VI 
THE WELLINGTON MUSEUM 
223 
village, and I wondered, but did not like to ask, how 
many hands were employed to work it 
Next day we went to see the sheep being dipped. 
They swam and ducked them in a deep trough of 
arsenic and water, 10,000 going through in one day. 
Drafting, too, was going on, and all hands were very 
busy. The frozen meat trade, too, is taking such strides 
that the squatters’ hearts ought to be jubilant with such a 
promising future. Coming home, we met the rabbiter 
with his pack of dogs ; for this troublesome pest is not yet 
a thing of the past. How quickly the time seemed to 
fly ! but I had to hurry on. My visit ended all too 
soon, and once more came the good-byes. The rain fell 
just enough to lay the dust. Then into the train, where 
a crowd of natives in the next carriage were going to 
attend a big lawsuit over some land dispute, and the 
small owner, a boy of four, together with his relations, 
ate and slept by turns until Wellington was reached at 
eight P.M. 
Next morning I went over the Wellington Museum, 
which is well worth seeing. Sir James Hector has had 
charge of it since its foundation in 1865. The Maori 
carved house here, which was originally built at 
Tauranga by the Ngatikaipoho tribe, is the best I have 
yet seen. It is hard to realise that such elaborate 
carvings could have been produced by those rough old 
stone weapons that are shown in the case in the same 
room. A big glass jar reminds one of Victor Hugo’s 
Toilers of the Sea, for it contains a single feeler, 14 
feet long, of an octopus which was caught in this 
harbour, and nearly cost the boatmen their lives by 
upsetting them into the water. The creature itself was 
52 feet long. The collection of New Zealand 
birds has not such a stuffed look as most that you see. 
They are all there, from the Kea (the long-beaked evil- 
