HERE & THERE MEMORIES."

Otago Witness, Issue 2310, 9 June 1898, Page 46

HERE & THERE MEMORIES."

By H. R. N.

The followißg are a few more aaecdotes from the above book :—: —

I knew Dr Selwyu, afterwards Bishop ol LichJßeld, when he was in New Zealand, and heard him preach the sermon which I think the best I ever heard It was to soldiers at the Queen's redoubt. He was not by nature an orator, nor eloquent in the conventional sense of the word, but he had a fine, ringing voice and a picturesque way of looking at and telling things, which, when he let himself loose, made him very effective. In a pulpit and its usual surroundings, I can fancy the trammels would extinguish him. Within a square of soldiers none could be finer. He stood, head covered in the sun, behind drums wrapped in the Union Jack, took out two pieces of gold, and holding up one. commenced, " A new sovereigD fresh from Sydney mint The effigy that of our Queen, the date, the millings, sharp, unblemished, definite, value 205." The coin dropped on the drum with a throbbing rumble. Then he showed the other disc. "An old sovereign, worn down, the face of George the Fourth, once the king, all abraided and dofaced, by rubbing through the world in contact with mankind. Value as much as the new sovereign — twenty shillings, no more, no less These coins exactly resemble your seals. That, as when an innocent child you put up your first prayer. This, as whilst you stand here veterans, sin scorched and ground down by passions Ah, soldier! your sou) was made in the image of God. It is as much value now as Before the world rubbed it." Having gripped every man's attention by the coins' he had rattled on the drum, he went on fox 20 minutes in language eloquent enough for a university audience, and so plain, simple and striking that no most obtuse, uncultured person might puzzle at a word Not being one of the good bishop's flock, I stood outside the square, which shook as the men wept. That sermon was real eloquence.

Dr Selwyn was, 1 am convinced, very dissatisfied with the state of things which limited his power over the clergy His friend, the Catholic Archbishop of New Zealand (Le Comte Pompellier deTroue), abso lutely prohibited his priests acquiring any land or property from their flocks, either native or European, - and any breach of bis rule was followed by prompt deprivation, or deportation to Europe Dr Selwyn could do nothing beyond protesting, but in his own case he set the example of- the spirit of abstention, and took no favours and bought no land except for actual "sites of schools or ' churches ! Paul, the chief of Qraki, pointed out to me the big fellow whom Selwyn polished off lon the Auckland quay The man would not ' let the prelate aboard his schooner, and was first ribald, then violent. When Selwyn was, in ring phrase, done with his man, he took , him on board and got him round. Of course the prelate never again had trouble with fellows who presumed on his lordship's office. The sailor who was thrashed was afterwards a successful colonist, and a friend of the thrasher.

', Mr Volkner. the Moravian missionary who ', was killed by the Pai-Mariri fanatics, was ! another quite disinterested exponent of the ■ Christianity exemplified by the poor son of i the poor carpenter of Judea Volkner's eyes ,' were squeezed out while he still lived and ! bolted for the behoof of the "Christian oni lookers, to prove that exceptional unselfish- ] ness and piety were not to be thought any , protection against the forcible eradication of , the pakeha and the pakeha's faith by Te Kooti's followers. Bishop Williams, of Waiupu, who translated the Scriptures into the Maori tongue, was another altruistic folj lower of Christ. I did him quite unintenj tional disservice in giving him a famous 1 " pig dog." which killed 34 of his &iieep I (mutton). This Bishop of Waiupu was th* 1 first who ever designed a whale net.

I Most people have nowadays no coßceptioa of the superb work of the ship carpenters in the .days of Hearts of Oak. The iluj - landers were, perhaps, quite as good siiipr wrights as the English. In 1866, I made 1 the passage through the roaring forties, from I Auckland to Chile, in the Matthias Salvmius. | a barque that, pierced for 22 guns, had bpen ; commissioned, victualled, and manned in the - harbour of. New Yoik — while it was stilt Ne.v Amsterdam. I made a most comfortable an? fairly quick passage in her : she was as t tight as a bottle. Her cuddy accommodation wrfs narrow, her crew's better than on modern ships. Of course it represented that trie skipper," under the Chilian flag, was a Butch man-'o-war. Her cm* were mostl7 • ruffians, the off-scourings of the Pacific and J of all nationalities, bul I never saw a better ■ working one " Don Roberto " Douglass, ■ the skipper under the Chilian flag, was a j Baltimore man He had few rules for work- \ ing a crew. They were " plenty of soft tack and coffee whenever they like. No liquor regular watches, and if they don't go fair, then boot their brains out."' But there was not the least violence shown, and the men , were excellently fed and contented — a great 1 contrast, to some English ships I Lave seen, ', with inadequate crews inadequately, disj gracefully fed. and almost requested' (often ! wnb abominably foul language) to work by ' officers whose authority depended on some vice-consul's dictum, or a character for effi ™dCId C l baSed or) a ? oard of Tradp certificace which makes no distinction between " those • " V 7 l0 i Ca v pass '" Twp eveTlts in that voyage of the brave old Dutch ship were notable One was that we had two New Years Days— one arriving in" due course, the other being made by the captain to bring his reckoning right Xhe other was, that I was enabled to establish, on exact data, a wonderful thing ■ which is still incomprehensible to me. - On a previous voyage (to Australia) I had come to think it, likely (though it was scarcely credible at first sight) that the albat trosses which, without distress, swung roun^ . us by darlight, whilst we burst along at from 10 to 13 knots, were the same birds which ; appeased day after day, though at night, in the brightest moonlight, not a bird was , visible. That was in the South Atlantic and J Southern Indian Ocean, Avhere albatrosses are J common. These birds are much rarer in the Pacific, but before we rim. ixito the " brave

