A First Year in Canterbury Settlement | Page 6

some were sitting on their boxes and making a
show of reading tracts which were being presented to them by a
serious-looking gentleman in a white tie; but all day long they had
perused the first page only, at least I saw none turn over the second.
And so the afternoon wore on, wet, cold, and comfortless--no dinner
served on account of the general confusion. The emigration
commissioner was taking a final survey of the ship and shaking hands
with this, that, and the other of the passengers. Fresh arrivals kept
continually creating a little additional excitement--these were saloon
passengers, who alone were permitted to join the ship at Gravesend. By
and by a couple of policemen made their appearance and arrested one
of the party, a London cabman, for debt. He had a large family, and a
subscription was soon started to pay the sum he owed. Subsequently, a
much larger subscription would have been made in order to have him
taken away by anybody or anything.
Little by little the confusion subsided. The emigration commissioner
left; at six we were at last allowed some victuals. Unpacking my books
and arranging them in my cabin filled up the remainder of the evening,
save the time devoted to a couple of meditative pipes. The emigrants
went to bed, and when, at about ten o'clock, I went up for a little time
upon the poop, I heard no sound save the clanging of the clocks from
the various churches of Gravesend, the pattering of rain upon the decks,
and the rushing of the river as it gurgled against the ship's side.
Early next morning the cocks began to crow vociferously. We had
about sixty couple of the oldest inhabitants of the hen-roost on board,

which were intended for the consumption of the saloon passengers--a
destiny which they have since fulfilled: young fowls die on shipboard,
only old ones standing the weather about the line. Besides this, the pigs
began grunting and the sheep gave vent to an occasional feeble bleat,
the only expression of surprise or discontent which I heard them utter
during the remainder of their existence, for now, alas! they are no more.
I remember dreaming I was in a farmyard, and woke as soon as it was
light. Rising immediately, I went on deck and found the morning calm
and sulky- -no rain, but everything very wet and very grey. There was
Tilbury Fort, so different from Stanfield's dashing picture. There was
Gravesend, which but a year before I had passed on my way to
Antwerp with so little notion that I should ever leave it thus. Musing in
this way, and taking a last look at the green fields of old England,
soaking with rain, and comfortless though they then looked, I soon
became aware that we had weighed anchor, and that a small steam-tug
which had been getting her steam up for some little time had already
begun to subtract a mite of the distance between ourselves and New
Zealand. And so, early in the morning of Saturday, October 1, 1859, we
started on our voyage.
The river widened out hour by hour. Soon our little steam-tug left us. A
fair wind sprung up, and at two o'clock, or thereabouts, we found
ourselves off Ramsgate. Here we anchored and waited till the tide,
early next morning. This took us to Deal, off which we again remained
a whole day. On Monday morning we weighed anchor, and since then
we have had it on the forecastle, and trust we may have no further
occasion for it until we arrive at New Zealand.
I will not waste time and space by describing the horrible sea-sickness
of most of the passengers, a misery which I did not myself experience,
nor yet will I prolong the narrative of our voyage down the Channel--it
was short and eventless. The captain says there is more danger between
Gravesend and the Start Point (where we lost sight of land) than all the
way between there and New Zealand. Fogs are so frequent and
collisions occur so often. Our own passage was free from adventure. In
the Bay of Biscay the water assumed a blue hue of almost incredible
depth; there, moreover, we had our first touch of a gale--not that it
deserved to be called a gale in comparison with what we have since
experienced, still we learnt what double-reefs meant. After this the

wind fell very light, and continued so for a few days. On referring to
my diary, I perceive that on the 10th of October we had only got as far
south as the forty- first parallel of latitude, and late on that night a
heavy squall coming up from the S.W. brought a foul wind with it. It
soon freshened, and