Brighter Britain! Part 3

"Five and six, and as much mutton as you want!"

"Too much, perhaps, and braxy at that!"

"Come, a cottage to yourselves, rations, and five and six a day!"

"Cottage! A tumble-down whare is what he means!"

"Fresh meat every day with me, boys--beef, mutton, and pork!"

"Yes; and he'll want you to work twelve hours!"

"Better engage with me at five and nine; I'll lodge you well, and feed you first chop!"

And so on and so on, until at last the brothers pluck up determination, and make choice of an employer. So our Caledonian friends begin to gather together their traps and make preparations to accompany their complaisant and well-satisfied boss to his farm on the banks of the Waikato. And an indescribable joy is in their hearts, for they are to receive six shillings and sixpence a day, and to be provided with comfortable lodging and lavish "tucker" withal; and though, no doubt, they will prove worthy of that high wage to their employer, yet what marvellous wealth it is, compared to the most they could have earned had they remained to toil upon the braes of Albyn!

Of course, very few of the other immigrants get such a wage as that. The two young Scots are the picked men of the crowd. Five shillings a day and "all found" is the ordinary wage for an agricultural, and though some are worth more, new-chums are generally held to be worth a good deal less for their first year. The distich--

"Eight hours' sleep and eight hours' play, Eight hours' work and eight bob a day,"

has been, and is, verified literally over and over again in New Zealand; but the "eight bob a day" cannot be called an ordinary wage. A man must be worth his salt and something over to get it, and will not do so unless labour is scarce and in much demand. Those who contract, or do work by the piece, often make as much and more if they are first-rate workers; and that kind of engagement is preferred by both employers and employes, as a rule.

All sorts of skilled labourers get high wages. Carpenters and blacksmiths will get ten and twelve shillings a day with their keep; and when they have saved a little money, and can go on the job by themselves, they may earn an advance on that.

I have already noticed the great demand that there is for female house-servants, and the high wages they can get. Girls cannot be relied on to stop in a situation very long, as they are sure to receive numerous matrimonial offers; hence there is a perpetual seeking after new domestics. Marriage is an inst.i.tution that turns out uncommonly well here. There is no such thing as a descent to pauperism for those who will work. By little and little the working couple thrive and prosper, and as their family--New Zealand families run large, by the way--multiplies and grows up round them, they are able to enjoy the comforts of a competence they could never have attained at home. Some settlers, who originally came out, man and wife, as government immigrants drawn from the peasant cla.s.s, are now wealthy proprietors of broad acres, flocks, and herds; and are able to send their sons to college and their daughters to finishing-schools; the whilom humble servant girl now riding in her carriage, and wearing silk and satin if she list. Such are the rewards that may tempt the peasant here.

Difficulties there are in plenty, but they lessen year by year; while comfort and competence are certain in the end, and wealth even is possible to the industrious.

Occasionally it happens that among a body of immigrants are one or two who are decidedly unsuitable. There is an example among our particular ship-load. Here is a woman, purblind, decrepit, looking sixty years old at least, and, by some incomprehensible series of mistakes, she has found her way out here as a "single girl!" What was the Agent-General in London about, and what could the Dispatching Officer have been thinking of, when they let this ancient cripple pa.s.s them? Yet here she is, a "single girl" in immigrant parlance; and work she must get somehow and somewhere, for there are no poorhouses or paupers here as yet. But even she, useless to all seeming as she is, and unable to bear her part in the energetic industry of a new country, will find her billet. A good-natured farmer takes her off, judging that she may earn her keep in his kitchen, and if not--well! he is prosperous, and should be generous too. And so old granny toddles away amid the friendly laughter of the crowd, satisfied enough to find there is a niche even for her in our Canaan.

The great question that of late years has been continually asked of old colonials in England is, what are the prospects afforded by New Zealand to men of the middle cla.s.ses? The answer is usually unfavourable, simply because many colonials cannot disa.s.sociate the idea of a gentleman adventurer from that of a scapegrace or ne'er-do-well.

Secondly, they look at the questioner's present condition; and never take into consideration the power he may have of adapting himself to totally different circ.u.mstances. I think this view admits of considerable enlargement, and my experience has led me to believe that many a man, who struggles through life in the old country in some exacting and ill-paid sedentary occupation, might have been benefited by emigration. The colonies have been inundated with ruined spendthrifts, gamblers, drunkards, idle good-for-nothings, who have been induced to emigrate in the belief that that alone was a panacea for their moral diseases. Very very few of them have reformed or done any good, so that colonists are naturally prejudiced against their cla.s.s, and look upon gentleman-new-chums with great suspicion. Again, some go out who are too delicate or sensitive to stand the roughnesses they are bound to undergo, and these break down in their apprenticeship the first year or two, and, if they can, go home again to speak evil of the colony ever afterwards.

