Poenamo : sketches of the early days in New Zealand : romance and reality of antipodean life in the infancy of a new colony

Front matter

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EDWARD ANGAS JOHNSON

Book The First. Myself

■Chap. Page.

I. ]My Advent on this Sublunary Scene. — Six Years'

Despotic Nursery Reign. — My Deposition . . 1 II. The Kind of Boy I Was.— Why and How I Became a

Doctor 8

III. I Weigh in the Baknce the Chances of Life, and

Determine to Forsake my Fatherland ... 14

IV. Portraying the Depth of a Sister's Love ... 23

V. " Ho ! for the Great South Land" .... 30

VI. I Forswear the Great Convict Land .... 39

Book The Second. The Town That Netee Was

I. The King of Waiou 46

II. We Start on the Exploring Expedition ... 58

III. We Sing and Row Ourselves over the Hauraki . . G6

lY. The Timber-Draggers.— A Pull for Dear Life . . 76

Y. The Night Camp. — The Morning's Yision ... 87

VI. The Isthmus of Corinth of the Antipodes . . ,102

YII. The Mess of Pottage which floored the King of Waiou's

Grand Scheme 112 xii Contents.

Book The Third

WITH THE MAOEIES ON TE HAUEAKI SHOEE. Chap. Page.

I. Why we Invaded Waiomu 123

II. We are Adopted by the Ngatitamateras . . . 134

III. We Secure Apartments for the Winter Season . . 144

IV. De Pluribus Maori Rehus 158

V. A Maori Wake 168

VI. A Gunpowder Explosion. — The Doctor Wanted . . 181

VII. Steeped in Tapu 191

VIII. Maori Philosopliy 204

IX. Farewell to Waiomu 213

Book The Fourth. How A New Colony Is Boen To An Old Nation

I. The Two Pioneer Pakehas of the Waitemata . • 226 II. Monarchs of all they Surveyed. — The IMonarchs Turn

Well-Sinkers 239

III. I Present our Credentials to the Ngatitais. — The Early

Missionary 233

IV. I Learn what Taihoa Means 266

V. Waiting in Expectancy 277

VI. My Maiden Venture in the Field of Commerce . . 287 VII. The Capital is Born to Us.— The Flagstaff that never

was Erected 300

VIII. We Change the Current of our Lives. — We Visit our

Newly -horn Child 309

IX. How we Shave a Pig 320

X. We Adopt our Child 328

XI The Capital of Poenamo in 1841. — How we Lived then . 334

XII. An Episode. — Our First Maori Scare. — Conclusion . 342

BOOK FIRST. CHAPTiJR I

MY ADVENT ON THIS SUBLUNARY SCENE, ANI>

SIX years' despotic nursery reign MY

DEPOSITION.

WAS an only son.

If my father had only been the same, he would have succeeded to the title and estates of " our family."

But not having been imbued with the proper appreciation of the value of these in this world, he allowed himself to be born the youngest of the family, one of fourteen too, and with such a large proportion of brothers that for him to look forward to succeed to the title through such a vista of male heirs as kept cropping up in the shape of nephews, would have been as hopeless a task as trying to see to the end of the list of his own Scotch cousins !

My forefathers for nearly three liundred years had been baronets, and lived in an old baronial castle on the borders of the Highlands. For as many more years previously I believe my ancestors could be traced as being very worthy gentlemen indeed. But beyond that period I always steadfastly set my face against making too minute inquiries " anent my forebears," because when a boy I remembered to have read in the Tales of a Grandfather, certain stories concerning Highland raids into the Lowlands for the purpose of " lifting" cattle, that in these operations the vile savages of the Lowlands sometimes used to kidnap their more civilised mountain neighbours, and ruthlessly consign them to a branch of the nearest tree.

Now I had always a very distinct aversion to look any of my ancestors in the face in that exalted position, and not being at all sure but that I should require to do so, if I penetrated into a too remote antiquity of my family, I wisely accepted the story of it as told in the Peerage, and hurked everything antecedent.

My father, as I have said, was the youngest of fourteen. My grandfather had had two wives — of course I don't mean at the same time. The consequence was, that before my fatner saw the light the children of his eldest sister — step-sister — did so, and

\\Q, had nephews and nieces who used to dandle their uncle on their knees. I merely tell this fact to prove that in the prolific increase of the thirteen there was as legitimate a hope that " our family" would never die out for want of male heirs, as there was a legitimate excuse for my grandfather getting head over ears into debt. The hospitality of the old castle that had to be extended to the direct members of the family — not to mention " Hielan" cousins and retainers — was enough to drain a heavier purse than the old gentleman's, so he got very handsomely indeed into debt, and, being an honest man, he foolishly sold off all the unentailed portion of the fine old family estate to make himself square with the world and his own conscience. And so it fell out that the old castle and the barony lands were all that were left, and, in fine, to tell a sad story in a few words, my grandfather died having only as many hundreds a year as his father had thousands, and sic transit gloria of old families !

