THE GRAVE BY THE RAKAIA.

I am afraid this will not be a very merry story; but I find that children sometimes like to hear a sad tale, and they will certainly learn as they grow older, that life is not all fun and laughter. It is full of stories as sad and as true as this; but the bravest men have often the tenderest hearts, and so, perhaps, the boldest and gayest of my little friends may be touched by a tale of suffering and death.

One lovely spring morning in New Zealand I went out for a ride with my husband: he wanted to look at what is called there an ‘out-station,’ that is, a hut far away from the homestead, and from all the bustle and life which surrounds the woolsheds, sheep-yards, and accessories of a prosperous settler’s new home in that new world. We left behind us the paddocks of English grass and clover, the patches of oats for the horses, my own little pet acre of wheat, grown expressly for my numerous fowls and pigeons, the garden sloping down to the creek, the young plantations whose growth we watched so anxiously, and whose enemy, the strong north-west wind, was on this balmy morning slumbering peacefully in his cave far away among the mountains. Going out for a ride in England is a very different affair from a New Zealand excursion. Here, you have only to coax papa to give the order to the groom, and then it is all settled; you mount quietly and set off (quietly also, I hope, though I rather doubt it). There, the first thing necessary was to catch the horses. Sometimes they were out on the run, and it took a man with a great stockwhip a long time to get them in: then they had to be brushed and cleaned, and at last the saddles were put on, and we started. I had the usual bag fastened to the pommel of my saddle, with a new book, the last English papers, and some numbers of ‘Good Words,’ or the ‘Leisure Hour,’ or the ‘Sunday at Home,’ for the poor lonely man whom we were going to see. The moment we appeared in the verandah, all the dogs set up a loud barking and jumping, each wanting to accompany their master, but only steady old Hector was allowed to come. Garry, and Queen, and Sharp, all pull at the chains which fasten them to their kennels, and howl dismally. Nettle, my little terrier, comes out in the verandah, stretching himself with a self-satisfied air, as much as to say, ‘I know I may come;’ but I can tell, by the coaxing expression of his brown eyes, that he has secret misgivings, and his worst fears are soon realised by my carrying him off to the cook to be taken care of and consoled during my absence. Then, as soon as the question about the dogs is settled, I have to make it known to the fowls and ducks, which surround me instantly, that I have no intention of giving them a second breakfast; and I have to elude the affectionate caresses of the pet calves, who leave their favourite amusement of trying to pull the clothes off the line, to come and playfully butt at me. ‘Julia’ is getting too big for these games, and she tried to kill me once by running, with her head down, between my horse’s forelegs, just as I was mounting, causing it to rear, and throw me off again.

However, we surmounted all these little difficulties on this particular morning, and set off; the horses caracolling with sheer high spirits as we walked them down the paddock; Hector frisking about more like a puppy than an elderly colley of great experience; and we ourselves saying every now and then, ‘Is not this delicious.’ There is such a sense of freedom in the open country, such freshness and brightness in the feeling of the air; it is warm without being oppressive, cool without a chill. Before we had gone 300 yards from the house there was a wide creek to be jumped, and our horses were so clever that they always knew exactly where the banks were sound, and would not cross anywhere except at the place they thought best. As we cantered up the sunny flat which stretched behind the house, and wound among the low downs for miles, we startled hundreds of sheep and lambs who were feeding on the young undergrowth of blue grass which lay sheltered beneath the tall waving tussocks. The lambs were so wild and so strong, that, the moment they saw or heard us, the whole flock would make for the nearest hill; and I have often watched a tiny newborn lamb keeping up with its mother, jumping from rock to rock like a goat. I delighted to see them at play; if we rode very softly round a corner, we sometimes came upon a large semicircle of old sheep standing gravely together, just like mammas at a party, watching their children amusing themselves and in the open space there were perhaps several hundred white lambs, jumping, frisking, and bounding about; butting at each other, running round and round, chasing one another. Our appearance caused a startled silence for half a moment, and then the whole flock would be off like a flash of lightning, amid much calling and answering from young and old, whilst Hector gazed in his master’s face, asking with speaking eyes, if he should go and bring them all back?

