Seeing the World

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 398, 5 July 1928, Page 9

Seeing the World

New Zealander’s Adventures Life in America

TO satisfy the spirit of adventure and wanderlust which had flowed through his veins since his earliest boyhood. a young New Zealander set sail in the R.M.S. Tahiti Irons Wellington, on March 27. 1927. Last week he returned to his native land as a seaman aboard the steamer Tekoa, which arrived in Auckland and lias sailed for after seeing more of the world and getting a greater insight into human nature than most men acquire in a lifetime.

in the 14 months he has been away from his homeland, Mr. William H. Leighton has practically worked his way across the globe and back again, tasting life first in a forge at Tahiti, then as a cherry picker in California, a farm labourer, harvester and real estate agent in the United States of America, a fireman on the White Star liner Olympic, and finally as a deck hand on the good ship Tekoa. Ho has conversed with some of the foremost writers in America to-day and at other times gone about among the down-and-outs of the great cities cf the United States. Mr. Leighton is a man of many and varied parts himself. He was educated at Wellington College, leaving school about eight years ago to go on a farm at Taihape. He returned to the city, but office life did not agree with the man who had always dreamed of seeing the world for himself. And so, throwing aside the pen, he turned to fulfil his life's ambition. Mr. Leighton travelled first to the island of Tahiti and spent the first month of his stay there enjoying the sights of the main and surrounding islands. He became acquainted with Rex G. White and Norman Hall, the

novelists. Arthur C. Hastings, of Boston, and, incidentally, with sev- | eral bootleggers. Accompanied by the novelists, the j adventurer paid a visit to Lac Vahiria. hidden away in the mountains on Tahiti. The party was led by a native guide who went before them with knife in hand, in story-book manner, to hew a way through the dense undergrowth. After seeing the wonderful effect of the moon on the calm of the lake waters, the party slept for the night in the hut constructed by the guide out of banana leaves. . As cash was running low, Mr. Leighton took a job in Martin’s foundry to earn enough to take him on the next stage of his travels. He was the only Englishman at the foundry, and the natives like to think that no white man can stand up to the strain of such strenuous work in the climate. Out the sturdy New Zealander did, and has not had a sick day since. THRILLING SEA TRIP Mr. Leighton tells a graphic story of a sea trip in A. B. Donald’s training schooner Tiare Taporo to the little coral island of Tite Roa. some halfday’s journey from Tahiti itself. Dr. Williams, the British Consul at Tahiti, had been troubled with coral rats on the island, and as the New Zealander had had experience of pests on his farm in the King Country, the consul invited him to visit the island. “We left port at midnight in the little craft,” he said, “and were trying to get to sleep on the deck about half an hour later, when an eerie moaning sound arose, to be followed shortly after by rain falling, literally in bucket-fulls. Then the sea rose, and my word we got it. It was the only time I have been seasick in my life, and I very nearly didn’t live to tell the tale. To land on those coral isles is to experience the biggest thrill on earth. As I was landing, the craft gave an extra heave, and had not a native grabbed me by the ankle, 1 would have gone overboard. “The sunset over the Tahitian lagoon is undoubtedly the most beautiful picture one could wish to see,” according to the adventurer. The beauty of those 10 miles of shimmering sea with the coral reef in the distance is beyond description.” His stay ofi the island over, Mr. Leighton caught the R.M.S. Tahiti again and left for San Francisco. On the voyage he travelled with a Mr. John S. Elliot, of Middlemarsh, Dunedin, a farmer en route to the States in search of modern ideas in farming. At the city of the “golden gate” the two were joined by a Melbourne orchardist, Mr. Raymond Black, and the party invested in a £3O car in which they set out to see the States. “The car was not a Ford, either,” Mr. Leighton remarked. “It was a Studebaker Six, and saw us some 3,000 miles before we finished with it.”

A week was spent in the orangefined roads of California, and then the band visited the Yosemite National Park. Turning north again, they spent the July 4 celebrations at Eureka, where they witnessed a Wild West turn-out. After a visit to Portland. Oregon, Mr. Black left for the apple country, while Messrs. Leighton and Elliot found employment on a ranch harvesting wheat. HOW TO GET WORK IN U.S.A. “When you want a job in the States,” said Mr. Leighton, “you don’t go to a Labour Bureau; you patronise a cigar store. We hung round a Dutchman’s shop, and eventually he got us a job for a Finn. We worked from four in the morning till eight at night, and spent part of the time hoeing weeds in a 1,100-acre paddock.” The Studebaker was then turned to Baker City, Idaho, Salt Lake City, and then the famous Yellowstone Park. The adventurer declared that the Mormon city is the cleanest city he has seen as far as crime goes. He was surprised to find that the inhabitants do not have two wives, as is the popular conception. In Buffalo Bill town the inhabitants still wear thrir picturesque sombreros and cowboy “chaps,” he said. Chicago, to Mr. Leighton, was just the place he expected to find it, the city with the greatest crime record in the world. Three days there were enough for him. “You dare not leave your car in the street five seconds unattended, and the stranger is followed everywhere by a band of sinister-look-ing fellows,” he said. The New Zealander made a stay of five months in Detroit, where Mr. Elliot left him to return to New Zealand. He to6k a position in an estate agency office, and the experience he gained there and later as a “door knocker” (in ordinary English, a house-to-house canvasser) was to him a wonderful insight into human nature. “In America, they are doing away with the conglomeration of tombstones we call a cemetery,” said Mr. Leighton, “and instead go in forr beautiful memorial parks, laid out in rolling lawns, with fountains, trees and flower beds. It impresses one rather with the beauty of life, than the sorrow of death.”

A visit to the Niagara Falls, and a stay of two weeks in New York, concluded Mr. Leighton’s American trip. He frequented the eating houses oJ South Street, the low-down quarters of the city of skyscrapers, mixing with the down-and-outs. Mr. Leighton also saw a deal of human nature in the stokehold of the Olympic. “Firemen are looked upon as of the lowest order, but I take my hat off to them, for how they can keep a wife and six children on £9 a month surpasses all understanding. HEAVENLY ENGLISH COUNTRYSIDE “My journey from Southampton to London by bus was the greatest pleasure of my life,” stated Mr. Leighton. “The country lives up to the words of the poet who referred to the ‘Smiling English Heaven’.” He then visi/d Edinburgh, and crossed the Channel to Paris, “the most beautiful of the big cities I saw on the whole trip.” Returning by Imperial Airways, Ltd., the adventurer signed on as a seaman on the Tekoa, and so back to New Zealand and the prospects of life in a Wellington office. “It will be a stale life going down to work at eight o’clock in the morning and knocking off again at fijre, after the adventures of my trip around the globe. But life is only what one makes it,” added the traveller in a philosophical mood. “Someday I hope to be able to spare the time to take a similar jaunt round Europe and the East. The desire for travel cannot be quenched.” __________