Brighter Britain! Part 9

And now, with considerable trepidation, and with something verging upon veritable awe, I approach a subject that I feel myself scarcely competent to handle. Fraught with the deepest interest to every new-chum, and a matter of no light concern to even the oldest colonist, it is one that demands an abler and more facile pen than mine to do full justice to it. Some one has boldly a.s.serted that, throughout the infinite treasure-house of Nature, every separate and single thing has its particular and well-defined purpose. Without attempting to dispute a proposition so emphatically and dogmatically brought forward, it will be sufficient for me to say that men have asked in shuddering horror, and must still continue to ask, what part in the economy of creation is the sphere of duty or usefulness of that malignant thing we call the KAURI-BUG.[5]

We do not know whether this insect is known to naturalists or not. That is a slight matter, and not particularly pertinent to the question of its interest for us. We believe, however, that no naturalist has yet been found of sufficiently ardent temperament, and of sufficiently hardy nerves, to attempt to cla.s.sify or examine this most infamous of bugs.

Appearances are deceptive very often; they are so in this instance.

Nothing could look more innocent and inoffensive than the kauri-bug, yet few insects rival it in crime. It is an oval shape, anything under and up to the size of a crown piece. It is flat, black, hard, and shiny, and resembles a cross between the English black-beetle and the woodlouse or slater. It stinks. That is all it does, but it is enough. Look at it, and it is harmless enough. But tread on it, touch it, disturb it never so slightly, and instantly the whole surrounding atmosphere is permeated with a stench more infernally and awfully horrible than anything else this side of the Styx!

The kauri-bug inhabits dead-wood of various kinds, but chiefly does it love that of the tree from which it derives its name. It invades houses built with open joints like ours in regiments and battalions, bringing all its family and luggage with it. The best cla.s.s of houses are here built in a fashion styled bug-proof, but even they cannot wholly exclude this fearful thing. It comes in hidden in the firewood, and once in the house it stops there, since no one is courageous enough to turn it out.

It appears to be indifferent as to whether the house is new or old, well-built or ruinous. If the structure is of kauri timber the kauri-bug will be there, and it will put up with any other wood if kauri timber is not available. It is one of the peculiar products indigenous to Northern New Zealand, and it is the least attractive of all.

Dandy Jack, who has been in North America, is my authority for stating that the celebrated odour of the skunk is mild and refreshing, compared to the unutterable loathsomeness of that of the kauri-bug. I can well believe it. How well I remember one of my first nights in the bush! It appears that one of these diabolical insects had got into my blankets. I rolled over and crushed it in my sleep. Inured as I had been by circ.u.mstances to bad smells, this conquered me. I awoke perspiring from a frightful nightmare. I rushed from my bed, from the room, from the house, to escape the hideous effluvium; and--well, darkness veiled the rest!

Nature has in this insect achieved the very acme and culmination of repulsive villainy. Fortunately she has mitigated it in two ways. The stench is volatile and soon disappears; while settler's noses get used to it in a measure. Were it not for these merciful provisions, colonization in this land would be an utter impossibility for people who had olfactory nerves at all. The kauri-bug would have driven us back to England long ago.

As an instance of an earnest but mistaken striving after the true colonial fertility of invention and readiness of resource, I put on record the following. The Fiend once evolved from the obscurest depths of his inner consciousness a truly fearful and alarming plan. In this gentleman's somewhat feeble intellect there floats a sort of hazy reverence for a mysterious force denominated by him "kimustry." And to this occult power he appears to ascribe a magical potency, that recalls memories of the "Arabian Nights."

We conclude that, at some time or other, the Fiend had been told, or had read, that a certain delightful perfume, _eau de millefleurs_ I think it is called, was derived by chemical agency from sewage, or some equally malodorous matter. He appears to have formed the idea that any disgusting stink could be turned, by "kimustry," into a delicious perfume; and, further, that the more horrible the original stink might be, the more ravishingly delightful would be the perfume to be derived from it.

One night, when the parliament of our shanty was a.s.sembled in full conclave, the Fiend enunciated his views. Seriously and circ.u.mstantially he put forward his proposition. This was that we were to form ourselves into a joint-stock company; that we were to cultivate and make collections of kauri-bugs; that we were to find a "kimust" who could "do the trick," and employ him; and that we were to introduce to the world, and grow rich by, the sale of a sort of celestialized essence of kauri-bugs. In proof of good faith, the Fiend produced a box full of kauri-bugs that he had collected for experiment, and handed them among the midst of us.

