Five Years in New Zealand Part 8

CHAPTER XIV.

LEAVE FOR MESOPOTAMIA--ROAD MAKING--SHEEP MUSTERING--DEATH OF DR. SINCLAIR--ROAD CONTRACTS ON THE ASHBURTON--WASHED DOWN STREAM.

I had only been a few days in Christchurch when I met a Mr. Butler whom I had once before seen up-country. He immediately offered me a post on his run at 60 a year, with all expenses paid, which I could hold for as long or short time as I needed. This exactly suited me in my present circ.u.mstances. I accepted his offer and started the following day for Mesopotamia, as he had quaintly named his station; it lay between two rivers.

[Ill.u.s.tration: MESOPOTAMIA STATION.]

Mr. Samuel Butler was a grandson of the late famous Bishop Butler. He had come to New Zealand about a year previously with a small fortune which, as he said, he intended to double and then return home, and he did so in a remarkably short time. Immediately he landed he made himself acquainted with the maps and districts taken up, and rode many hundreds of miles prospecting for new country. His energy was rewarded by the discovery of the unclaimed piece of mountain land he now occupied near the upper gorge of the Rangitata. The run, which comprised about 8,000 acres, formed a series of spurs and slopes leading from the foot of the great range and ending in a broad strip of flat land bounded by the Rangitata. Upon two other sides were smaller streams, tributaries of the latter--hence the name Mesopotamia (between the rivers) given to it by its energetic possessor. Mr. Butler had been established upon the run about a year, and had already about 3,000 sheep on it. The homestead was built upon a little plateau on the edge of the downs approached by a cutting from the flat, and was most comfortably situated and well sheltered, as it needed to be, the weather being often exceedingly severe in that elevated locality.

Butler was a literary man, and his snug sitting-room was fitted with books and easy chairs--a piano also, upon which he was no mean performer.

The station hands comprised a shepherd, bullock driver, hutkeeper, and two station hands employed in fencing in paddocks, which with Cook, the overseer, Butler, and myself made up the total.

At daybreak we all a.s.sembled in the common kitchen for breakfast, after which we separated for our different employments.

At 12 noon we met again for dinner, and again about 7 p.m. for supper, which meal being over, Butler, Cook, and I would repair to the sitting room, and round a glorious fire smoked or read or listened to Butler's piano. It was the most civilised experience I had had of up-country life since I left Highfield and was very enjoyable. I did not, however, remain very long at Mesopotamia at that time.

There was a proposal on foot to improve the track leading from the Ashburton to the Rangitata on which some heavy cuttings were required to be made. I applied for the contract and obtained it at rates which paid me very well. My supervisor was a man called Denny, who had been a sailor, and I knew him to be a capable and handy fellow, as most sailors are. He was quite illiterate--could not even read or write, but he was clever and intelligent and had seen a great deal of colonial life and some hard times. Every night when supper was over and we sat by the fire in our little hut, I read aloud, to his great delectation, and his remarks, pert questions, and wonderful memory were remarkable.

This work paid well, and I was soon in a position to make my first investment of 100 in sheep, which I placed on terms on Butler's run. To explain this transaction: I purchased one hundred two tooth ewes at a pound each, upon these I was to receive 45 per cent. increase yearly in lambs, half male and half female, and a similar rate of percentage of course on the female increase as they attained to breeding age. In addition I was to receive 12 10s. per hundred sheep for wool annually.

It was a good commencement, and I decided to stick to contract work if possible, and increase my stock till I had sufficient to enable me to obtain a small partnership on a run.

Just at this time there arrived at Mesopotamia a friend of Butler's by name Brabazon, an Irishman of good family, it being his intention to remain for some time as a cadet to learn sheep farming. He became a great personal friend of Cook's and mine, and many a pleasant day we spent together when, during intervals of rest, I was able to pay a visit to the Rangitata Station.

On the completion of the road contract, the mustering season had begun, and I went over with my men to give a hand and remained for a month a.s.sisting at the shearing, etc.

I think it was at this time that a most sad occurrence took place, resulting in the death of Dr. Sinclair, who was travelling for pleasure in company with Dr. Haast, Geologist and Botanist to the Government of Canterbury. He and Dr. Haast with their party had been staying at Mesopotamia for a few days previous to starting on an expedition to the upper gorge of the Rangitata. They all left one afternoon, Dr. Sinclair, as usual, on foot. He had an unaccountable aversion to mounting a horse, and could not be induced to do so when it was possible to avoid it.