You may think all this has little to do with me, but it has, for inasmuch as it affected my father's fortunes and obliged him to go forth and do battle with the world on his own account, with little to help him in the shape of hard cash, so it happened that when my time came I had e'en to go and do likewise.

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My clear worthy father's idea of starting in the world Avas after this fasliion : he fell in love and married when he was only a boy of four-and-twenty. He certainly was not guilty of Ids father's imprudence, that of numbering his progeny by a dozen and one or two extra, but marrying at four-andtwenty was just about as fatal to his w^ordly prospects. But if fatal to worldly prosperity I am bound to record that his imprudence secured an amount of happiness rarely attained in this world. Never was there a happier union. After seven-and-fifty yeai's of wedded life my mother passed away at the matm'e age of seventy-seven, and two years later — at eightythree — my father was laid by her side. If their end was peaceful and happy, and smTounded by the comforts of this life, they had their early struggles. Of course they had. Have I not already said he was the youngest of fourteen, son of a father with an exchequer at zero, whose children for inheritance had only the best of educations; but marrying at four-and-twenty, what other than early struggles could await him '^

He began life with a wife and seven-and-sixpence a day as a surgeon in the Army, when the whole world was gazing with fear and wonder at that fiery meteor Napoleon the First, whose after-consignment to St. Helena disbanded my father's regiment and sent him afloat on the worhl with his young Avife and two young children, and no seven-and-sixpcnce a day to help them I

Xow pray do not be impatient and think that all I have been telling is irrelevant. I flatter myself I have condensed into a marvellously small space what might have been spun out into quite a long story, merging to a point coeval with my own appearance on this world's stage, the whole scope of what has been previously written being none other than to usher myself into your presence with just that necessary introduction to enable you to understand my position "when I became the " only son," as announced in the Avords first herein written of these my memoirs.

]\Iy earliest reminiscences of nursery life are worthy .an "only brother." I remember enacting the small tyrant in a manner worthy the " only son" of a duke, let alone that of a metropolitan physician, which my father was when I appeared upon the scene. I ought rather to say that he was a family physician in a metropolis, as he was still too young to claim the more -easily earned fees of a consulting physician. Indeed, when I was enacting the nursery tyrant my father was only pushing his way into "family practice," and had difficulty in making the two ends meet.

My early 3'ears were fast ripening me into a most intolerable nuisance, as I lorded it over all the womenkind in a manner that ought to have brouglit down, condign punishment on my young understanding.. My worthy mother would have been equal to the occasion, but my father was the soft one who did the spoiling, and it was only when his organ of combativeness was direfully roused that he invoked that horribly cruel Scriptural adage, " He that spare th the rod hateth his son."

I shall only chronicle one sample of the manners and customs of the young savage I then was, to prove how well I earned the opprobrious epithet I have just given myself.

When in a particularly abominable humour I well remember I insisted, when being put to bed, that I should sit stridelegs on the neck of one of my sisters, and so have my ablutions performed. I have not the slightest doubt in my own mind that I should have grown up an unmitigated pest in the house, and perhaps afterwards in the world, if Providence had not most mercifully stepped in after I had tyrannised six years over my three sisters in the manner already described, and deposed me from my perilous reign of *'only son" and youngest child by making me no longer the latter, and giving me a foui'th sister. Tliis auspicious and happy event, all unlooked for, in the nursery in particular, and household in general, was my salvation.

My Advent. y

How in after years, when I have pondered over the matter, have I not thanked that dear sister's arrival in true heartfelt thankfuhiess ; showered down blessings on that singleness of purpose which caused her to appear on the family scene, and take upon herself the parental spoiling which had hitherto been my monopoly I

The transfer, fortunately for me, was complete. A very short time had elapsed ere I ceased my gambols on my sisters' necks at bedtime, and was to be found instead consigned to the tub in a summary manner, the best-behaved and most exemplary " only son" that ever got soused in soapsuds !

In justice to the new arrival I am bound to state that when in course of years she ripened into womanhood her nature had resisted all paternal indulgences, and she came throue-h the ordeal of beinc the youngest of the family in a manner I am certain would have put me to shame had I remained in her position.

