where of Goldsmith's death, and relating how the beautiful Miss Horneck begged for a lock of the dead poet's hair, remarks how that incident would have mitigated the bitterness of Goldsmith's last hours could he have foreseen it. And we may similarly aver how priceless to the lonely nun would have been the assurance of Galileo's love contained in the lines we have just quoted could she have read them. ALFRED J. Sanders.

From The Gentleman's Magazine. BUSH LIFE IN NEW ZEALAND.

SOME few years ago now, I found my self at Auckland, in the northern island of New Zealand, and uncertain what way to go. Illness - the result (primarily) of an accident at the Hot Lakes overtook me, and for many months I was kept indoors, having the pleasant company of a young Irishman of my own age. He had lately left the navy, and was now, like myself, drifting about the world in quest of home and hearth. He had tried various parts of Australia — I, Canada and Natal and now we agreed to chum together and try New Zealand.

So, in the middle of July, when I was able to get about again, we went up to the Crown Lands Office, purchased a piece of bush land about fifty miles away to the north, and sent a man down, with the map in his pocket, to find the place and put us up a hut. On his return, after the job was done, we asked eagerly after our future home. Was it pretty? Should we have agreeable neighbors? Did pheasants and pigeons abound? Were there roads? Above all, what was the quality of the

land?

was

"Much of a muchness," said the man, with a grin, adding: "I think it may do for you.' He was quite right. The land "much of a muchness," most of it under water; and it nearly did for us, as he had prophesied it would. However, we knew nothing of his hidden meaning, and we went to work with a will, laying in what provisions, and pots and pans, seemed absolutely necessary. In making our purchases, we were forced to take note of the fact that we ourselves, like beasts of burthen, should have to be the carriers of all we bought, from the landing-place to the place of our destination, nine miles off. Therefore weight and size were two things we protested against as far as might be.

We laid in a stock of salt pork, flour, coffee, tea, mustard, rice, sugar, butter, tobacco, and matches, and after dark one midwinter night committed our goods and ourselves to the care of a drunken little Nova Scotian skipper called Kenneth Mackenzie. An hour later we set sail in his cutter for Pakiari. The hands, with the exception of the cabin-boy, caroused all night. Luckily the weather was fine and clear, and the breeze light and fair, so the mad rum-drinking of our little captain and his crew was productive of no disaster worse than headache. And even from this tolerable sort of evil our skipper was free. Quite early in the morning I saw him on deck, fresh as a lark, sipping his coffee, and smoking his short clay cutty. It was ridiculous to hear him, after conning his craft over from stem to stern and whistling for wind, say softly to himself: "Hoots away, lassie! pit your best foot for'ard! Hoots, lassie, hoots!" After breakfast we were off Pakiri, about three miles from shore. The breeze, which since dawn had been gradually failing us, now died completely away, so that we could not come to the land. The men therefore took their dingy and rowed us ashore, landing us just inside the bar, which luckily happened to be in a placid and tranquil humor. Pakiri, which to our imagination had appeared a flourishing town where we might dispose of the produce of our farm, consisted of a saw. mill, a shanty for lumber-men, and a ferry. house. That was all. All day we walked as fast as our packs would allow, along the sandy beach, enjoying the cool sea-breeze and magnificent views of the Little Barrier, the Hen and Chickens, the Poor Knights, and many another needle-shaped rock and craggy islet. When day was nearly over we came to a wooded knoll about.one hundred and fifty feet high, rising all alone in a hummock from amidst the broad expanse of shifting sand dunes. Seeing a convenient pool of water at the base of this little knoll, we decided to camp by it, and, unpacking our bundles, collected sticks, lighted a fire, had tea, and lay down to rest - the stars overhead, and below the reflection of our camp-fire in the little pool. There was solemnity in the silence and stillness around, and the remoteness from mankind was not without a certain charm. Though now the depth of winter, we felt no inconvenience from cold. During the night, or early next morning, a sad change came over the spirit of the weather, and that unaccom modating St. Swithun spent the whole of

