NORTH ISLAND RURAL LETTER.

Otago Witness, Issue 2974, 15 March 1911, Page 8

NORTH ISLAND RURAL LETTER.

By John Spens. RUSTIC NOTES AND RAMBLING REMARKS. On the whole the season has been somewhat abnormal. Easterly winds have been much in evidence. Sudden changes of wind have been most remarkable. We have had splashes of hot weather dashed with cool and sometimes even with cold snaps. One Saturday afternoon the wind suddenly chopped round—in half a gale—from the •S.E. to the NW. Between I and 10 o'clock it blew as out of a hot furnace, reminding one of the hot winds one sometimes experiences in going through the 'Suez Canal. Our women folk, who make their own household butter, have not been troubled in, their churning operations this summer, as they sometimes are in our sultry Some of the apple trees are alreaay shedding their older leaves. I should say that apples and pears will keep better this winter than they did the last one, owing to the fruit being firmer. Quinces are not quite as large as usual, owing to the dry spells. Grapes under glass are ripening fast —in fact, the crop will soon be all on the market. Some grape-growers % have been getting 8d pet lb all round, delivery taken on the ground. Tomatoes are good in quality, but many suffer from black spot and caterpillars. Mushrooms are now plentiful in the paddocks. Indian corn is 6hot or shooting. Vegetable marrows have fruited excellently, and pumpkins promise a good crop. Cabbages and l cauliflowers have suffered from shot-hole-very badly this summer. Late potatoes are a very fine crop, and there is little evidence of disease. The tops are begining to wither and fade. For home use I strongly recommend the Northern Star, provided it is lifted before 6uper-tuDeration, sets in, or a second growth takes place. Its taste is sweet. It cooks floury, and is a good keeper. ■ Unless you can rely on the weather, and can dig the crop expeditiously, it is very risky as a market potato up here. We have had court eases over it, and some growers have lost heavily over its unealeableness. Sheepmen have been busy dipping. Dairymen have all rejoiced over the recent rains. The ground is very warm, and, provided we get some nice sunshine, feed will be plentiful for the winter. In cropping districts flocks of wild ducks wing their way at dusk from the sea or coastal lakes on to the stubble fields. Young cock pheasants are changing their plumage. Unless in some favoured spots and on the native reserves, where there is, fern, plenty of shelter, and abundance of pheasant food, the longtail is not the bird of sport he was in the north 30 years ago. I have listened to stories of 20 and 30 brace being bagged before noon. I accused one sportsman of being a "lady-killer." He did not deny the soft impeachment. The killing of hen birds is not sportsmanlike. Thirty odd years ago I can remember putting up a pheasant at every 20 or 30 yards in a Taranaki fern brake. In those days there was always a percentage of spotted and albino birds. I called Dr Buller's (afterwards Sir Walter) attention to those freak® of bird life. Albinoism he explained as being characteristic of New Zealand, just as nulvanism, or a tendency to become black, is a feature of East Indian bird plumage. By the way, I think I read in the Witness a long time ago something about Sir Walter failing to secure by purchase a white native pigeon in upland Otago. Subsequently Sir Walter, through Mr Charles Robinson, of the Upper Hutt, possessed himself of a very fine and perfect albino native pigeon. I was present when the genial knight carried off h's trophy to Wellington. Gossip in some T ; orthern circles is very prolific of prophecy over Sir Joseph Ward. The other day he passed along the Main Trunk in great state. He ha® divested himself of his carriage and horses, and lias placed his late coachman in the postal service. Perhaps it may mean that he has fallen under the spell of the omnipresent automobile. An idea obtains that a baronetage cr a baron's coronet lies in his pathway, and that eventually he will occupy the seat being kept warm by a knight. So we are going to have a Bishop of Agriculture to oversee our State farms. That proposed' appointment may be taken as testimony that Ministerial oversight has not been satisfactory. Years ago farmers and observing people living in the neighbourhood of our experimental farms had arrived at that conclusion. Quite qutside of politics and politioal parties, I still am of the humble opinion that the practical farmers of the Dominion should have some direct say in the polity and working of our State farms.

