Colonial facts and fictions: Humorous sketches

Seeing and hearing so much about rabbits when in New Zealand made me anxious to discover the law or laws which governed their multiplication. When I was in the train on my way to Dunedin, I, MacTavish, and MacCallum More tried to investigate the question, but I am sorry to say that we signally failed. MacTavish tried to illustrate it with a pack of cards he carried, beginning by dealing out a king and queen to represent a pair of rabbits. Under each of these he would place six more cards to represent their offspring. But at this point a controversy arose as to how many should be males and how many females. But work as we would, we never seemed to have enough cards to illustrate the thing properly.

After an hour or two of argument, our ideas were so hopelessly entangled, that for relaxation MacCallum tried to teach us a game he called poker.

The rabbit question, however, was only dormant. At Dunedin we were told an intercolonial congress had sat upon the rabbit question. One outcome of their labours was to recommend the various Colonial Governments who had found it impossible to legislate against an enemy they did not understand, to offer a handsome sum to the first person who successfully placed the rabbit question on an intelligent basis.

The prize was won by a Mr. Macalister, a schoolmaster in Dunedin. His treatise on the subject, which is known as ‘The Bunnyian Calculus,’ has since been recommended as a text-book for the junior classes in the various Government schools.

We called on Mr. Macalister when in Dunedin, who, when he heard that we were interested in the important question to which he had devoted so much attention, gave us a pressing invitation to hear the children at their rabbit exercises.

‘Noo, sir,’ said he, ‘ye wad aiblins like to hear the laddie bairns dae their Bunnyian Calculus; it’s jist wonnerfu.’

We said we ‘aiblins would.’

‘Well, ye maun ken then,’ continued he, addressing himself, chalk in hand, to his blackboard, ‘that a guid deal depends on the assoumptions even in the exawct scieences. Ane is that the doe rabbit litters aucht times in the twalmonth; and anither, that her feemly consists o’ twa he and four she anes. Monnie mae assoumptions maun be made that it wadna jist a’ thegither dae to explain to the callants. Ho’someever, we’ll reckon the term o’ life to be sax years, and start wi ae bonnie winsome doe rabbit. It is evident there will be—

(1 + 4) she rabbits at the end of the first term.
(1 + 4)²  ”      ”        ”       ”   second term.
(1 + 4)⁴⁸ ”      ”        ”       ”   sax years.

Here we should soobtrawct ane, for the auld doe will e’en noo dee, while the first four o’ her offspring’ll be hirplin, and maun be deducted at the end o’ the next term, belike. But as we maun ca’ cannie wi’ the bairns, an’ no ding them doited a’ thegither, we’ll just pay no kind of attention whatever to the deed anes; for weel I wat, it maks sma’ difference in the result, those that dee by natural means, and won’t affect the first few significant figures. Nae doot ye see, that it’s jist compownd interest payable aucht times in the twalmonth, and if we further aloo’ for the deed anes, that is exactly as if a brokerage, as it were, were soobtrawcted at the end o’ each payment after the aucht and twa score. I’ll just show ye the exact formula wi’ r for the number o’ she rabbits and R: r the ratio of total rabbits to she ones at a litter, n being the number o’ years that elawpsed.’

And consulting his book, this is what he wrote on another board:

    R

N = - (1 + r)⁸ⁿ⁻¹ [(1 + r){(1 + r)⁴⁸ - 8n - 1} + 8n]

    r

with the most evident satisfaction, and artistically chalking the whirrlies with the greatest care. It gave me a twinge of toothache, I must say.

He then completed his numerical example, saying:

‘At the end o’ a score o’ years the number of rabbits descended frae one doe is

    6

N = - (1 + 4)¹⁶⁰

    4

  = 684 × 10¹¹².’

‘No wonder,’ says my friend to me, who seemed to understand it—‘aiblins,’ ‘hirplin,’ ‘doited,’ and all—‘no wonder the Society for the Protection of Rabbits congratulated themselves; and,’ he added, ‘all the unnatural ways since tried to decrease these rabbits don’t affect the practical result either.’

All the time Macalister’s demonstration had gone on, Mac and I were giving significant nods, and grunting assent to all he said.

‘Noo,’ says Macalister, ‘the children will do a few practical exercises.’

