The Press. WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 28, 1863. A FIRST YEAR IN CANTERBURY SETTLEMENT.

Press, Volume III, Issue 310, 28 October 1863, Page 2

The Press. WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 28, 1863. A FIRST YEAR IN CANTERBURY SETTLEMENT.

We have received a copy of a little work entitled " A First Year in Canterbury Settlement," by one Samuel Butler. Who Mr. Butler may be

we have not the remotest conception ; but we should in a friendly manner advise him henceforward to keep his first impressions in M.S. unf i[ they become more matured and better worth presenting to the public. The preface (which, to do Mr. Butler justice is not written by him, nor apparently with his knowledge) informs us that the " unbiassed impressions of colonial life as they fall freshly on a young mind may not be wholly devoid of interest." From this passage we should be led to suppose that Mr. Butler who writes the book is not the same Mr. Butler as one who is tolerably well known as a sheep farmer in the Kangitata district. Mr. Butler must have passed the first blush of juvenility when he arrived in this colony, and though not yet in the sere and yellow leaf is at present no youngster, but the coincidence in the Christian name is singular, and on perusing the book (which thank goodness is not long) the frequent allusion to the Kangitata district may justly seem suspicious. We can arrive at only one conclusion, and though we have no personal acquaintance with Mr. Butler himself, we confess to having expected better things than those with which he has furnished us in the book before us. The fact is that the work is one which ought never to have been published. It is crude <rad wholly destitute of method, the faults in style are numerous, and there is an abundance of those details which, though interesting enough to the family circle of the writer, and therefore well enough adapted for a M.S. letter, are excruciatingly tedious to the general reader, and ought never to be allowed to exceed that circle for which they were originally intended. We grant that it is very tempting to publish letters of friends that may reach us from a distant quarter, and which, read through the eyes of affection, may seem deserving of a larger circulation than they can obtain in M.S., but it must be remembered in the present regular Xoachian deluge of literature that " of making books there is no end," and that unless valid reasons can be shown for supposing that a book ie actually demanded by the public, or would be demanded if ita contents were known, it is far wiser to refrain from publishing one.

It is possible that these letters may be more palatable, or rather one degres less unpalatable ill England than to colonial readers, inasmuch as they treat of things which in England are comparatively unknown: but the vein of glib selfsatisfaction and thinly concealed conceit ■which runs through the whole volume must render it almost amusingly nauseous even to the most charitable reader, -who, like ourselves, has not the honor of a personal acquaintance Avith Mr. Butler himself. We have no wish to wound the author's feelings; but if he is as great a simpleton as lus book would represent him to be, we would advise him henceforward to keep not only his first but also his second and third impressions entirely for the perusal of his own acquaintance.

On one point the book may be, to v certain extent, commended: the writer has throughout spoken hi favor of Canterbury, and even where lie has given us a rap on the knuckles he has not been maliciously spiteful in doing so; the book will do the settlement no harm and the reader no good, and with tliis much comment we proceed to give a few extracts. The aspect of Port Lyttelton is thus described :—

January 27, 1860.— Oh the heat ! the clear transparent atmosphere, and the dust! How shall I describe everything —the little townlet, for I cannot call it town, nestling beneath the bare hills that we have been looking at so longingly all the morning—the scattered wooden boxes of houses, with ragged roods of scrubby ground between them—the tussocks of brown grars —the huge wide-leafed flax, with its now seedy stem, sometimes 15 or 16 feet high, luxuriant and tropical looking—the healthy, clear complexioned men, ehaggy-bearded, rowdy-hatted, and independent, pictures of rude health and strength—tlie stores, supplying all heterogeneous commodities—the mountains, rising right behind the harbour to a height of over a thousand feet —tlie varied outline of the harbour now smooth and sleeping. Ah mc! pleasant sights and fresh to soa-stricken eyes"

Mr. Butler then dined at the Mitre (how interesting to the public-) ! climbed the hill which he styles "volcanic, brown, and dry ; with large intervals of crumbling soil, and then a stiff, wiry, uncompromising looking tussock of the Tery hardest grass ; then perhaps a flax bush, or as we in England should say, a flax plant: theu more crumbly brown flay s yi!, mixed >vith Hue but

dried up grass, and then more tussocks ; volcanic rock everywhere cropping out, sometimes red and tolerably soit, sometimes black and abominably hard : there was an uncomfortable prickly looking shrub too which they call Irislimau." • * * * * * The view from the top stands thus : — At last we near the top, and look down upon the plain, bounded by the distant Appennines, that run through the middle of the island. Near at hand, at the foot of the hill, we saw a few pretty little box-like houses, in trim pretty little gardens, stacks of corn and fields, a little river with a craft or two lying near a wharf, whilst the nearer country was squared into many-coloured fields. But after all the view was rather of the " long stare" description. There was a great extent of country, but very few objects to attract the eye and make it rest any whiie in any given direction. The mountains wanted outlines ; they were not broken up into fine forms like the Carnarvonshire mountains, but were rather a long, blue, lofty, even line, like the Jura from Geneva or the Berwyn from Shrewsbury. The plains, too, were lovely in coloring, but would have been wonderfully improved by an object or two a little nearer than the mountains. I must confess that the view, though undoubtedly fine, rather disappointed mc. The one in the direction of the harbour was infinitely superior. This may be allowed to be a fairly correct description of the scene as it must have then appeared, and it is satisfactory to reflect that the railway would now form a feature in the scene which could not be passed unnoticed. Then it was uot only not begun, but there seemed great doubts whether it woidd be undertaken for years. The author kept his ears open to the conversation of the people whom he met at the hotel where he stayed, and the- following remarks are the l'esult of his observation.

The all-engrossing topics seemed to be sheep, horses, dogs, cattle, English grasses, paddocks, bush, and so forth. From about seven o'clock in the evening till about twelve at night I cannot say that I heard much else. These were the exact things I wanted to hear about, and I listened till they had been repeated so many times over that I almost grew tired of the subject, and wished the conversation would turn to something else. A few expressions were not familiar to mc. When we should say in England ' Certainly not,' it is here 'No fear,' or ' Don't yoc believe it.' When they want to answer in the afiirmntive they say 'It is so,' 'It does so.' The word 'hum,' too, without pronouncing the r, is in amusing requisition. I perceived that this stood cither for assent, or doubt, or wonder, or a general expression of comprehension without compromising the hummer's own opinion, and indeed for a great many more things than these ; in fact, if a man did not want to say anything at all he said ' hum hum. . It is a very good expression, and saves much trouble when its familiar use has been acquired. Beyond these trifles I noticed no Yankceism, and the conversation was English in point of expression. I was rather startled at hearing one gentleman ask another whether he meant to wash this year, and receive the answer ' No.' I soon discovered that a person's sheep are himself. If his sheep are clean, he is clean. He does not wash his sheep before shearing, but he washes ; and, most marvellous of all, it is not his sheep that lamb down but he lambs down himself.

With these extracts, which are in good truth the very best we could find in the book, and which are almost the only ones against which no very reasonable exception can be token, w«j conclude our notice of this volume. We retain it in our possession, and though we have no wish to hold it in lerrorem over the author's head, and to threaten him with continued extracts from it, we warn him candidly that the next book he writes we shall treat with less leniency, unless he has digested his matter before printing it. For the present we will spare his feelings, and except we are very hard up for matter will print no more extracts.