LEAVE FOR MESOPOTAMIA--ROAD MAKING--SHEEP MUSTERING--DEATH OF
DR. SINCLAIR--ROAD CONTRACTS ON THE ASHBURTON--WASHED DOWN STREAM.
I had only been a few days in Christchurch when I met a Mr. Butler whom
I had once before seen up-country. He immediately offered me a post on
his run at £60 a year, with all expenses paid, which I could hold for as
long or short time as I needed. This exactly suited me in my present
circumstances. I accepted his offer and started the following day for
Mesopotamia, as he had quaintly named his station; it lay between two
rivers.
[Illustration: MESOPOTAMIA STATION.]
Mr. Samuel Butler was a grandson of the late famous Bishop Butler. He
had come to New Zealand about a year previously with a small fortune
which, as he said, he intended to double and then return home, and he
did so in a remarkably short time. Immediately he landed he made himself
acquainted with the maps and districts taken up, and rode many hundreds
of miles prospecting for new country. His energy was rewarded by the
discovery of the unclaimed piece of mountain land he now occupied near
the upper gorge of the Rangitata. The run, which comprised about 8,000
acres, formed a series of spurs and slopes leading from the foot of the
great range and ending in a broad strip of flat land bounded by the
Rangitata. Upon two other sides were smaller streams, tributaries of the
latter--hence the name Mesopotamia (between the rivers) given to it by
its energetic possessor. Mr. Butler had been established upon the run
about a year, and had already about 3,000 sheep on it. The homestead was
built upon a little plateau on the edge of the downs approached by a
cutting from the flat, and was most comfortably situated and well
sheltered, as it needed to be, the weather being often exceedingly
severe in that elevated locality.
Butler was a literary man, and his snug sitting-room was fitted with
books and easy chairs--a piano also, upon which he was no mean
performer.
The station hands comprised a shepherd, bullock driver, hutkeeper, and
two station hands employed in fencing in paddocks, which with Cook, the
overseer, Butler, and myself made up the total.
At daybreak we all assembled in the common kitchen for breakfast, after
which we separated for our different employments.
At 12 noon we met again for dinner, and again about 7 p.m. for supper,
which meal being over, Butler, Cook, and I would repair to the sitting
room, and round a glorious fire smoked or read or listened to Butler's
piano. It was the most civilised experience I had had of up-country life
since I left Highfield and was very enjoyable. I did not, however,
remain very long at Mesopotamia at that time.
There was a proposal on foot to improve the track leading from the
Ashburton to the Rangitata on which some heavy cuttings were required to
be made. I applied for the contract and obtained it at rates which paid
me very well. My supervisor was a man called Denny, who had been a
sailor, and I knew him to be a capable and handy fellow, as most sailors
are. He was quite illiterate--could not even read or write, but he was
clever and intelligent and had seen a great deal of colonial life and
some hard times. Every night when supper was over and we sat by the fire
in our little hut, I read aloud, to his great delectation, and his
remarks, pert questions, and wonderful memory were remarkable.
This work paid well, and I was soon in a position to make my first
investment of £100 in sheep, which I placed on terms on Butler's run. To
explain this transaction: I purchased one hundred two tooth ewes at a
pound each, upon these I was to receive 45 per cent. increase yearly in
lambs, half male and half female, and a similar rate of percentage of
course on the female increase as they attained to breeding age. In
addition I was to receive £12 10s. per hundred sheep for wool annually.
It was a good commencement, and I decided to stick to contract work if
possible, and increase my stock till I had sufficient to enable me to
obtain a small partnership on a run.
Just at this time there arrived at Mesopotamia a friend of Butler's by
name Brabazon, an Irishman of good family, it being his intention to
remain for some time as a cadet to learn sheep farming. He became a
great personal friend of Cook's and mine, and many a pleasant day we
spent together when, during intervals of rest, I was able to pay a visit
to the Rangitata Station.
On the completion of the road contract, the mustering season had begun,
and I went over with my men to give a hand and remained for a month
assisting at the shearing, etc.
I think it was at this time that a most sad occurrence took place,
resulting in the death of Dr. Sinclair, who was travelling for pleasure
in company with Dr. Haast, Geologist and Botanist to the Government of
Canterbury. He and Dr. Haast with their party had been staying at
Mesopotamia for a few days previous to starting on an expedition to the
upper gorge of the Rangitata. They all left one afternoon, Dr. Sinclair,
as usual, on foot. He had an unaccountable aversion to mounting a horse,
and could not be induced to do so when it was possible to avoid it.