We cantered gaily along till we came to the foot of a range of hills; followed the sheep track which led us across a low saddle, through another valley, across a higher range; and then we dropped down to the most lonely place I ever saw in my life. The downs, which we had hitherto crossed, were succeeded by gaunt bare hills stretching away as far as the eye could reach, rising higher and higher till the snowy range stood out sharp and clear from the glorious blue sky. We were on the borders of the ‘back country,’ a vague term used to denote the inferior land behind that which has already been taken up for sheep-runs. There were several thousand sheep probably among these desolate hills, but they had gone up to the higher ranges for their summer pasture, and the stillness was oppressive. Not a tree broke the monotony of the yellow tussocks, or brown and gray rocks, not a twitter or chirrup could be heard, only the startled cry of a woodhen, or ‘weka,’ gliding swiftly from its cover in a flax bush.

We had ridden for a few miles along the high bank of the Rakaia, a river, or rather a roaring torrent, gushing from the snowy mountains; our path for sometime had followed a narrow strip of flat land which separated the foot of the hills from the stream, when I noticed a little enclosure, close under a terraced bank about eight feet high. A few minutes’ canter brought us to it, and then I saw it was a wooden fence surrounding a grave. On the opposite bank of the river was a settlement, or ‘home station,’ and we could hear the dogs barking, and the men’s voices; but these sounds only made the solitude and loneliness of the spot where we stood more oppressive. The bright sunshine did not even touch it, for the shadow of a great mountain fell across and made the air chill. Involuntarily whispering I asked, ‘Why did they bury the poor fellow out here in this desolate spot, away from everybody and everything,’ and then F. told me the tale I am going to tell you.

A few years ago, in what is now called ‘the early days’ of the colony, a young surveyor came out to try his fortune in the new country. He was very much liked, knew his profession thoroughly, and got on as well as possible. He had just time to write home to the loving friends left behind, to tell them how happy he was, and how bright his prospects seemed in this fresh young world, when he received an order from the Government to start on a long journey to survey this very ‘back country.’ He was to be well paid for his work, and at each of the distant stations where he intended to put up, he was sure of the most cordial welcome. F. saw him as he was starting on this journey, whose end was here, and he described him as being full of health and spirits.

In those days any thing like an enclosure was very rare, even near a house, and throughout his expedition the young man had many difficulties to contend with. When he reached a station the only way of securing the horse he rode and the packhorse which carried the tin case with his papers, his saddle-bags, &c., was to tether them by a long rope, which was fastened to a flax bush or Ti-ti palm. Now the New Zealand horses are very clever and very cunning; they soon know when they have a ‘new chum’ to deal with; and these two horses were the plague of the young surveyor’s life. When he awoke in the morning his first thought was whether they had escaped, and he too often found that, in spite of his precautions over night, the words with which his host generally greeted him were, ‘Well, your horses are off.’ There was nothing for it but to track them, and by availing himself of the experience of the older hands around him, the truants were always recovered; but, though many an hour was wasted in these pursuings, the early winter days of June found him hurrying back to Christchurch with the materials for his report all collected.

He had reached a station about ten miles from this spot where we stood, and distant about seventy miles from the town. From thence the horses once more escaped; but a shepherd, belonging to the homestead I have mentioned on the opposite bank of the river, came with a message early the next morning, and said that he had seen two strange horses, whose appearance he described, feeding quietly among a ‘mob’ on their flat. It was a lovely, bright winter’s day, and the surveyor determined to walk over the hills to this homestead, catch his horses, cross the river, and sleep there that night, making his final stage to Christchurch next day. His host promised to send his valise and papers down to town to meet him, on a dray which was just starting by a longer route, and the poor fellow set off full of health and spirits, with a crust of bread and a flask of cold tea in his pocket. He sent everything down by the dray except a little notebook, took a flax stick in his hand, and with a cheery good-bye started fairly off, whistling as he stepped out. His host’s parting words were an injunction to him not to dawdle on the way, and a warning of how soon these bright short winter days turn into a dark and often foggy afternoon.

