THE UNIVERSE  
by C. W. MAUGHAN

PART I THE SOLAR SYSTEM
This article continues the science series begun last year. Already published are 
articles on volcanoes, earthquakes and tides. 
How Big is the Universe?
Suppose you were walking along a beach and found a sea-shell that you liked. You had 
nothing else to 
do, and so you decided to see how many
shells you could collect. At first you would probably pick up every shell, as long as 
it wasn't 
broken, but you would soon find that most of them
looked the same. If you looked all over the beach you might be able to find six or 
seven shells that 
looked really different. Of course, some of the
shells would be different sizes, and some of them would be slightly different colours, 
but they would 
all belong to one of these six or seven main
groups.
If you never had the chance to collect shells from other beaches round the world, you 
could easily 
think that there were no other groups of shells
except the ones you had found. If you were interested enough, you could go and find 
out in a book 
whether there were any more shells, as
somebody would probably have collected and named every group of shells in the world.
Although it takes a lot of time and trouble to do something like collecting every 
shell in the world, 
it can be done. It is very different, however, for
the person who wants to find out something about the universe, because the universe is 
too big for anyone to list everything in it. It is the whole of the Earth you live on, 
as well as the Moon, 
the Sun, all the planets and all the stars and all the
space in between them. If you look at the stars at night and think that they are the 
whole of the 
universe, you will be just like the person who
collects six shells from one beach and thinks that they are all the shells in the 
world. Because the 
stars you can see with your naked eye are
just one tiny part of all the stars that can be seen with a telescope, and even the 
biggest telescope cannot see very far into the universe.

ABOVE A view of part of the sky through a powerful telescope. Most of these stars 
cannot be seen with the naked eye. (Yerkes Observatory)

What do we know?
How then can we know anything about the universe? The answer is, of course, that we 
cannot know 
anything definitely. All we can do is to
suppose that the part of the universe we can see is just like any other part.
What can we see? If we use just our eyes, the three biggest things we can see are the 
Earth, the Moon and the Sun.

Earth from the Moon. This view of the Earth greeted the Apollo 8 astronauts on their 
first orbit around the moon on 24 December 1968. The lunar horizon is about 490 miles 
(780 kilometres) from the spacecraft. The area shown here is about 110 miles (175 
kilometres) wide. (N.A.S.A. photograph)

You will already know several things about the Earth and the Moon from 
reading about volcanoes and tides. You will
know that the Earth is like a ball with a thin crust of rock on the 
outside, a thicker layer below, called the mantle, and
a liquid core deep inside which is probably made of iron. Round the outside 
of the ball is the air we breathe, which is
called the Earth's atmosphere, and this is held close to the earth by the 
Earth's gravity. (Because the Moon is
smaller than the Earth, its gravity has not been strong enough to hold an 
atmosphere, and so no life is able to survive
on the Moon.)
You will also know from your reading that the Moon goes round the Earth and 
both of them go round the Sun. The
movement of the Moon round the Earth makes it tend to fly away from Earth, 
but it can't because the Moon and Earth
are pulled towards each other by gravity. The Moon, therefore, stays
in orbit round the Earth. In just the same way the Earth (and the Moon) 
stay in orbit round the Sun. As if this wasn't
complicated enough, all of them are spinning like tops. 
You will also be able to see quite clearly for yourselves that the Moon and 
the Earth are both very different from the
Sun. In fact, whereas the Moon and the Earth are both solid and cool on the 
surface, the Sun is a vast mass of hot
gas. The Earth is called a planet and the Moon a satellite planet of the Earth, but 
the Sun is a star, like many of the stars you can see in the sky at night.
What is the Universe verse made of?
What really is the difference between a star and a planet? To understand 
this you have to try and find out what they
are made of. If they were made of millions and millions of different things 
this would be impossible, but, luckily for us,
everything, whether it is big or small, alive or not alive, seems to he 
made up of a few basic particles which are just
arranged in different ways.
This is hard to believe, because everything looks so different. You 
yourself certainly seem to be very different from a
star or a rock. The reason for this is that the particles are very small 
indeed. This means that your eyes can see only
something built out of them, not the particles themselves.
In just the same way the particles of the universe cannot be seen, even if 
you use the most powerful microscope in
the world -but they are still there. What are they, and what do they look like?
The Atom
One of the smallest particles we can break everything down into
is an atom. An atom is made up of a tiny centre called the
nucleus (from which we get the word nuclear), and various
other particles, called electrons, that travel about the nucleus.
Atoms are so small that a pin's head would contain more than a
million, million, million atoms of iron.
Although it is so small, even the nucleus can be broken down
into two parts, called protons and neutrons.
If you could look through a huge microscope, an atom would
look much like a swarm of tiny insects flying about. Near the
centre of the swarm there would be more insects than on the
edges of the swarm. The whole "swarm" would be the atom, and
its centre would he the nucleus. The "insects" flying about close to
each other at the centre would be protons and neutrons. The
"insects" at the edges of the "swarm" would be electrons.
As long as you keep clear in your mind the idea of a "swarm
of insects", you can imagine what an atom looks like.
These diagrams illustrate the probability of finding electrons at
any particular instant. Electrons are more likely to be found
near the nucleus than far from it. Each dot does not represent
an electron. The closer the dots, the greater the chance of finding
an electron.
To understand the difference between the Earth and the Sun,
you not only have to know what an atom is, you also have to
know what can happen to it. Atoms can change. They can be broken into 
pieces (the "swarm" can fly apart), or they
can be made bigger (more "insects" can join the "swarm").
This seems to be a very simple thing, but in effect it causes the 
difference between the Earth and the Sun. The atoms
which go to make up the Earth are not being changed very much, but the 
atoms in the Sun are being changed all the
time.
Now, if atoms are being changed all the time, they release a lot of energy. 
This is exactly what is happening when a
hydrogen bomb explodes, and you must know how much energy is released by 
such a bomb. The whole Sun is just
like an immense hydrogen bomb. The atoms in the Sun are moving round 
violently and colliding. Some atoms are
being broken up, and others are being made bigger. As this happens, energy 
is being released. On the Earth the
atoms are not being changed very much, and so we have a much more stable 
world around us.
More about Atoms
Before we consider further differences between the Sun and the Earth, let 
us just return to the "swarm of insects"
idea. We didn't say how many "insects" (electrons, protons, neutrons) were 
in that "swarm" (the atom). In fact, some
atoms have many protons, neutrons and electrons, and other atoms only a 
very few.
The simplest atom has only 1 proton and 1 electron. One of the most 
complicated atoms has 92 electrons, 92
protons, and 146 neutrons. That is a very big "swarm". If the atom has more 
than 82 protons it doesn't seem to be
able to stay together. The electrons, protons, neutrons start to fly away. 
In scientific language, the atom becomes
unstable and decays.
We give atoms different names if they have different numbers of protons. 
The simplest one, which has only 1 proton,
we call hydrogen. The one that has 92 protons we call uranium. Uranium is the most 
complicated atom we know of
that occurs naturally. (Scientists in laboratories can make bigger ones, but they fly 
apart so quickly that they couldn't possibly exist outside the laboratories.)
Because of this, we can say that there are only 92 different types of atoms occurring 
naturally. We 
call these different
types elements, and each element has a name of its own (for example, hydrogen or 
uranium).
If millions and millions and millions of atoms of the same element (say hydrogen) all 
collect 
together then we get
hydrogen gas. If, on the other hand, all these hydrogen atoms are joined up with 
millions and 
millions and millions of
oxygen atoms in a certain way we get water. You yourself are an incredibly complicated 
collection of 
atoms, most of
which are hydrogen and oxygen, and another important element, carbon. These are all 
arranged in 
highly complicated
patterns which go together to make up your body.
The important thing to, remember is that all materials that we know about seem to be 
made up of these 
atoms and,
to understand what is in the universe, we have to assume that everything we run across 
is built like 
this, no matter
whether it is a blade of grass, a person, or a star.
Planets and Stars
If you understand this, we can get back to the Earth and the Sun and see what elements 
they are made 
of, and how
much of each element is in them. Of course, we can't get near the Sun, because it is 
about 93 million miles away.
Luckily someone discovered that, by examining the light that comes from an object, in 
an instrument 
called a
spectroscope, it is possible to tell what elements are in the object which produced 
the light.
If we examined the Sun in this way, we would find immediately that by far the greatest 
bulk of the 
Sun is composed of
hydrogen (the simplest element). The other more complicated elements are present, but 
in much smaller 
quantities.
On the other hand, we know that the Earth is composed mainly of the
 more complicated (heavier) elements of
 which probably the most common is iron.
 The Earth then is very, very different
 from the Sun and it immediately makes us
 ask the question: "Why?" Are there any
 more planets like the Earth? Are there any
 more stars like the Sun? Can we expect  to
 find more planets than stars in the universe, or more stars than planets? If we
 could find the answers to some of these
 questions, we could find out whether there
 is a possibility of other worlds, and try to
 guess why the universe is as it is.
 We can tell quite easily from our telescopes that there are more planets, which
 are fairly close neighbours of ours in space.
 You will all have read of at least two other
 planets (Mars and Venus), since the Russians and Americans have sent space ships to 
them, but you may not know that there
 are altogether nine planets going round
 our Sun. Together with our Sun, they are.
 called the solar system since they are all
 in orbit round the Sun (for which the
 Latin name is sol). Their names going
 outwards from the sun are Mercury,
 Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn,
 Uranus, Neptune and Pluto. Many of them
 have their own satellites, as we have a
 satellite moon, and in fact it is just possible
 that Pluto was once a satellite of Neptune
 and somehow got knocked out of orbit
 round Neptune.

In this illustration, the planets are shown in scale against a segment of the Sun.

The interesting thing about these planets is that they are all moving round the sun in 
the same 
direction, and this
would seem to suggest that they all were formed by much the same process. Of course, 
they do not all 
look alike
and it is only the four inner planets (Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars) which would 
look like balls of 
rock if we could
see them. The other planets are much larger and seem to be mostly composed of a great 
atmosphere of 
poisonous
gases.
 If we didn't look any further into the universe, we might think
that planets were more common than stars, since we have in our
neighbourhood 9 planets and only 1 star. In fact, planets are so
small compared with stars, and distances are so great in the
universe that we can see only the planets that are very close to
us. Everything else that we can see through telescopes are stars,
or groups of stars. So, we cannot know for certain whether there
are any more planets. One thing we can know for certain is that
there is far more material in the stars than in anything else.
Since we know - from our own Sun that the bulk of it is hydrogen,
we can be fairly sure that hydrogen, the simplest element, is the
most common in the universe. In fact, it seems as if the stars
themselves might be formed from great clouds of hydrogen gas
that collect together and gradually form themselves into a ball.
If, then, we want to find out what the planets are, we have to try and explain why 
they contain so 
little hydrogen and
so much of the heavier and more complicated elements.
How the Planets were formed
There are several theories of how the planets were formed, and no one knows which one 
is right. Some 
scientists
think that the Sun once had another star in orbit round it, and that this other star 
blew up with a 
colossal explosion.
The force of the explosion threw all the lighter elements (like hydrogen) right out of 
the orbit of 
our Sun, leaving all the
heavier elements closer to the Sun. Because of gravity, these heavier elements went 
into orbit round 
the Sun and
formed a thin disc-like ring round it.
Once the ring was formed, the various elements in the ring would start to come 
together. At first, 
chance would
decide that some parts of the ring contained more atoms than other parts, and so 
little particles of 
matter would form
in those places. However, as soon as that happened, gravity would take over and the 
big particles of 
matter would
attract other particles to them. This process would go on and on until whole planets 
were formed, and 
all the
elements in the ring had been used up.
Other scientists think that there was only one star, but that it was much bigger than 
our Sun. This gigantic star formed from a cloud of hydrogen gas. Now, it so happens 
that if a cloud of gas collects together, as 
it gets more
closely packed, that is, condenses, it will start to get hot and spin.
As it condensed and spun, the hydrogen atoms moved about violently. Bit by bit, they 
began to collide and build into other elements.
Even though this happened, there was still more hydrogen than anything else. However, 
the more the gas packed together, the faster it spun. Now, if the ball of gas were to 
spin very fast it would gradually get 
flattened at the top and
bottom and become fatter in the middle.
If this were the Earth, the equator would bulge outwards, and the North and South 
Poles squash 
inwards. Finally, the
material round the equator would break loose to form a thin flat ring of material 
round the original 
ball. The original ball
would of course have got smaller in doing this. We would then have something that 
looked like a 
tennis ball in the
middle of a hoopla ring.
If this had happened to the original huge star, we would have finished up with our 
present smaller 
Sun as the "tennis
ball" in the middle of the ring. The planets would have formed from the ring in much 
the same way as 
if the ring were
the remains of a second star. Of course, since most of the material in stars is 
hydrogen, the ring 
round the Sun would
have originally contained huge quantities of hydrogen, if it had been spun out from 
one gigantic star.
However, hydrogen is a very light element and the lighter elements would have tended 
to escape right 
to the outer
edges of the ring, the heavier ones to stay closest to the Sun. In fact, hydrogen is 
so light that it 
looks as if most of it
was able to escape into space, leaving behind mainly the heavier elements. If this 
were so, it would explain why there is so little hydrogen in the planets as compared 
with the Sun. The fact that the lighter elements 
would all go to the
outside of the ring would also explain why the outer planets are mainly made of light 
gases, while 
the inner planets
are made of heavier elements like iron.
Both of these theories (and there are also others) could explain how our planets were 
formed, and it 
is impossible to
say which is correct. If planets were formed from single stars, there could be 
millions and millions 
and millions of
planets all over the universe. Even if they are formed from two stars, one of which 
exploded, there could be many millions of them, so that there is every reason to 
suppose that planets have formed all over the 
universe, even though we cannot see them.

