Editorial note — Chapter XIII · THE PASTORAL PROVINCES

[Footnote 1: An amusing article might be written on the more primitive gaols of the early settlements. At Wanganui there were no means of confining certain drunken bush-sawyers whose vagaries were a nuisance; so they were fined in timber—so many feet for each orgie—and building material for a prison thus obtained. When it was put up, however, the sawyers had departed, and the empty house of detention became of use as a storehouse for the gaoler's potatoes. In a violent gale in the Southern Alps one of these wooden "lock-ups" was lifted in air, carried bodily away and deposited in a neighbouring thicket. Its solitary prisoner disappeared in the whirlwind. Believers in his innocence imagined for him a celestial ascent somewhat like that of Elijah. What is certain is that he was never seen again in that locality. A more comfortable gaol was that made for himself by a high and very ingenious provincial official. Arrested for debt, he proclaimed his own house a district prison, and as visiting Justice committed himself to be detained therein.]