<h2> <SPAN name="ch32" id="ch32"></SPAN><br/> <br/> CHAPTER XXXII. </h2>
<p><small><i>Description of the Town of Christ Church—A Fine Museum—Jade-stone
Trinkets—The Great Moa—The First Maori in New Zealand—Women
Voters—"Person" in New Zealand Law Includes Woman—Taming an
Ornithorhynchus—A Voyage in the 'Flora' from Lyttelton—Cattle
Stalls for Everybody—A Wonderful Time.<br/> <br/> <br/></i></small></p>
<p><i>The man with a new idea is a Crank until the idea succeeds.</i></p>
<p>—Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.</p>
<p>It was Junior England all the way to Christchurch—in fact, just a
garden. And Christchurch is an English town, with an English-park annex,
and a winding English brook just like the Avon—and named the Avon;
but from a man, not from Shakespeare's river. Its grassy banks are
bordered by the stateliest and most impressive weeping willows to be found
in the world, I suppose. They continue the line of a great ancestor; they
were grown from sprouts of the willow that sheltered Napoleon's grave in
St. Helena. It is a settled old community, with all the serenities, the
graces, the conveniences, and the comforts of the ideal home-life. If it
had an established Church and social inequality it would be England over
again with hardly a lack.</p>
<p>In the museum we saw many curious and interesting things; among others a
fine native house of the olden time, with all the details true to the
facts, and the showy colors right and in their proper places. All the
details: the fine mats and rugs and things; the elaborate and wonderful
wood carvings—wonderful, surely, considering who did them—wonderful
in design and particularly in execution, for they were done with admirable
sharpness and exactness, and yet with no better tools than flint and jade
and shell could furnish; and the totem-posts were there, ancestor above
ancestor, with tongues protruded and hands clasped comfortably over
bellies containing other people's ancestors—grotesque and ugly
devils, every one, but lovingly carved, and ably; and the stuffed natives
were present, in their proper places, and looking as natural as life; and
the housekeeping utensils were there, too, and close at hand the carved
and finely ornamented war canoe.</p>
<p>And we saw little jade gods, to hang around the neck—not
everybody's, but sacred to the necks of natives of rank. Also jade
weapons, and many kinds of jade trinkets—all made out of that
excessively hard stone without the help of any tool of iron. And some of
these things had small round holes bored through them—nobody knows
how it was done; a mystery, a lost art. I think it was said that if you
want such a hole bored in a piece of jade now, you must send it to London
or Amsterdam where the lapidaries are.<br/> <br/> <br/> <br/></p>
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<p>Also we saw a complete skeleton of the giant Moa. It stood ten feet high,
and must have been a sight to look at when it was a living bird. It was a
kicker, like the ostrich; in fight it did not use its beak, but its foot.
It must have been a convincing kind of kick. If a person had his back to
the bird and did not see who it was that did it, he would think he had
been kicked by a wind-mill.</p>
<p>There must have been a sufficiency of moas in the old forgotten days when
his breed walked the earth. His bones are found in vast masses, all
crammed together in huge graves. They are not in caves, but in the ground.
Nobody knows how they happened to get concentrated there. Mind, they are
bones, not fossils. This means that the moa has not been extinct very
long. Still, this is the only New Zealand creature which has no mention in
that otherwise comprehensive literature, the native legends. This is a
significant detail, and is good circumstantial evidence that the moa has
been extinct 500 years, since the Maori has himself—by tradition—been
in New Zealand since the end of the fifteenth century. He came from an
unknown land—the first Maori did—then sailed back in his canoe
and brought his tribe, and they removed the aboriginal peoples into the
sea and into the ground and took the land. That is the tradition. That
that first Maori could come, is understandable, for anybody can come to a
place when he isn't trying to; but how that discoverer found his way back
home again without a compass is his secret, and he died with it in him.
His language indicates that he came from Polynesia. He told where he came
from, but he couldn't spell well, so one can't find the place on the map,
because people who could spell better than he could, spelt the resemblance
all out of it when they made the map. However, it is better to have a map
that is spelt right than one that has information in it.</p>
<p>In New Zealand women have the right to vote for members of the
legislature, but they cannot be members themselves. The law extending the
suffrage to them went into effect in 1893. The population of Christchurch
(census of 1891) was 31,454. The first election under the law was held in
November of that year. Number of men who voted, 6,313; number of women who
voted, 5,989. These figures ought to convince us that women are not as
indifferent about politics as some people would have us believe. In New
Zealand as a whole, the estimated adult female population was 139,915; of
these 109,461 qualified and registered their names on the rolls 78.23 per
cent. of the whole. Of these, 90,290 went to the polls and voted—85.18
per cent. Do men ever turn out better than that—in America or
elsewhere? Here is a remark to the other sex's credit, too—I take it
from the official report:</p>
<p>"A feature of the election was the orderliness and sobriety of the people.
Women were in no way molested."</p>
<p>At home, a standing argument against woman suffrage has always been that
women could not go to the polls without being insulted. The arguments
against woman suffrage have always taken the easy form of prophecy. The
prophets have been prophesying ever since the woman's rights movement
began in 1848—and in forty-seven years they have never scored a hit.</p>
<p>Men ought to begin to feel a sort of respect for their mothers and wives
and sisters by this time. The women deserve a change of attitude like
that, for they have wrought well. In forty-seven years they have swept an
imposingly large number of unfair laws from the statute books of America.
In that brief time these serfs have set themselves free—essentially.