One thing is certain, the educated man has the advantage over the uneducated, and his abler mind will sooner or later be of use to him, although his physique may be weaker than the other's. The gently-nurtured individual finds the preliminary trials of colonial life very hard indeed--he is heavily handicapped at the start--but there is no reason why he may not do well after a time. Gentlemen-immigrants usually think they may find work of a congenial sort, such as clerking, a.s.sisting in a store, or some occupation of the kind in the city. That is a mistake; while yet they are new-chums there is but one thing for them to do--to go away into the bush and labour with their hands. Of new-chums, only artisans are absorbed into the city population as a rule; all others have to look to manual labour of some kind, and generally up-country, for a means of subsistence. All the clerks, counter-jumpers, secretaries, and so on, are either old colonials, or colonists' sons. Very rare is it for a gentleman new-chum to find a berth of that sort, perhaps he may after he has become "colonized," but at first he will have to go straight away and fell bush, chop firewood, drive cattle, or tend pigs. About the best advice I ever heard given to middle-cla.s.s men, who thought of emigrating to New Zealand, was couched in some such terms as these.

"What are your prospects here? If you have any, stop where you are. But if you have no particular profession, nothing better before you than laborious quill-driving and the like, at eighty pounds a year, and small probability of ever rising so high as two hundred, however many years you stick to the desk, or the yard-measure, then you may think of emigrating. If you are strong and able-bodied, somewhere between sixteen and twenty-six years of age--for over twenty-six men are generally too old to emigrate, I think--I say, emigrate by all means, for you will have a better chance of leading a healthy, happy, and fairly comfortable life. But you must throw all ideas of gentility to the winds, banish the thought of refinement, and prepare for a rough, hard struggle, and it may be a long one, too. You may please yourselves with the prospect of competence, comfort, and even luxury in the distance, but you must look at it through a lengthy vista of real hard work, difficulty, and bodily hardship. Success, in a greater or lesser degree, _always_ follows patient industry at the Antipodes; it can scarcely be said to do so in Britain.

"Now, _Il n'y a que le premier pas qui coute_, and the worst time you will have is at the first; also, it is only for the start that you need advice, after you become 'colonized' you can look out for yourselves. If you have any particular acquaintance with a useful trade, so much the better; if you have not, and can do so, learn one before you go--carpentry, boat-building, blacksmithing, tinkering, cobbling; it will help you through wonderfully. It doesn't matter twopence _how_ you go out, whether saloon, intermediate, or steerage, so far as your future prospects are concerned. If you can compa.s.s the means, go saloon--the extra comfort on a long voyage is well worth the extra price; besides, you might have some returning colonist as fellow-voyager, whose friendship would prove useful. When you land, bank any money you may have brought with you--whether it be ten pounds or ten thousand, I say the same--and resolve not to touch it, however you may be tempted, for two years at least. Then go about freely, get into the bush away from the city, make friends with every one everywhere, and let it be known that you are in search of work. Very soon you will hear of something or other. Take the job, the first that comes in your way, and stick to it till something better turns up. Don't be afraid of it whatever it is; don't imagine anything will hurt you or lower your dignity in the slightest so long as it is honest. Even if they make you a street-scavenger, remember that is better than loafing. In one year, or two, or three, you will be perfectly at home in the new life, and able to see, according to your abilities, the path that offers you the best prospect of the greatest success. During your new-chum days of apprenticeship you must consider yourself as a common peasant, like the men you will probably have to a.s.sociate with; don't be disconcerted at that, just work on, and by-and-by you will get ahead of them. You will meet plenty of nice gentlemanly fellows in any part of New Zealand, and they will think all the better of you if you are earnestly and energetically industrious. Lastly, don't run away with the notion that you are going to jump into luck directly you land. Wages are high to the right people, but you are not among those at the outset. You may be satisfied if you do anything more than just earn your keep, for the first six or twelve months."

I think that that is, upon the whole, pretty sound advice for the cla.s.s of men to whom it is addressed; but I will go further, and point out what advantages the average middle-cla.s.s "young gentleman" may reasonably look forward to from emigration to New Zealand. In the first place, he may expect to enjoy robust health, more perfect and enjoyable than he could hope for if tied down to a counting-house stool in the dingy atmosphere of a city. He will exchange the dull monotony of a sedentary occupation in the chill and varying climate of Britain, for a life of vigorous action in a land whose climate is simply superb. When he gets through the briars that must necessarily be traversed at the outset, he will find himself happier, freer from anxiety, and, on the whole, doing better than he would be if he had remained at the old life.