his fête day in emptying the vials of his wrath on our faithless heads in perfect bucketfuls, to the sad detriment of temper, food, and clothes. The paper bags that contained our provisions became soaked, and, bursting asunder, coffee, tea, butter, sugar, rice, and mustard rolled themselves into a conglomerate mass at the bottom of the sack. Butter had been the ringleader in this piece of nonsense, acting as a sort of kernel or loadstone. Round the butter was a coating of tea leaves and coffee-grounds; colored saffron with mustard, and stuck over with sugar that had once been lump. Salt pork was the only thing that had declined to join in such folly, but even it had a speckled, measly look, from its contact with all the other damp horrors of the bag. The confusion of substance was irremediable, and though on many a fine day afterwards we bestirred ourselves in trying to separate the ingredients of these composite balls, picking off corns of rice with the point of a penknife, or swabbing up mustard with a sponge, our efforts were not blessed with any great amount of success, and many a fit of indigestion did we have, brought on by the strange compounds that formed daily diet. Happily, most of our flour and some portion of our other things we had left behind us at the ferry-house of Pakiri. But to return from our sacks to ourselves. This day's journey, though short in distance, was long in time, being in great part through an atrocious quagmire. We tramped slowly and warily along, for the treacherous earth was so shaky and unstable, and we so heavily freighted, that we never knew how far, at each step, we should sink in the mire, and our course was a series of stumbles and extrications. When we were got through this swamp, which is made by the running down of one lake into another and here I would observe that it is a common and curious feature of the lakes in this part of the island that they have no regular and direct watercourses by which to intercommunicate, but are in the habit, rather, of demitting their superfluous waters to lower grounds by means of marshy slopes and plains when we were got through this swamp (I say) we went up the face of a hill whose sides were covered with the charred stems of burnt ti-tree, and came, still in the dreariness and discomfort of cold midwinter rain, to the sloppy place where our man, for some reason best known to himself, had chosen to erect our hut. It was a small affair, hurriedly put up, and constructed of native grass, lined

and thatched with leaves of the palm-tree (Areca sapida). Its furniture (besides the necessary bed) consisted of two chairs and a rough table. I may say at once that, on finally leaving this pleasant spot, we wrote a civil letter and offered our two chairs and our rough table as a present to the government of the day. The government of the day, with singular lack of courtesy, vouchsafed no answer to our civil letter, and thus deprived itself and its museum of three very remarkable specimens of colonial workmanship. When the weather cleared up we went out to stroll about our farm and see its capabilities. It had none. Most of the land we had bought, and which had looked so enticing, in its gaudy coat of paint, on the office map, lay submerged in the shallows of a reedy lagoon, with just one end jutting out on to dry land, like the nose of a crocodile basking in the mud. On this "nose," or 66 ness, or "nez," we lived and throve and had our innings, playing the played-out game of landlordism. The idea, no doubt, was pretty and poetical, but the practice (and the situation) preposterous in the extreme. I hope the New Zealand government will not try to turn an honest penny, in these dull times, by prosecuting me for libel if I venture to hint that land at the bottom of a lake, however profitable its sale may be to the colonial exchequer, is scarcely suitable for the purposes of farming. I don't suppose this part of the country will ever raise itself to affluence by the efforts of farmers, because of the sterility of the soil. Yet, bad-detestably bad as the land undoubtedly is

Quamvis lapis omnia nudus Limosoque palus obducat pascua junco — although everywhere are the cinders and scoriæ from the extinct volcanoes, or swamps of New Zealand flax and thickets of tree veronica, yet, all this notwithstanding, I know no colony in which it would be pleasanter to settle for life. The climate is salubrious and truly insular, though a little too damp at times to be perfection. The seasons glide imperceptibly one into the other, and the annual range of the thermometer is little more than thirty degrees. It does not often fall below 40° or rise above 70° Fahr. The forest is equally green, summer and winter; all the trees indigenous to the island, with the exception of the fuchsia, being evergreen. I am quite sure this island might have a great and glorious future of prosperity before it. One thing alone is wanting. In colonies and repub

