a remarkable dearth of animal life, and we carried no gun or gunpowder. If we had attempted to do so, the gun would probably have shared the same fate as the pit-saw, and would at all times have been dangerous in the hands of men liable to be so frequently thrown down.

The last part of our journey was down a branch of the Grey River, where we could sometimes walk in the river bed, but had very frequently to climb up and down rocky terraces to avoid the deep water that washed close to a steep rock; so that we frequently did not make four

miles a day in any straight direction, in spite of an amount of effort that should have taken us thirty miles. But at last we came upon sheep tracks, and then we knew that we must be nearing Mr Mackley's sheep station. He had been looking out for us, and his dogs gave ample notice of our approach, so that he met us before we got to the house. It was well that he did so, for the legs and front parts of our trousers were worn off by the constant friction of the wet bushes, and the empty provision bags that we had sewn on the fronts to save our skins were now not sufficiently whole in all cases to save appearances, even with the aid of the native flax. So that, before he introduced us to his wife, Mr Mackley took us into the wool-shed and supplied us liberally with old and new trousers, none of which, however, were big enough for our Irish friend. After this, we had much pleasure in consuming a whole sheep, which had been cooked for us by a lady who had not seen any other woman for seven years. Mr Mackley's brother, Dr. Mackley, was visiting him at this time, and Mrs Mackley talked science and philosophy with him as cleverly as she clothed the naked and fed the hungry who had suddenly made such large demands upon her hospitality.

We now learned that one of the four men who had hoped to cross the island before us had actually reached Mr Mackley's station, but reported that the other three had perished by starvation on the way. Mr Mackley said that the survivor seemed hardly sane, and was unwilling to answer questions as to how he had saved himself.

Mr Blackett had sent a boat up the Grey River, some fifty miles from Cobden, to meet us, and this boat had been waiting two weeks for us. The journey up the Grey in a boat is slow and laborious, but the down passage, although not particularly safe, is very easy; so that we reached Cobden in one day; and I had the pleasure of presenting our enterprising sawyers with a pit-saw nearly as long as the one they had left at the foot of the steep, rocky barrier that had arrested its further progress, and where it is probably still lying.

We had forced our way with considerable directness across the Island; but we only found that Mr Brunner was substantially correct, and that it would not be easy to estimate the cost or the gradients of a road or a railway in the same direction, so that we spent no more money upon that enterprise.

CHAPTER XXV. A DARK CLOUD HANGS OVER NELSON

CHAPTER XXV

A DARK CLOUD HANGS OVER NELSON

Other sins only speak; murder shrieks out:
The element of water moistens the earth,
But blood mounts upwards.
– J. WEBSTER.

WITH all the hard work and close personal supervision that Mr Stafford's determination to place New Zealand finance upon something approaching to a solvent foundation necessarily inflicted upon him, he did not entirely forsake his old habit of collecting statistics affecting the moral and intellectual condition of a Colony that he had reason to believe would present some exceptionally good features in that direction, which he could fairly attribute in some degree to his own early efforts in the cause of public education. Early in 1866, he sent out circulars calling upon the Superintendent of each province for returns showing the number of criminal convictions in the past, and the present number of persons above twelve years of age who could not read nor write. The returns show that, at that date, the Province of Nelson had produced the smallest number of criminals and of dunces, and the preeminence of the province in these respects was officially attributed to the facts that, since the year 1842, more than half the children in the province had joined the Band of Hope, under the energetic supervision of Mr Benjamin Crisp, and that, at the same time, Mr Matthew Campbell had devoted the best energies of his life to supply, with the most insignificant expenditure, almost every child in the province with the means to obtain a useful amount of elementary education.

But soon after these highly satisfactory statistics had been forwarded to the Premier, Nelson was visited by four of the worst criminals that ever disgraced Australasia or terrorised the gold-fields of New Zealand. Their bloodthirsty career was here terminated in

consequence of the complete absence of kindred spirits to give them the shelter or concealment that their dark deeds required.

On Tuesday, the 12th June, 1866 (the day on which I completed my 46th year), four men left Canvas Town, Wakamarino, in the Province of Marlborough, for the purpose of travelling to Nelson. Three of them, named John Kempthorne, Felix Mathias, and James Dudley, were storekeepers, and one, named John Pontius, was a gold-digger. They had hired a pack-horse to carry their swags over the roughest of the country, and the owner of the horse had agreed to come after them and take the horse back before they arrived in Nelson. Each of these men had a considerable sum of money in his possession, and one of them was carrying seventy ounces of gold for sale in Nelson. In all, they had with them fully £300. The owner of the horse, Mr Muller, followed them early on the morning of June 13th, and expected to overtake them. He made inquiries as he went along, and was told at one place that they were a mile and a half or two miles ahead of him, on the Maungatapu Road, going in the direction of Nelson. But he never caught up with them, and, when he reached Nelson, found that they had not arrived there.

Great was the alarm and excitement in the little town, and three armed policemen accompanied the friends of the missing men who at once started off to search for them.

Before the arrival of Mr Muller, four strangers had come to Nelson, and, on Thursday, June 14th, had sold gold to the banks, and bought new clothes and boots. They had come to the wrong place, a place where they were necessarily marked men, for we all knew each other in those days, and there were no birds of their own feather to consort with, nor was there even a beer shop that would welcome their ill-gotten gains. There was not a tittle of evidence against them, nor even any proof that a murder had been committed; but we all felt sure that there had been foul play, and knew that, if the murderers had come to Nelson, these and these only must be the men. Under these circumstances, I thought it best to give directions that their man of business, Levy, should be arrested, and then that every movement made by the others should be watched and reported by the vigilant police. No sooner was Levy arrested than the others attempted to fly; but they were quickly secured

and lodged in Nelson gaol. But so little was this building adapted to restrain desperate criminals that it was necessary to order that their cells should be completely ironed and that they themselves should be watched day and night.

There were four men in custody. Sullivan was a strongly built man about fifty years of age, 5ft. 7in. in height, with a cruel, hard face, a great deal of mental and physical power, a very remarkable capacity for accurate observation, and a correct memory of the most minute details. He was perfectly cool and self-possessed, and most careful to betray nothing by either speech or manner. Burgess was an extremely vain man, blustering and talkative, and absolutely careless of danger, pain or punishment. He was about forty years of age, 5ft. 4in. in height, and the scars on his body showed that he must have been severely wounded and flogged. Kelly was a little, cowardly, bloodthirsty animal, delighting to inflict cruelty upon others, but quite incapable of facing danger to himself. He was an adept at every description of cunning and deception. Levy was a Jew, about forty years of age, 5ft. 5in. in height with projecting brows and low, retreating forehead. He was a man of no words, and betrayed no feeling, so that even his comrades in crime believed that no one would succeed in getting any information from him. As the man of business for the murderous gang, his reticence was well adapted to cover some of Burgess' dangerous defects; but no judge of character would ever have trusted a man with such a head and face.

In the meantime, a vigorous search for the bodies of the men, who had so evidently been murdered, was going on. Most of us in Nelson had sons, or brothers, or friends, often on the road upon which the terrible tragedy had occurred, and we felt that they, too, might have shared a like fate. Our eldest son, William, had a narrow escape, for he rode alone, with a considerable sum of money upon him, over the route travelled by the murdered men, only a day or two before they met their sad fate. Mr James Wilkie, the son of my old friend, William Wilkie, who was then travelling regularly between Nelson and the gold-fields, was actually marked down as a victim and waited for by the murderers; but, by a fortunate accident, he travelled on that occasion by a different road.

On Thursday, June 21st, the body of the concealed

horse was discovered, and the bullet that caused his death brought into our house. The days were at their shortest, and the weather unusually cold and wet, but nothing could have been more determined or more systematic than the search made for the missing bodies by Mr Saxton and his eager helpers who daily increased until there were a hundred and twenty at work. But still the bodies of the murdered men were not found.

The men arrested were recognised by the Otago police as old criminals. They had old scars and other marks on their bodies which made their identity certain; but still not a particle of legal evidence could be obtained to connect them with the crime of which they were suspected, and every objection that law or money could devise was made by their lawyer to their re-committal without any legal evidence against them. So I went over to Wellington and explained the difficulties of the position to Mr Stafford, and got him to consent to offer a free pardon to an accomplice who would give Queen's evidence in the four murders supposed to have been committed.

This offer, copies of which were at once placed in the cell of each prisoner, soon made a very evident commotion amongst them; but there was still a difficulty which none of them could see how to get over.

The Jewish Rabbi took a great deal of interest in Levy, and, at his suggestion, the Jew was separated from the other three, and efforts were made to obtain a confession from him. But Levy saw the same danger to an informer that all the rest had seen, and was not the sort of man to assist in convicting himself.

Sullivan saw that the offer as it was announced in the hand-bills was of no use to him; but he also saw that it added very much to his danger, and that there was no time to be lost if anything was to be gained by a confession. He very cautiously felt the pulse of the Chief Constable, and finally declared that, before he would risk giving any information, he must see either the Superintendent or the Premier of the Colony.

It was just as the sun was setting, on the evening of Thursday, June 28th, that I entered Sullivan's cell. He objected to anyone else being present. This is what passed between us:

Superintendent: You have something you wish to say to me, Sullivan?

Sullivan: I don't know if I have or not, but I see by that hand-bill that you want information, and I can tell you that that offer won't get it, as it is really no offer at all.

Superintendent: What more do you want?

Sullivan: I don't want anything; but have you anything more to offer? You must know that the men who killed these four men, whoever they are, are pretty sure to have killed other men, so that they will be none the better for your pardon for the four unless you offer a pardon for all.

Superintendent: There is no one in this province who has the power to offer any pardon at all, and no one could advise the Governor to offer a pardon for every murder that has ever been committed.

Sullivan: Then I am sorry that I troubled you to come here. I can't give you any information if that is all you can do.

Superintendent: As the matter evidently stands, it becomes a question of whether the Government should trust you, or you should trust the Government. The Governor's pardon is certainly not offered with any view to entrap anyone. But I don't see how I could advise the Governor to do anything more, and he will certainly not offer a free pardon for every possible murder. You have no right to expect the Governor to trust you; you have no right to expect that the Government will play you any tricks, or take advantage of anything you do in good faith to them. If you tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, I shall consider that you have faithfully fulfilled your part of the bargain, and if you don't intend to do that, I would advise you to let me go, and to say nothing more to me about what you know. But, mind you, I am not the Governor nor the Government, and I have no power whatever to pardon anything. But, if I were in your place, I should expect that the Government would treat me honestly.

Sullivan: Then you won't promise a pardon for any other murders?

Superintendent: I have no power to pardon anything, and I won't advise the Government to pardon anything more.

Sullivan: Well, I suppose you are right, and I must tell the whole truth and chance it.

Superintendent: You may depend upon it you will save your neck in no other way, and I hope you will have the sense to try no other way.

It was soon evident that Sullivan understood the bargain, and his confession was consequently as unreserved and complete as it was horrible and revolting. After giving full particulars of the murder of the four men know to be missing, and describing with astonishing accuracy where their bodies were to be found, he gave particulars of the murder of a fifth, murdered at nearly the same time and place, who had not been missed. He then described the murderous career of his comrades on the West Coast, and told of the murder of Mr Dobson, whose body was consequently found and buried. And, lastly, he explained that tools and disguises had been sent for to Sydney for the purpose of murdering, in the most diabolical manner, the manager and clerks of the Bank of New South Wales in Nelson (this order was quickly executed and duly came into the hands of the Nelson police). The murderers' plan was to enter the bank a few minutes before the hour of closing, and, whilst one of the gang was to ask to see the manager, and to strangle him, the others were to lock the doors, to cover the clerks with their pistols, and to strangle all but one of them. The survivor was then to be employed in finding the keys and in giving any information required, on the promise of his life being spared, after which, he was to be led silently through the town after dark to some remote spot, where he was to be murdered and his body carefully concealed, so as to give the impression that he had murdered the other bankers and absconded with the booty.

With these ghastly tales still ringing in my ears, I had, that evening, to attend a meeting called to urge the Provincial Council to push on the search for the bodies more vigorously than ever. I had a difficult part to play, for I now knew where the bodies were; but it was most important that Sullivan's confession should not be made known until his accomplices on the West Coast, named in it, should have been arrested. And I kept the secret until the murderers who had been described by Sullivan were arrested at Hokitika and the Grey.

I was greatly impressed with Sullivan's mental powers. He was a striking instance of how completely such powers may be independent of moral qualities. His

remarkable capacity for accurate observation, and correct memory of the most minute details, were shown by the fact that the bodies of the five murdered men, so cleverly hidden that more than a hundred deeply interested and intelligent men had searched for them so long in vain, were found without the slightest difficulty by following Sullivan's minute and accurate directions for their discovery. The method by which the murderers had succeeded in so effectually concealing the bodies of their victims was described to me by Sullivan. Each man, before being despatched, was forced to walk to a spot very difficult to reach, even when quite unencumbered, and to which it would have been impossible to carry a dead body. The trial of the murderers occupied from the 12th to the 18th of September. When sentence of death was pronounced upon them, the appearance of stolid indifference that Levy had maintained throughout was not shaken, whilst Burgess's bold black eyes roamed round the Court, seeking the admiration or sympathy he hoped to find there, then, drawing himself up to his full height, he said to Judge Johnstone:

"Your Honour, may I speak now?"

"No," thundered Judge Johnstone, "your time for speaking is past."

Kelly, with his face hidden in his hands, was sobbing unrestrainedly, and Burgess, after a glance of hate at Sullivan, turned to the wretched coward and said, not unkindly: "Kelly, Kelly, be a man." Indeed, throughout the whole Court proceedings, Burgess seemed to regard the grovelling cowardice of his wretched accomplice with more pity than scorn.

It may be imagined with what horror and loathing these monsters in human form were regarded by the people of Nelson; but there was one good man (Mr Daniels, Land Commissioner of the province) whose innocent peculiarities – many of them the result of his great conscientiousness – and extreme physical timidity, had often made him a subject of jest amongst his stronger and less sensitive companions, who saw in the condemned men only fellow-sinners, and whose one thought about them evidently was

"Shall sorrow win our pity, and not sin –
That burden ten times heavier to be borne?"

He asked and obtained permission to visit them in their cells, and Burgess, who certainly seemed to have previously had no softening influences in his life of shame and misery, professed to have derived the greatest blessings from the ministrations of this good Samaritan.

Kelly's shrieks of terror, and prayers to be allowed to live, even if kept forever hung aloft in an iron cage, did not unnerve either of the companions in his fate. Levy met his death with apparent indifference, whilst Burgess kissed the rope with which he was to be hanged, and said:

"This is the happiest day of my life. I go to meet my Saviour."

Sullivan was sentenced to imprisonment for life. He was released at the end of seven years, but was a marked man, and so carefully watched by the police that he had no opportunity of adding to his many horrible crimes.

CHAPTER XXVI. ALFRED SEES HIS MOTHER AGAIN

CHAPTER XXVI

ALFRED SEES HIS MOTHER AGAIN

A change we have found there – and many a change!
Faces and footsteps, and all things strange!
Gone are the heads of the silvery hair,
And the young that were have a brow of care,
And the place is hushed where the children played –
Nought looks the same, save the nest we made.
– MRS HEMANS.

THROUGH all my ups and downs in New Zealand, I had never given up the hope that I should some day be rich enough to justify me in taking all my family to England to see the dear mother of whom they had so often heard me speak. This hope upheld me after James Draper's tragic death; made my work as carpenter, baker, or bullock driver, happy in the thought that I was working towards the accomplishment of my purpose; and added tenfold to my pleasure in the steady access of wealth that came to me after I started Bright-water Mill.

Mother was now in her eightieth year, and I felt that I should greatly risk my chance of ever seeing her again if I delayed my visit to England any longer.

In 1866, I sold Brightwater Mill and the goodwill of the business for £6000, and, adding this to the other money that I had invested in good landed security, I found myself in possession of an assured income of more than £2000 a year; so that there was no difficulty about the journey so far as money was concerned. But there was a difficulty, none the less, and that was the parting with the many kind friends who had, little more than a year before, re-elected me as Superintendent, expecting me to hold that position for four years. Was I justified in resigning my office? The answer my heart gave me then was "Yes." But I have sometimes thought since that it was wrong to lay aside a position of such great responsibility, in which I might have done valuable work, even for the sake of meeting my dear mother again.

I shall never forget the great kindness that I received from my fellow-colonists when I said "Farewell." It was almost more than I could bear as old friends and old opponents vied with each other in saying the kindest possible things and doing the kindest possible actions. I remember now, far better than things that I heard yesterday, the generous kindness of the speech that Mr Barnicoat made at my last farewell dinner in the City of Nelson.

