The Banishment by Leo Fowler Jim was the best shingle-splitter in Poverty Bay. Many claimed he was the best on the East Coast. I have the old lady's word for it and she should know for Jim was her husband's uncle. I shan't mention Jim's proper name, or the old lady's or her husband's, for though it's a hundred years almost since these things happened there are still descendants around who mightn't like to hear the names bandied about. The old lady tells me she heard the story from Jim's lips many a time, and she had it confirmed by many an old koro who knew the facts. Being the best shingle-splitter in the area Jim was kept fully employed. Turanga was a growing township and the tide of settlement was flooding into the surrounding countryside. Hamlets were springing up at Te Arai, Manutuke, Ormond, Matawhero and Makaraka and scarce a week passed by without a new house being raised. New houses meant roofs and roofs meant shingles. Shingles meant work for Jim. Most men could turn their hands to pit-sawing for even a novice could pull the pit-end of a crosscut if the top sawyer could guide the line straight. Shingle splitting was a much more demanding job as anyone who has swung a broad-bladed axe could tell you. Shingle splitters, good, bad or indifferent, were far to seek. A hard-slogging expert like Jim was given more work than he could possibly cope with. He did well, He'd contract to supply shingles by the tens of thousands where other chaps would contract only in hundreds. Having taken on his contract Jim liked to work alone. No mates. He would cruise widely through the bush until he found enough mature totara trees within the radius of an hour's walk. Then he'd pitch himself a well-found camp as near as could be to the centre of them, so that he needn't shift camp from tree to tree but could remain snug in a central position until his chosen area was worked out. Around thirty, I'd say Jim was at that time, and been in the bush since he was old enough to lift an axe, much less swing one. He knew how to look after himself and believed in doing so. A joker who slogs it out from morn to dewy eve keeps it up the better and the longer for solid eating and sound sleeping. So Jim would build himself a nikau whare, cunningly thatched to keep out any weather and with a wide ponga fireplace right across one end of it. He'd pack in plenty of flour and oatmeal, honey and sugar and the other basic needs. He was rated a master of the camp-oven and I'm told his camp-oven bread put to shame the finest loaf a town baker could turn out. For his vegetables