OPPOSITE. The light streak is the path of a meteor across the sky. (American Museum of 
Natural History)
Comets, Meteorites, Asteroids
Besides planets and stars, the only other objects in our own solar system that need to 
be mentioned 
to make the
description complete are comets, meteors, meteorites, and asteroids, which all seem to 
be bits and 
pieces of rubbish
left out from the building process.
Meteors are tiny particles of matter (mainly stone or iron) that career around the 
solar system until 
attracted by the
gravity of a planet. If the Earth attracts meteors, it usually manages to slow them 
down, or burn 
them up in the
atmosphere, before they reach the Earth's surface.
If a meteor is really large, it is called a meteorite, and sometimes the meteorites 
are too big to be 
burned up in the
atmosphere and come right through to hit the ground with a great explosion.
The Moon is even worse off than we are, as it has no atmosphere to slow them down, and 
you can see 
even with your
naked eyes the huge craters that some meteorites have made on the
moon over millions and millions of years. These lunar craters were at one 
time thought to be caused by volcanoes,
but it now seems more likely that most of them were caused by meteorites 
crashing into the surface.
Asteroids are even bigger than meteorites and are almost like tiny planets. 
Luckily, there is not much chance of an
asteroid hitting the earth, but some of them have come as close as half a 
million miles. The meteors, meteorites and
asteroids seem to he the debris left over from the break up of a planet 
that once existed somewhere between Mars
and Jupiter.
Comets are very different from meteors and meteorites in that they are made of 
millions of tiny particles, and, although they can be seen clearly in the sky from 
time to time, like huge white tadpoles, they have very little real substance in them. 
In fact, if we passed through the tail of a comet we would probably hardly know it.
You know now most of the objects in our own solar system, and it will 
therefore be much easier to explain in the next article what we can expect to find 
outside this system in the wider universe.

Follow - up Work
1. Find out what are the most common elements on earth.
2. If you can borrow a telescope, look at the craters on the moon. 
3. Find as many photographs of the planets as possible in books, and see how different 
the inner planets look from the outer ones.
4. If you have an observatory near you, go up there one night
and look round it. 5. When uranium decays, what does it turn into?

OPPOSITE One of Earth's closest asteroid neighbours, Eros, may be an oblong chunk of 
rock. Sometimes its diameter seems as small as 4 miles; at other times, as large as 14 
miles.

Craters on the moon, as seen by the Apollo 8 astronauts from an altitude of about 69 
miles. The crater in the foreground is Goclenius, which is nearly 40 miles in 
diameter. (N.A.S.A. photograph)

The Solar System: A View
The illustrations on this page and on page 21 are by Helmut Wimmer from Environments 
Out There by Isaac Asimov. Used with permission of Scholastic Magazines, Inc.

AVIATION IN NEW ZEALAND
1. RICHARD PEARSE
by N. L. ANSTISS

This is the first of three articles on New Zealand pioneer aviators. The others are on 
the Walsh brothers and George Bolt.

Richard Pearse as a young man.

Astronauts are so often going round the earth in their capsules today, that it is easy 
to forget that seventy years ago the only way to travel by air was in baskets slung 
beneath balloons, or by primitive airships. There are 
many elderly people
who watched the television programmes on the moon landings, who were reading in their 
youth of the 
very first flights
made by flying machines.
At the beginning of this century, most men thought that flying was an entertainment 
and a sport. In 
England, it was a
common sight to see people in balloons, chasing each other about the sky in "hares and 
hounds" 
contests. At the same
time in New Zealand, young men, who called each other "captain" or "professor", took 
their balloons 
to sports meetings.
There, helped by the spectators, they filled them with hot air from fires lit at the 
ends of the special tunnels. 
Then, saluting and showing off, they rose above the gaping crowds. The "professors" 
and
"captains" ended these acts in an exciting way by returning to the ground by 
parachute, while their 
balloons floated down some distance away.

Professor Jackson and his balloon at Lancaster Park, Christchurch.

While these young men were making flight a sport, others were being more serious about 
it. They were experimenting with machines that would not be at the mercy of the wind, 
but be able to move through the skies in the full control of their pilots. The names 
of most of these 
early European and American aviators are well known: Clement Ader, Santos-Dumont, 
Orvill and Wilbur Wright. But there were others who worked just as hard and patiently, 
and their names are hardly known outside the towns and districts where they carried 
out their experiments. One such man was a New Zealander, who neglected his farm work 
in order to build his flying machine, but who remained unrecognised in his own country 
until years after his death.
In 1959, Mr George Bolt, an aviator who had been active in dying since its very 
earliest days in New 
Zealand, was told of a strange machine kept in the Canterbury Aero Club hangar
at Christchurch. Mr Bolt examined the machine, and, because it had many unusual 
features, he began an 
investigation. He discovered that it had been constructed by a Richard
Pearse who had begun building it in 1908, and had experimented with it until about 
1920. When he 
realised that this was Richard Pearse's second machine, and that he had
constructed one that was believed to have flown at the same time as the Wright 
brothers were making 
their first flights, George Bolt became really interested.
Like a detective, Mr Bolt followed up every lead. He went to Waitohi, the small 
farming community eighteen miles from Timaru, and questioned the old residents. He 
poked about the
heaps of rusted machinery on the old Pearse farm, and he waded into the cold waters of 
the Temuka 
River and fished up rusted parts of a simple four-cylinder engine. He wrote letters
to many parts of the country. Question followed question. Gradually the story of 
Richard Pearse and 
his flying machines began to take shape and become clearer. Slowly the time
seemed to turn back to that March day in 1904 when Pearse put his machine to its very 
important test.
Watched by a small crowd of uninvited spectators, Dick Pearse and two boys wheeled a 
flying machine 
across the paddocks to the roadway by the old Waitohi School. The
spectators had heard much about the machine, although Pearse had tried to keep his 
invention to 
himself. They had also watched him as he taxied up and down the paddocks, trying
the controls and developing his skills. They knew young Dick as a very bright boy, who 
had built 
musical instruments and a gramophone not long after he had left the school, where
he was now lining up his latest creation. They wondered if he was, perhaps, just a 
little too clever!
Pearse moved the flying machine until it faced along the roadway. The high gorse 
hedges on both sides 
stretched away into the distance like guide lines. He bent down under the single, 
rounded,
high wing and climbed into the movable seat. Sitting on it and sliding it backwards 
and forwards 
helped him to control the balance of the machine. By using the wing elevators, when he 
moved his
seat, he could fly upwards and downwards.
Now he slid the seat a little to cheek it, then he adjusted the controls of the 
engine, which was 
bolted in the cut-away section at the front of the wing. Satisfied, he climbed out and 
asked the
boys and some of his neighbours to hold the wings while he started the engine. They 
did so eagerly, 
as the young inventor swung the paddle-shaped propeller. The engine coughed, and the
propeller whipped back and stopped. Pearse tried again, and this time the engine beat 
into life, 
gaining speed as it warmed up; he ducked back into his seat and grasped the controls. 
The wing-holders tightened their grips on the canvas-covered structure which was 
shuddering under their hands.
Dick Pearse shouted above the sharp beat of the engine, and waved his helpers away. 
They let go, and 
the flying machine bounced down the road, trailed by two boys, laughing and shouting 
in
excitement. The machine left the ground, climbing and dipping: gaining a few feet of 
height, losing 
half. The boys stopped at the take-off point, trying to wave the machine into the air 
by the
movements of their arms. Suddenly, as if whipped aside at the end of an unseen cord, 
the flying 
machine veered to the left, and crashed on the top of the twelve-foot gorse hedge 
beside the road.
 The spectators raced to where the machine perched among the
yellow flowers and thorns. The young aviator carefully climbed
down and stood rubbing his scratched arms, staring at his
creation, while his neighbours crowded around, talking and re-living the short flight 
through the actions of their hands. Then
some of them went back and measured the distance that had been
covered. Dick Pearse and his flying machine had flown one
hundred and fifty yards.
They eased the machine from its spiky perch, and later in the same day Pearse tried 
again, starting 
from the same place. The second flight was almost an exact repeat of the first: the 
take-off,
the dipping, climbing ascent, the sudden veer to the left, and Dick and his machine 
were back on top 
of the gorse hedge.
Over fifty years later, some of the spectators gave eye-witness accounts, and, by 
comparing them, it 
is possible to get an accurate picture of what happened that day. But there were some
stories that could not be checked in this way. One of these was told by a man who 
remembered being 
taken, when he was a boy, to a place where Mr Pearse flew his machine into a gorse 
bush.
He also remembered that the machine was later taken to a high bank overlooking a 
stream, and there 
several people gave it a push start over the bank. The man clearly remembered the 
machine
flying along the winding course of the stream lined with willow trees. Height was 
gradually lost, and 
finally the machine crashed into the stream and broke up.
A newspaper report of 1960 quoted an old woman who claimed that Mr Pearse flew over 
the paddock where 
she and another girl were helping with a potato harvest and she threatened to "pelt
that crazy loon, Pearse, with spuds if he flew over again".
The first of these stories appears to be supported by George Bolt's discovery of the 
rusted engine 
and propeller parts in that same river years later. The second, if it could be shown 
to be an
accurate account, would suggest that Dick Pearse had flown about the district often 
enough for his 
machine to be considered more of a nuisance than a novelty. But, as George Bolt found, 
the
task of tracing people to check events over fifty years after they have happened is 
extremely 
difficult.
Pearse's second machine, which was discovered in the Christchurch hangar, was examined 
by aero 
engineers from New Zealand and other parts of the world. Their conclusion was that it 
is doubtful if Pearse was ever able to get such a heavy aircraft with such a light 
engine to make more 
than short hops. For all that, this machine was years ahead of its time. Its engine is 
so fitted to the frame, that once the machine gained height, it could be tilted by 
means of a handle in the cockpit to act like helicopter blades. Many other features 
had also been designed to assist the change to a helicopter, such as wing flaps and 
tail rotor.
This remarkable machine, parts of Dick Pearse's first machine and the motor cycle he 
invented, can all be seen at the Museum of Transport and Technology, Western Springs, 
Auckland.

ABOVE Pearse's second aircraft after being brought to the Museum of Transport and 
Technology in Auckland. As shown in this photograph, the rear fuselage structure of 
the aircraft is damaged and the tail rotor drive has been badly bent.

LEFT George Bolt and the remains of the Pearse machine.

BELOW Approximate arrangement of Pearse's first aircraft, prepared by F.V. Cleary from 
information in 1906 Patent 21476.

THE BOHEMIANS OF PUHOI
I . GOOD NEWS FROM NEW ZEALAND
by AMELIA BATISTICH

This is the first part of a two-part story about the settlement in 1863 of Puhoi, 
which is about 35 miles north of Auckland. The settlers came from Bohemia, which was 
then part of the Austrian
Empire. Today it is part of Czechoslovakia.

Young Benedict Remiger edged his way through the crowd. He was on his way to market 
with a basket of 
eggs, when he saw an excited crowd in the square. What was it all about? He just had
to stop and see.
Someone was reading a letter. He couldn't see above the heads of the men in front, so 
he shoved 
through to get a closer look.
"Hey, young fellow! Look out with that basket!" an angry townsman growled.
Benedict hurriedly said he was sorry. He stayed where he was for a moment, then, 
seeing a gap, pushed 
in a little closer. Someone else muttered a complaint. "I'm sorry, sir," he said 
again. "I'm
only trying to see and hear."
"Well, stay there then, and keep quiet, so we can all hear!"

A market square in Czechoslovakia.

