"LITTLE CHRISTIE."
"Little Christie" was a rather helpless individual, totally unfitted for the rough life of pioneering. Having a few hundred pounds, he had visited Otago on spec. He ■gave its name to Portobello, in commemoration of his native place in Scotland. His speculation proved unprofitable, and he was reduced so much in circumstances that he had to subsist on fish and pigeons given him by some of the settlers. He bought a Maori woman with part of his money, and when ha was hard up she took him away south on a mutton-bird expedition. He was away some weeks, and on his return his friends did not know him, so altered was he— so black and full of grease was he. He had never washed, himself since he left, and through carrying a- great bundle of mutton birds, what with the grease whioh dripped from them and the smoke from the wood fires, the genteely-nurtured adventurer from Edinburgh was so begrimed as to be unrecognisable even by his intimate friends. His fortune, however, soon changed. His father died and left him a fortune of £14,000. He left by the next Home-going vessel after receiving the news, his last words being : " Good-bye groper ; good-bye barracouta, and God bless the pigeons."
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Bibliographic details
Otago Witness, Issue 2818, 18 March 1908, Page 62
Word Count
210"LITTLE CHRISTIE." Otago Witness, Issue 2818, 18 March 1908, Page 62
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