Our journey home to England was not a pleasant one. The ship in which we sailed, "The Countess of Kintore" had accomplished her first trip to New Zealand in record time. She was a new ship, well-built and well-manned, and her cabins and saloons promised all that we could wish for in the way of comfort. The captain readily agreed to my sending on board one of our best cows in full profit and enough fodder for her consumption during the voyage; and he also consented to allow me to take a good stock of poultry. Rhoda saw that we were all provided with good warm clothing. But, as soon as "The Countess of Kintore" had left the shores of New Zealand behind her, and had started pitching on her way (for she proved a very uneasy sailer), the Captain's smiles vanished, and he appeared in his true light as a niggardly, bad-tempered, untrustworthy man. He had made a wager with another skipper, who left New Zealand at the same time, that he would be the first to reach England, and to win this wager seemed to be the great object of his existence.

The many unpleasant happenings during our rough passage had such a bad effect on the health of Rhoda and the children that when at last the long-hoped-for day came on which I was to present my family to my mother, though we did our best to smarten up for the occasion, I thought that they looked a poor, sickly lot, very different from the children whose health and beauty I had been so proud of when we sailed out of Nelson harbour.

Mother received us all just as I had expected her to do. No one could have been disappointed in his reception by her. Her parental love was as warm and bright as ever, and she was just as willing, and almost as able, to say and do something kind and pleasant to everyone, and to expect and exact nothing in return. Age had not made her in the very least less thoughtful or unselfish, and the

face that looked out of her white old woman's cap was just as pure and sweet and brightly intelligent, and almost as fair, as when I said "Good-bye" to her twenty-six years before. She and Rhoda were attracted to each other at once; and mother was so watchfully kind and considerate of each of her long-unseen grandchildren that she soon made friends with them all.

It was well for us that mother so completely fulfilled our most sanguine expectations; for many, many changes had taken place during the years of my absence from England. My stern but warm-hearted and generous father had passed away in 1849; and Edward, who had been a second father to all his brothers and sisters, followed him in 1861. Edward never married, and, at his death, left his fortune, with the exception of some generous bequests to philanthropic objects, to be divided equally among his eight brothers and sisters.

My eldest sister, Sarah, was a widow. Her kind and good husband, Thomas Box, who was her first cousin (and whose father and mother also had been first cousins), had died soon after the birth of their third child. Of these children, only two, both of them very delicate, were alive when we reached England. Henry was reading for the law, and Mary entered our family as governess soon after we arrived in England – and a very first-class governess she was. She devoted herself particularly to Edward, and did much to supply the defects in his education caused by his early delicacy.

My sister Mary had married Captain George Bayly who, before we reached England, had been elected an Elder Brother of Trinity House. Mary was the mother of five brightly intelligent girls, and, besides fulfilling admirably her happy home duties, she had been the founder of Mothers' Meetings, and the author of several books on social science.

Samuel had married, and been left a young widower with three little girls, many years before. He had married again, and his second wife was a member of the Society of Friends. He never joined that body himself, but his religious views were so far from orthodox that officious friends would sometimes try to frighten mother about him. But to these she would answer, with a serene smile:

"' Ye shall know them by their fruits ' – look at his life."

Mother's name for Samuel was "the beloved physician." Rhoda became very much attached to his daughters Annette and Alice, and, when we had a home of our own in England, Annette spent many months with us, and was regarded by Rhoda with almost as much affection as she felt towards her own children.

Ann, who was always the handsomest of my five sisters, was a happy, independent spinster. She had set up a little establishment of her own, but came almost daily to visit mother, and, by her bright, original conversation and generally happy-go-lucky ways, was a source of great interest and amusement to us all.

My dear sister Ellen devoted herself entirely to mother, and was often called by her "my guardian angel." She was a great reader and a very earnest thinker, and had such a retentive memory that she could quote pages, and even chapters, from all her favourite authors. She was very fond of young people, who always found her a delightful companion.

My youngest brother, William, was married to a beautiful and elegant wife, the daughter of Dr. Spender. William was an excellent man of business, and was then preparing for the duties in the English Parliament that he afterwards so successfully discharged. Years before we came to England, he and his wife, who had no children of their own, had asked to be allowed to adopt our eldest son, William; but as Rhoda, at any time, would quite as soon have thought of parting with her life as with one of her children, the offer had to be instantly declined. And I suppose I should have been as unwilling to accept it as Rhoda was, though I am sure that my brother would have been a most kind and conscientious foster-parent. Now that he had passed onward, I like to remember what a very honourable and useful career William's was. I think one of the most powerful pleas for religious toleration that I have ever read was given by him after he became a member of Parliament in a speech he delivered at Hull in May, 1885. On that occasion, he said:

"Grotrian recommends re-imposition of disabilities and tests on account of religious beliefs. Now, gentlemen, that is a matter of the utmost seriousness. What is a religious belief? Religion involves belief in the unseen, and you cannot compel a man to a belief of that kind. You may induce him; but you cannot compel

him; and it is the most unwise, the most unjust, the most injurious thing that can possibly be attempted, to put a strain upon the consciences of men, and impose upon them disabilities on account of their religious beliefs or absence of religious beliefs. A man who has the misfortune to be without a religious belief is a man greatly to be pitied. He is by no means a man whom we ought to attempt to subject to any injustice. Nothing that a man believes or disbelieves can justify us in depriving him of his political rights. It is to me one of the first principles of Christianity that we have no right to say to any man, 'Stand by thyself, for I am holier than thou!' And if these men are to be pitied, how are we to bring them into the field of belief? We certainly cannot do it by imposing injustice upon them. I remember in my young days being delighted with those lines by Thomas Hood, in which he lays down the broadest principles of religious liberty, and not only of religious liberty, but of, shall I say, consideration and approbation of every feeling or sentiment respecting religion, which ought to have our complete tolerance. He says:

E'en the poor Pagan's homage to the sun
I would not harshly scorn, lest even there
I spurn some elements of Christian prayer –
An aim, though erring, at a world ayont,
Acknowledgment of good, of man's futility,
A sense of need, of weakness, and, indeed,
That very thing so many Christians want – humility."

And the pretty little sister Elizabeth, the pet and plaything of all the family, had married and come to New Zealand years before I left it. There she was surrounded by boys and girls of her own.

Of my two best-loved aunts the tale was a sad one – "Too late, too late, you have come just too late to see them. They are both dying." And so it was. My clever, controlling Aunt Willett and my good motherly Aunt Richard Box were both on their death-beds. In a day or two, a letter came inviting me to Aunt Richard's funeral. I hurried from Bath to Southampton to meet the "pretty Boxes" I used to play with, and the uncle whose agricultural wisdom even father bowed down to. A maid servant met me at the door and led me into the large drawing-room, now somewhat darkened. Two mournful-looking, middle-aged women were there, sitting with bowed heads, one on each side of a feeble old man.

Could these indeed be the pretty cousins of whom we used to say when we saw them cantering their donkeys up to the mill door, "Here come the merry little chatter-Boxes"? Sarah soon convinced me that they were by seizing my hand, and saying, with the tears streaming down her face:

"Oh! how I wish that you had reached England soon enough to have seen her once more alive."

Soon after we reached England, William entered the office of the able and prosperous New Zealand and London merchant, John Symons; and he lodged at Barnet with his aunt, Mary Bayly, with whom, and with all her family, he became a very great favourite. Mr Symons, too, was very fond of William and treated him as affectionately and confidentially as if he had been his own son. Elizabeth and Samuel went to boarding schools, and the rest of us soon took up our residence in Russell Mill house where Samuel and his wife were living. Here our youngest daughter was born, in the same house and the same room that all mother's ten children were born in. And this baby of ours was nursed for a time by old Alice who had nursed me and most of my brothers and sisters.

Some little time after our arrival in England, Uncle Richard told me of a small farm not far from Southampton where he himself lived. It had a fairly good house, conservatories, and outbuildings, which would be let to any one who would take the stock and improvements at a valuation. I decided to rent this property, as I was glad to have a small farm and to be so near to Uncle Richard, who had always been father's adviser in his farm work.

Of course I was never long away from the mother I had come so many thousand miles to see. She was now slightly deaf, but her eyesight was still wonderfully good, she still sewed beautifully and read a great deal. She was not strong enough to move about much, but her brain was as bright and clear as ever, and her wisdom was even more profound than of old. It was a pleasant sight to see her sitting at work in her easy chair with such a happy, peaceful expression on her face, and surrounded by the middle-aged sons and daughters who loved her so dearly.

During my residence in England, I gave a good many lectures on New Zealand at one time and another. I

heard Gladstone, Disraeli, John Bright, Dean Stanley, Lord Shaftesbury and many other celebrated men speak. I also had the great pleasure and privilege of discussing privately with John Bright many subjects in which we were both deeply interested. My sister, Mary Bayly, was, at this time, in the habit of entertaining at breakfast, once every week, a number of men and women who were interested in philanthropic work, and amongst the most honoured guests on these occasions was Lord Shaftesbury who did so much to ameliorate the condition of the factory workers. Mary was quite a notable housekeeper, and at these little reunions she took a great pride and pleasure in the dainty dishes for which her cook was famous. It was such a disappointment to her that Lord Shaftesbury always declined anything but the very plainest food that at last she could not refrain from remonstrating with him. In his kind, courteous way he answered:

"You must pardon me, Mrs Bayly, for eating nothing but your delicious bread and butter. I see so many instances of misery and starvation in my work amongst the poor that I cannot think it right to partake of luxuries."

Both Rhoda and I were much interested in the immensely useful work of Mr and Mrs Smedley, and we spent some happy weeks in their Sanatorium at Matlock Bank where they were curing and relieving thousands, and instructing tens of thousands, in their rational and comforting hydropathic treatment. Rhoda, who had very clever hands, soon became quite an expert in administering their remedies, and, in after years, she undoubtedly saved some lives by their application. Our children were so impressed with their efficacy that, on one occasion, when Rhoda's pet canary was suffering from some bird ailment, her youngest son, Owen, said eagerly: "Why not give him a wet pack, mother?"

I occupied some of my leisure in taking a course of lessons from Professor Stone in Electro-Biology, Mesmerism, and Animal Magnetism, and I made some interesting experiments in these fascinating subjects.

Whilst we were still at Aldermoor (as our little farm was called), our eldest daughter, Elizabeth, was married, at the age of eighteen, to John Edgar Buchanan, partner in a firm of cement makers at Southampton.

When our lease of Aldermoor expired, we moved to Barnet. Our youngest son, Owen, was born here. "Camelot," as our new home was called, was a beautiful house with every possible convenience and numerous spacious rooms. The very large hall was the whole height of the building, and a gallery ran round it from which the upstairs rooms opened. Standing in this hall, you might have fancied yourself in a cathedral. We kept great fires burning here in the winter time, and it often resounded to the sounds of music and dancing, for our young people found it a convenient place in which to entertain the many new acquaintances we made during our sojourn at Barnet. But "Camelot" always seemed to me to lack the homelike charm that characterised our far from stylish dwelling at Brightwater Mill.

CHAPTER XXVII. ALFRED RETURNS TO NEW ZEALAND AND BUILDS THE ASHBURTON MILL

CHAPTER XXVII

ALFRED RETURNS TO NEW ZEALAND AND BUILDS THE ASHBURTON MILL

He who digs a well, constructs a stone fountain, plants a grove of trees by the roadside, plants an orchard, builds a durable house, reclaims a swamp, or so much as puts a stone seat by the wayside, makes the land so far lovely and desirable, makes a fortune which he cannot carry away with him, but which is useful to his country long afterwards.
– R. W. EMERSON.

AS two of our boys were now old enough to go to work in some business, and we knew that there would be better prospects for them in New Zealand, we decided to return to the country where we had spent so many happy years. When we arrived in Canterbury, at the beginning of 1872, I bought a house about a mile from Christchurch on the banks of the River Avon. The property was called "Avonbank," and the house, with its rose-covered verandah, looked very picturesque standing amidst its large gardens and orchards and extensive shrubberies. It had a number of outbuildings of various kinds, and, besides the gardens and shrubberies, there were about six acres of meadow land. The orchard was full of fruit, the boughs of the peach trees in particular being quite weighed down with the profusion of large, sweet peaches.

As soon as this important business of settling into our home at Avonbank was satisfactorily disposed of, I sought for profitable employment in my own line by the erection of a flour-mill and the creation of a good water-power in the evidently rising town of Ashburton. After a good deal of careful exploring, I thought that I had discovered that the Ashburton River had, at some far-distant time, taken a different course to that which it now pursued; and that I could, by a rather bold expenditure, and by obtaining the permission of the

Colonial Government of New Zealand, the Provincial Government of Canterbury, the Ashburton Road Board, and a large number of land proprietors, procure a valuable water-power, close to the town of Ashburton, in the centre of a large agricultural district. It was not a pleasant task, and it took a long time, to obtain all these permissions, but, as the new river that would thus be directed through some twenty miles of land would injure no one and benefit all, the public bodies gave me all the authority that they could, and most of the proprietors thanked me heartily for what I proposed to do. The next thing was to purchase the land that it was necessary to make my own, and this had to be done quickly, as land was rising in value every day. The erection of the mill would greatly increase the value of the surrounding land. I had to deal with a rich runholder on one side and a shrewd Irishman on the other. They would sell me only about six acres each, and this amount I at once purchased. I gave them all that they asked for their land, and they benefited greatly by the increased value that the mill and the water gave to the rest of their property; for, as I expected, the land I bought would have fetched four times as much as I gave for it after the mill was at work.

It was an unusual thing to be building a water-mill and a large water-wheel on a spot where it was difficult to get enough water to drink, and opinions varied very much as to whether I was seeing further or was a greater fool than the other inhabitants of Ashburton. I sent to Nelson for four carpenters who had more faith in my directions than the residents of Ashburton, and I procured four extraordinarily good working navigators to whom I gave fifty per cent more than the ordinary wages – which they did not fail to earn.

The timber for the mill was very expensive, as it had to be carted through the often flooded Rakaia River where it was a mile wide. The intake for the water had to be made very secure with many tons of cement, and the water had to be taken across public roads under bridges constructed to the satisfaction of the Ashburton Road Board. Near the mill, some high, strong embankments had to be built to give the necessary height to the head-water, and some obstructions in the ancient course below the mill had to be cut through to take the water freely away from the water-wheel. After all had proved secure, on Monday, February 17th, 1873, I went up with

a bar to draw the hatches and try the water down through the ancient course that had possibly had no water running through it since the time that Joshua crossed the Jordan. Although this natural course brought the water only a mile and a half nearer the mill, it wound about so much that it took the water five or six miles and had lots of gullies and back water courses – dry, hard, and cracked, after an unusually dry summer – to fill up. To what extent, and for what length of time, the water would be absorbed by this dry ground, I could not tell.

When I returned, I found all the men looking out from the mill in the expectation of seeing the water flowing up. They looked surprised and incredulous when I told them not to expect it for at least four days and nights. When this time had passed, and still no water came anywhere near the mill, I was overwhelmed with pitying condolences for having spent so much money upon such a fine mill, without knowing whether any water would come to it or not, and the favourite talk of the country round about was the extraordinary act of lunacy that I had committed.

I turned on more water every day, until at last I put nearly the whole river in, but all seemed lost in the old course. The carpenters began to work like men who know that their work is wasted, and would not take the trouble to put their tools out of the way of the no-longer-expected water, so that I had to do it for them. At last the dry and thirsty land was saturated, and the water came creeping on towards the embankment. I went to bed that evening leaving the water-wheel so that it would turn if the water came. At two o'clock next morning, it came up to the mill hatch with a bang, and I heard the joyful sound of the wheel turning. I had an opportunity to see and try everything before anyone else was about. Standing alone in the mill, I imbibed it all. All proved right and tight, and the fall greater than I had ventured to expect.

The men, when they arrived in the morning, looked astonished to find the dry embankment full of water, and the wheel going merrily round. It was laughable to see what a difference it made in their work, and how they all were now as determined as I was that we should begin to grind on the appointed day; and, on the lst of March, 1873 (at 10.45 a.m.), we ground the first wheat that was ever ground within forty miles of Ashburton.

But, after the mill was going well, the water was no less than three months before it reached the sea; so much soil had to be soaked and so many by-ways and little lakes to be filled up on its long, winding course over the great thirsty plain. The effect of this watering of the plain was by no means confined to myself or to the mill; for, by sending a winding river more than twenty miles through a dry and parched land, the whole appearance of the surrounding country was altered, and hundreds of farmers were enriched by the doubling of the value of their land.

The success of this experiment eventually led to the utilisation of the Ashburton River for more extensive irrigation and water supply. Some few months after the mill started, it was necessary to shut off the water whilst making some repairs, and I felt somewhat triumphant when a runholder, who had put many difficulties in my way whilst I was bringing the water through his property, arrived at the mill in hot haste to inquire why the water that was so necessary for his sheep and cattle was not coming down.

