Page:Letters from New Zealand (Harper).djvu/121

Rh am doing well, boots and bottle-washer, lamp trimmer in this hotel; a pound a day, board and lodging. Yes, coming to church to-morrow, shall bring all I can.; you won't get any private sitting-room here, but the grub's good."

Sunday came. There was no bell, but the Town Crier had been engaged with his bell. "Roll up, roll up, boys,—Church service,—roll up," and then, with stentorian voice and ingenious invention of titles: "Roll up! Roll up! His Riverince! the Archdeacon! His Honour! His Grace! will preach to-day,—roll up! roll up!" And they did roll up, lots of men, few women; a most hearty service morning and evening; my friend there too, in a good suit, and kid gloves! "Got a Sunday off to-day; gentleman again to-day; bottle-washer to-morrow."

A month or so has passed, and I have settled myself, and can tell you something of the place. A lovely summer morning, soft, yet exhilarating, so unlike the East Coast in its absence of dry mountain wind; an early wander down to the sea-beach before breakfast, just behind the main street of the town. Eighty miles southward Mt. Cook rears its great mass of snow and ice and rock, as clearly seen as if only one-third of its real distance; the sandy beach strewn with huge drift timber, blanched white, washed down from the forests which fringe the Hokitika river; an incessant tumult of heavy lines of surf, which make bathing impossible; in the offing, where anchorage is good (for the wind seldom blows home on the coast), steamers and other vessels waiting for lighterage, or for a full tide on which to cross the river bar. Just clear of the town I find men at work in an excavation in the sand about fifty feet square, and half as deep;