Cameos of Colonial Life & Character;

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XII, Issue XVII, 28 April 1894, Page 390

Cameos of Colonial Life & Character;

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NO. VIII. — WAIHO BEN. ON Jannaiy 6th, 1884, the Greek's Gully Guardian and Paddy’s Creek Free Press contained the following paragraph : — ‘ AS.® are sorry to state that the search Party returned on Friday without fiNding any Trace of WaiHo beN. The S hole District from Normans Bluff to the blue River was Carefully exPlored without finding aNy Trace of Him. A Very curious circumstance is that his Dog, which waS at the but on Sunday Last, has also disappeared A§ cannot Be found anywhere. We think that the county CounCil, for Whom Waiho Ben has done so much in Years Gone By in the way of Exploration, shoUld organize another SearcH party and leave No Stone Unturned to Solve this veßy strange Disappearance.’ Waiho Ben, the subject of the above eccentric editorial attention and comment, had lived for years and years quite alone in various parts of the same district, but always in the gloomy and damp forest. The nature of his occupation necessitated periodical shiftings of his residence, bat he dwelt, for all that, invariably amongst the pines. Perhaps you have lived, for a time, in the solitude of the New Zealand bush ’ Is there, anywhere, think you, a place on this earth where a man stands nearer to his Maker than amongst the towering rata trees, and the stillness of sometimes impenetrable sylvan shades? Nowandagainthesilence is broken by the melodious clanging note of the bell bird : it seems to tell one, somehow, that we are not after all, as children without a father ; that, although all the world be afar off, there is a God still near—maybe still nearer. Not that I mean to say Waiho Ben thought of these things. I don’t know that he didn’t. I don’t know that he did. He preferred a lonely life in the bush, anyhow, to any other. A young man in the prime of life and vigour when he first built his hut under the Blue River boughs he seemed to care altogether for work, and nothing at all for romance, poetry, or woman. Some said he was not constructed in the latter way—that he was incapable of what we call love, and that the laughter of little children had no charm for him. I don’t know, I’m sure. It may have been the other way about; and just as a great grief kills tears and dries the eyes, so a former overmastering but unrequited passion may have been eternal death to every other affection in the heart of Waiho Ben. There are men in this world whom nobody could ever fathom or make out: who inwardly laugh at our estimates of them : who chuckle to themselves at our delightfully absurd and mistaken notions concerning them ; and who take a grim pleasure in leading us altogether astray as to what they think and feel —nay, even as to what they suffer. Some such queer reserved character was Waiho Ben.

His real name should be stated here, but that can t be done, for the simple reason that nobody knew it. When be came first to the Blue River he was generally known there as Blue River Ben. But a much longer residence on the Waiho, and an intimate acquaintance with the few scattered people round about that little known and but half explored country, caused him to be widely known, later on, as Waiho Ben. It was very generally believed that his proper name would have had even an aristocratic vibration, if one could but hear it uttered. Ben kept his real name, and a great many other things, to himself. There was little doubt that he had been to college in his day, and his hut presented unmistakable evidences of the fact that he was somewhat of a reading, and even of a thinking man. In bis leisure hours—he did not allow himself many—he had books to read. There could be seen, on his rough shelves, the better part of Macaulay's works ; Bourienne’s account of Napoleon I. ; Mill on Liberty ; Carlyle’s French Revolu-

tion. But, more conspicuous, and apparently more thumbed than all the others, were a number of works on mineralogy and mining, chief among which was a large volume on New Zealand Mines and Mining, compiled by a number of persons who were meek enough for anything—meek enough to allow another man to put his name, with many flourishes, on the title page, as the author ; whereas the individual in question never wrote the book, and, asamatter of fact, did not, and could not write any book. In other respects the interior of the hut was a curiosity. There were all kinds of mineral specimens in it: Silver ore from Mount Rangitoto (which mountain, Ben declared, would some day or other rival in richness the famous Hartz Mountains); manganese from half a dozen places ; tin from one or two streams In the vicinity ; lead from somewhere or other adjacent'; and any number of queer stones which Ben felt certain represented mineral wealth, because they were so heavy and looked so unlike other stones. As for quartz, the specimens were various, and too numerous to specify. There was the cold, snow white quartz: very pretty, but poor, like a good many peoples’ daughters. There was the yellow, hungry quartz —nothingin it—like a good many peoples’ sons. There was quartz with a tendency to dazzle and to sparkle and to glisten as diamonds do, but which turned out badly under the stamper—somewhat like the offspring of clever men, and more especially the sons of clever parsons. And there was the dull bluish quartz, streaked with veins of a darker colour, in which the experienced eye could discern traces of that bright metal which so many of ns seek all our lives for, and seek, as Ben did, in vain. And now you can see, or at least pretty well guess, what occupation it was that Ben gave his life to. Whatever he may have been in the old country, and however intended, by birth or education, for a totally different life and pursuits, be was at present an enthusiastic pioneer and mining prospector. He had been so, right down from 1868. Tunnelling was his strong point. He had put in no end of tunnels in his time, in all sorts of formations, for miles round ; and just as an Irishman can’t see a bald head without longing to have a whack at it, so Ben never looked on a hill or terrace in the auriferous Waiho country, without wishing to put his pick into it, and to keep tunnelling away until he came out at the other side, if need be. After more than a decade of labour, it was rather unfortunate that he never discovered anything worth mentioning, or perhaps the truer way to put it would be to say that he was never lucky enough to make any discovery which was of much practical benefit to himself. There is, without doubt, silver in quantity in regions prospected by Ben, and gold in many of the terraces which he explored. Ben didn’t drop on these coveted deposits. But, if a prospector doesn’t exactly find the riches he is seeking for, he can always do the next best thing—that is, he can always be just on the point of making a discovery. Ben was always just about opening up something startling. With the pick in his hand, and hope in bis heart, the months Hew by, and the years rolled away,—and Ben still was a poor man. In this way the day came round when the tunnel that was to make Waiho Ben’s fortune was in,—in ever so many feet, and now required slabbing. Ben went into the forest to spy out a pine suitable for splitting into slabs, and he selected a huge red pine tree, which may have been one thousand years old, and which was probably growing there, in the time of of the Druids. Red as blood was the gash which Ben made round the bottom of the barrel of the tree : the crimson chips and splinters which leaped from the blows of the axe, seemed to cover the ground all about, with patches and blotches of blood. The gash grew deeper and deeper and ruddier: presently the giant began to quiver and to tremble. There is an awful resemblance between the fall of a great tree and the ruin of a mortal man. The ruined man is bewildered and uncertain at first—he can hardly comprehend the catastrophe. He reels ; he staggers; he shudders. Then he utters a groan of despair, loud enough always to awake the slumbers of the dead, but scarcely ever loud enough to arouse the pity of the living—and, with a terrible thud, he falls, to rise in this world no more. The great red pine tree which Ben was cutting down creaked, as if in pain. It towered perhaps 200 feet into the sky. A column in the heart of the tree, no thicker than the small end of a jib-boom, and like the thigh bone of a man’s leg abont to be sawn through, alone held it upward. One more stroke of the axe and the tree trembles; it shudders ; it lists a little, now to this side, now to that; it