On the 20th of May, 1873, the great barrier between Christchurch and Ashburton, the Rakaia River, was bridged. The engineer's tender for the 4,480ft. road and railway bridge reached the formidable sum of £140,000; but an old weaver, named William White, built the bridge for £34,350.

On the 13th of August, 1873, our eldest son, William, was married to the youngest daughter of our old friend William Wilkie. Rhoda and I then went to live at Ashburton, leaving William and his wife and four of our children at Avonbank. This arrangement lasted about two years, after which Rhoda and I returned to Avonbank, and William bought a property less than a mile distant from us.

Before the railway reached Ashburton, thus enabling them to come home for week-ends, the children we had left behind in Christchurch so that they could attend school there, had a few journeys home over the Ashburton plains in the flour waggons. The top lights of the mill could be seen from the Rakaia then without tree or house to intercept the view.

As soon as the mill was smoothly at work, and I had leisure to do so, I sat weekly as a Justice of the Peace

with the only other J. P. who resided near the town of Ashburton, and, in that way, we supplied the place of a Resident Magistrate for some years. As I was the senior J. P. and lived nearest to the Court House, the lion's share of the work fell to me during the two years that we lived at Ashburton. I was also elected a member of the Ashburton Road Board, and of the County Council as soon as that body was brought into existence. Later on, I became one of the Governors of the Ashburton High School.

In a purely pecuniary sense, the Ashburton mill was a great success; but I never attained there anything like the same reputation as a miller as I had done in Nelson. To make first-class flour it is necessary to have first-class wheat, and that grown on the dry land of Ashburton was generally harsh and weak, having often been prematurely dried up by strong, hot nor'-west winds.

The completion of the Rakaia bridge, and the unbroken railway connection between Ashburton and the port of Lyttelton, at once altered the character of my milling business. These factors greatly extended the competition of buyers for the farmers' wheat, and made it necessary for me to buy nearly all that I required within two months after harvest. This made the mill really more profitable, but it required a great deal of storage room. The railway had made timber much cheaper, so I erected some very large stores. Most of the farmers around Ashburton were working men who had obtained their land upon credit, and who were obliged to obtain advances upon their crops to meet their harvest expenses. I had to be prepared for that usually profitable business which made wheat almost invariably cheaper just after harvest than it became soon afterwards. There was little risk and almost a certainty of profit in buying heavy stocks to be delivered in February and March.

Acting upon this experience, I purchased all the wheat we could store at the end of 1875 and the beginning of 1876 at about four shillings a bushel. Most of the flour made from this wheat was sold at £15 a ton, giving more than a hundred per cent, profit. Thus the mill earned over £10,000 profit in the year 1876; but I had then given up the mill and its contents to my two eldest sons.

CHAPTER XXVI. AN ADVENTURE IN AMERICA

CHAPTER XXVIII

AN ADVENTURE IN AMERICA

A certain man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell among thieves.
– ST. LUKE, X, 30.

AFTER we returned to Avonbank to live, I divided my time pretty evenly between it and the milling business at Ashburton. Quite a number of our old Nelson friends visited us at Avonbank, and amongst the most welcome were Henry Redwood, William Cullen and William McGowan. My old friend Thomas Magarey came twice all the way from Adelaide especially to see us. He brought with him his wife, two daughters, two sons, and a cousin. Thomas was now a very wealthy man, but he gratified Rhoda immensely by telling her that he still preserved, as a relic of old times, a pair of sacking trousers that she had made for him in the early days of the Nelson settlement.

On the 17th of January, 1876, my second daughter, Sarah, and I started on a visit to England via Melbourne, Adelaide, Ceylon, Aden, and Malta. We had a pleasant journey, and, on our arrival in England, leaving Sarah at a good school, I paid visits to my sisters, brothers and cousins. My mother had passed away more than a year before, and oh! what a change her absence made.

We had planned our trip around the world so as to spend a week or two at the great Philadelphia Exhibition of 1876, where we were sure to find all the newest inventions of the world. In the early autumn, we sailed from Liverpool to Canada with some very interesting fellow-passengers who kept up a good deal of amusement on the voyage, and with whom we had some interesting discussions on great public questions. We went to Niagara, and then made our way on to New York, where

we spent a few days and presented a letter from an English friend to Mr Chapman. This gentleman was soon to prove a friend in need.

At that time, both New York and Philadelphia were crowded with the most skilful pickpockets, and I had begun to rather pride myself on the fact that I had never had my pocket picked in any part of the world. I had chosen a pocket-book that fitted so tightly into my left trouser pocket that I always had to use both hands to get it out. In this I had placed twelve £10 Bank of England notes, our through tickets from Liverpool to Lyttelton, and other valuable papers, and I felt quite confident that no one could get them from me unless I was drunk or asleep. But I was not clever enough to escape the snare laid by New York's experienced thieves.

Sarah was just then at the age when "childhood's grace and maiden softness blend," and it might very truly have been said of her at that time that "her face was fair as dream of cherished friend." Her fair, flowerlike face, with its bright, delicate colouring, contrasted so strongly with the sallow complexions of the majority of the New York women that men stopped and turned round in the street to look after her, and I often heard the remark, "That must be an English girl." When the time came for leaving New York for Philadelphia, we went to the station, but only to see train after train crowded with passengers and sent off without our having a chance to squeeze into one. We waited more than an hour, and, during all this time, I noticed that deliberate attempts were being made to separate me from Sarah. These attempts were so evident and persistent that we both became alarmed. I held Sarah's hand tightly in mine, and, in the presence of this much more serious danger, forgot the necessity to guard my pocket-book. At last, we decided to make a rush for a seat in a train just about to leave the station. As we came to the door of the carriage, a big, stout man jostled me against its side, saying, " Are you going to stick here all day, governor?" I still pushed forward, and so gave the thief just the chance he wanted to cut out my pocket. As soon as we were seated in the train, I found that my money and papers were gone. I at once told the guard what had happened. He laughed heartily, and, when I suggested applying to the police, he said:

"Oh, the police have, no doubt, got hold of your notes by this time. You might just as well ask the pickpockets themselves to help you as the tammany police in New York. I expect they got your description from Liverpool as one of the men worth robbing."

I was very much at a loss to know what to do or where to go. I first tried the police, but they proved to answer exactly to the railway guard's description. Sarah had less than ten shillings in her purse, and this was all the money we – strangers, as we were, in a very strange land – had. It occurred to me that Walter Wood and Co. were supplying a good deal of machinery to New Zealand, and that they had a large collection for show at the Exhibition, so I thought I would try to strike up some acquaintance with them. We spent part of our precious cash in hand to get into the Exhibition, and I felt the more inclined to try my plan when I found that Walter Woods' exhibit was in charge of an old-fashioned Quaker. I told him what had happened to me, and where I came from, and what I knew about Walter Wood's machines in New Zealand; and then I asked him if he would lend me enough money to cable to London for means to carry me home, at the same time taking out my gold watch and chain and saying that I would leave them with him for security if he would lend me £5. This was evidently a mistake on my part. His suspicions were aroused by my proposal, and he was very distinctly offended. He said:

"Oh no, we are not pawnbrokers, and I know nothing about the value of watches; but I have seen better looking ones than thine offered for much less than £5. Plenty of watches are made in New York on purpose to pawn and take people in."

Very much disappointed, Sarah and I were walking slowly away, when he followed us, and, putting his hand on my arm, said:

"Dost thee know of a respectable house to which to take thy young daughter?"

"No," I answered, "I know no one in Philadelphia, and I have no money to pay for board and lodging."

He said: "Wait a minute," and, going to his desk, he wrote the address of an hotel, and, underneath it, these words: "Give the bearers plain board and lodging for which I will be responsible until further notice. This must not include any intoxicating drinks."

Our immediate wants were fully supplied, as the Quaker's order was received with great respect. I now remembered the letter of introduction that I had delivered to Mr Chapman in New York, and I wrote, telling him what had happened, and asking him to lend me enough to pay for a cable to London. As soon as possible, I received a most kind reply enclosing ten 10 dollar notes, and assuring me that he would apply to the proper authorities in New York to replace our through tickets. This he did successfully. On receipt of his letter I at once cabled to my friend John Symons in London – "Robbed and penniless in Philadelphia. Send £50." Next day I received £100, so that we could afford to see all that we cared for at that really wonderful exhibition. And from our Quaker friend I bought a reaper and binder to take with us to Canterbury. This was worked at the fag end of the harvest by Mr Hunt at Ashburton just long enough to show the farmers that it was the harvester that must be used in New Zealand in the future.

On our journey from San Francisco to Auckland, we had the delightful society of Sir William and Lady (then Mr and Mrs) Fox who took most kindly to Sarah and added much to her enjoyment of the voyage. Our journey across the Pacific was by no means tempestuous, and our short stay at Honolulu, with its cheap and delicious fruit, was a pleasant experience of semi-tropical life, barring the mosquitoes, which inflicted more disfiguring damage on Sarah's fair skin than they did upon mine. So, with pleasant interludes, we journeyed back to our home at Avonbank.

CHAPTER XXIX. FINANCIAL RUIN

CHAPTER XXIX

FINANCIAL RUIN

Here's to the men who lose!
If triumph's easy smile our struggles greet,
Courage is easy then:
The king is he who, after fierce defeat,
Can up and fight again.
– ANONYMOUS.

I HAVE hitherto had a pleasant task in recording some of the principal incidents of my life, but I now come to a period about which it is extremely painful to me to write, for at this time I made many mistakes which brought great trouble both on my family and myself.

Soon after my return to New Zealand, a by-election took place for the Cheviot seat. I contested it with Sir Cracroft Wilson, and my candidature was successful. Some very hard work lay before me when I went up to the House of Representatives, and I was greatly disappointed to find Sir George Grey doing exactly the reverse of what I had expected him to do. I devoted my time so entirely to my political duties that I was at home only one Saturday and Sunday during the whole session, but Rhoda and some of our children came up to Wellington to see me.

At this time William Fox was leading the Opposition. Nothing could be more pleasant than to work under such a chief as he. He used sometimes laughingly to call me "Father Saunders" because I had been the means of converting him to the cause of total abstinence – and very proud I was of such a convert. We agreed heartily in nearly all our political views. I recognised him as a remarkably honest and able man, and I had a very sincere admiration for the way in which he had brought the cruel, disastrous Maori war to a close by bravely doing what was just and right by both nations. With his invariable kindness, and confidence in me, he now told me that he

should trust me to answer many of Sir George Grey's speeches, as I was usually at my best when speaking on the spur of the moment. It was just the kind of speaking that I most enjoyed, and I was thus called upon to take a more leading part in the work of the House than I had ever done before, and I became so deeply engrossed in my Parliamentary duties that I did not give the attention I should have done to the business my own sons were engaged in.

William Fox carried a most able amendment to the Address-in-Reply by a majority of fourteen votes, thus bringing about a dissolution. I returned home, not to attend to my private business, but to contest my election in a district one hundred and forty miles long, against an old Parliamentarian who had been Sir Edward Stafford's whip.

As we stood together in the lobby of the House of Representatives the night before I left Wellington, Mr Fox (as he then was), said to me:

"Well, Father Saunders, I wonder if you and I will both come back here again. Myself, I almost doubt it. The publicans and brewers would be delighted to burn us both in effigy."

I said: "Yes, and the advocates of denominational education would like to bring the kerosene to pour over the sacrifice."

He laughed, and replied: "But, seriously, if we both return, I should like to have you as a member of my Cabinet. You refused to be my Colonial Treasurer once many years ago, will you accept the position now if I offer it to you again, or will you be my Minister of Lands?"

I said: "You had better give me the Lands. Major Atkinson will expect to be made Treasurer."

He answered: "Very well. Remember it is all settled. You have consented to be my Minister of Lands if we both return to the House."

By the help of my friends the Parsons brothers in the north of my electorate, and of the highly popular chairman of the Farmers' Co-Operative Association (Charles Ensor) in the south, I was again successful in my candidature; but my great leader, William Fox, was

defeated in his old district by a majority of one. His defeat was brought about entirely by the apathy of the Temperance Party, who made so sure that his re-election was safe that they took no trouble to secure it.

I have entered somewhat at length into the intensely interesting public work I was engaged in at this time, because my absorption in it is an excuse, though not a justification, for the way in which I neglected to look after the management of my own financial affairs.

So many mournful thoughts and vain regrets arise when I recall the circumstances that I am now about to relate that I would fain pass them over in silence; but no story of my life could be complete without some mention of events that so completely changed its outward circumstances.

My eldest son, William, had been with me in the mill almost from babyhood. He was a brightly intelligent child, and soon learned to keep out of the way of all the dangerous machinery there. I often talked to him about the process of making good flour, and let him feel, with his little hands, the grists as they came through, to see if they were fine enough. When he grew older, he used to spend his holidays in the mill, and understood how to manage it so well that he sometimes took entire charge of it at night. Whilst still a mere lad, he became my book-keeper and received all the large sums of money that were constantly being paid for flour, hardly ever making a mistake in his accounts.

Many a talk did my friend John Symons and I have over my promising boy's future career, which the wealthy, capable merchant seemed almost as anxious to advance as I was. It was in the London office of Mr Symons that William received his commercial training, and it was Mr Symons' strong recommendation that made Mr Bennett, when we returned to New Zealand in 1872, take William into partnership in his wholesale merchant's business in Christchurch, and himself provide by far the largest share of the capital. It was a splendid opening for so young a man, and things prospered so well with William at first that he would sometimes jestingly say to me, "Father, I have made more money in five years than you did in twenty," whilst I, proud of his success, and thinking that he was in many ways more capable of managing my fortune than I was myself, left more and

more business in his hands, until, when I went to England in 1876, I left in his control all the property that I possessed except Avonbank.

I had had an example in my old Quaker friend, John Wilmott, that a very kind heart and great personal unselfishness are not always conducive to success in business; and, before I left New Zealand, I earnestly warned William to be careful; but I never really doubted that his capacity for commercial life was as great as that which I knew he possessed for domestic. I was, however, often afterwards to regret this blind confidence; for William was very ambitious – more so for his young brothers and sisters, whom he regarded with almost fatherly affection, than for himself. He was also very optimistic and hopeful, and, having constantly seen land increase in value, thought that it would be quite safe to purchase many thousands of acres of it. It never seems to have occurred to him that its value might decrease; but that is exactly what did happen. Of course this meant financial ruin for us all, and this was hastened by William's serious business losses and a most disastrous fire.

So all the savings of a long life-time disappeared from my grasp like a dream, and I found myself, at nearly sixty years of age, once more a poor man.

It is said that misfortunes never come singly, and, in our case, they certainly did not; for, before I could find a satisfactory purchaser for Avonbank, word reached us there that our eldest daughter, Elizabeth (who, with her husband, had followed us to New Zealand some years before), was dangerously ill with typhoid fever. Her mother went to her at once, and nursed her for some weeks with devoted tenderness, but all in vain. She passed away in her twenty-ninth year, leaving behind her four little children.

Rhoda had always been a creature of smiles and tears. I was accustomed to see her, at one moment, downcast and sorrowful; the next, joining in her children's merriment as if she had not a care or sorrow in the world; but she never really recovered her old elasticity of spirit after this second crushing blow, following as it did so closely on our loss of fortune. With characteristic unselfishness, she at once laid aside every little luxury and indulgence that had once been hers, and resumed all the occupations and cares of a poor

man's wife. She even tried to appear cheerful, but henceforth moved about the house with the weary step of one from whom all joy had fled.

Amongst the properties that William's creditors were trying to force upon a glutted market in a time of commercial panic, were some hundreds of acres of poor, stony land that was part of the old bed of the Waimakariri River. They were situated in the West Melton district, about fifteen miles from Christchurch, bounded on one side by the West Coast Road along which the miners had often wearily trudged with their heavy swags in days gone by. This property was still partly in native tussock grass, and was bleak and wild-looking. So that it was inexpensive enough for me to be able to purchase it with the money I obtained by the sale of our luxurious residence at Avonbank. We called the place "Broomfields," and here, far from educational advantages, railway, or near neighbours, I built a plain, but comfortable enough house, and to this refuge I brought my wife and those of our family who were still children.

I was downstricken and despondent when we settled here, and deeply impressed with the cruelty I had unintentionally committed in bringing up my children for a position in which I had no longer the power to keep them. But, with youth and health in their favour, they soon adapted themselves to their changed circumstances, and no other music I have ever heard has sounded so sweetly in my ears as the gay voices of my young daughters, singing as blithely over their hitherto untried tasks of milking, baking, and scouring as if these had been the most delightful occupations in the world.

