Station Life in New Zealand | Page 6

wonderful native name impossible to write down; but, as I
said before, I do not like the rather rough flavour. We had not a great
variety of fruit at dessert: indeed, Sydney oranges constituted its main
feature, as it is too late for winter fruits, and too early for summer ones:
but we were not inclined. to be over-fastidious, and thought everything
delicious.

Letter III: On to New Zealand.
Christchurch, Canterbury, N. Z. October 14th, 1865. As you so
particularly desired me when we parted to tell you everything, I must
resume my story where in my last letter I left it off. If I remember
rightly, I ended with an attempt at describing our great feast. We
embarked the next day, and as soon as we were out of the bay the little
Albion plunged into heavy seas. The motion was much worse in her
than on board the large vessel we had been so glad to leave, and all my
previous sufferings seemed insignificant compared with what I endured
in my small and wretchedly hard berth. I have a dim recollection of F---
helping me to dress, wrapping me up in various shawls, and half
carrying me up the companion ladder; I crawled into a sunny corner
among the boxes of oranges with which the deck was crowded, and
there I lay helpless and utterly miserable. One well-meaning and
good-natured fellow-passenger asked F--- if I was fond of birds, and on
his saying "Yes," went off for a large wicker cage of hideous "laughing
Jackasses," which he was taking as a great treasure to Canterbury. Why

they should be called "Jackasses" I never could discover; but the
creatures certainly do utter by fits and starts a sound which may fairly
be described as laughter. These paroxysms arise from no cause that one
can perceive; one bird begins, and all the others join in, and a more
doleful and depressing chorus I never heard: early in the morning
seemed the favourite time for this discordant mirth. Their owner also
possessed a cockatoo with a great musical reputation, but I never heard
it get beyond the first bar of "Come into the garden, Maud." Ill as I was,
I remember being roused to something like a flicker of animation when
I was shown an exceedingly seedy and shabby-looking blackbird with a
broken leg in splints, which its master (the same bird-fancying
gentleman) assured me he had bought in Melbourne as a great bargain
for only 2 pounds 10 shillings!
After five days' steaming we arrived in the open roadstead of Hokitika,
on the west coast of the middle island of New Zealand, and five
minutes after the anchor was down a little tug came alongside to take
away our steerage passengers--three hundred diggers. The gold-fields
on this coast were only discovered eight months ago, and already
several canvas towns have sprung up; there are thirty thousand diggers
at work, and every vessel brings a fresh cargo of stalwart, sun-burnt
men. It was rather late, and getting dark, but still I could distinctly see
the picturesque tents in the deep mountain gorge, their white shapes
dotted here and there as far back from the shore as my sight could
follow, and the wreaths of smoke curling up in all directions from the
evening fires: it is still bitterly cold at night, being very early spring.
The river Hokitika washes down with every fresh such quantities of
sand, that a bar is continually forming in this roadstead, and though
only vessels of the least possible draught are engaged in the
coasting-trade, still wrecks are of frequent occurrence. We ought to
have landed our thousands of oranges here, but this work was
necessarily deferred till the morning, for it was as much as they could
do to get all the diggers and their belongings safely ashore before dark;
in the middle of the night one of the sudden and furious gales common
to these seas sprang up, and would soon have driven us on the rocks if
we had not got our steam up quickly and struggled out to sea, oranges
and all, and away to Nelson, on the north coast of the same island. Here

we landed the seventh day after leaving Melbourne, and spent a few
hours wandering about on shore. It is a lovely little town, as I saw it
that spring morning, with hills running down almost to the water's edge,
and small wooden houses with gables and verandahs, half buried in
creepers, built up the sides of the steep slopes. It was a true New
Zealand day, still and bright, a delicious invigorating freshness in the
air, without the least chill, the sky of a more than Italian blue, the
ranges of mountains in the distance covered with snow,