the new zealand mainland—if the word may be used for anything so slender and fragmentary—is long as well as slight. nearly eleven hundred miles divide the south end of stewart island from cape maria van diemen. if the outposts of the main are counted in, then the dominion becomes a much larger, though more watery, expanse. its length is about doubled, and the contrast between the sunny kermadecs and the storm-beaten aucklands becomes one of those things in which science delights. it is a far cry from the trepang and tropic birds (the salmon-pink bo’suns) of the northern rocks to the sea-lions that yawn at the casual visitor to disappointment island. the kermadecs—to employ an overworked expression—bask in the smiles of perpetual summer. the three kings, lying thirty-eight miles beyond the tip of the north island, might be portuguese isles, and the chathams—as far as climate goes—bits of france. but the peaty groups of the shivering south lie right across the pathway of the antarctic gales. even on their [205]quieter days the grey sky that overhangs them looks down on a sea that is a welter of cold indigo laced with white. relentless erosion by ocean rollers from the south-west has worn away their western and south-western shores into steep cliffs, cut by sharp-edged fissures and pitted by deep caves. for their vegetation you must seek their eastern slopes and valleys, or the shores of land-locked harbours. on some of the smaller of them, parakeets and other land-birds learn to fly little and fly low, lest they should be blown out to sea. the wild ducks of the aucklands are flightless, and in the same group are found flies without wings. in the snares the mutton-bird tree lies down on its stomach to escape the buffeting blasts, clutching the treacherous peat with fresh rootlets as it grows or crawls along. the western front of the aucklands shows a wall of dark basalt, thirty miles long, and from four hundred to twelve hundred feet high. no beach skirts it; no trees soften it; only one inlet breaks it. innumerable jets and little cascades stream from its sharp upper edge, but—so say eye-witnesses—none appear to reach the sea: the pitiless gusts seize the water, scatter it into spray-smoke and blow it into air. the wind keeps the waterfalls from falling, and their vapour, driven upward, has been mistaken for smoke from the fires of castaway seamen.
there is, however, one race to whom even the smallest and wildest of our islets are a source of unceasing interest and ever-fresh, if malodorous, pleasure. zoologists know them for the procreant cradles of [206]antarctic sea-fowl. and that, from the kermadecs to the bounties and the antipodes, they assuredly are. on raoul—the largest kermadec—you may walk among thousands of mutton-birds and kick them off their nests. on the west king, gannets and mackerel gulls cover acre after acre so thickly that you cannot help breaking eggs as you tread, or stumbling against mother-gannets, sharp in the beak. on dismal antipodes island, the dreary green of grass and sedge is picked out with big white birds like white rosettes. in the aucklands, the wandering albatross is found in myriads, and may be studied as it sits guarding its solitary egg on the rough nest from which only brute force will move it. on the spongy snares, penguins have their rookeries; mutton-birds swarm, not in thousands, but millions; sea-hawks prey on the young of other birds, and will fly fiercely at man, the strange intruder. earth, air, and sea, all are possessed by birds of unimaginable number and intolerable smell. penguins describe curves in the air as they dive neatly from the rocks. mutton-birds burrow in the ground, whence their odd noises mount up strangely. their subterranean clamour mingles with the deafening discords of the rookeries above ground. on large patches the vegetation is worn away and the surface defiled. all the water is fouled. the odour, like the offence of hamlet’s uncle, “is rank: it smells to heaven.” mr. justice chapman found it strong a mile out to sea. in that, however, the snares must cede the palm to the bounties; dreadful and barren rocks on which a few [207]insects—a cricket notably—alone find room to exist among the sea-birds. in violent tempests the foam is said to search every corner of the bounties, cleansing them for the nonce from their ordure. but the purity, such as it is, is short lived. all who have smelt them are satisfied to hope that surf and sea-birds may ever retain possession there. indeed, as much may be said for the snares. science may sometimes perambulate them, just as science—with a handkerchief to her nose—may occasionally pick her steps about the bounties; but none save savants and sea-lions are likely to claim any interest in these noisome castles of the sea-fowl.
