Brighter Britain! Part 7

There are shanties and shanties. It is necessary to explain. Primarily, in its Canadian and original sense, the term means a log-house--a hut made of rough squared logs, built up upon each other. Such log-huts are not common in this country, though they may be seen here and there. The mild climate does not require such a style of building. The labour of cutting and squaring logs for the purpose is great. The native whare of thatch is quickly and easily raised, serves all requirements, and lasts for years. In most parts. .h.i.therto settled, water-communication places the settler within reach of a saw-mill, where he can obtain boards and so on at very moderate cost. A shanty here, is a name applied to almost any kind of nondescript erection, which would not come under the designation of whare, or be honoured by the ambitious t.i.tle of house.

Rough edifices of planking are the common form.

We went up to Tokatoka on the Wairoa, and there we purchased enough sawn timber for our purpose, for about twelve or fifteen pounds. We hired a big punt, and fetched this stuff down to our place, a distance of some forty miles or so by water. Then we set to work at building.

The site we selected was an ambitious one; too much so, as we were afterwards to discover. From the first Old Colonial objected to it. It was too far from the river, he said, and would necessitate such an amount of "humping." Bosh about humping! returned the majority. It was only a temporary affair; in a year or two we should be having a regular frame-house. Old Colonial gave way, for he perceived that, as our acknowledged boss, he would have but little of the humping to do himself. And the chosen site was central for the first proposed clearings of our future farm.

The selected spot was a rising ground in the centre of a broad basin, nearly a mile across. Steep ranges surround this basin, and the whole was then covered with light bush. Half a mile in front is a mangrove swamp, beyond which flows the river--the mangroves filling up a s.p.a.ce that without them would have been an open bay. The prospect in this direction is bounded by the forest-clothed ranges on the opposite side of the river, which is here about a mile in breadth. The land within the basin is nothing like level, and English farmers might be frightened at its ruggedness. To colonial eyes, however, it seems all that could be desired.

Knolls and terraces gradually lead up to the ranges, which sweep away to run together into a high hill called Marahemo, about three miles behind us. The little eminence, on which stands the shanty, slopes down on the left to a flat, where originally flax and rushes did most abound.

Through this flat a small creek has channelled a number of little ponds and branches on its way to the river beyond.

On the right the bank is steeper, and upon it stand a number of cabbage-tree palms. Down below is a little rocky, rugged gully, with a brawling stream rushing through it. Just abreast of the shanty this stream forms a cascade, tumbling into a pool that beyond is still and clear and gravelly. It is a most romantically beautiful spot, shaded and shut in completely by fern-covered rocks and overhanging trees. This is our lavatory. Here we bathe, wash our shirts, and draw our supplies of water. This creek flows down through the mangrove swamp to the river; and, at high-water, we can bring our boats up its channel to a point about a quarter of a mile below the shanty.

The site of the shanty has its advantages; but it has that one serious drawback foreseen by Old Colonial. Somehow or other, year after year has flown by, and still we have not got that frame-house we promised ourselves. It is not for want of means, or because we have not been quite so rapidly successful as we antic.i.p.ated. Of course not! Away with such base insinuations! But we have never any time to see about it, and are grown so used to the shanty that we do not seem to hanker after anything more commodious. So all these years, we have had to hump on our backs and shoulders every blessed thing that we have imported or exported, from the shanty to the water, or the contrary--sacks of flour, sugar, and salt, grindstones, cheeses, meat, furniture. Oh, misery! how our backs have ached as we have toiled up to our glorious site, while Old Colonial laughed and jeered, as his unchristian manner is.

Our work began with the timbers of the shanty itself, and with the heavy material for the stockyard. But humping was then a novelty, and we regarded it as a labour of love. Now we know better, and, when we do get that frame-house, we are going to have it just as near to the landing-place as we can possibly stick it. You may bet your pile on that!

Of course, in building the shanty, we employed the usual fashion prevalent in the colony. Because, when we set to work we said we were going to build a proper frame-house, _not_ a shanty. That is a name for our habitation, which has since grown up into usage. We were none of us practised carpenters; but what did that matter? We knew how to use our hands; and had so often seen houses built that we knew precisely how to do it.