That was the last glimpse which anyone had of poor Charlie —— in life. The drayman took his things down to town, deposited them at one of the rude little wooden publichouses which in those days were called hotels, and returned home. A week later people began to ask each other, ‘Have you heard anything of Charlie ——?’ No one had seen him since those friendly eyes had watched him round the corner of the last turning, and then lost sight of him for ever. Inquiries were made at the homestead on the banks of the Rakaia, which resulted in the discovery that he had never arrived there: his horses were still feeding in the sheltered valley where the shepherd had seen them. It took only a short time to organise a regular search along the track between the stations: this continued for two days without even a sign being found to show that any human being had ever trodden those desolate hills. On the third morning, just such a bright, sparkling day as the one on which Charlie —— set out, the dogs came whimpering and whining back to their master’s side. Colleys are not of any use as sleuth hounds; they are only wise and learned about sheep; but they showed the instinctive uneasiness in the neighbourhood of a sudden or violent death which all the nobler brutes feel. Still there were many hours of patient search before the men came upon what was not far from them when first the dogs returned from their mad gambols to walk soberly at their masters’ heels.

There, below this little terrace, which he could have jumped down without injury, was a weather-stained, rain-sodden body in Charlie ——’s clothes. It lay on its face, and underneath it, safe and dry, was the little pocket book: the arms were extended, and the hands much cut and torn; but what was more shocking than all was to find that both the legs were broken. Rough strong hands, whose touch became gentle as a mother’s through the magic of pity, turned the poor stiffened figure over and tried to close the wide-staring eyes gazing sightlessly up into the bright heaven above. Some of the party remained to watch, whilst others recrossed the river to fetch picks and spades. The short afternoon was hardly long enough to give time for a grave to be dug, wide as well as deep, for those frozen arms could not be bent, but, just as darkness closed in, the sorrowful task was finished, and the mourners returned slowly and sadly to light, and warmth, and the sound of human voices, leaving him who had specially delighted in all these things, lying in his lonely grave. After the supper-tea, with which a New Zealand day ‘up-country’ is closed, they drew round the fire, having first packed up carefully his watch, a lock of his hair, and a tuft of grass which had been held tight in one clenched hand, to be sent home to his relations. Before the little pocket book was added to the collection it was examined, and was found to contain the history of those sad days.

The first entry, in trembling pencil strokes, was dated the morning after the day on which he had left the distant station; it told briefly how the accident had happened. He had lost his way and wandered about all day. He tried to keep within sound of the waters of the Rakaia, as he knew his destination lay on its opposite bank, and at last to his great joy he saw the lights and heard the sounds of a homestead. A more experienced traveller would have ‘camped’ under a flax bush and ‘coo-éd,’ or waited till the moon rose, or in fact done anything but what poor Charlie did, which was to hurry on, tired and footsore, through the pitchy darkness, stumbling at every second step, till he walked over the short but abrupt descent beneath which his poor body was found. He wrote at first with hope; he said he had waited for a gleam of light to see where he was, for he found he could not move either of his legs; he felt them snap like sticks, he wrote; but he meant to try and drag himself up the little terrace so as to be more easily seen, and he must have made the attempt by the state of his hands and clothes. There was only one more intelligible and connected entry dated the next day. He had spent all the intervening hours in trying to better his position, and to attract the attention of those on the other side of the river. He trusted to a shepherd passing on his way to a boundary; alas! the river was sufficient boundary for miles along its banks, and no shepherd was likely to come that way. He wrote that he had shrieked and screamed for help till his voice was quite gone; that the anguish he endured made him pray for a speedy death; and that, before the night, whose piercing cold he felt sure he could not again survive, he intended to exert all his remaining strength to turn over on his face, partly to keep the book dry in his breast, partly to prevent the hawks from tearing out his eyes. Then came a few words saying, he had suffered much from thirst, an adieu to his mother more pathetic in its brief good night than pages of leave-taking, a prayer for a speedy end to his life of torture, and his initials scrawled over the page. Soon after tracing these he must have died.

