Book: Following the Equator, Part 4
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Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) >> Following the Equator, Part 4
In the New Zealand law occurs this: "The word person wherever it occurs
throughout the Act includes woman."
That is promotion, you see. By that enlargement of the word, the matron
with the garnered wisdom and experience of fifty years becomes at one
jump the political equal of her callow kid of twenty-one. The white
population of the colony is 626,000, the Maori population is 42,000. The
whites elect seventy members of the House of Representatives, the Maoris
four. The Maori women vote for their four members.
November 16. After four pleasant days in Christchurch, we are to leave
at midnight to-night. Mr. Kinsey gave me an ornithorhynchus, and I am
taming it.
Sunday, 17th. Sailed last night in the Flora, from Lyttelton.
So we did. I remember it yet. The people who sailed in the Flora that
night may forget some other things if they live a good while, but they
will not live long, enough to forget that. The Flora is about the
equivalent of a cattle-scow; but when the Union Company find it
inconvenient to keep a contract and lucrative to break it, they smuggle
her into passenger service, and "keep the change."
They give no notice of their projected depredation; you innocently buy
tickets for the advertised passenger boat, and when you get down to
Lyttelton at midnight, you find that they have substituted the scow.
They have plenty of good boats, but no competition--and that is the
trouble. It is too late now to make other arrangements if you have
engagements ahead.
It is a powerful company, it has a monopoly, and everybody is afraid of
it--including the government's representative, who stands at the end of
the stage-plank to tally the passengers and see that no boat receives a
greater number than the law allows her to carry. This conveniently-blind
representative saw the scow receive a number which was far in excess of
its privilege, and winked a politic wink and said nothing. The
passengers bore with meekness the cheat which had been put upon them, and
made no complaint.
It was like being at home in America, where abused passengers act in just
the same way. A few days before, the Union Company had discharged a
captain for getting a boat into danger, and had advertised this act as
evidence of its vigilance in looking after the safety of the passengers
--for thugging a captain costs the company nothing, but when opportunity
offered to send this dangerously overcrowded tub to sea and save a little
trouble and a tidy penny by it, it forgot to worry about the passenger's
safety.
The first officer told me that the Flora was privileged to carry 125
passengers. She must have had all of 200 on board. All the cabins were
full, all the cattle-stalls in the main stable were full, the spaces at
the heads of companionways were full, every inch of floor and table in
the swill-room was packed with sleeping men and remained so until the
place was required for breakfast, all the chairs and benches on the
hurricane deck were occupied, and still there were people who had to walk
about all night!
If the Flora had gone down that night, half of the people on board would
have been wholly without means of escape.
The owners of that boat were not technically guilty of conspiracy to
commit murder, but they were morally guilty of it.
I had a cattle-stall in the main stable--a cavern fitted up with a long
double file of two-storied bunks, the files separated by a calico
partition--twenty men and boys on one side of it, twenty women and girls
on the other. The place was as dark as the soul of the Union Company,
and smelt like a kennel. When the vessel got out into the heavy seas and
began to pitch and wallow, the cavern prisoners became immediately
seasick, and then the peculiar results that ensued laid all my previous
experiences of the kind well away in the shade. And the wails, the
groans, the cries, the shrieks, the strange ejaculations--it was
wonderful.
The women and children and some of the men and boys spent the night in
that place, for they were too ill to leave it; but the rest of us got up,
by and by, and finished the night on the hurricane-deck.
That boat was the foulest I was ever in; and the smell of the breakfast
saloon when we threaded our way among the layers of steaming passengers
stretched upon its floor and its tables was incomparable for efficiency.
A good many of us got ashore at the first way-port to seek another ship.
After a wait of three hours we got good rooms in the Mahinapua, a wee
little bridal-parlor of a boat--only 205 tons burthen; clean and
comfortable; good service; good beds; good table, and no crowding. The
seas danced her about like a duck, but she was safe and capable.
