BRIGHTER BRITAIN!
OR
SETTLER AND MAORI
IN
_NORTHERN NEW ZEALAND._
BY
WILLIAM DELISLE HAY,
AUTHOR OF
"THREE HUNDRED YEARS HENCE," "THE DOOM OF THE GREAT CITY," ETC.
"Queen of the seas, enlarge thyself!
Send thou thy swarms abroad!
For in the years to come,—
Where'er thy progeny,
Thy language and thy spirit shall be found,—
If—
—in that Austral world long sought,
The many-isled Pacific,—
When islands shall have grown, and cities risen
In cocoa-groves embower'd;
Where'er thy language lives,
By whatsoever name the land be call'd,
That land is English still."
SOUTHEY.
IN TWO VOLUMES.—VOL. II.
LONDON:
RICHARD BENTLEY AND SON,
NEW BURLINGTON STREET.
1882.
_(All rights reserved.)_
PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED, LONDON AND BECCLES.
CONTENTS OF VOL II.
CHAPTER PAGE
I. OUR SPECIAL PRODUCTS 1
II. OUR CLASSIC GROUND 29
III. MAORI MANNERS. I. 71
IV. MAORI MANNERS. II. 100
V. MAORI MANNERS. III. 135
VI. OUR NATURALIST'S NOTE-BOOK 184
VII. THE DEMON DOG—A YARN 232
VIII. OUR LUCK 272
APPENDIX 303
BRIGHTER BRITAIN!
CHAPTER I.
OUR SPECIAL PRODUCTS.
Northern New Zealand has two special products, which are peculiar
to the country, and found nowhere else. They are kauri timber and
kauri-gum. When speaking of Northern New Zealand in these sketches,
I do not thereby intend the whole of the North Island, as has been
previously explained; I mean that northern part of it which may be more
properly designated "The Land of the Kauri."
The kauri grows throughout all that part of the old province of
Auckland which lies to the north of S. lat. 37° 30' or 38°. It does
not grow naturally anywhere south of the thirty-eighth parallel
of latitude, nor, I believe, can it be induced to flourish under
cultivation south of its natural boundary line.
The kauri is indigenous to this comparatively small section of New
Zealand. It is one of the _Coniferæ_, or pines, and is named by
botanists _Dammara Australis_. The only tree of similar species that
affords a timber nearly resembling the kauri, though not of such good
quality, is one that is found in Fiji; the _Dammara Vitiensis_. It may
be as well to mention that kauri and Maori rhyme together, and are
pronounced "kowry" and "mowry."[1]
[1] See _Pronunciation of Maori Names_, in the Appendix.
The kauri was first brought into notice by Captain Cook, who, it will
be remembered, passed many months in New Zealand altogether, and the
greater part of the time in the north. He discovered that kauri was
superior to Norway pine, or indeed, to any other wood then known, for
spars and topmasts of vessels. Other explorers endorsed his opinion of
it, and in 1820 the British Government sent a ship, the _Dromedary_,
to New Zealand, for the purpose of obtaining kauri timber. It was then
classed high at Lloyd's.
Subsequently a demand for kauri timber arose in Sydney and elsewhere.
Some trade in it was established with the Maoris; and little
communities of English sawyers settled here and there along the coast
of New Zealand. This was one among other causes that led to the
colonization of the country in 1840. Thus the kauri holds a place in
history, having had its share in making this our Brighter Britain.
The value of the kauri to New Zealand at large, and to the North
in particular, can hardly be overrated. It is an important export,
being sent to other parts of the colony, to Australia, the South Sea
Islands, and elsewhere. In its own country it is used for every purpose
to which timber is applicable. The many other trees of the bush are
neglected for the sake of it; while it is more plentiful than any of
them. Settlers in other parts of the colony, beyond the limit of the
kauri's growth, make use of their native timbers, but lament that the
cost of transport prevents them from importing kauri, so much superior
is it. Wherever it is necessary to bring timber from a distance, as in
comparatively treeless Otago for example, kauri is preferred; though it
will have to be brought from further away than totara, miro, or matai,
which are cut in southern forests.
One may say that the kauri is to Northern New Zealand what the oak has
been to England, and even more. There, houses are built of it almost
exclusively; it is used in the construction of vessels, for fencing,
furniture, and all the more general purposes. And its valuable resin is
the kauri gum of commerce; but that I must speak of separately.
