Page:Reminiscences of Earliest Canterbury 1915.pdf/69

 for two or three years, until gradually relieved by the erection of hotels and accommodation houses.

The living from 1843 to 1846 was chiefly wild pork for nine months of the year, and native pigeons in May, June, and July. During those months the pigeons were well flavoured and in good condition, but in August they began to feed on the kowhai flowers and leaves, and in consequence acquired a bitter taste, and became lean.

It frequently happened that the settlers ran short of flour, tea, and sugar. There were no flour mills in those days, so that wheat had to be ground by hand in a small contrivance resembling a coffee-mill. This was done at night and on wet days, and, the bran having been sifted out, bread was made either in “damper” fashion or baked in the camp oven. When tea ran out a substitute was made from the young shoots of manuka scrub. The favourite native tea was made from the “biddy-biddy,” collected in small bundles and dried. Very often this dry biddy-biddy was mixed with China tea to spin it out when the stock was running low.

There was much that was attractive in the social relations of those hardy old