some of our larger outposts in the ocean are not repulsive by any means. if human society were of no account, the kermadecs would be pleasant enough. one or two of them seem much more like robinson crusoe’s fertile island, as we read of it in defoe’s pages, than is juan fernandez. even the wild goats are not lacking. flowering trees grow on well-wooded and lofty raoul; meyer island has a useful boat-harbour; good fish abound in the warm and pellucid sea. to complete the geniality, the largest island—some seven or eight thousand acres in size—has a hot bathing-pool. one heroic family defy solitude there, cultivate the fertile soil, and grow coffee, bananas, figs, vines, olives, melons, peaches, lemons, citrons, and, it would seem, anything from grenadilloes to potatoes. twenty years ago, or thereabout, our government tempted a handful of settlers to try life there. a volcanic disturbance scared them away, however, and the one family has [208]since plodded on alone. stories are told of the life its members live, of their skill in swimming and diving, and their struggles with armies of rats and other troubles. once when the steamer that visits them yearly was late, its captain found the mother of the family reduced to her last nib—with which she nevertheless had kept up her diary. on board the steamer was the lady’s eldest daughter, a married woman living in new zealand. she was making a rough voyage of a thousand miles to see her mother—for two days. sooner or later—if talk means anything—auckland enterprise will set up a fish-curing station on meyer island. that, i suppose, will be an answer to the doubts which beset the minds of the lords of the british admiralty when this group, with its breton name, was annexed to new zealand. the colony asked for it, and the lords commissioners of the admiralty were duly consulted. their secretary wrote a laconic reply to the colonial office observing that if new zealand wanted the kermadecs my lords saw “no particular reason” why “that colony” should not have “these islands or islets”; but of what possible use they could be to new zealand my lords couldn’t imagine.
the three kings mark a point in our history. it was on the 5th of january that tasman discovered them. so he named them after the three wise kings of the east—caspar, melchior, and balthasar. the great king, the largest of them, is not very great, for it contains, perhaps, six or seven hundred acres. it is cliff-bound,[209] but a landing may usually be made on one side or the other, for its shape resembles the device of the isle of man. into one of its coves a cascade comes down, tumbling two hundred feet from a green and well-timbered valley above. tasman saw the cascade; and as the heemskirk and her cockle-shell of a consort were short of fresh water, he sent “francis jacobsz in our shallop, and mr. gillimans, the supercargo,” with casks to be filled. when, however, the two boats neared the rocks, the men found thereon fierce-looking, well-armed natives, who shouted to them in hoarse voices. moreover, the surf ran too high for an easy landing. so the dutchmen turned from the white cascade, and pulled back to tasman, who took them aboard again, and sailed away, to discover the friendly islands. thus it came about that though he discovered our country, and spent many days on our coasts, neither he nor any of his men ever set foot on shore there. did francis jacobsz, one wonders, really think the surf at great king so dangerous? or was it that good mr. gillimans, supercargo and man of business, disliked the uncomfortable-looking spears and patu-patu in the hands of the rarewa men? tasman, at any rate, came to no harm at the three kings, which is more than can be said of all shipmasters; for they are beset with tusky reefs and strong currents. a noted wreck there was that of the steamship elingamite, which went down six years ago, not far from the edge of the deep ocean chasm where the submarine foundations of new zealand seem to end suddenly in a deep cleft of ocean.