Not alone is the kauri monarch in the forests of New Zealand, but it
must rank among the royallest trees the earth produces. It grows, for
the most part, in forests sacred to itself, not mixing with the common
herd of trees. In this respect other kinds of pine are similar. Also,
each distinct tract of kauri bush, or forest, contains trees of a
certain uniformity of age, consequently of size. In the aggregate vast
tracts are covered with it. The largest forest of kauri is that between
the Hokianga and the Kaipara waters, which, I believe, is to be put
down at nearly a thousand square miles in extent, bush of a more varied
description intervening here and there among it. After it come the
kauri forests of Mongonui, Whangaroa, and Coromandel.
There are few experiences more impressive to the feelings than to stand
alone in the recesses of a kauri forest. Unlike the character of the
mixed bush—the forest where trees of many other kinds are found—the
kauri bush is weirdly depressing from its terrible monotony. It is
solemn, sombre, and gloomy to the last degree. Yet is there a profound
majesty about it that awes one in spite of oneself.
The trees stand closely together, not branching out much till near
the top. They cover range and gully, mountain and plain, in unbroken
succession. At the base they may girth as much as up to fifty feet.
Forty feet of girth is not uncommon, and thirty feet is often the
average. They soar up straight to a hundred, a hundred and fifty, even
to a hundred and eighty feet before branching, and then their leafy
crowns, interlaced together, form a canopy through which daylight
hardly penetrates.
The boles of these woodland giants are mostly black and smooth,
sometimes covered with twigs, though this chiefly in the smaller
trees. Supple-jack, bush-lawyer, mounga, various creeper-ferns with
magnificent fronds, and sometimes flowering clematis, swing from trunk
to trunk and knit the columns together. Below there is not the thick
undergrowth that prevails in the varied bush, but a lighter tangle
of shrubs. Ferns, among which several varieties like the maidenhair
predominate, grow waist-high in rank luxuriance.
The sublime grandeur of a kauri forest is hardly equalled by anything
else of the kind in nature. One seems to stand amid the aisles
of a mighty temple, shut out from the world and imprisoned amid
endless ranks of tremendous columns. Stillness and silence deepen
the profundity of gloom around one. The fiercest gale may be raging
overhead, and not a leaf is stirred within the dark coverts; only the
faint murmur of the foliage far above betrays what is passing. Of life
there is nothing visible. The little fantails, the traveller's friends
in the bush, hover around one, and they are all one sees, unless it
be, perchance, the rapid flash of a rat running up some trunk, or the
scuttling of a kiwi or weka amid the fern.
To get some real notion of what these forests are like let us compare
them with English woods. The latter bear the palm of beauty, but the
former that of grandeur from their very vastness. The largest wood in
England is but the size of one dingle in a kauri forest, and is flat
and tame contrasted with the hilly ruggedness of the land here. Again,
measure the girth of English beeches, oaks, elms, and ashes. The oldest
and best grown woods will not give you an average girth of ten feet.
Trees girthing fifteen to twenty feet are rare and singular. What is
this to the giant kauri?
If we look at height there is another difference. English trees are
remarkable for their limbs and branches. Take these away, and the stick
that remains seldom averages more than thirty or forty feet. If it
reaches to sixty the tree is regarded as something extraordinary. But
the splendid dome of foliage, the beautiful spread of boughs, which is
the glory of English oak or chestnut, is forbidden to the kauri. Its
magnificence resides solely in its stick, which is more like a factory
chimney than anything else. You get an impression of immensity, you
feel a veritable pigmy as you walk, mile after mile, among trees
whose girth is thirty feet, and whose branches only begin a hundred
and thirty feet from the ground; while, every now and then, you come
upon some patriarch of fifty feet girth and a hundred and eighty feet,
perhaps, of stick.
An assertion has been made, that if the present rate of consumption be
kept up, some eighty years will see the end of the kauri forests. This
may be true, but I do not think it is. I fancy that it is a calculation
made in ignorance of the real extent of the kauri bush. Also, that no
true idea was conceived of the enormous bulk of the trees, and the
countless number of them to be found far back from the rivers, in the
less accessible regions of the bush. I think I might say, with quite as
much show of reason, that if the present rate of consumption were even
doubled, as it doubtless will be, a century may elapse before economy
in cutting kauri need be studied.
