NOTES AND COMMENTS.

Lyttelton Times, Volume CXVI, Issue 16843, 29 April 1915, Page 6

NOTES AND COMMENTS.

Tho fact that four “ canatifces ” have been returned to the Harbour Board will probably not cause any Serious disturbance in the minds of those who oppose the movement nor particular enthusiasm among those who support it. The subject is hardly one for immediate consideration. We doubt if any considerable percentage of the. people would care to have the question reopened just now, when large experimental projects seem inopportune. But it is impossible to withhold admiration for the persistence with which canal advocates stick 'to the faith that is in them. At present, of course, they do not suggest that the big canal scheme which used to be proposed should be taken into consideration. They merely urge that the estuary should be opened lip for vessels of moderate draught and tonnage, so that a large part of the city's incoming goods might be landed more economically. Unquestionably the adoption of such a proposal would bring the greater scheme a step nearer serious consideration. But, as we have said, the question will not concern the people very much for some time to come. Yesterday’s voting, however, proves that there is a fairly substantial body of sympathetic public opinion, and if the circumstance merely stimulates endeavours to keep the Lyttelton port up to the standard in facilities and equipment the community will benefit.

Those well-meaning people who promoted tho poll on the half-holiday question must surely be satisfied that, Saturday is the popular day for the closing of shops. ' It was urged that the public should lie given a chance to “ finally , decide.” We suppose this way of putting it was chosen for strategic reasons, because very few questions can really bo “finally decided’ by popular vote or otherwise. However. the supporters of the Saturday half-holiday quite swamped the other side at the ballot-box yesterday, so that those who sought the decision will no doubt bo convinced. It seems that Wellington is about to change its half-holiday from Wednesday to Saturday. This has long been a subject of much controversy in the capital city. One argument that has been advanced against the change is that :ifl the Saturday half-holiday became general AVellington would not have sufficient playing-grounds for the increased number that would take part in outdoor games. As a matter of common-sense, this was quite as good an argument in favour of Saturday as it was against, since Wellington will be much improved if its sports areas aro extended.

Very wisely the electors yesterday decided that the Hospital Board is a moot suitable body for women li> servo on. Probably there is no place in the ■whole ■ctbif.iuif" r bf“"local gorprntienfc lydjero. tte wn t>p - 2tlL ■

pital staff oonsists of women, wlioso work can hardly be supervised thoroughly by men. and there are special phases of suffering and its treatment towards which the feminine mind cau be most profitably applied. In the purely administrative side, especially the financial side, of hospital management it is possible that men are more suitabio, but both sexes can work together towards general effie.ioncy. while women certainly have the advantage of the other sex in many obvious directions concerning subjects of drily occurrence in a hospital. With the lifting of the interdict ( against the publication of tho strength of tho colonial forces sent to tho seat of war it is possible to reckon up in print the approximate total numbers of tlje soldiers which Australasia has despatched and has in training for active service. Reports from Australia, show that the strength of the Commonwealth’s contribution as originally proposed will be more than doubled by the middle of the year. The Federal Government at first made provision for forces numbering 32,000, but the popular agitation for a more decisive recognition of the needs of tho Empire lias resulted in tills number being more tha.n doubled. Up to the present Australia has despatched 4-5.000 men on active service, and 25,000 more are in training, so that very shortly the. Commonwealth will have over seventy thousand soldiers in tho field. The details given in the latest Australian papers to hand show that the grand total is made up of 2074 officers and 68,027 men of other ranks, and that these forces have 30,946 horses and 3098 vehicles. Approximately 80 per cent of the forces sent abroad were Australian born. In proportion to population, however, New Zealand has done somewhat better than the Commonwealth, for out of one-fifth of the total population of Australasia we have sent to the fighting lines one-fourth of the sixty thousand men shipped Europe-wards. By the time our spring comes round again Australia and New Zealand between them will have contributed quite a hundred thousand soldiers to play their part with rifle and bayonet in the great wars. And that will not nearly exhaust the resources of Brighter Britain.

