From Gisborne to Melbourne.

Poverty Bay Standard, Volume X, Issue 1113, 3 August 1882, Page 4

From Gisborne to Melbourne.

[Written for the Poverty Bay Standard, j No. XIII. Farewell to New Zealand. We left the Bluff in the Te Anau in evening, with a strong sou’ wester, of course right in our teeth, and the prospects of dirty weather increasing as we rounded the southern extremity—the Land’s End—of the Colony of New Zealand. It was dark, with a dismally cloudy moon in her first quarter; and as she chose, or was destined by the unalterable laws of the universe, to go out of sight, beneath the horizon, at an early hour, the picture, in its realistic form was anything but cheerful. To add to the grim cheerlessness of the scene, rain began to fall as we entered Foveaux Straits, and continued drizzling for the best part of the night, becoming beautifully less as the night advanced, and the wind-storm increased. I stayed on deck until an early hour in the morning, to watch the wildness of the elements in their conflict, as it would appear, for the mastery' The weird-like desolateness of the time, and the surrounding atmosphere of loneliness, imparted a kind of pleasant melancholy to the situation which consorted favorably with the then state of my feelings. The winds whistled mournfully through the rigging of the good old ship, while the billows appeared, to the ordinary measurement of landsmen, to run, up to the usual altitude, “mountains high.” Lonely I trod the deck, and still more lonely I, anon, sat and communed, as the poets say, “with the spirit within me.” I tried to call spirits from the vasty deep; but two difficulties met me. First, there was no “ vasty deep ” on board the Te Anau, the only one known in Dunedin haring been left behind. And, second, when I called “ the spirits," unless I did so pretty lustily from the top of the “ companion,” the steward (in whose temporary charge the said spirits were) Would not attend to unlock the doors of their secret places, so I comforted tnyself without their ministration. Comforted, did I say ? What a mockery of words I No, there was no comfort that night for me. I felt as if I was parting once more from the land of my birth—the place where all I hold dear on earth lie buried in the dust, or move in the flesh, in an absence worse than death. And it was not alone my friends, whose parting was one of sorrow, that lent an additional poignancy to my grief. It was as the severing of one’s heart-strings to mentally feel the snapping of cords that had bound me to the land of mv adoption for over 30 years. Thoughts that I fain would smother came chasing each other, in dismal array ; images of bygone days ever and anon startled me from the slumber of an enforced forgetfulness, as if to mock at the misery I endured. The lustre of the past was dimmed most sadly by the reflection it cast on the darkness of the present. And why dark ? Perhaps that mav not be the only word that accurately describes the exact state of my feelings ; but in a poetic sense it is the best, for when the clouds of melancholy come across the brow, and east their louring shadows o’er the heart, it is then that a “ darkness is felt” of which the poets write. The words that had come from the thoughts of many poets spoke their “ whispering plaudits to my silent soul,” and I felt in that kind of solitude when we “ are least alone,” for the airy forms of those I was leaving bore me their silent company—yes:— “ The cold, the changed, perchance the dead, anew, The mourned, the loved, the lost—too many! Yet how few!”

Now and again the horizon we were leaving would clear, and the slowlyreceding land dipped, as it were, beneath the crest-topped waves, and my heart felt what my lips dared not utter: — “ Adieu! Adieu! my native shore Fades o’er the waters blue.” In vain did I essay to shake off the feeling of despondency that sat like a ghoul-like nightmare upon me, but in vain. The tempest without beat in unison with the tumult within me, and I felt like one

“ Onee more upon the waters ; yet once more. And the waves bound beneath me as a steed That knows his rider. Welcome to the roar!” There is, I think, speaking from experience, nothing so depressing to one's feelings (excepting, perhaps, an empty stomach, and lacking the wherewithal to fill it) as an uncertainty and indefinition of the future, that is, in so far as our worldly concerns are affected. Beyond the grave, I shall not presume to question the wisdom of our being kept in ignorance, but in temporal matters he is best accredited with promise of success who can see some distance ahead. It was not my desire to look into the future. I dwelt in the present-past, and melancholy remembrances of days gone never to return occupied my thoughts; and I keenly realised the fact that “ There’s not a joy the world can give, Like that it takes away.” 1 was conscious that the pangs of separation would be fleeting, and that after awhile I should tread again the dust of my native soil; but there are some dispositions that refuse to be comforted in their misery, and, I suppose, mine is of that character. Had I not been moved by the rather weak sentiment, that, in leaving New Zealand I was out of the world, my temporary absence from it would not have been so hard to bear. “ Good-bye” is a

form of departing salutation I never could say to a friend ; and “ Fare.

well” is fraught with the same funereal j sound, when applied to the country wherein dwelleth all that makes life worth the living for. We all know what we leave behind, but we know nothing yet of that which is to come. The great secrets that lie hidden in the embryotic womb of time, experience, only, can give form and substance to. The past we have lived ; but the future is a blank till it becomes a reality of the present. To a man of Cosmopolitan hope and nerve —or shall I say a practical Colonial — the future is not shorn of its attractions. Here, it is not as in the old country, where, to move from one part to another, destroys, to a large extent, that grand and noble desire to achieve success, through the conquering of all obstacles. Nature, truly, asserts her prerogatives of sorrow and regret, but the firm, iron will, holds its possessor up, and he scorns the idea that, although in a land of strangers he is “ Midst the crowd, the hum, the shock of man, To hear, to see, to feel, and to possess, And roam along, the world’s tired denizen, With none to bless him, none whom he ean bless.” So I, too, looked forward with a determination that, dark and unpleasant as the prospect might then appear, the land that lay beyond—ahead, in the distant vista of that which is to come could produce its sunny rays as well as that which I had left for a season. Towards the early cock-crow (we had cocks on board) I felt refreshed from the physical repose and quiet I had had, albeit it was accompanied by severe agitation ; and I hied me from" the deck wishing for another “ red funnel,” or something to soothe the troubled brain. But no ' And for the first time for years, Byron’s caustic lines in Don Juan made me feel that “ There’s naught, no doubt, so much the spirits calms As rum and true religion.”

The only point upon which I think I could have successfully argued the point with the satirical Bard, would be that I should back the “ red funnel " brand, against that from either the East or West Indies. Nothing but the fog horn, the orders of the officer of the watch, and the dismal creaking of the rudder chains, was now to be heard, for the gale moderated as we got clear of the Straits ; so with the last waive of my thoughts across the midnight billows, I commended those I had left behind to safer keeping than my own, and wished “ My native land—good nightl”