First of all, then, are the piles. These are of puriri wood, tough, heavy, and durable. They are rough-split sections of the great logs, some two feet thick, with squarely-sawn ends. They are fixed in the ground two or three feet apart, so as to bring their flat-sawn tops upon a uniform level. The irregularities of the ground are thus provided against, while a suitable foundation is laid.

The next process is to build a scaffolding, or skeleton frame, of scantling and quartering. When that has been done, the floor is planked over, the sides weather-boarded, doors, windows, and part.i.tions being put in according to the design of the architect. Lastly, the roof is shingled, that is, covered with what our chum, O'Gaygun, calls "wooden slates."

Our shanty is thirty feet long by ten in width. The sides are seven feet high, and the ridge-pole is double that height from the floor. There are a door and two windows, the latter having been bought at the township.

There is a part.i.tion across the shanty, two rooms having originally been intended; but as this part.i.tion has a doorway without a door, and is only the height of the sides, being open above, the original intention in raising it has been lost, and it now merely serves for a convenient rack. There is no verandah on the outside of the shanty, for we regarded that as a waste of material and labour.

The fireplace is an important part of the shanty. Ten feet of the side opposite the door was left open, not boarded up. Outside of this a sort of supplementary chamber, ten feet square, was boarded up from the ground. The roof of this little outroom slopes away _from_ that of the rest of the shanty, and at its highest point a long narrow slit is left open for a chimney. There is no flooring to this chamber, the ground being covered with stones well pounded down. Its level is necessarily sunk a little below that of the shanty floor, which is raised on the piles, so the edge of the flooring forms a bench to sit on in front of the fire. The fire used simply to be built up on the stones, in the middle of this chimney-place; but, after a year or two, we imported an American stove, with its useful appliances, from Auckland.

Our shanty is the habitation of some half-dozen of us, year out and year in. There are in the district a good many settlers of the middle-cla.s.ses. Men of some education, who would be ent.i.tled to the designation of "gentleman" in Europe. Of such sort are we. Some of us are landowners, and some have no capital, being simply labourers. Which is which does not matter. I shall not particularize, as each and all have the same work to do, and live in exactly the same style. There is brotherhood and equality among us, which is even extended to some who would _not_ be called by that old-world t.i.tle just alluded to, anywhere at all. We do not recognize cla.s.s distinctions here much. We take a man as we find him; and if he is a good, hearty, honest fellow, that is enough for us.

A good many of us come from the cla.s.ses in England among whom manual labour is considered low and degrading. That is, unless it is undertaken solely for amus.e.m.e.nt. Out here we are navvies, day-labourers, mechanics, artisans, anything. At home, we should have to uphold the family position by grinding as clerks on a miserable pittance, or by toiling in some equally sedentary and dull routine of life. If we attempted to work there as we work here, we should be scouted and cut by all our friends.

Out here we have our hardships, to be sure; we have got to learn what roughing it really means. It is no child's play, that is certain. But here, an industrious man is always getting nearer and nearer to a home and a competence, won by his toil. Can every one in the old country, no matter how industrious, say that of himself? Is it not too often the poor-house, or the charity of friends, that is the only goal of labouring-cla.s.s and middle-cla.s.s alike, in overcrowded Britain? Does patient industry invariably lead to a better fortune for the declining years in England? We know that it does here.

This is enough for one digression, though. Be it understood, then, that we are not h.o.r.n.y-handed sons of toil by birth. We were once called gentlemen, according to the prevailing notions of that caste at home.

Here, the very air has dissolved all those ancient prejudices, and much better do we feel for the change. Only occasionally does some amusing instance of the old humbug crop up. I may light upon some such example before I lay down my pen.

It is now some years since our shanty was built--seven or eight, I suppose. The edifice certainly looks older. Not to put too fine a point on it, one might candidly call it ruinous, rather than otherwise. This is singular and surprising; we cannot account for it. Frame-houses in this country ought to require no repairs for twenty years at least. That is the received opinion. We dogmatically a.s.sert that the house we built ourselves, with such infinite labour and trouble, is as good as any other of its size and kind. Consequently, it will not want repairing for twenty years. _But it does._ It looks as old as the hills, and seems to be coming to pieces about us, though only eight years old. Nevertheless, we will not forswear ourselves, we will _not_ repair our shanty till twenty years are gone!