A few acres of land round our house were of a somewhat superior quality to the rest of the property. These I surrounded with a belt of fir and macrocarpa trees, planting them in such a manner that the ground between them could be cultivated with the plough. They grew rapidly and, before long, made a shelter from the rough winds for our orchard and garden, which flourished like the rose in the midst of the desert in which we had made our home. Indeed, in the course of time, we gained quite a reputation for our mulberries, raspberries, cherries, gooseberries, currants, peas and asparagus.

Soon after we had settled into our new home at West Melton, I commenced a task which I had looked

forward to for a good many years, but which I had never hitherto found leisure to accomplish. This was the writing of a book on poultry. My brother William, who knew my fondness for all feathered creatures, encouraged me warmly in this enterprise, and paid all its preliminary expenses.

My eldest remaining daughter, as soon as we left Avonbank, obtained a position as governess; but the two youngest, who remained with us during the whole time of our residence at West Melton, entered heartily into the work I was now engaged in. One of them enjoyed as much as I did the experiments we made in rearing ducks, geese, guinea fowl, pheasants, and all sorts of poultry, although we specialised in gold and silver-pencilled Hamburghs. She also added £50 to our income, and an immense amount of interest to our life, by raising eight hundred ducks (all of which I hatched in incubators) for the New Zealand Shipping Company. We kept these until each weighed 41bs. and for the whole consignment we received £100, a very liberal price as prices went in those days. This same daughter also took charge of our dairy cows for some eighteen years, and no cows ever had a happier life than they did. Although never sent to, nor purchased from, any Agricultural Show, they eclipsed all competitors as producers of butter. A cow that Ellen sold to Mr and Mrs George Gilmour of "Strathfillan," Weedons, gave birth, three or four months after the sale, to a heifer which they called "Nellie Saunders" and which, for a good many years, was never beaten in New Zealand as a producer of butter fat. My other daughter was a very early riser, and seemed to enjoy the drudgery of housework. She also acted as my private secretary, and I found her a very efficient one.

During nearly the whole time of my residence at West Melton, I drove into Christchurch at least once a week to attend a meeting of the Board of Education (or one of the committees appointed by it) there. Mr J. V. Colborne-Veel was, for a long period, Secretary of the Board, and, with his wide culture and high-bred courtesy, was a very pleasant man to work with. At these meetings, I had, too, the pleasure of discussing educational problems with such men as Mr T. S. Weston, Sir C. C. Bowen, the Hon. William Montgomery, and Mr T. W. Adams, the arboriculturist par excellence of New Zealand.

CHAPTER XXX. UNPOPULAR WORK.

CHAPTER XXX

UNPOPULAR WORK

Who speaks the Truth stabs Falsehood to the heart.
– J. R. LOWELL.

IT was an entirely new and very unpleasant sensation J3I that came over me when I returned to the House of Representatives in 1879, and realised that if I indulged in public work at all, I must earn enough by it to support myself and my family. I had hitherto regarded it as partly a duty, and partly an indulgence upon which I could afford to lose money. I had now to learn that the instinctive dislike I had always felt to write or speak for money was not altogether a mistaken one, and that a poor man has some temptations from which the wealthy are exempt.

As soon as it was known that I was so poor as to need payment for what I wrote to the newspapers, Mr Guthrie, the Editor of the Christchurch "Press," came to see me, and offered me two guineas a week for a weekly leading article, and £50 for the session for sending his paper a very short "Essence of Parliament" between 9 and 10 p.m. every sitting day. Mr Guthrie was a pleasant man to work for, and he always treated me very kindly and even respectfully. During this same session, I received a general order from the "Southland Daily News" asking me to send that paper an article upon any important debate that I thought would interest its readers. This I frequently did with very pleasant results. The proprietor and editor of this paper was a very upright man. The next session the "Otago Daily Times" offered me £20 to write a short sketch (about twenty-five lines) about each member of the House – the sketches to come out daily in the paper. This offer I accepted. About a week after the first sketches were published, I received a letter from Mr Guthrie. He called my attention to those "very clever sketches in the 'Otago Daily Times,'" and asked me to write something like

them for the "Press." I declined this offer, telling Mr Guthrie that I agreed so generally with the sketches that were being printed in the "Otago Daily Times" that I should certainly be accused of copying them if I wrote about the same men in the "Press." I asked my oldest and ablest political opponent, John Wallis Barnicoat, to write my portrait for the "Otago Daily Times," as I could not leave it out without betraying the secret of the writer's identity. He at once sat down in our Parliamentary Library and wrote a sketch which was so very kind and flattering that I could not make it public; but I have it still, in Mr Barnicoat's own handwriting, in my scrap-book. I valued, and still do value, this sketch more than I should otherwise have done, because it was written at a time when fair-weather friends were forsaking me, and even regarding me with suspicion, saying by their actions, if not by their words, that I deserved my poverty for not attending to my business better, and that "any fool can make money, but it takes a wise man to keep it." Finally Mr (afterwards Sir) C. C. Bowen kindly wrote for me a sketch of the "member for Cheviot" which I was able to send along for publication.

At that hasty election of 1879, no less than thirty-five members lost their seats. The amendment to the Address-in-Reply was moved by Sir John Hall, who had taken Sir William Fox's place as Leader of the Opposition. It was carried by a majority of only two.

Sir John Hall felt bound by Sir William Fox's wish to offer me the post of Minister of Lands; but we differed on so many points that I knew that he would be relieved by my refusal to take a seat in his Cabinet. Mr William Rolleston, on the other hand, was Sir John's personal friend and held views far more in accord with his own than mine were. He was, moreover, an honest man and an able and experienced public worker, and knew more about Canterbury requirements than I did. I hastened, therefore, to set Sir John at liberty to do what I am sure he wished to do, by telling him that I differed from him upon too many subjects of great importance to be willing to become a member of his Ministry. I also told him at the same time that I and six other members (who, in the absence of our great chief, looked to me for, leadership) would support him as Premier, provided Bills were immediately passed giving Manhood Suffrage,

Triennial Parliaments, and severe penalties upon electoral corruptions. These measures Sir John Hall agreed to introduce, and he kept well to his promise.

Soon after the session was over, Sir John Hall asked me to accept the chairmanship of a Commission appointed to inquire into the working of the Civil Service. I agreed to do so, and was thus employed in more arduous and important work than I should have been as a Minister of the Crown.

It did not take me long to see that the task set before me was of no light or cheerful character. I can very truly say that I did the lion's share of work on this Commission, and my colleagues were very eager to accord me the whole credit of the many unpopular reforms we brought about.

Perhaps I should here give you some idea of the comrades I had. We were four in number altogether. Two of us were members of the House of Representatives and received one guinea a day each for travelling expenses, and two were not in the House and received three guineas a day each as some payment for their services.

Sir Robert Douglas was a good-tempered, jolly fellow – just the right kind of man to make up for all my social deficiencies. He had many relations and friends in the Civil Service, so that we always expected him to act as "counsel for the defence." This he did very pleasantly and good-temperedly.

The member who helped me most with the real hard work of the Commission was Mr Pharazyn, a son of the Hon. C. J. Pharazyn, M.L.C. He was a man with very strong perceptive faculties, who easily saw through every subterfuge, and took a keen interest in the work. He wrote that part of the report referring to the Land Office.

Mr Kelly was a member of the House for a district in Taranaki. He delayed the presentation of our report for a week whilst he wrote an opposition one.

A superficial inquiry into all the departments of the Civil Service soon showed us that it would be quite impossible to report upon them all before the next Parliament met and expected a report from us. All the departments, except that of the Post and Telegraph Office (over which Post-

master-General Sir John Hall had exercised control with the same conscientious thoroughness that he brought to bear upon any work for which he was responsible), showed the employment of many useless, extravagantly-paid officials. But the place where the grossest wholesale robbery of public money was going on was the Public Works Department.

The Commissioner in charge of all the South Island railways was receiving a salary of £1,700 a year; but, not content with this, he added indefinitely to his annual income by becoming the principal partner in a firm in which his name did not appear, but which was the only firm that could ever obtain contracts for the supply of railway trucks and other requisites. This firm built trucks of stringy bark which were sent empty to Christchurch, there to be pulled to pieces and properly built of ironbark in the railway workshops. So that they were twice paid for, and twenty-six of them were waiting to be re-made on the workshops siding in Christchurch when the Commissioners inspected that establishment.

When I presented the report of the Civil Service Commission to the Premier (Sir John Hall), he said, courteously and kindly, but very gravely and sadly:

"Gentlemen, I thank you for the industry and courage you have shown in this investigation, but you can understand how sorry I am that the painful, drastic use of the pruning knife, which must result from it, should have fallen to my lot."

On the evening following the one upon which the report had been sent down to the House, the Minister of Public Works (who should have found out for himself most of the information that our report contained, and whose duty it was to instantly act upon it), read with the utmost confidence, from his seat on the Ministerial benches, a document he had called on from the Chief Engineer of the South Island railways. Of this document I will give the exact words, incredible as they appear:

"No waggons built by contract under the Department mentioned at Dunedin were delivered in Christchurch at the end of last year. The last contract for waggons there was finished in August, 1877, consequently they had been running for thirteen months before the railway was opened to Christchurch, and

nearly two and a half years before the date referred to in the Civil Service Report. I may add that, so far as waggons built under the supervision of this department are concerned, there is not the slightest ground for thinking them defective. They have, in every instance, been well made and of proper material."

The Minister sat down with a defiant look at me, and every eye in the House was turned towards me with a look that seemed to say, "What a mess you have made of it!"

I did not think it wise to pit my word in the House against the Minister's. I knew what the waggons were, where they were, and when they came there, and how impossible it was that they could ever have carried a single ton from Dunedin to Christchurch, so that, instead of speaking in reply, I telegraphed to the brave locomotive superintendent at Christchurch, Mr Allison D. Smith, who had shown me the fraudulent trucks on the workshops siding. I told him what the Minister of Public Works had read in the House, and asked him to send me a boxful of the mortises and tenons sawn from the stringy bark trucks. The following is the telegram I received from him in reply:

"I have abundant proofs, and waggons on sidings which are available for inspection. The Hon. Mr Oliver saw two of these waggons when going through the workshops. There are no less than twenty-six waggons now standing on workshop siding requiring to be rebuilt, all bad workmanship and all built in Dunedin. Will send you specimens of timber and workmanship by the mail steamer. Will it be necessary for me to send further information re bad work in waggons or more specimens? I have a great number collected. I could also produce many expert witnesses to verify evidence."

It was a bitter pill for the Minister of Public Works to swallow when I had the stringy bark tenons and mortises laid on the table of the House where they spoke louder than words. Sir John Hall suffered severely over the humiliating position his Minister of Public Works had placed himself in by denying facts so completely proved; and there can be no doubt that the work the report of the Civil Service Commission laid upon his already overburdened shoulders had a large share in breaking down his health so completely that he was soon afterwards compelled to resign the Premiership.

Sir William Fox's familiar fearless voice was now once more heard in the House, as one of his devoted admirers had insisted upon resigning his own seat so as to give Sir William's old Rangitikei constituents an opportunity to send him there again. Sir John Hall and Sir William Fox did not agree in all their views, but they were firm friends, and, under the existing circumstances, Sir William was Sir John's warm supporter. The assertion of the Minister of Public Works that my report was untrue aroused all his old fire and all his old determination to be in the forefront of any unpopular reform, and, bounding to his feet. Sir William said, in reply to a tirade of abuse of the report from Mr Macandrew:

"The chief officer in the department out of which these waggons came absolutely denies the whole of the Civil Service Commission's facts. He says that no such waggons were ever made in Dunedin, or sent from there to Christchurch. He absolutely denies their existence. Yet, Sir, we have, placed upon the table of this House, their whole jingling machinery, the pieces of wood just hanging together, mortises without tenons, tenons without mortises, every conceivable description of bad work. Stringy bark has been used for ironbark, and the different parts rattle together like a child's toy. And for all this the country has paid! Why! Sir, what more do we want? Will all the assertions of all the officials in New Zealand contradict the evidence of our own eyes? We have not had to 'wait for the waggon'; in this case the waggon has come to us, and is incontrovertible evidence. The man who can swallow that waggon, who can swallow in fact the twenty-six waggons, must have a marvellous gorge. I trust that we shall not allow a red herring to be drawn across the scent, but shall make good use of this report; the use for which it was intended. Let it be a guide to the Government in entering upon reforms in the Civil Service in the direction it indicates, and it will do right good service to this country, saving thousands and tens of thousands, and perhaps, ultimately, millions of money."

I have given this long account of the waggons to show you one specimen of the lengths to which those whom our report incriminated were prepared to go, and to indicate the sort of men I had to contend with in the prosecution of my work. The tenons and mortises,

however, served me well, as my facts were never again flatly contradicted in the House.

To write a full account of this Commission would fill a large book, so I must not stop to describe any more of the glaring abuses we brought to light, but content myself with saying that, after pointing out these abuses, we advised that both the Railway Commissioners, and some fifty engineers (who were doing more harm than good), should be dismissed, and that the fifteen per cent, increase in the salaries of Civil Servants (proposed by Sir Julius Vogel in a time of short-lived, abnormal prosperity) should now be followed by a general reduction of not less than 12 1/2 per cent, on all yearly salaries. This reduction at once effected a saving of £100,000 a year.

The report was accepted by the House, and its adoption made me as unpopular as Satan. In one respect this unpopularity was undeserved, for I had never once suggested interfering with the amount given to day-wages men. Yet they were the first and greatest sufferers, their wages being reduced more than sixteen per cent., i. e., from six shillings to five shillings per day. I have always felt that it was unjust to point me out to the working men of the Colony as the one who had so reduced their daily earnings. I had consistently upheld their rights, and received my most valuable support from them; but now they united with the runholders, land speculators, advocates of denominational education, and brewers, in keeping me out of the House, and I was defeated in my next five election contests. What made my defeats seem somewhat harder was that for thirty-eight years I had worked through a great many difficulties, in company with Sir William Fox, to obtain Manhood Suffrage, yet the very first election it was in force we were both turned out of the House. But, through all my unpopularity, many honest, staunch friends steadily supported me, and I may mention, as a proof of this, that I never had a crushing defeat, and was four times defeated by majorities of, respectively, four, three, five and thirteen.

CHAPTER XXXI. DAILY LIFE AT BROOMFIELDS

CHAPTER XXXI

DAILY LIFE AT BROOMFIELDS

(By Ellen and Ann Saunders)

What matter if the gains are small
That life's essential wants supply?
Your homestead's title gives you all
That idle wealth can buy.
– -J. G. WHITTIER.

AMONGST the sorrows that loss of fortune brought to Alfred and Rhoda, the return to a very simple mode of life was certainly not one, for both of them had a dislike, almost amounting to horror, of any sort of display or ostentation. Alfred never drank anything but cold water, and never ate more than two meals a day. His menu for breakfast never varied from home-made brown bread and butter, and clear, cold water. This habit of cold water drinking once provoked a remark from one of Mr Henry Redwood's sons that amused Alfred very much. On one of his visits to Avonbank, this young man expressed the utmost astonishment when, at the evening meal, Alfred was supplied with cold water instead of hot tea; and when Rhoda said, "Mr Saunders never drinks anything but cold water," he exclaimed earnestly, "What a constitution he must have had to stand it so long!"

At Broomfields, there was neither butcher nor baker nearer than six miles, but this was no hardship to Alfred, as he never ate butcher's meat, and thought that no other bread in New Zealand was to be compared with the wholemeal loaf manufactured by his wife and daughters. Dinner consisted of green vegetables and potatoes, stewed or raw fruit, and junket or some other milk pudding. About once a week fish or poultry was added to this bill of fare. All kinds of raw salads – lettuce,

celery, radish, onion, and tomato – appeared on the dinner table whenever it was possible to obtain them, and, since Alfred was a remarkably good gardener, there were few weeks in the year when one or other was not flourishing in the Broomfields garden.

This method of life with regard to diet was then much more uncommon than it is now, and it is interesting to note that, in his eighty-sixth year, Alfred could eat and enjoy hard brown crusts and raw apples which he masticated very thoroughly with his own natural teeth. The year he spent in the service of a member of the Society of Friends had given him a great admiration for very simply made and quietly coloured garments, and he was quite delighted on one occasion when a kind-hearted Irishman, who admired him very much and had exhausted every other form of compliment, said to him:

"When my girls want me to spend a lot of money in buying them new hats and frocks, I always say, 'Look at Mr Saunders' daughters – you never see any fine clothes on them.'"