We were rather tired, and, as it was nearly one o’clock, somewhat hungry; but not wishing to offend the scholar, we said we were delighted.

‘Jock,’ said he, pointing to the board, ‘hoo mony muckle is that?’

‘Six hundred and eighty-four,’ said the boy.

‘Sax hunner an auchty-four, my braw bairn; but whaat? Tell me whaat? dinna be blate and skirl a’ thegither.’

With that each child drew a long breath, clutched the back of a bench, shut his eyes, and began, ‘Of millions of millions of millions of millions of millions,’ as if they were never going to stop.

Suddenly the schoolmaster lifted his hand, and the noise ceased.

‘How many times did ye say millions of millions of millions?’ asked the teacher.

‘Five score and twelve times,’ was the answer.

‘Quite correct, you see,’ said Macalister. ‘It’s only an application of the formula. The rabbits which die don’t affect the answer.’

It was now one o’clock, and Mac was shuffling his feet to get away.

‘Just one more problem,’ said Macalister; and before we had time to make any excuse about catching our steamer, Macalister said to the school: ‘With the same conditions as before, assume that Captain Cook had landed a pair of rabbits in New Zealand instead of a pair of pigs, how many would there now be in the country? Before stating the answer, half of you can go to your dinners, but mind and be back by two o’clock.’

Half the school had no sooner gone than the remainder of the children commenced saying, ‘Millions of millions of millions of millions,’ in a monotonous sort of rhythm. When they were going to stop we could not tell.

At two o’clock those who had been to their dinner came back, and as they dropped into their places struck up the millions of millions tune. The detachment who had commenced the answer, being in this way relieved, retired to their dinners.

‘It’s a gey lang answer,’ said the schoolmaster, ‘isn’t it?’ Mac looked black. ‘Better take a seat; you will appreciate the children’s intelligence much better.’

It was then close on three o’clock, and still the children kept on singing ‘Millions of millions of millions.’

‘Wonderful children,’ I remarked. ‘How many more times will they say “Millions of millions of millions”?’ I inquired.

‘Oh,’ said the schoolmaster, ‘the number of times they will say it will be millions of millions of millions of millions of millions.’

Mac looked furious. Millions of millions of millions. ‘The old fool’s mad,’ he whispered.

‘Civility costs nothing,’ I replied; ‘his tongue will get tired in time.’

But still the schoolmaster kept repeating, ‘Millions of millions of millions.’

‘Ask him how many years he will be before he gets to the end of his answer?’

As it was now four o’clock, and the lamps were being lighted, I ventured to ask the schoolmaster how many days it would be before he had finished his answer.

His face lighted up with a smile, and he said, ‘Well, perhaps in millions of millions of millions of millions,’ and there he was off again.

‘How many years will it be before the children have finished?’ I broke in.

‘Oh, in millions of millions of millions,’ he again went on.

‘Well, then, we’ll come and hear some more of the answer to-morrow,’ said Mac.

‘Thank you very much for your entertainment, Mr. Macalister; your children are very intelligent, and so are you. Good-bye, Mr. Macalister, good-bye.’ But said I, at the door, ‘What were the other assumptions you alluded to?’

‘Well, well,’ says he, ‘these rabbits maun hae nae haevings at a’, sic as scruples o’ conscience or regard to the laws o’ the Kirk o’ Scotland.’

The landlord of our hotel was delighted when he heard that we had interviewed Macalister on the rabbit question. Some of the members of the legislature who have not been blessed with the gift of the gab have found the schoolmaster’s calculations quite valuable. When they want to block proceedings one of them asks a question about rabbits. It doesn’t matter much what it is. How many tons of phosphorus will it require to clear the rabbits out of New Zealand? How many tons of grass do the rabbits in New Zealand eat every year? How many rabbits would it take to fill the Pacific Ocean? Anything will do.

No sooner is the question asked, than up jumps a member, and from an equation in the Bunnyian Calculus, which he shows to be correct, begins to say ‘Millions of millions of millions,’ until everybody has left the house.

They have now brought forward a Bill compelling those who speak on rabbits to express time intervals as geological periods.

After our experiences at Dunedin, Mac and I were cautious when we asked questions about the rabbit plague.

