The Women Pioneers

Auckland Star, Volume XLIX, Issue 244, 12 October 1918, Page 13

The Women Pioneers

and in it had to stow her piano brought with her from the Old Country. Many a time Bishop Sehvyn was her guest there, and when in Auckland she herself was a guest at Government House, where Sir George Grey delighted [ in her music When I went to live at M , my old I schoolmaster, a man of mighty intellect, . said: "Ah, that is where my old friend, I Mrs. P ■ lived. She was the finest lady t I ever knew." " Mrs. P has been dead these many years, but her children's children do her » memory honour. They bear the etamp j , of inherited refinement. Her influence stretched far beyond her immediate family. She came with her husband to M ' long before the days of Board Schools. I To add to their small income, and also £ no doubt to find au outlet for her 1 strong mentality, she opened a little , school for settlers' daughters. They '■ came to her from all the scattered dis- ) tricts around, and were taught a little music, botany and general knowledge, , as well as " the three R's." From their i instructress they caught a little of her . 1 fine manners, and learned lessons of .(high thinking and right living that they . have carried with them far into middle age, and which have given to their faces j the strength and beauty of the inner . light. An old lady, who died some years ago, ! at the age of ninety, came to New /sea- [ land with her husband from a bcautifnl I , Kentifch home, where she had been deferred to by willing servants, and bad , ' there learned no one of the useful arts ' of housekeeping. When I knew her she ' was little and old, and fine, 'with masees ] ' of silky white hair and the complexion ■ of a beautiful child. Out in the wilderi ness she had lived her life, and seen her i children and grandchildren grown up .around her. When well over seventy ehc A took charge of her son's home, and little

Let no base. Ingrate soul forget Or tlfcesteeii), In coming years, The labours of the pioneers Who here the Tree of .Empire set And watered It with Mood nnd tears. . We honour and esteem them yet! —Prom "Zealaudia's Jubilee." Like the scent of a faded spray of lavender found in the pages of an old Bible is the memory of our grandmother. All through the days of our childhood that cheery old face passed in and out of the family life, and we particularly remember that grandmother was always there when the dear mother-face wae missing , . Perhaps the house had to be kept very still, and it was grandmother who led us out under the trees, to keep all us young ones quiet with , tales of the early days when mother w«e only a little girl, and often got into scrapes, just as we did. Dear grandmother, she has been a cherished memory bhe.se many years. While we marvel at the way in which the women of the Empire have risen to heights of devotion and patriotism during these troubled days, let us also remember what the British women ot fifty I or sixty years ago did for this new land, i Many of them left homes of ease and luxury to follow their young husbands across the world. Some broupht with them large families of young children. Sometimes (he youngest child of the family was registered in the parish of Stepney, where are recorded the births of all tjhose born on British &hipe at sea. For many years the hostility of the Maoris barred the fertile plains of the Waikato, and co rt came about that large numbers of the earliest eettlere in the Auckland province went north into the hilly Northern Peninsula. After the lapse of sixty and more years!

the northern eerttlera are still crying as One in the WiWernees for improved communications with the city and for the Toading of their lands. Picture it, then, when the settlers of the Jane Gifford and the Duchess of Argyle and other early emigrant ships made tibeir first homes there! Their sole communication with Auckland was by cutter. By it they brought down their families and small stocks of household plenieihrngß. By it must come nil the necessities of life other than what the little farm could be made to produce. Our grandmothers could not run to the shop whenever they became short of supplies. It was a serious matter in those days to run out of salt. Some of our grandmothers had even to evaporate small quantities of this most, necessary article from sea water, until the next trip of the cutter replenished their etores. Grandmother made her own eoap and candles from the tallow, spun her own wool, and knitted the family's soek6 and singlets. I never remember her without a sock or a long stocking on the needles for one of us young ones. Grandmother used to tell how her first home wae a Taupo whare. which a friendly Maori helped to build. It was! some time before grandfather could; clear the site of their future home and split the palings for the cottage. The paling cottage was "home" for manyi years. On moonlit nights one could see! the Maori-bug-s—great black fellows,, that the children hated because of their offensive smell—following each other in long black lines up the palings. Those early settlers had little time to spare to help their womenfolk. They; themselves worked from daylight till' dark, clearing their land and putting inj the necessary grass. One Enpl4sh lady lived in a raupo whare for three years,

ones, and with the assistance of a girl of ten she achieved wonders. Her skill at cooking and all the niceties of a wellordered table was marvellous. To partake of one of her dinners wae to realise the science and poetry of mere food.

"We always did things so," she would say, "in my father's house." She loved to tell of the splendours of that Englkh home; but sometimes I would persuade her to tell mc tales of her early days in New Zealand. She would then speak nf the escape of Sir George Grey's 'prisoners from the Kawau Island. These were the Maoris captured at Bangiriri, and first placed on a hulk in the Auckland Harbour, from which they were after wards transferred to Kawau in the Hauraki Gulf. Once on the island, the i natives found no difficulty in eluding their guards, and swam across to the mainland. There they made for Mount Tamahue, or Mount Hamilton, aa you will find it called on the map. This Iβ the highest point of the backbone range that separates the two coasts of the Northern Peninsula. Tamahue overlooks al] the eastern settlements between the Mahnrangi and Omaha Harbours. In the early hours of a spring morning the absconding natives reached my old friend's farm. Her husband was away, and no other man about. In those troubled days she might well be alarmed to find herself surrounded by a gesticulating crowd of brown warriors, half clothed, and armed with clubs torn from the trets. She understood that they wanted food. So she shut her two beautiful young daughters inside the house, and she herself found the Maoris whnt they wanted. They took her washing boiler and built a fire under it in the yard, and in it cooked a meal of potatoes and bacon. When they had satisfied their hunger they took the remainder of the food available, and