[210]
thanks to a thick white fog, she ran on a reef in daylight on a quiet sunday morning. she was carrying fifty-eight of a crew and about twice as many passengers. there was but a moderate sea, and, as those on board kept cool, four boats and two rafts were launched. though one boat was capsized, and though waves washed several persons off the wreck, nearly every one swam to a boat or was picked up. one woman, however, was picked up dead. no great loss or sufferings need have followed but for the fog. as it was, the shipwrecked people were caught by currents, and had to row or drift about blindly. their fates were various. the largest boat, with fifty-two souls, was luckiest: it reached hohoura on the mainland after but twenty-five hours of wretchedness. there the maori—like the barbarous people of melita—showed them no small kindness. it is recorded that one native hurried down to the beach with a large loaf, which was quickly divided into fifty-two morsels. others came with horses, and the castaways, helped up to the kainga, had hot tea and food served out to them. whale-boats then put out and intercepted a passing steamer, which at once made for the three kings. there, on tuesday, eighty-nine more of the shipwrecked were discovered and rescued. one party of these had come within a hundred and fifty yards of an islet, only to be swept away by a current against which they struggled vainly. finally, they made great king, and supported life on raw shell-fish till, on the third day after the wreck, the sun, coming out, enabled them (with the aid of their [211]watch-glasses) to dry the six matches which they had with them. five of these failed to ignite; the sixth gave them fire, and, with fire, hope and comparative comfort. they even gave chase to the wild goats of the island, but, needless to say, neither caught nor killed any.
one of the rafts, unhappily, failed to make land at all. a strong current carried it away to sea, and in four days it drifted sixty-two miles. fifteen men and one woman were on it, without food or water, miserably clothed, and drenched incessantly by the wash or spray. the woman gave up part of her clothing to half-naked men, dying herself on the third day. four others succumbed through exhaustion; two threw themselves into the sea in delirium. three steamers were out searching for the unfortunates. it was the penguin, a king’s ship, which found them, as the fifth day of their sufferings was beginning, and when but one man could stand upright. the captain of the man-of-war had carefully gauged the strength of the current, and followed the raft far out to the north-east.
gold and silver, to the value of ￡17,000, went down with the elingamite. treasure-seekers have repeatedly tried to fish it up, but in vain.
weaving the kaitaka
five hundred miles to the east of banks’ peninsula lie the pleasant group called the chatham islands. they owe their auspicious name to their luck in being discovered in 1790 by the government ship chatham. otherwise they might have been named after lord [212]auckland, or mr. robert campbell, or stewart the sealer, as have others of our islands. they are fabled of old to have been, like delos, floating isles, borne hither and thither by sea and wind. the apollo who brought them to anchor was the demi-god kahu. the myth, perhaps, had its origin in the powerful currents which are still a cause of anxiety to shipmasters navigating the seas round their shores. they are fertile spots, neither flat nor lofty, but altogether habitable. the soft air is full of sunshine, tempered by the ocean haze, and in it groves of karaka-trees, with their large polished leaves and gleaming fruit, flourish as they flourish nowhere else. neither too hot nor cold, neither large nor impossibly small—they are about two and a half times the size of the isle of wight,—the chathams, one would think, should have nothing in their story but pleasantness and peace. and, as far as we know, the lot of their old inhabitants, the moriori, was for centuries marked neither by bloodshed nor dire disaster. the moriori were polynesians akin to, yet distinct from, the maori. perhaps they were the last separate remnant of some earlier immigrants to new zealand; or it is possible that their canoes brought them from the south seas to the chathams direct; at any rate they found the little land to their liking, and living there undisturbed, increased till, a hundred years ago, they mustered some two thousand souls. unlike the maori, they were not skilled gardeners; but they knew how to cook fern-root, and how to render the poisonous karaka berries innocuous. their rocks and reefs were nesting-places [213]for albatrosses and mutton-birds; so they had fowl and eggs in plenty. a large and very deep lagoon on their main island—said to be the crater of a volcano—swarmed with eels.
they were clever fishermen, and would put to sea on extraordinary rafts formed of flax sticks buoyed up by the bladders of the giant kelp. their beaches were well furnished with shell-fish. finally, the fur seal haunted their shores in numbers, and supplied them with the warmest of clothing. indeed, though they could weave mantles of flax, and dye them more artistically than the maori, they gradually lost the art: their sealskin mantles were enough for them. as the life of savages goes, theirs seems to have been, until eighty years ago, as happy as it was peaceful and absolutely harmless. for the moriori did not fight among themselves, and having, so far as they knew, no enemies, knew not the meaning of war. they were rather expert at making simple tools of stone and wood, but had no weapons, or any use therefor.