When working with parties of the Government Land Survey, I had good
opportunities for getting some idea of the stupendous supplies of kauri
timber. I once counted forty trees on a measured acre. Of these the
smallest had a girth of twenty feet, with a stick of about eighty feet
in height; the largest might be about double that. We estimated that
these trees would yield a million feet of sawn timber. Of course that
is an exceptional instance, but it must be remembered that there are
hundreds of square miles of kauri bush in the aggregate.
The annual output of the saw-mills is reckoned to be sixty million
feet of sawn kauri timber, the value of which may be roughly put at
£300,000. Much of this is used up in the colony; but an increasing
export trade, amounting in value to £40,000 or £50,000 per annum, is
carried on with Australia, Fiji, and the South Sea Islands. There are
some twenty large saw-mills in various parts of the kauri forests, and
there are other small ones which supply local demands; together these
employ a large number of hands.
The largest mill is that at Te Kopura, on the Wairoa river, some
forty-five miles above its outfall into the Kaipara harbour. It can
turn out 120,000 feet per week. At Aratapu, higher up the same river,
there is another mill, turning out 80,000 feet per week. These mills
are working on the outskirts of the great Kaipara-Hokianga forest.
Vessels drawing seventeen feet of water can come up the Wairoa to
load at them. The mill at Whangaroa, on the east coast, ranks next in
point of size, turning out sawn timber to the average annual value
of £23,000. At Whangapoua, in Coromandel, are two mills, cutting
about 160,000 feet per week between them. The cost of their plant was
£25,000. The Whangapoua kauri bush extends over some 30,000 acres.
Sawn kauri is sold at the mills at 9_s._ 6_d._ to 11_s._ 6_d._ per
hundred feet. The high freights cause it to cost 15_s._ to 17_s._ in
the southern ports, and, I believe, it is sold at about the same in
Sydney or the Islands. It would not be easy to say what is the average
yield of a tree, the difference being very considerable. Some put it
down at 10,000 feet, but I am sure that is an under estimate.
A stick of fifty feet length, and thirty feet in circumference at the
base, might be reckoned to yield about 20,000 feet of sawn timber. The
value of this would be £100. Deducting £40 as the cost of felling,
transporting to the mill, and cutting up, a profit of £60 is left. This
is a fair example. When a stick of a hundred and fifty feet, with a
girth of forty or fifty feet, is in question, both work and profit are
larger, of course.
The stump of one of these titanic trees is no small affair. It is big
enough to build a small house upon, if sawn flat. I remember once
making one of a party of eight, and dancing a quadrille on the stump of
a kauri.
There is a variety of the tree known as the mottled kauri. The wood
of this is very curious and beautiful, and fetches a high price for
cabinet work. It is not very common, and when a big tree of this kind
is come upon, it is a source of great gratification to its owner, for
it may yield him £500 or £600 of absolute profit.
Felling big trees with the axe is tremendous labour. Till recently it
was the only means employed here. Perhaps you may have to cut five or
six feet deep into the tree, in order to reach the heart of it. To do
this an enormous gash must be made, so large in fact, that scaffoldings
have to be erected within it, to permit the workmen to reach their
mark. Only two men can cut at the same gash at a time; but frequent
shifts are resorted to, so as to "keep the pot boiling." Now, a saw
working between portable engines is more generally employed upon the
big trees.
When the great stick has been laid prostrate, with a crash that
resounds for miles, and a shock that makes the whole hillside quiver,
it is cut into lengths, and roughly squared with long-handled axes.
Then comes the process of getting it to the mill, which may possibly be
a considerable distance off.
The hilly and rugged character of the land nearly always prevents
anything like a tramway system being adopted; and, for a long time,
trees were only cut where they could be readily run down into the
water. But a system has been introduced, by an American bushman, I
believe, which is now generally used, and by means of which the largest
trees can be got out anywhere in this country of heights and hollows.
The logs are easily collected in the bottom of the nearest gully, as
they can be readily sent down the sides of the ranges by means of
screw-jacks, rollers and slides. When the sides of the gully have been
denuded of their timber, and a huge collection of logs lies piled in
the bottom, preparation is made to further their descent to the river.
A dam is built right across the ravine below the logs, constructed of
timber, earth, stones, and whatever material comes handiest.
When the winter rains commence, the first day or two of continued
downpour causes every little water-course to swell into a foaming
torrent. The stream in the gully pours down a great volume of water,
which, checked by the dam, spreads out behind it into a broad lake that
fills all the lower ground. In this flood the mighty logs are borne up,
and float upon its surface.