As for allowing that there could be any fault in our workmanship, that our inexperienced joinery can have been the cause of the shanty's premature decay, that, even Old Colonial says, is ridiculous. No, the wood was unseasoned; or, perhaps, it was over-seasoned. We admit so much, but our handicraft was certainly not to blame.

The imperfections of the shanty are many and grievous. The door and windows have quarrelled desperately with their settings. On windy nights we get no sleep, as every one is engaged trying to fasten and wedge them into noiseless security. The door developed a most obstreperous and noxious habit of being blown into the middle of the house during the night, with much hideous clatter and clamour. We stopped that at last by nailing it up altogether, and making a new entrance through the side of the chimney-place.

Then, each particular board in the sides of the shanty has somehow warped itself out of place. We are thus enabled to view the lovely scenery lying round the place from our bunks, without the trouble of rising and going to the window. Old Colonial says that free ventilation is one of the great blessings of life. He thinks that the c.h.i.n.ks in our walls are absolutely a provision of Nature, since, he says, we would certainly be choked with smoke if there were none.

Sometimes the cattle, feeding on the clearings round the shanty, come and thrust their noses through the gaps in the boards, or stand and eye us as we are taking our meals. The Saint says he has invited them to breakfast with us, on the first of April next, by which time he expects that the c.h.i.n.ks will have gaped wide enough to permit of the pa.s.sage of cattle.

Of course, the smoke of the fire will not go up the chimney as it ought, but floats freely about the shanty. This is good for the bacon and hams, when there are any, that depend from the rafters. It is also a wholesome thing, says Old Colonial, and sweetens and preserves everything. "None of your ga.s.sy, sooty coal-smoke, but the fragrant vapours of the burning forest!" so he remarked one night, when we were all blinded and choked by the volumes of smoke that rolled through the shanty. O'Gaygun is often funny, but not always original. He says that the smoke floats about our habitation because it never knows which hole it ought to go out at!

On rainy nights--and that is nearly every night during some three months of the year--there is perpetual misery in the shanty. One hears some choice varieties of rhetorical flowers of speech; there is a continual shifting about of beds; and often unseemly scuffling for drier places.

O'Gaygun says that he loves to "astthronomise" when lying comfortably in bed; but he adds, that, "a shower-bath is a quare place to sleep in."

It will be surmised from this that our roof is leaky. All roofs are that, you know, in a greater or lesser degree, only ours in a greater, perhaps. Those shingles _will_ come off. We are sure we put them on properly and securely. The nails must have been some inferior rotten quality, doubtless. Loose shingles lie about all around the shanty. They come in useful as plates, as our crockery is generally short. In fact, O'Gaygun prefers them to the usual article, and always goes outside to pick up a plate for any stranger who may happen to drop in to lunch. To use his words, "They fall aff the shanty roof loike the laves aff the tthrees!"

Somehow or other all these things go unremedied. It would, of course, be an admission that our work had been unsatisfactory, if we were to earnestly set about repairing the shanty, and thereby formally allow that it required such renovation. No one will dare to initiate such a serious thing. Besides, it is no one man's particular business to begin the work of mending; while we are always busy, and have acquired such an amazing notion of the value of our time, that we consider the necessary repairs would not be worth the time it would take us to effect them.

Moreover, Old Colonial is a bush-philosopher, and delivers himself of moral orations in the shanty of nights. His views on some subjects are peculiar, and they are always hurled at our heads with the utmost scorn and contempt for all who may differ from them. This is his theory on repairing--

"We are pioneers; it is our special duty and purpose to make, to begin, to originate. We inherit nothing; we are ourselves the commencement of a future society, just as Adam and Eve were in the Garden of Eden. Our whole time and labour must be given to the one purpose of hewing out the new path. We cannot stop to repair our faults and failures. For _us_ that would be a waste of energy and of time. It is for those who inherit the commencement we have made to do that; not for us, the pioneers. They will improve our beginnings; we must continue onward. _Never mend anything_, except your manners, boys! Put up with discomforts and hardships, as pioneers should!"