Conceive our horror and consternation at this unnatural and appalling proposal. Springing instantly to his feet, O'Gaygun demanded that the Fiend be forthwith taken out and hung from the nearest tree. But the Fiend saved his life by immediately withdrawing his proposition and his bugs, humbly suing for mercy. It was then thought that our duty to humanity would necessitate our sending the unhappy Fiend for incarceration in the Whau Lunatic Asylum, where they were in want of "subjects," as Old Colonial significantly remarked. That point is still under debate. Meanwhile, the Fiend still lives, but is kept under strict surveillance.

There is another of our insect enemies which must have special mention, and that is the Maori blow-fly. We have flies of many sorts, house-flies and blue-bottles among them. The latter, the blue-bottles, get very big, and have an increased propensity for multiplying themselves, and that in their usual unpleasant manner. But over all the blue-bottles'

old-fashioned systems the Maori blow-fly soars supreme. It is a colonizer with a vengeance. It does not go to the trouble of laying eggs or nits; it carries its family about ready hatched. The blow-fly is always ready, at a moment's notice, to deposit an incredible number of lively, hungry maggots upon any desirable surface.

The difficulty of keeping fresh or cooked meat, and various other provisions, will be readily appreciated. The blow-fly will cause its disagreeable offspring to take part in every meal. Maggots are showered down on your very plate. A string of them may be deposited on the mouthful on your fork. The blow-fly is not particular. If you have a wound, cover it up, or the maggots will speedily be in it. The eyes of cattle and sheep are often full of them. If blankets or clothes are hung up to air in the sun, they will soon be white with living organisms; though, for want of moisture, they cannot live more than a few minutes in such a situation, luckily. There is little or nothing we can do against these foes. We get used to them, and try to forget their existence. We keep them out where possible. We salt our food, which they do not like. But we are unable to keep them down, or fight with them.

Even argument with a blow-fly is inadmissible.

We have spiders as big as walnuts, with great hairy legs two or three inches long. We would rather encourage them, as they help to keep down the flies, and they do no harm, though not pretty to look at. There is said to be a poisonous spider in the country, but no one in the North seems to know anything about it. We regard it as a myth. Other insects we have in profusion, but none that affect us like those I have specially spoken of.

After all, we have no great cause for complaint. Some trivial annoyance is the worst we have to suffer in this way. We have no scorpions, snakes, poisonous centipedes, or any other vile thing of that sort. I have told the worst of our indoor plagues. Rats and mice we have, of course, as they swarm in the bush; but our dogs, and a cat or two, keep the shanty fairly clear of them.

Our commissariat is plentiful and varied enough. With slight exception we are our own providers, living almost entirely on our own produce, as farmers should. Sometimes the pressure of work leads to carelessness in catering and cooking, and we are consequently reduced to short commons, for which there is no sort of need. In the worst times of poverty we should not starve. The river is always full of fish; and things must be more than bad if one could not get credit for a sack of flour or potatoes with the Mayor, or with some other storekeeper on the rivers.

And, after the first year, the garden ought to produce enough vegetables, potatoes, k.u.mera, taro, pumpkins, and maize, to keep the family going, even if everything else failed them.

Pig-meat, in its various forms, is our staple article of food. We breed and fatten a large number of pigs on the clearings round the shanty.

These we butcher in batches of six or eight, as required, and turn into salt pork, bacon, and ham. We have occasionally sent a cask or two of pork, some flitches or hams, to market; but as a rule we consume our pigs on the farm. Pig-meat is most reliable as a staple. One does not tire of it so utterly as one does of either mutton or beef, if one of these be the invariable daily food.

Beef we rarely see in our shanty. The steers we breed are too valuable to be used by ourselves; they have to go to market. Only occasionally we find it necessary to slaughter some unmanageable rusher, a cow, or bullock, and then we have beef, fresh and salted down. Mutton was just as scarce for several years, as we could not afford to kill out of our small flock; and mutton is not good to salt down. Now, we kill a sheep every week, sometimes a couple, as the township will take the surplus meat, and so it pays us.