An entry in our list of anniversaries to-day is of uncommon interest because it is. a reminder that there is still in the land of the living—or was at latest reports—a man who is a link with the far-away past when the only white people who shared this island with the savage were a few whalers and seniors, a man also for whom it is claimed that he was the first white child born in the South Island. It is eighty-ono years to-day since the whaling barque Harriet, commanded by the celebrated Captain John Guard, was wrecked a few miles south of Cape Egmont, her crew falling into tho hands of the cannibal Tnranakis. The captain’s wife and two infant children were kept in captivity by tho Maoris for several months, and one of these children is “Old Jack” Guard, tho veteran sailor and whaler, whose home is in a quiet little bay in Port ' Underwood, on the Marlborough const. Mr Guard was born at To Awaiti—“old Tarwhite,” as the whalers used to call it—in Tory Channel, in the year 1831, and his youth was spent in scenes of which the young New Zealander of today can have but faint conception. His father first, traded with tho Natives more than ninety years ago, and it is more than sixty since the venerable man of Port- Underwood first pulled a strenuous oar in the chase of the great “right” whale in and about Cook Strait.

In tho thirties of last century tho 240-ton barque Harriet, which combined whale-chasing with trading, was one of the most regular visitors from Port Jackson to the New Zealand coast. On ■April 29, 1834, she was wrecked at a place now known as Harriet Beach, near Cape Egmont, and in the fighting which followed between the castaways and the Alaoris twelve out of-the twenty-seven men of the crew were killed, and their bodies went into the man-eaters’ ovens. The Harriet’s people retreated along the beach in the direction of Aloturoa—where New Plymouth now stands—firing as they went, but one after another fell, and at last the survivors were captured. Captain Guard was permitted to leave with five men in one of tho boats which the Natives had brought from tho wreck, leaving the rest as hostages; their release was conditional on Guard bringing back some gunpowder. The Maoris detained his wife and children, and took them to Wnimate and Orangitnapeka, two strongly fortified villages on the sea coast not far from the present town of Hawera. There they were the prisoners of the Alaoris for five months, and although they were riot- injured, they wore treated very callously by their barbarous captors. Mrs Guard spent the winter in a half-nak-ed condition; all she was loft to wear was a single garment; later she was given some mats. She became known amongst them as “ Peti,” the Native pronunciation of her Christian name, Betty.

Aleamvhile Captain Guard had made his way to Sydney, and when he told his story the Governor of New South Wales dispatched H Af.S. Alligator, accompanied by the colonial ischooner Isabella. to the New Zealand const for the purpose of rescuing the captive white people. Calling at Moturoa, the war-, ship took off the eight sailors left by Guard, and then sailed for To Namu. near Cape Egmont, where she landed a force who met the Alaoris in a skirmish. Then the ship went on to AVaimate, at the mouth of the Ivapuni River, where the long-missing white woman was brought off in a canoe with the younger of Jut two children, a little girl named Louisa.’ She was dressed, it is recorded, in two beautiful “ korowai ” mats, the parting gifts of the Maoris, which covered her from neck to icet. No sooner had she been taken to the Alligator, than tho frigate and the schooner opened fire and shelled the Alaori forts and the canoe fleet in the river for three hours.

After this very one-sided piece of work, which was considered by the naval men a. justifiable act of retribution, the ships sailed away, hut returned on October 8J landed a force of sailors,..marines ana soldiers, with a six-pofuider gun, rejoined the remaining child, little Jack Guard —who was ;brbvitd»t.: "along .011. the shoulders of a 31 adri-rliief—aud th»> foughtelitfrsSris.

looking the beach. The liill castles were rushed and scaled, and soon the British ensign was flying from the summit of Waimatc Pa. These"encounters were the. first engagements between a regular British force and the Maoris. In “Old Jack” Guard’s home, where he has lived for nearly two generations, at Port Underwood aro a brace of water-colour sketches by a sailor friend of his depicting the rescue from the Taranakis and tho bombardment, of the pa in which, as a tiny child, he spent a cruel winter with the savages of Old New Zealand.