Next morning early she went through the French Pass--a narrow gateway of
rock, between bold headlands--so narrow, in fact, that it seemed no wider
than a street. The current tore through there like a mill-race, and the
boat darted through like a telegram. The passage was made in half a
minute; then we were in a wide place where noble vast eddies swept
grandly round and round in shoal water, and I wondered what they would do
with the little boat. They did as they pleased with her. They picked
her up and flung her around like nothing and landed her gently on the
solid, smooth bottom of sand--so gently, indeed, that we barely felt her
touch it, barely felt her quiver when she came to a standstill. The
water was as clear as glass, the sand on the bottom was vividly distinct,
and the fishes seemed to be swimming about in nothing. Fishing lines
were brought out, but before we could bait the hooks the boat was off and
away again.
CHAPTER XXXIII.
Let us be grateful to Adam our benefactor. He cut us out of the
"blessing of idleness," and won for us the "curse of labor."
--Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.
We soon reached the town of Nelson, and spent the most of the day there,
visiting acquaintances and driving with them about the garden--the whole
region is a garden, excepting the scene of the "Maungatapu Murders," of
thirty years ago. That is a wild place--wild and lonely; an ideal place
for a murder. It is at the base of a vast, rugged, densely timbered
mountain. In the deep twilight of that forest solitude four desperate
rascals--Burgess, Sullivan, Levy, and Kelley--ambushed themselves beside
the mountain-trail to murder and rob four travelers--Kempthorne, Mathieu,
Dudley, and De Pontius, the latter a New Yorker. A harmless old laboring
man came wandering along, and as his presence was an embarrassment, they
choked him, hid him, and then resumed their watch for the four. They had
to wait a while, but eventually everything turned out as they desired.
That dark episode is the one large event in the history of Nelson. The
fame of it traveled far. Burgess made a confession. It is a remarkable
paper. For brevity, succinctness, and concentration, it is perhaps
without its peer in the literature of murder. There are no waste words
in it; there is no obtrusion of matter not pertinent to the occasion, nor
any departure from the dispassionate tone proper to a formal business
statement--for that is what it is: a business statement of a murder, by
the chief engineer of it, or superintendent, or foreman, or whatever one
may prefer to call him.
"We were getting impatient, when we saw four men and a pack-horse
coming. I left my cover and had a look at the men, for Levy had
told me that Mathieu was a small man and wore a large beard, and
that it was a chestnut horse. I said, 'Here they come.' They were
then a good distance away; I took the caps off my gun, and put fresh
ones on. I said, 'You keep where you are, I'll put them up, and you
give me your gun while you tie them.' It was arranged as I have
described. The men came; they arrived within about fifteen yards
when I stepped up and said, 'Stand! bail up!' That means all of
them to get together. I made them fall back on the upper side of
the road with their faces up the range, and Sullivan brought me his
gun, and then tied their hands behind them. The horse was very
quiet all the time, he did not move. When they were all tied,
Sullivan took the horse up the hill, and put him in the bush; he cut
the rope and let the swags--[A "swag" is a kit, a pack, small
baggage.]--fall on the ground, and then came to me. We then marched
the men down the incline to the creek; the water at this time barely
running. Up this creek we took the men; we went, I daresay, five or
six hundred yards up it, which took us nearly half-an-hour to
accomplish. Then we turned to the right up the range; we went, I
daresay, one hundred and fifty yards from the creek, and there we
sat down with the men. I said to Sullivan, 'Put down your gun and
search these men,' which he did. I asked them their several names;
they told me. I asked them if they were expected at Nelson. They
said, 'No.' If such their lives would have been spared. In money
we took L60 odd. I said, 'Is this all you have? You had better
tell me.' Sullivan said, 'Here is a bag of gold.' I said, 'What's on
that pack-horse? Is there any gold ?' when Kempthorne said, 'Yes,
my gold is in the portmanteau, and I trust you will not take it
all.' 'Well,' I said, 'we must take you away one at a time, because
the range is steep just here, and then we will let you go.' They
said, 'All right,' most cheerfully. We tied their feet, and took
Dudley with us; we went about sixty yards with him. This was
through a scrub. It was arranged the night previously that it would
be best to choke them, in case the report of the arms might be heard
from the road, and if they were missed they never would be found.
So we tied a handkerchief over his eyes, when Sullivan took the sash
off his waist, put it round his neck, and so strangled him.
