TO NEW ZEALAND FIFTY YEARS AGO.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVII, Issue 20508, 8 March 1930, Page 4 (Supplement)

TO NEW ZEALAND FIFTY YEARS AGO.

BY LUCY WINN,

If you had been on a quay at Plymouth one February day fifty years ago, you would have seen a sailing ship almost ready to leave for New Zealand. The decks would have been crowded with tearful lad.es, in flowing dresses, and grave gentlemen with large beards, and little children in stiff coats and carefully buttoned boots, all hopelessly mixed with carpet bags, and cabin trunks and various bundles done up in different coloured stuffs. Perhaps you would have _ skipped aboard just before the ship's sails filled, and she hurried away from Plymouth. You would have found about four hundred people aboard, first class and steerage. In one corner of the deck you would have noticed a pen of sheep and pigs and forlorn-looking hens, which were going to supply fresh meat and eggs to the first class pasengers. If you were travelling steerage you would not have seen any fresh meat the three months the ship was sailing to New Zealand, You would have had salt pork and salt beef and dried beans, and every morninir you would have been given a very small -ation of water, that was to last vou th' 3 day, for cooking, drinking and washing If you wanted porridge or soup, the cook look some of your precious water with which to make it. If it haopened to be very stormv. the hatches would be down for two or three day 3 so that the air below deck became almost stifling and vou would have had nothing to do but complain or quarrel—if you had felt well enougfl. But in fine weather you might hava begged a wee bit of fat pork from the cook and fished for ocean monsters and albatross. If you did hap Den to catch an albatross vou would have let it go because to kill an albatross is considered very unlucky. And after, three months t>f salt beef and salt pork, and very little fresh water, and hard bunks and stuffy atmosnheres, you would have reached Nov? Zealand, without once seeing land the whole way, and perhaps with just a passing glimpse of a ship or two, like great white birds, on the horizon.So, if you had been on a quay at Plymouth on a February day fifty yeais ago, you would not, if yon had been wise, skipped aboard the sh'.p as she heaved up the anchor, to set sail fcr New Zealand.