Strange to say, a horse was eventually the cause of his death. He was a man of some seventy years of age with snow white hair, a learned antiquary and botanist, and old as he was, and in appearance not of strong build, he could undergo great fatigue and walk huge distances in pursuit of his favourite science.

The party had proceeded in company some few miles up the river, when Haast and his men went ahead to select a camping place, leaving Dr.

Sinclair with a man and horse in attendance to come on quietly and take him over the streams, the intended camp being on the opposite side of the river.

[Ill.u.s.tration: UPPER GORGE OF THE RANGITATA.]

The plan adopted for crossing a stream, when there is more than one person and only a single horse, is as follows: One end of a sufficiently long rope is fastened round the animal's neck, the other being held by one of the men. One then crosses the stream on horseback, when he dismounts, and the horse is hauled back by means of the rope, when another mounts, and so on. In this instance the attendant rode over first, but the stream being somewhat broader than the rope was long, the latter was pulled out of Dr. Sinclair's hands. The man then tried to turn the horse back loose, but the animal, finding himself free, bolted for the run. Dr. Sinclair called to the man that he would ford the stream on foot, and although, as the attendant stated, he warned him against attempting to do so, he immediately entered, but the current was too powerful and quickly washed him off his feet. It was now nearly dark and the man said that although he ran as fast as he was able down the stream, he was unable to see anything of the Doctor. This was the miserable story the station hand gave in at the homestead when he arrived an hour afterwards.

All hands turned out, and having mounts in the paddock, Cook and Brabazon were soon in the saddle galloping towards the fording place.

Striking the stream some distance below where the accident occurred, both sides were carefully searched, as they worked up. When within a quarter of a mile of the ford Cook discovered the body of the Doctor lying stranded with head and shoulders under water. Life, of course, was extinct. He was drawn gently from the stream and laid on the shingle just as the foot men arrived with torches. It was a sad spectacle, this fine old man we all loved and respected so much, only a few hours before full of life and health, now a ghastly corpse, his hair and long white beard lying dank over his cold white face and glaring eyes. The scene was rendered all the more weird and awful by the surroundings, the still dark night, the rushing water, and overhanging cliffs under the red glare of the torches. His body was laid across one of the saddles while one walked on each side to keep it from falling, and so they returned to the station that lonely four miles in the dead of night.

He was laid in the woolshed and a watch placed on guard, and early in the morning a messenger was despatched to Dr. Haast with the sad tidings. His party were at first alarmed at his non-appearance the previous evening, but at length took it for granted that he must have returned to the station, and felt confident that with his attendant and a horse he could not possibly have come to any harm, the river being easily fordable on horseback, or even on foot by a strong man, but of course such a clumsy mistake as employing too short a rope never struck anybody. The attendant who was responsible was one of the hands employed on ditching and fencing, and possibly was not much experienced at river fording, and he said the Doctor delayed so long botanising that darkness was upon them by the time they reached the fording place.

Dr. Sinclair's remains were interred the following day about a mile from the homestead on the flat near the south bank of the Rangitata, where his tomb doubtless may now be seen, his last earthly resting place; and, dear old man, with all his strong antipathy to horses, what would he have thought could he have known that one was destined at last to be the cause of his death?

As a set-off against the previous sad story I may relate an amusing one, in which I was myself a princ.i.p.al actor, and which occurred soon after my arrival at Mesopotamia. Butler was much exercised about some experimental gra.s.s-growing he was carrying on about three miles from the station, on the further side of one of the boundary streams I first referred to, where he had recently secured another slice of country.

Early one morning I had started alone on foot for the paddocks, where Butler and Cook were to meet me later, riding, and if I found the stream too high to ford on foot, I was to await their arrival.

On reaching the river it was so swollen as to be unsafe to attempt fording, and so, lighting my pipe, I sat down under the shelter of a large boulder, and presently fell asleep. When I woke up, after some considerable time, and remembered where I was, I feared that Cook and Butler must have pa.s.sed while I slept, and was on the point of returning to the station, when I observed two hors.e.m.e.n a long way down stream, apparently searching for something. I speedily understood what was on foot. My friends were laboriously seeking for my dead body, having naturally supposed, when they could not find me at the paddock, that I had tried to ford the river and been washed away. The idea of these two men spending the morning hunting for a supposed drowned man, who was enjoying a sound sleep near them all the time, was so ludicrous that I could not refrain from an immoderate fit of laughter when they arrived.

