Brighter Britain! Part 5

But with the horses it is different. Three of them are speedily got on their legs and rubbed down, being no more than scared. The fourth, however, cannot rise, and examination shows that one of its legs is broken, and probably the spine injured as well. It is evident the poor creature is past all further service. So Dandy Jack sits on its head, while Yankee Bill pulls out his sheath-knife and puts the animal out of misery. I overhear our eccentric driver murmuring--

"Woe worth the chase, woe worth the day That cost thy life, my gallant grey!"--

Adding, in a louder voice--

"Twelve pounds I paid for that critter; but I reckon I've had the profit out of it, anyhow!"

The horse that Yankee Bill was riding is now unsaddled and hitched up with the others, in place of the dead one. For baggage and pa.s.sengers are being collected again, and it seems we are going on as though nothing had happened.

It is, perhaps, not strange that no one should express surprise at the accident; but it is certainly singular that no one shows any resentment towards our driver, or blames him in any way. The prevailing feeling is one of simple congratulation that things are no worse. One would think the accident was quite a usual affair, and had even been expected. A pa.s.senger remarks quite seriously--

"I will say this for Dandy Jack: he always contrives that you shall pitch into a soft place."

They seem about to offer a vote of thanks to this reckless madman, for having overturned us without hurt to any one! It occurs to us two new-chums that our life in this country is likely to be eventful, if this kind of thing is the ordinary style of coaching. And we begin to understand what our driver meant, when he alluded to the grave responsibility of having a lady among his pa.s.sengers; for his driving is only comparable to the driving of the son of Nimshi.

Before we proceed on our way, the foppery of our charioteer rea.s.serts itself. Of course, his neat and spruce trim has been considerably disarrayed, so now he proceeds to reorganize his appearance. Gravely and calmly he draws brushes and so on from a receptacle under the box-seat, and commences to t.i.tivate himself. This is too much. Laughter and jibes and energetic rebukes fall on him thick as hail. At first he pays no attention; then he says slowly--

"Look here! If any one wants to walk the rest of the way, he can do it.

I'm willing to split fares for the half journey!"

There is a covert threat in this, and as no one cares to quarrel with the speaker, his eccentricities are allowed to develop themselves without further interference. Then we resume our drive on to Helensville.

For the most part the road pa.s.ses through open country, but we now more frequently see scrub and bush in various directions. At one place, indeed, for about two miles, we pa.s.s through forest. The trees, mostly kahikatea, seem to our English eyes of stupendous proportions, but we are told they grow much bigger in many other parts. Signs of human life are not altogether wanting in these wilds. We pa.s.s a dray coming down from the Kaipara, laden with wool, and pull up, that Dandy Jack may have a private conversation with the driver of it. This dray is a huge waggon, built in a very strong and substantial style, and it is drawn by twelve span of bullocks.

Here and there among the fern, usually in the bottom of a gully beside some patch of scrub, we have noticed little cl.u.s.ters of huts. These are not Maori whares, as we suppose at first, but are the temporary habitations of gum-diggers, a nomadic cla.s.s who haunt the waste tracts where kauri-gum is to be found buried in the soil. In a few places we pa.s.s by solitary homesteads, looking very comfortable in the midst of their more or less cultivated paddocks and clearings. These are usually fixed on spots where the soil, for a s.p.a.ce of a few hundred acres, happens to be of better quality than the gum-lands around. At most of these settlers' houses somebody is on the look-out for the coach, and there is a minute's halt to permit of the exchange of mails or news. For travellers along the road are very few in number, and the bi-weekly advent of the coach is an event of importance.

The afternoon is wearing late, and the rays of the declining sun are lengthening the shadows, when we emerge on the top of a high hill that overlooks the valley of the Kaipara. A wide and magnificent prospect lies spread before us. Far down below the river winds through a broad valley, the greater expanse of which, being low and swampy, is covered with a dense thicket of luxuriant vegetation. In parts we see great ma.s.ses of dark, sombre forest, but even in the distance this is relieved by variety of colouring, flowering trees, perhaps, or the brilliant emerald of cl.u.s.ters of tree-ferns. Right out on the western boundary a line of hills shuts out the sea, and their summits glisten with a strange ruddy and golden light--the effect of the sun shining on the wind-driven sand that covers them. To the north the river widens and winds, until, far away, we get a glimpse of the expanding waters of the Kaipara Harbour. Successive hills and rolling ranges, clothed with primeval forest, close in upon the valley.