I have heard' the opinion expressed bymore than one that we are going to have a severe winter. Already in the interior we are having fine days and frosty nights. The more intelligent Natives say the atua gives prescience of a winter of etorm and stress by the plenitude of berries and the camp-shifting of certain- birds. Do you intelligent, God-fearing, Biblereading, and charitable-thinking dwellers on the open lands of the south really believe all you read about us pagan forest inhabitants of the north. The latest is that our Sundays in the bush are turned into devil days, and some of 'our bush-camp sawmills are gambling hells. The mouthpieces of one church yesterday described us ae pagans, without rites or religion. To-day the tongues of another denomination would lead you to believe we are deserted by Pan with hie sheep, his bees, his fish, and his fowls, and that Pluto and Proserpine have come up from the lower regions and are camping under canvas in our midst. London, the city_ of light and leading, un- * earthed a, veritable pagan the other day. As a lad, when trying to scratch a. little learning at the doorsteps of a college, I did foregather with a pagan or two, and I had experience of something like a " hell upon earth " within civio environment, under the shadow of cathedral dome, church spire, and ohapel porch, such as I've never had in 30 years of bush life. The slums are not unknown to me, but the bush is. well known. I know the - biish a<9 few parsons living know it. I've been, soaked by its rains, blistered by its burns, scalded by it# fires, soiled, by ita knee-deep mud, and

swaddled by its dripping scrub. I've slept for months in its terate and have occupied more strange bunks and beds and no beds than possibly any parson in the Dominion, and my experience of bush-dwellers,' sawmillers, choppers, and roadmen is that they compare favourably with the ordinary run of sturdy British sons of toil. They are neither better nor worse, and less ungodly in some ways than a moiety who shelter themselves under religion as a cloak. Yes, I've found hard cases in the bush, but, at least, they were transparent, and did not conceal the cloven hoof under the disguise of religion's cloak. How dare anyone judge a bushman's Sunday by a townsman's Sunday I What is it to toil in the bush, unohangeless in its society and unrelieved of Its monotony, month in and month out? Think of its dripping shades and its rain-soaked shadows! Go thou and sleep in its dank fern bunks, under its damp and fly-blown blankets 1 Eat its changeless tucker cooked at its camp fares before sunrise or after sundown! Can the criticisms of the man with his carpets and his comforts, his sheets and hie servants, his books and his banquets, his sun-bathed landscapes, his rustle in rippling flood and flow of humanity, with its ever-varying mobility and cinematics, who gees on a hurry-skurry vsit to a bush camp, be other than a.n improvisation as immature in its judgment as it is unfair in its deductions? A hop, skip, and jump through a bush camp, a flash and a flying visit into the woodland—what know they of the bush who only thus the bush know? The lowest of the low and the basest of humanity for selfish or sordid reasons, have quartered themselves in bush, camps and on railway works, and by their evil communications have made the pace hot. But such are not bona fide workmen. , Well, we have settled the question ct who is to be the Anglican Bishop of Auckland. Another Irishman, I fancy. Like his predecessor, Bishop Neligan, Archdeacon Crossley, was educated at Trim y College Dublin. He must be of middle age for he graduated in 1883, and was ordained in 1884. We've had two very capable Bishops of Auckland, who were Scotsmen-William G: Cowie and David Bruce. Hold hard there! I will; but between you and me David Bruce was ; a capital "Presbyterian bishop, and youve sent up another from Otago to take his place. I've done a little bit of tramping in the bush with' the Bruce, and a finer tvpe of pioneer parson, with sanctihed common sense and modernism, I've never before nor since met. Have not Scotsmen in sequence' adorned the historic chairs of Canterbury and York. It's ultra vires for a soribbler like me to suggest a Waddell, a Gibson Smith, or a Gibb—but its only in line with the modern trend ot the drawing nearer of all branches of the church militant. The church of the future will adorn itself with the diverse and distinctive elements of the church in fragments. • , , I write for country people and trom country people, and I may say we are tired of the parchment roll, the Egyptian papyrus—otherwise, the quire of note-paper in the pulpit. The pulpit is losing a good bit of its fire and force, its grip of the people, and its distinctive potential position as the mouthpiece and messenger of God. Why are our newspapers so popular and so powerful? Largely, I think, because most newspaper work is red hot from the human soul; it's fired off from scored and scribbled manuscripts, and is instinctive with the life and living reality of the human heart. Some 15 years ago a dear old Scotch woman had grown tired of the wood-pulp in the pulpit, and -wanted a little of the old pulpit pulper. She had heard that the then newly-arrived Bishop of Wellington (Dr Wallis) preached without parchment, so one Sunday night 6he crept into St. Paul's. On Monday morning a neighbour asked her what she thought of the new bishop's preaching. "He may," was her reply, "be a bishop body, but he's no a paper body like some o' oor new ministers; he just preached an extrumphery sermon." Shortly after I first heard the story I related it to Dr Wallis, and he quite enjoyed its characteristic Scotch point and pith. By the bye, although the departing bishop spells his name differently from the Scottish hero, _ I am of opinion he's got Scotch blood in his veins; at least, he's got the Scotch idiosyncrasy of knowing when to hold his tongue and knowing when to speak—and to speak out and to hit hard when the occasion arises.