lics the mob is rampant and almighty. Why not take things into its own hands? Why not play its government the same trick that Nero tried to serve his mother? Why not sink the whole lot in the profoundest depths of Cook's Straits? Then, and not till then, may these "isles of the blest," these "Fortunate Isles "(in all but government), look for peace, plenty, and prosperity. After splashing and plunging about our farm, and satisfying ourselves that we need be in no violent hurry with our spring crops, we took the first fine opportunity to go to fetch those things of which we had lightened our loads at the knoll where we slept some days back. We found them all right, untouched by man or pig. Getting them well in hand, and equally divided into convenient packs of about twenty-five pounds apiece, we started homewards again, and again storm and tempest, with great thunder and lightning, fell on our devoted heads. I suppose saints are pretty much the same all the world over, but here, where we are all so busy, St. Swithun might really be content with an octave instead of exacting his full forty days. We found ourselves heavily weighted in crossing the dismal swamp that lay between us and our home. Floundering on through it, we clung tenaciously to the stems of the tall burnt ti-tree scrub which were standing dead in the swamp. But they, at those moments when we most required their support, when our feet were sunk deepest in the slough, made a particular point of giving way under our weight, and with a vile crack, a smart snap, precipitating us into the bog below. Woe to these hateful trees! It was of them (and none other) the prophet spake, saying: "When they took hold of thee by the hand, thou didst break, and rend all their shoulder; and when they leaned upon thee, thou brokest, and madest all their loins to be at a stand." Struggling miserably along, black, bloody, and soaked, we regained our den at nightfall. It was extremely galling, thus again and so soon to have all our provisions destroyed by wet. In their cache at the knoll they had done well enough and kept dry, but now there was nothing for us but to fall to again at the old work of disintegration. This time we tried what heat would do, melting our but ter over the fire, and skimming it with spoons of the various things that rose to the surface.

The first fine Sunday we devoted to vis iting our next-door neighbors, who lived only three miles off; four brothers

their

name was Crapp-living together in a very passable watertight shanty of their own construction. Their father, an old soldier, had run through everything, and ended his days at Rouen, where these lads were educated. Finding themselves cast adrift in the world, they had drifted out to New Zealand quite at haphazard, and were now, like ourselves, engaged in contest with old mother earth. "Beatus ille!" said the elder, throwing up his eyes, but wagging his head. "Were we only blest with bobus'!" cried. a younger, whose name was Bob. "But we really have plenty of honey, you know," said the youngest, who took cheerful views. So they prattled on, truly French and vivacious. We saw a good deal of them during our stay in their neighborhood, and liked what we saw. We got the elder one, Albert, to come over to our place one day, as a sort of land-valuer, and see what he thought our farm was really worth; and also to see what he could make out of our hut, with an eye to our future comfort and better way of living. He was too polite to say much in disparagement, till we pressed for his candid opinion, and then he was forced to confess it was altogether a disheartening sort of place, and the ground scarcely worth cultivating.

When he found we did not take things too seriously he was glad and joked, sug. gesting to us a crop of eels as best suited to our land. Forthwith we christened our estate "the Snare," by which_name, I understand, it is known to this day.

After that, on fine days, which, however, were few and far between, the Crapps came frequently over to see us, and we made a point of returning their visits with quick civility, often passing the night at their shanty, singing French chansons and vaudevilles.

One fine morning, as we sat on logs outside our hut, mending clothes and bak. ing a "damper" on the glowing embers of a wood fire, the brothers swooped down on us with loud whoops and holloas from the dense bush above. They were accompanied by dogs, and armed with krives and bill-hooks, intent on a pig-sticking expedition. After satisfying, as far as in us lay, their huge appetites, we loaded revolvers and joined the cavalcade. First we went through the forest for three miles to Te Arai point. The glories of this sublime forest will ever be fresh in my memory; steep hillsides clothed with gigantic trees, and in the trees themselves perfect gardens of epiphytes and airplants. From a vast height overhead the