A TRIBUTE TO OUR GRANDMOTHERS EARLY TRIALS AND TRIUMPHS (By E. A. W. WILSON.)

started for Tamahue. There they stayed unmolested till the end of the war, subsisting on wild ipigs and roots. In time the settlers grew to know that they had nothing to fear from them. You may still trace that encampment of the Maoris on Tamahue by the soft native grass surrounding the great flat stone on the summit, and by the marks on the trees showing iwhere at one time they had been barked on one side to roof the native huts. We can well imagine the dread with which our grandmothers looked towards that frowning, bush-dad bill — sometimes to see it swathed in the white sea mints, sometimes to see the smoke of enemies' fires rising from its summit. They had need of brave hearts and a firm truet in the protection of God. How our grandmothers worked in those early days! One old lady has often told mc how she and her sister helped their father to burn shell lime. They had no brothers at home to help. Perhaps they had been out all night at an infrequent dance, and on returning in the dawn would find their father waiting to be off to a distant beach for shell before the tide fell. They would hastily lay aside their party dresses, and get into rough skirts and old coats, then race down to the boat, currying with them a hastily collected basket of food. It would not have done to let their grim old father think that the dance would interfere with the day's work. If so, the dance wonld have been forbidden. Father and (laughters would row, towing behind them the heavy punt. When they reached the beach they would pull the punt up as far as possible on the shell, and wait till the tide fell. Now they might cat their breakfast. When the shell wae uncovered they had to get to work with shovels and buckets awl load the punt—and hard work it was!

But these girls were used to toil and did not feel it as much as we of a softer generation would. By the time the punt was loaded it was dead low tide, and there was a long wait till the tide rose again. So the girls would leave their father to hie little black pipe and curl themselves up under a shady tree to sleep away the hours of waiting. Think of the hard, long pull back home, towing that loaded shell punt! It needed both muscle and a stout heart. Another day they would help to build the shell up over a great pile of dry ti-tree logs, and cover it with turfs. The fire would be lit under the logs and the shell slowly burnt to lime. This was the only manure the farmer of that day had to loosen up the stiff clay soil of the North, and there was always a ! ready sale for it. Sometimes the girls had to help tow a punt full of lime up some distant creek. A plentiful supply of ti-tree firewood was also needed for the kiln. This had to be cut, carried, and stacked. My old friend told mc how one day she and her sister took a day off to visit two girl friends further up the river. In the early morning they pulled up, looking forward to a day's rest and a good gossip with their friends. But this was not to be the programme of the day. On arrival they found that word had been sent that a cutter was coming next day to pick up a load of firewood. The firewood had to be carried some distance and thrown over a cliff. There were only the daughters of the house to do it. These were big, fine looking girls, the belles of the countryside. They were already hard at work, co there was nothing for the visitors to do but borrow some old clothes and help. All morning they toiled, and when the noon sun hung hot in the sky, one of the daughters of the

houee proposed a rest and dinner, but the eldest and most determined, sister would hear of no pause till the work wae finished. So they tailed on till the sun was setting in the west, and the last of the ti-tree lay on the rocks below. Were not these worthy pioneers? They became the ancestresses of a race of sturdy men. One 01 them married a sailor, and while her husband sailed the seas she sowed her fields and worked her farm. To-day she is the grandmother of hardy men children who are serving their King both on the seas and on the battlefields of Europe. One would be apt to think that euch a round of toil would leave no time for the refinements of life. My old friend was always a great reader. When out with her father for shell she always carried a book with her—l>ickens, Scott, or Thackeray. Later in life she had the opportunity of living with those who put a fair amount of education in her way. To-day she is a discriminating reader; she can read music and play the harmonium a little; she takoe an interest in art, and times her annual excursion to town to coincide with the Arts Exhibition; she keeps abreast of current thought, anil though well over seventy, takes a keen interest in world politics and in the war. Gould college and a degree give us much more to carry with us into old age? Here is the story of another grandmother. She left a town in the Lowlands of Scotland with her husband and cix children to come to New Zealand. They took up land in the North of Auckland, on the banks of a lovely creek. Within a few months of getting a small cottage built, the husband and father died. His was the first grave in the settlement of M . The old eons sought and found work at the shipyards in the estuary. The mother, with the help of the youngest boy and the

two girls, kept the little farm going The children rowed several miles three days a week down the river to school. There were long years of toil and hardship till the older boys became men, and could relieve her of much of the burden. She was always cheery and ready to help any neighbour in distress. The women on the lonely farms looked to grandmother to help them through eeasons of illness, and never asked in vain for help.

In those early days of struggles and hardship, it was the law of life never to refuse help in time of need, otherwise living in those isolated places would have heen almost impossible. A bit of ploughing or help with some bushfelling, by some grateful neighbour, helped grandmother from time to time over the roughest places. She lived to be eightyfive, loved and honoured by her children and grandchildren. Among her descendants are members of three learned professions, and numerous grandsons are serving at the front. Grandmothers such as these of ours have helped to build up our young nation, and it is their heroic virtues and sacrifices that have made it possible today for New Zealand to answer the Empire's call for men, and yet more men. And what of the women of today? Cannot we, too, look forward to the hope that by quietly doing our simple duty now, our children's children will rise up to call us blessed, and point to us as the font of strong vitality from which they drew their strength. Our grandparents toiled and endured to make this fair land. Two generations later their grandsons have gone forth to defend it from the invader. It remains for the women who stay behind to combat the social evile that have arisen among us because of our long period of esee and luxury.