An Open Air Page For Big Girls and Boys

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 179, 19 October 1927, Page 6

An Open Air Page For Big Girls and Boys

THE GREENWOOD TRAIL

TI»S a green trail this morning, Young Thunder.” “And dappled with sun and shade, O Chief.” “Like the trail ot* life, Young Thunder, where light and shadow must ever touch and intermingle. .. . Harken! Redwinged Blackbird joins our circle—she who is the constant friend of Silver Dove. The law of contrast yet governs the world. . . . And here is the great Brave, Many Tokens, whose decorations outnumber the feathers in a chieftain’s war bonnet. With her comes Keeper of the Fires with twigs from the cedar and resinous pine. Still shall the faggots of friendship be laid at the Wigwam fires. . . . Golden Plume, the sun god has blessed your gleaming token. Welcome to our circle, O maid of the shining feather. . . . And you, Greenwood Rover, with the leaves still crowning your hair. . . . Hush! Who comes? “Waving Pampas, a Brave from the wide spaces where the wind walks with restless feet and the grasses gossip of his coming.” “Greetings, fair one. . . . And you, O newcomer?” “I am Lone Sentinel, Redfeather, keen of eye and vigilant of heart—fitting keeper of the Wigwam door.” “Welcome, worthy one. . . . And you, O chief of the winged feet?” “Swift Warning is my name. Every track in the forest is known to me and the rivers tell of my coming. I carry the word of man far and near and I would be one of your news bearers, Redfeather.” “ ’Tis well. Should danger threaten or trouble approach I shall send Swift Warning to the far-flung tepees of my children.” REDFEATHER

GIRL GUIDES’ CORNER

Last Saturday. Redfeather journeyed to Hamilton and found the tepee of Lone G lide-Brave Red Star, the little faithful one. Red Star will shortly be enrolled in St. Peter’s Company as a member of the Honesty Patrol of which Silver Heel is leader. The Wigwam has brought many loyal friendships to this staunch little invalid Brave, who has kept every Wigwam page and is conversant with each member. . Red Star sends her greetings to ill the Children of Redfeatner. On Saturday evening a pow-wow of St. Peter’s Guide-Braves took place. The Company Captain, Mrs. Seddon, and Mrs. MeNicol, Camp Mother, attended and the following Guide-Braves were present:—Silver Heel (Campany Leader), Wanika and Blue Wir_g, of the Honesty Patrol; Blue-fringed Moccasin, Second Leader, Par.sy Patrol; Gliding Moccasin, Leader, Iris Patrol, and Hovering Bird, of the Daffodil Patrol. Singing Wild Flower also attended the gathering and the following new St. Peter's-Braves became members of the Wigwam:—Many Tokens, Keeper of the Fires and Greenwood Rover. On the following morning the Captain of St. Peter’s Company took Redfeathcr for a delightful tour round Hamilton while the Children of the Wigwam, assisted by the Camp Mother, built a fire on the picturesque brink of the Waikato and prepared an outdoor feast. Mrs. Johnson, of the Takapuna Company, recently visited the St. Peter’s Girl Guides and on Saturday, October 8, was present at a field day organised by the company. Competitions were held between the various patrols, the Fuchsia winning the cooking test and the Honesty coming first in the leaf and grass defining. In the latter competition the Pansy Patrol won second place. This company was the first to be established in the Hamilton district, and has made rapid strides under its capable leadership. Miss Moore and Miss Valder are its lieutenants. The annual camp will be held at Okete. a delightful spot with a site reserved for the camping expeditions of the Scouts and Guides. This site is 20 miles from Hamilton, and is adjacent to the oldest flaxmills in the district, the Okete Falls being also near. The girls revel in both fresh and salt water bathing and are looking forward to January 15, when the company will go into camp. * * * The First Church Company, Frankton, has a membership of 35 and is in charge of Acting-Captain J. Patterson, who is the possessor of three service stars. Miss L. Murray fills the post of lieutenant. Recently this company held a mothers’ meeting, enrolment ceremony and exhibition of company work. Recitations and songs were rendered by the Guides and a delightful play, “Rosemary Green,” was presented by the Primrose Patrol under PatrolLeader Marjorie Tomlinson. The frocks were made by the girls and this feature largely contributed to the success of the evening. Red-winged Blackbird, of this company. has recently followed the trail to the Wigwam. ♦ «* *

The Claudelands Company has a smaller membership, but is making splendid progress under the Captain, Miss Hamilton. Between these three companies there exists the true spirit of friendship, and at the various functions members of the one are the guests of another. * * *

The Papatoetoe Company of Girl Guides, in charge of Captain D. Barton, attended church parade at the Papatoetoe Methodist Church yesterday, 34 members answering the roll, and listened to a very interesting and appropriate address delivered by Rev. F. Greenwood.

