VAGRANS VIATOR.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXII, Issue 4949, 1 February 1877, Page 3

VAGRANS VIATOR.

(Froni th* New Zealand Mail.) “ Hib ot übique’’—Anv Author you ouoose. When next an English Dictionary is published “monotony” should be defined as “ the ride along the beach from Paikaikariki to Manawatu.” The only incident likely to break the monotony of sand and sea recurs so frequently, as to become in itself monotonous. Every hundred yards is a seagull, and every seagull, seemingly at stated intervals, carries a pip? high'in the air and drops it on the beach to break it. The condition of the _ pipi after having beeuthus- dropped several: times, must be like that of my cumbrous though conceited friend Gillon since the Country Districts and Te Aro Ward elections. ” At Waikanae arc an accommodation house and a river to be passed. The first task was not accomplished, the second was. Amongst other refreshments, the accommodation house contains a very old whaler and two monkeys. That whaler I can assure you has seen “ sometings,” He has as it were an hereditary right to exciting adi enture, his father having been clubbed to death on one of the. South Sea Islands when he himself was only fifteen years of age. He may now be any age between 70 and 150. What times has he not seen. The good old roaring piping times when every flat on Kapiti and the little islands adjacent had its trypot, and when barrels of rum had their heads knocked in and their contents drunk in pannikins. Soda water not having been then invented, what did the whalers do of a. morning. The present specimen says they “just A»/,!• a wvnwn unm

More monotony, and at the mouth of the Otaki I turn inland to reach the village and Maori settlement. Not more welcome than is “ the shadow of a great rock ” to the traveller “in a weary land ” comes Otaki to me. After a scorching forenoon where the sun’s heat comes up from the hot desolate sand and broils you, you suddenly find yourself amidst water courses and fragrant meadows, and waving corn and green crops, and in a street kept cool by pendulous willows, and in a hotel where all the windows on the shady-aide of the house are flung wide open, and all those on the sunny-side have their blinds drawn down, and presently you find that there is poetry eyen in spring onions when they accompany a cold leg oi lamb and succulent salad.

And stowed away in this village is the most wonderful piece of Maori work that can be imagined. The church and school and collegebuildings (the two latter, to judge by appearances, now unused), stand in paddocks as level as the surface of smooth water, and covered with green sward. On the outside, the church is a large plain barn-like building, shingleroofed, of the common colonial type. But inside ! In the first place, there are no rafters. Three enormous tree-trunks running in a line of pillars from gable-end to gable-end, support a roof-tree so massive, that like the fly in amber, you wonder how it ever got there. The walla and inside of the roof are covered all over with the particolored reedwork in which Maoris used' to delight,: and carved pilasters run up the walls from floor to eaves. The altar-rail. is also carved, and all by Maori hands, iu Maori fashion. And the whole was done with the direction of only one European artisan. The great tree-trunks were cut down miles away .in the mountains, conveyed here, and reared into their present positions by multitudes of willing hands. In a smaller sense, the Maori church teaches how the Pyramids were built. Service is held ‘ twice a day (morning and evening) with commendable regularity. That in the morning takes place somewhere about 5 or 6 o’clock, and the ringing of a bell for a full half-hour precedes it, and effectually prevents from future slumber the irreligious who do not attend it. Such of the Maoris as attend serVice' either morning or evening, and have sixpence to spare on quitting it, never pass by the public-house without making a call there also. . ' . ' .

I made a great mistake at Foxton, reached after another dreai’y ride. Whilst being put across with Piscator in a ferryboat, the ferryman in answer to inquiries directed me to Whyte’s Hotel. Whence much trouble. For it appears that there is a hotel rivalry in Foxton. Mr. Whyte has a very comfortable and well-conducted house, at which most travellers stay. The other-house is also,. I make no doubt, a palatial residence,' being now indeed the property of Mr. Andrew Young. But Mr. Young, who runs the line of coaches that pass through Foxton on their way. te Wellington from Wanganui, or vice versa; as a 'riile'stops his coaches at and starts them from his own hotel - and it is a singular fact that, owing no doubt to the state of the tides,: it is difficult-for a passenger to find out when the coach starts of a’ , morning, unless “he stays at the hotel from whence it departs. An easy remedy for all this would be to- make the coaches deliver the mails at and receive them from the Post Office. But the whole thing creates mnch local jealousy, and to the circumstance, of, my having stopped .at the hotel I chose to stop at, I must attribute an ingenious paragraph, the production of a literary gentleman who would not get credit himself at< any hotel in Wellington. Indeed it is on record that he only once paid a grog, and billiard score, and that was when after being dunned for it through six months, he; in a moment of forgetfulness, asked for change of a j£s note, and got it —minus his debt. But if my stay at Foxton was productive of a little 1 temporary local irritation it was not without agreeable reminiscences to myself. ‘The exquisite, Italian accent acquired' amidst the sunny, groves of ..Blarney lane, and-on-which I have 1 long prided myself, was (mistaken for French. A German gentleman with a species of brevet rank as doctor. hearing me speak, remarked that my pronounciation betrayed my French nationality. Fancy .“ nabocklish.” being mistaken for “ parley voo.” ; As during my stay I was asked many questions as 'to my opinion of the position; and future prospects' of Foxton, I am happy in being able to give, a general reply here. Foxton will'yet be the site of a great local industry, the manufacture •of sand glasses for timing the boiling of eggs.' ; Here I met a gentleman of a phrenological turn of, mind who/ at my request, kindly felt Piscator’s bumps for me.' He said;that Piscator’s head quite differed from that! of a namesake which he had once examined. Piscator would never borrow half-a-crowh and let time render him oblivious of the (fact. Neither would he scheme and contrive in order to get other men’s billets,'nor when scheming failed, would he do all he could to injure and annoy those whom he could hot oust. Altogether, Piscator is rising in iny' estimation daily. ~ ' :