Alfred and Rhoda were good neighbours, delighted to both give and receive little neighbourly kindnesses, and a pleasant confirmation of this statement is afforded by the fact that Alfred was never defeated for a constituency in which his own home was situated. In cases of illness or accident, his and Rhoda's valuable help and advice were often sought, and were always freely and cheerfuly given. The nearest doctor was twelve miles distant, and it sometimes happened that one or other was aroused in the middle of the night to go to the assistance of some sick or wounded neighbour. A few instances of Alfred's gift of healing are related here.

The young teacher of the little village school fell and injured her knee so severely that it seemed as if she must certainly lose the use of one of her legs. Rhoda went to see her, and learnt from her that, as long as the knee was kept perfectly motionless, she felt no pain; but that any attempt to move the leg, even when the knee was very tightly bandaged, caused immediate agony. The skilful doctor who attended her could find no means of relieving her, and, as she was entirely dependent on her own exertions for her living, the poor girl was very unhappy indeed. Rhoda took Alfred to see her. He examined the knee carefully, and, with the aid

of the village blacksmith, made a tin case which was carefully padded with flannel on the inside. This was strapped above and below the injured knee in such a way as to keep it absolutely rigid, and thus the injured tendons had an opportunity to heal, which they very satisfactorily did.

A five-year-old grandson who was paying a visit to Broomfields, fell from his pony on to a hard metalled road, and broke his arm in two places – at the elbow joint, and between the shoulder and elbow. He was picked up and carried home by a neighbour, and, directly he saw his grandfather, he called out:

"It's nothing, Grandfather, I've often been hurt worse than this."

But when his grandfather had carefully ripped open the sleeves of the little coat and shirt, and had seen the smashed elbow and the bone of the upper arm protruding through the skin, he realised that the child's injuries were very far from being "nothing." The doctor who set the bones, said, at the end of six weeks, that the arm would be a permanently crooked one, and that the only hope of straightening it was to try re-setting the bones. Alfred refused to allow this to be done. He made a tin box of such a shape that the child could, whilst comfortably sitting down, hold his arm in it. This box was filled with water as hot as the arm could bear, and in it the injured limb was soaked for one or two hours every day. Each time that it was taken out of the water, Alfred gently massaged it, until, at the end of a few months, it was almost as straight and pliable as the other arm. Some years afterwards, when this same grandson again paid a visit to Broomfields, he could not tell which of his arms had been broken.

A poor young fellow, who was employed as a labourer on a neighbouring farm, ran a rusty nail into one of his fingers, with the result that his whole hand became a mass of festering sores which obstinately refused to heal. He came at length to Alfred, who daily dressed and poulticed the swollen, disfigured hand, but was often so sick at the end of the process that he could eat nothing for the rest of the day. In the course of a few weeks, he was rewarded by his patient's complete recovery.

Like nearly all the early colonists. Alfred and Rhoda were very hospitable, and were never too poor, too sad, or too busy, to give a hearty welcome to any of their neighbours, kindred, or friends. For many years, it was the custom for as many as possible of their children and grandchildren to come to a Christmas gathering of the family at Broomfields, and the finest poultry, vegetables and fruit were always reserved for these occasions.

Alfred occasionally gave lectures on various subjects in the little village schoolroom; but, as a rule, the evening was spent in listening to his daughters read aloud from books that had been selected by him for that purpose, chiefly biographies and books of history and travel. Rollin's "Ancient History," Macaulay's and Froude's "Histories of England," Prescott's "Histories of Peru and Mexico"; and lives of such men as George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, the Prince Consort (for whom Alfred had a great admiration), and Thomas Carlyle, were especial favourites. But a few novels were permitted, and amongst these were Charlotte Yonge's historical novels, and all of George MacDonald's and Edna Lyall's books. Alfred especially enjoyed and admired Edna Lyall's "To Right the Wrong."

During the early years of his stay at Broomfields, Alfred wrote and published "Our Domestic Birds," and "Our Horses." Soon after the publication of the latter, Lord Onslow, who was then Governor of New Zealand, wrote to Alfred to ask for permission to use his description of the Maori method of schooling horses in a book that he himself was preparing for publication; and when this permission was readily granted, the Governor had a capital sketch drawn (of a scene in a Maori village described by Alfred) to illustrate the story.

CHAPTER XXXII. IN PARLIAMENT AGAIN

CHAPTER XXXII

IN PARLIAMENT AGAIN

(By Ellen and Ann Saunders)

Shall we not heed the lesson taught of old,
And by the Present's lips repeated still,
In our own single manhood to be bold,
Fortressed in conscience and impregnable will?
– J. R. LOWELL.

AT a by-election held in January, 1889, Alfred was returned to Parliament to represent the Lincoln electorate. He and Rhoda were both much gratified that, at the West Melton polling booth, out of 112 votes recorded, Alfred received 108. A few extracts are given from the letters he wrote to his family during this session:

"I was almost overwhelmed with kindness on Tuesday evening, and, since my speech on the Hare system, all the members treat me even better than they did before – and that was quite needless. I don't seem to have an enemy of any kind here, and they all treat me as a sort of grandfather who must be taken great care of."

"You know that the House adjourns from 5.30 to 7.30 for dinner. No matter who is speaking, the Clerk rises from his seat exactly at 5.30 and tells the Speaker the time, and off everyone goes. On Tuesday afternoon, the debate on the Representation Bill was called about 5 p.m. I had promised Sir John Hall that I would speak and I rose to do so. I should, of course, have had to stop at 5.30, so Sir John rose and proposed to the House that it should adjourn then and there so that my speech need not be interrupted. This extraordinary indulgence was carried by acclamation. It thus happened that all

the members knew that I was going to speak, and, when I rose at 7.30, the House was fuller than it has been at any other time this session. Most of the Legislative Councillors were in their gallery, all the members were in their seats, and every gallery was full. I felt how much I should disappoint such high expectations; but, as soon as the Speaker called for 'Mr Saunders,' the members, led on by Sir George Grey, gave me a jolly cheering and clapping which soon made me feel quite at home. Sir George Grey cried 'Hear! hear!' in his fine mellow voice at the end of every other sentence. Was it not generous of Sir John to arrange for such a full House to hear me?"

"When I rose to speak last night, I was heartily cheered by the House; but, before I sat down, both House and galleries hummed with dissatisfaction as I told the Premier that he starved our railways and the education of the people in order to pay big salaries to the Wellington Civil Servants."

In December, 1890, Alfred was again elected a member of Parliament, although the boundaries of his electorate had been altered and its name changed from Lincoln to Selwyn. His work in Parliament is recorded in "Hansard" and in the newspapers of the day. He never wavered from the earnest unfaltering aims that have been recorded in chapter 17 of this Memoir, and every session of Parliament found him more and more dissatisfied with the system of Party Government. His ideal is described in Macaulay's lines –

Then none was for a party;
Then all were for the State;
Then the great man helped the poor,
And the poor man loved the great:
Then lands were fairly portioned;
Then spoils were fairly sold;
The Romans were like brothers
In the brave days of old.

A Wellington paper wrote of Alfred at this time:

"Mr Alfred Saunders can fill the House when he speaks. The background of the green curtain over the lobby door, throwing forward the old gentleman's massive head and venerable beard, he makes a striking picturesque figure as he stands in his place."

During the session of 1892, Sir Harry Atkinson died very suddenly, and Alfred wrote to a friend in Christchurch:

"I do not feel inclined to speak of his death in the usual language as a 'sad event.' To those who know the real sadness of failing health and waning power and usefulness, it will hardly be pronounced 'sad' to terminate a useful, honourable, distinguished life in the very act of duty, and in the midst of devoted friends, without pain, without a complaint, and without fear. No, if Sir Harry had been permitted to choose for himself all the accompaniments and surroundings of his last moments, he could have wished for nothing less painful, more sympathetic, or more appropriate to the termination of his brave and public-spirited life."

An event which Alfred felt very keenly was the death of the Hon. John Ballance in 1893. He concludes an article upon his life and work, written for the "Canterbury Times" and published in that paper on Thursday, May 4th, 1893, in the following words:

"When the young night student in the great city of iron and Radicals bravely decided to seek his fortune in the most distant British Colony, he could hardly have dreamed that fourteen thousand New Zealanders would follow him to his last resting place, or that a young nation would so deeply mourn his death and confer upon his memory a tribute of respect which kings could not bestow, and which gold could not purchase. He is gone – a plain 'John Ballance' marks his tomb – and the people he has served so unselfishly are left to mourn their loss. Let the history of New Zealand be his abiding monument."

In November, 1893, another General Election took place, and Alfred was again returned to represent the Selwyn constituency. To one of his sisters in England he wrote, soon after this election:

"My old friends stood by me with a wonderful amount of steady, disinterested faithfulness which makes me feel quite rich. My electoral district is ninety miles long, and, in some places, thirty miles wide, without even one large village in it; so that I had to speak in twenty-six different places; which means speaking every weekday night for a month – meeting in no place more than three hundred people. In most cases the meetings lasted from 8 p.m. till 11 p.m., speaking for an hour and

a half, and answering questions for an hour and a half. I had two first rate horses to take me from place to place, and, with my now poor muscles, I often felt how helpless I should have been without their great locomotive power. Age is a great protection in political warfare, and I am getting the full advantage of it now. There was no attempt to insult me anywhere, and any attempted underhand slanders did not prosper at all."

When Parliament was called together in June, 1894, Alfred had the pleasure of proposing for the office of Speaker his friend Sir Maurice O'Rorke, for whose remarkable fitness for this position he always had a profound admiration. In describing an incident connected with this event, Alfred wrote to his family at West Melton:

"There is one thing connected with my proposal of the Speaker which will, I am sure, interest you, and which gives a very striking proof of the remarkably good taste sometimes possessed by those who have been reared in the most cultivated society. That they should possess this good taste is often spoken of as a matter of course; but my experience has been that the most beautiful, tactful courtesy is more frequently shown by those who have never had any training in formal etiquette, so that I am quite pleased to have had an exhibition of it from one who occupies such a position as Lord Glasgow does.

"Of course you know that the proposer and seconder of the man who is elected Speaker are required to accompany him to Government House when he goes to pay his respects to the Governor, and, soon after Sir Maurice was elected, I went to him and said:

"'I have no dress clothes here, so that, if I must go with you to the Governor, I must go just as I am.'

"I saw that he was a bit shocked, but it was only for a moment, and then he said, in his own pleasant way:

"'Oh! never mind, do just as you like. Lord Glasgow will give you credit for being a stiff Republican of the Franklin School.'

"I went away, feeling rather ashamed of myself for having evidently given him some trouble in the matter, and, if I had a dress suit and shirt, I should certainly have put them on, especially as the seconder, Mr Kelly, who had to go with us, is a dressy Irishman and a great

frequenter at Court. But, next morning, when I met him in the Speaker's room, I was surprised to see Mr Kelly, dressed very nicely, but not wearing a dress coat. As we were handed out of the carriage at Government House, the aide-de-camp who received us was also in a frock coat.

"As we walked through the hall, Sir Maurice threw his hat on a marble slab as if we were in his own house, and said, 'We can leave our hats here if we like,' and thus I was relieved from my ugly old hat. We then entered the reception room and arranged ourselves in a row in which I stood next to the Speaker, awaiting the Governor's entrance. He came in, and we all bowed; but lo! he, too, was in a frock coat.

"When the ceremony was over, Sir Maurice introduced me to the Governor as 'the Father of the House,' and Lord Glasgow shook hands and said a few pleasant things very nicely. As the aide-de-camp was conducting us back to the carriage, he said, laughingly, to the Speaker:

"'A minute or two before you came, I saw His Excellency in a frock coat, and I asked him in a horrified tone if he had forgotten that you were coming, and he said, ' No, make haste and get a frock coat on yourself.'

"The aide said this as if he were not at all aware that I had been the guilty cause of the startling innovation.

"This is a lesson to me. It shows how much the highest and best politeness consists in putting other persons at their ease and even saving them from their own mistakes."

Before the general election of December, 1896, the boundaries of the Selwyn electorate were altered, and Alfred was defeated by Mr J. C. Wason. In replying to an old friend who had written expressing his disappointment at the result of the election, Alfred wrote:

"I was in a pleasant position as the oldest member of the House. It brought with it many privileges, and I should like to have died in harness; but my old friends have stuck to me well, and had not the alteration in the boundaries of my district cut off my neighbours and so many of my best supporters, I should have been again returned."

CHAPTER XXXIII. ALFRED'S WORK FOR WOMANHOOD SUFFRAGE

CHAPTER XXXIII

ALFRED'S WORK FOR WOMANHOOD SUFFRAGE

(By Ellen and Ann Saunders)

No, it isn't home-neglecting
If you spend your time selecting
Seven blouses and a jacket and a hat;
Or to give your day to paying
Needless visits, or to playing
Auction bridge. What critic could object to that?
But to spend two precious hours
At a lecture! Oh, my powers!
The home is all a woman needs to learn;
And an hour, or a quarter,
Spent in voting! Why, my daughter,
The home would not be there on your return!
– ANONYMOUS.

WHILST absent from Parliament, Alfred had never ceased to take a very vivid interest in the public life of his adopted country, and one of the reforms always very dear to his heart was the enfranchisement of women. Three friends of his, Mesdames Kate Sheppard (now Mrs W. S. Lovell-Smith), Isabel May, and Ada Wells, were deeply interested in this question, and it is, of course, a matter of history that New Zealand women are more indebted to Mrs Lovell-Smith than to anyone else, in or out of Parliament, for the final triumphant passage of the Bill to enfranchise the women of New Zealand. But Mrs May (Mrs Lovell-Smith's sister) and Mrs Wells also did valiant service in this great cause, and Alfred took every opportunity of acknowledging, both in public and in private, how much of its success was due to their unselfish devotion.

From his return to Parliament in January, 1889, until the enfranchisement of every adult woman in New

Zealand was at last achieved, Sir John Hall and Alfred Saunders lost no opportunity of championing the right of women to share with their fathers, brothers, husbands, and sons, the privilege and duty of taking part in the election of their Parliamentary representatives.

In the introduction to his "Outlines of the Women's Franchise Movement in New Zealand," Mr W. S. Lovell-Smith writes (August 3rd, 1905):

"As early as 1843, Mr Alfred Saunders and Sir William Fox advocated Woman Suffrage in the Colony. This fact has only just been brought to my knowledge, and I am glad to be able to do justice to two of the truest patriots that New Zealand has possessed."

Perhaps the best epitome of Alfred's views on the subject of Womanhood Suffrage is contained in a paper written by him in 1886. The concluding paragraphs are as follows:

"But what can we say of the unqualified assertion that 'marriage is to a woman what a profession is to a man?' We need not enlarge upon, or even point out, the very obvious fact that all women are not married, nor the equally obvious one that a considerable proportion of those that are would have been much better off in some other position of life. We have not the slightest wish to prevent women from marrying; but we cannot entirely ignore the education and happiness of those who may not desire, or may not be called on to fill that station in life.

"Where all the essential conditions of mutual happiness do not present themselves, woman is often the chief sufferer, and, as she values her own peace of mind, we would counsel her to aim so to shape her course in life that she may never be compelled, as a matter of convenience, to a friendless, joyless, heartless union for life. We need not descend to argue that she can be happy and useful in other walks of life. No age has ever been without abundant proofs of that, from the humble, useful, and beloved village nurse to a 'Sister Dora.' a Hannah More, or a Harriet Martineau.

"Woman is not prone to despise, or rebel against, her destiny as helpmeet. Very few women, and very few women's sons, are likely to undervalue either the personal or the national worth of good wives and mothers. Even the heartless Napoleon, though quite willing to

sacrifice his own good wife to his personal ambition, to wet the hearthstones of France with mothers' tears, and to stain the plains of Europe with the blood of their sons, was wont to say that what France wanted was good mothers.

"Men commonly hold such opinions. We often hear from them that good wives and mothers are a very valuable and sometimes a very scarce commodity. We find no fault with them for entertaining or even for expressing such opinions; but, as good husbands and fathers are, in some countries, quite as scarce as good wives and mothers, we cannot wish to see women cut off from every other resource and compelled to look upon marriage as their only profession. And we believe that we do not claim too much when we say that man does not make the most of his best friend and companion when he hedges her round with restrictions that are dictated, not by nature, but by ancient, deep-rooted, and unworthy prejudices."

Sir John Hall and Alfred Saunders are now generally accorded the credit of having done, in Parliament, more than anyone else to secure the enfranchisement of the women of New Zealand. But there was another brave, good man who also did much to forward this great reform, and the following extracts from a letter that the Hon. John Ballance wrote to Alfred Saunders less than a month before Mr Ballance's death, prove this very clearly:

Premier's Office,
Wellington, 11th April, 1893.