Men could not have done so much for themselves in that time without
bloodshed—at least they never have; and that is argument that they
didn't know how. The women have accomplished a peaceful revolution, and a
very beneficent one; and yet that has not convinced the average man that
they are intelligent, and have courage and energy and perseverance and
fortitude. It takes much to convince the average man of anything; and
perhaps nothing can ever make him realize that he is the average woman's
inferior—yet in several important details the evidence seems to show
that that is what he is. Man has ruled the human race from the beginning—but
he should remember that up to the middle of the present century it was a
dull world, and ignorant and stupid; but it is not such a dull world now,
and is growing less and less dull all the time. This is woman's
opportunity—she has had none before. I wonder where man will be in
another forty-seven years?</p>
<p>In the New Zealand law occurs this: "The word person wherever it occurs
throughout the Act includes woman."</p>
<p>That is promotion, you see. By that enlargement of the word, the matron
with the garnered wisdom and experience of fifty years becomes at one jump
the political equal of her callow kid of twenty-one. The white population
of the colony is 626,000, the Maori population is 42,000. The whites elect
seventy members of the House of Representatives, the Maoris four. The
Maori women vote for their four members.</p>
<p>November 16. After four pleasant days in Christchurch, we are to leave at
midnight to-night. Mr. Kinsey gave me an ornithorhynchus, and I am taming
it.</p>
<p>Sunday, 17th. Sailed last night in the Flora, from Lyttelton.</p>
<p>So we did. I remember it yet. The people who sailed in the Flora that
night may forget some other things if they live a good while, but they
will not live long enough to forget that. The Flora is about the
equivalent of a cattle-scow; but when the Union Company find it
inconvenient to keep a contract and lucrative to break it, they smuggle
her into passenger service, and "keep the change."</p>
<p>They give no notice of their projected depredation; you innocently buy
tickets for the advertised passenger boat, and when you get down to
Lyttelton at midnight, you find that they have substituted the scow. They
have plenty of good boats, but no competition—and that is the
trouble. It is too late now to make other arrangements if you have
engagements ahead.</p>
<p>It is a powerful company, it has a monopoly, and everybody is afraid of it—including
the government's representative, who stands at the end of the stage-plank
to tally the passengers and see that no boat receives a greater number
than the law allows her to carry. This conveniently-blind representative
saw the scow receive a number which was far in excess of its privilege,
and winked a politic wink and said nothing. The passengers bore with
meekness the cheat which had been put upon them, and made no complaint.</p>
<p>It was like being at home in America, where abused passengers act in just
the same way. A few days before, the Union Company had discharged a
captain for getting a boat into danger, and had advertised this act as
evidence of its vigilance in looking after the safety of the passengers—for
thugging a captain costs the company nothing, but when opportunity offered
to send this dangerously overcrowded tub to sea and save a little trouble
and a tidy penny by it, it forgot to worry about the passenger's safety.</p>
<p>The first officer told me that the Flora was privileged to carry 125
passengers. She must have had all of 200 on board. All the cabins were
full, all the cattle-stalls in the main stable were full, the spaces at
the heads of companionways were full, every inch of floor and table in the
swill-room was packed with sleeping men and remained so until the place
was required for breakfast, all the chairs and benches on the hurricane
deck were occupied, and still there were people who had to walk about all
night!</p>
<p>If the Flora had gone down that night, half of the people on board would
have been wholly without means of escape.</p>
<p>The owners of that boat were not technically guilty of conspiracy to
commit murder, but they were morally guilty of it.<br/> <br/> <br/> <br/></p>
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<p>I had a cattle-stall in the main stable—a cavern fitted up with a
long double file of two-storied bunks, the files separated by a calico
partition—twenty men and boys on one side of it, twenty women and
girls on the other. The place was as dark as the soul of the Union
Company, and smelt like a kennel. When the vessel got out into the heavy
seas and began to pitch and wallow, the cavern prisoners became
immediately seasick, and then the peculiar results that ensued laid all my
previous experiences of the kind well away in the shade. And the wails,
the groans, the cries, the shrieks, the strange ejaculations—it was
wonderful.</p>
<p>The women and children and some of the men and boys spent the night in
that place, for they were too ill to leave it; but the rest of us got up,
by and by, and finished the night on the hurricane-deck.</p>
<p>That boat was the foulest I was ever in; and the smell of the breakfast
saloon when we threaded our way among the layers of steaming passengers
stretched upon its floor and its tables was incomparable for efficiency.</p>
<p>A good many of us got ashore at the first way-port to seek another ship.
After a wait of three hours we got good rooms in the Mahinapua, a wee
little bridal-parlor of a boat—only 205 tons burthen; clean and
comfortable; good service; good beds; good table, and no crowding. The
seas danced her about like a duck, but she was safe and capable.</p>
<p>Next morning early she went through the French Pass—a narrow gateway
of rock, between bold headlands—so narrow, in fact, that it seemed
no wider than a street. The current tore through there like a mill-race,
and the boat darted through like a telegram. The passage was made in half
a minute; then we were in a wide place where noble vast eddies swept
grandly round and round in shoal water, and I wondered what they would do
with the little boat. They did as they pleased with her. They picked her
up and flung her around like nothing and landed her gently on the solid,
smooth bottom of sand—so gently, indeed, that we barely felt her
touch it, barely felt her quiver when she came to a standstill. The water
was as clear as glass, the sand on the bottom was vividly distinct, and
the fishes seemed to be swimming about in nothing. Fishing lines were
brought out, but before we could bait the hooks the boat was off and away
again.<br/> <br/> <br/> <br/></p>
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