Butler was hot-tempered, and anything approaching to ridicule where he himself was concerned was a mortal insult. He turned pale with pa.s.sion and rode off, and I do not think he ever entirely forgave me for not being drowned when he had undertaken so much trouble to discover my body.

It was at Mesopotamia that I noticed so many remains of that extinct bird, the "Moa," and it appeared that some of the species had inhabited that locality not very many years previously. Indeed, some old Maoris I had met on the Ashburton said they remembered the bird very well. It was not uncommon to come across a quant.i.ty of bones, and near by them a heap of smooth pebbles which the bird had carried in his craw for digestive purposes, and I recollect one day employing a number of the bones in making a footway over a small creek.

A complete skeleton of the Moa bird is to be seen in the British Museum.

I had now obtained a fresh contract for making cuttings, draining swamps, and bridging over some ten miles in the Lower Ashburton gorge and Valley, and I was busily engaged all the summer and autumn. There were some extensive patches of swampy ground where great difficulty was experienced in pa.s.sing the heavy wool drays, and to make a feasible road over them was one of my tasks, and an interesting one it proved, giving some scope to my engineering ability. Having laid out the proposed line of road over the marsh, I cut from it at right angles, and some 300 feet in length, a channel wide and deep enough, I calculated, to convey away the flood water during heavy rains, and from the upper end of this channel I cut four feeding drains, two running along the road line, and two diagonally, all four meeting at the top end of the main channel; over the latter, at this point, I constructed a wooden bridge of rough green timber from the forest, distant about eight miles. I sunk a row of heavy round piles or posts about a foot in diameter at each side of the channel, which was fifteen feet wide, securing them with heavy transverse beams spiked on to their tops; over this I laid heavy round timber stretchers, about nine inches in diameter and four in number, upon which were spiked closed together a flooring of stout pine saplings from two and a half to four inches thick. The floor between these was then covered with a thick layer of brushwood, topped with earth and gravel. The road embankment was then carried on from each side till the swamp was cleared. I am particular about describing this, as it was my first attempt at bridge building and draining, and of all the thousands of bridges I have since constructed, I do not think any one of them interested me more keenly than these in the Ashburton Valley when I was a lad of nineteen. The bridges and roads over the marshes proved quite satisfactory, and it was a real delight to me when the first teams of wool drays pa.s.sed over safely. I was at the same time engaged on the cuttings, and got some of them completed before the severe winter set in.

I was so busy this season that much of my time was necessarily spent in supervising between the forest and the work, and I had a rough hut erected at the former, where I could live during my visits.

Once, on pa.s.sing to the forest, I met with an amusing accident. I was riding a huge sixteen-hand black mare and had heavy swags of blankets strapped before and behind the saddle, in addition to which I carried a new axe, some cooking utensils and a large leg and loin of mutton, which I had called for at the station, fearing that my men were out of meat.

Near the forest I had to cross a small stream with steep banks. There had been heavy rain the previous night, and the little stream was a rushing torrent, and as I forded it, the water reached to the girths.

The opposite bank was steep and slippery, and the huge animal laboured so in negotiating it that the girths snapped, and the entire saddle, with myself, slipped over her tail into the rushing stream. In this manner we were carried down; immersed to nearly my armpits, but securely attached, for some two hundred yards, before I was able to extricate myself and inc.u.mbrances by seizing a branch as we swept by a bend in the stream.

With some difficulty I succeeded in getting all out safely and fortunately on the right side. The mare was quietly feeding where she had emerged.

Where the work went on in the valley I had a couple of tents for my gang of navvies, some of whom were sailors. I always found these excellent workers, and specially handy and clever in many ways, where a mere landsman would be at fault. I worked with them, and shared everything as one of themselves, even to a single nip of rum I allowed to each man once a day. They treated me with every respect, and I had not, so far as I can recollect, a single instance of serious trouble with any of them.

