第16章 CHAPTER IV(4)

However,I did my best to conceal my deficiency,and before night had become comparatively expert without having betrayed myself to my companion.I dare say he knew what was going on,well enough,but was too good and kind to notice it.

At night,and by a lovely clear,cold moonlight,we arrived at our destination,heartily glad to hear the dogs barking and to know that we were at our journey's end.Here we were bona fide beyond the pale of civilisation;no boarded floors,no chairs,nor any similar luxuries;everything was of the very simplest description.Four men inhabited the hut,and their life appears a kind of mixture of that of a dog and that of an emperor,with a considerable predominance of the latter.They have no cook,and take it turn and turn to cook and wash up,two one week,and two the next.They have a good garden,and gave us a capital feed of potatoes and peas,both fried together,an excellent combination.Their culinary apparatus and plates,cups,knives,and forks,are very limited in number.The men are all gentlemen and sons of gentlemen,and one of them is a Cambridge man,who took a high second-class a year or two before my time.Every now and then he leaves his up-country avocations,and becomes a great gun at the college in Christ Church,examining the boys;he then returns to his shepherding,cooking,bullock-driving,etc.etc.,as the case may be.I am informed that the having faithfully learned the ingenuous arts,has so far mollified his morals that he is an exceedingly humane and judicious bullock-driver.He regarded me as a somewhat despicable new-comer (at least so I imagined),and when next morning I asked where I should wash,he gave rather a French shrug of the shoulders,and said,"The lake."Ifelt the rebuke to be well merited,and that with the lake in front of the house,I should have been at no loss for the means of performing my ablutions.So I retired abashed and cleansed myself therein.Under his bed I found Tennyson's Idylls of the King.So you will see that even in these out-of-the-world places people do care a little for something besides sheep.I was told an amusing story of an Oxford man shepherding down in Otago.Someone came into his hut,and,taking up a book,found it in a strange tongue,and enquired what it was.The Oxonian (who was baking at the time)answered that it was Machiavellian discourses upon the first decade of Livy.The wonder-stricken visitor laid down the book and took up another,which was,at any rate,written in English.

This he found to be Bishop Butler's Analogy.Putting it down speedily as something not in his line,he laid hands upon a third.This proved to be Patrum Apostolicorum Opera,on which he saddled his horse and went right away,leaving the Oxonian to his baking.This man must certainly be considered a rare exception.New Zealand seems far better adapted to develop and maintain in health the physical than the intellectual nature.The fact is,people here are busy making money;that is the inducement which led them to come in the first instance,and they show their sense by devoting their energies to the work.Yet,after all,it may be questioned whether the intellect is not as well schooled here as at home,though in a very different manner.Men are as shrewd and sensible,as alive to the humorous,and as hard-headed.Moreover,there is much nonsense in the old country from which people here are free.

There is little conventionalism,little formality,and much liberality of sentiment;very little sectarianism,and,as a general rule,a healthy,sensible tone in conversation,which I like much.But it does not do to speak about John Sebastian Bach's Fugues,or pre-Raphaelite pictures.

To return,however,to the matter in hand.Of course everyone at stations like the one we visited washes his own clothes,and of course they do not use sheets.Sheets would require far too much washing.Red blankets are usual;white show fly-blows.The blue-bottle flies blow among blankets that are left lying untidily about,but if the same be neatly folded up and present no crumpled creases,the flies will leave them alone.It is strange,too,that,though flies will blow a dead sheep almost immediately,they will not touch one that is living and healthy.Coupling their good nature in this respect with the love of neatness and hatred of untidiness which they exhibit,I incline to think them decidedly in advance of our English bluebottles,which they perfectly resemble in every other respect.The English house-fly soon drives them away,and,after the first year or two,a station is seldom much troubled with them:so at least I am told by many.Fly-blown blankets are all very well,provided they have been quite dry ever since they were blown:the eggs then come to nothing;but if the blankets be damp,maggots make their appearance in a few hours,and the very suspicion of them is attended with an unpleasant creepy crawly sensation.The blankets in which I slept at the station which I have been describing were perfectly innocuous.