We keep a great number of turkeys on the clearings, as also a less number of ducks and poultry, to diminish the crickets, caterpillars, and other insect foes. These birds are now practically wild, and give us something like sport to shoot them. There are hundreds of turkeys, as they thrive amazingly, consequently we often have them at table. Eggs, too, are plentiful enough, whenever any one takes the trouble to hunt up some nests.

As to wild game of any sort, we get little enough of that; for we cannot spare time to go after it. Sometimes we may shoot some of the splendid wild pigeons, some kakas, parrots, tuis, wild duck, teal, or the acclimatized pheasants. Wild pig is nauseous eating, so that is not sought after.

Every now and then we go in for fish. There are schnapper, rock-cod, mullet, mackerel, and herring, or species that answer to those, to be had for very little trouble. There are also soles, which we catch on the mud-banks and shallows at night, wading by torchlight, and spearing the dazzled fish as they lie. When we make a great haul we salt, dry, or smoke the capture for lasting use. The endless oyster-beds, and other sh.e.l.l-fish, we rarely touch, they are not worth the time and trouble, we consider.

Tea is the invariable beverage at every meal, and almost the only one, too. Milk is generally available in our shanty as a subst.i.tute, but somehow we stick to the tea. We drink quarts and quarts of it every day, boiling hot, and not too weak. Throughout New Zealand and all the Australian colonies this excessive tea-drinking is the universal practice. Even the aboriginal races have taken to it just as kindly. It is such a good thirst-quencher, every one says, so cooling in warm weather, and so warming in cold seasons.

We had an earnest medico on a visit to us lately. He inveighs strongly against tea-drinking, which he says is the curse of these countries. I think he would preach a crusade against it if he dared; for, of course, he would have to join issue with Good Templars, Sons of Temperance, and all the fanatical anti-alcoholists. These zealous reformers are so blindly infatuated with their hatred for alcohol, that tea seems to them its natural ant.i.thesis, and they vaunt it as if it were a celestial boon. And such people are a political power out here--worse luck!

The doctor declares--"Tea-drinking is one of the most serious mistakes of our age and race in these new countries. It produces, first of all, a low form of chronic dyspepsia, whose effect is immediately perceived in early decay of the teeth. It often seriously affects the great organs--the liver, kidneys, stomach, and heart--predisposing them to derangement, and aiding the progress of organic mischief in them, should that arise from other causes. It affects the nerves, causing irritability and debility in them. Nervous power becomes impaired, reacting with evil effect upon the ganglionic centres and the brain.

Hence the mind must become insidiously affected also. I am quite sure that the character of our colonists is being modified by their practice of excessive tea-drinking, and I cannot believe that the change will be for the better. I believe that we may trace to tea, gloominess, misanthropy, loss of cheerfulness, a restless energy without fixity of purpose, a sour temper, a morbid and abnormal simplicity, leading to intellectual retrogression instead of progress, and to a tendency to yield to superst.i.tious fancies, with loss of control over reason and its advancement. What will be the future of these young tea-drowned nations?"

Fortunately, we only understood a fraction of this tirade, yet we trembled and shivered ever afterwards as we drank our tea.

Then the doctor showed us how to make sugar-beer, treacle-beer, cabbage-tree-root-beer, honey-beer, peach-cider, corn-cider, and various other drinks of a more or less unlicensed kind. So now we have usually something else to quaff besides tea. Peaches we have in any quant.i.ty; and the cider they make is capital stuff. Honey abounds in every hollow tree; and the mead or metheglin we compound is a fine drink.

Flour and meal we have to buy. By-and-by there will be a flour-mill at the township, for already some of the more forward settlers near are growing wheat. Maize we do not use ourselves, except as a green vegetable. Some people grind it and use the meal for cakes, but we princ.i.p.ally turn it into pig-meat or fowl-flesh.

Our garden department, though not always so well managed as it might be, yet adds largely to our food supply. The princ.i.p.al crops are potatoes, k.u.mera (sweet potatoes), and pumpkins; good substantial food that will keep, and, should we have a surplus, will sell. We don't bother with green vegetables; they don't pay, we think, and boiled green maize-cobs suffice us for that cla.s.s of thing. But, in such seasons as it has occurred to any one to go in for more extensive gardening, we rejoice in a profusion of carrots, turnips, parsnips, onions, taro, beet-root, and sundry other things.

