Page:Reminiscences of Earliest Canterbury 1915.pdf/79

 Lord Salisbury and a friend, Lord Cavendish, passed through Pigeon Bay on their way to Akaroa, where they visited Mr. S. C. Farr, and stayed overnight. Next day they returned to Pigeon Bay, and thence went by whaleboat to Lyttelton. They had come from Auckland.

Early in the sixties a brother of Gordon of Khartoum was sawing timber in Duvauchelles Bay.

Passing to a celebrity of a different stamp, the famous Tichborne claimant was for a short time “boots” at Mr. Shadbolt’s Travellers’ Rest Hotel, Duvauchelles Bay. He frequently attended to and fed my horse before he left for Melbourne, and thence for London to push his claim.

Those who can remember the Peninsula when it was covered with virgin forest, and only they, can form any conception of the beauty that has for ever passed away from the landscape.

With the bush have gone the native birds that haunted it and filled it with song. In the spring the notes of the tuis, mako-makos, and other little bush songsters filled the air. In the autumn they were still more in evidence, for their ranks were swelled by