upon these altogether inoffensive and unprovocative islanders came a series of misfortunes which in a couple of decades wiped out most of the little race, broke its spirit, and doomed it to extinction. what had they done to deserve this—the fate of the tasmanians? they were not unteachable and repulsive like the tasmanians. thomas potts, a trained observer, has minutely described one of them, a survivor of their calamitous days. he saw in the moriori a man [214]“robust in figure, tall of stature, not darker in colour perhaps than many a maori, but of a dull, dusky hue, rather than of the rich brown” so common in the maori. prominent brows, almond eyes, and a curved, somewhat fleshy nose gave the face a jewish cast. the eyes seemed quietly watchful—the eyes of a patient animal “not yet attacked, but preparing or prepared for defence.” otherwise the man’s demeanour was quiet and stolid. bishop selwyn, too, who visited the chathams in 1848, bears witness to the courteous and attractive bearing of the moriori. they were not drunken, irreclaimably vicious, or especially slothful. they were simply ignorant, innocent, and kindly, and so unfitted for wicked times and a reign of cruelty.
white sealers and whalers coming in friendly guise began their destruction, exterminating their seals, scaring away their sea-fowl, infecting them with loathsome diseases. worse was to come. in the sealing schooners casual maori seamen visited the chathams, and saw in them a nook as pleasant and defenceless as the city of laish. one of these wanderers on his return home painted a picture of the group to an audience of the ngatiawa tribe in words which mr. shand thus renders:—
[215]
“there is an island out in the ocean not far from here to the eastward. it is full of birds—both land and sea-birds—of all kinds, some living in the peaty soil, with albatross in plenty on the outlying islands. there is abundance of sea and shell-fish; the lakes swarm with eels; and it is a land of the karaka. the inhabitants are very numerous, but they do not know how to fight, and have no weapons.”
“te hongi”
his hearers saw a vision of a maori el dorado! but how was it to be reached? in canoes they could not venture so far, nor did they know the way. doubtless, however, they remembered how stewart of the elisabeth had carried rauparaha and his warriors to akaroa in the hold of his brig a few years before. another brig, the rodney, was in cook’s strait now, seeking a cargo of scraped flax. her captain, harewood, was not such a villain as stewart; but if he could not be bribed he could be terrified—so thought the ngatiawa. in port nicholson (wellington harbour) lies a little islet with a patch of trees on it, like a tuft of hair on a shaven scalp. nowadays it is used as a quarantine place for dogs and other doubtful immigrants. thither the ngatiawa decoyed harewood and a boat’s crew, and then seizing the men, cajoled or frightened the skipper into promising to carry them across the sea to their prey. whether harewood made much ado about transporting the filibustering cannibals to the chathams will probably never be known. he seems to have had some scruples, but they were soon overcome, either by fear or greed. once the bargain was struck he performed his part of it without flinching. the work of transport was no light task. no less than nine hundred of the maori of cook’s strait had resolved to take part in the enterprise, so much had rauparaha’s freebooting exploits in the south inflamed and unsettled his tribe. to carry this invading horde [216]to the scene of their enterprise the rodney had to make two trips. on the first of them the maori were packed in the hold like the negroes on a slaver, and when water ran short suffered miseries of thirst. had the moriori known anything of war they might easily have repelled their enemies. as it was, the success of the invasion was prompt and complete. without losing a man the maori soon took possession of the chathams and their inhabitants. the land was parcelled out among the new-comers, and the moriori and their women tasted the bitterness of enslavement by insolent and brutal savages. they seem to have done all that submissiveness could do to propitiate their swaggering lords. but no submissiveness could save them from the cruelty of barbarians drunk with easy success. misunderstandings between master and slave would be settled with a blow from a tomahawk. on at least two occasions there were massacres, the results either of passion or panic. in one of these fifty moriori were killed; in the other, perhaps three times that number of all ages and sexes. on the second occasion the dead were laid out in a line on the sea-beach, parents and children together, so that the bodies touched each other. the dead were of course eaten; it is said that as many as fifty were baked in one oven. i have read, moreover, that the maori coolly kept a number of their miserable slaves penned up, feeding them well, and killed them from time to time like sheep when butcher’s meat was wanted. this last story is, i should think, doubtful, for as the whole island was but one large slave-pen, [217]there could be no object in keeping victims shut up in a yard. the same story has been told of rauparaha’s treatment of the islanders of kapiti. but kapiti is but a few miles from the main shore, and one of his destined victims, a woman, is