Another voice spoke up. A burly farmer moved aside to let the boy through. "Give the 
boy room," he 
said. "It's as much his world as ours."
Mail day in Mantau brought many scenes like this. A letter from the outside world was 
an event. Many 
people had relations in America. Others had sons who had been forced to serve in the
Imperial Austrian Army. Their letters home were shared amongst townspeople and country 
folk who had come 
to town on market day. But this letter was different from any other. It bore the 
stampmark
of an almost unknown country, New Zealand. It was interesting because Blacksmith 
Krippner's son, 
Martin, had gone there.
Martin Krippner had been born and bred in Mantau, but he had left it long ago. Mantau 
was a small market town in the Staab district of Bohemia, at that time a 
province in the Austrian Empire. It served the needs of country people - farmers and 
agricultural labourers, and miners who worked on the great Pilsen coal-fields.
Father Krippner might have expected his sons to follow his trade. He was a good 
blacksmith, and there 
was plenty of work. Landowners of the big estates needed ploughs and harrows, and
wheels for carriages and farm carts. There were riding horses to be shod, as well as 
fine carriage 
horses and humble working horses. But Martin was good at his books. He had no wish to 
be a
blacksmith. But how could Father Krippner, who was poor, afford to give Martin a good 
education?
"Send him to the church school!" advised the parish priest. So, Martin went there, but 
he did not 
want to be a priest. At thirteen he left, and somehow the money was found to send him 
on to
college, then to law school in Prague. He passed with honours, but he didn't find law 
to his liking 
either. He wanted something more exciting. The army accepted him as a private, but he 
soon
became an officer and rose to the rank of captain.
He was handsome and brave and dashing. But an officer's pay was poor. So, when he was 
made Commander 
of the garrison at Frankfurt-on-Main, and had met and married an English woman
name Emily Longdill, he again thought of changing his way of life.
It all came about through another letter. This one had come from Emily's brother, who 
had gone to New 
Zealand some years earlier. The letter told of rich opportunities in the new colony. 
The Provincial Government, keen to encourage settlement, was now actually giving land 
away. Under the 
"forty acre system", each adult settler was given a forty-acre grant, with another 
twenty acres
for every other person between the ages of five and eighteen.
It was a specially important letter, for it was to change the lives not only of the 
Krippner family, but of families throughout Martin Krippner's native Staab district.

Waterfront scene in early Auckland.

Before long, Martin Krippner, had resigned his post at the garrison and gone off to 
New Zealand, with  his family and his household servants - the Pancratz and Schiedler 
families. Martin took up land in a place called Orewa - about twenty-five miles from 
the capital (which was then Auckland). Why he chose Orewa is something no one will 
ever know. It was country nobody wanted. The earth
was so poor that only three-foot tea tree would grow there.
For nearly two years the Pancratz and Schiedler families struggled and nearly starved 
in Orewa, then 
they gave up and went elsewhere. The Krippners were left on their own.
Perhaps Martin Krippner spent more time in Auckland than in Orewa. Certainly he was a 
welcome visitor there. Even Governor Grey was known to be his friend. To him he 
confided his next bold
idea: the settlement by Bohemians of the country around
the Puhoi River, not far from his own place at Orewa. It was land that no 
one seemed to want.
Perhaps Martin had made the journey up the Puhoi River in a canoe paddled 
by friendly Maoris, who surely thought
this European was mad even to want to go there. They had never liked its 
dark towering hills, covered with thick
forest.
But Martin Krippner was not discouraged by what he saw at Puhoi. He went 
ahead with his plans, and the
Government approved of them. He then wrote to his brothers, and, one of 
them, Michael Krippner, was the man
reading the letter at the beginning of this story.
The men of Mantau were amazed. Land! Given away! Yours for no more than 
the asking! Few of them had made even
the journey to Prague, the capital. Yet here they were, suddenly fired 
with the wildest notions of setting off for the
ends of the earth.
As he listened to the grown-ups talking excitedly amongst themselves, 
Benedict became excited, too.
 "I could go to New Zealand with them!" he thought. "I could have land of 
my own, too." Few men in the region could
ever hope to own their own land. Farm workers could hope to get only four 
pounds a year for wages - even a head
farmhand would be lucky to get ten.
It was the younger men who were doing most of the talking. The older men 
just shook their heads. What was so
wrong with the life they had here? At least you knew what to expect. But 
what could you expect in a strange country,
a land that no one knew anything about? True, there was this letter from 
Martin Krippner, but Martin had always been
one to let his dreams run away with his sense.
 
Dudelsack player.

Then suddenly the Town Hall clock struck 10, and Benedict remembered the 
eggs he was taking to the market. His
mother and sister Anna would be at their stall, wondering where he had got 
to. But, when he arrived, Benedict did not
get the expected scolding. News travels fast in Mantau on market day. The 
women were clustered around the stalls,
all talking excitedly. Mrs Remiger took the eggs and put them 
absent-mindedly amongst the onions. Anna wanted to
know if he had heard the news.
"I was there!" he said excitedly. "I heard it all. I want to go, too!"
"Hush, the two of you!" Mother Remiger said sharply. Like the other women she was 
disturbed by all the talk of emigration.
She wouldn't be surprised of there was no such place as this New Zealand, 
and, if there was, no one of hers was
going there – not if she could help it! Anyway, she felt sure that the talk would soon 
die down.
But she was wrong. The talk did not die down. The stolid young Bohemian farm workers, 
miners, shoemakers and tailors
were thinking hard. True, up to now, they had been contented enough. They had little, 
but then they 
expected little. Their lives were hard, but peaceful, except when there was the threat 
of a new
war. On week days they worked for their masters, but Sundays and holidays were their 
own. Then they 
put on their best clothes and went to Church, and met afterwards in the Square for 
talk of
the weather, the harvest, the price of wheat, or the marriage of this boy and that 
girl.
The embroidered jackets of the young men, the gaily-coloured skirts of the young 
women, the 
brightly-dressed children - all these gave towns and villages a holiday air. They had 
their 
dancing – how they loved to dance, the people of Mantau and all the other districts of 
Staab! Old and young, 
everyone danced to the music they loved.
But it wasn't of dancing they thought now. Land - that was the lure! To own the earth 
you walked on! To call no man, Master because he was better off than you!
"Forty acres for each person who has reached the age of eighteen years, twenty for 
each person 
between the ages of five and eighteen …" That was the music that rang in their ears 
now!
It was the music that was calling young Benedict, too. By now, about eighty altogether 
had decided to 
go - young men and women with their families. Why couldn't he go with them? He was 
nearly
a man. Just a few more inches and he would be as tall as his father. He could handle a 
team of oxen. 
He could dig. He could plough. He could make a farm.
It was no use his father's pleading. In the end he had to give in to his son.

A country town in Bohemia.

Father and Mother Remiger knew that they would lose him forever, but boys like 
Benedict will not be held back. Sooner or later they will strike out on their own.
But how would he manage with no mother to cook and clean and sew for him? His sister 
Anna spoke up. 
"Let me go, too," she said. "If Benedict is nearly a man, I am nearly a woman. I can 
look
after him. And if we both go, we can have forty acres of land for the two of us."
Forty acres of land! The Remigers, and all the others, saw it as forty acres of rich 
Bohemian plain, 
stocked with fat cattle, strong oxen-green with grass, golden with wheat.
So, at last it was agreed that Anna could go, too. The passage money was found, and 
all arrangements 
made. The future was in God's hands.
On the night of 26 February 1863, the emigrant party set off on the first stage of 
their journey. 
Families from the
neighbouring villages and towns of the region gathered on the railway station at Staab 
to farewell 
their loved ones who
were about to depart on the midnight train.
Now that time for parting had come, hearts were not so brave. Grandparents held the 
grandchildren 
they would never
see again, and hugged them close. Fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters said their last 
goodbyes 
amongst hampers,
trunks, baskets packed with food for the journey - all the luggage that held 
everything the emigrants owned.
Mother Remiger clung to her children. There was so much to say at this last moment. 
The woollen 
stockings she had
knitted for them - Anna must see that they were washed with care. They must wear their 
vests, and 
listen to what
their elders told them. There were hard-boiled eggs in the food basket, and sausage, 
and bread for 
the journey. They
must write letters home, not forget their brothers and sisters, take good care of the 
money that was 
to see them
through the voyage. It had taken all the family savings to equip them for their new 
life, and pay the 
passage money ...
It was bitterly cold. Outside the snow was falling. Even the huge log burning in the 
waiting-room 
could not keep the
chill out.
At last came the whistle of the train. The flickering lamps lit the sad midnight 
scene. Time only for 
last goodbyes.
There was a rush for the carriages as the train pulled in.
"All aboard!" the station master called, clanging the harsh station bell. At the last 
moment Father 
Remiger could bear
it no longer.
"Don't go! Don't go!" he begged the children. "I will gladly give up the passage money 
and all I have spent." Benedict and Anna shook their heads. There was no turning back 
now.
In the morning they had reached the city of Prague, the capital of Bohemia. Anna and 
Benedict gazed in wonder at the rich buildings and the wide, streets. 

Prague

The elders of the party were invited to call on the Cardinal-Archbishop to receive his 
blessing. He spoke to them as a father.
"You are going to a new country," he said. "From now on you will be British subjects."
From Prague they journeyed three days to Altona, the port of Hamburg in Germany. They 
were all in high spirits now.
In the excitement of the adventure they had forgotten the sadness of parting. The port 
was in holiday mood – flags waved, bands played, and crowds cheered. What was 
happening? They were told that the celebrations 
were for
Edward, the heir to the

Later he became Edward VII.


British Crown, and his young bride, the Princess Alexandra of Denmark, who were on 
their way to 
England.
The Bohemians felt that the rejoicing was for them, too. Old Europe was giving them a 
royal farewell. As the ship sailed off to Gravesend in England, they waved goodbye to 
their old world
forever, and turned their faces bravely to the new.
From Gravesend they set off in the sailing ship War Spirit on 12 March 1863. The ship 
was full of 
emigrants for New Zealand. Altogether there were about as many Scots and English and 
Irish as
there were Bohemians. The starboard side was allotted to the Bohemian party, the port 
side to the 
British. The German-speaking Bohemians had begun their experience as "foreigners" -a 
people apart.

An emigrant ship in the 1860's.

decorations drawn by NAN REID

THE BOHEMIANS OF PUHOI
Part 2: ARRIVAL IN NEW ZEALAND
by AMELIA BATISTICH

LEFT. Immigrant ship, 1875.

The first part tells how a letter from New Zealand changed the lives of many people in 
the Staab district of Bohemia. Lured by promises of land, about eighty people decided 
to emigrate. That story was told in the last Journal, Part 4, No. 1. Now we take up 
the story on board ship.

The voyage began well. It was the first and only holiday most of them would have. 
Benedict roamed the ship, making friends with the British sailors and learning from 
them his first English words. Anna kept with the 
womenfolk. Days were spent in caring for the children, cooking and cleaning, while the 
men played cards on deck, or talked about the new life ahead. But the nights were 
given to singing and dancing. 
Fiddler Yesensky led the music, and when he grew tired other men played the concertina 
and
dudelsack (Bohemian bagpipes). From the starboard side, the Scots emigrants must have 
wondered about 
these strange sounding bagpipes. Perhaps they all wished they were as gay and happy
as the Bohemians. But then came tragedy.
A sudden storm, the sails filling, the seas pitching - and then it happened. A huge 
wave crashed on 
the port deck, smashing the livestock pen where the ship's cow was kept. One of the 
Bohemians, Lawrence Turnwald, was crushed by the falling timbers, and everyone was 
made sad by his 
death.
Lawrence Turnwald was buried at sea the next day. His young widow and her five small 
children were 
now in a bad way. How would they get on in the new country, without husband and father 
to
care for them?
There was no music that night, and for many nights after that. But the Bohemians had 
plenty of 
courage, as they showed later, and Mrs Turnwald had as much courage as anyone else. 
Then two
babies were born to the Karl and Kaes families, and the Bohemians began to feel happy 
again.
After one hundred and six days at sea, the Port of Auckland came in sight.

Auckland, 1852. View from roughly the site of the present General Post Office in Queen 
Street. Old St Paul's on the skyline is on the site of the present university.

What were their thoughts when they first arrived in that young town? They saw a 
cluster of rough buildings round the waterfront, and a muddy main street that 
straggled up to the bush. But, apart from Partington's windmill, they saw nothing that 
reminded them of what they had left behind in Bohemia.

View from Shortland Street of part of the Auckland waterfront in the 1870's.

What they saw was so different from what they had expected that they felt confused and 
unhappy. It was annoying to be stared at by the white colonists, but to be stared at 
by the Maoris was worse-it was frightening.
Benedict, who was excited by the strangeness of the scene was not afraid to move 
about, but Anna stayed close to the women, ready to burst into tears at any moment. 
Was this the wonderful country, New 
Zealand? she asked herself. Or was it a bad dream from which she would wake?
Why had no one warned her about these dark people with markings on their 
faces? The men looked very fierce, and one of them wore a top-hat, like the Mayor at 
home, but had no shoes on his feet. The children began to cry and their mothers 
gathered them, as a hen does her chickens, and hid them under their full skirts. 
There, they felt safe and were able to peep out at all that was going on about them.
But the sight of Captain Martin Krippner moving amongst them, comforted 
them all - for a time. He looked so rich and sure of
himself, and he seemed known to everyone. The Bohemians gladly let him take 
charge of them.
He told them that a cutter was waiting to take them to the mouth of the 
Puhoi River. They would sail up the beautiful coast of
their new homeland where a wonderful welcome was waiting for them all.
Suddenly they thought that they would feel better if they saw the land they 
had come so far to own. They wanted to leave at
once. They stood with their belongings around them, waiting to be led to 
the jetty. It was now growing dark. The first star
already shone faintly in the sky.
But, when the cutter moved away from the wharf, the Bohemians again grew frightened. 
The lights of Auckland soon disappeared from view, and the dark shore seemed wild and 
unfriendly. Worse 
was to follow. From the cutter, they changed
to punts that did not look strong enough to hold them. The Maori oarsmen 
lifted their paddles, and the strange fleet made its
way through the night. They seemed to be going into the heart of a thick forest.