Dunedin is a fine city, and is in every way creditable to its founders. It is certainly hilly, but these difficulties are overcome with tramcars moved by an underground wire rope similar to that which has been for so many years successfully used in San Francisco. The banks and churches are of course noticeable, and so are the shops.

At the meeting of four streets in the centre of the town, there is a miniature of Sir Walter Scott’s monument in Edinburgh. This is to the memory of a Mr. Cargill, an energetic gentleman and pioneer in the earlier days of Dunedin.

On the night of our arrival we were entertained with a torchlight procession, and the howlings of the Salvation Army.

At the Museum Mac and I had our first interview with the remains of the moa. We saw some of their feathers, and a mummified larynx of one of these animals. I am not sure whether the moa could sing, but anyhow he had a larynx. What was more, he had a gizzard. In one corner of a glass case there were about a coal-scuttleful of white pebbles, which had been removed from the gizzard of a moa. The moa had therefore a taste for mineralogy.

‘We shall get some valuable facts about this animal before we have done,’ remarked Mac.

Then, turning to the director of the Museum, who kindly accompanied us round the show, he blandly inquired whether the moa ever attacked travellers.

‘It is an extinct bird, sir,’ said the director, looking very much disgusted at Mac.

‘Oh, it’s extinct, is it?’ was the reply.

Birds are in great force in the Museum, especially the extinct ones. One blue-looking fellow, almost as big as a small goose, fetches £250 apiece at the British Museum.

Besides the birds there were the usual lot of stuffed sharks and whales which museums provide themselves with. I really believe that a good-sized whale is the best bit of furniture that can be bought for a juvenile museum. You get such a lot for your money, and it’s very attractive to visitors, especially to the nursemaids and children.

There was certainly enough in the Dunedin Museum to occupy a student for a lifetime, and the curator deserves great credit for what he has done towards educating the young New Zealanders about the animal kingdom. A New Zealander, if left to himself, must necessarily conclude that the inhabitants of the world, are few in number. All that New Zealand possessed prior to the introduction of ‘Captain Cook’ was a bat and a rat.

There are no snakes in the country, and if ever any man introduces one he is threatened with an immediate lynching. One felt inclined to tell the Iceland story when I heard that there were no snakes, but I judiciously refrained. It might make a New Zealander cross.

Another interesting place to visit is the University; but the best of all things is to take a ride in a tramcar to the top of one of the mountains, and have a look at the panorama of bay and island down below. Everywhere we went—to railway stations, to hotels, in trains or on trains—we were sure to see half a dozen people called Mac. This led my friend at every opportunity into conversation with his neighbours as to whether there were many Scotchmen in New Zealand.

‘Eh, no, mon; maybe thurs a wee sprinkle o’ Scotus,’ was a typical reply.

This always enabled Mac to tell them that was what he thought. He had been looking out for his countrymen, and was sorry to find that they were so poorly represented. One or two of the casual acquaintances saw the joke, and gently snorted.

We joined our ship at Port Chalmers, which is about eight miles’ ride in the train from Dunedin. Looking back, we saw the hills and valleys of the city we were leaving. One thing which was very striking, was the number of houses built on the top of the highest hills. Judging from the thousand-foot climb that the people who live in these houses must often indulge in, they cannot be very lazy. To live on a pinnacle is indicative of a romantic nature, and I thought Scotch folks were only practical.

At Port Chalmers we began to load up with passengers and assume the character of a coaster. The wharf was crowded, and so were our decks.

‘Good-bye, Mac. Tell Maggie I’ll be up by next boat.’ ‘Mind that hawser there.’ ‘Give my love to Charlie, and send me word how baby is,’ and a thousand other private communications, mixed up with the blustering of sailors, was what we heard. Then there was a lot of crying, and a great deal of kissing. Mac wanted to know how it was that the girls never kissed us when the steamer left.

At seven o’clock next morning, we were steaming between the high grassy hills, about 2,000 feet in height, which bound the harbour of Lyttelton. Everything looked big and grand. A passenger who had travelled said it looked like Madeira. Instead of trees there were a few patches of snow.