said to have swum across the strait with her baby on her back. the unhappy moriori had nowhere to flee to, unless they were to throw themselves into the sea. the white traders and sealers on the coast were virtually in league with their oppressors. the only escape was death, and that way they were not slow to take. chroniclers differ as to the precise disease which played havoc with them, but i should imagine that the pestilence which walked among them in the noonday was despair. at any rate their number, which had been 2000 in 1836, was found to be 212 in 1855. the bulk of the race had then found peace in the grave. it is a relief to know that the sufferings of the survivors had by that time come to an end. long before 1855 the british flag had been hoisted on the chathams and slavery abolished. after a while the new zealand government insisted upon a certain amount of land being given back to the moriori. it was a small estate, but it was something. the white man, now lord of all, made no distinction between the two brown races, and in process of time the maori, themselves reduced to a remnant, learned to treat the moriori as equals. these better days, however, came too late. the moriori recognised this. for in 1855, seeing that their race was doomed, they met together and solemnly agreed that the chronicles of their people [218]should be arranged and written down, so that when the last was dead, their name and story should not be forgotten. the conquering maori themselves did not fare so much better. they stood the test of their easy success as badly as did pizarro’s filibusters in peru. they quarrelled with their friends, the white traders and sealers, and suffered in an unprovoked onslaught by the crew of a certain french ship, the jean bart. then two of the conquering clans fell out and fought with each other. in the end a number of them returned to new zealand, and the remainder failed to multiply or keep up their strength in the chathams. in the present day moriori and maori together—for their blood has mingled—do not number two hundred souls.
wahine’s canoe race on the waikato
the affair of the jean bart is a curious story. the vessel, a french whaler, anchored off the chathams in 1839. eager to trade, the maori clambered on board in numbers. they began chaffering, and also quarrelling with one another, in a fashion that alarmed the captain. he gave wine to some of his dangerous visitors, and tried to persuade them to go ashore again. many did so, but several score were still in the ship when she slipped her cable and stood out to sea. then the frenchmen, armed with guns and lances, attacked the maori, who were without weapons, and cleared the decks of them. the fight, however, did not end there. a number of the ngatiawa were below, whither the whites did not venture to follow them. they presently made their way into a storeroom, found muskets there, and opened fire on the crew. two of the frenchmen [219]fell, and the remainder in panic launched three boats and left the ship. by this time the jean bart was out of sight of land, but the maori managed to sail back. she went ashore, and was looted and burnt. about forty natives had been killed in the strange bungling and causeless slaughter. the whalers and their boats were heard of no more. it is thought that they were lost in the endeavour to make new zealand.[6]
[6] in the journal of the polynesian society, vol. i., mr. a. shand summarises and compares the various versions of this odd business.
we have seen how the maori began their invasion of the chathams by the seizure of the rodney at port nicholson. it is curious that the best-known incident of the subsequent history of the group was almost the exact converse of this—i mean the seizure at the chathams of the schooner rifleman in july 1868. in this case, too, the aggressors were maori, though they did not belong to the chathams. they were prisoners of war or suspected natives deported thither from the north island, and kept there under loose supervision by a weak guard. their leader, te kooti, had never borne arms against us, and had been imprisoned and exiled on suspicion merely. a born leader of men, he contrived the capture of the rifleman very cleverly, and sailed her back to the north island successfully, taking with him one hundred and sixty-three men and one hundred and thirty-five women and children. the schooner was carrying a respectable cargo of ammunition, accoutrements, food, and tobacco; but the fugitives could muster between them only about thirty [220]rifles and guns. yet with this scanty supply of weapons te kooti managed to kindle a flame in the poverty bay district that took years to extinguish. finally, after massacring many settlers, and winning or losing a series of fights with our militia and their native allies, his forces were scattered, and he was hunted away with a few followers into the country of the maori king. there he was allowed to settle undisturbed. he lived long enough to be forgiven, to have his hand shaken by our native minister, and to have a house with a bit of land given to him by the government. he was not a chivalrous opponent. a savage, he made war in savage fashion. but he was a capable person; and i cannot resist the conclusion that in being banished to the chathams and kept there without trial, he was given reason to think himself most unjustly used.