Puhoi, 1899

The Bohemians looked at each other in dismay. Where were the farmlands they had been 
promised? Where were the houses for them to live in?
When at last they landed, near the site of the Puhoi town today, they knew that there 
were no farmlands 
and no houses
waiting for them. The place was shut in by tall hills covered with thick bush. They 
began to feel that they were
lost, castaways on unknown shores, who would never be heard of again.
It was midnight, and light rain was beginning to fall. The only shelter provided for 
the settlers 
were the two long
whares, twenty feet by ten, put there for them by the Government. They were only rough 
houses made from nikau palm trees, but they provided them with shelter. Their beds, 
which were of fern, were not very 
comfortable, but they were
better than nothing.
And so, cold, hungry and exhausted, the Bohemians packed into the whares - women and 
children in one, men in the other. Those men who couldn't find room inside slept out 
under thetrees.
To Benedict, this first night in New Zealand was high adventure. He slept under a 
tree, wrapped in a thick blanket, with the stars shining through the tree-tops, and he 
felt like Robinson Crusoe. He was sure that the 
boys back home
would envy him now, if only they could see him.
But Anna was becoming more and more frightened and she cried for her warm home and for 
her father and 
mother.
She wished now she had never left them and the rest of her family.
The next morning, the settlers looked about them and found that the "promised land" 
was worse than they had imagined.
What were they to do? Go home to Bohemia? There was not enough money for that. There 
was very little 
of anything
a few bags of flour, some salt, a little sugar and coffee. Whether they liked it or 
not, they must 
live off this land
somehow.
Today, when you turn off the main highway north and take the road to Puhoi, you have 
the feeling of 
coming into
another time. The sluggish Puhoi River winds through the farmlands.

The fiftieth anniversary of the Puhoi settlement, 1913. Many of the early settlers 
appear in this photograph.

It flows past green, grassy hillsides that rise in places to peaks covered with bush. 
Here and there, a deserted farmhouse stands in the middle of a paddock.
The new homes of the farmers are bright with paint; they belong to the present. But 
the wayside 
Crucifix with its vase
of fresh flowers belongs to an older and different way of life. You know that you are 
in New Zealand, 
but you feel that
there is something about Puhoi that makes it different from any other part of the 
country. You see it 
in the face of the
farmer you meet on the road. He is a New Zealander, and he speaks English, but his 
name is Bohemian.
Remiger, Schollum, Straka, Rauner, Bayer, Schiska . . . these
are some of the old pioneer names in the telephone book today. The Post Office, which 
is also a store, is still kept by the Schollum family, who have been postmasters since 
1884. The first John Schollum was postmaster from 1884 to 1943. 
 
John Schollum and his family, 1903.

The certificate that he was given for this outstanding service now hangs in a frame on 
the Post Office wall.
The library building, a tiny concrete structure by the river bank, is deserted and 
empty now. The books were washed away in one of the bad floods, but two old 
photographs remain. One has these words on it:
FOUNDERS AND PIONEERS OF PUHOI 1863 - 1913
You can tell from the sixty-two faces that they had to struggle hard to survive. 
Benedict and Anna Remiger stand with the others – those people who fought and won.
 And, when you look across to what was the jetty, and up to the towering wooded hill 
that looks down on the scene of that landing on the night of 29 June 1863, you can see 
how it all happened. They had to 
fight - or starve. They could choose to live or die.
At first, the Bohemians lived together in the Government whares. Like the Maoris, they 
found their food in the bush and the river. The little flour they had was soon gone. 
They had no money to 
buy a cow, but from somewhere they
managed to get a nanny-goat; and from somewhere else, a setting of eggs. 
There were no roads to anywhere - only the
river. There were no shops nearer than Auckland, and it was a thirty-mile 
walk to get there - not that they had any
money to spend.
But the Maoris became their friends. Their chief, Te Hemera, knew how badly 
off they were. He sent them many punt
loads of kumara and peaches to keep them from starving. The Bohemians never 
forgot Te Hemera's kindness; they
still remember it today.
Everyone had to work hard, even the children. Before crops could be 
planted, clearings had to be made in the bush.
They chopped down the trees with axes and then dug out their roots with 
picks and spades. They had no other tools,
not even a saw. Sometimes it was a whole week's work to root out one tree, 
but they worked on.
They could stand the hardship, but it was a bad blow to them when their 
young men had to join the militia to fight
against the Maoris. These young Bohemians would hardly have known what the 
war was about, for the Maoris that
they knew were very friendly. But they had promised to be loyal to their 
new country, so off they went to war, as did
their sons and grandsons in later years.
The Bohemian militiamen were given land in the Waikato, which had been 
taken from the Maoris. It was better land
than at Puhoi. Many of them did go to the Waikato, and only one returned to live in 
Puhoi.
Benedict was too young for the wars, but he had grown a lot in the six 
months in Puhoi. He worked alongside the
men. Anna worked hard, too. Her hands were scratched and torn with bush 
brambles. She soon wore her shoes out
and, like the others, she learnt to go barefoot till her soles were as hard 
as leather.
The people of Puhoi shared all they had, or could get. Even the letters 
from home were passed around and every bit of
news was sorted out and talked about.
They shared their sorrows, too. There were accidents in the bush and sickness, 
especially among the 
young people. Puhoi mothers carried their sick children on their backs, thirty miles 
through
bush to hospital in Auckland, and thirty miles back again.
Except for the Maoris, the Puhoi settlement had no visitors, so they never had a 
chance to learn to 
speak English. When they went to Auckland for stores, or to sell chickens and eggs, 
the men
used sign language to make themselves understood.
So, one day, when a stranger came, riding down from the bush, they had no way of 
finding out why he 
had come. He was an Irishman, Terence Kennedy, and his farm was over the hills four 
miles
away. He had heard that there was a Catholic settlement at Puhoi and had come to ask 
when the priest 
would come to say mass.
He could not make himself understood, so he rode away. "The man from nowhere," they 
named him. Later, 
when he became their friend, they gave him another name: "The Mountain Chief".
Slowly the Bohemians won their fight with the bush. Clearings were made, and crops 
were planted. Roof 
shingles were needed in Auckland, so they set to work and made them. The shingles were
tied into bundles, rolled down to the river bank and floated downstream to the waiting 
barges. As 
soon as the barges left, the men set off on foot to Auckland, so that they could be 
there when their
shingles arrived and make sure they were paid.
Roof shingles earned them money. Now they could buy some flour as well as cloth, 
though they used 
flour bags to make some of their clothing. By now the families had moved to their own 
land,
where at first they built homes of nikau. Then came the first slab cottages. At last 
they had real houses.
But the big day came when the first cow was brought to the settlement. Wenzl Kaes 
bought it with the 
money that he got from the eggs and fowls that he sold in Auckland.
By this time, they were thinking less and less of the old life, back in Bohemia. Puhoi 
was their home now. 

View of Puhoi township, 1903. Note the small steamer, the Post Office and the hotel 
behind it.

Their struggles were made a little easier by Captain Krippner, who taught them new 
ways of making a living. They were now burning charcoal for sale in Auckland, as well 
as collecting fungus that was dried and
also sold, in Auckland, from where it was sent to China. A few of the men went off to 
the gumfields, and a few to the goldfields.
Benedict went off to Auckland to work for a printer. He was young enough to learn the 
English language quickly, and he was a good and willing worker. The money that he 
earned he saved for the
day when he would settle on the land that had been given to him at Puhoi.
Anna remained in the settlement. She was seventeen now - old enough to be married. 
When the day came for 
the wedding of Anna Remiger and Albert Wenzlick, everyone had a happy time. The
best dresses were taken out, and the best suits were cleaned and pressed. Fiddler 
Yesensky called the tune, and the dancers stamped and whirled and shouted and sang. A 
wedding was one of the few occasions when they 
could forget about the hardness of their lives and just enjoy themselves.
Three years after the first migration, a second party of Bohemians arrived. The Puhoi 
settlers felt 
sorry for them, because they knew what lay ahead of them.
"What made you come out into this wilderness?" they asked. "You have come from the 
frying pan into 
the fire!"
"Your letters," came the reply. What could they say to that
But it was never to be so hard again. Slowly, life became easier.
They now had bullock teams to haul down the logs that could be sold for a good price 
to the mills. The land they had come to get was theirs. They had cattle and sheep and 
crops. Cutters sailed regularly down the river. Roads were being built, providing the 
men of Puhoi with work and steady wages. The years of hardship were over.
And so, when the third and last party of emigrants arrived in 1872, they were greeted 
with smiles, 
not tears.
By now, they had a priest visiting them regularly, and a school. It was not a very 
good school, 
because Captain Krippner, who was the teacher, had never been trained. He spoke 
English with an
Austrian accent, and his pupils did the same. But a new school was soon to be built 
and better 
teachers would come. Then, in 1880, when the Church of Saints Peter and Paul was built 
and
blessed, the people of Puhoi believed that at last they could call themselves a real 
community.
The church is still there. Its name commemorates the day of the arrival of the first 
Bohemian settlers, 29 June. This is the feast-day of Saints Peter and Paul, who are 
also the patron saints of the church of those settlers who came from Pilsen.

Bullock team with a giant log.

Puhoi congregation after mass, 1903.

Turn the key and walk in. The afternoon light shines through the stained-glass windows 
on to the rows 
of hand-hewn pews. Here, the pioneers of Puhoi gathered for worship. Their names can 
be
read on the walls: Adalbert and Anna Bayer, Anton and Margaret Schedewy, Robert and 
Cristina Weck, 
Joseph and Rose Schollum, Joseph and Dorothy Straka . . . and many others.
But their true memorial is written in the place they earned for themselves in the 
story of New Zealand. The first Bohemians of Puhoi stand there with the other pioneers 
who built our country. They have gone, but the work of their hands lives on.
General view of Puhoi, 1903. To the left of centre, part of the steamer can be seen.

The Universe
Part 2. Stars and Galaxies
By C. W. Maughan

Part of the Milky Way

The Vastness of the Universe
You will know from the first part of this article that the earth is one of the nine 
planets revolving around (or orbiting) the sun, and that these planets, together with 
the sun, are called the solar system.
We are now going to go on a tour of the stars, but first we must find out how far we 
have to go to get to the nearest star.
Find a New Zealand five-cent piece. This coin is very nearly three-quarters of an inch 
across. Imagine that the sun is a little spot on the centre of the coin. If it were, 
the edge of the coin would 
represent the path (or orbit) of the planet Mars
round the Sun. Earth itself would be a tiny pin point, and its orbit 
would be just in from the edge of the coin (a quarter
of an inch from the centre). The last of the great planets of the solar 
system - Neptune-would have an orbit roughly fourteen inches from the centre of the 
coin.
Where do you think the nearest star would be on the same scale? It would 
be exactly one mile from the five cent
piece!
In fact, the distances are so colossal that it is silly to talk about 
them in miles. The closest star, Alpha Centauri, is
about 26,000,000,000,000 (twenty-six million million) miles from the 
earth. You can see that if we want to talk about
distances in the universe, we will have to find another measure of 
distance instead of a mile, or else fill up every page
with noughts. The usual measure of distance that is used in talking about 
the universe is something called a light year.
If you were driving a car at 60 m.p.h., in each minute you would be 
travelling one mile. In the same one minute, a
flash of light-would have travelled more than eleven million miles. A 
"light year" is the distance that light can travel in a
year (about 6 million, million miles).
We can say therefore that Alpha Centauri is 41 light years away instead of 26 million, 
million miles. This is much more convenient 
and stops us from saying million million every
time. There is very little hope at the moment of ever being able to 
travel to the stars because of these vast distances,
but with telescopes and the aid of a spectroscope (the instrument that 
allows scientists to analyse the light from an
object and say what that object is made of) scientists have found out 
quite a lot about the stars.
Main Types of Stars
Let us see what we would find if we visited some of the millions of 
stars. First of all, we would find that many of the
stars are alike, and so we would not have to visit every one, but only those that 
seemed very different from each other.
These different stars, or main types of star, all have names that come out 
of fairy tales - red dwarfs, yellow dwarfs, white dwarfs, red giants, blue giants and 
super-giants.
These names are actually very descriptive, as they tell us the size of the star and 
its colour. Our own Sun, however big it may seem to us, is just a plain yellow dwarf. 
But somewhere out in 
the universe there are stars many thousand
times the size of the sun, and these are the giants and super giants.
These star types are given colours because colour tells us something about 
the heat on the surface of the stars. A
star that is not very hot is red to look at. As it gets hotter it appears 
orange, and then white, and finally when it is
really hot it gives off a blue-white light.
This means that a red giant is a fairly cool star many times the size of 
the Sun, while a white dwarf would be a very
hot star about the size of the Sun, or smaller.
It looks, then, as if we are going to have to explain how all these stars 
were formed and why they are so different. This
would be very difficult if they were all made out of different things in 
different ways, but in fact it now seems that all
these stars had much the same sort of beginning and that these different 
star types are just stars going through
different periods of their lives.
It seems that stars do much the same as human beings: they are born, they 
live and they die. Just like human
beings, the baby stars vary considerably in size when they are born, and 
again like human beings some of them don't
manage to complete their full life-span. They have a violent accident along 
the way.
The main difference between the life-span of a star and a human being is of 
course the enormous length of time that a
star lives. Our own Sun is just a young adult but it is already probably 
5,000 million years old.
Let's try and trace the life cycle of a star and see what happens to it.
Life Cycle of a Star
You will know from the first article that the commonest and simplest element in the 
universe is 
hydrogen. You will
also know that the stars, one of which is our own Sun, are formed mainly from hydrogen 
gas. This gas 
collects
together and, as it gets more closely packed (condenses), it gets hot and spins round 
like a top. In 
this closely-packed mass, the atoms of hydrogen (remember the atom is like a swarm of 
insects) are moving round violently and colliding with each other. As they collide and 
move around, the swarms change their size and gradually become atoms of different 
elements. Most of the hydrogen seems to become an element called helium. In other 
words, the
stars, like our Sun, are gradually converting their hydrogen into helium.
 
