Brighter Britain! Part 13

"Look here, old fellow! You don't understand what a bull is. I'll tell you. It's a thing that some people look at from the safe side of the fence, and that other people take by the horns."

This was hardly fair upon the giant, perhaps. But after his doughty deed, Dandy Jack was to be excused if he improved the occasion, and revenged himself for the sneer that had previously been cast upon him.

Oh! we are getting on fast and famously now, with our farm. The stumps on the first clearing are now completely rotten; so we have pulled them out, piled them in heaps, and burnt them. This clearing is ready for the plough. Besides, there is a piece of flat, marshy ground below our shanty on the left, and this was only covered originally with flax, swamp-gra.s.s, and small shrubs. In the dry season we have burnt this off as it stood. The soil is not deep, but it is good, and we shall plough this in with the other. There will be about fifty acres of plough land altogether, and twice as much more next year, or the year after.

We have borrowed a plough and harrows from a neighbour, and are going to work. Ploughing is quite a new industry up here. There are some of the settlers round who have got lands under plough before this; but not to any great extent. To us it seems to open up a boundless vista of opulence, and there is no end to our speculations, and to the general excitement in our shanty.

Wheat! We must grow it, of course; and a flour-mill at the township is an imperative necessity. Somebody must start one, and that quickly. Why should we go on eating Adelaide flour, when we are growing wheat ourselves? They have reaped sixty and eighty bushels to an acre, in the South Island, and their average is thirty! So Old Colonial tells us.

Well, our land is richer than theirs, and our climate is better too, so much cannot be gainsaid. _Ergo_, we shall have better crops. South Island corn has been sold in London at a profit; and has been judged first-cla.s.s in quality. _Ergo_, again, ours must infallibly top the markets of the world. That is, what we are _going_ to grow, you understand.

Then there is the great sugar question. Government is always offering divers incentives to new industries. It has offered a bonus of 500 to whomsoever produces the first fifty tons of beet-root sugar in New Zealand. That is, over and above what the sugar may fetch in the market.

We say, why should not we go in for it? So many acres of beet, a crushing mill, a few coppers and some tubs, and there you are! Wealth, my boy! Wealth!

But O'Gaygun has misgivings. "This is not a whate-growin' counthry," he declares. It is far too rough and hilly. There are too many difficulties in the way. You can grow wheat to a certain extent, of course. The North can produce enough for its own consumption, and more. It will pay as one among other operations and productions. But we must not think of it as our princ.i.p.al or staple industry.

And then as to sugar. You must have a couple of hundred acres of beet at least, to begin with. A mill and appliances that are to be of real use would cost 2000 or so. Your bonus would be but a small thing if you got it. If all the farmers in the district were to combine to grow beet-root on every acre they could plough, and nothing else, even then it would hardly pay the sugar-mills, or possibly the farmers either. Stick to cattle and sheep, to pigs and potatoes, "Ontil ye're able to give ye're attintion to fruit. Fruit! Whativver ye can do wid it, that's what this counthry's made for! Wine! an' ile! an' raisins! an'----"

"Oh, shut up, O'Gaygun! Get out, you miserable misanthrope!"

Nevertheless, I think our Irish chum was about right in what he said, after all, especially in the last part of his remarks.

Dandy Jack had been training horses, and Old Colonial had been gentling bullocks; so we had a choice of draggers for the plough. We ploughed in those fifty acres, fenced them round, and put in potatoes for a cleaning crop, to thoroughly break up the old turf. We hope to get two crops in the year. The second will be maize and pumpkins. Then, next year, wheat.

The new-ploughed land is surveyed with rapture by us; but it is something different from an English field, after all. The ground was so irregular and rough; our beasts were not too easy to manage; and then--but this is unimportant--it was our first essay at ploughing. The furrows are not exactly straight, and there is a queer, s.h.a.ggy look about them. But the potatoes are in, and a crop we shall have, no doubt about it. What more can possibly be needed?

I have mentioned that we have several enclosures that may be termed gardens. So we have, and what they produce fully bears out O'Gaygun's opinion, as to this being essentially a fruit country. Of course our spade industry gives us all the vegetables we require, when we lay ourselves out for it. The worst of growing anything except roots is the immense amount of weeding required; the weeds spring in no time; and they are of such a savage sort in this fertile land.

We grow large quant.i.ties of melons--water-melons, musk-melons, rock-melons, Spanish melons, pie-melons, and so on. Also, we grow marrows and pumpkins in profusion, as the pigs are fed on them as well as ourselves. These plants do not want much weeding. They may be grown, too, among the maize. k.u.mera, or sweet potatoes, we grow a good deal of; also many other vegetables, when we think we have time to plant them.

But in fruit we excel. There is a neighbour of ours who goes in for tree-culture exclusively, and who has a nursery from which he supplies Auckland. To him we owe a greater variety than we should otherwise have, perhaps.

