Page:Reminiscences of Earliest Canterbury 1915.pdf/55

 many of them excelling as bullock drivers. In whatever manner they were occupied they showed great aptitude in acquiring new duties, were intelligent, clever with their hands, and conscientious. Their one failing was their love for rum. For three or four months they would work steadily and well, and then they would deliberately abandon themselves to a fortnight’s spree with their accumulated earnings. Their first care on these occasions was to pay all their liabilities to storekeepers and others, reserving the balance for their frolic. They drank rum, and drank it neat, scorning either to dilute or pollute it with water, and when their money ran out, they went back quite resignedly, and even cheerfully to work for another spell.

As a class, they were fine chivalrous fellows, and from their natural generosity and resourcefulness were most useful to the early settlers, with whom they were on good terms.

Notwithstanding their mode of life, and the liberties they took with themselves in pursuit of those rum orgies, it is astonishing to what an age they lived. Very few of them died under eighty, many of them reached