I have met many middle-class men in the colony, and all contrived to bear out the view I have put forward by their own condition. Those who come to grief do so from their own failings and deficiencies. Some growl and grumble a little now and then, and think they would rather be back in England; but, when they reflect upon the condition they would probably be occupying at home in the ordinary course of things, they are forced to admit that they are better off. At any rate, such bitter and terrible distress as overtook so many thousands in Britain a year or two ago, could scarcely fall to the lot of the same people under any circumstances, if they were industrious colonists. But I have digressed inordinately, and must get back to Auckland forthwith.
The barracks are empty at last, and all our fellow-voyagers have found each his or her starting-point in the new life. Our own little party of cuddy-passengers is dispersed as well. Some have gone off to join friends in the country, some are gone on to distant parts of the colony, some have gone this way or that, scattering to work in all directions; only a couple of us are left, and it is time that we should begin to follow the plan we have conceived for ourselves.
Parting with shipmates, with the faces that have been so long familiar to us, seems to have severed the last link that bound us to the old country, the old home, and the old ways. We shall meet with many of them again, no doubt, but then the old "Englishness" will have disappeared, and we shall be at one with those who now are strangers to us, we too shall be New Zealanders. Henceforth all before us and around us is strange and new, an untried, unknown world. We are about to enter on a life totally different to that we have hitherto led, and it is a life that we have got to make ours for the time to come; for there is no thought in our minds of retreat, even if we find the unknown more distasteful than we think. But, courage! "Hope points before to guide us on our way," and, as yet, there is nothing in the prospect but what is bright and inspiriting, surely; nothing to diminish our youthful energy, nothing to daunt our British pluck! The past lies behind us, with its sweet and tender recollections, and with a softened sense of remembrance of those failures and sadnesses and bitternesses that are linked with them. Now our cry must be "Forward!" for a page in the book of our lives is completely turned down, and we may imagine there is endorsed upon it, "Sacred to the memory of auld lang syne!"
CHAPTER III.
GOING UP COUNTRY.
I and my last remaining shipmate certainly came out here without any very clear idea of what we were going to do. We came to make our fortunes, of course, after the manner of all new-chums, but as to how we were to set about it, and what were to be the first steps we should take, we had the very vaguest notion.
However, our condition of existence as new-chums sat very lightly upon us. Hope! We were all hope; we were hope incarnate! We felt that we were bound to win. It seemed, though, that the beginning must be made in some fashion that was, to say the least of it, unpleasant, now that we were face to face with the reality. Plenty of work offered, but none of it seemed to be of a particularly engaging kind; and, moreover, the wage offered us was extremely paltry, so we considered. For we belonged to that much maligned middle-class, which, in the chrysalis or new-chum stage, is so greatly contemned by colonists.
But it happened that, long long ago, a certain schoolfellow of ours had gone forth into the colonial world. He was in the sixth form when we were in the first, or thereabouts; but, as his family and ours were neighbours in the old home, there had been enough intimacy between us. It was owing to his letters home that we had determined on emigration. He had been apprised of our coming, so now we were not surprised to receive a message from him through a resident in Auckland. This was an invitation to join him at a distant settlement called Te Pahi, there to make a beginning at pioneer farm work, and see what might turn up.
We found on inquiry that little or nothing was known in Auckland of Te Pahi. It was a new township in the Kaipara district, lying sixty or eighty miles north of Auckland. That was about the sum of what we could learn of our destination, except that there were very few settlers in the Kaipara, and that communication between it and Auckland was not very good. Somewhat later than this date—in fact, to be precise, in 1875—an Auckland newspaper wrote of the Kaipara under the title of Terra Incognita. So that when we decided on going there, we felt that we were about to penetrate an almost unexplored country. But we found out what were the means of transit, and prepared to set out without further delay.