Five Years in New Zealand / 1859 to 1864

Party-Travel t

h a few labourers, and our destination was Lake Ellesmere, some 15 to 20 miles down the coast,

s and the survey instruments, were all packed together with our respective swags of blankets and the cooking ut

the night round a camp fire, whereon we boiled our tea and fried chops, and after placing the usual damper under the

dolite knee deep in water or swamp, but I learned much even

taken a small tract of land in this swampy wilderness, and settled down to farm it. The buildings consisted of a wretched mud hut, some twelve feet square, a small yard, and a few pigsties. What a habitation it was, and what filth and absence of management was apparent all over it! Failur

ing at night on the floor of the hut. There were

a glass and delph shop in Christchurch, but only for a time. That inevitable tendency to failure engraved on the

ircumstances as they did, and from being on arrival strong, hopeful and brave, they, from lack of something in themselves or from want of the needful advice and sense to adopt it, gradually deteriorate past all recovery. I recollect the billiard-marker at one of the Christchurch hotels was the younger son of a baronet. He worked as billiard-marker for his food, and as much alcohol as he could get. I believe he was never u

ending arrival of letters from home, and as I had nothing just then on hand, I accepted his invitation. It seemed very apparent that I was fast becoming a rolling stone, but though I stuck to nothing long, i

live there, so the entire management was in Smith's hands. The route lay across the Canterbury plains by a def

along the river beds, and occasionally dot the adjacent plain. The plains are almost perfectly flat, with no undulations more than a few feet in height. They are intersected every ten to twenty miles by wide shallow river beds, which during the summer months, when the warm nor'-westers melt the snow and ice o

nt streams is altered after every fresh. One might approach the Rakaia to-day and find it consist of three or four streams from twenty to one hundred yards wid

each side, both establishments providing expert men and horses who wer

is fifty miles from Christchurch, and that was our first day's ride. The accommodation house on the north side was a weird-looking habitation, a long, low, single-storeyed d

king purposes as well as a sitting and a bed-room for those travellers who could not afford the luxury or were not entitled to the dignity of the parlour. Separated a little way from this tenement was a long low s

uor and grasping hands for "Auld Lang Syne," the wretched debauched crawler, the villainous-looking "lag" from "t'other side," the bullock puncher, whose every alternate word was a profane oath, the stockrider, in his guernsey shirt and knee boots with stockwhip thrown over his shoulder, e

en for a little hobnobbing with the motley assemblage collected there, and, of course, we stood liquor round in the usual friendly way. We soon ret

here was a very superior house of entertainment, conducted by a Mr. Turton, a man above the general ru

. There was a comfortable rough dwelling house and

owns, and a fine stream ran along the front of the enclosure. A considerable po

lled mirages, that I had seen, and there is something in the atmosphere maybe of the New

cabbage trees (like palms), whose reflections were cast in the water. Neither of us had seen the like before, and for a while really believed we were approaching a lake, although how such could possibly exist where a few moments before had been dry waving

r obstacles intervened, I saw a beautiful inverted landscape of mountains, woods, and other objects like castles. The picture or reflection seemed suspende

ime of the year there was little routine work on the

in which we were frequently jo