westerlies " five picked us up, and we succeeded in catching four of them with the well-known board and hook contrivance. 1 caused a French sailor ■to sew distinctive leather-coloured badges on the birds' legs and released them. The whole five birds had accompanied us across the Pacific, and before making northwards to get to a Chilian port we caught one and shot another to make absolutely sure that the birds were the same we bad met thousands of miles to the westward. We had bowled along at not less than 10 knots during their companionship with us, and certainly they flew many hundred for each L 0 miles we made. I timed many birds wheeling round the ship with that majestic sweep which one never forgets. They averaged one complete circuit each four minutes, which gives 825 circuits in 15 hours. Each circuit musf, cover many hundred yards, and the bird? must thus have flown quite five, or six times the distance our ship had run, probably 20 times How is this done? Soon after dawn the birds would be seen coming after us tip from the western horizon How, if they remained at rest on the water whilst we sailed on our course by night, did they follow us at dawn? Albatrosses are not known to fly high, like condors or vultures. This is one of the things "no fellow can understand," at least, I have not. met the fellow y«t The Frenchman articulated the skeleton of one of the albatrosses, preserving and putting together the smallest bones I intended to give the skeleton to the collection of the Irish College of Surgeons. Unfortuna.tely, 1 conveyed it through a young student, who got- rid of It ignominiously, and in no museum have I been able to see any specimen of the bones of the great birds so perfectly prepared

There were " men " and officers of many nationalities employed in the New Zealan-3 War. Amongst them few were more characteristically odd than Major Kripner. Before the Colonial Ministry weie assured o c being able to obtain the services of enough English-speaking officers of experience, it was glad to secure the services of anyone who had seen war. Kripner had. buf. his peculiarities soon showed his unfitness to command most of those enlisted for desultory fighting, and he was ultimately selected to com mand a force of German soldiers some 100 strong, on whom devolved thi- duty of guard ing the Maori prisoners of war who were confined in the hulks in Auckland Harbour. VvTien his morning duties were over, Kripner was always to be found in the Masonic Hotel, ax the flank gate of Government House, where the veteran was wont to tell stories of' the Schleswig-Holstein campaign, the inter cine conflicts of '48. and the battle of Navarro, v where he had ' fought ' against Charles Albert • The amount of tobacco and beer he consumed during these narrations was stupendous, and the measure of his potations may be conceived by his thirst at a supper, given by the "firm of Hunter and Company (army contractors), at the close of the campaign. Disdaining, as he did, champagne, or aught but. ale, a case, of AHsopp was placed beside him early in the evening. One bottle, a -little less than an imperial quart, had been used before the case of two dozen' was placed beside his chair: In -""-he small hours, one of the hospitable ' hosts asked him, " Well, major, I hope you are supplied?" "Ach, my tear sir, I haf tone pretty well." and jerking his thumb towards the now emptied case. " I trunked that. Haf you got any draught beer? It ish lighter."

I had once to report a sergeant in his comma,nd for persistently refusing to salute officers other than Germans. Some days after, Kripner beamed on me, explaining, and those who have served the Queen will appreciate his explanation, " Ach. mem friend, I have taught that Schomacher to obey the regulations. I haf stopped for him a month's pay, and I have confined him to the schip for a month. That will make him devilish schmart to salute and teach him regulations." ICripner's craze was the theory of drill. He had written a book of many thousand pages' on it, and had submitted it to the headquarters staff of many Governments. It was totally inapplicable in practice, but was to "revolutionise war." He could not drill a squad himself. By some inexplicable means he got it brought under the favourable notice of some Queen of Madagascar, who invited him to Tamatave to inculcate its prin- ; ciples on the Malagasy army. That he went ' I know n6t. Perhaps the French may again 'be " trahis '' if they may have to deal with i the outcome of Canaster ahd AHsopp. Of different mettle were many other German officers, notably Yon Tempski, of whom I write elsewhere. Thatcher's " Ki'ipner's Lament," to the German air of "Du-Du," etc., was in the mouths of every Auckland urchin when his tattooed charges escaped from Sir George Grey's beautiful island— \ Kau-waw. | Ah, me, you've gone away; i * Tell me you -will not stay; i Come back early I bray, I Tell me back soons yon mill come. I cannot tiink any more Pottles of beer mor'u a score, Mine bipe it goes out, urine heart is so sore, Te]] me back soons you mill come.

But Major Kripner was a valiant man. who had won the Red Eagle on one battlefield, and a corresponding Austrian decoration on another. The truth was, though it was mpossible to make him drunk, oceans of beer had softened him. Yet he, at beer, was nothing to a savant and artist, capable to the last hour when he laid down his life in the fatal Bourke and Wills expedition, for we gauged the beer drunk by poor Ludwig Becker, whilst he drew and talked of a thousand obscure investigations, and from early morning till he went to bed, still most entertaining and clear - headed, he had swallowed an amount of sound Lager beer "of greater cubic mass than that of his own body." Notwith standing such an excess (it was then habitual), Becker was a healthy, agile little man Captain Mechosk, the Polish mineralogist, was another man on whom drinking seemed ineffectual, but his tipple was alcohol, w-hioii he drank without water but rarely, for though he could, when he thought it companionable to do so, get outside a measure of brandy which w6uld floor a ship's watch, ne was by habit and inclination an ascetic in drinking and eating.

— The average weekly loss of vessels on the seas throughout iho world ia 13.