FROM THE WATCH TOWER

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 555, 7 January 1929, Page 8

FROM THE WATCH TOWER

By

“THE LOOK-OUT MAN.”

THE HIGHER EDUCATION

Shooting-sticks, fishing-gear, musical instruments, and a minimum amount of other luggage, formed the equipment of 45 schoolboys who left Waterloo Station, London, for seven weeks in New Zealand on an ‘‘educational mission.”

Sing a song of holidays, and education, too. Five-and-forty schoolboys board the train at Waterloo. With mandolines and shooting-stick,s and fishing-rods and flies, To take a course of study underneath the southern skies.

Touring in New Zealand offers variegated joys — Trout as big as salmon for a sporting lot of boys; Partners in the cabarets, and deer upon the moors, Pretty fare to set before the young ambassadors.

Thus the happy tourists saunter through the promised land, While the busy farmer mops his brow, and tries to understand. Herds of coxes give little chance for fooling with the gun. There's not much time for angling when the farmer’s work is done. Sing a song of Dover cliffs, the holiday is o’er. The educated stripling greets his fond progenitor. “My son , horv fare the problems of that ” distant southern clime?” f< Pater. I cannot tell you; but —I HAD A PRICELESS TIME” —BEOWULF. THE TRUTH PREVAILS' The truth will always prevail, even over typographical errors. A Southern paper, heralding fine weather, had this in its headings: ‘‘Road conditions. An imprisonment expected.” The fine weather did not come, and the imprisonments (of motorists) duly materialised. * * * AUCKLAND'S SINS How far a had name travels was indicated when an Aucklander picked up a little Queensland, paper, the “Tableland Examiner,” published at Atherton, North Queensland. On the front page was a damning article headed “Sinful Auckland.* * ** * * A BAD START New Year’s Eve was a heavy night for many revellers. It left one roisterer, homeward hound in a taxi in the grey light of dawn, both physically and financially exhausted. At the journey’s end he Informed the taxi-driver that credit would have to be extended. It was duly extended, though obviously because the taximan had no option. “No way to begin the New Year,” he grumbled, as he drove off.

THAT DECEPTIVE PEAK They were wise climbers, the four Aucklanders who. benighted on Egmont. decided to stay where they were, in preference to moving on in the darkness. The elegant peak that dominates all Taranaki has a bad record in casualties, both in the way of fatalities through falls, of which there have been two tragic instances, each involving more than one death, and in the' way of deaths from exposure after the unfortunate climbers had got off the beaten tracks. Two or three women have been lost on the mountain, and one young Wellington man perished in the dense bush, barely one hundred yards from the track that would have taken him to safety. The forest that girdles She mountain is unbelievably tangled, and he who would make for the lowlands has to traverse the broken beds of the mountain torrents. Several lost climbdrs reached safety by this arduous method, but it was this that was fatal to Mr. Murray, a Presbyterian minister who disappeared in strange circumstances in 1923. Mr. Murray, an elderly but active man, had scaled the peak in company with a younger comrade. From the summit he insisted on continuing alone toward the North Egmont house, and after his companion had watched him disappear down a steep gully, he was never seen again. His tracks, which searchers followed in vile weather for several days, led up and down the slopes, and covered some terrible country that even the boldest had hitherto let alone. For all his courageous efforts, Murray failed to reach safety. Had he stopped still, at a spot where he wrote a pathetic message on the worn sole of his boot, tying the fragment of leather across a lonely trail by means of knotted rushes, he would have been rescued within a few hours. But he continued on down the deep chasm of the Waiwakaiho, and no other authentic trace oh him was discovered. His memory has a claim to the attention of posterity, for he pioneered the condensed milk industry iu New Zealand.