IN DAYS GONE BY.

Evening Post, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 23, 27 January 1912, Page 11

IN DAYS GONE BY.

— -• THE BOYS OF EARLY WELLINGTON. AND THE MOTHERS. (By "Eareye.") It ig a clear blue summer's day, and tho air is hot and still," especially in tho'old wind-mill :vt the. foot of Mount Victoria (at a point where Majbribanksstreet joins Clyde-quay).'. The miller has the unusual experience of waiting for a breeze to make the old sails flap round for a creaking of cranks and sluggish wheels and a grinding of the wheat grown by the pioneers on the shores of Pjrt Nicholson. He is envying hia fellow-craftsmen of Kaiwarra and Ngahauranga, not dependent on the whims of the wind. They have their water-vvheels i^ spots delightfully cool. Meditation on the present joy and comfort of his rivals puts a little meanness into the wind-miller';* ' mind for a minute, and he half-wishes that one hot day (not windless) will follow another till the streams of Kaiwarra and Ngahauranga dwindle and the great lumbering wheels stand dry over the shrunken brooks. Presently .he laughs away this illwill, fcr millers were ever a jolly race, and he looks out over the marshy flat. He gazes' with disdainful eye on the acres of raupo, with their countless brown i spear-heads uplifted stiffly among the sword blades of flax, like the weapons of a savage horde about to spring fiom an ambusji.' "Golden grain- should be 'there," mutters the wind-miller to himself, and he sighs for the time when the bearded wheat will flourish on that waste place and far away where the forest holds the land in pretty bondage to Pan. Rumirfatingon that prospect makes him think of the people, some of whom he can dimly see busy, at primitive work across the water. He divides them now, as he often has divided them, without regard for class or creed, into customers and non-customers. He has- a liking for those who bring their wheat to him to be ground and—well, he cannob for tho life of him understand those who patromso the water-millers or go to- the' trouble of grinding their own corn with hand mills. This trend of thought abruptly ends. The mulerls roving eye, sees a band of happy young rascals, fossicking for little at the edge of the swamp. He wonders whether they will try to' repeat a diabolical feat of attaching a tin (with a' stone .suspended inside) to one of the sails of his mill. ' He watches intently, devising ay.craftya v . crafty scheme of punishment for their utter undoing if they set their impish wits against him. However, much to the millers-re lief, the small boys have otKer/interests. They have been bathing in a. fresh- water pool at the place /which is now the Basin Reserve, and Borne of the soldiers from the Thorndon Barracks >aye been teaching them to swim. That day the children were the' proud escort of nearly a hundred British troops, who marched in easy order through the settlement, exchanging jests with pioneers and their wives, on- the way to that fresh- water plunge! , . The boys have a sort of captain who orders a trek to the seaside. There the command "is short and sharp : "Strip," an easy process, quickly done. They are at the mouth" of a' creek, sometimes readily fordable at low-tide by reason of a bar that has banked up/ and sometimes to be crossed by the aid of a boat. This day the bar is absxmt.- It has been scoured away ; by flood waters. The .stream at first pushed "niggerneads" and clumps of raupo and flax ahead of itself, dammed itself up, and then burst the dam, which was swept into the sea. The boys behold little islands in the low water, and their mood is for a game of, "pirates" or 1 "wild. Maoris" in and about that beloved archipelago. Seeing ,_thfs the' miller is comforted and his happiness is. .complete, when a few puffs of wind flap his 'sails-, signalling the approach" of a steady \ breeze. Tired mothers are . wondering where 'that Jack"- or "that Tom" has got to. 1 hey were" to be away "only a few minutes," but the minutes have stretched to two oxMhree hours, ajid the Saturday work -is far from done,' In one household - there is. com to be ground by "Jack,",, and it " is .a ' 'task whsi he loathes. It is monotonous, •it\is"exacting. . There is noblifffing at grinding corn by Hand. The flour £as to be produced, and the amount, of it. reveals the degree of energy put Jrito l ithe r 'pperation. Gathering firewood atHhe edge of tho bush' is different. .V'Jack" likes this. The nearest place' suitable' for this occupation 15 6ome i hundreds of yards from 'the house",, and, he can plead *»ll sorts of excuses' for- arriving, home with a load ridiculously disproportionate to the time spent. ' ,\ "Jack," when he does at' last bend himself to the mill; wonders why, his father does not fix -up a little waterwheel, the same as other fathers, sensible fathers, had ;done. '■ (Mr. Elsdan Beet, who is not the "Jack" of this narrative, remembers a 4 hand-mill 'replaced by a ' waterwheel at 'his home. A dam had justr been nicely fixed up, to his great .joy, and the power was ready to turn "the .wheel, when- the earthquake of 1855 smashed the. dam. He did not mention the ejaculations:' which his father and the boys uttered}. t Some of the mothers, with races^and forearms wel} browned, "are busier than ever the gentle Ruth i'wa* among the corn. The fields of Bo,az r where Ruth's sickle gleamed} in the sun' had been broken in by long years' of tillage. Rock and, „stunjp lurked among . the undergrowth 'for. the feet of some of the sturdy »Wellington,^jnothers of the old time. In the spring they^had helped to "chip" in, the seed on the/, tougn ground, newly cleared. It was territory that declined to be tamed by the simple plough, after the axe and fire 'had destroyed the • first line of the hill-sides^ defence against the pakeha aggressor. Now and then a poppy or wild flower am ( 6ng Hhe cornsends their thoughts"' back' to old England, old Ireland, or did Scotland, to a girlhood that dreamt '.not of these tasks at the Antipodes. , A sigh, perhaps, but 1 no vain regrets. .'There is corn to bo cut in a good cause — the good man (busy enough in his white .moleskins and blue shirt) and the boys ; aud , girls — and the reaping. hook flashes to well-remembered lines of an old song. ' Brave women of strenuous years long gone I It -is bread-making day, " an important time for mother and "Jack." Confidently she lifts the cloth from tho dishes of "batch" which she set over night. She knows that she will see domes of creamy hue, for did not her own practised hands make the yeast and knead up all the I material with the scrupulous care of the good housewife? '"Jack" has been feeding* the fire', cheerfully for he knows that \vhen the Bread is" cooling its beautiful brown roundness,, mother I will put on some Bconfis • which ho will attack with a generous 1 " splatter of butter. Therefore he has pieced-of manuka or matai (black-pine) blazing in the wide open fire-place beneath., the camp oven, j hung fairly high on a •.beam, and he is taking care to have a supply of glow--ing charcoal to be heaped on top of the lid. In the very early days it was^the camp

oven for everything that was baked or roasted. It took years for somebody to devise the simple "Dutch oven" for the roasting of meat. In its simplest form this patent was merely a strip of iron folded lengthwise. Tho meat was suspended in the angle exposed to the flame. This invention waa followed by the -"colonial oven," practically an iron box set into the hearth, and heated from the top. i This oven had all the uses of the old ca,mp article, but it is said by those who should know, that the old colonial's bread was not nearly so good as the old "camp's;" In parts of Banks Peninsula camp ovens are still turning out round loaves such as those which nourished many a family in Wellington m the 'forties and the 'fifties.