Paddle Carver and Silver Moon, of the Awataha Company, forward their weekly Guiding news: On Saturday at 1.30 the Awataha Girl Guides left the Nortlicote War Memorial for a long walk to Takapuna. After about an hour’s walk we arrived at the Parish Hall, Takapuna, to find the Takapuna. Devonport and Xorth Shore Girl Guides enjoying themselves until the whistle blew for the Ouid€*s to come to attention. About. 40 girls were chosen to act in a performance which is to be given at the Domain. At about 4.30 p.m. a few of our company strolled down to the beach. We Had tea and then decided to walk from Takapuna to Milford Beach by way of the rocks.

The fiftii and the sky were a picture. The horizon was deep blue and the sea \\ a« peacoc k blue. The very sand itself seemed yellow and orange and everything was a blaze of colour. The sea clashed against the rocks drenching them in spray and the gulls flew I hither and thither uttering an occasional sereech. I At seven o'elock. with our LleutenI ant * we returned to Northcote by bus.

OF INTEREST TO SCOUTS

The First-class Test examinations were held last Saturday at Western Springs, but owing to the threatening weather conditions the full number of candidates did not attend. Those who did gave a fine exhibition of work and the majority passed the test. Mr. Clarke, a Wanganui Scoutmaster, passed through Auckland recently on his way Xorth and with Scoutmaster Mailman, late of Wanganui, was the guest of St. Mary’s troop. He also visited the Whangarei scouts.

The weekly parade of the Otahuhu Boy Scouts took the form of a very interesting lantern lecture delivered by Mr. Falla, of the Auckland Training College, who took for his subject, “Bird Life.” The parade was held at the Otahuhu Public School last evening and the boys of Standard VI. attended by invitation. The lecturer dealt very fully with habits of the various species of bird life and the lecture was made all the more interesting by the screening of a range of beautiful slides dealing with the subject. At the conclusion of the address Mr. Falla received a very hearty vote of thanks for the trouble and patience he had taken in arranging the evening Rev. C. B. W. Seton was in charge of the Scouts, and Mr. Murdock, headmaster of the, school, also attended. • * * On Tuesday, October 11, the District Scoutmaster, Mr. E. B. B. Boswell, paid a visit to St. James’s troop and examined the leaders in First Aid work. The boys gave a fine exhibit .on and proved a great credit to their instructor. The full list of badges awarded in the Avondale troop during the last fortnight is as follows: Second A.R. Cords, T/L K. Taylor and P/S D. Blackman; King Scout, Scouts I. Bellini, G. Trigg and Second F. Armstrong; First-class, P/S F. Armstrong, G. Trigg and I. Bellini; Entertainer, P/L W. Pringle; Ambulance, I. Bellini. G. Trigg and P/L W. Pringle; Healthyman, T. Vendt and D. Blackman; Swimmer, Scout W. Jeffs; Public Healthman, D. Blackman; Second-class, Scout R. Lennox and D. Murphy; Tenderfoot, W. Currie, G. Scott and H. Foster.

Scout. Andrew Hawthorne is progressing favourably and the troop look forward to the time when he will be able to leave the hospital.

The Paddy’s Market, which takes place on October 28 and 29, will be held in the football training sheds at Avondale. The proceeds will be devoted to the annual camp.. On Friday, October 14, Mr. Boswell spent the evening with the Grey Lynn troop, which is conducted by Scoutmaster Swales. This troop has a fine record, at one time holding the King’s Standard of Xew Zealand. What most impressed their visitor was the true scouting spirit among the boys, the camp-fire sing-song, the acting and story telling being an interesting lesson. The Grey Lynn Play Hour is always a performance of a very high order. The evening concluded with the Troop Court of Honour, at which Patrol Leader Allan Collins presided. One hundred and fifty boys, chosen from twenty different nations, recently held a 3 0-day camp in the Royal Windsor Forest by permission of the King. The solution to a world-wide peace is to be found in the spirit of brotherhood which is fostered in the great out-of-doors. The 10th Calgary Troop is now taking care of a small park which adjoins a bird sanctuary in the neighbourhood. The sanctuary was started by Scouts about three years ago, and

FROM A LETIER

The other day I was in the garden, when suddenly, from beneath the soil, ran a spider dragging a white ball as large as itself. I thought it was too big for a spider’s egg, and that it was the egg of some other insect which it intended to eat. I caught it in a matchbox, and was so curious that I broke the little ball. Inside were hundreds of little spider’s eggs. Soon I saw some more, but having satisfied my curiosity, did not touch them. —White Moccasin.

