Pungent History

New Zealand Listener, Volume 17, Issue 439, 21 November 1947, Page 10

Pungent History

D®. McLINTOCK, whose talks on early Otago I have recommended before, has a gift not always vouchsafed to speakers who present us with the facts of history; he can conjure up a vivid picture of the people, places, and events he describes. This seems to be due more to the power of the written than the spoken word, for Dr. McLintock’s radio style, though clear, is a little on the aloof side, and he has not been helped by the fact that records

were made of the talks-for when the needle gets "in the groove" and phrases are repeated, the illusion of listening directly to a speaker is shattered, and the talk becomes a mechanical thing. Such is not the case with the subjectmatter of these talks, nor with the historian’s racy account of it. Indeed, in the case of "Whaling Days Along the

Otago Coast," the mental picture of the desecration of the Leaches under the onslaught of the whalers was more than _sufficient to fill my living-room with the smell of rancid fat, decaying whale flesh, and cooking blubber; and with the image in my mind of what the men had to undergo in the process of rendering their catch fit for the market, so that richer firms in Australia could reap the financial benefit of their labours, I felt more than ah affinity with these early whalers, and readily forgave them, as did Dr. McLintock, any historical predilection they may have exhibited for the temporary oblivion of alcohol.