Sullivan, after I had killed the old laboring man, found fault with
the way he was choked. He said, 'The next we do I'll show you my
way.' I said, 'I have never done such a thing before. I have shot
a man, but never choked one.' We returned to the others, when
Kempthorne said, 'What noise was that?' I said it was caused by
breaking through the scrub. This was taking too much time, so it
was agreed to shoot them. With that I said, 'We'll take you no
further, but separate you, and then loose one of you, and he can
relieve the others.' So with that, Sullivan took De Pontius to the
left of where Kempthorne was sitting. I took Mathieu to the right.
I tied a strap round his legs, and shot him with a revolver. He
yelled, I ran from him with my gun in my hand, I sighted Kempthorne,
who had risen to his feet. I presented the gun, and shot him behind
the right ear; his life's blood welled from him, and he died
instantaneously. Sullivan had shot. De Pontius in the meantime,
and then came to me. I said, 'Look to Mathieu,' indicating the spot
where he lay. He shortly returned and said, 'I had to "chiv" that
fellow, he was not dead,' a cant word, meaning that he had to stab
him. Returning to the road we passed where De Pontius lay and was
dead. Sullivan said, 'This is the digger, the others were all
storekeepers; this is the digger, let's cover him up, for should the
others be found, they'll think he done it and sloped,' meaning he
had gone. So with that we threw all the stones on him, and then
left him. This bloody work took nearly an hour and a half from the
time we stopped the men."
Anyone who reads that confession will think that the man who wrote it was
destitute of emotions, destitute of feeling. That is partly true. As
regarded others he was plainly without feeling--utterly cold and
pitiless; but as regarded himself the case was different. While he cared
nothing for the future of the murdered men, he cared a great deal for his
own. It makes one's flesh creep to read the introduction to his
confession. The judge on the bench characterized it as "scandalously
blasphemous," and it certainly reads so, but Burgess meant no blasphemy.
He was merely a brute, and whatever he said or wrote was sure to expose
the fact. His redemption was a very real thing to him, and he was as
jubilantly happy on the gallows as ever was Christian martyr at the
stake. We dwellers in this world are strangely made, and mysteriously
circumstanced. We have to suppose that the murdered men are lost, and
that Burgess is saved; but we cannot suppress our natural regrets.
"Written in my dungeon drear this 7th of August, in the year of
Grace, 1866. To God be ascribed all power and glory in subduing the
rebellious spirit of a most guilty wretch, who has been brought,
through the instrumentality of a faithful follower of Christ, to see
his wretched and guilty state, inasmuch as hitherto he has led an
awful and wretched life, and through the assurance of this faithful
soldier of Christ, he has been led and also believes that Christ
will yet receive and cleanse him from all his deep-dyed and bloody
sins. I lie under the imputation which says, 'Come now and let us
reason together, saith the Lord: though your sins be as scarlet,
they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson,
they shall be as wool.' On this promise I rely."
We sailed in the afternoon late, spent a few hours at New Plymouth, then
sailed again and reached Auckland the next day, November 20th, and
remained in that fine city several days. Its situation is commanding,
and the sea-view is superb. There are charming drives all about, and by
courtesy of friends we had opportunity to enjoy them. From the grassy
crater-summit of Mount Eden one's eye ranges over a grand sweep and
variety of scenery--forests clothed in luxuriant foliage, rolling green
fields, conflagrations of flowers, receding and dimming stretches of
green plain, broken by lofty and symmetrical old craters--then the blue
bays twinkling and sparkling away into the dreamy distances where the
mountains loom spiritual in their veils of haze.
It is from Auckland that one goes to Rotorua, the region of the renowned
hot lakes and geysers--one of the chief wonders of New Zealand; but I was
not well enough to make the trip. The government has a sanitorium there,
and everything is comfortable for the tourist and the invalid. The
government's official physician is almost over-cautious in his estimates
of the efficacy of the baths, when he is talking about rheumatism, gout,
paralysis, and such things; but when he is talking about the
effectiveness of the waters in eradicating the whisky-habit, he seems to
have no reserves. The baths will cure the drinking-habit no matter how
chronic it is--and cure it so effectually that even the desire to drink
intoxicants will come no more. There should be a rush from Europe and
America to that place; and when the victims of alcoholism find out what
they can get by going there, the rush will begin.