The furniture and internal arrangements of our shanty are more simple in construction than elegant in appearance. We go in for utility, and not for show. As a central feature is the table. It is our pride and glory, that table, for it was made in Auckland, and imported by us from Helensville. It is the one piece of furniture we possess that displays an art superior to our own. Solid, strong and large, made of stout kauri wood, it has borne a great deal of rough usage, and is capable of bearing a great deal more.

Besides all the customary uses to which a table may be put, this article of ours fulfils even another purpose. It comes in very handy sometimes as a bedstead. I have known two men to sleep upon it on occasions; its breadth being considerable. For a long time it went by the name of O'Gaygun's four-poster, that gentleman having a predilection for sleeping on it. He is a huge, bony Irishman, and somewhat restless in his sleep. Accordingly, it was no unusual thing for him to roll off the table in the night, and descend upon the floor with considerable uproar.

This was got over by inverting the table at night, and making him recline on the inside of it, with the legs sticking up around him. He does not like this position, though, for he says the rats run across him all night.

Chairs we have none, except two curious contrivances belonging to the Saint and the Little'un. We use empty kegs and boxes, sawn logs set up on end, and the sides of our bunks, when we sit at table. When at our ease and our tobacco, we either recline in our bunks, or sit on the edge of the floor opening into the chimney-place.

The two curious contrivances alluded to are styled armchairs by their manufacturers, and somewhat remarkable objects they are. The Saint's is made out of the section of a cask set up on four legs. It possesses a fifth leg, or outrigger at the back, and has cushions of flour-bags, stuffed with turkey's feathers. The owner doubtless finds it to his mind, but he has to guard against leaning to either side, or collapse is always the consequence.

The other armchair is the Little'un's. Now, this young gentleman, though the most youthful of our party, is by no means the least. He is, in fact, six feet six inches in height, and is of broad and muscular build.

His private seat is therefore of the ponderous kind. At first sight it would seem to be of immense strength, since it is made of heavy stakes, cut in the adjoining bush. These are abundantly jointed with bars and bolts of the same solid and substantial kind; the seat and back being composed of sacking. But, in spite of the apparent power displayed by this fabrication, disastrous accidents are continually happening. The Little'un has no inborn genius for joinery.

Sometimes it has happened that, as we sat at a meal, a loud crack would be heard, some part of his throne would give way, and the Little'un would disappear from view. Shouts of laughter from the rest. Old Colonial, in high delight, would proceed to show how cleverly the Little'un had adapted his armchair to his exact weight; and how it was unable to support the addition of the great load of victuals which that individual had unthinkingly stowed away. The Little'un would arise silent and perplexed; and, by-and-by, we would find him deeply pondering over the manufacture of his scaffolding, and probably shaping another small tree with his axe to add to it.

The most important items of the shanty's plenishing are the bunks and beds. The former are made in this way, having been constructed by the carpenter at the township. A simple folding trestle at head and foot supports two parallel bars. Across these is stretched and nailed stout canvas. Each of us has one of these bedsteads, which are very convenient in the limited dimensions of our shanty, for they can be folded and stacked out of the way when necessary.

The beds themselves are curiously fabricated. Old potato-sacks, flour-bags, and the like have been utilized. The stuffing is of fern, feathers, mounga, and sundry other matters. Each of us has two or more blankets, which, I regret to say, are a trifle frowsy as a rule.

O'Gaygun's call for special remark.

This descendant of Hibernian kings is content to undergo even greater inconveniences than he necessarily need do, since he has determined to make his fortune in the shortest possible s.p.a.ce of time. Moreover, he professes the profoundest contempt for luxury and even comfort. He holds that almost anything civilized is an effeminacy, and out of place in the bush, where he considers that life ought to be lived in a stern and "natchral" way. He is intensely conservative in the primitive usages and habits of the roughest pioneering times, and emphatically condemns any innovations thereupon. He works with furious zeal and unflagging energy, and saves all the money he earns, generally investing it in gold-mine scrip, or something that rarely turns out well.