Strange to say, a horse was eventually the cause of his death. He was a
man of some seventy years of age with snow white hair, a learned
antiquary and botanist, and old as he was, and in appearance not of
strong build, he could undergo great fatigue and walk huge distances in
pursuit of his favourite science.
The party had proceeded in company some few miles up the river, when
Haast and his men went ahead to select a camping place, leaving Dr.
Sinclair with a man and horse in attendance to come on quietly and take
him over the streams, the intended camp being on the opposite side of
the river.
[Illustration: UPPER GORGE OF THE RANGITATA.]
The plan adopted for crossing a stream, when there is more than one
person and only a single horse, is as follows: One end of a sufficiently
long rope is fastened round the animal's neck, the other being held by
one of the men. One then crosses the stream on horseback, when he
dismounts, and the horse is hauled back by means of the rope, when
another mounts, and so on. In this instance the attendant rode over
first, but the stream being somewhat broader than the rope was long, the
latter was pulled out of Dr. Sinclair's hands. The man then tried to
turn the horse back loose, but the animal, finding himself free, bolted
for the run. Dr. Sinclair called to the man that he would ford the
stream on foot, and although, as the attendant stated, he warned him
against attempting to do so, he immediately entered, but the current was
too powerful and quickly washed him off his feet. It was now nearly dark
and the man said that although he ran as fast as he was able down the
stream, he was unable to see anything of the Doctor. This was the
miserable story the station hand gave in at the homestead when he
arrived an hour afterwards.
All hands turned out, and having mounts in the paddock, Cook and
Brabazon were soon in the saddle galloping towards the fording place.
Striking the stream some distance below where the accident occurred,
both sides were carefully searched, as they worked up. When within a
quarter of a mile of the ford Cook discovered the body of the Doctor
lying stranded with head and shoulders under water. Life, of course, was
extinct. He was drawn gently from the stream and laid on the shingle
just as the foot men arrived with torches. It was a sad spectacle, this
fine old man we all loved and respected so much, only a few hours before
full of life and health, now a ghastly corpse, his hair and long white
beard lying dank over his cold white face and glaring eyes. The scene
was rendered all the more weird and awful by the surroundings, the still
dark night, the rushing water, and overhanging cliffs under the red
glare of the torches. His body was laid across one of the saddles while
one walked on each side to keep it from falling, and so they returned to
the station that lonely four miles in the dead of night.
He was laid in the woolshed and a watch placed on guard, and early in
the morning a messenger was despatched to Dr. Haast with the sad
tidings. His party were at first alarmed at his non-appearance the
previous evening, but at length took it for granted that he must have
returned to the station, and felt confident that with his attendant and
a horse he could not possibly have come to any harm, the river being
easily fordable on horseback, or even on foot by a strong man, but of
course such a clumsy mistake as employing too short a rope never struck
anybody. The attendant who was responsible was one of the hands employed
on ditching and fencing, and possibly was not much experienced at river
fording, and he said the Doctor delayed so long botanising that darkness
was upon them by the time they reached the fording place.
Dr. Sinclair's remains were interred the following day about a mile from
the homestead on the flat near the south bank of the Rangitata, where
his tomb doubtless may now be seen, his last earthly resting place; and,
dear old man, with all his strong antipathy to horses, what would he
have thought could he have known that one was destined at last to be the
cause of his death?
As a set-off against the previous sad story I may relate an amusing one,
in which I was myself a principal actor, and which occurred soon after
my arrival at Mesopotamia. Butler was much exercised about some
experimental grass-growing he was carrying on about three miles from the
station, on the further side of one of the boundary streams I first
referred to, where he had recently secured another slice of country.
Early one morning I had started alone on foot for the paddocks, where
Butler and Cook were to meet me later, riding, and if I found the stream
too high to ford on foot, I was to await their arrival.
On reaching the river it was so swollen as to be unsafe to attempt
fording, and so, lighting my pipe, I sat down under the shelter of a
large boulder, and presently fell asleep. When I woke up, after some
considerable time, and remembered where I was, I feared that Cook and
Butler must have passed while I slept, and was on the point of returning
to the station, when I observed two horsemen a long way down stream,
apparently searching for something. I speedily understood what was on
foot. My friends were laboriously seeking for my dead body, having
naturally supposed, when they could not find me at the paddock, that I
had tried to ford the river and been washed away. The idea of these two
men spending the morning hunting for a supposed drowned man, who was
enjoying a sound sleep near them all the time, was so ludicrous that I
could not refrain from an immoderate fit of laughter when they arrived.