Diagrams of nuclear reactions.

Although the Sun is mainly composed of hydrogen, sooner or later it will convert most 
of its hydrogen 
to helium, and,
because it is heavier, all the helium will go into the core of the sun. (The Earth got 
its core of 
liquid iron in much the
same way.) The more the Sun burns its hydrogen, the bigger it will make this core of 
helium. (It is 
rather like
someone making a ball out of silver paper by putting layer after layer of silver paper 
round a tiny central core.)
This process of adding layers of helium to the core makes the core get hotter and 
hotter, until 
finally it gets so hot
that the helium starts to change into something else.
Just as hydrogen is changed to helium by a nuclear process (reaction), so the helium 
in time becomes 
changed to
other elements.
And so, the reactions go on until all the nuclear fuel in a star is used up and the 
star "dies".
While this is going on, the star does not stay the same to look at. As a star uses up 
all its 
hydrogen, it gets much
hotter at the centre. But, although the star gets hotter at its centre, its surface 
cools down and it 
changes colour. A
number of other complicated things happen to it as it changes, and the star expands 
(gets bigger). 
Because of this a
yellow dwarf star could become a red giant (the "red" showing that it was cool on its 
surface, and 
the "giant" showing
that it had expanded).
No one quite knows what happens to a star when it "dies" of old age. Some scientists 
think that it 
becomes a black
star, but no one has yet found a black star in the universe - possibly because no star 
has yet lived 
long enough to
reach this stage. Other scientists think that it might become a white dwarf star. 
These are no larger 
than the earth,
but they are tremendously heavy. A matchbox full of material from a white dwarf star 
would weigh 
about a ton.
In the course of its life, a star does one other thing that no one can explain. It 
changes size very 
very quickly. First it
swells up, and then, in a very short time (less than a day), it becomes small again. 
And so it goes 
on, getting first
bigger then smaller, rather like a balloon that is being blown up and let down. This 
seems to happen 
fairly late in a
star's life.
We can then say that of these original star types we mentioned, some of the dwarfs, 
some of the 
giants, the stars
that change size very quickly, could be the same star at different ages.
To understand the other types of star, the red dwarfs and the rest of the giants, we 
will have to 
explain one more
thing. I said that stars are like human beings when they are born, in that they are 
all different sizes. This seems 
to be what these
other stars are. The red dwarfs are stars that have been formed (or born) much smaller 
than our own 
Sun, while the
blue giants are stars that have been born much larger than our own Sun. They will 
still pass through 
a life just like our
own Sun, but it might take longer or it might be cut dramatically short.
Some stars, if they are born too large, don't seem to be very stable, and at a certain 
point in their 
life they explode
with incredible violence. A star that explodes is called a nova, or if the explosion 
is very violent 
it is called a
supernova. These explosions are so colossal that they can be seen with the naked eye 
sometimes. One happened in the year 1054 and was recorded by Chinese astronomers.

The Crab Nebula.

It was so bright that it could be seen in the daytime. Even now, if a photograph is 
taken of the place where this explosion was recorded nearly a thousand years ago a 
vast cloud of debris can be 
seen. This is called the Crab Nebula (or Cloud). It measures about 5 light years 
across and is still travelling 
into space at the rate
of 1,000 miles per second.
One thing is certain. We are very lucky that our own Sun isn't any bigger or we might 
really be faced 
with problems.
As it is, it will be another two or three thousand million years before our own Sun 
starts to make 
life on earth
uncomfortable by getting hotter and growing bigger.
Galaxies
You now know most of the main types of star that you would be likely to find on a tour 
of the 
universe, but what you
won't know is that millions of these stars are attracted to each other by gravity and 
form a 
collection of stars called a
galaxy. This comes from a Greek word which means "milk", and it is used to describe 
the groupings of 
millions of
stars, because from a distance they look like milk in the night sky. The galaxy, of 
which our Sun and 
solar system is
a part, is called the Milky Way.
Almost all of the stars you see in the sky at night belong to the Milky Way or part of 
two clouds of 
stars attached to
the Milky Way called the Magellanic Clouds. If we could step outside our own galaxy we 
would find 
that it looked like
a catherine wheel of stars. There would be so many stars that you wouldn't be able to 
distinguish 
individual ones;
they would just blur into a massive cloud. The stars you see at night are not even the 
whole of the 
Milky Way; they
are just a tiny part near the edge. The centre of the catherine wheel, or galaxy, is 
many light years 
away, hidden from
us by clouds of gas and dust. There are something like one hundred thousand million 
stars in our own 
galaxy, and
the stars furthest away from us are about 80,000 light years away.
The scale of the universe is so huge that it is almost impossible to imagine. It is 
difficult to 
realise that the whole of
our solar system is just one tiny speck in this galaxy, and that the whole galaxy is 
revolving round its centre. In fact, the solar
system is like a vast space ship which is travelling round the galaxy. As if this 
wasn't enough to grasp, if we went
outside the galaxy we would find that it was surrounded by a halo of 
round clusters of stars with several million stars
in each cluster; and if we finally got past all these we would see that 
the rest of the universe contained millions and
millions of galaxies.
In these articles I have tried to show you that the earth, the planets 
and the sun are pulled towards each other by
gravity. In just the same way, the stars are pulled towards each other 
and form galaxies. But even the galaxies (or
rather some of them that are close to each other) seem to be pulled 
towards each other to form clusters of galaxies.

The Andromeda Galaxy.

The cluster of galaxies that our own Milky Way belongs to is a very small one. In this 
cluster, the 
nearest big galaxy
to the Milky Way is the great galaxy of Andromeda, about two million light years away 
from the Milky 
Way. Besides
that, there are about twenty smaller galaxies in our cluster. As far as we know, the 
Andromeda Galaxy 
and the Milky
Way are very similar to each other. Some clusters of galaxies have hundreds of 
galaxies in them.
I said originally that the stars are formed from clouds of hydrogen gas which condense 
and form into 
a ball. It actually
appears that these clouds of gas form a whole galaxy first, and then bits of the cloud 
within this 
enormous mass of
gas form into the stars.
The Expanding Universe
In a cluster of galaxies, objects seem to be pulled towards each other by gravity. 
But, once we move 
outside a cluster
of galaxies, something peculiar seems to happen. The clusters of galaxies do not seem 
to attract each 
other. They
actually move away from each other. In scientific language, the universe is expanding 
or getting 
bigger. No matter
where we were in the universe, this would be happening.
The best way to think of this is to get a balloon which hasn't been blown up. Then 
paint one red spot 
and a whole lot
of black spots on it and pretend that these are clusters of galaxies. Now blow up the 
balloon. Each 
spot will move
away from every other spot. Something like this is happening to the universe, and no 
one can really 
explain why. The other odd thing about the clusters of galaxies moving away from each 
other is that the further away a 
cluster of
galaxies is, the faster it moves away. You will find that this is just the same with 
the spots on the 
balloon. If we take
the red spot on the balloon, a black spot close by it, and a black spot on the other 
side of the 
balloon, we will see
that the black spot on the other side of the balloon moves away from the red spot much 
faster than 
the black spot on
the same side of the balloon.
In order to explain this, many theories have been put forward. Two of them have 
attracted more 
attention than the
others. I shall say what they are, but shall ask you to remember that no one knows 
which one is true, 
or whether
either of them is true.
The first one is called the Big Bang Theory. It supposes that at some time the whole 
of the universe 
was created in
one great explosion which sent out bits of material (which later formed clusters of 
galaxies) 
whizzing across the
universe.
This explains why the clusters should be moving outwards but it doesn't explain very 
much else.
The other theory, which is more complicated, is much more satisfying to me personally, 
but that 
doesn't necessarily
mean it is correct. This theory is called the Steady-state Theory.
It supposes that when objects are very very far away from each other they are not 
attracted to each 
other by gravity,
but are pushed away from each other. This theory then goes on to say that instead of 
everything being 
made with one
big bang, matter is being created all the time to fill the gaps left by the clusters 
of galaxies 
moving outwards.
If this theory is correct, all the matter in the universe originally came from 
hydrogen, and hydrogen 
would be created
all the time out of nothing. The idea of something coming out of nothing seems very 
odd, but if you 
think about it, it is
certainly no odder than everything being made with a big bang at the same time.
It seems very unlikely that we will ever know the answer to this question, but you 
never know, because you can see how much we have guessed about the universe just by 
staying on our own planet. Admittedly, we have used telescopes, but these cannot see 
very far into the universe. Radio telescopes can penetrate further, and have helped
a lot over the last few years. These do not send out radio waves, but receive radio 
waves sent out by the stars to us.
The waves are set up by the various reactions taking place within the stars.
You will probably want to know where the universe ends. Strangely enough this question 
does have an answer. I said
that clusters of galaxies were travelling away from us at a faster rate
the further away they were (remember the balloon). Well, there must come a 
time when the galaxies are travelling
away so fast that we shall never know whether they exist, because we shall 
never have any sort of communication
with them. The fastest means of communication that we know of is light, 
which, you know, travels at more than
eleven million miles an hour. If a galaxy travelled away from us faster 
than light there would be no way of knowing
whether it existed or not, and for us at least the universe would end when 
galaxies travelled faster than light. This
distance can be calculated and it is about 10,000 million light years. So, 
for men at least, the universe would end at
10,000 million light years from Earth.
Follow-up Work
1. Try the experiment with the 5 cent piece to get a scale model of the 
nearest star.
2. Try the experiment with the balloon to show an expanding universe.
3. Find as many photographs of galaxies as you can, particularly the 
Andromeda galaxy.
4. Study the sky at night, preferably using a telescope. If there is an 
observatory in your district, see if you can pay a
visit to it.

On page 39 is a planisphere, or map of the night sky, as seen from 
Wellington each year on 1 March at 9 p.m. The stars rotate every 24 hours about the 
South Celestial Pole (reflecting the movement of the earth as it rotates on its own 
axis) which is marked by a cross towards the top of the map.
If you lie on your back and hold the map above your head, with the south side of the 
map turned to the south, the stars in the sky will appear in the same positions as 
those on the map. If you are standing up, facing south, have the side of the map 
marked south nearest to you. If you turn to the east, turn the map so that the part 
marked east is nearest to you.

Diagram showing types of stars and their relative sizes. Our sun is indicated by the 
coloured dot.

How our galaxy, the Milky Way, probably looks from the top (ABOVE) and from the side 
(BELOW). The arrows indicate the Sun's position.

FIGHTERS FOR FREEDOM
4. THOMAS CLARKSON
by BARRY FAVILLE

A slave is the legal property of another person. Thanks to men like Clarkson, no one 
today can deprive another of his personal freedom by making him a slave.

Thomas Clarkson, 1760-1846.