native gathering
the only trouble given by the natives at the chathams in later days took the form of a little comedy. the maori there own a good deal of live-stock, including some thousands of sheep and a number of unpleasant and objectionable dogs. the maori kuri, an unattractive mongrel at the best, is never popular with white settlers; but in the year 1890 the kuri of the chathams became a distinct nuisance. a dog-tax was levied on the owners, but this failed either to make them reduce the number of their dogs or restrain them from worrying the flocks of the white settlers. if i remember rightly, the maori simply declined to pay the dog-tax. when they were prosecuted and fined, they refused to pay the fines. the [221]government of the day, with more vigour than humour, despatched a steamer to the chathams, arrested some forty of the recalcitrants, brought them to the south island, and lodged them in lyttelton gaol. the maori, who have a keen sense of the ridiculous, offered no resistance whatever. i suspect that they did not greatly dislike the trip; it enabled them to see the world. their notion of hard labour and prison discipline was to eat well, to smoke tobacco, and to bask in the sunshine of the prison yard. it was impossible to treat them harshly. after a while they were sent home, where their adventure formed food for conversation in many and many a nocturnal korero. in the meantime their dogs lived and continued to chase sheep. at this stage the writer of these pages joined the new zealand government, and the unhappy white flock-owners laid their troubles before him. at first the little knot did not seem, to an inexperienced minister, quite easy to untie. after some cogitation, however, a way was found of ending the comedy of errors. what that was is another story. since then, no more terrible incident has disturbed the chathams than the grounding of an antarctic iceberg on their coast—a somewhat startling apparition in latitude 44° south.
otherwise the chatham islanders have gone on for the last forty years living quietly in the soft sea-air of their little arcadia, without roads and without progress. they grow wool and export it; for the rest, they exist. a small steamer visits them half-a-dozen times a year, and brings news, groceries, and clothes, also [222]the correct time. great is the tribulation when her coming is delayed. a friend of mine who witnessed a belated arrival tells me that the boat found a famine raging. the necessaries lacking, however, were not food, but tobacco and hairpins. the 60,000 sheep depastured on the islands have played havoc with some of the native vegetation, and have brought down retribution in the shape of moving drifts of blown sea-sand, whereby many acres of good pasture have been overwhelmed. however, that wonderful binding grass, the marram, has been used to stop the sand, and is said to have stayed the scourge. much native “bush” is still left, and shows the curious spectacle of a forest where trees spread luxuriantly but do not grow to much more than twenty feet in height. that, says professor dendy, is due to the sea-winds—not cold, but laden with salt. in this woodland you may see a veronica which has become a tree, a kind of sandalwood, and a palm peculiar to the islands. that beautiful flower, the chatham island lily—which, by the way, is not a lily,—blooms in many a new zealand garden.
the auckland isles lie some three hundred miles south of our mainland. they are nearly four times the size of st. helena, where, as we know, several thousand people have in the past managed to live, chiefly on beef and a british garrison. no one, however, now lives in the aucklands. new zealanders speak of their climate in much the same strain as [223]frenchmen use when talking of november fogs in london. there are, however, worse climates in several parts of the united kingdom. it does not always rain there; there are many spots where you are sheltered from the wind. it is not so cold but that tree-ferns will grow—the group is their southern limit. the leaning or bowed habits of the forest are due as much, perhaps, to the peaty soil as to the sou’westers. vegetables flourish; goats, pigs, and cattle thrive. so far are the valleys and hill-sides from being barren that their plant-life is a joy to the new zealand botanists, who pray for nothing so much as that settlement may hold its hand and not molest this floral paradise. pleurophyllums, celmisias, gentians, veronicas, grass-trees, spread beside the sea-gulfs as though in sub-alpine meadows. the leaves are luxuriant, the flowers richer in colour than on our main islands. the jungle of crouching rata tinges the winding shores with its summer scarlet. dense as are the wind-beaten groves, the scrub that covers the higher slopes is still more closely woven. the forest you may creep through; the scrub is virtually impenetrable. a friend of mine, anxious to descend a steep slope covered with it, did so by lying down and rolling on the matted surface. he likened it to a wire-mattress—with a broken wire sticking up here and there.
