Bush, an’ put in your potatoes, or pumpkins, or maize, or wheat, or whatever it was, an’ up they’d come; there didn’t want no manurin’ or deep spadin’ in that kind soil, I can tell you; an’ next year, you could make your garden somewhere else—there was plenty o’ room. Then, when the wheat come up, us children had to grind it, in a coffee-mill as we’d brought from board-ship. The bread, it was made from the bran an’ all; but, seems to me, there’s never any now tastes half so sweet.
“What else had we to eat? Well, there was wild pig in the bush, an’ the men ’ud get one now an’ again; an’ there was plenty o’ parrots an’ pigeon—ah! them pigeons was good! Father ’ud go out a-shootin’ in the Bush sometimes of a Sunday mornin’ (they didn’t work of a Sunday, an’ of course there was no church; only once there was the Bishop, Bishop Selwyn, came—it was he as christened your great-aunt Mary Ann there, in old Martin’s barn; but that was later); well, an’ I’d go with him, an’ sometimes he’d shoot as many as twenty, bless you, or twenty-five. Some he’d give away to the neighbours, an’ some we’d stew an’ eat right hot—I wouldn’t mind havin’ some of mother’s stewed pigeon to-night for my tea, neither, that I wouldn’t! An’ as for the rest, mother, she used to put ’em in her big pot, first a layer o’ pigeon, an’ then a layer o’ pig, an’ like that, pigeon an’ pig, pigeon an’ pig, till the end of ’em; then a little water, an’ seasonin’, an’ stew ’em, stew ’em, stew ’em slow an’ slow . . . till when you come to eat ’em cold, there they was all in a jelly, an’ tender—my word! Autumn, when the black pine berries was ripe, was the best time for pigeon—but not