He will "feel his life in every limb," and, remote from the world, know naught of its cares. If he be anything of a man, before ten or a dozen years are gone he will find himself with a bit of land and a house of his own; he will be married, or able to marry, his earnings will suffice for existence, while every pound saved and invested in property will be growing, doubling, and quadrupling itself for his age and his children.

There is something to work for and hope for here: independence, contentment, and competence. It is not a stern struggle from year's end to year's end, with naught at the finish but a paltry pension, dependence on others, or the workhouse. The gentleman-colonist we are talking of is working for a _home_, and, long before his term of life draws to its close, he will find himself, if not rich, at any rate, in the possession of more comfort and happiness than he could hope for in the old country.

I am not an emigration-tout, and have no interest in painting my picture in too vivid colours, and in these remarks I have transgressed against some of the ordinary colonial views on the subject; but I have done so with intention, because I consider them not entirely in the right. The colonist says--we don't want gentlemen here, we want MEN! But he forgets that the unfortunate individual he disparages has often more real manhood at bottom than the cla.s.s below him. Therefore, the middle-cla.s.s emigrant must remember the qualities most required in him--pluck, energy, and resolution.

I have met many middle-cla.s.s men in the colony, and all contrived to bear out the view I have put forward by their own condition. Those who come to grief do so from their own failings and deficiencies. Some growl and grumble a little now and then, and think they would rather be back in England; but, when they reflect upon the condition they would probably be occupying at home in the ordinary course of things, they are forced to admit that they are better off. At any rate, such bitter and terrible distress as overtook so many thousands in Britain a year or two ago, could scarcely fall to the lot of the same people under any circ.u.mstances, if they were industrious colonists. But I have digressed inordinately, and must get back to Auckland forthwith.

The barracks are empty at last, and all our fellow-voyagers have found each his or her starting-point in the new life. Our own little party of cuddy-pa.s.sengers is dispersed as well. Some have gone off to join friends in the country, some are gone on to distant parts of the colony, some have gone this way or that, scattering to work in all directions; only a couple of us are left, and it is time that we should begin to follow the plan we have conceived for ourselves.

Parting with shipmates, with the faces that have been so long familiar to us, seems to have severed the last link that bound us to the old country, the old home, and the old ways. We shall meet with many of them again, no doubt, but then the old "Englishness" will have disappeared, and we shall be at one with those who now are strangers to us, we too shall be New Zealanders. Henceforth all before us and around us is strange and new, an untried, unknown world. We are about to enter on a life totally different to that we have hitherto led, and it is a life that we have got to make ours for the time to come; for there is no thought in our minds of retreat, even if we find the unknown more distasteful than we think. But, courage! "Hope points before to guide us on our way," and, as yet, there is nothing in the prospect but what is bright and inspiriting, surely; nothing to diminish our youthful energy, nothing to daunt our British pluck! The past lies behind us, with its sweet and tender recollections, and with a softened sense of remembrance of those failures and sadnesses and bitternesses that are linked with them. Now our cry must be "Forward!" for a page in the book of our lives is completely turned down, and we may imagine there is endorsed upon it, "Sacred to the memory of auld lang syne!"

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 1: 1882. The railway now runs northward to Helensville, connecting Auckland with the Kaipara; and is being pushed on to Whangarei. To the south, it penetrates far into the Waikato country, and it is only a question of a few years before Auckland, New Plymouth, Wellington, and Napier will be joined by rail.]

[Footnote 2: 1882. During the last year or two, there has been some depression in New Zealand, and, for the first time in her history, many labourers have had difficulty in getting work. But that crisis is now past, and things are rapidly returning--as they were bound to do--to former conditions, such as I have described.]

CHAPTER III.

GOING UP COUNTRY.

I and my last remaining shipmate certainly came out here without any very clear idea of what we were going to do. We came to make our fortunes, of course, after the manner of all new-chums, but as to how we were to set about it, and what were to be the first steps we should take, we had the very vaguest notion.

However, our condition of existence as new-chums sat very lightly upon us. Hope! We were all hope; we were hope incarnate! We felt that we were bound to win. It seemed, though, that the beginning must be made in some fashion that was, to say the least of it, unpleasant, now that we were face to face with the reality. Plenty of work offered, but none of it seemed to be of a particularly engaging kind; and, moreover, the wage offered us was extremely paltry, so we considered. For we belonged to that much maligned middle-cla.s.s, which, in the chrysalis or new-chum stage, is so greatly contemned by colonists.

But it happened that, long long ago, a certain schoolfellow of ours had gone forth into the colonial world. He was in the sixth form when we were in the first, or thereabouts; but, as his family and ours were neighbours in the old home, there had been enough intimacy between us.

It was owing to his letters home that we had determined on emigration.

He had been apprised of our coming, so now we were not surprised to receive a message from him through a resident in Auckland. This was an invitation to join him at a distant settlement called Te Pahi, there to make a beginning at pioneer farm work, and see what might turn up.