in addition to their botanical fame, the aucklands have a sinister renown among seafaring men. nature has provided the group with nearly a dozen good harbours. two among these, port ross and carnley [224]harbour, have found champions enthusiastic enough to style them the finest seaports in the world. yet, despite this abundance of shelter, the isles are infamous as the scene of shipwrecks. they are in the track of australian ships making for cape horn by passing to the south of new zealand. in trying to give a wide berth to the snares, captains sometimes go perilously near the aucklands. to go no further back, eight wrecks upon them have been recorded during the last forty-five years; while earlier, in 1845, there are said to have been three in one year. the excellent harbours, unluckily, open towards the east; the ships running before the westerly winds are dashed against the terrible walls of rock which make the windward face of the group. the survivors find themselves on desolate and inclement shores hundreds of miles from humanity. many are the tales of their sufferings. even now, though the government of new zealand keeps up two well-stocked dep?ts of food and clothing there, and despatches a steamer to search for castaways once or twice a year, we still read of catastrophes followed by prolonged misery. five men from a crew of the grafton, lost in 1864, spent no less than eighteen months on the islands. at length they patched up the ship’s pinnace sufficiently to carry three of them to stewart’s island, where they crept into port adventure in the last stage of exhaustion. the two comrades they had left behind were at once sent for and brought away. less lucky were four sailors who, after the wreck of the general grant, two years later, tried to [225]repeat the feat of a boat-voyage to stewart island. they were lost on the way. indeed, of eighty-three poor souls cast away with the general grant, only ten were ultimately rescued, after spending a forlorn six months on the isles. the case of the general grant was especially noteworthy. she did not run blindly against the cliffs in a tempest, but spent hours tacking on and off the western coast in ordinary weather. finally, she found her way into a cave, where she went down with most of those on board her. at least ￡30,000 in gold went with her, and in the effort to find the wreck and recover the money, the cutter daphne was afterwards cast away, with the loss of six lives more.
cruel indeed was the ill-luck of the crew of the four-masted barque dundonald which struck on the aucklands in march 1907. they saw a cliff looming out just over their bows shortly after midnight. an attempt to wear the ship merely ended in her being hurled stern foremost into a kind of tunnel. the bow sank, and huge seas washed overboard the captain, his son, and nine of the crew. sixteen took refuge in the tops, and one of them, a russian, crept from a yard-arm on to a ledge of the cliff. after daylight a rope was flung to him and doubled, and along this bridge—sixty feet in air above the surges—fifteen men contrived to crawl. on reaching the summit of the cliff they discovered the full extent of their bad fortune. they had been cast away, not on the larger aucklands, but on the peaked rock ominously named [226]disappointment island. it contains but four or five square miles, and is five miles away from the next of the group. heart-stricken at the discovery, the chief mate lay down and died in a few days. the second mate’s health also gave way. the carpenter and sail-maker, whose skill would have been worth so much to the castaways, had been drowned with the captain. a few damp matches and some canvas and rope were almost all that was saved from the ship before she disappeared in deep water.