My Dear Mr Saunders –

Since I last wrote you, I have been discussing with my colleagues the order of business for the session; and I think I can inform you that without doubt the Electoral Bill, including the Woman's Franchise, will be one of the first measures introduced, and will be pushed through without a moment's unnecessary delay. There is one reservation, however, that I should make. We will not agree to any distinction being drawn between the sexes; and the friends of the measure should make up their minds to resist any innovation of the kind, which would almost certainly wreck the measure. My own strong opinion is, that we want on the Statute Book, as a

foundation of our constitution, a broad measure taking in all the adults of the Colony, male and female, without any experimental legislation such as voting through the Post Office. Then we shall have the freest political system in the world.

"I have myself the utmost faith in the good sense of the women of the Colony, and have never changed in the slightest, for the last fourteen years, my views on the subject. I was the first to carry a resolution in favour of the franchise in the House, and believed then, as I believe still, that it would be one of the greatest of social reforms.......

Yours very truly,
JOHN BALLANCE.

CHAPTER XXXIV. ALFRED WRITES A HISTORY OF NEW ZEALAND

CHAPTER XXXIV

ALFRED WRITES A HISTORY OF NEW ZEALAND

But why, you ask me, should this tale be told
To men grown old, or who are growing old?
It is too late! Ah, nothing is too late
Till the tired heart shall cease to palpitate.
– H. W. Longfellow.

IT was by the persistent urging of the daughter who acted as my private secretary that I was one day prevailed upon to scribble in pencil an essay for her to copy, and the pleasant result of this effort was what really gave me confidence to undertake the presumptuous task of writing a history of New Zealand.

I think it was only on the morning of the day before the essay had to be posted to Melbourne, that Ann came to me with a newspaper in her hand, in which she had found an advertisement of the Melbourne bookseller, E. W. Cole, offering ten prizes of £10 each for essays on the Federation of the World. No essay was to exceed in length what could be written on one sheet of foolscap paper. I objected to such a close limit upon such a very large subject; but Ann said:

"Well, father, I don't think that limit will tell against you. You generally say as much on one sheet as most persons do on two, and I think that I could write as much on one sheet as most people do write on two. It won't take you long, and we may get one of the £10 prizes!"

So I went to work, and scribbled the essay off in pencil, and Ann copied it in a clear, round hand that was as easy to read as print.

Although we knew that the prizes were offered to the whole world, neither of us had the slightest idea that

so small a prize as £10 would call forth competitors from all parts of the globe. No real name or place was to be attached to any of the essays, so that the judges should not know who wrote them or where they came from. The real name and address of each competitor was sent to Mr Cole under a separate cover, and only some fictitious name was attached to the essay. I signed myself "Three Score and Ten."

I think it must have been quite a long while before I heard any more about that morning's work, as I had almost forgotten that I had ever written such an essay when, one afternoon, as I was reading in the library in the House of Representatives, Mr Cole's letter, telling me that I had obtained one of the prizes, was handed to me.

I have written so much about this essay because it was the result of that one day's work that decided me to attempt a long history of New Zealand.

Sir George Grey, the Hon. John Ballance, and many, other members of the House, had often pressed me to undertake that task; but I had always replied that such a work should be undertaken by a successful University man, and not by a self-educated one like myself. After reading my Federation Essay, Sir William Fox said to me:

"Now, Saunders, this ought to show you how little you have lost by never seeing the inside of a University. You actually know more about the history of New Zealand than any other man living. You are, in fact, an expert upon it, and, as to your style of writing, you see, even upon a subject in which none of us thought you were an expert, you have easily beaten at least a hundred University men.

Mr Ballance, Sir George Grey, and Sir Maurice O'Rorke were equally kind in their comments; but I think no other opinion had so much weight with me as that of the always honest and faithful friend of fifty years' standing. Sir William Fox.

NOTE BY COMPILERS

The number of essays actually received by Mr Cole was 660.

NOTE BY COMPILERS

The Federation essay was written in May, 1890 The first volume of Alfred's History of New Zealand was published towards the end of 1896. Such a work necessarily entailed a tremendous amount of reading as well as writing; but, having once embarked upon it, Alfred never thought of relinquishing the task until it was accomplished. The goal at which he aimed is explained in the last paragraph of his introduction to the book:

"My aim has been to write a history that can be obtained, read, understood and trusted by the young and the old of all classes of both races; in which the mistakes of my fellow colonists, as well as those of our rulers and governors, have not been concealed; in which their humble but honest efforts have not been underrated; and in which truth, justice, patriotism and philanthropy will take a higher place than wealth, station, ambition, talent or success."

The book was well reviewed in all the leading New Zealand newspapers, and many old friends wrote expressing their appreciation of it.

CHAPTER XXXV. DEATH OF SIR GEORGE GREY

CHAPTER XXXV

DEATH OF SIR GEORGE GREY

He who all things forgives
Conquers himself, and all things else, and lives
Above the reach of Wrong, or Hate, or Fear,
Calm as the Gods, to whom he is most dear.
– H. W. LONGFELLOW.

IN 1898, Sir George Grey died in England, and the following paper, entitled "A Personal Reminiscence, by Alfred Saunders," was published in the "Lyttelton Times" of September 21st, 1898:

".....In his capacity of Governor, I had the very highest general admiration for Sir George. His great courage, his perfect manners, his natural instinct to protect the weak, all seemed to single him out as an ideal man for the position; and it is pleasant to me to remember that during my long public life in Nelson, either as Superintendent of the Province or as a member of the House, I always tried, to the best of my ability, to defend him from the savage and unwarrantable attacks that were, in those days, so often made upon him. But when I was returned to the House of Representatives, as the member for Cheviot, in 1877, hoping to support him, I was often unable to approve of Sir George's actions as Premier; and I still think that, in spite of his remarkable talents, he was not suited for that position; so that, as far as my action in the House at that time is concerned, I do not feel that I can regret the course I then took in condemning his financial policy. But, in a public newspaper of that date, I made an attack upon Sir George Grey which I now remember with regret. When, after some eight years absence, I re-entered the House as member for Lincoln, I was surprised and grieved to see how much the years had told upon Sir George. He seemed to me, physically, to be such a broken-down, feeble old man that I could not refrain

from writing to him to express my deep regret for the letter to which I have referred, and also for any other occasions on which I might have unnecessarily and unjustifiably wounded him. He replied immediately, and his letter is such a beautiful example of noble and magnanimous forgiveness, and so characteristic of some of the best traits of Sir George Grey's character, that I shall quote it in full:

"My dear Saunders, I regard your letter as a very noble one, that does credit to your good heart. It has given me great pleasure, and relieved me from what has often weighed upon my mind. From the first time I knew you, I felt a great esteem for you. It has always been a cause of sorrow to me that an estrangement had arisen between us. I truly have never felt any ill-will in my mind, and have wished for a renewal of old intercourse. I always attributed the coldness that arose, from an attack, which I thought unwarranted, which a friend of mine made on you, and to which I was no party. In this I may be wrong – I have no doubt he is now sorry for it – but an end to this. You have performed a worthy action, the remembrance of which will always be present with me. – Truly yours, G. Grey."

And it was not by this letter alone that Sir George showed how completely he had forgiven and forgotten the past. During all the rest of the time we spent together in the House of Representatives, he lost no opportunity of showing me every graceful kindness in his power, and only those who knew him personally know how graceful and delightful his kindnesses were. Perfect, unselfish courtesy was a natural instinct of his nature, and, though he was several years my senior, and so much my superior, the only painful thing about the intercourse to me was that, in all our talks and walks together, he always insisted on my having the best and easiest chair, the smoothest path, and every other advantage that should rightly and properly have belonged to himself.

"Another most attractive characteristic of Sir George was his great love for children. It was touching – when one remembered his own childless old age – to see how naturally children loved and confided in him, and how warmly he returned their affection. I remember, many years ago, taking a railway journey with him,

accompanied by two of my daughters, who were then children. He was, even then, far from strong, and was suffering severely from a swollen and disabled leg; but, during the whole of that long journey, his one thought seemed to be how he could make the time pass pleasantly and quickly to the two little girls.

"The last letter I ever received from him was dated March 11th, 1897. I had sent him a copy of my 'History of New Zealand,' and, with his usual unselfish consideration for others, he had made what must have been the great effort of acknowledging it at once. I need hardly say how valuable this letter is to me, though, for many reasons, I cannot quote it here. No other man ever made me feel so much as he did, how wise it always is for a public man to attend with assiduity to all the little private courtesies for which possibilities present themselves in the daily intercourse of public men."

CHAPTER XXXVI. THE PARTING OF THE WAYS

CHAPTER XXXVI

THE PARTING OF THE WAYS

(By Ellen and Ann Saunders)

The sweetest voice I ever heard on earth has joined the angels' singing.
– ELISABETH BOYD BAYLY.

LITTLE more than a year after the golden anniversary of her wedding day, on May 26th, 1898, Rhoda died. Her passing beyond was very sudden, and, although she had been an invalid for many years, none of her family had thought the end so near. To her husband, who was more than eight years her senior, this event came as a shock for which he was quite unprepared. It changed him for a time into a feeble, dependent old man. He lost his keen interest in all that was going on around him, laid aside the second volume of the History of New Zealand which he had been eagerly engaged in writing, and began to feel the journey to Christchurch to the Board of Education meetings a very long one indeed. He had for some years been subject to occasional attacks of hemorrhage which were both painful and dangerous. His wonderful vitality had enabled him to regain some measure of his old strength after several of these; but, shortly after his wife's death, he had a very severe attack which left him absolutely prostrated for a long while. It was pathetic to see one naturally so eager and active lie for hours, too listless, weak, and sad to occupy himself in any way.

Many kind letters of sympathy were sent to him from friends all over the Colony. He kept these beside his bed, and read them over and over again. But he seemed even more touched by the kindness he received from his West Melton neighbours, many of whom came to see him. They would sit beside his bed, talking of politics, weather, or crops, too much in awe of him to

give expression to the sympathy which showed in every line of their kind, sorrowful faces; for, in all his, weakness and dependence, that awe-inspiring attribute, which he himself often deplored, never left him, and an incident that occurred at this time shows what a real power this was.

Whilst Alfred was slowly recovering from the severe illness just mentioned, he was, one evening, with his two daughters in the Broomfields dining-room. It was a rough, cold, winter night, and the room was brightly lighted by both lamp and fire. The blinds were up, and every now and then the moon would appear for a few minutes from behind the dark clouds, making faintly visible the tops of the tall pine trees swaying in the wind. One of his daughters was reading aloud, the other was knitting, and Alfred was lying on a sheep-skin rug in front of the wood fire. He had only his dressing-gown on, and any one looking in at the window could not have seen him, as he was in such a position as to be quite hidden by the furniture. There were no neighbours within call of the Broomfields house, which was surrounded on all sides by tall trees. On this occasion, the dogs had several times barked furiously, but they were not very good watchdogs, and, after going to the door and peering out into the darkness once or twice, Ellen decided that it was some stray pig or cow that was exciting them. It was getting near bed time when a loud knocking came at the back door. When it was opened by Alfred's daughters, they were confronted by a large, dark, powerful-looking man who demanded rather than requested, "tucker and a shake down." Ellen told him that he could sleep in the loft above the stable in which there was plenty of clean straw, and, requesting him to sit down by the kitchen fire, proceeded to get him some supper. She put wood on the fire, and had just taken up a loaf to cut some bread, when he roughly grasped her arm, and said, with an oath:

"I've been all round this here place, and I know that you two girls are the only folks on it, so I'm going to do what I jolly well please."

Alfred had such a power of inspiring confidence that his daughters never felt in the least afraid when he was at hand, however weak and helpless he might be, and one glance at the swagger's face had sent his daughter Ann hastening to him.

He now appeared on the scene, standing in the doorway that led to the kitchen. He looked wasted, white, and fragile enough to have been blown down by a breath. He stood still, with his long white hair falling on his shoulders and his blue eyes blazing under his massive forehead and shaggy eyebrows with all the fire and passion of youth. He did not speak, but stretched out his arm and pointed to the door. The evil-looking face of the great rough bully blanched with terror, and he went staggering backwards towards it. Then he turned and fled, and was heard cursing the dogs as he crashed hither and thither through the shrubbery, in search of the stile over which he had made his way to the house.

Alfred always had a very warm spot in his heart for swaggers, perhaps remembering how often he had been footsore and weary himself in the early days of his New Zealand life, and it needed such provocation as he received on this occasion to make him turn one away from his door unrested and unfed.

He had great recuperative powers, and slowly regained some measure of his former health and strength, resuming his usual occupations and driving to Christchurch to attend the meetings of the Board of Education. He also resumed the writing of his second volume of the History of New Zealand, but his old delight in it was gone, and he toiled at it now as at a wearisome task which he longed to complete. The parting from one who had been for so many years his companion seemed for a long time to destroy, to a great extent, all his interest in present, every-day things. He lived principally in the past, and talked continually of his childhood's home at Russell Mill, of his sisters and brothers, and of his cousins Ann and Sarah Box, and would often say with great earnestness, "I should so like to see them all again."

His daughters started some fortnightly meetings in the West Melton schoolroom, and in these Alfred showed a revival of his old keen interest. He pondered over what subjects the neighbours would best like to hear discussed; he induced several of his friends to deliver addresses; and he sometimes gave a short lecture himself. He was a better speaker than writer, and the term "orator" was often applied to him by both political friends and foes. In his political speeches, he sometimes

denounced men and measures that he thought were obstructing the progress of righteousness in such strong terms as to give great offence; but at these little, informal, neighbourly gatherings, his talks on various subjects were really delightful, and people came from quite a distance to listen to them. He was often very much exhausted when the meetings were over; but friends who had heard him addressing packed audiences in some of New Zealand's largest public buildings, said that he had never spoken with more force and charm than he did in this little village schoolroom.

When the season came round for the Christmas family gathering at Broomfields, Alfred entered with even more than his usual eagerness into preparations for entertaining his guests. The house was not big enough to accommodate all who were coming, so two tents were pitched under the fir trees beside a large pool in which the younger members of the party loved to disport themselves.

Alfred himself drove to the station to meet those who came by train, ushering them into the house with a beaming smile. It was glorious summer weather, and Christmas lilies and Canterbury bells were making a great show in the garden, where the air was sweet with the perfume of lavender, thyme, and scented verbena. Raspberries, cherries, currants, and gooseberries were ripe, and each morning a merry party sat under the shelter of the tall trees, busily shelling peas and scraping potatoes for the early dinner. A small Shetland pony, for which Alfred's son Edward had made a miniature cart, was a great source of amusement to the little ones. The same clever son had built a tiny summer-house high up in a huge macrocarpa tree, with steps up to it by which the children could climb. Sitting aloft in it, one could see for miles over the undulating country around, whilst as completely hidden from view oneself as King Charles was in his celebrated oak tree. When the nor'-west wind came sweeping down the Waimakariri riverbed, it set the little erection swaying in a perfectly safe but excitingly-suggestive-of-danger way that was altogether delightful to the laughing children who clambered into it.

One thoughtful boy of fifteen, who has since passed onward, but who lived long enough to act as the secretary who helped Sir Ernest Shackleton compile his

two great books, followed his grandfather everywhere, watching with anxious care to save him from overexertion, and guarding his books and tools from mischievous little ringers. The grandmother was gone who had known so well how to make the tiny tots happy, and Alfred had none of her instinctive understanding of a child's heart; but he valiantly endeavoured to take her place, even to the extent of trying to join in the children's games and frolics; and when the time came for them to depart, he took leave of them with a demonstrative affection that he had never shown before.

CHAPTER XXXVII. THE CALL OF THE HOMELAND

CHAPTER XXXVII

THE CALL OF THE HOMELAND

(By Ellen and Ann Saunders)

Land of our fathers; precious unto me,
Since the first joys of thinking infancy.
W. WORDSWORTH.

NOT many months after the events recorded in the last chapter, the old homestead was sold; but, before Alfred left it, just as the winter was closing in, a 'Frisco mail boat arrived bringing bad news for him. One letter was from his niece, Elisabeth Boyd Bayly, telling him that his sister Mary (who had been for some years an invalid) was not expected to live many weeks longer. Another little note came from his cousin, Sarah Box, and this note he handed to his daughters, saying sorrowfully, "Keep it carefully: it is Sarah's last farewell." This is what the note contained:

"My dear Cousin, I have been thinking so much of you lately, and was so disappointed when the mail came in without bringing me a letter. It is so very long since I have heard from you. We came home from Basle a week ago, as the change was doing me no good, and I have been in bed ever since. I was to have undergone a rather serious operation to-day, but it has been postponed until to-morrow. Dr Elliot says that he hopes I shall be on my feet again in a few weeks' time, but, in case things should turn out more seriously than he anticipates, I cannot leave you without a few words of farewell. If this should be my last letter, dear Alfred, think as kindly and affectionately of me till the very end as I think of you. Good-bye, good-bye. God bless and keep you always. – Sarah."