The Atlantic slave trade lasted for about 300 years. It began in the 1500s after the 
discovery of America by Columbus and the growth of the Spanish and Portuguese colonies 
in the West Indies and South America. Before the trade was stamped out, at least 
fifteen million Africans were taken from their homelands and transported across the 
Atlantic
Ocean; and twice that number died on the slave ships or while waiting to be sold.
It is hard today to imagine that a highly organised trade in human beings could ever 
have existed; we shudder at the thought of it. But, during the eighteenth century, the 
trade was at its height and flourishing. Two hundred years had passed since the small 
beginnings, and buying and selling Africans had become accepted as a normal business, 
little different from selling a cow or a horse.
The owner of a slave ship in Bristol or Liverpool would fill his ship with trading 
goods-cloth, cutlasses, knives,
muskets, iron bars, glass beads, whiskey, rum or brandy. After a captain had been 
appointed and a crew rounded 
up, often by
force, the ship would sail for the west coast of Africa, known as the Guinea Coast. 
(It bordered the 
Gulf of Guinea and
included countries, such as Senegal, Ghana, Nigeria and Angola, though they were not 
known by those 
names at
that time.)
On the African coast, the captain would buy slaves, either from a dealer who kept a 
stock of slaves 
in his pens, or
direct from a chief. This was the first part of the voyage. The slaves were paid for 
with the trading 
goods brought from
England, and in place of those goods the slaves were packed into the holds. The second 
part of the 
voyage was the
journey across the Atlantic Ocean, known as the Middle Passage. The slave ships 
usually headed for 
the British
colonies in the West Indies, though some also went to American ports and Brazil.
The main buyers of slaves were the plantation owners in the West Indies and the 
southern states of 
America. The
slaves were sold either at a public auction on shore or at a "scramble" on the ship. 
The "scramble" 
was well named.
All the buyers agreed on a fixed price to be paid for each slave - the same for each 
one. The Negroes were herded together, and at a signal the buyers rushed in and 
grabbed as many as they could, tying a handkerchief or piece of cloth to an arm or leg 
to show that the slave had been bought.

Slave chain-gang in Central Africa, 1861.

After the ship had been emptied and cleaned, the captain was ready for the voyage 
home. Part of the profits from the sale was used to buy a cargo of sugar or cotton, 
and the ship sailed home, where its third cargo was finally re-sold for as high a 
price as possible. For the merchants who put money into the slave trade it was a very 
profitable business.
The Society for the Abolition of the Slave Trade was formed in England in 1787. Thomas 
Clarkson was 
one of the
founders. He had decided to join the fight against slavery two years before when he 
was a 25-year-old 
student at
Cambridge University. A prize was offered by the University for the best essay written 
in Latin on 
the subject: "Is it
lawful to make slaves of others against their will?" Clarkson read all he could find 
about the trade 
and the essay he
wrote won the prize.
But Clarkson only half-believed what he had written at the time. He had used the 
information of other 
people, and he
could not imagine that what he had learnt about the treatment of slaves could really 
be true. But 
what if it were the
truth - or worse, only part of the truth? The more he thought about slavery the surer 
he became that 
it was a great evil
that had to be destroyed. Clarkson decided to set about the task himself.
Settling in London, his first move was to translate his essay from Latin to English 
and have it 
published. At first, Clarkson thought he would be fighting a single-handed battle 
against slavery. Then he found that a committee of
Quakers already existed in London with the same aims as his own. He met these men and 
they decided to 
form a
new organisation - the Society for the Abolition of the Slave Trade. Their aim was to 
end slavery first in Britain and her colonies in the West Indies and then in other 
parts of the world. To do this, they had to arouse the feelings of the whole country.
One of the Society's first moves was to approach William Wilberforce, a member of 
Parliament. He was wealthy and a close friend of the Prime Minister, and he had 
already shown that he was against slavery.

William Wilberforce, 1759-1833.

Wilberforce agreed to join the Society and to be its spokesman. But to 
attack slavery Wilberforce needed evidence to show that the trade was evil. Thomas 
Clarkson provided the facts Wilberforce needed.
He set about the task brimful of energy and enthusiasm. Clarkson was a difficult man 
to get along 
with. He had little
sense of humour and was interested only in his work; he was a poor talker and did not 
make friends 
easily. He was
the kind of man who is not often invited to parties - not that this worried Clarkson. 
Unlike many reformers he knew his limits. He realised that he could never be a popular 
leader, and he was content to work in 
Wilberforce's shadow. He knew that his own work was valuable and that without it the 
Society's campaign could not even begin.
An early example of Clarkson's tireless efforts to gather information was his search 
for a sailor who 
could tell him
about slave raids along the African coast. He heard about this sailor from a friend 
who could not 
remember the man's
name or address, and knew only that the sailor was on a "warship in ordinary". These 
were ships of the Royal Navy not on active service, anchored at one of the Navy 
Dockyards. This 
information was so
vague that most men would have forgotten the sailor and looked elsewhere for 
information.
But Clarkson set about visiting every warship in ordinary in England. He boarded more 
than a hundred 
ships at
Deptford, Woolwich, Chatham and Sheerness without finding his sailor. He had no better 
luck at 
Portsmouth (where
another hundred ships were visited), and moved on three hundred miles to Plymouth. On 
the 
fifty-seventh ship that
Clarkson boarded at this port, he found the sailor he wanted. He was Isaac Parker, a 
good honest man 
who had once
sailed with Captain Cook. Parker had taken part in raiding expeditions up the West 
African rivers, 
where men, women
and children were ambushed and bound and taken to be sold. Parker agreed to give 
evidence in London 
and Clarkson
was happy and excited: "I returned now in triumph. I had been out only three weeks, 
and I had found 
out this
extraordinary person." To find this one man, Clarkson had questioned the crews of more 
than three 
hundred warships
anchored at six widely scattered ports!
Clarkson then visited the ports of Bristol and Liverpool, where most of the English 
slave ships were 
based and
prepared for their voyages. He had to visit the pubs and taverns used by seamen, 
trying to find men 
who could give
him details about the treatment of slaves. He soon found that the crews of the slave 
ships were in as 
much need of
help and protection as the slaves themselves. Soon after arriving in Bristol, he heard 
that the ship 
Brothers lying in
the harbour could not gather a crew. Clarkson discovered the reason. On her previous 
voyage the 
captain had treated
the crew so brutally that thirty-two men had died. One of these men had broken some 
minor rule and 
been tied face
down on the deck. The captain had poured hot tar over his back and jabbed him with 
heated tongs! 
There were men
on almost every slave ship that returned home who had suffered some cruel treatment 
from their 
captains.
Clarkson learned that service on a slave ship was so unpopular that captains often had 
to use force or trickery to muster a crew. If the offer of high wages would not 
persuade a seaman aboard, the captain would enlist the help of one of the landlords 
who ran the seedy boarding houses and taverns where seamen stayed on shore. A man 
might be given enough liquor to make him unconscious; when he awoke he would find 
himself on board a slave ship, in irons if necessary. Another popular method used 
by greedy
landlords was to allow a seaman to run up a large bill just before a slave ship was 
due to sail. 
Unable to pay, the
seaman would be offered the choice of being sent to debtor's prison or serving on the 
slave ship. The 
man usually
chose the ship, and the captain would pay the landlord for his trouble.
Clarkson gathered a huge amount of information, though he often had difficulty in 
persuading men who 
spoke to him
to put their information in writing and sign the document before witnesses. Again and 
again someone 
would agree to
make a statement, and then refuse, after being bribed by a merchant or captain 
interested in keeping 
the slave trade
a flourishing business. A great deal of anger was also aroused against Clarkson 
himself. He spent 
many nights in
taverns used by the roughest men imaginable and he had to face many scowls and 
threats. He was 
taunted by ship
owners and merchants, and his city clothes and educated speech were jeered at by 
seamen.
In Liverpool an attempt was made to kill Clarkson. He had been inspecting a slave ship 
and was 
returning along the
pier when nine men moved towards him, barring the way. They obviously intended 
throwing him into the 
racing tide
where he would be certain to drown. Clarkson recognised one of the group as a man who 
had been 
pointed out to him
as a murderer. They walked slowly towards him. No one else was in sight. He was almost 
forced back to 
the edge of
the pier when he put his head down and charged. He broke through the cordon and 
escaped.
Clarkson's health began to suffer as his investigations continued. He suffered 
nightmares about the 
horrors on slave
ships, but he had no thought of giving up. As well as collecting statements from men 
describing what 
they had seen
in the slave pens of
Africa and on the ships, Clarkson gathered evidence of a different kind. In Liverpool 
shops he bought 
handcuffs and
leg shackles which were used to keep slaves in the holds of ships. He found thumb 
screws used to 
torture mutinous
slaves, and a "mouth-opener". Slaves sometimes tried to kill themselves rather than be 
taken away from 
their
homelands. If they failed to drown themselves, they often refused to eat, in an 
attempt to starve 
themselves to death.
When this happened the two prongs of the mouth-opener would be forced in either side 
of the man's 
clenched lips. The
prongs would be moved apart forcing the mouth open and food would then be poured down 
the victim's 
throat through
a funnel.
Clarkson also made up long lists of the numbers of slaves carried on ships, and the 
number who died. 
Twenty ships
he investigated carried between them 7,904 slaves on one voyage across the Atlantic; 
2,053 died before the ships reached the West Indies. Clarkson also calculated how much 
space each slave was allowed in the hold. One of his most vivid pieces of evidence was 
a plan of the Brookes showing how the slaves were packed in. Each man was allowed a 
space six feet long by sixteen inches wide; the space above him was about 2-1 feet 
high. Women and children had less space. This diagram was printed and widely 
distributed. It did more than words could to 
awaken feelings of horror among ordinary men and women.

Plan of a ship, showing how slaves were packed in like sardines.

A slave barracoon or pen. Slaves who gave trouble were often whipped to death.

When Clarkson returned to London with the information he had collected, the Society 
printed large 
numbers of
pamphlets describing the facts of the slave trade. They outlined the methods through 
which traders in 
Liverpool alone
earned a profit of $600,000 a year, and by which merchants who supplied trading goods 
to buy slaves 
gained a further
$280,000 annually.
For the first time, people could learn easily of the way in which a slave captain 
gathered together a 
cargo of slaves.
Dealers who lived along the Guinea Coast bought slaves from African chiefs and kept a 
good stock in 
their pens. If
there was a shortage, a captain might send his crew up a river in small boats to 
kidnap any African 
they saw, or a
chief might be persuaded to send out a raiding party against a neighbouring tribe.
The dealers tried to hide the age of elderly slaves by shaving their heads to remove 
grey hair. A 
wise captain always
looked carefully at a slave's teeth before buying him; they showed the age of a man. 
After being 
bought, the slaves
were branded on the chest with a red-hot iron with the mark of the French, Dutch or 
English company to whom they now belonged. If a slave escaped, the tell-tale brand 
would show 
anyone who saw
him that he was not a free man. The slave was branded again when he was sold to some 
plantation owner.
The slaves were usually packed into the holds of a ship in three separate 
compartments, one each for 
men, women
and children. The men were shackled to each other in pairs by their wrists and ankles. 
They lay on 
bare boards. The
women were usually left unchained because they were less liable to band together to 
attack the crew. 
Twice a day,
the slaves were brought on deck
and fed a vegetable mash or rice. They were made to jump and dance for exercise. For 
the rest of the 
time, they
remained in the foul-smelling hold where the air was poor and disease could spread 
like fire. The 
living and the dead
were often found fastened together.
Much of the information gathered by Clarkson about the
Middle Passage came from the Rev. John Newton. In his younger days, Newton had served 
on slave ships and become a captain.

A slave auction in Virginia.

The great anti-slavery meeting, Exeter Hall, London, 1840.

He had enjoyed the life. His slaving career ended when he suffered a stroke at the age 
of thirty. In an amazing change of life, he became a minister of the church, and for 
the rest of his life he attacked the slave trade whenever he had the chance.
Clarkson's valuable work was supported by other members of the Society. One of the 
most successful methods was provided by the famous potter, Josiah Wedgwood. The seal 
of the Society showed a slave in chains 
kneeling with one knee on the ground and with both hands lifted up to Heaven. Round 
the seal was written the motto: "Am 
I not a Man
and a Brother?" Wedgwood copied the seal in china and thousands of them were sent 
around the country. 
Supporters
of the abolition movement set the plaques in snuff boxes and on bracelets, and women 
wore them in their hair mounted on gold pins.
Clarkson's journeys to the ports of England were only the beginning of the battle 
against slavery. 
The struggle against
the slave-ship owners and merchants lasted many years. They were powerful men with 
friends in 
Parliament and they
fiercely attacked Wilberforce's speeches. The sugar trade, which depended on slaves to 
work the plantations, was valued at about $12 million. But eventually the Abolition 
Society began to win victories.
In 1807 English ships were forbidden to carry slaves. The Governments of other 
countries did the same 
in following
years. Denmark had already banned the trade in 1802 and by 1818 France, Sweden, the 
Netherlands, 
Portugal and
Spain had passed laws to stop their ships taking part in the slave trade. However, 
although the trade 
had been ended
by many countries, little had been done to help slaves who were already in captivity. 
Not until the 
1830s were the
slaves in British colonies set free; in other parts of the world freedom for slaves 
came much later. 
In fact slavery still
exists in some places today.
Thomas Clarkson kept up his interest in slavery after the trade had been abolished in 
1807. He wrote 
a history of the
abolition movement which was published in 1808, and he frequently visited other 
European countries to 
support their
anti-slavery movements. As he grew older, younger men took over much of the active 
work in fighting 
for the freedom
of slaves, but the setting free of the slaves in British colonies was due as much to 
his early work 
as anyone's.
Clarkson and Wilberforce formed a partnership; we should not forget the man who worked 
tirelessly to 
provide the
weapons that Wilberforce wielded so brilliantly in Parliament. Clarkson was one of the 
greatest 
friends the slaves ever
had.

