Through South Westland/Part 2/Chapter 6

by A. Maud Moreland

CHAPTER VI.

THE SHIELING ON THE MATUKITUKI.

“From the lone shieling of the misty island
Mountains divide us and a waste of seas,
Yet still the blood is warm, the heart is Highland,
And we in dreams behold the Hebrides.”

Round the foot of the mountains winds a track, which, if it were not for the rabbit-holes, might be thought a fairly good one in these parts. As it is, it is extremely perilous; and the fresh green of the flat is also full of bog-holes, and beyond the grass is the stony river-bed with its bright blue streams hurrying along, breaking into foam at the rapids and shallows.

Leaving our own sunny valley, we rode up the track to the junction where the western Matukituki issues from its gorge. It was a forbidding, desolate place; great bare mountains ran up in rocky pinnacles and serrated edges on either side. The bush, along the base, had been swept by some forest fire, leaving only a few scattered groups of beech. Though the sunshine was flooding over everything and the sky cloudless, the entrance to that gorge always to me had the same dread look, and a sentence kept running in my head: “Through the grave and gate of death we may pass to our joyful resurrection.”

The ground, too, was stony and barren, and cut up by torrents that tear their way from the mountains; and in many places tumbled boulders and tree-trunks gave us plenty to do to get the horses over. It was better in the river-bed, and we rode them through a ford breast deep, and continued along a shingle-spit for a time; and then we saw signs of cultivation—tiny enclosures of starved oats and hay, a potato patch, and then a bit of road, leading past an old byre and a yard, to a little cottage on a green slope.

It might, indeed, have been a Highland crofter’s home—only built of boards instead of stone. A room had been added as it was wanted to the end, but the orginal dwelling, with its little green porch and window to one side, was just as when Mr. Macpherson built it for his wife; and here they have lived for nine years, and the children know no other home.

A path led up to the door through a plot enclosed by a rude fence, and a few flowers showed an attempt at a garden; and a little higher up the hill was another enclosure with currants and gooseberries.

Just here the mountains fell back, so that the western sun shone always full on the cottage; the river made a wide loop, partly encircling the rough ground about the house, which was covered with short, green grass.

Dismounting, I went up to the door and knocked. Great was the astonishment of the lady who opened to me! A visitor was so rare an event

that the four children flocked round, staring with all their eyes, but my welcome was of the heartiest. Mrs. Macpherson seized my hand and drew me forcibly into the room, as though she thought I might vanish if she did not hold me fast. She set the children to wash up and prepare tea and scones for us, and while she rocked her seven-weeks-old baby, talked to me and to the children sixteen to the dozen!

At length I was able to explain to her what we wanted. Yes, bread and butter, milk and cream, she could give in plenty—meat they rarely had, and the hens were not doing well; but she would save all the eggs for us during our stay. The little boy ran out and brought in four, just new laid. He was a solemn little man, but his sisters were rosy-faced, pleasant little lasses, always laughing, and already able to do most of the work for their mother—“and milk, too,” as she told me with pride. Her husband works for Government at road-making, and is often away a fortnight or more at a time; and these children, the eldest only twelve, with their mother, did all the work of the farm.

Mrs. Macpherson explained to me she was growing deaf, and “Macpherson” was worse. “It’s the roaring of the creeks,” she said; “sometimes I think I’ll go mad, and I know I’m going deaf. I’ve stood there by the door on a spring morning when the snows are melting, and I’ve counted forty waterfalls, and the roar of them and the roar of the avalanches is enough to send a woman out of her mind! and then, it is that lonely, too—Oh, you don’t know what it is to see another face up here besides your children’s! It’s sometimes eighteen months, and once it was two full years, before I saw the face of living woman; you must come and see me whenever you can.”

I promised her I would, and then, Transome coming in, we had tea, and learned that her husband would be home next week, and, she was sure, would act guide for us.

The children waited on us, not in the least shy, though inclined to go off in explosions of merriment at anything we said to them. Their mother begged us to excuse them, for, as she said, they never saw anyone but their dad from year’s end to year’s end. I was greatly interested in the account of their school-keeping. Not alone did she look after husband, children, and cows—of which they had a large number—but she taught the three eldest children as well, and for this the Government gives a grant of five pounds per head, there being no school nearer than Pembroke, thirty miles away. When they went to be examined this year with the other school children, she was unable to go on account of her baby; but the inspector gave her great praise, and they were found to be quite as well taught as children of their age at school.

“Only,” she said, “he sent word: ‘their manners must be seen to’—to think of that now! and it was all because they just smiled up and talked to him same as if it was their dad! I could have cried with vexation.”