With the veneration I have for mother and the respect I have fo>r wife, sister, and daughter, I must not be deflected from uttering- a warning against a little bit of thoughtlessness. Comparatively recently one or two northern farmers have complained to me that their private financial affairs have in some unaccountable manner become subjects of local gossip. In one instance the leak was traced to a man, but in the latest case it is the opposite sex; and this is how the snowball started: "I'll tell you a great seoret, but you must first promise not to repeat it." Needless to say, that'6 about the surest way to scatter broadcast the secrets of any sanctum, be it financial or marital. The office finance is in my eye. Verb sap. The interesting contributions on Gabriel's Gully have recalled the fact to some cf our old farmers that they also were there. I may as well record the homely words of one of them—Peter is his Christian name. "Ave-aye, Jimmy, and me had the fever badly—the gold fever, ye ken. My wife —poor body, she's gone before me, —she stuffed my carpet bag foo o' flannels. As I hoisted it on to my shoulders she kept on talkin' a'boot washin' and bilin' so much that I thought to mysel' she cares more for my clothes than my body. 'Toots, woman, div' ye think I cannay wash a few duds? I'm no 6uch a dunderhead as a' that.' She called out, 'Deed, Peter, ye'r dunderhead enough, and I wouldnay put it past ye.' On the second Saturday nisoht, at Gabriel's, Jimmy gave his flannels 'a lick and a promise.' On the Sabbath he spent his time between his bunk and his Bible, while I slaved and boiled jmV underwear in an oil-drum. On the following'Sabbath mornin' I tried for half an. hour to get one of my Sabbath boiled flannels over my head. I got it so _ far, but after a time I found it would neither go up nor doon. At last I rushed into Jimmy's tent and asked him for pity's sake to give me some relief. lie rugged and tugged somethin' awful. I cried out. 'Yo'r rivin' my lugs oot o' im' head.' Jimmy replied, 'Man, Peter, the Lord's hand is heavy on Sabbath washers.' 'I think; Jimmy,' says I, 'it's heavier cvn Sabbath filers.' " As I write, an item of interest comes to hand by the Home mail. "The Earl of Kin.noull has sold hi® Dr<nlm Castle estate to Dewcrs, of Edinburgh whisky fame, for a figure a good way above a quarter of a million sterling. Duplin Castle is da-

lightfull? situated, and overlooks a part of Strathearn, and has many historical associations connected with its immediate neighbourhood. Hay is the Kinnoujl family name, and I am of opinion that it figures in one or other of lan Maclaren's charming stories.