Lyttelton is a quiet little town on the side of a steep hill. From here you go by train to Christchurch. You are hardly out of the town before you drive into a tunnel, which is a mile or more in length. Before making this tunnel, which cost a fabulous sum of money, the good folks of Christchurch could only reach their harbour by climbing the high hills, which we saw as we steamed into Lyttelton. These hills consist of volcanic rock, and the driving of the tunnel through them proved that they were not so solid as they appeared, for here and there large cavernous spaces were met with.

On emerging at the other side, we were amongst the green fields and furze fences of the famous Canterbury Plains. Christchurch is a large town conducted on strictly moral principles. Its streets are wide and numerous. Notwithstanding the existence of steam-trams, good shops, and a fair amount of traffic, it appeared to be dull. Perhaps it was the general flatness which created this impression. The only shop which had unusual attractions was an establishment for the sale of music and musical instruments. It seemed to contain everything, from a Jew’s harp to a church organ. It must be a musical depôt for the Colonies.

Christchurch has many churches and a cathedral. From the spire of the latter, which you are allowed to ascend on paying a shilling, an extensive view of this portion of New Zealand may be obtained.

The pride of the place is, however, the Museum, which is reckoned by its energetic curator, Dr. Von Haast, to rank amongst the best in the world. It is certainly the best museum within a radius of many thousands of miles. It contains something of everything, from the autograph of Nelson to a sewing-machine. There is a fine gallery of paintings and statuary. Antiquities, from mummies to mediæval armour, galleries of geological specimens, rooms full of birds and stuffed animals, other chambers filled with bones, a Maori house chock-a-block with Maori treasures, and finally a room full of moas. In the Moa room we met a Chinaman.

‘Good-morning, John,’ said Mac; ‘you live at Christchurch?’

‘No, I come this side all samee you; my wantchee see moa. S’pose can catchee moa, can catchee plenty dolla.’

‘Um, how’s that?’ asked Mac.

‘You never hea?’ inquired John; ‘no man talkee you about Mr. Haast? Mr. Haast dig garden one day, find plenty moa bones. Then he send letter all country: “Suppose you send me twenty piecee mummy, 400 piecee papyros, two sphinxes, one smalla pyramid,” he talkee Egyptian man, “I sendie you one piecee moa.”’

John then said that the Egyptian Government were delighted with the offer, and sent the twenty piecee mummy, 400 piecee papyros, two sphinxes, and the small pyramid, and then received their allowance of moa.

‘Next time he write that man live top side North Pole.’

I suppose John meant that he entered into communication with the Esquimaux.

‘“You sendee two piecee polar bear, and one piecee iceberg, you can catchee all same Egypt man.”’

Of course the Esquimaux were delighted. Next, John told us he wrote to the British Government.

‘“I wantee five piecee steamer, four piecee outside walkee can see, and another piecee inside walkee no can see; I pay you plenty moa bones.’”

And according to our friend he went on swapping moa bones all over the universe, obtaining in exchange Turner’s masterpieces, button-hooks, anchors, relics from ancient Rome, specimens of small volcanoes, pumpkins, and, in short, almost everything you see in the Museum. These the talented and energetic director has classified and reduced to the orderly system in which they are now presented to the visitor.

Although Christchurch has been a centre from which moa bones have been distributed throughout the world, the best collection of them has remained in their old habitat. There were big moas and little moas, and each of them had a different name. The first bit of moa that went home was a thigh-bone. The uninitiated would have pronounced it as belonging to an elephant. Professor Owen, however, said it was the relic of a gigantic bird. People smiled; now the Professor smiles.

The biggest moa had a neck like a giraffe. When he straightened and stood on his toes, he might have picked a weather cock off the top of a church spire. Naturalists say that the moa could not fly, but an old Maori, who I think was a king, told me that they could fly beautifully. Sometimes you could flush a dozen in a morning, and the shooting was grand. When they dropped they shook the ground like an earthquake. The best were roasted. I quite believed the latter statement, as their singed bones could be seen by the basketful in every museum we went to. They were pretty tough, and strangers, after once partaking of the delicacy, often refused to take any ‘moa.’ Thus the name of the animal.

Mac had not a soul for the anatomy of an extinct animal, and said it was dry.

