Grandfather’s Yarns.

Southern Cross, Volume 2, Issue 28, 6 October 1894, Page 11

Grandfather’s Yarns.

(All Eights Reserved).

THE NEW RIVER IN ’37.

WEALING SHIPS AT THE bluff.

THE LATE DR. MENZIES.

A WHOLESALE LAND SALE,

TAKING A RISE OUT OP MB MANTELL.

No. 2s.bf “ Grandfather, is there anything more you could 1 ell us about the Pauhouf ?” asked Jack.

“Well, boy, considering he was dead, 1 don’t suppose there is ; but I know he gave all Southern Maories a dreadful scare. I remember when we first came to the New River—in ’37, it was. It was hard work to get any M aories to come with us at all, they were so afraid of another invasion. All the Maories had left the mainland and gone either to Rhuapuka or* Centre Island to live. Carter and I had our fishery where the pilot station is now, and .Jack Williams and Joss had another higher up the river. We came over in February and went to Otatara to get totara bark tb build our huts with, “ The country was then as wild as you could wish to see it —all bush and ■swamp ; if anyone had suggested that any of us should live to see Invercargill such a town as it is, we should have smiled; as it was we never imagined that people would ever settle here.

“ I was reading a letter in Monday’s Times about the early settlers whicli said in the thirties and early forties as many as twelve whaling ships had been lying in Bluff Harbour at a time, and I know for a certainty there were never more than four at the most. The letter ' also mentioned Tom Brown’s ‘ exciting scenes in following up and harpooning whales.’ I could not help laughing at that, for I remember in ’36—-two years after I came to New Zealand —Tom Brown went with Captain Bruce in the Sydney Packet to Sydney to be christened, when he was a baby, so he can hardly called an ‘ old hand.’ Why, there’s Captain Gilroy at the Bluff who was here as boat steerer before Tom Brown knew what a whale was. I think Gilroy came in ’37 with Capt. Bradley in the Protest. “ I remember, too, when Dr Menzies came here, but it wasn’t till ’63. One afternoon he and Mr Mantell, the commissioner, a constable and four Maories arrived, having walked from Otago. They were all pretty well knocked up, but Dr Menzies was the worst —his clothes were torn to shreds, and his boots were almost gone. “Mr Mantell and the constable stayed at Spencer’s, but the doctor came down to Jack Tiger’s hut, where we all were. It was very rough, but he seemed thankful for any kind of shelter, and he asked if he could buy a pair of trousers anywhere. _ We ■couldn’t help laughing at the idea; but I said to Jack —‘ You’ve got a pair—give them to him.’ ‘ Yes, I’ve got an extra pair,’ said Jack ; ‘ but they’re moleskins and he’s a doctor .’

“ ‘ Oh,’ I said, 1 doctor or no doctor, he’d like a whole pair of trousers so Jack gave them to him and he seemed very grateful for them. We bathed, his feet in warmj f water and the siftings of the wheat we had just ground. He seemed much relieved, and next morning was considerably better. “ But the Maories who came down with then}, used to make fun of Dr Menzies, and take him off to the life. He hadn’t the nack of bush travelling, and used to' go at it so hard that he was tired out in no time. One Maori offered to make him a pair of pararas to wear, to save both his boots and hi s feet but he wouldn’t have them, and I think after that they felt no p ity for him, but delighted in laughing at him.

Next day there was the great land sale, when Mr Mantell bought all this end of New Zealand for the New Zealand Government for £IOOO. Mr Mantell sat just inside Spencers’s house. He had a little table and chair there, -and the Maories went in by turn to receive their share. One man from Rhuapuka went in, and Mr Mantell handed him ten pounds. ‘My share’s forty pounds,’ said the man. ‘ No,’ said Mr Mantell, ‘ You’re only down for ten pounds. If you were down for forty, I’d give you forty.’ So the man said —‘ You can keep your ten, I don’t want it, John Topi promised that I’d have forty.’ ‘ He went outside in an awful rage, and Mantell came to the door and said, ‘Well, I hope there’s no grog about. I don’t want any of the Maories to get drunk.’ ‘ No,’ said Gilroy, ‘ I don’t think you’d find a glass of grog in the Bluff, and I know there’s none in that ship there, either.’ Mr Mantell said he was very glad, and went inside again ; and it was a good thing, too. If there’d been grog about some one would have been killed that day, for there was great quarrelling among the natives. “ That afternoon we were all in Spencer’s boat shed, when we saw Mr Mantell coming up the path. Some of the boys, saw him coming, and they knotted some tussock across the track. Mr Mantell was shortsighted or something—anyway he wore spectacles, and he was looking up at us in the shed, and not noticing where he was walking. » Presently there was a crash, and a wild flourish of arms and legs in the air, and spectacles flying in all directions. He was naturally such a dignified man that it was really more than human nature could stand without a good laugh, and we fairly roared; and the little Maori children who had caused the downfall tumbled about like the small niggers in ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin’ in piles of immeasurable giggle.’ It was a funny sight though. And when he picked himself up again he was so angry, but it only added to their amusement, for the little beggars had a keen sense of the ridiculous.”