Chapter II

THE KIIs^D OF BOY I WAS, AND HOW I BECAME A DOCTOK.

WAS not a bright boy ; I was not a stupid one. Indeed, I have a kind of feeHng now that I was one of those dreary, sensible boys who provoke people because they find a fellow is so sensible — for a boy. I scarcely ever got into scrapes, which makes me wonder now how I pushed my way in the world so well in after-life ; for boys who have not spirit enough in them to get into scrapes are generally slow, steady-going fellows avIio live and die within the radius of a small and narrow local vision. At school I did not shine, and could only just manage to keep a little above the middle of my class. I well remember I used to wonder why this was so, because I felt myself a better fellow than those beside me, and my companions were invariably those at the head of the class. In after-years the reason why dawned upon me, and I came to the conclusion — in confidence to myself — that I really should have been a tremen-

The Kind of Boy I Was.

■dously clever man if I had not, most unfortunately for myself and the world at large, of course, been horn with only — half a memory ! This has been my bane through life ; to save that life I could not at this moment tell you the year in whicli I was born. Little wonder that I was only in the middle fonii, little wonder my poor mother used to deplore that she never •once knew me to say my Sunday lessons without a blunder. So hopeless was I, that she once offered a sovereign whenever I could repeat to her a chapter from the Bible without making a mistake. Did I not, one Sunday, with a sort of mean feeling that I was not doing the right thing, go to her to claim the trial, and repeat a chapter from the Old Testament? I had managed to find one with only a couple of verses ! The old lady was equal to the occasion, and, looking sternly at me, asked, " Is that a chapter from the New Testament?"

Of course I was ashamed to tell her she had said a chapter from the Bible. She had bowled me over, and — I never pocketed the sovereign !

With herculean labour I do remember managing to learn the song " If I had a donkey," thinking all the time what a marvellously stupid one I was myself, a belief confirmed beyond all contradiction when thi'ee days afterwards I in vain endeavoured to (repeat " If I had a donkey." Ko, I had none other lo The Kind of Boy I Was.

than myself — I had to sigh and give it up. I had not then discovered that I had been born with only half a memory or I might have been consoled.

My school-days were pain and grief to me. I learned, but only to forget ; it was as hopeless as the task of trying to carry water in a sieve. I grew up a horrid, classicless, sensible lad; I laboured at Latin and Greek through the accepted curriculum of school and college for over six years — in my case a direful waste of my young life. My masters thought well of me, over-much of me, though only figuring in the middle of my class; but I did differ from those on each side of me, for they never attempted an " essay," and I always got my half-holiday for my composition. If I could not retain I could create y. there was something in me, in myself, however much I allowed what others ordained to be driven intO' me, to run out again, and before my school-days were ended fearful was the quantity which had run out.

And what next ? What was I going to be ? Only sons generally have little difficulty in fixing the grooves in which their lives are to run, for in nine cases out of ten it is fixed for them ; they follow in their father's wake. If there are two boys, people will ask " What are you going to be ?" of the second, it being taken for granted the eldest is entitled to

The Kind of Boy I V/as. 1 1 succeed liis father, be it in his estates or in his business. Of course I was going to be a doctor — it never entered my mind to be anything else — it was a fixed and determined thing before I had brains enough to think about it myself. And I found myself becomhig a doctor accordingly.

But as the time kept slipping past Avhich was converting me into a doctor, I had brains enough to force home the conclusion that when I fairly was one, the sticking up my name on a brass plate on the door, below my father's, with "Junior" on it, would not add to his practice ; nor did I see, as long as he was alive and well, how it would bring me any. What connection I had was his already ; he was hale and hearty, and up to more work than he had to do. And so it came about that by degrees, slow but sure, it became a fixed idea in my mind that I wo'uld push my fortune abroad somewhere or other. I am (piitc satisfied now that in this conclusion there came out some of the " sensible fellow" that 1 had . been christened by my friends.

Doubtless you will be Avondering how it came about that a man with only half a memory managed to pass his examinations, but with superhuman perseverance I did so. True, I was still a mere sieve, but I kept pouring the thousands of facts which I had to "be up in" in such an incessant stream

1 2 The Kind of Boy I Was.

through my brain that the necessary quantum got entangled therem somehow or other for the ordeal of examinations.