First, there are peaches. We have a great number of trees, as they will grow from the stone. We eat them in quant.i.ties; pickling, preserving, and drying them sometimes. But the princ.i.p.al use to which we put them is to fatten our pigs. We have several kinds of peaches, coming on at different seasons. The earliest kind are ripe about Christmas, and other sorts keep on ripening to March or April. Then we have some few apricots, nectarines, plums, cherries, loquats, etc., all yielding bounteously.

The last are a very delicious fruit, ripening about October or November.

Figs we have till late into the winter, and they begin again early; we are very fond of them. Oranges, lemons, and shaddocks grow fairly well, and are fruiting all the year round. Apples do badly, being subject to blight, though the young trees grow rapidly, and, if freely pruned, will yield enormous crops. To obviate the blight we keep a constant succession of young trees to replace those that are killed. Pears are not subject to the blight, and do well. Grapes are very luxuriant; and, no doubt, this will be a wine-country in the future. Already, some people at Mangawai have made good wine, and have started a little trade in it. Of strawberries, guavas, Cape gooseberries, and other small fruit we have a little. The former fruit so plenteously here, that the leaves are entirely hidden by the cl.u.s.ters of berries and blossom. The second is a bush; and the last a plant like a nettle, which sows itself all over. The fruit is nice.

Both the gardens and the clearings are subject to a horrible plague of crickets. They are everywhere, and eat everything. But turkeys and ducks fatten splendidly on them, acquiring a capital gamey flavour.

Cricket-fed turkey would shame any stubble-fed bird altogether, both as to fatness and meatiness and flavour. We have hundreds of turkeys wild about the place, which keep down the crickets a good deal. Although we eat them freely, they increase very rapidly, like everything else here.

The worst of it is they will not leave the grapes alone, and if they would the crickets won't, which is a difficulty in the way of vine-growing. But notwithstanding that, some of us are convinced that wine-making is the coming industry of the Kaipara. Then there is the olive, and the mulberry for serici-culture. Both these things are to come. Experiment has been made in growing them, but that is all as yet.

Tobacco, too, will have its place. It grows well; and the Maoris sometimes smoke their own growth. We prefer the Virginian article. A man at Papakura has done well with tobacco, we hear. Government has bonused him, so it is said; and his manufactured product is to be had in all the Auckland shops--strong, full-flavoured stuff; wants a little more care in manufacture, perhaps.

Tobacco, like some other things we have tried--hops, castor-oil, spices, drugs, and so on--needs cheap labour for picking. That is the _sine qua non_ to success in these things. And for cheap labour we must wait, I suppose, till we are able to marry, and to rear those very extensive families of children, which are one of the special products of this fruitful country, and which are also such aids to the pioneer in getting on.

Take it altogether, we--the pioneers of Te Pahi--are of opinion that pioneer-farming here is a decided success. We are satisfied that it yields, and will yield, a fair return for the labour we have invested in it. We think that we are in better case, on the whole, than we should have been after eight years' work at other avocations in the old country. Putting aside the question of the magnificent health we enjoy--and that is no small thing--we are on the high road to a degree of competence we might never have attained to in England. Not that we wish to decry England; on the contrary, we would like to return there.

But for a visit, merely. Here is our home, now. The young country that is growing out of its swaddling clothes, and that we hope, and we know, will one day be a Brighter Britain in deed and in truth.

CHAPTER IX.

OUR SHOW-PLACE.

We have a show-place, and one of which we are excessively proud. It is not a castle, a baronial hall, or ruined abbey, as one would expect a properly const.i.tuted show-place to be--at "home." In this new country, it is needless to say, we have no antiquities of that sort. Yet this place, of which we are so proud, and that it delights us to extol to strangers, has a history that renders its singular picturesqueness additionally striking.

Mere scenery is never so effective if it has no story to tell. There must be something, be it fact or fiction, to attach to a place before its beauties can be fully appreciated. The charm of poetry and romance is a very real one, and can add much to one's enjoyment of a particular view. I suppose that something is needed to interest and attract the intelligence, at the same moment that the sense of sight is captivated, so that a double result is produced.

Scotland is one fair example of this. Fine as the scenery there may be, is it to be supposed that alone would attract such hordes of tourists every summer? Certainly not; it is the history a.s.sociated with each spot that throws a glamour over it. Much magnificence of nature is pa.s.sed by unheeded in Scotland, because history or tradition has conferred a higher t.i.tle to regard upon some less picturesque place beyond. The fiction and poetry of Scott, and of Burns and others in less degree, have clothed the mountains and the glens with a splendid l.u.s.tre, that causes people to view their natural beauties through a mental magnifying gla.s.s. Nature unadorned seldom gets the admiration bestowed on it that it does when added to by art.

But why pursue this topic? Every one knows and feels the power that a.s.sociations have of rendering picturesque nature more picturesque still. Therefore, a show-place, to be regarded as such in the true sense of the word, must possess features of interest of another kind, underlying the external loveliness of form and outline that merely please and captivate the eye.