Butler was hot-tempered, and anything approaching to ridicule where he
himself was concerned was a mortal insult. He turned pale with passion
and rode off, and I do not think he ever entirely forgave me for not
being drowned when he had undertaken so much trouble to discover my
body.
It was at Mesopotamia that I noticed so many remains of that extinct
bird, the "Moa," and it appeared that some of the species had inhabited
that locality not very many years previously. Indeed, some old Maoris I
had met on the Ashburton said they remembered the bird very well. It was
not uncommon to come across a quantity of bones, and near by them a heap
of smooth pebbles which the bird had carried in his craw for digestive
purposes, and I recollect one day employing a number of the bones in
making a footway over a small creek.
A complete skeleton of the Moa bird is to be seen in the British
Museum.
I had now obtained a fresh contract for making cuttings, draining
swamps, and bridging over some ten miles in the Lower Ashburton gorge
and Valley, and I was busily engaged all the summer and autumn. There
were some extensive patches of swampy ground where great difficulty was
experienced in passing the heavy wool drays, and to make a feasible road
over them was one of my tasks, and an interesting one it proved, giving
some scope to my engineering ability. Having laid out the proposed line
of road over the marsh, I cut from it at right angles, and some 300 feet
in length, a channel wide and deep enough, I calculated, to convey away
the flood water during heavy rains, and from the upper end of this
channel I cut four feeding drains, two running along the road line, and
two diagonally, all four meeting at the top end of the main channel;
over the latter, at this point, I constructed a wooden bridge of rough
green timber from the forest, distant about eight miles. I sunk a row of
heavy round piles or posts about a foot in diameter at each side of the
channel, which was fifteen feet wide, securing them with heavy
transverse beams spiked on to their tops; over this I laid heavy round
timber stretchers, about nine inches in diameter and four in number,
upon which were spiked closed together a flooring of stout pine saplings
from two and a half to four inches thick. The floor between these was
then covered with a thick layer of brushwood, topped with earth and
gravel. The road embankment was then carried on from each side till the
swamp was cleared. I am particular about describing this, as it was my
first attempt at bridge building and draining, and of all the thousands
of bridges I have since constructed, I do not think any one of them
interested me more keenly than these in the Ashburton Valley when I was
a lad of nineteen. The bridges and roads over the marshes proved quite
satisfactory, and it was a real delight to me when the first teams of
wool drays passed over safely. I was at the same time engaged on the
cuttings, and got some of them completed before the severe winter set
in.
I was so busy this season that much of my time was necessarily spent in
supervising between the forest and the work, and I had a rough hut
erected at the former, where I could live during my visits.
Once, on passing to the forest, I met with an amusing accident. I was
riding a huge sixteen-hand black mare and had heavy swags of blankets
strapped before and behind the saddle, in addition to which I carried a
new axe, some cooking utensils and a large leg and loin of mutton, which
I had called for at the station, fearing that my men were out of meat.
Near the forest I had to cross a small stream with steep banks. There
had been heavy rain the previous night, and the little stream was a
rushing torrent, and as I forded it, the water reached to the girths.
The opposite bank was steep and slippery, and the huge animal laboured
so in negotiating it that the girths snapped, and the entire saddle,
with myself, slipped over her tail into the rushing stream. In this
manner we were carried down; immersed to nearly my armpits, but securely
attached, for some two hundred yards, before I was able to extricate
myself and incumbrances by seizing a branch as we swept by a bend in the
stream.
With some difficulty I succeeded in getting all out safely and
fortunately on the right side. The mare was quietly feeding where she
had emerged.
Where the work went on in the valley I had a couple of tents for my gang
of navvies, some of whom were sailors. I always found these excellent
workers, and specially handy and clever in many ways, where a mere
landsman would be at fault. I worked with them, and shared everything as
one of themselves, even to a single nip of rum I allowed to each man
once a day. They treated me with every respect, and I had not, so far as
I can recollect, a single instance of serious trouble with any of them.
They received good wages, and earned them, and if any man among them had
been found guilty of reprehensible conduct, the others would have
supported me at once in clearing him from the camp. When the day's work
was over, these sailor navvies would all bear a hand to get matters
right for the night and the next day. Mutton was put in the oven, bread
made, and placed under the ashes, firewood collected, and water in the
kettle ready for putting on the fire at daybreak, then the nip of rum
and pipe alight, and yarns or songs would be told or sung in turn, till
the blankets claimed us.
This was a very severe winter, and as the snow began to lie heavily I
was perforce obliged to stop work for a month or two, and for that time
I accepted an invitation from Cook and Brabazon to keep them company at
Mesopotamia. Butler had left for Christchurch, where he would remain for
an indefinite time.