Aviation in New Zealand 
2. THE WALSH BROTHERS
by N. L. ANSTISS

"Manurewa"
In 1903, the Wright brothers screwed a carefully-designed petrol engine to their 
glider, and then 
flew about 120 feet in twelve seconds. It was the first successful flight by a 
heavier-than-air
machine, and it spurred men on all over the world.
A few years later, Santos-Dumont and Henri Farman made successful flights in Europe; 
then, in 1909, 
Louis Bleriot flew the English Channel, and man's advance into the air was well under 
way.
During these years, and the ones that followed, New Zealanders were still eagerly 
forming queues to 
fly in the only way that they could: shilling balloon rides. Yet, here and there were 
men who
were patiently trying to solve the problems of flight: Richard Pearse at Waitohi, 
Bertram Ogilvie at 
Napier, Arthur Schaef on the beaches near Wellington, and Leo and Vivian Walsh at 
Auckland.
Bertram Ogilvie built a biplane like the Wrights' machine. He spent months trying to 
overcome the 
difficulty that faced all early aviators: how to get the aircraft into the air. 
Ogilvie's method was 
to
launch his machine at full throttle down a steep, wooden ramp, hoping that sufficient 
speed would be 
built up for the aircraft to take off. But, every time, after a wild, jolting rush 
down the ramp and
a soaring leap off the end, man and machine crashed to the ground.
Arthur Schaef, another man who kept trying, came closer to success. By racing his 
machine along the 
sands of Lyall Bay beach in Wellington, he often got it to make great leaps into the 
air. But almost as often he ended 
in the sea, because of the wind or because of something wrong with his design. Next, 
Schaef
fitted floats to the aircraft and tried again, but his engine did not have the power 
to lift the 
machine from the water. Later, his machine caught fire in its shed, and when the 
flames were finally 
put
out, there was little of the aircraft left. Schaef was so disheartened that he gave 
up.
While Schaef was experimenting with his aircraft, two young Auckland engineers, Leo 
and Vivian Walsh, 
had persuaded friends to raise $1,500 to buy a Howard Wright aeroplane. It was similar 
to
one that had already proved that it could fly.
One day in August 1910, the brothers went to the Auckland wharves to collect their 
aircraft. But it 
was not a gleaming, ready-to-fly machine that they claimed, it was a huge, mixed 
assortment of
wire, linen, bundles of wood, metal, pipes, propeller and engine. They took it to 
their home in 
Remuera, and, in the space they had hastily cleared for it, they began to put the 
pieces together.
For five very busy months, the new flying machine was the most important thing in that 
house. Even 
neighbours and friends became very keen and found themselves, with the Walsh family,
spending every spare moment working on the aircraft. Doreen and Veronica Walsh, who 
were as keen as 
any male members of the family, cut, shaped, sewed and fitted 500 yards of fabric on 
to
the wings and tail.
As parts were completed and space became less, the Walshes realised that they needed a 
larger 
workshop. They wanted one near a stretch of flat land, where they could practise 
taxiing and
taking off. They found what they were looking for at Papakura, twenty miles away. 
Glenora Park, a private racecourse, had everything they wanted: flat grass-land big 
enough for trials, and a small
grandstand that could be used to house the workers. They bought a marquee (large tent) 
and put it up 
near the grandstand as a workshop. Then they moved the parts from Remuera, and took up
the work again with increased excitement. Under their skilled and eager hands, an 
aircraft grew and took shape.
The day came when the workers pulled back the flaps of the marquee and wheeled out 
their creation - the first aircraft that any of them had ever seen. The metal pieces 
gleamed in the sun, and
rays of yellow light shone through the wing fabric. Boldly painted on the tail were 
the words: The 
Walsh Brothers Aeroplane Company, Aeronautical Engineers, Contractors, Auckland, 
Registered
No. 1. A few days before, the Prime Minister had named it Manurewa No. 1. "Manurewa" 
meaning "the 
soaring bird".
Everyone who had helped to build it was there to watch the first tests, which were 
concerned only 
with taxiing. They were all wondering how machine and man would get on. Some of the 
men
held the wing tips while Vivian got into the pilot's seat on the front edge of the 
lower wing. Before 
testing his controls, he turned round and tied a small teddy bear to the strut by the 
radiator
behind him. Leo ducked under the tail and stood ready by the propeller.
Manurewa was a "pusher type" aircraft, as many were at that time. The engine pointed 
to the rear, and 
the propeller "pushed" the machine through the air from behind the wings. Leo slowly 
turned the propeller. "Are you right?" he called.
"Right," his brother replied.
Leo swung down hard with the propeller, twisting himself out of the way as it flipped 
round and back. 
He took another hold and tried again. The engine coughed, then barked into life.
The wing-holders moved the machine across the open ground and walked with the 
aircraft, as Vivian 
began lessons in the first steps of flying. After a while, he waved his helpers away 
and opened
the throttle wider.
Manurewa bounced the length of the training field and back again, while the excited 
watchers shouted 
for more speed. As he grew more sure of himself, Vivian was able to go faster. Bounces
then became bounds and the aircraft's wheels spun in the air. Suddenly, Manurewa left 
the ground in a 
long, graceful glide. The spectators laughed, shouted and then lay flat on the ground 
to
observe the height of the next leap. They were not disappointed. The machine rose 
again from the 
springy turf, drawing another "Ooh!" from the spectators.

Vivian Walsh in Manurewa 1, 1910.

But the trials were really taxiing trials: the machine was not yet ready to fly. So, 
Vivian ended the experiment and headed back to the marquee.
He was delighted with the tests, but he knew very well that what he had found out 
about flying was 
only the beginning. He had to discover the rest for himself. He had to learn the hard 
way,
knowing that he could make no mistakes once he was in the air.
The fifth morning of February 1911 was gentle and mild. The warm air made its own 
mysterious streams 
over the earth, as Manurewa was brought once again from the marquee and pointed along 
a take-off path. Birds flew 
about in easy, confident flight, as man made ready to imitate them.
Vivian climbed up to the pilot's seat, put the teddy bear mascot in place and settled 
himself 
comfortably, his feet on the rudder bars, the joystick in his hand. He was dressed as 
a racing car
driver dressed at that time: heavy jersey and top coat, and cap turned back to front, 
giving him a 
dashing, devil-may-care look.
Leo swung the propeller, and, as the engine settled into a steady beat, he joined 
several others at 
one of the wing-tips. Vivian looked briefly at his mascot above the radiator, then at 
the men holding the wing-tips.

The Walsh brothers (seated in the aircraft), with friends and helpers.
 
When he was sure that everything was ready, he waved the men away and pushed forward 
the throttle. Manurewa bounced down the field, gathering speed as it went, rose
from the ground and climbed until the hedges and trees at the far end of the field lay 
below. Then it 
banked in a wide, careful circle and headed back to its landing point.
The excited spectators laughed and clapped one another on the back. But as soon as the 
aircraft began 
its long glide back to earth, they grew silent. They watched anxiously as the machine
drew closer and closer to the earth. For many yards the wheels hung above the ground, 
then Manurewa 
was bobbing safely across the field. The first successful flight in New Zealand had 
been accomplished.
While other spectators measured the length of the flight, and estimated the height 
reached by 
Manurewa, someone slipped away to the nearest telephone. By the end of the day, news 
of that
event had spread throughout the country.
Vivian made several flights in the weeks that followed, and the sight of the huge 
aircraft flying 
above Papakura stirred the imagination of the people of Auckland. It also caused many 
angry
arguments about the worth and the future of such "dangerous machines". Although some 
people had their doubts about the aircraft, all over the country there were people who 
were very keen to see it perform. So many of them asked for exhibition flights that 
the Syndicate saw a way of making money out of the aircraft. They might even get back 
some of the money they had already spent! (The Syndicate was made up of the people who 
had provided the money to buy the aircraft. It included Leo, Vivian and members of the 
Walsh family.)
It was while he was practising for these exhibition flights that Vivian's luck 
changed. He made a 
small mistake and Manurewa stalled during a take-off and fell heavily to the ground. 
Neither Vivian
nor the machine was harmed, but the children of Papakura missed their exhibition.
Some time later, as Manurewa was again taking off, one of the long landing skids dug 
into the ground 
and Manurewa somersaulted. Miraculously, Vivian crawled unhurt from the wreckage. The 
brothers examined it, then 
decided to leave it where it was until the next day. That night, calves completed the 
day's damage
by eating the fabric on the wings and tail. Although this set them back, the brothers 
were not 
discouraged. They took the broken parts to their home in Remuera and patiently rebuilt 
their aircraft.
By the time Manurewa was once more flying, the Syndicate had made arrangements for 
flights from the 
Auckland Domain. Vivian wanted more time for practice, but the other members insisted
that the flights should take place. When Leo and Vivian would not agree, the Syndicate 
took 
possession of the machine.
Months later, Manurewa, which had been rebuilt with sweptback wings by two other 
flying enthusiasts, 
crashed so heavily that there was little that was worth taking away. New Zealand's 
first
really successful aircraft had made its last flight.

The flying school hangars at Mission Bay, with two Curtis-type flying boats built by 
Vivian and Leo Walsh.

The Flying School
After losing Manurewa, it seemed that Leo and Vivian Walsh had given up flying 
altogether. The public heard nothing of them for four years.
During that time, different types of aircraft were often seen in some of the main 
cities, and more and more people became interested in flying. It was a time of daring, 
for those early flying machines
were very much at the mercy of the wind and weather. Scientific instruments for 
forecasting the 
weather were almost unknown. The aviator held up a lighted match to see if it was safe 
for flying. If
the match blew out  the wind was too strong!
It was at this time, when World War 1 had been raging for five months in Europe, that 
the Walsh 
brothers again appeared. For eighteen months they had been working in their home on a 
new
aircraft - a flying boat, the first of its kind in the Southern Hemisphere. It was 
ahead of any other 
machine in the country in its design and construction, and it helped to put them back 
into the
forefront of New Zealand aviation.
When they learned that England badly needed pilots' for the Royal Flying Corps, the 
brothers obtained 
permission to train them. With one flying boat, one instructor, Vivian, and three 
pupils, they
formed "The New Zealand Flying School".
They did not have to advertise for pilots. The young men were so keen that each was 
willing to pay 
$200 for his training, and also to pay for any damage he caused to aircraft or 
equipment while he
was learning.
Within a year of accepting the first pupils, the flying school had gained two 
seaplanes, several 
Walsh flying boats, three more instructors, and had its home on the beach at 
Kohimarama, near Auckland.
The course for the pupil pilots had been carefully planned. They spent the mornings 
learning to fly 
or building new aircraft and repairing damaged ones. Their afternoons and evenings 
were spent on
lessons and learning the morse code. While Leo organised the ground courses and the 
business side of 
the school, Vivian (who had been given New Zealand's first pilot's licence) and his 
instructors gave lessons in flying.

Walsh flying boat taking off from Auckland Harbour.

Early each morning, the pupils trundled the flying boats along rails from the hangars 
to the sea, and waited for their 
instructors. Before they
took off, Vivian named the skills to be practised. He had to do this now. Although he 
sat beside his pupil in the flying 
boat's open cockpit, once
they were in the air, the roar of the engine just behind their heads was so deafening 
that the only way he could give 
instructions was by hand signs.
Patiently, Vivian and his instructors taught their pupils water take-off and landing. 
It was not an easy skill to learn. 
There were no instruments to
tell the pilot the aircraft's height or speed; and each pupil had to develop that 
"feel" for the way his machine was flying, 
that judgement of height
and speed that became known as "flying by the seat of your pants".
When he thought that they had made sufficient progress, Vivian allowed the pupils to 
make solo flights. Then, if they passed a flying test at the end of the three months' 
course, they were given their pilot's licences and sent to England to prepare for 
combat.
The strain of such continuous teaching and instructing over a long period was 
enormous, and by the end of the war Vivian was 
forced to stop
flying. The flying school continued training pilots for a further six years with 
George Bolt as chief instructor. Finally, in 
1924, the Government
bought the school and moved everything - aircraft, hangars and equipment - to 
Hobsonville.
After they had sold their school, Leo and Vivian Walsh, the fathers of New Zealand 
aviation, retired permanently from aviation and spent their remaining years in their 
engineering business.