for seven months the survivors managed to live on disappointment island, showing both pluck and ingenuity. for a day or two they had to eat raw sea-birds. then, when their matches had dried, they managed to kindle a fire of peat—a fire which they did not allow to expire for seven months. they learned a better way of cooking sea-fowl than by roasting them. at the coming of winter weather they dug holes in the peat, and building over these roofs of sods and tussock-grass, lay warm and dry thereunder. these shelters, which have been likened to kaffir kraals, appear to have been modelled on russian pig-sties. the seamen found a plant with large creeping stems, full of starch, and edible—by desperate men. when the seals came to the islands they mistook them for sea-serpents, but presently finding out their mistake, they lowered hunters armed with clubs to the foot of the cliffs, and learned, after many experiments, that the right place to hit a seal is above the nose. they found penguins tough eating, and seal’s flesh something to be reserved [227]for dire extremity. their regular ration of sea-birds, they said, was three molly-hawks a day for each man. as to that, one can only say, with dominie sampson, “prodigious!” searching their islet they lighted upon a crack in the ring of cliff where a waterfall tumbled into a quiet little boat-harbour, the bathing-pool of sea-lions. then they determined to build a boat and reach that elysium, the main island, with its dep?t of stores. with greased canvas and crooked boughs cut from the gnarled veronica, which was their only timber, they managed to botch up something between a caricature of a welsh coracle and “the rotten carcase of a boat” in which antonio and the king of naples turned prospero and miranda adrift. rowing this leaky curiosity with forked sticks, three picked adventurers reached the main island—only to return without reaching the dep?t. another boat, and yet another, had to be built before a second transit could be achieved; and when the second crossing was effected, the coracle sank as the rowers scrambled on shore. this, however, completed the catalogue of their disasters, and was “the last of their sea-sorrow.” the dep?t was reached in september, and in the boat found there the tenants of disappointment island were removed to comfort and good feeding at port ross. with the help of an old gun they did some cattle-shooting on enderby island hard by, and in the end were taken off by the government steamer hinemoa in december.
campbell island, another habitable though sad-coloured spot, is a kind of understudy of the auck[228]lands—like them, but smaller, with less striking scenery and scantier plant life. it has, however, a local legend odd enough to be worth repeating. in the hodden-grey solitude there are certain graves of shipwrecked men and others. among them is one called the grave of the frenchwoman. on the strength of this name, and of a patch of scottish heather blooming near it, a tale has grown up, or been constructed, which would be excellent and pathetic if there were the slightest reason to suppose it true. it is that the frenchwoman who sleeps her last sleep in rainy campbell island was a natural daughter of charles edward, the young pretender. she has even been identified with the daughter of prince charles and clementina walkenshaw, the scottish lady who met him at bannockburn house in the ’45, and long afterwards joined him abroad. this daughter—says the new zealand story—became, when she grew up, an object of suspicion to the prince’s jacobite followers. they believed that she was a spy in the pay of the english court. so they induced stewart, a scottish sea-captain, to kidnap the girl and carry her to some distant land. stewart—whose name remains on our stewart island—did his work as thoroughly as possible by sailing with her to the antipodes of france. on the way he gained her affections, and established her at campbell island, where she died and was buried. such is the story; sentiment has even been expended on the connection between bonnie prince charlie and the patch of heather aforesaid.
it is true certainly that there was a daughter named [229]charlotte or caroline, or both, born to the prince and miss walkenshaw in the year 1753. but it was the mother, not the daughter, who was suspected of being a spy in english pay. clementina left the prince, driven away by his sottish brutalities, just as did his legal wife, the countess of albany. the countess adjusted her account by running away with alfieri the poet. abandoned by both women, charles seems to have found some consolation in the society of his daughter charlotte, to whom, even in his last degraded years, he showed his better side. he went through the form of making her duchess of albany. she remained with him till his death in 1788, and seems to have followed him to the grave a year afterwards. in any case, stewart, the sea-captain of the legend, did not find his way to our southern isles till the earlier years of the nineteenth century. that was too late by a generation for jacobite exiles to be concerned about the treachery of english agents. he is described in surgeon-major thomson’s book as a man “who had seen the world and drunk burgundy,” so it is possible that the story may have had a burgundian origin. who the buried frenchwoman was i cannot say, but french seamen and explorers, as the map shows, have visited and examined campbell island. it would be a desolate spot for a frenchwoman to live in; but when we are under earth, then, if the grave be deep enough, all lands, i suppose, are much alike.