But it was hard work. For six months before going up for the degree of physician, and diploma of surgeon — for I took both — I had only five hours' sleep a night. I was at college all day attending lectures, not cettino; home until five o'clock, then came dinner, and thereafter digestion and the sleepiness of wornout nerves, so that one did not brighten up to Avork until ten o'clock, then at it I went, in a cold attic room in winter witiiout a fire, wrapped in a cloak, until two in the morning. During these hours the meshes in my brain — my poor sieve brain — seemed to grow •closer, but it was overstrained work, bordering on danger both to the mental and bodily system. Sometimes I would protract my sederunt to half-past two or three, but I soon found that this was not to be done with impunity. As soon as I exceeded the four hours' grind I spoiled my five hours' sleep. I used to fall into a half- nightmare, half- cataleptic state, ^live to the night-watchman's call and every noise in the street, but unable to move a muscle of my body.

And I soon learned that two o'clock was the extreme limit that nature would stand, and so I was compelled to stick to it. I had to get up at seven

The Kind of Boy I Was.

1^ o'clock all the winter to go to attend a lecture at eight.

When spring came I exchanged that hour's lecture for very different work, as shall be chronicled further on in these memoh's.

Chapter III

I WEIGH IX THE BALANCE THE CHANCES OF LIFE, AND DETERMINE TO FORSAKE MT FATHERLAND.

HAT shall be my future — where pitch my tent and start in life?"

These were the absorbing questions which now occupied my mind as the time drew near when I should be dubbed ]\I.D. and hold a legitimate title to exercise " my prentice hand" in the curing •or killing, as the case might be, of my trusting or mistrusting, as the case might be, fellow-creatures.

ISIy enterprising mother saw, and nobly joined me in saying, there was no use in my remaining at home. The old gentleman did not take at all kindly to that idea : he would have been quite content to have seen the second brass plate with the " Junior" •on the door. Indeed, my mother and I had to canvass privately the friends through whose good offices there was a prospect of procui'ing a commission in the East India Company's service.

For I had determined to enter upon that field of enterprise.

I ought in an earlier page to have mentioned as a trait of my boyhood's character a deeply-rooted love of travel. When a mere boy I had walked from the east to the west of Scotland to spend my holidays at my grandmother's, and many were the pedestrian excursions I had made through Scotland with my iishing-rod and basket, the latter not to carry fish but to serve as a knapsack. I well remember the one promment and prevailing desire of my heart was, that some day I should see the world. I believe it was this feelino; which was the movins; spirit in determining me to have no second brass plate underneath my father's. I believe it was this feeling that decided me to try for the " Company's service." And I well know the book that first kindled this deep desire : it was Mungo Paries Travels in Egypt, and it was the embers still slumbering that fired me to look beyond my own home for my future career.

The description of Egypt's vast monuments and her underground tombs made such a lasting impression on my boyish imagination, that the desire to travel in that land never faded away.

Ah me ! it is now long, long ago since I gratified that desire of boyhood's days, and the best part of manhood's too have passed away. The Nile,

1 6 Jlje Chances of Life.

far beyond where Belzoiii's tomb lies hidden, has been ascended, but the ruling passion is ever still strong upon me. Other things " might cloy the appetites they feed," but to me travelling "made hungry where most it satisfied."

But there is a dear face opposite me now which caused the rolling stone to be at rest and gather moss, which created new feelings and new ties, and there are two other dear wee faces for whom I write these memoirs, proclaiming that they are my little anchors dropped in the stream of life to hold me back so that I cannot now go floating away hither and thither over the world to look at it.

But I digress. Let me go back to the time of my cold attic studies.

The end of winter still found me struo;a"lins: hard to narrow the meshes of my sieve-like memory and hold in the quantum sujfficit to face my examiners, but with the spring came a new light as to my future, unlooked-for prospects opened up, and it became a question whether I should dare this new path or continue in the beaten track I had chosen. I had no idea, however, of letting one rope go before getting hold of another, so I carried my midnight labours to a successful issue, and duly became an M.D. and surgeon of the Edinburgh Schools of Medicine.

And now rose the question, was I to follow the profession I had cliosen, or ^' throw physic to the doers ?"

The new path whicli had opened up was one in the great new workl — not the Western, but the Great South Land of Austraha.

Was I to be, or not to be, a medical officer in the Company's sen-ice, and risk the cHmate of India, or become a squatter in the plains of Austraha, and make a fabulous fortune by " growing wool ?" This expression, by the way, has grown up since those days when we made use of the more homely term of " keeping sheep." I am noAv writing of the years 1838-9, when the first great excitement prevailed with regard to Australia, and when the first great stream of emigration set out towards that colony.

The return of some connections of my family, who had been early settlers there, soon turned the scale, as far as I was concerned, in favour of my descending from the " high estate" of M.D. to shepherd.