In the matter of blankets and bedding, the spirit of O'Gaygun's economy and self-sacrifice is apparent. His bedding is like that of all of us, except that it is less bulky--O'Gaygun a.s.serting that a soft bed is a sin. His blankets have long been worn out; in fact, they are the mere shreds and tatters of what once were blankets. Bunk he has none. It would go against his principles to get one. If any of us is absent, O'Gaygun borrows his bunk for the time. When all are present he contents himself with the inverted table, his especial four-poster.

To see this eccentric Milesian settling himself for the night is invariably a mirthful spectacle, and, it may be added, that, no one of us is more volubly humorous and laughter-loving than O'Gaygun himself.

Reclining on the sacks which he has spread out upon the table, he proceeds to draw his tattered blankets carefully over his lengthy limbs.

Piece by piece he spreads the coverings. First one foot and then another, then the waist, and so on, until at last he is entirely covered. The process is troublesome, perhaps; but when it is finished O'Gaygun lies as warm and comfortable as need be. Why should he go to the expense of new blankets?

Of course there is in the shanty a litter of cans, kegs, old packing-cases, and the like, which come into use in various ways. Among them are the remains of former state, in the shape of certain trunks, portmanteaus, and boxes. These receptacles held our wardrobes, when we possessed such things, and the sundry personals we brought with us from England years ago, and imported up here.

We have long got over the feeling that it is imperative to h.o.a.rd up clothes and things in boxes; in fact, we have no longer any clothes and things that require such disposal. But in the bush everything must serve some purpose or other; and so all these now disused trunks are turned to use. One grand old imperial is now a brine-tub, within whose dank and salt recesses ma.s.ses of beef and pork are always kept stored ready for use. Other cases hold sugar, salt, flour, and so on; a uniform case is now our bread-basket; each has its proper purpose, and is accomplishing its final destiny. There is a fine leather portmanteau, or what was once such, now the residence of a colley b.i.t.c.h and her litter of pups.

Mildewed and battered as it is, it still seems to recall to mind faint memories of English country-houses, carriages, valets, and other outlandish and foreign absurdities. There must be magic in that old valise, for, the other day, Dandy Jack was looking at the pups that live in it, and remarked their kennel. A fragment of schoolboy Latin came into his head, and, to our astonishment, he murmured, "_Sic transit gloria mundi!_"

To avoid the possibility of any mistakes arising from an admission just made, I hereby beg to state that we do _not_ consider clothing as entirely superfluous. But we no longer regard it from any artistic or ornamental point of view; that would be to derogate from our character as bushmen. We are not over-burdened with too large a choice of clothing. Such as we have is pretty much held in common, and all that is not in immediate use finds a place on the part.i.tion-rack, or the shelves upon it. We are supposed to possess _another_ change of garments apiece, but no one knows exactly how he stands in this matter, unless it be the Little'un, whose superior amplitude of limb debars him from the fullest exercise of communal rights.

Our ordinary costume consists of flannel shirt and moleskin breeches, boots, socks, leggings, belt, and hat. In chilly and wet weather we sling a potato-sack, or some ancient apology for a coat, round our shoulders. When we visit the township, or our married neighbours, we clean ourselves as much as possible, and put on the best coat we can find in the shanty. We do not entirely dispense with such things as towels and handkerchiefs, though the use of them is limited, and subst.i.tutes are employed. Razors, of course, were discarded long ago, but some antique brushes, and a small piece of cracked looking-gla.s.s, represent the toilette accessories of the shanty.

Our custom is to wear our clothes just as long as they will hold together, before we renew any garment by purchasing another of its kind at the township store. There is no time for mending in the bush, so we are often rather ragged. Washing is a nuisance, but we feel bound to go through it sometimes; and very knowing laundrymen are we, up to every dodge for economizing elbow-grease, and yet satisfactorily cleansing the things. But we do not undertake this work too often. Old Colonial has laid down a law upon the subject. He says--

"Frequent washing spoils clothes, and causes them to rot sooner.