RANDOM NOTES

Dominion, Volume 32, Issue 262, 3 August 1939, Page 8

RANDOM NOTES

Sidelights On Current Events (By Kickshaws). The Spanish newspapers, it is reported, are calling for the return of Gibraltar. Where’s it been? * » » New Zealand overseas trade, it is claimed, is now strictly on a cash and carrv basis, but can we take it? . » * « A new comet has been reported rushing southward without a tail. In its haste to be in time for our Centennial it must have forgotten to dress properly- ♦ * * Now that the Budget is out and there is going to be millions and millions for this and the other, Kickshaws has given deep thought, how best to help spend the money. These days of millions any Finance Minister is naturally' grateful to anybody with brains enough to think out how to spend. Some folk, for example, are aghast at the waste of money in ripping up a perfectly good Hutt Road before it has even been paid for. Kickshaws suggests that the Hutt Road in its new glory will not even then have utilized to the full the spending possibilities of this magnificent four miles of mud. Why should this magnificent spendway be spoilt by corners? Admittedly, the 'banking at the corners provides an outlet for a few thousands. Better still, eliminate the corners entirely. A grandiose scheme to straighten the Hutt Road by connect- _ ing the various bluffs and points with a four-mile causeway would have provided a marvellous opportunity to prove that if the sky is the limit the sea certainly offers no obstacle. * * « Then, of course, in the matter of spending, why not a few more tunnels? We have a tunnel expert in the Cabinet. Every hill should have its tunnel. We suggest that a tunnel should be started, at once through the Tinakori Hills. One critic might ask what use such a tunnel would serve. The answer, of course, is that it would get to the other side. Moreover, as soon as the tunnel was completed, or even before, a battery of bulldozers might remove the Tinakori Hills entirely and dump them in Evans Bay to make an aerodrome, or even two. We would sug- ' gest, moreover, that in view of the fact that if all the ice melted at the Poles the level of the oceans would rise 200 feet, something should be done in. time to protect New Zealand. The level of Wellington and other cities might well be raised 300 feet. A bulldozer or two could do the job in no time at a cost so delightfully high everybody would be chortling with joy. If it be correct that Captain Cook has been given the wrong sort of sailing ship in the centennial stamp the famous navigator will probably not turn a hair. He must be used to philatelic errors of this nature by now. The famous navigator, in fact, has no doubt recovered from the shock of seeing his bead depicted upside down on a sheet of penny stamps sold over the counter at Rarotonga. As this hapi>ened in 1932, Captain Cook no doubt has sufficiently recovered to be ready for any sort of philatelic ehock that the Centennial in New Zealand may have in store for him. The redoubtable navigator, if he had teen a stamp collector, would 'be turning in his grave at his inability to add his inverted head to his own collection. As a matter of fact, slight shifts of the head are by no means exclusive to mariners of note. Kings and Queens have suffered these inversions on other occasions. » » » One can well imagine Captain Cookcomplaining bitterly to his friend. Columbus that his vessel has been depicted wrongly on the Centennial stamp. But it Is doubtful if he will get any sym- • pathy from Columbus. “My good sir.” this aged navigator will point out, “that's nothing. What do you expect from the folk down there? Why, sir. they couldn’t even decide if I were clean shaven or wore a beard when I discovered the Americas. Gad, sir, I had a shock when the Americans issued a stamp showing me in sight of their land with a clean-shaven face, and in another issue I was given a remarkably long and flowing teard. Certainly, sir, we had no electric razors those days, but I ask you could I have been both. I might also point out to you, sir, that a little place called St. Kitts and Nevis gave me the shock of my life when I discovered on one of their stamps in 1903 a figure of my own good self looking through a telescope. I tell, you, sir. those contrivances were only discovered a century after I came here. Don t vou worry over little details ou stamps or you’ll'get celestial eramp or even worse.” Whether or no folks who go down to the sea in barques like to spell it that way we must accept the fact that Captain Cook in his own inimitable handwriting chose to spell the word “bark.” We may deplore this lapse from nautical spelling. Nevertheless, Captain Cook is supported in his waywardness by most dictionaries today, including the Oxford Dictionary. As tile tyi>e of vessel Cook used there is no reason to suppose that, bark or barque, the vessel would, have teen rigged wrongly. The various kinds of rig are legion, but the two main classes are square rigged, with the yards and sail across the length of the vessel, and fore and aft rigged with the sails roughly along the line of the keel. OriginaUj bark or barque, was “any small ship, but it is now particularly applied to a three-masted vessel with fore and main masts square rigged, but mizzen mast rigged fore aud aft. * ¥ * “My thanks are due to ‘Mitch’ for stating the source of his information about the French priests and the Maori alphabet,” writes “A.W.,” “but I am afraid the facts are still against him. I can only repeat that tee and Kendall’s Grammar was first published in 1829, and that the French mission did not arrive till 1838. From Williams's ‘Bibliography of Printed Maori’ it appears that ‘Notes Grammaticales Stir la Langue Maorie,’ by Bishop Pompal Her, was published in 1849, and it is possible that the Rev. T. S. Grace had a copy of this. It has a short prelimin ary paragraph on the Maori alphabet and pronunciation, stating that the vowels are pronounced as in Italian, but it is b successor not only to D M ' aud Kendall, but to Maunsell’s ‘Grain, mar of the New Zealand Language.’ published in 1842. This has a chapter of several pages on pronunciation. ■Miteh’s’ suggestion that ‘Messrs. Lee and Kendall’s view of New Zealand (possibly) was per medium of an atlas, is quite wide of the mark. Kendall arrived in New Zealand at the end ot 1814, and hud beeu for five years living among the Maoris and making a special study of the language, when he went to England in 1820. taking with him the chiefs flongi and Waikato. The three of them spent two months at Cnnt bridge in order that Professor Lee might study the pronunciation from native lips.”