shivers in every leaf. Then, with a mighty cry it stretches itself out a lifeless thing henceforth and forever. More than this, however, did this tree do in its death struggle. It is sometimes very difficult to tell in which precise direction a tumbling and tottering tree may fall—frequently a tree falls to a place quite unexpected. Blood for blood and life for life was what this tree meant—and Ben did not know it. ‘lt will fall—so,’ Ben said to himself. But it didn t fall, so. It fell, all suddenly, just the other way, and came crashing down with the reverberation of a clap of thunder. And under it, crushed to a jelly, it buried Waiho Ben. And there, I dare say, he might have lain till that uncertain period called the crack o’ doom came round—there he might have lain were it not for his dog, Dan’l by name. Dan’l was a literary dog, and thought more, I think, of the Greeks Gully Guardian than any human being did, in those parts. At all events, he went every evening to the roadside, about a mile away, to fetch the Guardian (which the driver of the coach left for him as the coach passed) and bring it in his mouth to his master. It would be quite impossible to train a dog to do as much for the Wellington Post, Dan’l trotted off for the Guardian just before sundown every week day—on Sunday he stopped at home—and brought that powerful sheet, very wet, and covered all over with • we’s ’ (mostly upside down) into the lonely bush hut. But when Dani’s master lay stark and stiff under the pine tree, what was Dan’l to do ’ Clearly, to leave the paper as near to his master as possible. Every evening therefore Dan’l fetched the journal as usual; but instead of taking it to Waiho Ben’s hut, he laid it by the fallen tree. Then came a day when all the Maori hens and kiwis in the vicinity of the tree (for Dan’l would not go far from it) were devoured, and Dan’l was dying of hunger. As as faithful dog should do, he lay close to his master when his hour approached—and he died the way dogs generally do. A passing surveyor was the first to discover the truth of what had happened. He thought he saw, in the distance, as he cut his way through the bush, several strange white things, lying about. The * strange white things ’ were dozens of unopened copies of the Greek's Gully Guardian. Then he saw a huge tree somewhat recently fallen : a new American axe, deeply eaten with rust; a dead dog which bad had its day, and the bones of a human hand and arm, about which many flies buzzed, and slimy creatures crept. The latter was, of course, the once strong arm and always willing hand of Waiho Ben. In years gone by I had crept down along that same somewhat dreary and desolate coast, in the little steamer Waipara. Precipitous bluffs and cliffs succeeded each other, as we bore onward : the low hills skirting the shore, a mass of gloomy foliage. Beyond, and at the back of them a chain of towering mountains, topped with clear, cold snow. The rocks and crags that stood in the boiling surf appeared, often, like the ruins of some mighty Stonehenge, built in the sea, ages ago. But they were more ancient than the walls of Babylon, having defied the angry elements, and the wear and tear of time, for countless centuries. ’As for hut or human habitation, or evidence of man’s presence there was none—none, that is, saving and excepting a gauzy wreath and coil of bluish smoke that crept through the dense trees, and hovered over them—and then got lost in a still more sombre sky, just by the Waiho bluff. Yes, that was the smoke from Ben’s fire ; it was in there he was working. But the last time chance bore me that way, there was a change. The eternal mountains were all silent, and majestic as before. The gaunt and gray rocks stood up in the surf, grim and defiant, las before. The breakers foamed and rushed landward, impetuously, as before. The cliffs and bluffs frowned solemnly, as before. But the gauzy wreath of smoke was gone—for the work which had been given Ben to do in this world had been completed. And as we passed along, and left the Waiho, the machinery of the little steamer, which had been churning out a melancholy • One, two, three, four; one, two, three, four,’ for three hundred miles, seemed to vary its monotony by giving us a sort of musical sermon (with the same strokes, however), on the life and death of poor Ben. The variation ran somewhat in this way :— One, two, three, four; Work away men Work away, men ! While the day is: Work away and Work, and fear not: Fear not fortune. There’s a future Few are happy: For the hopeful. Many suffer A Hereafter Black disaster!— For the faithful. Tears, and frowns, and Work on toiler, Sighs and sorrows Work on moiler, Go before us. Fear not evil. Follow after I Do your duty 1 Woik away men. Stout and steady. And be ready For such fate as Chance may send you. H.R.R.