About the centre of the broad-stretching vale, we discern a little patch of what looks like gra.s.s and cleared land. There is here a cl.u.s.ter of houses, whitely gleaming beside the river, and that hamlet is Helensville--the future town and metropolis of the Kaipara.

The road, from the hill-top where we are, winds in a long descent of about two miles down to the township. It is scarcely needful to say that Dandy Jack considers it inc.u.mbent on him to make his entrance into Helensville with as much flourish and _eclat_ as possible. Accordingly, we proceed along the downhill track at breakneck speed, and come clattering and shouting into the village, amid much bustle and excitement. We are finally halted in an open s.p.a.ce before the hotel, which is evidently intended to represent a village green or public square, the half-dozen houses of the place being scattered round it.

The entire population has turned out to witness our arrival: a score or so of bearded, sunburnt, rough-looking men, three or four women, and a group of boys and children. A babel of conversation ensues. We, as new-chums, are speedily surrounded by a group anxious to make our acquaintance, and are eagerly questioned as to our intentions.

Several persons present are acquainted with Old Colonial, and when it is known that we are going to join him, we are at once placed on the footing of personal friends. Hospitality is offered, invitations to take a drink at the bar are given us on all sides. We accept, for we are not total abstainers--or sich!--and are in that condition when the foaming tankard is an idea of supreme bliss.

The hotel is larger and more pretentious than that at Riverhead. It is better built, and has a second storey and a balcony above the verandah.

It is furnished, too, in a style that would do credit to Auckland--we particularly noticing some capital cabinet-work in the beautiful wood of the mottled kauri.

And then we are treated to a dissertation on the wonderful advantages and prospects of Helensville, some day to be a city and seaport, a manufacturing centre and emporium of the vast trade of the great fertile tracts of the Kaipara districts. We are a.s.sured that there is no place in all New Zealand where it could be more advantageous to our future to settle in than here. And so to supper, and finally to bed, to sleep, and to dream of the wonders that shall be; to dream of cathedrals and factories and theatres rising here, and supplanting the forest and scrub around us; to dream of splendid streets along the banks of the Kaipara, but streets which ever end in rocky wooded gullies, down which we plunge incessantly, behind a rushing nightmare that is driven either by a demon or by Dandy Jack.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 3: A railway across this portage was opened for traffic in 1876. It has since been continued from Riverhead to Auckland, and is now--1882--being pushed forward to the north, from Helensville on to Whangarei.]

CHAPTER IV.

IN THE KAIPARA.

The next morning after our arrival at Helensville, we go down to the wharf, close behind the hotel, and embark on board the steamer _Lily_.

This vessel is the only regular means of communication, at present, with the young settlements lying round the Kaipara. She is a much larger craft than the _Gemini_, but she is of the same ancient and ruinous character. One would have thought that, on these new waters, such craft as there were must necessarily be new also.[4] Such does not appear to be the case, however, for the steam service on the Waitemata and the Kaipara is conducted by very second-hand old rattle-traps. Where they were worn out I know not. Bad as they are, they are considered a local improvement, for, until quite recently, settlers had to depend on small sailing-boats, that plied very irregularly.

The Kaipara is a name applied rather indiscriminately to a river, a harbour, and to a tract of country. The Kaipara river is that on which Helensville stands. It waters an extensive valley, and, flowing north-westerly, falls into the Kaipara Harbour, some miles below Helensville. It is tidal to a short distance above the settlement.

The harbour is a vast inlet of the sea, almost land-locked, since its entrance, the Heads, is only about three or four miles wide. Opening from the harbour are sundry great estuaries, resembling the sea-lochs of Western Scotland. They are the Kaipara, the Hoteo, the Oruawharo, the Otamatea, the Wairau, the Arapaoa, and the Wairoa. Several of these have branches. Thus the Pahi, to which we are going, branches out of the Arapaoa. They are fed by creeks--that is to say, by freshwater rivers, as one would call them at home. The tidal estuaries are here called rivers; and the freshwater streams, of whatever size, creeks.