WHY THE CONVOLVULUS TWINES

In the very beginning, when all the flowers were made together, the convolvulus had a great friend. The two would twine around each other, kissing and embracing through the pleasant sunny days, idly swaying this way and that as the wind blew them, and keeping time with the rippling of the brook. But one day a thunderstorm arose, and the gale blew the friends asunder, while the convolvulus was struck blind by the lightning. From that day the little flower wandered in search of its friend, and even now, when it comes up to another plant, it twines its arms about the stem, as if hoping to find its long-lost friend.

THE BLACKFELLOW

There are now fewer than 60,000 Blackfellows in Australia. Contact with the whites seems fatal to them, and the only hope of saving them appears to be to give them wide territories of their own, in which they may' slowly change from the hunting to the pastoral stage. At present they are in the Slone Age of civilisation. Their weapons and tools, their spears, knives, axes, and boomerangs, are of wood and stone. They live on what they can find. Roots, yams, wild honey, snakes, frogs are their chief food, with an occasional kangaroo or emu for a feast! A wonderful story has recently been told of the remarkable self-sacrifice of one Blackfellow. The man had been arrested for some misdeed and was being taken through waterless country for trial when the policeman became so exhausted through thirst that he could go no farther, and was likely to die. This was the prisoner’s opportunity. He could easily have escaped, and there would have been very small chance of his recapture. But he did not escape. This poor Blackfellow did something better. Regardless of the opportunity of escape he set out to find water for his captor. Fifteen miles back on the path they had travelled he obtained it, and brought it all the way to his dj'ing travelling companion. A friend of the natives who tells the story asks how it can be said that men who are capable of such acts as this belong to the lowest race of mankind. The cloudy weather melts at length into beauty, and the brightest smiles of the heart are born of its tears.

THE GERBIL

The gerbil is a small Old World rodent about the size of a rat. It inhabits open sandy plains, where it constructs extensive burrows, which lead into large central chambers. An active little animal, it covers the ground in a series of leaps on its long hind legs. The Indian species can jump a distance of 15 feet.

many birds have since built their homes there. The park and sanctuary are situated on a small island in the Elbow River, which runs through the city. The members of the troop recently met in the park and constructed a number of rustic benches. REDFEATHER.

MAROONED ON AN ISLAND

On a small island off Australia, inside the Great Barrier Reef, Xorth Queensland, an Englishman was one day obliged to visit a distant town Tor supplies, leaving his wife and their baby in the care of their Chinese servant. While lie was away the servant came in great alarm, saying that the natives, who were very fierce and cruel, had come from the mainland and were marching down the island, toward their house. What could be done? There was no hiding place on the little island, and the master had gone away in th«* only boat! The Chinaman hastily launched a huge copper vessel used for cooking, helped the woman and child into it, and taking a jug of water and a little food, paddled away to an uninhabited islet, three or four miles distant. From there they saw the natives arrive and destroy the little house. As long as she lived the woman kept a diary of events, writing how tlm Chinaman made them as comfortable as* possible, and how, after many days of self-denial, he went off by himself and hid in the bush, where later he was found, starved to death, wrapped in his old ragged quilt. Alas! before help came the mother and her babe died too; and they were found with the diary that told the story.

NOBODY KNOWS

Nobody knows what the wind is, Under the height of the sky, Where the hosts of the stars keep far away house And its wave sweeps by— Just a great wave of the air, Tossing the leaves in its sea, And foaming under the eaves of the roof That covers me. —WALTER DE LA MARE.

BEFORE THE ICE AGE

The elephant is the largest o£ beasts, yet an elephant of to-day would look a midget beside an ancestor which once roamed the jungles of Britain. Some of the bones of such a beast were dug up during the war at TJpnor, and they have now been put together and set up at South Kensington. The creature is over 12ft high, having a thighbone of sft, and its hip-bones are 6ft across, the widest yet known.

The fragments were very fragile and Cull of holes. They had to be hardened, cleaned and artificially completed or restored, and the work has been going on since the close of the war. The animal lived any time from 500 to a thousand centuries ago, before the lact Ice Age, when Britain was still part of the Continent.

A STRANGE INVASION

Swaziland, in South Africa, has suffered a strange invasion. Vast herds of wildebeestc, the buf-falo-like antelope of South Africa which we call the gnu, living in the lowlands of the Transvaal, have been driven frantic by drought, and have charged into Swaziland in search of water. About 30,000 of them, in herds 2,000 strong, crashed through the fences, trampling the young crops and fodder. The farmers formed great hunting parties and shot thousands of the invaders.