The Thermal-springs District of New Zealand comprises an area of upwards
of 600,000 acres, or close on 1,000 square miles. Rotorua is the
favorite place. It is the center of a rich field of lake and mountain
scenery; from Rotorua as a base the pleasure-seeker makes excursions.
The crowd of sick people is great, and growing. Rotorua is the Carlsbad
of Australasia.
It is from Auckland that the Kauri gum is shipped. For a long time now
about 8,000 tons of it have been brought into the town per year. It is
worth about $300 per ton, unassorted; assorted, the finest grades are
worth about $1,000. It goes to America, chiefly. It is in lumps, and is
hard and smooth, and looks like amber--the light-colored like new amber,
and the dark brown like rich old amber. And it has the pleasant feel of
amber, too. Some of the light-colored samples were a tolerably fair
counterfeit of uncut South African diamonds, they were so perfectly
smooth and polished and transparent. It is manufactured into varnish; a
varnish which answers for copal varnish and is cheaper.
The gum is dug up out of the ground; it has been there for ages. It is
the sap of the Kauri tree. Dr. Campbell of Auckland told me he sent a
cargo of it to England fifty years ago, but nothing came of the venture.
Nobody knew what to do with it; so it was sold at 15 a ton, to light
fires with.
November 26--3 P.M., sailed. Vast and beautiful harbor. Land all about
for hours. Tangariwa, the mountain that "has the same shape from every
point of view." That is the common belief in Auckland. And so it has
--from every point of view except thirteen. Perfect summer weather. Large
school of whales in the distance. Nothing could be daintier than the
puffs of vapor they spout up, when seen against the pink glory of the
sinking sun, or against the dark mass of an island reposing in the deep
blue shadow of a storm cloud . . . . Great Barrier rock standing up
out of the sea away to the left. Sometime ago a ship hit it full speed
in a fog--20 miles out of her course--140 lives lost; the captain
committed suicide without waiting a moment. He knew that, whether he was
to blame or not, the company owning the vessel would discharge him and
make a devotion--to--passengers' safety advertisement out of it, and his
chance to make a livelihood would be permanently gone.
CHAPTER XXXIV.
Let us not be too particular. It is better to have old second-hand
diamonds than none at all.
--Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.
November 27. To-day we reached Gisborne, and anchored in a big bay;
there was a heavy sea on, so we remained on board.
We were a mile from shore; a little steam-tug put out from the land; she
was an object of thrilling interest; she would climb to the summit of a
billow, reel drunkenly there a moment, dim and gray in the driving storm
of spindrift, then make a plunge like a diver and remain out of sight
until one had given her up, then up she would dart again, on a steep
slant toward the sky, shedding Niagaras of water from her forecastle--and
this she kept up, all the way out to us. She brought twenty-five
passengers in her stomach--men and women mainly a traveling dramatic
company. In sight on deck were the crew, in sou'westers, yellow
waterproof canvas suits, and boots to the thigh. The deck was never
quiet for a moment, and seldom nearer level than a ladder, and noble were
the seas which leapt aboard and went flooding aft. We rove a long line
to the yard-arm, hung a most primitive basketchair to it and swung it out
into the spacious air of heaven, and there it swayed, pendulum-fashion,
waiting for its chance--then down it shot, skillfully aimed, and was
grabbed by the two men on the forecastle. A young fellow belonging to
our crew was in the chair, to be a protection to the lady-comers. At
once a couple of ladies appeared from below, took seats in his lap, we
hoisted them into the sky, waited a moment till the roll of the ship
brought them in overhead, then we lowered suddenly away, and seized the
chair as it struck the deck. We took the twenty-five aboard, and
delivered twenty-five into the tug--among them several aged ladies, and
one blind one--and all without accident. It was a fine piece of work.
Ours is a nice ship, roomy, comfortable, well-ordered, and satisfactory.
Now and then we step on a rat in a hotel, but we have had no rats on
shipboard lately; unless, perhaps in the Flora; we had more serious
things to think of there, and did not notice. I have noticed that it is
only in ships and hotels which still employ the odious Chinese gong, that
you find rats. The reason would seem to be, that as a rat cannot tell
the time of day by a clock, he won't stay where he cannot find out when
dinner is ready.