This was a very ominous letter from one who always instinctively looked on the brightest side of everything, and Alfred felt it to be so. The next day he told his daughters that he had quite made up his mind to start for England in three weeks' time, saying:

"We are all so very old, I dare not jeopardise my chance of seeing my own people again by delaying any longer."

His heart was so evidently set on going that his children could do nothing to dissuade him, and they set sorrowfully to work to prepare his outfit for the long voyage.

As soon as the news of his intended departure from New Zealand became public, he received daily letters and telegrams giving such convincing proof of the esteem in which he was held by his fellow Colonists that they did much to soften the sadness of farewell.

No written account could do justice to the gratitude and affection that animated the large gathering which assembled to say "Good-bye" to Alfred in the Chamber of Commerce, Christchurch, on June 7th, 1899. The arrangements for this meeting had been made by Sir John Hall and the Hon. William Montgomery, and their thoughtful tact and delicacy were apparent everywhere. As one after another of the public men of New Zealand rose to testify to the integrity and courage that Alfred had shown in all his public work, he was deeply touched, and their words of warm appreciation and affection filled with pleasant memories a farewell that must otherwise have been a very sad one. The beautiful and costly gifts presented to Alfred at this farewell gathering were accompanied by an address tastefully illuminated and handsomely bound in morocco, which was signed by a large number of his fellow-Colonists. Another beautifully illuminated and richly bound address was presented to him at his farewell meeting at the Board of Education. This was signed by all his colleagues there.

CHAPTER XXXVIII. ALFRED'S THIRD VISIT TO ENGLAND

CHAPTER XXXVIII

ALFRED'S THIRD VISIT TO ENGLAND

Assiduous all his wishes to attend,
Deprived of much, he yet may boast a friend.
– GEORGE CRABBE.

TWO days after the farewell gathering mentioned in the last chapter, Alfred started on his journey to England. When a little three-year-old grandchild, named Rhoda in honour of her grandmother, heard that he was going across the sea, she appeared to think that he was preparing to swim the distance that separates England from New Zealand, for she said with much solicitude, as she fixed her blue eyes anxiously on his face, "But what about the sharks, grandfather?"

Alfred laughed heartily at this remark; but perhaps he knew that the childish words would haunt some of his children until they heard of his safe arrival in England, and, on his homeward journey, he lost no opportunity of communicating with them, and assuring them of his continued health and comfort. From San Francisco he sent on to them the following letter that he had received there from his sister Ellen:

"Dear Alfred! To think of really having you ! It is like a dream. You will find us very much gone down in the way of handsomeness, but your loving eyes will regard us as the old like to be regarded. There is much besides our faces that will interest you, and I recall yours as one calculated to freshen us all up. If the sharks do have you, Theosophy would put you very high in the next state. Samuel would say that the sharks can't deface your spiritual body. But I feel certain that Providence means me to have you before they do. Ever your loving sister Ellen."

On his arrival in England, Alfred went first to his sister Mary's home, and was delighted to find her quite

unexpectedly well, and able to converse with him as easily as she had ever done. He wrote from his brother Samuel's house in his native village of Lavington:

"The affectionate warmth with which all my relations in England have greeted me seems almost like a continuation of the great kindness that I received in New Zealand before I left."

From Lavington Alfred went to Southampton to visit his cousins Ann and Sarah Box. Here he had a very severe attack of the hemorrhage from which he had, for some years, been occasionally liable to suffer. He wrote to his two youngest daughters:

"Whatever happens to me now or hereafter, you may be quite sure that I shall want for nothing that the kindest woman could do or the bravest woman attempt.

"My heart leans hard on you, more even in weakness than in health, but don't for a moment think that I am lonely or forsaken. My faith is still that God is good and the Supporter of those who try to follow His guidance, however weakly and imperfectly. I quite expect to be writing much more brightly next month. Good-bye, my good girls, I know you will never forget me. God bless you."

Sarah Box, who was making a satisfactory recovery after her operation, gave the playmate of her childhood a very warm welcome, and, a few months later, on October 6th, 1899, she and Alfred were married. She made her cousin a splendid wife, interesting herself in all his pursuits and nursing him with tender care through several serious illnesses. The sisters had a beautiful home, and here Alfred had the great happiness of entertaining, not only his English relatives, but many of his New Zealand friends. Mr and Mrs Rolleston, Sir John Hall and his son, Mr Seddon and his wife and daughters, Mrs May and Mr Joseph Herrick, were all welcomed to Firgrove House by Sarah with as much hospitable warmth as if they had been her own particular lifelong friends. But the crowning joy of Alfred's five years in England was a long visit from his much loved son Edward. This son left England in March, 1903, to take up land in Africa, and Alfred wrote, after his departure:

"My neighbours here are all agog to form a company and go all together to start a settlement on a big piece

of land in Africa, and, ridiculously weak and helpless as I am, I long to be at something of that sort too, and often go to Africa in my dreams."

Alfred's last year in England was a very sad one. It was found necessary for his wife to undergo another operation, and in November, 1903, he wrote:

"Sarah's operation was not successful. She may linger on for some time, they say, but I shall never again hear her light feet going cheerily about the house on their constant errands of love and mercy."

Some months afterwards, on June 30th, 1904, Alfred wrote:

"I have had no sleep for the last thirty hours and am still unable to sleep, so that you will expect nothing but a very poor letter from me to-day. The events of the past nine months have made me feel strongly what a blessing sudden death, with all its shock, is, compared to long protracted suffering, and the more lovely the sufferer the greater the pain to her loved ones. Our dear Sarah is dead. Although hope fluctuated as to the time she might be spared to us, there has never, since her operation, been the slightest hope that she could ever be restored to the enjoyment and usefulness of her valuable, beneficent life. Almost every day she seemed to lose the ability to do something for us that we had learned to expect, but her natural instinct to be thinking of other persons' troubles more than her own shone out so pathetically to the last."

CHAPTER XXXIX. WITH CHEERFUL COURAGE ALFRED SETS FORTH ON ANOTHER LONG JOURNEY

CHAPTER XXXIX

WITH CHEERFUL COURAGE ALFRED SETS FORTH ON ANOTHER LONG JOURNEY

So may it be, perchance, when down the tide
Our dear ones vanish. Peacefully they glide
On level seas, nor mark the unknown bound
We call it death – to them 'tis life beyond.
– ANONYMOUS.

ALFRED always bore heavy sorrows courageously, and, though for a time after the loss of his dearest friend his health gave way completely, before many weeks had passed away, upheld by the thought of seeing his children again, he was employing his strong will, and still powerful brain, to drive on his now feeble body to make the necessary preparations for the long voyage, that must be negotiated before that bright hope could be realised.

Most fortunately, he had not to make that journey unattended, for the good Providence that often comes to our aid when our resources are at their lowest ebb, had sent kind, capable John Withell (the husband of one of Alfred's favourite nieces) to England on business that summer. He was returning to New Zealand in the autumn, and offered to look after his uncle on the voyage. Needless to say that this kind offer was joyfully accepted.

Occupied with multitudinous preparations, the time sped swiftly by till Alfred's last day in England arrived. He rose at six o'clock on that morning to write farewell letters, despatch telegrams, and make some final purchases in the London shops. The last of the many voluminous letters that he sent to New Zealand during his sojourn in England was written that evening as he sat on the deck of the "Paparoa," warmly wrapped up in rugs by his thoughtful nephew, John Withell. Alfred thus concludes this letter:

"My heart grows lighter, my limbs less feeble, and my brow less wrinkled, as I realise that every day I live I shall be getting nearer to you; and I now feel a great confidence that I shall be granted the few weeks more of life that will be all that is necessary to carry me back to my own loved ones."

Those few weeks were granted, and, on the morning of Sunday, October 30th, quite a large group of Alfred's children and grandchildren gathered on the Lyttelton wharf to welcome him home. The steamer was sighted about 1 p. m., and, before long, Alfred was seen on her deck leaning on the arm of his eldest son, William, who had gone as far as Wellington to meet him. Before the gangway that connected the steamer with the wharf was put down, Alfred's son Samuel lifted his two little girls over her bulwarks, and they soon made their way to their grandfather's side. So that he was first greeted by members of his family who had grown and altered so much during his five years' absence that he had to be introduced to them over again. He, too, had greatly changed. It was a very feeble old man who stood there, gazing with such beaming smiles at his children's familiar faces; but some of the old indomitable spirit still shone out of his blue eyes, and lingered in his decided and fearless movements.

When Alfred reached Lavington Cottage, which was henceforth to be his home, it was looking its best and brightest in the glorious spring weather. He praised the garden, the house, and the various little preparations that had been made for his comfort, seeming as delighted as a child at being safely home again. A few happy days followed, and then Alfred was once more prostrated by a return of the hemorrhage from which he had suffered so much in the past.

All their efforts to relieve him proving futile, his daughters sent for Dr. Fox, who, after a talk with Alfred, proposed performing an operation that an English doctor had suggested more than two years before. This operation was performed at Nurse Turner's Hospital, and, for some weeks afterwards, Alfred hovered between life and death. Dr. Fox, who, by his skill and kindness, had gained great influence over him, was very desirous at this time that Alfred should take alcoholic stimulants of some kind; but he steadily refused to do so, evidently

feeling that it would have been a violation of the principle of total abstinence from such stimulants which he had advocated throughout his long life. Apart from this, he still had the most absolute faith in his own judgment that alcohol in any form would be harmful, not helpful, to him.

Nine weeks after his operation, Alfred was able to return to Lavington Cottage. He was very feeble, but the severe pain was gone, and he would lie on his couch amusing himself with his books and papers, or in talking to the relations and friends who came to see him, sometimes saying with bright serenity:

"I don't think many old people have so much peace and comfort in their last days of life as I have in mine."

Alfred had many visitors. His children and grandchildren came from afar to see him; and his first New Zealand great-grandchild, a pretty little baby girl, was brought many hundreds of miles that he might have the pleasure of holding her in his arms. Old friends from all over New Zealand, his colleagues on the Board of Education, and members of the House of Representatives with whom he had been associated, all came to say farewell to the old comrade who was passing so calmly and cheerfully away.

Sir John Hall, Alfred's associate in his efforts to obtain Womanhood Suffrage and to exercise care and economy in the expenditure of public money, was always a welcome visitor; and so was Mr Seddon, the stalwart Premier, who showed to much advantage in the little sick room, as he lowered his powerful voice or softened his heavy tread to meet with its requirements.

The Rev. Decimus Dolamore (for whom "the prophet's chamber" in Brightwater Mill house had been built) came regularly to read and pray with Alfred, and it was a pleasant sight to see the two silvery heads bending over the Bible Alfred's mother had given him so many years ago. The little service over, a chat about old times followed, when the two old friends were often heard laughing most heartily at things that had long gone by.

Alfred's son Samuel (at that time editor of the "Lyttelton Times") came almost every day to see him, bringing books, papers, fruit, and flowers, and keeping

him well informed as to all that was going on in the world around him. Till almost the last day of his life, Alfred greatly enjoyed a talk on the political situation with this son, whose views differed sufficiently from his own to provide plenty of scope for argument.

Lavington Cottage was next door to the home of Alfred's daughter Sarah, who, on fine afternoons, would often take him out in his bath chair; and, with her bright face leaning over him, whilst her sturdy little sons trotted along at his side, he passed many pleasant hours.

A few days after he returned to New Zealand, Alfred said to one of his daughters:

"Sarah promised me faithfully that, if there was any possible way in which she could communicate with me after death, she would do so. "However," he went on sadly, "I have never in my dreams, or in any other way, received what I could regard as a communication from her."

But one morning during this last winter of his life, he greeted the same daughter with a very bright smile, saying:

"I feel convinced that Sarah came to me last night. I heard her say so plainly, in her peculiarly clear, distinct voice, and with the strong accent on the first syllable of my name that no one else has ever employed in addressing me, 'Alfred.'"

In the long, wakeful watches of the night, Alfred often amused himself by reciting aloud poems that he had learned by heart many years before. He delighted in the works of the Quaker poet Whittier, especially in "The Eternal Goodness." He loved also the poems of Cowper, Longfellow, Burns, Macaulay, Crabbe, and Mrs Hemans. He enjoyed the sonorous flow of Mrs Barbauld's hymns, often falling asleep with their soothing rhythm upon his lips.

So autumn and winter passed tranquilly away, and the time of the singing of birds drew nigh. Alfred welcomed the spring flowers and the first delicate green of the foliage with delight, saying happily, "I have never seen a more beautiful spring than this."

But, as the days grew warmer, his strength failed very rapidly; he could no longer leave his bed; and

sometimes lay for hours in a heavy sleep or stupor from which he would rouse himself with an effort when addressed.

Thus he grew daily weaker, until the time arrived when he and those who stood and knelt around his bed knew that the hour of his departure was at hand. His laboured breathing had almost ceased when his blue eyes opened wide, shining with love and intelligence, and, stretching out his hand to his children each one in turn, his lips just formed the words "Good-bye." The next minute, those who watched beside him thought that his spirit had departed, for his eyes closed and the ashen hue of death spread over his motionless face. His youngest daughter, who was still kneeling by his side holding his hand in hers, began to sob aloud. The sound of that loved voice in distress seemed to recall Alfred's spirit, and, like one who, hastening to keep an important appointment, turns back for a moment to comfort a child weeping over his departure, his eyes opened, and, fixing them upon her with a look of deep affection, he feebly tried to caress her hand. Through all the loving sympathy expressed in that dying face, there shone triumphantly an expression of eager expectancy that seemed to say, as plainly as if the pale lips had articulated the words:

"Be comforted, my child. There is nothing whatever to weep about. This is quite the most interesting and important journey that I have ever undertaken. How much I wish that I could write and tell you all about it."

Thus, as fearlessly and hopefully as, sixty-four years previously, he had sailed from the Downs for the far distant shores of New Zealand, Alfred Saunders passed onward. It was on October 28th, 1905, just a year from the day that the "Paparoa" had carried him safely into the Auckland Harbour.

His worn-out body was laid to rest in the Linwood cemetery, and many true friends stood round the grave whilst his old friend Mr Dolamore led the short, simple burial service.

CHAPTER XL. A PERSONAL REMINISCENCE.

CHAPTER XL

A PERSONAL REMINISCENCE

Others shall sing the song,
Others shall right the wrong, –
Finish what I begin,
And all I fail of win.
What matter, I or they?
Mine or another's day,
So the right word be said
And life the sweeter made?
– From "My Triumph," by J. G. WHITTIER.

[Note by Compilers. – This chapter is kindly contributed by Alfred's friend, Mr F. J. Alley. ]

"COME and hear one of New Zealand's Grand Old Men," remarked a Springfield elector to me in the nineties; so together we stepped across to the little schoolroom where Mr Alfred Saunders was on his last victorious campaign – not the final one of 1896 when Mr Wason defeated him. The rugged, sturdy frame, the quiet, clear, convincing style, the ready fluency of speech, the complete absence of the arts and finesse of the "wily politician," deeply interested me in a personality of which I had heard and read, but which I had never before met face to face. More impressive still was his final campaign three years later, when, quite alone, he drove horse and buggy to the most distant outskirts of his large Selwyn electorate. It was a happy ending of a long political career, that Alfred Saunders, the lover of horses, the writer of a book on horses, should farewell politics in the company of his animal friend.

As member of Parliament, or lecturer to the local debating societies, Mr Saunders paid several visits to our little village. I remember his advocacy of the Hare

system of voting, of which he once gave a practical illustration in a mock election. The Elective Executive was another reform dear to his heart, Mr Saunders holding strongly the view that Parliament itself should elect its own Ministers, just as any other elective body, from a school committee upwards, appoints its officers on a democratic vote of its members.

Mr Saunders made frequent reference to the little Republic of Switzerland, where a mixed Protestant and Catholic nation, mainly German, or French, or Italian in nationality, had dwelt for half a century in peace and amity. If these once warring sects and religions could overcome the barriers of race and creed, why could not their European neighbours do likewise? Here, before W. T. Stead's time, was the germ of the United States of Europe, and an era of universal peace.

Perhaps the best part of Alfred Saunders' political meetings was the period devoted to questions. Here his quick mind, his encyclopedic knowledge of all colonial events and problems, his noble sense of duty, always won supporters; but he could throw away votes too.

"If you want to send a man to Parliament who will squander public money on paltry local works, don't send me," he replied to a demand for a bridge over the village ford.