Here, in our Britain of the South Sea, we have abundance and variety of the most glorious and splendid scenery. So far as wild nature is concerned, there is nothing in Europe that we cannot match. Our Alps might make Switzerland envious; one or two of our rivers are more beautiful than the Rhine; the plains of Canterbury are finer than midland England; the rolling ranges and lakes of Otago may bear comparison with Scotland and with Wales; Mount Egmont or Tongariro would make Vesuvius blush; the hot-spring region of Rotomahana and Rotorua contains wonders that cannot be matched between Iceland and Baku; and here in the North our forest country is grander than the Tyrol, and more voluptuously lovely than the wooded sh.o.r.es of the Mediterranean. At least, that is what those who have seen all can say.

But, though nature has given us such sublime triumphs of her raw material, these have no history, no spirit. They tell to us no story of the past; and poetry has not crowned them with a diadem of romance.

Hence their effect is partly lost, and when we New Zealanders go "home"

for a trip, we find a charm in the time-hallowed landscapes of the Old World, above and beyond all our greater scenic glories here.

Still, here and there in this new land, we have contrived to invest some special spot with a kind of infant spirit or baby romance of its own.

Here and there our short history has left a landmark, or Maori tradition a monument. Already we are beginning to value these things; already we are conscious of the added interest they give to our scenery.

But to our children's children, and to their descendants, some of these places will speak with more vivid earnestness. They will appreciate the stories that as yet are so new, and will take a rare and lively pleasure in the scenery enriched by the tale of their pioneer ancestors, or by legends of the native race that then will be extinct.

New Zealand has even now what may be termed its "cla.s.sic ground," as will be found in another chapter. But there exists a great deal of Maori tradition connected with various spots, and some of us do the best we can to preserve the tales that adorn certain localities. Some of the legends are mythological. Of such sort is that which gives such vivid interest to lonely Cape Reinga; the place where the spirits of dead Maori take their plunge into the sea, on their way from earth to the next world. Such, too, is the dragon legend, the tale of the Taniwha, which graces the volcanic country in the interior.

Besides these are the numerous stories of a more historical sort, incidents of love and war, which hang around the places where they happened. A country like this, so rich in natural beauties, so filled with the glories and magnificences of the Creator's hand, is surely--

"Meet nurse for a poetic child."

It is not surprising, then, that we find the Maori character actively alive to such impressions. The oldest men absolutely revel in the abundance of the tales, both prose and poetry, that they are able to relate about the scenes around them. But Young Maori is more civilized, and does not trouble his head so much with these old narratives. It is well, then, that some should be preserved while that is possible.

Old Colonial is a great hand at yarns. He loves to hear himself talk, and, in truth, he can tell a tale in first-cla.s.s dramatic fashion.

O'Gaygun and Dandy Jack are both given to the same thing a good deal.

They run Old Colonial pretty close in all respects save one, and that is when he gets into a peculiarly Maori vein. There they cannot follow him, for neither has achieved his command over the intricacies of Maori rhetoric, nor has that intimate experience of the natives, which enables Old Colonial to enter so thoroughly into the spirit and character of their narrations.

As I know that Old Colonial's hands are more accustomed to the axe than to the pen, and that he will never take the trouble to give his wonderful collection of anecdotes to a larger audience than his voice can reach, I have made notes of his narratives, and some day, perhaps, shall put them in print. In the meantime, I may as well mention, that, it was from his lips that I heard the tale of our show-place.

One day, some lime was wanted on the farm for some purpose or other, and it became a question as to how we had better get it. The usual method employed in the neighbourhood was to utilize oysters for this purpose. A rude kiln would be constructed in the bank, where it sloped down to the river-beach. In this would be placed alternate layers of dead wood and of living oysters, with a proper vent. The burn usually resulted in a fair supply of good sh.e.l.l-lime, than which there can be no better.

But on this occasion we wanted a tolerably large quant.i.ty of lime, so that there were objections to the plan I have just detailed. For though oysters abounded on our beach, and covered the rocks that low-tide laid bare, yet, when a good many tons of them were wanted, all of which must be gathered with a handshovel and carried on men's backs to the kiln, it became evident that a considerable amount of labour must be undergone before our ultimate object could be attained.

Now, one of the first and chiefest considerations of the pioneer-farmer is always how he may most closely economize time and labour. It is particularly necessary for him, because of the scarcity of the latter commodity, and the consequent pressure upon the first. It is usually a strictly _personal_ question.

On this occasion the subject was debated at one of our nightly parliaments in the shanty. Then the Saint broke out with one of those quaintly simple remarks that used to amuse us so much. He said--

"I don't think it can be right to burn oysters, you know. It must hurt them so awfully, poor things!"

Of course, we all laughed long and loudly. It seemed too ridiculous to consider the possibilities of an oyster feeling pain.