True, if I failed in that walk in life I could still fall back upon my profession. But my being an M.D. could do the sheep no possible harm, while I looked after them, while possibly I might shoot with two strings to my bow, and be a bush doctor as well. My late midnight studies might come in handy, with regard to the sheep, if they were overtaken with catarrh or such-like, and there was myself just smitten with the sheep and Australia fever, and no doctor was going to cure me of" it.

At last my dear cautious father got bitten with the mania for Australia, and my mother, improving the occasion, ended by talking him over to the new opening for the ** only son." The old gentleman was only too glad to get rid of the East India Company's service, having a dread that the climate might bring his only son to an untimely end ! So he dropped into the excitement of the day — " the making a fortune in Australia."

As for my darling old mother, I knew she had visions of transplanting the whole family to the banks of some beautiful river in the far-off land, and of all of us ending our days there in some hitherto unaccomplished patriarchal manner. The dear old lady little thought that the rivers of that land sometimes dry up and cease to flow for a year or two at a time, or that I should stand on the banks of one within a year of our discussing " the making a fortune in the Antipodes," and look dow^i on an immense river-bed — all that was to be seen of the river being a little green pool every two or three miles.

But I am describing the future long before I have left my fatherland, so I had better make my start therefrom first.

And had I not much to leani before I left? Truly yes. My life hitherto had been purely a college one. I had, it is true, generally passed my summer vacations Avith relations in the country, where I had seen farming operations going on, in which I had helped in a very small way. I could load a cart with sheaves of corn, and take it to the stockyard. I could even build the stack — all save the top ! I had seen bulls, and cows, and steers, ■and really knew one from the other quite well ; but when I heard my country friends from Australia talking about ewes and maiden ewes, and wethers and hoggets, I felt I Avas not " up in sheep" as an intending shepherd ought to be, and that wise adage of ne sutor ultra crepidam, tvould keep rising uj) before me in a way that forced home the necessity of being up and doing.

"Well, I was up and doing all sorts of things, for we had decided that I was to be a squatter, and I laid my plans accordingly, and made a rush at the acquisition of some knowledge of the various trades which I hoped would serve me in good stead in my future life at the Antipodes. AVhen my eight o'clock in the morning class at college ended with the winter session I exchanged the college for the carpenter's shop, and I used to commence there at seven.

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My studies now were a strange mixture, as it was quite a question whetlier my professional or my trade knowleda;e was ffoinij; to serve me best in after-life. Of course I took kindly to the carpenter's shop, for I had always displayed a strong mechanical bent, and was never happier than when at work at some carpentry or other. As my college education came to an end so did my apprenticeship at the carpenter's shop, but at the end of the spring session I had served three months at it, and had produced a huge splendidly dovetailed tool-chest, which was to carry an ample supply of tools for Antipodean iise. It was carpentering at early morn, then a turn at college, then a rush between lectures to the cattlemarket, and to where the cattle were slaughtered, or how else could I have known whether sheep were skinned and pigs scalded, or vice versa ? — a most necessary knowledge when I had made up my mind to go to the uttermost parts of the earth, and very likely might have to do everything myself, or superintend others who knew no better ! Then one required to know how to mend a saddle-girth, and to be able to do that one required to know how to put a bristle on the thread that had to be used. I found it so much more easy to remember all these things that I saWf than to remember the minute anatomy of the eye which saw them, which I had to remember by the aid of memory alone, that I found my day studies much more simple than my night ones. But they all came to a conclusion in early summer. I had passed my examinations, and written a wonderful thesis (lying unappreciated in the archives of the University to this very day), proving how the tono;ue was not the or^an of taste, thus complying with the last requirement before going through the ceremony of being " dubbed." But as this dubbing of neophytes was forbidden unless they were of the age of one-and-twenty, and as 1 had not as yet attained that ripe age of green manhood at the time of the last dubbing, and should not be forthcomino; when the next one came off. the Senatus Academicus had to make a special case of it, and allow me to be dubbed by proxy, keeping back my parchment certificate of M.D. until after said dubbing ceremony, which came oif in August, had been gone through. But it was now only June. The time had come, however, that was to witness my departure from the parental roof. The " only son" was bidding it farewell, starting on his pilcrima^e in life. The inheritance to which he was succeeding was simply that which he could carve out for himself in the race for life, the patrimony in hand summed up in his education of M.D. and a five-hundred-pound note! My worthy father had come to believe so completely in " keeping sheep" in Australia that he had raised a thousand pounds^ giving me one-half, the other to be invested by me on his account.