As one of the founders of our New Zealand system of education, first in Nelson, whose system the rest of New Zealand copied, Mr Saunders did noble pioneer work, and when, in the sixties of the last century, statistical information was being collected, it was shown that Nelson Province spent more money per head of population, and showed less illiteracy, than any other province, not excepting Scotch Otago. Eventually the outcome was our National System – "Free, Secular, Compulsory." Later, Mr Saunders settled in Canterbury and gave twenty years of continuous, faithful service to the North Canterbury Board of Education. These were the "hard times" for teachers, before Seddon's colonial scale of salaries protected the luckless teacher from the periodic retrenchment, when building funds were low; and doubtless Mr Saunders shared his part of the resentment that filled the minds of teachers in the nineties and the first decade of this century.

He was ever the foe of denominational education, and I can remember his wise sayings, – "There is more of the 'Sermon on the Mount' taught without the Bible in schools than with it"; by which he meant that the kindly spirit of toleration and brotherhood, the absence of the narrowing sectarian spirit, were the very essences of true religion. "I will have mercy, and not sacrifice," was the spirit of his creed. As a practical educationist, he was an advocate for less "drive," more "lead"; for "come" not "go." Speaking once in his quiet, forceful, suggestive style to a deputation of teachers waiting on the Board in the old Normal School corner office, in the days of Mr J. V. Colborne-Veel's secretaryship, Mr Saunders narrated how he had once paid a "surprise" visit to a little country school on examination day, and had found the children crying in one corner, the teacher almost in tears in another, the books thrown about, and (the cause of all the misery) the Inspector in a towering rage. Luckily that type of Inspector is now extinct.

As a practical physiognomist, Mr Saunders showed considerable skill in reading character, though he emphasised what might be called the average interpretation from a close study not merely of the face and head but of the whole physical and mental being.

No reference to Mr Saunders as an educationist would be complete without a tribute to his large, two-volume History of New Zealand, in the stirring scenes of which Mr Saunders was often not merely a spectator, but an actor. For he was "the first settler who landed from the first emigrant ship that entered Nelson Harbour on the lst February, 1842." Now that the grand subject of history has risen to such prominence in our Universities, lovers of Maoriland can rely on the help of an historian who, up to the time of his death, knew more of New Zealand's Parliamentary history than any other living man. Quite characteristic of Mr Saunders is a brief but delightful account of Julia, the Maori Grace Darling, whose noble deed he honours in two pages, and whose noble face and kind maternal eyes help to fill another page.

And so this Nestor of the House of Representatives, this temperance reformer, "the first man to take a pledge in the Province of Nelson," this dietician with his simple tastes and practical knowledge fifty years ahead

of his age, this noble public servant with probably the cleanest, whitest record in the political life of New Zealand, passed quietly to his rest, pillowed on the sustaining hearts of his dear American Poets. What a comfort they have been to such reformers as Alfred Saunders! Whittier's noble hymn, "My Triumph," with its matchless exaltation, its triumphant faith in Right, has filled many a dying ear with the melody of its angel voices, so strong, so sweet, so intensely human and Divine.

F. J. ALLEY,
Late Headmaster,
Wharenui School,
Riccarton.

CHAPTER XLI. NOT FORGOTTEN.

CHAPTER XLI

NOT FORGOTTEN

O living friends who love me!
O dear ones gone above me!
Careless of other fame,
I leave to you my name.
– J. G. WHITTIER.

WHEN it became known that Alfred Saunders had passed onward, the newspapers throughout New Zealand gave ungrudging recognition in their leading columns to the splendid public service that he had rendered to his adopted country. The general trend of the obituary articles may be summed up in the words of "The Spectator," November 2nd, 1905:

"The late Mr Saunders did not possess those qualities that tend to popularity, but he possessed in a remarkable degree those nobler ones which command respect, and he has left a record of public services that stamps him as having been one of the real founders of New Zealand."

Of his work for Womanhood Suffrage, Mrs K. W. Sheppard, Alfred's friend of thirty years standing, wrote in "The White Ribbon" of December, 15th:

"My own friendship with Mr Saunders dates from over thirty years ago. From the very first I was greatly impressed by his remarkable courage and straightforwardness. Yet with all his strength, equally noticeable was his reverence for women, his tender thoughtfulness for children, and his gentle and humane care for and treatment of animals. In many ways, to know him was an education, for his breadth of view, his advanced opinions, his unselfish and unflinching devotion to principle, well qualified him to be a mentor and guide.

"The veneration with which he regarded his mother broadened into a profound esteem and respect for women, and for more than sixty years he advocated their

claims to citizenship. In matters pertaining to hygiene he took a deep interest, and for almost two generations he practised and urged the practice of natural methods of living and healing. Indeed, I think no stronger proof of the acute and penetrating nature of his intellect – of his clearness of vision – could be found than in the fact that almost all the social and political reforms which agitate society to-day, found in Alfred Saunders an able exponent sixty years ago . . . . . .

"His work in connection with our enfranchisement should be gratefully remembered by us. The fact of the championship of the measure being in the hands of a Conservative while he himself was a Liberal did not take from his helpfulness and enthusiasm. But this was characteristic of him throughout his career. He was no party politician. He and Sir John Hall worked vigorously together until victory was the result and our women possessed the vote.

Personally, I acknowledge my deep indebtedness to him for his unvaryingly wise counsel in many puzzling and crucial situations during my term of office as Franchise Superintendent of the W.C.T.U. at that period. Outside of Parliament, too, he proved himself a doughty champion, giving frequent addresses on the franchise question. In these he always laid down the proposition that where woman's presence and influence were wanting, things were radically wrong. He instanced the whaling ships of older days, and the diggings on the gold-fields before the advent of women, and described them as scenes of almost inhuman vice and wickedness. And, he declared, as woman purified and made home-like those dark places, so would she purify the dark corners of political life. We never could, however, induce him to assent to women being elected as members of the House of Representatives. Not that he considered them incapable of acquitting themselves well in that position, or that it would be at all unseemly for them to hold such an office. But he thought that the best men would always give preference to women in speaking, and as the less refined would not do so, the result would not be for the country's good. His proposition was that there should be a Revising Chamber composed solely of women, whose decision on legislation should be final.

"That he received little support in his adherence to this idea mattered to him not one whit. Indeed, it was

curiously indicative of his great strength that, although extremely sensitive and keenly appreciative of sympathy in his work, he could steadfastly plough a lone furrow. A frequent complaint against him was that he did not understand the necessity for compromise, and this unblendable trait frequently caused him to be a lonely figure in the House. The truth is that he was essentially a nation-builder on ideal lines – nothing less than the best would satisfy him. It is known that he refused office on more than one occasion, fearing a consequent curtailment of freedom. Had he only been successful in his efforts to establish an Elective Executive system of Government in New Zealand, it is certain that he would have held a portfolio in the Ministry, and thus have done the country still further service. He constantly advocated the Hare system of election, and one of his most ardent desires was to see it established in the Colony.

"The formation of the character of an individual is always a most interesting study. There is no doubt that the early influence of his mother, and his friendship with members of the Society of Friends, had a profound effect on the character of Mr Saunders. He was much too original to allow anyone else to do his thinking for him on religious questions, and held that the spirit of Christ's teaching was much more important than the letter – a view which often caused him to be misunderstood. His, however, was essentially a reverent mind, and the Fatherhood of God was to him a very real relationship. A kind parent, a staunch friend, a man brave, full of resource, given to hospitality, he stands out in my mind as a fine type of the Anglo-Saxon pioneer settler of the Nineteenth Century."

K. W. SHEPPARD.

From the many valued letters received by Alfred's children after his passing, the few that have been selected for publication here indicate the kind sympathy and generous appreciation of their father's life work which formed the keynote of them all. The following letter to Alfred's son Samuel is placed first because, apart from its intrinsic interest and value, it seems appropriate that this chapter should contain Sir John Hall's name, since, though he and Alfred often differed widely on public questions, they were always united in taking care of the

public money as if it were their own, and in their efforts to secure the franchise for the women of New Zealand, and thus remove from them the injustice of being classed, for purposes of citizenship, with children, lunatics, and criminals:

Hororata,
Canterbury,
30th October, 1905.

My Dear Mr Saunders –

It was a matter of real concern to me that the news of your father's death reached me too late yesterday to enable me to take the evening train to town, and so be able to show once more, at his funeral, my sincere regard and respect for him – I could only telegraph to you.

Except for a few days, some years since, owing to a misunderstanding, we were always excellent friends, though differing greatly on many public matters. I never could quite understand why he took so kindly to me, grating as many of my doings and sayings must have done upon his sturdy democratic views. And what I never can forget is that when I was misrepresented and unfairly abused anent my precious gridiron, he stood up to defend me and to put the matter fairly.

May I say that I think the "Lyttelton Times" obituary notice hardly does Mr Saunders full justice? Perhaps it was difficult for you to do so. but a freer hand might have said more, besides his remarkable independence, of his utter unselfishness, and his incessant industry in public work. Even in the Old Country I understood that this latter never ceased.

It was a great pleasure to me to visit him there on two or three occasions, and to see how happy his domestic life was until illness broke in upon it. His wife told me that his thoughts still lived in New Zealand, and about his children, and that his interest in the Colony never seemed to flag.

Forgive this tedious letter. I am anxious to say why I was unable to be present at the funeral of my old friend, and to show my regard for him. Will you kindly mention to your sisters why I was absent to day.

Believe me,
Sincerely yours,
JOHN HALL.

The Hon. William Montgomery telegraphed:

"The news of the death of my dear old friend grieved me very much. I valued his friendship very highly; he was so frank and true, and such an able, fearless, honest politician and valuable public servant."

Sir Maurice O'Rorke telegraphed:

"Deeply deplore your father's death. We entered Parliament together, and always endeavoured to protect the rights of the people, resisting centralisation."

Alfred had always a great respect and admiration for the Hon. William Rolleston. He and Rhoda often spoke with pleasure of a dinner party they once attended at Mr Rolleston's house when that gentleman was Superintendent of Canterbury. The point about this entertainment that pleased them so much was the fact that Mr Rolleston's young sons acted as attendants at the dinner table, a departure from ordinary custom of just the kind that always delighted them both. When she heard of Alfred's passing onward, Mrs Rolleston sent the following kind letter to one of his daughters:

Kapunatiki,
Temuka,
October, 30th, 1905.

Dear Miss Saunders –

May I offer you and your family my sincerest sympathy in your recent loss. The friendship and mutual respect that existed between your father and my husband over such a long period of years would be my excuse, if indeed any is needed, for we must all lament the passing of our famous men who have loved and served their country so well, and among whom Mr Alfred Saunders's name will always be pre-eminent.

Believe me,
Sincerely yours,
E. MARY ROLLESTON.

The following letter from Mrs W. Carlton-Smith {now of "The Knoll," Tauranga) was of especial interest and value to Alfred's children because that lady is the

daughter of Mr George Snow, mentioned in chapter 24, who acted as guide to the strenuous expedition therein described:

Dromore,
5th November, 1905.

Dear Miss Saunders –

I do not know how to express my sympathy with you in your loss, for, while fully understanding how you will miss your dear father, yet I think we should not grieve over the passing on of a noble life at a ripe age. Your dear father had been spared so many years, and had influenced for good so many other lives, that, although the outward garment has gone from us, there is that of him which still lives and which you will have with you always.

The esteem in which your father's memory will be held by so many thousands in various parts of the world must be a wonderful comfort to you all.

With deepest sympathy,
Your affectionate friend,
LAURA L. SMITH.

Sir Robert Stout wrote:

"I was sorry to see by the paper this morning that your father has passed away. He is one of the last of our early pioneers who took part in founding the Colony and future historians will honour his memory. He was strenuous, imbued with a great public spirit, and ever anxious to see our political and social life lived on right lines. We miss men of his calibre in our political life to-day. His regard for the simple life, and for thrift and economy in our public life, is not, I am afraid, felt by a majority in our Colony. He passed away honoured by all who knew him, and what greater consolation for his loss can his descendants have?"

Professor J. Macmillan Brown wrote to Alfred's son, Samuel:

Holmbank,
Fendalton,
October 30th, 1905.

My dear Mr Saunders-

Would you allow me to express a word of sympathy with you in the loss of your father. I have only recently come to see what a noble fight he fought all his life and how few there are of such upright independence in politics, if not in life itself. And I can sincerely mourn with you now over the loss of so fine a spirit, such a manly lover of his country and still more of freedom and humanity.

The loss of his keen judgment and grand common sense will be felt by you for many a day. I have been regretting these past months that I never came to know him personally; I now feel how much even I, a stranger, have lost by lack of acquaintanceship with him – now that the chance is irrevocably gone.

But even from my distance I bow the head at the passing of a really noble New Zealander.

Yours most sincerely,
J. MACMILLAN BROWN.

Sir Charles Bowen wrote:

"I had a great respect for your father as an able and candid public man, and I appreciated the loss the Legislature sustained when he retired from active political life. Personally I missed his presence in the Legislature, because, notwithstanding our frequent differences of opinion, we were always friends, and were able to discuss questions of public interest freely and without reserve.

"For his own sake, death at such a ripe old age can scarcely be regretted; and I feel sure that his family will feel some consolation for their inevitable loss in the universal recognition throughout New Zealand of the distinguished life-work devoted by him for so many years to the best interests of his adopted country."

Mr Weston, his old friend and colleague for so many years on the North Canterbury Board of Education, wrote:

"I often – very often – regard with no ordinary pleasure the friendship that existed between Mr Saunders and myself, and go back to the days when, with one mind and heart, we together worked in the hope of benefiting the institutions of the Colony and the people amongst whom we dwelt. He was an excellent colleague, a man of power and of strong will. It is a pity there are so few like unto him as he was."

Miss Jessie Mackay wrote:

"One by one the noble old pioneers are dropping away; and well it becomes us to lament them, we who have entered into the goodly heritage their unselfish labour bestowed upon us.

"It must comfort you to think that, while you mourn a father, New Zealand mourns a brave and fearless nation-builder. We women most particularly regret a strenuous friend and advocate, to whom we owe much of our later freedom."

Mr William Hutchison, a dear friend some months older than Alfred, wrote:

"At Mr Saunders's age there is no call for any profound display of grief; he had lived beyond the allotted span of life, a life of noble endeavour and strenuous and comparatively successful action – and he has fallen like a shock of corn fully ripe.

"Although of very different temperaments, we became fast political friends; for a number of years he was 'my guide, philosopher, and friend,' it was more than a political alliance; we became warmly attached to one another. In his private life and conduct, Mr Saunders was placid, unassuming, cheerful, and most considerate. His conversation, like his writing, was racy, full of useful and curious information and often of anecdote. In public life he was too independent and too rigidly conscientious to attach himself strongly to any political party; he was broad and free, patriotic and unselfish; every genuine reform had his earnest support. As a liberal educationalist and a well-informed historian he

has left an excellent record. I speak of what I know, and for a long time none had better opportunities of knowing. His memory is very fragrant in my remembrance."

Alfred's niece, Sarah Withell, wife of the "John" whose kind care enabled Alfred to return to New Zealand in safety, wrote:

"I can imagine what a comfort it would be to Uncle to have you about him. John says the thought that he was returning to his children, was what sustained your father all through the voyage out. What a different thing it would have been, if the call had come at Home. When I heard of the dream about one of the dear ones who have passed onward calling him by name, I could not help thinking how lovely it must be to be near enough to the other world to hear the voice of our loved ones. I am so thankful to hear from mother of the calm, peaceful passage from this earth to 'the land that is fairer than day.'

The music of that life is not yet hushed;
Its fragrance is not scattered: – it is well
While memory lingers yet, to track the path
Which, brightening ever to the perfect day,
Onward and upward led, till all the light
Of Heaven was mirrored in the wondrous calm."

In the House of Representatives, Alfred's life and work were affectionately and respectfully referred to by many old comrades.

In the course of a speech in support of the Premier's motion "That this House desires to place on record its high sense of the distinguished services rendered to New Zealand by the late Alfred Saunders, etc, etc," Mr Lewis (Courtenay) said:

"The attributes which I shall always associate with his memory were the sturdy independence of his character and the extreme simplicity of his life. The Right Hon. the Premier has referred to a number of occasions on which the late Mr Saunders occupied public positions. I trust I will not be misunderstood when I recall a statement once made in this House – that few honourable gentlemen had seen so many reverses in their public career as the late Mr Saunders. In that

respect the late honourable gentleman resembled the late Mr Rolleston, whose name we all hold in reverence. I believe this resemblance was due to the fact that each of them preferred the consolations of an honourable defeat to the rewards of what he would have accounted a dishonourable victory. In the person of Mr Saunders, we lose one more of the ex-Superintendents, each of whom was a link, and a strong one, to the chain which binds us to the past . . . . . Let us hope that we of the present generation may so shape our public life that when it is our time to fall we may leave behind us memories which, if they may not be as lasting, shall at least be as pure as those of such men as the late Mr Alfred Saunders."

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