November 29. The doctor tells me of several old drunkards, one
spiritless loafer, and several far-gone moral wrecks who have been
reclaimed by the Salvation Army and have remained staunch people and hard
workers these two years. Wherever one goes, these testimonials to the
Army's efficiency are forthcoming . . . . This morning we had one of
those whizzing green Ballarat flies in the room, with his stunning
buzz-saw noise--the swiftest creature in the world except the
lightning-flash. It is a stupendous force that is stored up in that
little body. If we had it in a ship in the same proportion, we could spin
from Liverpool to New York in the space of an hour--the time it takes to
eat luncheon. The New Zealand express train is called the Ballarat Fly
. . . . Bad teeth in the colonies. A citizen told me they don't have
teeth filled, but pull them out and put in false ones, and that now and
then one sees a young lady with a full set. She is fortunate. I wish I
had been born with false teeth and a false liver and false carbuncles.
I should get along better.
December 2. Monday. Left Napier in the Ballarat Fly the one that goes
twice a week. From Napier to Hastings, twelve miles; time, fifty-five
minutes--not so far short of thirteen miles an hour . . . . A perfect
summer day; cool breeze, brilliant sky, rich vegetation. Two or three
times during the afternoon we saw wonderfully dense and beautiful
forests, tumultuously piled skyward on the broken highlands--not the
customary roof-like slant of a hillside, where the trees are all the same
height. The noblest of these trees were of the Kauri breed, we were told
the timber that is now furnishing the wood-paving for Europe, and is the
best of all wood for that purpose. Sometimes these towering upheavals of
forestry were festooned and garlanded with vine-cables, and sometimes the
masses of undergrowth were cocooned in another sort of vine of a delicate
cobwebby texture--they call it the "supplejack," I think. Tree ferns
everywhere--a stem fifteen feet high, with a graceful chalice of
fern-fronds sprouting from its top--a lovely forest ornament. And there
was a ten-foot reed with a flowing suit of what looked like yellow hair
hanging from its upper end. I do not know its name, but if there is such
a thing as a scalp-plant, this is it. A romantic gorge, with a brook
flowing in its bottom, approaching Palmerston North.
Waitukurau. Twenty minutes for luncheon. With me sat my wife and
daughter, and my manager, Mr. Carlyle Smythe. I sat at the head of the
table, and could see the right-hand wall; the others had their backs to
it. On that wall, at a good distance away, were a couple of framed
pictures. I could not see them clearly, but from the groupings of the
figures I fancied that they represented the killing of Napoleon III's son
by the Zulus in South Africa. I broke into the conversation, which was
about poetry and cabbage and art, and said to my wife--
"Do you remember when the news came to Paris----"
"Of the killing of the Prince?"
(Those were the very words I had in my mind.) "Yes, but what Prince?"
"Napoleon. Lulu."
"What made you think of that?"
"I don't know."
There was no collusion. She had not seen the pictures, and they had not
been mentioned. She ought to have thought of some recent news that came
to Paris, for we were but seven months from there and had been living
there a couple of years when we started on this trip; but instead of that
she thought of an incident of our brief sojourn in Paris of sixteen years
before.
Here was a clear case of mental telegraphy; of mind-transference; of my
mind telegraphing a thought into hers. How do I know? Because I
telegraphed an error. For it turned out that the pictures did not
represent the killing of Lulu at all, nor anything connected with Lulu.
She had to get the error from my head--it existed nowhere else.
CHAPTER XXXV.
The Autocrat of Russia possesses more power than any other man in the
earth; but he cannot stop a sneeze.
--Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.
WAUGANIUI, December 3. A pleasant trip, yesterday, per Ballarat Fly.
Four hours. I do not know the distance, but it must have been well along
toward fifty miles. The Fly could have spun it out to eight hours and
not discommoded me; for where there is comfort, and no need for hurry,
speed is of no value--at least to me; and nothing that goes on wheels can
be more comfortable, more satisfactory, than the New Zealand trains.
Outside of America there are no cars that are so rationally devised.
When you add the constant presence of charming scenery and the nearly
constant absence of dust--well, if one is not content then, he ought to
get out and walk. That would change his spirit, perhaps? I think so.
At the end of an hour you would find him waiting humbly beside the track,
and glad to be taken aboard again.