They received good wages, and earned them, and if any man among them had been found guilty of reprehensible conduct, the others would have supported me at once in clearing him from the camp. When the day's work was over, these sailor navvies would all bear a hand to get matters right for the night and the next day. Mutton was put in the oven, bread made, and placed under the ashes, firewood collected, and water in the kettle ready for putting on the fire at daybreak, then the nip of rum and pipe alight, and yarns or songs would be told or sung in turn, till the blankets claimed us.

This was a very severe winter, and as the snow began to lie heavily I was perforce obliged to stop work for a month or two, and for that time I accepted an invitation from Cook and Brabazon to keep them company at Mesopotamia. Butler had left for Christchurch, where he would remain for an indefinite time.

CHAPTER XV.

WINTER UNDER THE SOUTHERN ALPS--FROST-BITE--SEEKING SHEEP IN THE SNOW--THE RUNAWAY.

In winter in these high lat.i.tudes, such as the Upper Rangitata, lying at the foot and immediately eastward of the great Alpine range behind which the winter sun dipped at 3 o'clock in the afternoon, it was intensely cold, and instances of frost-bite were not uncommon. I recollect a poor young fellow, a bullock-driver on a neighbouring station, getting frost-bitten one night when he had lost his way in the snow. He knew nothing of it until he arrived at the station in the morning, when, on removing his boots his feet felt numb and dead, and no amount of rubbing had any effect in inducing a return of circulation. It soon transpired that his toes were frost-bitten. A messenger was despatched to the Ashburton in hope of finding a doctor, but in vain, and the lad was sent to Christchurch, 150 miles, in a covered dray. This, of course, took a considerable time, and when he arrived gangrene had set in, and both feet had to be amputated above the ankles.

When the snow falls in large quant.i.ties it becomes an anxious time for the sheep farmer, and if the flocks are not strong and healthy they are sure to suffer. In snowstorms, the sheep will seek the shelter of some hill or spur, collecting together on the lee side, and here they are sometimes drifted over, when if the snow does not remain beyond a certain period they are mostly safe. As the snow drifts over them the heat of their bodies keeps it melted within a certain area, while the freezing and increase of drift and falling snow continue above and beyond the circle. In this manner a compartment is formed underneath in which the animals live and, to some extent, move about. The existence of these habitations is discovered by the presence of small breathing holes on the surface leading from below like chimneys, and sheep will live in this manner for a fortnight or so. When they have eaten up all the gra.s.s and roots available they will feed on their own wool, which they tear off each other's backs, and chew for the grease contained in it.

For a fortnight we had been completely snowed up at Mesopotamia. Upon the homestead flat the snow was four feet deep, through which we cut and kept clear a pa.s.sage between the huts, and for fifty yards on one side to the creek, where through a hole in the ice we drew water for daily use. Fortunately we had abundance of food and a mob of sheep had previously been driven into one of the paddocks to be retained in case of emergency. The confined life was trying. We read, played cards, practised daily with the boxing gloves, and missed sorely the outdoor exercise. One day, however, we had a benefit of the latter which was a new experience to all of us.

The overseer was getting anxious about the sheep. Once or twice distant bleating had been heard, but for some days it had ceased, and as he wished to satisfy himself of the safety of his flocks, we decided to make a party and go in search of them.

When last seen, before the heavy snow began to fall, the flocks of ewes and lambs were two miles from the homestead on the lea of the great spur forming the north extremity of the run, and it was in this direction the bleating was heard.

We arranged our party as follows: Cook, Brabazon, and I, with two station hands, were to start early the following morning, while two men remained at the huts to be on the look out for us, and if we were late in returning they had orders to follow up in our snow trail and meet us.

We each dressed as lightly as possible, and provided ourselves with stout pine staffs to a.s.sist us in climbing and feeling our way over dangerous localities. Each of us carried a parcel of bread and meat, and a small flask of spirits was taken for use only in case of urgent necessity.

An expedition of this kind is always attended with danger. Travelling through deep snow is exceedingly tiring, and the glare and glistening from its surface tends to induce sleepiness. Many a man has lost his life from these causes combined when but a short distance from safety.

[Ill.u.s.tration: SEEKING SHEEP IN THE SNOW.]

We started in Indian file, the foremost man breaking the snow and the others placing their feet in his tracks. When the leader, whose work was naturally the heaviest, got tired, he stepped aside, and the next in file took up the breaking, while the former fell into the rear of all, which is, of course, the easiest.