About seven years ago I drifted from Out-Back in Australia to Wellington, the capital of New Zealand, and up country to a little town called Pahiatua, which meaneth the 'home of the gods', and is situated in the Wairarappa (rippling or sparkling water) district. They have a pretty little legend to the effect that the name of the district was not originally suggested by its rivers, streams, and lakes, but by the tears alleged to have been noticed, by a dusky squire, in the eyes of a warrior chief who was looking his first, or last -- I don't remember which -- upon the scene. He was the discoverer, I suppose, now I come to think of it, else the place would have been already named. Maybe the scene reminded the old cannibal of the home of his childhood.
Pahiatua was not the home of my god; and it rained for five weeks. While waiting for a remittance, from an Australian newspaper -- which, I anxiously hoped, would arrive in time for enough of it to be left (after paying board) to take me away somewhere -- I spent many hours in the little shop of a shoemaker who had been a digger; and he told me yarns of the old days on the West Coast of Middle Island. And, ever and anon, he returned to one, a hard-case from the West Coast, called 'The Flour of Wheat', and his cousin, and his mate, Dinny Murphy, dead. And ever and again the shoemaker (he was large, humorous, and good-natured) made me promise that, when I dropped across an old West Coast digger -- no matter who or what he was, or whether he was drunk or sober -- I'd ask him if he knew the 'Flour of Wheat', and hear what he had to say.
Sign in to unlock this title
Sign in to continue reading, it's free! As an unregistered user you can only read a little bit.