This took us from the Museum to an hotel, where we found a bar supplied by an overflowing artesian well. Many of the people in Canterbury get their water from artesian wells. A hole is bored, and up shoots the water. Geologists say that this is due to hydraulic pressure communicated from the hills through inclined strata. These theories may be true where inclined strata exist, but it does not explain the coming up of water, when the strata are horizoned by flat river plains, which is the case in many parts of the world. The artesian-well theory wants considerable amplification in our mind.

At the railway station we found a little boy in uniform who wanted to insure our lives! The reason for his anxiety was that we might suffer harm in the tunnel. ‘It’s only a penny, sir, and we insure nearly everybody.’

In the Colonies they will insure you against a heartache. At the book-store I observed a notice that anyone found after a railway accident with a copy of the Daily Chronicle (if I remember rightly), issued on the day of the disaster, in his possession would receive £500.

After a rough-and-tumble night, crammed in a small cabin with three sick passengers, I was not sorry to find that we were steering into Wellington. On all sides there were high and irregular hills. Some of them on the left were capped with snow. The view was by no means so smooth in its outlines as on entering Lyttelton. The hills, instead of being round and green, were ragged and brown. Wellington is situated at the foot of these hills at the head of the bay. The position seemed to be snug and quiet, but we soon discovered it was quite the contrary.

Wellington seems to have been built in a sort of natural funnel, through which there is a perpetual gale of wind. You can always tell a man from Wellington, for wherever he goes he will grip hold of his hat on turning a corner. When we got ashore we found that we had to grip our hats, and could quite understand how a prolonged residence at Wellington might lead to an instinctive desire to save your hat on turning a corner.

We had a talk with a resident about the winds of Wellington.

‘Wind, indeed! Why, it’s only a week or so ago when a whole girls’ school was blown clean out to sea. Now they have invented a way for reefing their petticoats. Too much sail doesn’t do in these parts. All the nursemaids and children never turn out now without carrying a small kedge and a few fathoms of chain hooked to their perambulators.’

‘Good for windmills,’ I remarked.

‘Yes, we thought so, until we tried them. One was blown away and landed somewhere up amongst the Maoris, who refused to return it, saying that it had been presented to them last year by a gentleman from Australia. The other mill we anchored down, but when it once commenced to move, we were never able to stop it.’

‘And how was that?’ said I, and I was told the story of

‘It was a sad affair, that was. It was Dickey Adams who thought he could make a fortune out of the Wellington winds. We told him to let them alone.

‘“Look,” Dickey, said I, “nothing can stand against these Wellington winds. You’ll find your blessed windmill up amongst the Maoris the day after you put it up, and they’ll say it was given to them last year by a gentleman from Australia. Don’t you remember that train which was blown backwards right through the terminus, and landed the passengers forty miles in the opposite direction to what they had started?” says I. “Dickey, Dickey, it’ll never do to fight against the Almighty. The Almighty has made these winds, and we must bear them.”

‘But Dickey wasn’t to be persuaded, and it just ended by his being ruined and breaking his heart and then dying. It was just like pulling at a pig’s tail to talk to Dickey. The more you pulled back the more Dickey went ahead.

‘Well, we watched Dickey’s mill being put up with considerable interest. Every stone he stuck in he had dovetailed into those below it, for all the world like a lighthouse. At last he got the top on, and then, waiting for a fine day when the breeze slackened a little, he put up the sails. These he held fast with chains and anchors.

‘At last the mill got finished, and Dickey invited us all up to see him slip the anchors, and give the machinery a turn, just to ease it a bit, you know, for it was all new. Of course we all went, and Dickey was as happy as a skylark. There he was, hopping about and chirping away to everyone about the way he had built his mill. Dickey’s smiles did me good. It was certainly a red-letter day for him. Some of the old hands shook their heads, and called the mill Dickey’s Folly.

‘At last the inspection was over, and then came the loosening. He had had his chains nicely arranged by a sailor man, he said, but no sooner was one cast off than the old thing gave a groan and a heave, and away she went carrying the other three chains with her. My word, how we scattered as the sails went flying round quicker and quicker, and at every turn three great chains came beating on the ground. People down below thought there was an earthquake. By-and-by, as the chains didn’t come off, some of us ventured back, and Dickey said he would go inside and put on a patent friction brake which he had invented, and show us how it stopped.

