Page:Reminiscences of Earliest Canterbury 1915.pdf/205

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modem boy to gauge the fright we got, just because it is impossible for him, by imagining that he had never seen a horse, to put himself in our place. When the rider proposed putting us on the back of his mount, we broke for cover again, and it took some persuasion this time to bring us out again. Neither of us had ever previously seen or heard of a horse, nor ever seen a picture of one. The rider was a whaler with whom we were fated to become better acquainted ere we were much older, and the horse was one he was bringing over from Akaroa to Purau either for Messrs. Greenwood or Messrs. Rhodes, I forget which. I do not, however, forget the horse, whose image is so clearly stamped on my brain cells, that, were it possible for him to pass me in the street after an interval of nearly seventy years, I should immediately recognise him. He was a big, raking, light chestnut, with a wall eye.

Shortly after this event, Bishop Selwyn came to Pigeon Bay. He had come south from Nelson, and was en route for Dunedin, having made the diversion to the bay in order that he might confer with the Maoris. He called at my father’s house, but finding him away from home, and having business