The sides of the dam, which is angularly shaped, are chiefly supported
by logs set up endways as buttresses upon the lower side. To these
supports ropes are attached, which are carried up the hillsides out
of reach of the water, above the level of the swollen flood pent in
by the dam. Then men and horses, or bullocks, haul with sudden and
united effort upon the ropes; the chief supports are torn away; the
dam breaks down in various places; the waters overflow and stream
through the breaches. Or, sometimes, the dam is flushed by breaching
it with gunpowder or dynamite. Soon the mass of water moves with
irresistible force, breaking down what is left of the dam and sweeping
everything before it. Then, in mighty volume, it rushes down the gully,
bearing onward with it the great collection of massive logs that it
has floated. Sometimes the first flush carries the timber down to the
open river. Sometimes the entire process has to be repeated more than
once or twice, if the distance be long, or the nature of the ground
necessitate it.
When they fall into the river, or inlet of the sea, as the case may
be, the logs are brought up by booms ready to receive them. They are
then chained together in rafts and floated down to the mill, which,
of course, gives upon the water-highway. Often such a flush will
constitute a whole year's work, or longer; and will provide a supply of
raw material for the saw-mill that will last it as long. But exactly
the same process may be practically and profitably carried out for only
a few logs, where the gully is not large, and not too far from the
river.
Our own special little community are pioneer farmers, of course, and we
do not employ ourselves in this way. Still, some of us have in former
years acted the part of lumberers, or bushmen proper, when we were
working at any jobs that turned up. The work we have is heavy enough in
all conscience, but it is light compared to the tremendous labour that
bushmen have to get through.
The lowest rate of wages for bushmen is 25_s._ per week, and all found.
But the rate varies, better men getting better wages, the paucity
of hands affecting the scale, and strikes for more pay occurring
sometimes. I have known the hands of a saw-mill to get as much as seven
or nine shillings per day.
Usually there are comfortable barracks for the men employed at a mill;
but, when working up in the bush, these are not always available, and
the workmen are lodged in huts, or shanties, upon the ground, being in
much the same case as we are in our shanty. Their employers supply them
with all necessaries, and have to be pretty careful in this respect, as
your bushman will not work unless he gets tucker according to a very
liberal scale. Beef, mutton and pork, bread, potatoes, kumera and tea
he gets in unlimited quantities, besides various other items that need
not be catalogued.
Most of our produce is taken by the saw-mills at the market-price. We
have even sent them our fat steers and wethers, instead of shipping
them to Auckland; and one year we made a good thing by growing cabbages
and fresh vegetables for the bushmen. Like English colliers, they look
to have the best food going; and, what is more, they get it. Yet it
must be remembered that the bushman's work is terribly hard. It needs
the employment of all the physical strength and vigour a man has to
bestow, and this must be used with a continued pertinacity that is
excessively trying.
Kauri-gum—or Kapia, as the Maoris call it—which has been just
alluded to, is another peculiar product of this northern extremity
of New Zealand. It is not of any practical service to the colonists,
as the timber of the tree which produces it is, but it is an export
of considerably greater value. It is the solidified sap, or resin of
the kauri, but not in a fresh form; it is that resin in a hardened
condition found buried in the ground.
There are tracts of country, known as gum-fields, in which the
kauri-gum is to be dug up most plentifully. These places are stretches
of bleak moorland for the most part, though not invariably. The soil
in them consists very much of a heavy yellow clay, loose and friable
near the surface. It is impregnated with fragments and particles of
gum, which may be found in numerous spots to occur in layers and
collections of larger pieces, varying in size up to blocks the size of
a man's body. It is not usual to collect pieces smaller than the closed
fist—minuter fragments not being considered remunerative to the digger.
The gum is found just below the surface of the ground, and sometimes
down to the depth of six or eight feet. The finding of it, collecting
and bringing to market, affords a sufficiently profitable occupation
to have constituted a distinct class of men, who go by the name of
gum-diggers.
Gum-fields are poor lands usually, though some are adapted for
settlement. The country lying between Riverhead, Helensville, and
Ararimu, which I described when relating our journey up-country, is
a fair example of a gum-field. But gum is also found in the kauri
forests, round the roots of the trees, especially of old, partly
decayed, or wholly dead specimens. It is also to be found pretty
generally throughout all the land of the kauri. Of course it cannot
be discovered everywhere, or in all soils, but traces of it will be
apparent somewhere in any single square mile; and in every sort of
land throughout the limit of the kauri's growth, gum will be found here
and there. Thus, on our farm and in the surrounding bush, although
these are distinctly not gum-lands, there are little patches of ground,
of a few acres in extent, whence we have got a ton or two of gum at
times.
