Page:Letters from New Zealand (Harper).djvu/61

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Letters from New Zealand
43

as best he could, amongst bags of potatoes, the other lying on a settee just below him. In the night there arose a sudden uproar; the sleeper above had rolled off his perch and fallen right atop of the man below, who happened to be an Irishman; with indignant voice he woke up the whole household, refusing to accept any apology from the offender, nor would he be pacified by the landlord's arguments. "Sure, an' he did it on purpose, will ye be tellin' me that he fell like that, right on me, if he didn't mane it?" There was imminent chance of a regular shindy, but the Bishop, roused by the noise, came out and secured peace, and some chance of sleep for us all. Nevertheless, at breakfast, the injured man again appealed to me: "Now, Sorr, I've forgiven him, but I ask your opinion, could he have done it without maning it?" I prudently held my tongue, and the excellent ham and eggs, fried potatoes, and tea, banished all ill-feeling in the end.

Making an expedition up the riverside, and wondering why there were no fish in such a stream,—the very place for salmon—we visited a small settlement founded by an old whaler, quite a patriarch, Captain Howell, a man of some wealth in cattle, and the father, and grandfather, of a numerous family. His wife had lately died, and a number of Maori women, from their settlement close by, were holding a "Tangi," or lamentation, to bewail her death, squatting, as their manner is, in and about the house, crooning a funeral chant. There had also been a sad accident to one of Howell's whaling boats, in which he conducted a fishery from the shore; a fine young fellow had met his death, through the capsizing of one of the boats, and his loss was felt all the more because he was engaged to