‘But what do you think we found? Why, we found the blessed sails, with their twenty fathoms of iron tassels, were lashing round and round right in front of the mill door. Of course Dickey couldn’t get inside. “But the wind may shift a bit by-and-by,” said he, and he looked quite cheerful. So we sat down and watched it.

‘All that night the thumping of the chains and the rattling of Dickey’s machinery stopped a lot of us from sleeping. Next morning we found that Dickey, who had been sitting up watching his machine all night, as was natural, was looking a bit anxious.

‘This went on for fully a week, until, instead of being a curiosity, Dickey’s mill became a nuisance, and several who lived near him said they had earthquakes enough about the place without his starting a perpetual one. Next they began to hint that their window-frames were getting loose, and the children couldn’t sleep, and that Dickey’s mill must be stopped somehow. A few who sympathized with Dickey’s bad luck suggested that they need not trouble, it would wear itself out in a week or so. Others, however, said Dickey had built it so strong that it might go thumping and turning for a lifetime, and proceedings ought to be taken against it as a public nuisance.

‘Well, all this ended by the Town Council sitting to discuss how Dickey’s mill was to be got rid of. Some suggested blowing it up with powder, others said we ought to get the artillery to come down from Auckland; but the suggestion which found the greatest favour was to pump on it with the fire-engines and then try if the thing would rust up solid. The fire-brigade had a fine time of it; the more water they pumped into Dickey’s mill, the quicker the hanged thing seemed to go—it just acted like oil.

‘By this time Dickey was getting pretty low in spirits, and with sitting up all night had got quite thin. Many’s the time I walked up to the hill to see Dickey sitting on a bank of stones with his face in his hands and great tear-drops trickling down his face. What with building the thing, paying compensation for new window-frames, making presents to the women all round just to keep their tongues quiet, and paying the bill presented to him by the fire-brigade, unless the mill stopped, Dickey was a ruined man.

‘Then the cold weather came on, and yet Dickey would never leave his mill. He was always hoping the wind might change, and he could get inside.

‘It finished him at last, however. One cold frosty morning the children who used to take him his tucker came running back, saying Dickey was dead. It was true enough; there was poor old Dickey lying out stiff and cold, on the frosty grass. We were all sorry about Dickey. Wellington wind killed a good man when it carried off poor old Dickey.’

‘And how did the windmill finish?’ I asked.

‘Why, a man fenced it in, and used to take visitors up to see it at a shilling a head. One night, however, a heavier gale than usual blew, and carried it right away.’

Here Mac broke in, ‘I suppose a Maori has got it, and says it was presented to him last year by a gentleman from Australia.’

Our communicative acquaintance was evidently a little piqued by Mac’s query, and replied that he didn’t know; but anyhow, after Dickey’s windmill, no wonder people talked about ‘windy Wellington.’

Another thing that Wellington is famous for is its earthquakes. Many of these have been sufficiently violent to become landmarks in New Zealand history. It has often happened that the coast-line to the west of Wellington has been permanently raised several feet by earthquakes. Wellington has been a gainer by these upheavals, and houses which were once on the sea-shore are now some distance back.

Any year may bring the announcement that Wellington has taken another upward start, and what is now the quay may be a street with houses on either side. Events like these, together with the minor shakings which are of continual occurrence, very naturally alarm many of the Wellingtonians. At one time nearly every person in Wellington felt it a duty to have all loose articles like ornaments on shelves fastened in position by wires.

The greatest proof that Wellingtonians fear these disturbances is the fact that nearly all their houses are built of wood. The Government buildings are spoken of as the largest wooden buildings in the world. Wellington is certainly wooden as well as windy. I met with quite a number of people who had seismological experiences to relate. Some apparently did not mind the shakings—just tremors, they said. These people were, for the most part, new chums, who had not yet been imbued with a due respect for plutonic force. Others told me that they did not mind earthquakes so much as at first, but that they had gradually come to have a great antipathy for them; they alarmed their wives and children so much.

There is a feeling of insecurity with these phenomena; you feel you can’t stop them, and you expect after a thing has begun, the next shake may be like that of 1855, when all the buildings came down.