PROVERBS ABOUT TIME

A little time may be enough to hatch a great mischief. He that has the most time has none to lose. He that hath time hath life. Take hold of a good minute. Time and tide wait for no man. Time fiieth away without delay. Time is money. Time is the great discovery-

GLOOSKAP AND THE PAPOOSE

Xo Indian brave was so great a warrior, no medicine man was so strong an enchanter, as Glooskap. He cleared the Earth of evil as a gardener clears a garden of weeds. When he had overthrown tyrannical chiefs, fierce animals, wizards, giants, goblins and demons, he said he should soon sail away to some other world and find more work that he could do. When people heard that the mighty one was leaving them they flocked to his wigwam with requests. One day four men came. The first was so poor that he hardly knew how to feed his children: he asked to be lucky with his crops and hunting. The second was of low estate; he asked that he might become honoured in the tribe. The third man wished to cure his violent temper. The fourth, who was dressed as carefully as a bride and had stuffed fur into his moccasins to make himself look tall, asked that his height should surpass that of all others.

Glooskap gave each of them a little box of ointment, bidding them rub it on their bodies when they got home. This the first three faithfully did. In course of time the poor man became rich, and the lowly man great, and the ill-tempered man gained perfect selfcontrol. But the fourth man coLild not wait: he annointed himself in the forest on his way home. Xo one ever saw him again. Next day a hunter was puzzled to see, in a clearing that had been empty last evening, a pine that surpassed all others in height. Another day a woman came to see the wonderful Glooskap. “Mighty sir.’ she said, “you are leaving the Earth, and yet there is one thing you have never conquered here.” “What is it? Where is it?” cried Glooskap, starting up. “It is Wasis, my baby,” the woman replied. “You can never force him to obey you: it would be useles to try.” Glooskap knew nothing of babies. He was a solitary warrior. He prepared at once to meet this strange monster. The woman led him to her house, and there was the baby sucking its thumb. Glooskap smiled to see how small it was, and laughed to think that such a helpless creature could be supposed to defy his all-powerful self. He told the baby to come to him. Wasis began to play with his own toes. Glooskap was amazed at this insolence. He repeated his order in tones of thunder, whereupon Wasis set up such a wail that the warrior was almost frightened. The more he threatened and commanded "Wasis to be silent, the louder did ' the baby cry. Then he began to recite incantations and curses which would have made any adult drop dead from sheer terror. But Wasis simply continued his melancholy howls, till Glooskap could endure the noise no longer, and fled from the house. Babies remember the victory to this day, and if we only had the wit to understand them they are trying to tell us abo Lit it when they crow “Goo, goo 1 ”

WATER PICTURES

FRESCO AND FIGURE

How many of you have drifted where the winds were still and watched strange shapes appear alonrg the shore line? The curious natural representation of a totem pole is the result of reflection in unbroken waters and this branch of exploration makes an interesting study. An American writer tells how she went afloat in the beautiful Georgian Bay and spent a vacation drifting about the shores of Ojibway Island, armed with a camera. Over a hundred water pictures fell to her lens, of which the intriguing design of a totem pole is an example. Water pictures, she states, do not appear at all times. The day must be

clear, the* air still and the rocks exposed to the level, chromatic .rays of the early morning or the late afternoon sun. With clouds and a stifl! breeze, nothing is evident but black, uninteresting rocks, or perhaps a gray or yellowish ochre. But if the sun shines and the breeze dies, the stolid mass is vivified. The angles, planes and lines of its surfaces form delicate, intricate patterns. The rocks themselves and their duplication in the water seem to float like .massive carvings against a foil of real and reflected sky. An effect of light appears that makes a clean-cut line of demarcation both above and

below' the pattern, isolating it in all its wealth of detail, to people the imagination with strange visions. Such pictures are better seen, not crossw’ise from a position directly facing, but as one would view a figure lying upon a couch and approached from the foot. Then only is the full effect of their beauty and weirdness appreciated. Groups of small stones, with their reflections, are unified into a brilliant mosaic, and great rocks look like monsters or companies of unearthly beings. When a narrow channel, such as only a canoe can penetrate, winds between two granite shores, one moves between uncanny shapes. The ghostly effect is even more arresting when under moonlight some fantastic face peers from a pool, or a legion of faces lie along the shore, grinning, frowning —beast, bird or human, or curious combinations of all three. There are creatures of the woods

with little black eyes and puckered lips; scarabs with scaly wings, and mummified grasshoppers with attenuated heads; great batlike motlis, and finny fish, and the backs of elephants as seen from the air. Some appear to be gigantic totem poles, full of emblems of bidden meaning; others, staring, armless idols, with necklaces of uncut stones at their throats.

It is easy to believe that primitive man in such surroundings and in some simple craft perceived water pictures such as these and, with their images still vivid in his mind, fashioned for himself strange monster gods, totem poles and curious idols.