It is true certainly that there was a daughter named Charlotte or Caroline, or both, born to the Prince and Miss Walkenshaw in the year 1753. But it was the mother, not the daughter, who was suspected of being a spy in English pay. Clementina left the Prince, driven away by his sottish brutalities, just as did his legal wife, the Countess of Albany. The Countess adjusted her account by running away with Alfieri the poet. Abandoned by both women, Charles seems to have found some consolation in the society of his daughter Charlotte, to whom, even in his last degraded years, he showed his better side. He went through the form of making her Duchess of Albany. She remained with him till his death in 1788, and seems to have followed him to the grave a year afterwards. In any case, Stewart, the sea-captain of the legend, did not find his way to our southern isles till the earlier years of the nineteenth century. That was too late by a generation for Jacobite exiles to be concerned about the treachery of English agents. He is described in Surgeon-Major Thomson’s book as a man “who had seen the world and drunk Burgundy,” so it is possible that the story may have had a Burgundian origin. Who the buried Frenchwoman was I cannot say, but French seamen and explorers, as the map shows, have visited and examined Campbell Island. It would be a desolate spot for a Frenchwoman to live in; but when we are under earth, then, if the grave be deep enough, all lands, I suppose, are much alike.
[APPENDIX]
A WORD TO THE TOURIST
WHITE CLIFFS, BULLER RIVER
Passengers to New Zealand may be roughly divided into two kinds—those who go to settle there, and those who go as visitors merely. The visitors, again, may be separated into sportsmen, invalids, and ordinary tourists who land in the country in order to look round and depart, “to glance and nod and hurry by.” Now by passengers and travellers of all sorts and conditions I, a Government official, may be forgiven if I advise them to make all possible use of the Government of the Dominion. For it is a Government ready and willing to give them help and information. I may be pardoned for reminding English readers that the Dominion has an office in London with a bureau, where inquirers are cheerfully welcomed and inquiries dealt with. Official pamphlets and statistics may not be stimulating or exciting reading; but, though dry and cautious, they are likely to be fairly accurate. So much for the information to be got in England. When the passenger lands in New Zealand, I can only repeat the advice—let him make every use he can of the Government. If he be in search of land, he cannot do better than make his way to the nearest office of the Lands and Survey Department. If he be a skilled labourer whose capital is chiefly in his muscles and trade knowledge, the Department of Labour will tell him where he can best seek for employment. Last, but not least, if he be a tourist of any of the three descriptions above mentioned, he cannot easily miss the Tourist Department, for that ubiquitous organisation has agents in every part of the islands. Once in their hands, and brought by them into touch with the State and the facilities its railways offer, the traveller’s path is made as smooth as ample knowledge and good advice can make it. The journey from Auckland to Wellington may now be made by railway, while the voyage from Wellington to Lyttelton is but a matter of ten to eleven hours. Old colonists will understand what a saving of time and discomfort these changes mean.
The visitor need not overburden himself with any cumbrous or extravagant outfit. He is going to a civilised country with a temperate climate. The sort of kit that might be taken for an autumn journey through the west of Ireland will be sufficient for a run through New Zealand. A sportsman may take very much what he would take for a hunting or fishing holiday in the highlands of Scotland; and, speaking broadly, the mountaineer who has climbed Switzerland will know what to take to New Zealand. Of course any one who contemplates camping out must add the apparatus for sleeping, cooking, and washing; but these things can be bought in the larger New Zealand towns at reasonable prices.
A much more complicated question is the route which the traveller should follow on landing. The districts for deer-shooting are well known. Indeed, the sportsman need have no difficulty in mapping out a course for himself. All will depend on the season of the year and the special game he is after. Any one interested in the progress of settlement and colonisation may be recommended to pass through the farming district between the Waiau River in Southland and the river of the same name which runs into the sea about sixty miles north of Christchurch. Next he should make a journey from Wellington to New Plymouth, along the south-west coast of New Zealand, and again from Wellington to Napier, threading the districts of Wairarapa, the Seventy Mile Bush, and Hawke’s Bay. The city of Auckland and its neighbourhood, and the valley of the Waikato River also, he should not miss.