‘The last good shake we had,’ said a gentleman, ‘gave a terrible fright to my neighbours, who are married people living in a two-story house. Every night they were very particular to see that things were locked up safely. I suppose they were afraid of their servants getting out at night. When they went upstairs they always took the keys with them, and put them under their pillows. One night a shake came on pretty smart, and they both bundled out of bed and bolted downstairs. It wasn’t until they had got to the bottom and tried to open the front door that they remembered that unless they went back to get the keys they were fast prisoners. Now, will you believe me, there they stood shivering in the cold at their front door, both afraid to go upstairs and get the keys, until the motion finished. They leave the keys downstairs now.’

‘What did you do?’ I asked.

‘Oh, I, well—I bolted through the front parlour window, and landed on my stomach on a flower-bed. It is as true as I am here that I could feel that flower-bed palpitating as if it were alive.

‘Oh, there were some funny things happened that night. The old man who is supposed to study these things up at our observatory was found by his wife standing in his nightshirt out in the snow, with the window-sash round his neck. You know, the old ass had bolted head first through his window without stopping to open it. When his wife asked him what he was doing, he told her that he had just stepped out to make an outside observation; “I wanted to see if the chimneys moved very much, my dear,” he stammered.

‘Down at the club there were a lot of our boys and some naval officers playing poker. You don’t know that game, I suppose? It is a game where they have a pool, and this keeps getting bigger and bigger as the game goes on. They call this pool a Jack Pot. Well, when the shake came on, the pot was reckoned to be worth about £45. People never thought about money when they felt the movement and heard the timbers creaking; they just looked at each other and then stampeded. Some went for windows, some for doors, and others, who did not know the place, got jammed in the kitchen, and the ends of blank passages. One man landed in the bath-room, another found himself a prisoner in the lavatory.

‘When the thing was over, one of the party was missing. Now just guess where they found him. Why, shaking and shivering in a cupboard.

‘Well, after a laugh and a drink—for it needs something to square your nerves after a good earthquake—they sat down to finish their game. But do you think they found the Jack Pot on the table? No, sir, not a bit of it; and what was more, they never did find it.

‘It was, however, observed that the man that was shaking in the cupboard, and at whom they had laughed for being in such a funk, bought himself a new watch that week. General opinion held that he had never been in a funk at all, but had just stayed behind until his friends had cleared, and then nobbled the pool, after which he quietly walked into the cupboard.

‘You ought to have seen the mess our town was in next morning. All the chimneys were slewed round, tiles were shaken off the houses, plaster was down everywhere. It just looked as if the Russians had been in and bombarded the place. It cost us on an average £100 apiece to put things straight.

‘Up in the churchyard all the gravestones were turned round, but the curious thing was that they had all gone in the same direction. The disturbance gave us conversation for a fortnight.

‘You know, when we go to call at a house in Wellington it is just as common to begin the conversation by—“That was a nasty shock last night,” as to begin by telling people “the weather is getting a little colder.”’

‘Which way do these earthquakes come?’ I asked.

‘Why, some folks say they come one way, and others say they come another. They go by their senses, you see, and half of them lose their senses when an earthquake comes.

‘Our old observatory man says they come from the sea, and that the motion we feel may be in all directions, twisting and squirming about, first one way, then another. Then again, you’re not moved so much if you’re up on high ground, as you are down on the soft stuff.’

To gain as much information as possible, I asked if there were any theories about how these things start.

‘Theories, why, yes, plenty of them. Some say they are volcanic—explosion of steam in fissures—others say they are caused by the rocks suddenly breaking, adjusting themselves to a position of equilibrium, the observatory man calls it. I don’t believe in the theories. I think earthquakes are just electrical phenomena, and kind of subterranean lightning and thunderstorm.

‘Just to show you what I mean, the other day I was out having dinner with Harris up the hill, when one of the hanged phenomena came along and shook the house as if it was going to fetch it down. I knew if it was so bad up there, down below I might expect at least to find my chimneys through the roof.

‘As I knew the state my wife and daughters would be in, I didn’t stop to finish dinner, but went off as hard as my legs could carry me home.

‘When I got in, what do you think I saw? My wife was knitting, with her toes on the fender, and my daughters were playing with a little cat they had.

‘“Good gracious, Tom!” said my wife, “we thought you were dining with Mr. Harris. What’s the matter? You look too frightened to tell us. Is it serious?”