I heard of one more such accident whilst I was in New Zealand, and that was to a poor shepherd who went to give what is called a ‘drafting notice’ to the next run. You are obliged to send and tell all your neighbours when you muster your sheep, at shearing and other times, so that any which may have strayed on to your feeding grounds may be claimed by their rightful owners. Each sheep has a device stamped on it every year after it has been shorn; this is called the ‘brand;’ besides which a little mark is put on each ear, so you can easily tell your own sheep at a glance; indeed, I have heard of a celebrated colley, who was supposed to know his master’s brand, and to be able to pick the sheep belonging to him out of a mixed mob! Well, this shepherd, ‘Joe’ by name, never came back; but it happened that just then there was a great rush to some wonderful Gold fields near, and it was no uncommon thing for a shepherd to go out in the morning, and, instead of returning, send a message to say he had gone to the diggings; so, although no such message came from Joe, his master never doubted but that he had started to look for a fortune in the wintry torrent of a New Zealand river.

Months afterwards a lad was eel-fishing in a creek which ran between the two stations, and as he strolled along its banks looking for a deep hole wherein to cast his simple tackle—a few yards of strong twine and a large hook, baited with a bit of mutton—he came to a new place where the banks had been washed away by a recent heavy fresh, and a splendid basin formed. Here he prepared to throw in a line, fasten it to a flax bush, and then go on to search for another favourable spot. The water was clear, and on the shining shingle which paved the little pool he saw some white bones. At first he thought of a missing bullock of his father’s, and laying down at the edge of the stream, with a flax stick in his hand, he tried to drag or push the bones into a shallow place where he could reach them, but to his horror, the weight of his own body leaning on an overhanging bush seemed to dislodge some more bones, which had caught in its thick branches, and first a skeleton hand, and then a foot, dropped into the bright sparkling water. The boy told me the story himself, and described very simply and forcibly how he had felt as if the whole thing was a ghastly dream; for in New Zealand one is seldom brought face to face with anything worse than a lamb which has met with an untimely fate; and to this boy, who had left England as a child, and lived a free pastoral, life, almost removed from the knowledge of death, these grim bones were very dreadful.

He stood in perplexity wondering if he could find his way back again exactly to the same spot, when his eye was caught by a fluttering rag on a thorny shrub near. He disentangled it and examined it carefully, and then there flashed upon his mind, the distinct recollection of Joe the shepherd having worn a flannel shirt of this peculiar kind, for he well remembered having ‘chaffed’ him about its staring pattern of brown foxes’ heads on a scarlet ground. He quickly returned for help to the home station, and that evening poor Joe’s remains were collected in an empty flour sack, and buried by the side of the stream. His skull, easily recognised by a peculiar enormous tooth, of which he was very proud as being a sort of lusus naturæ, was higher up on the steep hill-side, and his tobacco-pouch and pipe were found a little way off. It was then remembered that the evening he left for home a dense and sudden fog had come on, and, as he was found far from the right track, he must have lost his way, made a false step in the dark, and probably broken his neck. He must at any rate have so injured himself by a fall, as to be incapable of moving, for otherwise there was no reason why he should not have waited till morning and then retraced his steps.

This story was told to me on my asking why a certain hill, which I very often passed in my rides, was called ‘Golgotha.’ The shepherds had given it that name ever since the discovery of poor Joe’s skull on its pathless and slippery sides.

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