Fruit can hardly be looked on as a food; it is merely an ornamental accessory to it, in our opinion. We are great fruit-consumers, but we look on such trifles as only refreshers for odd moments, and not as having anything to do with the serious business of eating. We have pretty well all the fruits that are seen in English gardens, and besides them we have quant.i.ties of various sorts of melons and peaches, also specimens of oranges, lemons, shaddocks, grapes, loquats, quinces, pomegranates, guavas, Cape gooseberries, figs, almonds, and some others.

We have even bananas, which are a success in most seasons. The marvellous profusion and richness of our fruit-crops, leads to the belief that industries connected with fruit-growing will eventually be found to succeed best in the North.

Of course, long practice in cooking has made us tolerably proficient in the simpler processes of the art. Several of us are very fair all-round cooks, but Old Colonial is supreme in this, as in most things. He is a veritable Soyer of the bush. When he chooses to exert his skill he can turn out the most wonderful dishes. Where he learnt, and how he learnt, no one can tell; but he seems to be a perfect master of cookery in every shape and form.

In spite of the peculiarities of our table-service, we fare sumptuously often enough, much more so than many people who would disdain to feed without linen and dishes and plates, forks, spoons, and other things that we hold in slight regard. Old Colonial's name has gone abroad through the country. When any one of our neighbours goes in for the luxury of a wife, Old Colonial is not infrequently called in to educate her in culinary matters. He is a past master in endless wrinkles, dodges, makeshifts, and subst.i.tutes of all sorts; and has, besides, an unbounded faculty of invention that is highly satisfactory to our little commonwealth.

One hot and blazing Christmas-tide we invited all the married people, who lived within anything like reasonable distance, to visit our shanty--Bachelor's Hall, as the ladies termed it. Such an entirely novel and unusual event as the visit of some of the gentler s.e.x to our shanty was an occasion of no light moment. Old Colonial determined to banquet our visitors in the superbest possible style, and vast preparations were at once undertaken.

Two days before the expected arrival, all hands set to work in the arduous and unavailing endeavour to render the shanty approximately clean and respectable. Such a turn out as that was! Such an unlooked for bringing to light of things that must be nameless! We broomed and we scrubbed, we washed and we sluiced, we even tinkered and mended, we cleaned and we swore, and made our lives temporarily miserable; and yet, with all this, how grimy, and dirty, and mean, and wretched, that shanty of ours would continue to look!

Never had our household property been subjected to such a cleaning up as that was. Gradually some order was introduced into the chaos, and at last we began to think we should convey a favourable impression after all. But our chief concern was in the matter of table equipage.

One of us was sent over to the township, with orders to beg, borrow, or steal, all the crockery and table-cutlery in the place. Another was dispatched on horseback through the bush somewhere else, and on the same errand, that something like proper table furniture might grace the feast. Then our wardrobe underwent inspection. Some one had to go over to the township and buy new shirts for all of us, with several pairs of trousers, and other things. O'Gaygun stormed and wept at this outrage; but our boss was firm for the proprieties, as he estimated them. The worst of it was, we had to contemplate frightful expenditure. And more, it was humiliating that our previous condition should be made known to the Mayor, who, with his wife, were to be among our guests. But, what matter? The Mayor is a good fellow, and a friend; and what can be too great a sacrifice to make for England, Home, and Beauty!--especially the last.

We all had our tasks. There was the path between the shanty and the landing-place to be put in proper condition; various muddy places in it to be covered with fascines; a certain watercourse we were in the habit of jumping to be newly-bridged, and so forth. Then there was the catering. Two of us were out with guns, shooting turkeys, pheasants, pigeons, fowls, and anything else that was eatable. Others were butchering the fairest and fattest pig in our drove, and doing the same by a lamb. Two were out on the river diligently fishing, or collecting oysters and c.o.c.kles. Some, too, were employed in the garden, picking fruit, gathering vegetables, and so forth, and so on.