All these waters have the generic name of the Kaipara. The united water-frontage is said to be over a thousand miles; and nearly two million acres of land lying round are comprised within the so-called Kaipara district. Ships of heavy tonnage can get up to Tokatoka on the Wairoa, to Te Pahi and Te Otamatea, and within a short distance of Helensville, these places being, respectively, from twenty-five to thirty-five miles from the Heads. Smaller vessels can, of course, go anywhere. The Wairoa creek is navigable for schooners and cutters for more than eighty miles, as well as its tributaries, the Kaihu, Kopura, Tauraroa, and Maungakahia.

We have come into a district admirably adapted for pioneer settlement.

For nature has supplied water-ways in every direction, and thus the first great difficulty in opening up a new country, the want of roads, is obviated. Here, indeed, as we shall find, no one walks to his township, or rides to see a neighbour, he jumps into his boat and rows or sails wherever he wants to go.

As the _Lily_ steams down the Kaipara, we get a better idea of the bush than our previous day's coach-ride had given us. There is no more of the brown and s.h.a.ggy gum-land, but, instead of it, such glorious woods and jungles and thickets of strange beautiful vegetation. Mile after mile it is the same, the dense evergreen forest stretching away over the ranges as far as one can see. Here it is the light bush, woods of young trees that have grown over what were once the sites of Maori cultivation; there it is the heavy bush, the real primeval forest.

One great feature of the Kaipara tidal estuary is the quant.i.ty of mangroves. Immense tracts are covered with water at high tide, and are left bare at low tide. These mud-banks are covered with mangroves in many places, forming great stretches of uniform thicket. The mangrove is here a tree growing to a height of twenty or thirty feet, branching thickly, and bearing a dark, luxuriant foliage. At high water, the mangrove swamps present the appearance of thickets growing out of the water. When the tide recedes, their gnarled and twisted stems are laid bare, often covered with clinging oysters. Below, in the mud, are boundless stores of pipi (c.o.c.kles), and other sh.e.l.l-fish and eels.

The channel of the river is broad and deep, but often, to save some bend, the _Lily_ ploughs her way along natural lanes and arcades among the mangroves. It is a novel experience to us to glide along the still reaches among these fluviatile greenwoods. We are embosomed in a submerged forest, whose trees are uniform in height and kind. All round us, like a hedge, is the glossy green foliage, sometimes brushing our boat on either side. And we scare up mult.i.tudes of water fowl, unused to such invasion of their solitudes. Wild duck, teal, grey snipe, s.h.a.gs, and many kinds that no one on board knows the names of, start from under our very bows. Not gay plumaged birds, though, for the most part; only now and then a pair of kingfishers, flashing green and orange as they fly, or the purple beauty of a pukeko, scuttling away into the depths of the swamp.

By-and-by we emerge into the expanse of the harbour. Once out in it we could almost imagine ourselves at sea, for, from the low deck of the _Lily_, we only see the higher grounds and hill-tops round, looking like islands in the distance, as we cannot descry the continuity of sh.o.r.e.

And now we have leisure to make closer acquaintance with the boat that carries us.

The _Lily_ is a queer craft. Though old and rickety, she gets through a considerable amount of work, and is sufficiently seaworthy to fight a squall, when that overtakes her in the harbour. Not that a gale is by any means a light affair, in this wide stretch of water. When one is blowing, as it sometimes does for two or three days at a time, the _Lily_ lies snugly at anchor in some sheltered cove, and settlers have to wait as patiently as may be for their mails or goods. She knows her deficiencies, and will not face stormy weather, if she can help it.

Three times a week she visits certain of the Kaipara settlements, returning from them on alternate days. The arrangement is such that each township gets--or is supposed to get--one weekly visit from her. She is a boat with a character, or without it, which means about the same thing in the present instance. She has also a skipper, who is something of a character in his way.

The Pirate, or Pirate Tom, as he is indifferently called, is a gentleman of some importance locally, for he is the channel of communication between the Kaipara settlers and the outside world. He is a man of ferocious aspect, black-bearded to the eyes, taciturn, and rough in demeanour. In his hot youth, he is credited with having borne his part in certain questionable proceedings in the South Sea, and hence his appellation.

Freights run very high on the _Lily_, and it is by no means certain how far the Pirate may be concerned in keeping them so. He is apt to be captious, too, as regards the transit of cargo, and will refuse to do business if it is his whim, or if any particular individual happen to offend him; for he is lord paramount over the river traffic, and well does he know how to turn that to his own advantage. Apparently, he considers that he does you a personal favour if he carries you or your goods, and you have to keep on his good books, lest he should not condescend to do either.