‘“Thank God you’re safe,” said I, holding myself against the door-post, and panting for breath, for I had run the last mile or so.

‘“Safe!” they all said, “of course we’re all safe. What’s the matter?”

‘“Oh, Tom, Tom!” said my wife, rushing up and putting her arms round my neck, “don’t keep us in suspense. Is it something dreadful?”

‘“Why, the earthquake,” said I.

‘“Earthquake!” said they, “there hasn’t been an earthquake.”

‘“You’re crazy, Tom,” said my wife.

‘“Why, Harris’s house has been nearly shaken down, and I came to see how you were getting on.”

‘Then they laughed, and told me I had been dreaming. Well, to be called crazy, to be accused of dreaming, and to miss my dinner, set me thinking.

‘That very afternoon I made inquiries from all my friends in the town about the disturbance, and what do you think I found? One thing I found out was, that it had just gone through the town in a straight line. It had worked just like the subtle fluid works; it had travelled along the shortest distance between two points. It hadn’t gone to the right or the left, but it had gone as electricity goes, in a straight line, and therefore I say that earthquakes are electricity. And what is more, when we get some railroads through the country, the stuff will gradually escape along the metals, and these underground thunderstorms, as I call ’em, will stop. Now what do you think of that for a theory?’ said he.

He finished up by telling me the following story about Soft Sammy.

‘In many countries when an earthquake takes place,’ he began, ‘the land goes down. At Lisbon it went down so suddenly that it buried a whole lot of people. In our country, so far as I can make out, the land appears to have a habit of going up. In ’55 about 4,600 square miles of land rose in some places nine feet, and the breadth of the beach increased more than 100 feet.

‘All this, you know, occurred near Wellington, and it has kept on occurring, off and on, ever since. The trouble and litigation these earth-jerks have cost us have been something terrible.

‘After the first jump-up, people were for a time too scared to know what they ought to do. Most of them, when they recovered a bit, began to scratch about amongst their ruins, trying to root out their property. Most of the things had got so flattened that it was difficult to tell what was yours and what was somebody else’s.

‘One man sued another for having been digging in the wrong ruins. The plaintiff deposed that the defendant had not only trespassed, but had stolen his kitchen-clock. The article was produced in court, and the defence held it not to be a clock, but a warming-pan.

‘If it was a clock, the judge remarked that he should give the case in favour of the plaintiff; but if it was a warming-pan, he should be compelled to side with the defendant.

‘Do you know, the thing had been so flattened, that there wasn’t a jury in Wellington could decide whether the thing was a clock or a warming-pan. One man stuck to it that it was a frying-pan, and from the smell of it should say it had last been used to cook beefsteak and onions.

‘While all this was going on in the town, the people who lived along the quay were speculating as to when the water was coming back. There were all the ships lying high and dry, and, as far as you could see, there was a broad beach covered with rocks and seaweed. It wasn’t so many days before the mussels and stuff began to putrefy, and when the breeze set in from outside, the smell was horrible.

‘One day, as we were walking along the new beach, we observed that here and there some pegs had been driven in, just as if somebody had been staking out a claim; and when we came to inquire, we found that somebody had been staking out a claim.

‘The fellow who did it was a man who lives up there,’ and our acquaintance pointed up the hill to one of the biggest houses in the town. ‘At that time he was a new chum, and because we thought he was a bit soft, we called him Soft Sammy.

‘Sammy, however, took the wind out of our sails this time. Instead of pottering round his ruins like the rest of us had been doing, he had quietly staked the new ground which had been lifted up.

‘At first they told him that land between high and low water-mark was the Queen’s property, and he couldn’t hold possession. Billy, however, showed that the judge had a bit of land on which there was a ship stranded. When it came there no one knew, but that it was a long time ago there was no doubt, as there was then a tree growing out of it.

“The tree didn’t walk there,” was Sammy’s argument; “and if that land belongs to you, then the land I’ve pegged out belongs to me.”

‘The judge decided in Sammy’s favour.

‘As soon as Sammy got possession, he sent round notes to the masters of all the ships which were lying on his ground, politely informing them that unless they moved off his patch within the next twenty-four hours, he should be compelled to take action against them for trespass. He wanted to build on the ground, and they were in the way, he said.