All day and all night the stove was redhot, while a supplementary fire blazed outside the shanty. Between them oscillated Old Colonial, pipe in mouth, hirsute and unkempt, grim, grimy, and naked to the waist. His two aids, the Saint and the Fiend, had a bad time of it. They were his scullions, marmitons, turnspits, or whatever you like to call it. They had to keep up the supplies of firewood, to prepare the fowls and fish, and generally to do all the dirty work; and the way that Old Colonial "bossed" them round was an edifying sight to see.

The preparations were stupendous. Victuals enough had been laid in to feed a regiment, and the variety of them was endless. But Old Colonial, once having given way to the mania of extravagance, was determined to lay under contribution every conceivable thing, and to turn out more dishes than even an American palace hotel would put on its bill of fare.

Finally, it was discovered that the shanty was far too small a place for our banquet. So, on the appointed morning we were up at sunrise, and, from then till noon, we laboured at the construction of a bower; while Old Colonial was busy with his hot meats and confections. The bower was an open shed, running all along the shadiest side of the shanty and beyond. It was a rude erection of rough poles, latticed and thatched--Maori fashion--with fern-fronds and flax. Under it was _the_ table, supplemented by another of loose boards on such supports as we could fabricate; and round it planks resting on kegs and boxes made sufficient seats.

Hardly were our preparations finished when the first boat was descried, coming through the mangroves from the river down below, and a parasol was visible in the stern. Then there was a hasty stampede down to the gully to wash; an agonized scuttle into the new shirts; and a hot and anxious a.s.sumption of restful calm. And so we welcomed the guests as they came.

What a feast that was, and how it astonished everybody! And such a party as our shanty had never witnessed before! For curiosity brought half a dozen ladies--all there were in the district--and fully a score of masculine friends honoured our establishment with their presence.

It is not to be supposed, of course, that all our neighbours inhabit rude shanties like ours. Some are further forward, or had more capital at the start; and men do not bring wives into the bush until they can manage to furnish forth a decently comfortable house for them. Our married friends live in respectable comfort. Still, the ladies, living in the bush, get to know its more primitive ways, though they may not experience them themselves. So, our domestic arrangements, though made the occasion for a great deal of banter and fun, were neither unexpected nor novel to our lady visitors. But the banquet that was provided for them made them open their eyes indeed. It was something altogether new to the bush. Such a miracle of catering! such marvellous unheard of cookery! It surpa.s.sed anything any one of them had ever seen before, anywhere.

The table was covered with white linen, borrowed at the township, and all the equipage we could muster was displayed upon it. Plates, forks, spoons, and knives, there were in plenty; but we had not been able to collect enough dishes and bowls for the profusion of viands Old Colonial had provided. Some parts of the service were therefore peculiar, and caused much addition to the merriment. There was always such incongruity between the excellence of the comestible and the barbaric quaintness of the receptacle that happened to contain it. Soups in billies, turkeys in milk-pans, salads in gourd-rinds, custards in cow-bells, jellies in sardine-boxes, plum-pudding in a kerosene case, vegetables, fruits, and cakes in kits of plaited flax; anything and everything was utilized that possibly could be.

High enthroned upon a pile of potato sacks, Old Colonial presided over the feast he had created; while, as vice, sat O'Gaygun, his barbaric conservatism laid aside for the nonce in favour of grace and gallantry.

What glorious fun we had! What a flow of wit beneath the august influence of ladies' smiles! And we were cool in our ferny bower, out of the strong hot sunshine. And in the intervals of eating and drinking, we could look about us on the splendid perspective of bush and river, across the clearings, where the air shimmered in the heat, where the crickets whistled and hummed, and where the cattle were lazily lying among the stumps. It was a magnificent picnic, so everybody declared.

There never was anything to match it in all New Zealand!

I can fancy, that in days to come, when the full tide of civilization has overtaken this fair country, some of those ladies will be sitting in boudoirs and drawing-rooms talking to their children; and they will tell them of the early pioneering days. And one of their best-remembered stories will be that of the Christmas-time, when they were banqueted by Old Colonial and his chums at our shanty in the bush.

To a certain extent we are of musical tastes, and, though our time for practice is limited to an occasional half-hour of an evening, we consider ourselves no mean instrumentalists, and sometimes give public performances, as will appear hereafter. We have two flutes, a clarionet, a cornet, and a French horn, often supplemented by two violins and a concertina. Old Colonial does not play, neither does O'Gaygun. They fiercely decline to add to what they term the beastly uproar.