It is worthy of remark that the fresh resin of the living trees is not
of any commercial value. Great masses of gum are often found in forks
and clefts of the trees, and about the roots; but of this, only a
little of the latter is generally worth anything, the rest being soft
and in a condition that renders it valueless. It seems that the gum
must be buried underground for a considerable time, an unknown term of
years, before it attains the degree of hardness and other qualities
that merchants require.
I have been told that the Maoris collect the soft, fresh gum and
bury it, so that they or their descendants may dig it up again after
sufficient time has elapsed for it to undergo the requisite changes.
Whether this is so or not I am unable to say of my personal knowledge.
I have never met with any instance of the kind, and have strong doubts
as to the forecasting care with which such a tale credits the Maoris.
They are certainly not given to providing for a distant future in a
general way.
It would seem that the deposits of gum in the soil are all that
remains of ancient kauri forests. These must once have covered the
open fern-lands, where no trace of them now remains, except rich
gum-holes here and there. It would seem that the kauri had, in the
course of ages, exhausted the soil on which they grew, of constituents
necessary to their growth, and had then naturally died out in such
localities. The existing forests are, of course, making new deposits,
which will some day be available. Felling the trees necessarily causes
a diminution of this, but possibly some means may yet be discovered of
rendering the fresh, soft gum equally useful with the semi-fossil kind.
Kauri-gum is very like amber in general appearance, and is similar to
it in chemical characteristics; but it is much more brittle, and hence
is not of such value for ornaments. Many colonists amuse themselves
with carving and polishing trinkets of gum, but they chip too readily
to permit of their ever being of value. Kauri-gum has sometimes been
fraudulently substituted for amber, but the better specimens of the
latter have a yellow tint which is seldom seen in the New Zealand
product. Our gum exists of various shades of brown and sherry-colour,
both clear and clouded. The most highly-prized variety is colourless
like glass, or nearly so, and some is found almost black, not unlike
jet. Flies, fragments of moss, and so on, are occasionally seen
embedded in it.
Kauri-gum was first brought into notice at the time of the first
colonization, in 1840 and 1841. It was then collected chiefly by
Maoris, and was sold by them to the store-keepers. Its value at that
time was only £5 or £6 per ton; and about a hundred tons was all the
annual export for some years.
Since then, however, an increasing demand for it arose in the
United States. New York and Boston now take two-thirds of all the
gum exported; and of what is sent home to England the greater part
is re-shipped thence to American ports. The number of gum-diggers
regularly employed is supposed to have exceeded four thousand at times;
now they average some two thousand altogether. The amount of the export
steadily increased from the first, until, in 1870-71-72, it reached
to some fifteen thousand tons for the three years, valued at half a
million sterling.
Subsequent to this there was very considerable falling off in the
export. The number of diggers decreased, fields were declared worked
out, and it was thought that the supplies were exhausted. But after a
year or two, it was discovered that gum existed in many places where
its presence had been hitherto unsuspected; and it was also made
clear that large deposits were often underlying the two or three feet
of surface-soil previously worked, on the fields it was thought were
exhausted.
A fresh impulse was given to gum-digging, and the amount of the export
rose again. In 1878, it stood at 3410 tons; in 1879, at 3247 tons;
in 1880, as much as 5500 tons was shipped, valued at £236,500. From
1853 to 1880 inclusive, about 70,000 tons were sent out, export value
£2,100,000. It would thus seem that kauri-gum is more plentiful now
than ever, while its average value has risen to £43 per ton.
Some American scientist has given it as his opinion that the kauri-gum
exported from 1840 to 1880 must have required a forest-growth of ten
thousand years to have produced it; but then we know that scientists
will go making these rash assertions on the very vaguest premises. How
long ago the kauri forests that covered the now open fern-lands died
out, it would be hard to say. And how long they had stood before that
is an equally difficult problem to solve. Of the trees in the forests
now standing we can easily calculate the age. Some of them were already
big trees at the period when Julius Cæsar was colonizing the other
Britain. Doubtless the forests here were pretty much what they are
to-day, when Norman and Saxon and Dane were fighting for the throne.
