THE THEODOLITE.

Auckland Star, Volume LXV, Issue 129, 2 June 1934, Page 1 (Supplement)

THE THEODOLITE.

OLD BUSH DAYS. A SURVEYOR'S JOKE. (By J.C.) The old-time surveyor, who traversed range and gully and swamp and set up his trig-stations on every commanding peak, did not usually accumulate much wealth in his life's profession, but one thing he did gather in plenty and that was a stock of yarns of the bush, the Maoris and the tragedies and humours of the back-country and the camp and trail. And particularly the lighter side of life. This is one of those camp tales of the men of theodolite and chain, told years ago by a veteran who has carried his last swag, aud crossed his last range. The leading figure in the story was one of his old collfeagues in the North Taranaki and King Country surveys that preceded the coming of the settler and the roads and railways. * » » » There was a survey camp on the western fringe of the forest that spread its green mask over hill and valley for sixty miles inland from the belt of open fern land along the coast. The Government "Kai-ruri," as the Maoris called him, the man who ruled lines and made maps, was subdividing for settlement a block of wild country, lately purchased from the Maoris by the Crown. A mile away was the village of a little tribe, a settlement whose people kept the surveyors supplied with potatoes and fresh pork. Out near the coast was a small pakeha township. Isaac and Jacob. In the Maori kainga there were two old fellows whom the Kai-ruri had christened Isaac and Jacob \ because he could never remember their long native names. Every now and again they came in to the survey camp with backloads of potatoes and pork and sometimes a basket of fish from the tidal river. Isaac and Jacob were greywhiskered, and tattooed of face. Their invariable attire was an old shirt and a plaid shawl belted round the waist. Isaac wore a grey shirt, Jacob wore a blue one; otherwise there was very little to distinguish the one from the other. They might have stood for two old twins, each tattooed exactly like each other on cheeks and nose, and whiskered exactly the same to an inch.

One morning Isaac and Jacob came trudging into camp along the muddy track, each with a large flax basket of potatoes, flax-strapped to his shoulders. Each kit contained, say, fifty to sixty pounds weight.

"Here, Cookey," said Isaac, in Maori, "we've brought a tine lot of potatoes for you, the best ever dug. But we want them weighed this time; we won't sell them to you unless they are weighed. When we sell potatoes to other white men they weigh them for us, and we watch the weighing carefully so that we won't be cheated. Now weigh them for us, won't you, Cookey?" The camp cook knew sufficient Maori to gather the meaning of-'lsaac's speech. He had no steelyards or any other kind of weighing machine. He Went to the Boss, who was sitting at a camp table in his tent plotting in some field-work. "Old Isaac and Jacob have brought in some spuds, Boss," said Cookey, "and they want them weighed. What'll I do about it? I've got no scales or anything." The Boss went out to the old bushmen. Isaac explained the trouble, and Jacob explained it all over again—long speeches in Maori. They had been instructed by their young people that they must get their potatoes weighed. Each of their baskets held about 501b of potatoes, they had been told, and they must got five shillings for that hundred pounds, to be given them in two halfcrowns and nothing else, because they wanted to divide it equally. "All right," said the Boss. "Wait a moment, young fellows." He went to his tent "and returned carrying his theodolite on its tripod. "I have no machine with weights, but I have this, which is far better. It will measure your taewa exactly, and it will tell me, too, whether there are any stones in the bottom of the baskets. Now get your potatoes up there and stand clear, and don't talk while I'm measuring them, or it will spoil the work." The Mysterious Instrument. Isaac and Jacob placed the baskets on a rough timber platform, near the cooking tent, and hurried clear of the theodolite, which the Kai-ruri adjusted with great care. No Maori cared to get in front of that mysterious instrument with its wizardly eye. The Man-who-measures ogled the potato baskets through the theodolite telescope and turned the screws this way and that. Isaac whispered to Jacob, "He is measuring them all right, isn't he, Jacob?" "Hush," cautioned Jacob; "be quiet or you'll spoil the whole thing." The Kai-ruri figured away a while with a pencil on a piece of paper. Then he turned to the patriarchs and announced the result. "Sixty pounds of taewa —that's thirty in each basket. Your young people must have been pulling your old legs for you when they told you there were a hundred pounds. Sixty pounds —that's three shillings, and there you are." Isaac took the money, which he tied up carefully in a corner of his shirt, to await division at home, and Cookey

, took possession of the baskets. The old i men backed respectfully from the theoi dolite, anil . trotted -off to the village, Isaac every now.and again feeling his i knot.tecl-np shirt, to assure himself that i the money was still there. '"That Kai-rurl Is a man of great knowledge, isn't he, Jack?" said Isaac. "It was the magic glass that did it," ■ replied Jack. "It can see everything, and it never makes a mistake." Presently Isaac, who had been immersed in profound thought, asked his companion, "But are you quite sure that the Kai-ruri had the magic glass fixed aright? Because wc have all heard that pakeha machines have a way of measuring good to the pakeha's advantage. How is it that our baskets, which should hold a hundred pounds of potatoes, as our young people told us, only hold sixty pounds when the glass gets its eye on them ?" That indeed was a problem which neither Isaac nor Jack could solve. But Isaac presently brightened up. "I know," he said. "We'll ask ray son-in-law Piri about it. You know lie was in prison for a year for being a Hauhau and setting fire to the store at the Mokau. So he is wise in all the ways of the pakeha now. He will know." "Yes, yes," said Jack. "That will be just the thing. We'll ask Piri." Making it Right. I never heard what Piri's diagnosis ; was, nor whether the patriarchs penetrated the mystery of the magical gla3s before they passed on to the Spiritland. But I do know that the Kai-ruri, having had his little joke, gave a pound note to the old fellows when he next saw them and bade them go out to the township and imbibe cheering liquors and make a day of it. This they did gladly and thoroughly, with many benedictions on the loving kindness of their rangatira friend, chief of all the magicians of the Glass. So thoroughly that after peeling off their shirts in the main road between the two public houses they engaged in a terrific duel with their spear-tongued taiahas, yelling the war-songs of their rowdy youth, to the diversion of the populace and the scandalising of their parson, who chanced to come riding through the township. That was the Kairuri's good deed for that day.