I looked at the copy-books and drawing-books, and found the elder children could read quite nicely; and I conceived a tremendous respect for this lonely woman without a soul to encourage or help her; who goes on cheerfully doing the work of mother, teacher, farmer, and housekeeper combined.

Many a difficulty has to be faced, and not least the want of water in winter, when the waterfalls are solid ice, and icicles fifteen feet long hang from the rocks; and the only water is melted snow, or that which they fetch from the main river.

“It’s a beautiful sight,” said Mrs. Macpherson, “in winter, when everything is white, and the blue shadows lie on the snow; but the sun gets above the mountains for only two hours and a half in mid-winter, and there’s a long time of darkness.”

Once the chimney caught fire, and they were all running this way and that with the buckets to find water to put it out; they thought the house would be burnt: “and Macpherson got on a ladder, and the whole thing fell down with him. But, praise God, he wasn’t hurt, and we just stood and laughed,” said cheerful Mrs. Macpherson; “we could not help it! and we couldn’t have a fire till he could fix up the chimney again.”

One point she always came back to: the river. It was an enemy—something to be dreaded and feared. “I never see Macpherson go, but I pray he may come back safe; and when I’m expecting him, I’m out there on the point every minute watching till I see his horse come over the creek. And the creeks are nearly as bad. I had another little girl, and once when the floods were coming, down she ran after her father, and her foot slipped on the plank over the creek, and she was carried away! Her father’s deaf, and he never heard her cry; and we found her when the creek went down.”

The tears were in her eyes, and I felt how ill she could spare one out of her little flock. Her husband made a sad journey with his little one, to bury her in consecrated ground, but the mother stayed behind with the other children.

“Why,” she went on, “only this summer, when baby was born, I had someone come up to be with me, and it was five weeks before the river let her get away again!”

“And when the children are ill, do you see a doctor?” I asked.

“Doctor! there’s never been a doctor here! It’s not so long since I thought I had lost her there”—pointing to a little fair girl of three. “Her father was away; there was no one but myself and the children here; and she was the baby then. She had been eating the matches when my back was turned, and I was just distracted to know what to do—leaving the house and all, and only the three children, and them babies, you might say, to take care of it.

“She was a big, heavy child, and I set off with her on my knees to ride to Pembroke—one of the little girls handed her up to me when I was in the saddle—and I got across the river; but the horse fidgeted, and I got down to shift the saddle, for I thought it was hurting it, and then I could not mount again with the sick child in my arms. Evening was drawing on, and there was seventeen miles to go through bog and creek, and I carried her every step of the way, and the horse dragging on the bridle, for it wanted to get back. I thought she was dying when I got to Russell’s Flat—they wanted me to stop, but I cried to go on, and they brought me a cup of tea; but I was too wild to drink it, and kept begging them to hurry—so they put a horse in the buggy, and drove me the rest of the way.

“The doctor looked very grave, and said I must leave the child for a week with him; but I had to stay and nurse her, and all the time I was thinking the other three would be drowned or the house burnt before Macpherson would get back, for I got word sent to him to go home. She got well in a week’s time. Everyone was good to us in Pembroke; if it hadn’t been for my worrying, I could have enjoyed it. Mr. Ross drove us all the way home, and when I got back the place was clean and tidy, and the scones baking on the fire, and the children well. I was a thankful woman that night!”

We had finished tea, and, while she talked, Mrs. Macpherson had packed up milk, cream, scones, eggs, and butter; and we said good-bye to her and rode away, considerably enlightened as to the other side of life on the Matukituki. “The Gate of Death” looked very grim and awful, but beyond it the mellow sunshine still lay on our valley, though the long shadows from the mountains had crept over its upper end. In a book of Australian verse I came across a poem one day by George Essex Evans, called “The Woman of the West.” It is rather long to quote, but some of it seemed to me just to describe the mistress of the Lone Shieling, and the life there of one who had faced the wilderness:

“In the slab-built, zinc-roofed homestead of some lately taken run,
In the tent beside the ’bankment of a railway just begun,
In the huts on new selections, in the camps of man’s unrest,
On the frontiers of the Nation, live the Women of the West.
 
“The red sun robs their beauty, and in weariness and pain,
The slow years steal the nameless grace that never comes again;
And there are hours men cannot soothe, and words men cannot say—
The nearest woman’s face may be a hundred miles away.

“The wide bush holds the secret of their longing and desires,
When the white stars in reverence light their holy altar fires,
And silence, like the touch of God, sinks deep into the breast—
Perchance he hears and understands the Women of the West.”