Gum-diggers receive an all-round price for the gum they bring down to
the stores, which fluctuates somewhat in amount. It usually averages
about £30 a ton. Before reaching its final market, the gum is cleaned,
picked, and carefully assorted and re-assorted into six or eight
different classes. The very best of these has been known to sell at
£144 per ton in New York; the others at varying prices down to £25 or
£20 for the lowest class. The average price is now £43 per ton.
The use to which kauri-gum is put is the manufacture of varnish. At
least this is the general theory. It is made into a varnish much
resembling that of copal; and gum copal, as the reader will remember,
is the product of the _Hymenea verrucosa_ of tropical Eastern Africa,
where it is dug from the ground much as kauri-gum is here.
Varnish-making is the assigned use of kauri-gum, but there is a dark
suspicion afloat in our Brighter Britain that this is not the only
nor the chief one. It is hinted that the Yankees use it to adulterate
something or other with, or to fix up some compound of a wholly
different kind. I will not say that O'Gaygun is solely responsible for
this insinuation, but he certainly fosters it in every way he can.
In the mind of our Milesian ally there exists a profound belief that
the principal object in life of an American is to invent new and
profitable ways of adulteration, or to discover means of perfecting
colossal shams, and thereby defrauding a guileless public, such as
ourselves.
For my own part, I disagree with O'Gaygun on this point. Experience
has led me to believe that the English manufacturer and trader
stand unrivalled in all the arts of adulteration. The Yankee is a
babe compared to them at this game. In fact, so far as exports are
concerned, it would seem as if the British merchant could not help a
greater or lesser measure of chicanery. What the Yankee sends to us is
generally good; this in other matters besides hardware.
But O'Gaygun's views are warped, and his conclusions are mainly drawn
from the remembrance of one incident, the tale of which he is never
weary of narrating.
It seems that, shortly before he came out to New Zealand, O'Gaygun was
concerned with others in the exportation from Ireland to America of a
certain mineral. It was a heavy, white, glistening earth, which I take
to have been witherite, or carbonate of baryta.
This stuff was sold ostensibly for paint-making, and certain Yankee
merchants bought up all they could of it. Shipload after shipload went
to America, and the Irish speculators were in high glee as the demand
for it increased; although such a quantity had been shipped as would
have sufficed to have whitewashed the entire two continents.
At last the real destination of the mineral came to light. It was
powdered and mixed with flour, which America was then exporting largely
to Europe. It made the finest flours heavier, and made seconds rank as
first-class. So, according to O'Gaygun, hundreds and thousands of tons
of this witherite were eaten by cheated Europe in the form of bread. A
whole mountain, so he says, was shipped to the land of the Stars and
Stripes; and as much as was sent came back to Europe as flour.
When the thing was blown upon, of course, the export gradually
ceased. And I believe that O'Gaygun and his associates were blamed
for participation in the fraud. Therefore he, poor, deluded Irishman,
has ever since held the Yankee to be of very nature iniquitous in all
his dealings. Well, let us hope that kauri-gum is, after all, only an
innocent varnish basis, as is generally stated, and that it is not
eaten as pork or beans or anything by a too-confiding British public.
The gum-diggers of Northern New Zealand are a peculiar body of
nomads. They are recruited from every nation, and from every rank of
society, and, like the communities gathered together on Australian or
Californian gold-fields, present a strange medley of opposites.
Among them one may come across men who are graduates of the
universities. One may find members of noble houses, representatives of
historic names; nay, twice I have met men born to titles gum-digging.
Then one may find diggers who should belong to professions they have
abandoned—civil, military, learned, artistic. Clerks, accountants,
secretaries, and shopmen swell the ranks of our Bohemian army. There
are guileless peasants, natives of Norfolk or Devon, France or Germany,
perhaps; and there are runaway sailors, ex-convicts, tinkers, tailors,
printers' devils, pirates, rowdies, negroes, Kanakas, Maoris, Chinamen;
a collection of gentlemen educated to every pursuit under the sun, in
fact.
Throughout all this heterogeneous assemblage there exists entire
equality, but little fraternization. Each man is as good as his fellow;
there is no recognized line of demarcation between man and man. Yet
gum-diggers are not gregarious as a rule; they are too jealous, each
of another's possible luck, to admit of general brotherhood. Generally
little gangs associate together and work in company; but it is rare
that they do so on communistic principles. More often, each member of
the gang works entirely for his own hand, though they may have food and
so on in common.