We found on inquiry that little or nothing was known in Auckland of Te Pahi. It was a new township in the Kaipara district, lying sixty or eighty miles north of Auckland. That was about the sum of what we could learn of our destination, except that there were very few settlers in the Kaipara, and that communication between it and Auckland was not very good. Somewhat later than this date--in fact, to be precise, in 1875--an Auckland newspaper wrote of the Kaipara under the t.i.tle of Terra Incognita. So that when we decided on going there, we felt that we were about to penetrate an almost unexplored country. But we found out what were the means of transit, and prepared to set out without further delay.

Now that we were on the point of starting into the bush, and entering into the realities of our new life, we began to encounter the difficulties of our situation. The first that met us would be more annoying were it not for the ludicrousness of it. It was the baggage difficulty, a thing that took us quite by surprise; for, till then, we had never appreciated the word "transport" at its full meaning. Like most home-living Britons, hitherto surrounded by every facility for locomotion of persons and goods, we had utterly failed to understand that in a new country things are wholly different in this respect. One can get about one's self easily enough; travel can always be accomplished somehow, even if one has to walk; but it is quite another thing to move baggage. In a roadless country, where labour is scarce and dear, the conveyance of goods from place to place is a difficult matter.

It can be done, of course, but the cost of it is frightful.

Our old schoolfellow, who, by the way, will be known under the appellation of "Old Colonial" in these pages, had apparently had some experience of new-chums before. His agent in Auckland had been instructed to see to us, and one of that person's first inquiries was regarding our impedimenta.

We had been out-fitted in London by the world-renowned firm of Argent and Joy. There being no experience to guide us, we had placed ourselves unreservedly in the hands of the firm, and had been provided by them with a sumptuous stock of what they were pleased to term necessaries.

Altogether, these formed a goodly pile. Our bedroom at the hotel was cram full of boxes, trunks, and portmanteaus; and their contents were now spread out for the inspection of our adviser.

"Good gracious!" was his exclamation when he surveyed our property, and then he mused awhile.

"Look here!" he said suddenly. "I've got some distressing intelligence to break to you. Prepare your minds for a shock. This inheritance is a _dead horse_. Chuck it overboard at once!" And he waved his hand impressively over our belongings.

We did not understand; we thought this was some new kind of joke--which it was, but not to us. We asked for explanations; all that we wanted was to know how we were to get these things up to the Kaipara. Our colonial friend sighed deeply, and proceeded mournfully to expound the position.

He told us that we could not afford to possess more personals than were absolutely necessary, and these ought to pack into one box of easily portable size. In the first place, the freight of our baggage into the bush would cost us something approaching to the expense of our pa.s.sage out from England. In the second place, we were not going to a house of our own, but were going to work on different farms, and might be moving about a good deal. We could not carry such a cargo about with us, for the cost of doing so would be simply ruinous. It appeared, too, that we could not even keep the things until we _had_ got a house of our own to store them in. For, our only resource, with that in view, would be to warehouse them in Auckland, and the expense of even this dead weight would make too large a hole in our possible earnings. Finally, there was hardly anything in our entire outfit that would be of much practical use to us.

Aghast and grieving, we comprehended at last that we should have to rid ourselves of the too heavy burden with which Messrs. Argent and Joy had weighted us, in consideration of that prodigious and ever-to-be-regretted cheque. There was no help for it. An Israelitish dealer, who happily abided in the city, would have to be called in. And it could scarcely be said that he bought our property of us; it was a nearer approach to our having to pay him to take it away.

Our friend contemptuously examined parcel after parcel of things. Dress suits and white waistcoats, broadcloth and doeskin, scarves and gloves, white shirts, collars, and cuffs all appeared to move his derision. He kicked aside a dozen pairs of boots with the remark that--

"There's nothing there fit for this country. Rough-hide and hobnails is what you want."

Certain tweed suits that the fancy of our London tailor had invested with the t.i.tle "New Zealand Specialities" were, said our friend, only suitable for colonists who intended to settle on the top of the Southern Alps. Various knick-knacks, dressing-cases, writing-cases, clocks, etcetera, were regarded by him as contemptible lumber. Some silk socks he looked upon almost as a criminal possession.

In the end we were reduced to a single box apiece, containing something like the following a.s.sortment, several items of which had to be purchased in Auckland. Six flannel shirts, two blankets, two pair moleskin breeches, one light pilot coat, one light tweed coat and trousers (which we wore at the time), some handkerchiefs, some socks, two towels, brush and comb, two pairs of boots, and one pair of leggings, a wide-awake hat, and a few odds and ends. Such books as we had we were allowed to retain, for, although the time for reading is very limited in the bush, yet, books being a rare commodity, are much prized there.