Besides the playful way in which he manipulates the commerce of the district, Pirate Tom has another mode in which he adds to his gains. At some of the river townships and stations there is no hotel, or store, where liquor can be obtained. The only immediate facility that settlers and bushmen at such places have for procuring it, is such as is afforded by the boat. The Pirate is always ready to dispense the vile compounds he call spirits to all comers--sixpence per drink being his price, as it is the established tariff of the colony. It is held to be manners to ask him to partake himself, when any one desires to put away a n.o.bbler; and the Pirate, being an ardent disciple of Bacchus, was never yet known to refuse any such invitation. He also sells, at seven shillings a bottle, the most atrocious rum, brandy, or "square" gin.

To a.s.sist him in the management of his craft, the Pirate has under him an engineer and a Dutch lad. The former of these has, of course, his special duties; the latter is cook and steward, sailor, landing-agent, and general utility man. He goes by the name of "The Crew." To beguile the tedium and monotony of constant voyaging, "The Crew" is wont to exercise his mind by conversation with such pa.s.sengers as there may be.

He is of a very inquiring disposition, and asks leading questions of a very personal nature. Seeing that I am a new-chum, he begins to ask me my name, age, birthplace, who my parents were, where I formerly lived, what I did, what my cousins and aunts are, their names, and all about them, and so on, a series of interminable catechetical questions on subjects that, one would think, could not possibly have any interest for him. This would be gross impertinence, were it not that "The Crew" is perfectly unconscious of giving any offence. He only asks for information, like Rosa Dartle; and this questioning is his idea of polite sociability.

Among the points of interest about the _Lily_, the most noticeable are the engines with which she is supplied. These are fearfully and wonderfully contrived. How such rusty, battered, old-fashioned, rough-and-ready machinery can be got to work at all, it is hard to say; but it does. Of course the engines are continually breaking down, or bursting, or doing something or other offensive. But whatever may happen, the Pirate and his two aids consider themselves equal to the emergency, and make shift to tinker up the mishap somehow. Such unlooked for examples of misapplied force are constantly occurring, the consequence being that repairs are as often called for. Thus it is that the engines present a very extraordinary and uncommon appearance. Report has, perhaps, added somewhat to the truth, but numerous legends are current in the Kaipara about the _Lily_, her engines, and her captain.

These amateur artificers are not in the least particular as to the materials they use for effecting their repairs, nor are they given to considering the relative differences of the metals. On one occasion, rust had eaten a hole through the boiler, and leakage ensued. Promptly they set to work, and soldered the lid of a biscuit-tin over the weak place. Then the boat went on as usual.

Once again, so it is said, something or other gave way--some screw, or c.o.c.k, or lever failed to act. The boat became unmanageable, could not be stopped, or slowed, or done anything with. In short, she ran away. But Pirate Tom was not to be imposed on by any such feeble tricks. He immediately steered the _Lily_ slap into the nearest bank and tied her up to a tree. Then the three went on sh.o.r.e, with a bottle of rum and a pack of cards, and sat down at a respectful distance to await the progress of events, and to enjoy a game of cut-throat euchre.

The engineer bet Pirate Tom a note--colonial for a sovereign--that the engines would blow up, and the latter laid on the chance that the rebel craft would spend herself kicking at the bank. After churning up the mud, plunging at the bank, and straining at her tether for an hour or so, the _Lily_ quieted down, all her steam having worked off. So the Pirate won and pocketed the engineer's note; and then the party adjourned on board again, to resume their ordinary avocation of tinkering up.

In the log of the _Lily_ there is supposed to be an entry, which would seem to indicate that the Pirate is not invariably so lucky as on the last-mentioned occasion. It is his rule never to spend any more money on repairs than what cannot possibly be avoided. There was an unsafe steam-pipe, which might easily have been replaced at a trifling cost; but, of course, the Pirate would spend nothing on it, and relied on his own usual resources. One day the steam-pipe burst, when a number of pa.s.sengers were on board, and a woman got her legs scalded. After that, the Pirate found it absolutely necessary to get a new steam pipe; and was, besides, heavily mulcted in an action brought against him by the injured lady. The entry referred to probably runs like this:--

s. d.

To a new steam-pipe 0 10 0 To fine and costs 3 12 6 To damages awarded to Mrs. ---- by the Court 5 0 0 To doctor's fees for attendance on Mrs. ---- 4 0 0