There is precious little feeling of _caste_, or prejudice on account of
different social ranks, remaining to us in this free land. What there
is, however, places gum-diggers, as a class, on the bottommost level
of society. Not that even that distinction conveys any slight upon
individual gum-diggers; it is more a sort of abstract principle, than
anything real or practical.
Still, they are sneered at occasionally by other colonists. It is a
favourite theory that, if you should see some particularly haughty
swell come out with all the pomp of a first-class passage, some
grandiose creature of the scapegrace-fine-gentleman sort, with such
airs and dignity as befit a man who feels that the colony was made
for him, and not he for the colony, you may chuckle over his probable
descent to gum-digging very soon. You have to get out of his lordly
path while the air of the quarter-deck is round him, feeling that
this humble country is only too much honoured by his mere presence in
it. But, in a few months' time, you come across him on the gum-field,
in ankle-jacks and ragged shirt, picking up a scanty living. He is
Captain Gorgeous Dashabout no longer.
There is a certain charm about gum-digging, particularly to people of
unsettled and gypsy-like disposition. You have no boss. You can do as
you like; work when you like, and how you like; and lie on your back
when it pleases you to do so, without fear of being rowed at by any
one. Moreover, with ordinary luck, you can make as good wages as by
working on a farm, and that with less actual toil, though possibly some
additional hardship.
Gum-diggers must be equipped as lightly as possible. It is commonly
said that a blanket, a spade, a gum-spear, a knife, a hatchet, a billy,
a pipe, some provisions and tobacco, together with the clothes he
stands in, constitute all that a gum-digger needs in the way of outfit.
He really cannot afford to possess much more, for he must hump all his
belongings on his own back, over mountain and dale, forest and morass.
This is one reason why small parties associate together, besides for
company. They can then manage to carry a better sufficiency of things
with them from camp to camp.
Where proximity to a settlement, a road, or a river permits of it, it
is possible for gum-diggers to make their camps pretty comfortable.
Often it is not necessary to move camp for months at a time, when
the surrounding field is pretty rich in gum-holes. But they are not a
provident class, seldom caring for anything beyond the present moment.
The occupation is simplicity itself. Once the prospecting has been
accomplished and the district determined on, the party move to it as
best they can. Nearly always there is a long tramp through the wilds,
with the necessaries on back and shoulders. Then a camp is formed in
some favourable spot near a stream; a rude hut is constructed of such
material as is at hand; and a store of firewood is cut.
For work, each man straggles about all day by himself, with his spear
and spade and sack. He tries every likely looking place with the spear,
which is simply an iron rod, sharp at one end, and with a wooden handle
at the other. When the end of the spear touches buried gum, there is a
peculiar clip or "feel," which the digger knows. Then he digs out the
gum, fills his sack, and carries it to camp, continuing to work the
same spot as long as it yields anything, when he goes on to look for
another. In the evenings he scrapes and cleans the day's take with his
knife.
Sometimes a digger will not get a shilling's worth of gum in a whole
week's work; sometimes he will find five or six pounds' worth in an
hour. Generally speaking, and taking one week with another, he may
earn £2 to £4 a week. When enough has been collected and scraped it
is carried down to the nearest bush-store or settlement, where it is
at once sold. Provisions are bought, and the surplus may be banked,
though, in nine cases out of ten, it goes in a "lush up." Some
gum-diggers save till they can get down to Auckland, and then they have
a high old time of it as long as the money lasts.
It will be seen how this kind of life appeals to the ne'er-do-well.
Luck and chance are elements in it; and it is a free, roving,
devil-may-care existence. Hence it is that scapegraces take to it so
kindly, and prefer its risks and manifest hardships to the steady work
of farm-labourers or bushmen.
Gum-diggers seldom make much money. They get a living, and that is
about all. Now and then they may do better, but it only results in a
"burst." Yet gum-digging has often been a great assistance to settlers.
We have taken to it at times, in order to raise a little ready money,
when the farm was not paying. Many a small, needy settler has found
it a resource to stave off ruin. To energetic and industrious men it
offers good wages on the whole, and, as a temporary thing, many such
have taken advantage of it.
There are even men among the regular gum-diggers who are superior to
their class. These may save all they make, till they have enough to
start a small pioneer-farm, or to set up in some handicraft. Thus, in
spite of the acknowledged evil repute of the gum-digger, there will be
and are, in our Brighter Britain, comfortable homes, whose proprietors
will tell you that they are founded and built upon kauri-gum, so to
speak.