rum-laden brain is proof against all our blandishments, until, mindful that "music hath charms," I try the effect of a plaintive Irish song on "the savage breast." And lo! at the old familiar strain the flood-gates are unloosed, and the poor, blundering, impulsive, drink-besotted, warm-hearted bosthoon begins to blubber like a child.
Poor Pat! Surely his love of country covers a multitude of sins. We get on better after this; but I have to sing till I am hoarse to keep our Hibernian friend in the right key, and possibly to preserve my pate from a punching.
We cross the river at Dunkeld on a pontoon raft, propelled by the power of the current through the agency of a traveller on a wire cable, such as we had seen on the Manawatu River. I was informed by McIntosh that the idea had been borrowed from India, and introduced into New Zealand by an engineer who had served in the East.
At Lawrence, the ancient Tuapeka (why will they change these beautiful old native names for the vulgar patronymics of Cockaigne?), we bid good-bye once more to the stage coach, and revert to the iron horse. Here for the first time in all my colonial experience, I noticed a Chinese name over a hotel. Sam Chew Lain is the Boniface of "The Chinese Empire Hotel," nor is this the only sign of the march of civilization among the Mongolians in New Zealand, as I found on reading the Bankruptcy list in Dunedin the names of two Chinese market-gardeners, whose liabilities were set