FIGHTERS FOR FREEDOM
5. GANDHI
by BARRY FAVILLE

Sketch of Gandhi by a Chinese artist.
Early Years
Newspapers almost every day describe riots or fighting that have broken out in some 
parts of the world. On television, we see angry crowds battling against police or 
soldiers. We have become so used to such scenes that we often take little notice of 
them. Most of these outbursts are made by people trying to change the way they are 
governed.
Mahatma Gandhi is remembered today because he showed that non-violence can 
be just as powerful a weapon as
violence against unjust governments or unwanted rulers.
His full name was Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi. He was born in the city of Porbandar in 
1869, but when he was seven his family moved to Rajkot. At this time India was ruled 
by Britain. 
Rajkot was one of the smallest of the Indian states, with a population of 37,000, and 
Gandhi's father was Prime Minister.

LEFT. A human blockade on a railway in India, 1945. This is an example of non-violent, 
or passive, resistance.

But his mother, a simple woman who had never been to school, had much more influence 
on him than his father. She was kind and gentle
and she followed the laws of the Hindu religion very closely.
Gandhi was not clever at school and he found multiplication tables hard to master. But 
he enjoyed 
reading, even though learning English was another difficult task.
He was married when he was thirteen years old to a girl of the same age, Kasturbai. 
The wedding had 
been arranged by their parents and, as they continued to live in the family home, 
Gandhi did
not have to find a job or rent a house.
In Gandhi's boyhood, something happened that upset him very much. It was over 
religion. He was led 
astray by a school friend, a Muslim called Sheikh Mehtab. Mehtab was a big, strong 
boy.
Because he was a Muslim he was allowed to eat meat -something that was forbidden to 
Gandhi by the laws of the Hindu religion. They used to recite a verse about the 
British.
Behold the mighty Englishman, He rules the Indian small, Because being a meat-eater He 
is five cubits tall.
Mehtab got Gandhi to believe that he would grow big like the English only if he ate 
meat. One day he 
ate some cooked goat's meat that Mehtab gave him and was sick. That night he had a
terrifying dream of a live goat bleating in his stomach. All the same, he went on 
eating meat in 
secret for about a year. But at last Gandhi realised that the breaking of religious 
laws was wrong,
and that having to invent excuses at meal times to explain why he was not hungry was 
turning him into 
a liar. He stopped eating meat and gave up his friendship with Mehtab.
When Gandhi was sixteen his father died. He left little money for his family, and a 
friend advised 
that Gandhi be sent to London to train as a lawyer so that he could help support the 
family in the years ahead. He was the only son in the family who knew English, and 
further education in England would help him to find a well-paid job in India.

Photograph of Gandhi taken in London, 1906.

Gandhi was overjoyed at the idea. He travelled to London just before his nineteenth 
birthday, leaving 
behind his wife and newly-born son. He was still very young and shy, and his first 
weeks in
London were lonely and miserable. But at last he settled down to his law studies.
The other great change in his life at this time was his decision to become a strict 
vegetarian. He 
soon discovered that eating only vegetables was excellent for his health. He also felt 
that it led him
towards a much purer way of living.
Gandhi finished his studies in 1891 and sailed for India almost at once. His home-
coming was not a 
great success. He quarrelled with his wife and he failed as a lawyer. It seemed that 
his London training had been wasted. Then came the turning point in Gandhi's life. A 
firm of merchants asked him 
to go to South Africa for a year as their lawyer, and he accepted the offer.
Gandhi in South Africa
At that time, South Africa was divided into four colonies, two ruled by 
Britain and two by the Dutch. But, whatever
their nationality, the Europeans governed South Africa - coloured people 
had few rights. Native Africans made up most
of this group, but there were a large number of Indians who had been taken 
to South Africa. They were labourers who
worked for low wages on plantations and in mines. Indian merchants followed these 
workers to supply them with food and clothing. Gandhi was working for one of these 
merchant firms.
Soon after his arrival, he had to make a train journey from Durban to 
Pretoria. He bought a first-class ticket and then
made himself comfortable. At one of the train's early stops, a white 
passenger came into the compartment, saw
Gandhi, and called the ticket collector, who arrived with two other railway 
Officials. They all stared at Gandhi.
"Get back to the luggage van!" said the ticket collector.
"I have a ticket," replied Gandhi
"You can't travel in this compartment whether you have a ticket or not!" 
shouted an official
Gandhi refused to budge. A policeman was called and he was hauled out. The train 
moved off leaving him alone with his luggage on the platform.
He was frightened and angry and he spent the night cold and hungry in the waiting 
room. He thought of going back to his employer and admitting defeat, but then he made 
the most important decision of his life - the decision to fight.
He sent an angry telegram to the manager of the railway, and he was allowed 
to travel first-class on the next train that
passed through. When Gandhi discussed with other Indians what had
happened, he was disturbed at the way they shrugged their shoulders and told him to 
forget about it. Gandhi had come to South Africa intending to stay for only a year, 
but now he decided 
there was work to be done. He remained
for twenty-one years.
He began to send many letters to newspapers and Government
offices. In them, he criticised laws that made Indians pay unfair
taxes, gave them little say in the governing of their towns and
cities, and said that they could live and trade only in certain
areas. His name became well-known and he could have been a
very rich lawyer.
But Gandhi decided on a completely different way of life.
The only way to have Indians treated as equals by white people
was to show his countrymen how to live properly. Indians were
called "coolies" by the Europeans; they had a reputation for
being dirty and greedy. Gandhi knew there was some truth
in these criticisms. Indians from different parts of India often
argued with each other. Shopkeepers sometimes tricked their
customers and did not always take care to keep their shops clean.
He also knew the criticisms were exaggerated. But Gandhi felt
that the only way to unite his people and to give them the spirit
to fight for their rights was to make his own way of life an example
to others.
He started a kind of farm-settlement near the city of Durban.
His own family had arrived from India and they lived there
together with Gandhi's followers. They ate only vegetables,
fruit and nuts, drank no tea, coffee or alcohol, and did not smoke.
Everyone worked, and Gandhi himself helped in the kitchens
and nursed the sick.
Gandhi's ideas on fighting for his rights were very different
from the usual idea of fighting. Put simply, he taught that the
best way to fight was not to fight. The best way to "defeat" an
opponent was by showing him love and by preaching the truth.
It meant that if you were arrested without good cause, or treated
unjustly, you accepted your punishment without protest and
with dignity. At the same time, you would tell the people who
were harming you that you forgave them. At no stage would you
fight back. The main idea was to "return good for evil until
the evildoer grow tired of evil".
The first test came in 1907, when all Indians in Transvaal
were made by law to register their fingerprints at Government
offices. The police were to have the right to search Indian homes
whenever they wished. Any Indian refusing to obey could be imprisoned or deported. 
Gandhi and a 
number of
followers refused to obey the law and they were sent to prison.
Gandhi then accepted a Government promise that the harshness of the law would be 
removed if the 
Indians agreed to
register voluntarily. The Government did not keep its word; the law was not changed. 
Gandhi's answer 
was to gather
three thousand Indians in a public square in Johannesburg. They threw their 
registration forms into a 
burning cauldron
and awaited their punishment. Gandhi was given a further prison sentence.
But his tactics were attracting attention. Newspapers around the world described the 
quiet courage of 
Gandhi and his
followers. The jails were not large enough to hold all the law-breakers and the 
Government was 
embarrassed by the
publicity. Month after month, Indians deliberately broke minor laws and "invited" 
prison sentences. 
The struggle
stretched from months to years.
Finally, in 1914, the South African Government realised how hopeless it was to hold 
back the 
peaceful resistance of
the Indians and agreed to allow them to live as freely as other South Africans. It was 
a victory for 
Gandhi - the end of a battle fought not with guns, knives or stones, but by honesty, 
faith and a willingness to suffer punishment and imprisonment.
Gandhi in India
Gandhi now decided to return to India. He was welcomed home as a hero, and given the 
title by which 
he was known
until the end of his life - Mahatma, which means "great soul" or "saint".
Soon after his arrival, Gandhi joined the Indian National Congress, an organisation 
formed to bring about the end of British rule in India.
As always, Gandhi made it clear that he would have nothing to do with violence, and he 
had a strong 
weapon to
combat it - the love the people held for him. He was once asked to settle a dispute 
between the owners 
and workers of
the textile mills at Ahmedabad. The owners promised to improve their employees' 
working conditions, 
but went back
on their word. Gandhi advised
the workers to go on strike, but not to become violent. But, as the strike dragged on 
day after day, 
the men became
rowdy. Gandhi's solution was to go on a fast, to stop eating and drinking and starve 
himself to 
death, if need be. The
mill workers were horrified at the possible sacrifice of Gandhi's life on their behalf 
and the owners 
had no wish to be
accused of causing Gandhi's death. The dispute was settled after Gandhi had fasted 
three days and 
there was no
further trouble at the mills.
Gandhi was never far from the centre of the struggle led by the Indian National 
Congress to end 
British rule. At first he
had not been willing to speak out against the British, because he knew they had 
brought many benefits 
to India. But
in 1919 events in the city of Amritsar brought the whole country to boiling point.
There was a great deal of unrest, because strict laws introduced during the First 
World War had not 
been removed
when peace came. Sometimes rioting and looting broke out, and a few Europeans were 
killed by angry 
mobs. It was
hard for the Army and police to keep control without hurting innocent people. In 
Amritsar, the Army 
commander,
General Dyer, decided to keep the peace by using force. He first published a notice 
forbidding 
processions and public
meetings. The following day, General Dyer heard that a meeting was to be held that 
afternoon to 
protest against
Gandhi being banned from the city.
Between ten and twenty thousand people gathered in a public square. General Dyer did 
not warn the 
crowd that they
were breaking his new regulation; nor did he order them to move away. His soldiers 
opened fire and 
continued firing
for about ten minutes. The people had no chance to escape; 379 were killed and about 
1,100 were 
wounded. General
Dyer was later condemned for his brutal action. But this one incident, more than 
anything else, 
damaged the
reputation of British rule beyond repair in the eyes of the Indian people.
The Congress Party suddenly became popular all over India. Gandhi organised his 
protest in the same 
way as he had
done in South Africa. He called on the people to have nothing to do with anything 
British; to refuse 
to buy British
cloth, or anything else imported from Britain.

Gandhi's cell in the Sabarmati Prison, 1922.

There was little the Government could do. The boycotts that Gandhi was leading broke 
no laws. 
However, there were several outbreaks of fighting with the police, and after one of 
these incidents Gandhi was arrested and charged with persuading people to oppose the 
Government. At his trial he was 
found guilty. Before he passed sentence, the judge said: "In the eyes of millions of 
your countrymen you are a great patriot and a great leader. Even those who differ from 
you in politics look upon you as a man of high ideals and of noble and even saintly 
life." All the same, he was sentenced to six years' imprisonment.
Prison life was no hardship to Gandhi. He read and studied and laid plans for his 
future work. He was 
released sooner than anyone expected, after serving two years. An attack of acute 
appendicitis almost killed him and he 
was operated on just in time. He was still in poor health and the Government feared 
that if he
died in prison the whole country would erupt in fighting and rioting. Gandhi did not 
return like a 
conquering hero. He lived quietly, recovering his health, but he stepped into the 
limelight when 
rioting
broke out again, this time among Indians themselves.
The two main religious groups in India were Hindus and Muslims. Almost every day, 
there was a report 
of a Hindu killing a Muslim or a Muslim attacking a Hindu. Some of the trouble arose 
over
the Hindu belief that the cow was a sacred animal; to kill it was like killing a god. 
The Muslims did 
not have this belief, but this did not protect them from attack if they killed a cow 
for meat.
Gandhi's pleas for peace were ignored, so he went on a fast lasting twenty-one days. 
The rioting 
stopped as soon as the fast began and people begged him not to risk death. But Gandhi 
kept to
his word, and not until the twenty-first day did he break his fast with a drink of 
lime juice and 
water.
The 1920s drew to a close. India was still no nearer to independence; Gandhi decided 
the time had 
come to renew the struggle. He announced that he would campaign for the removal of 
just one
regulation - the salt tax. All salt in India was sold by the Government, and people 
buying it had to 
pay a little extra as tax. No one was allowed to make his own salt, and Gandhi claimed 
that this
was unjust, especially for the poor. But the Government was not worried. How could a 
campaign against 
a minor regulation like the salt tax harm anyone?
On 12 March 1930, Gandhi led seventy-eight people from his Ashram and began a march to 
the sea two 
hundred miles away. By the time he reached the sea, several thousand people were
following. Gandhi walked to the beach and said, "I am giving a signal to the nation." 
He picked up a 
pinch of salt which had evaporated from sea water, then set out on the return journey 
to the Ashram.
Gandhi's simple action soon had results. All over India people began breaking the law 
by making their own salt, and the police were forced to arrest the culprits.

Gandhi spinning on board a ship, 1931.
Gandhi on the Salt March, 1930.

Gandhi was one of the first to be imprisoned. Sixty thousand people were soon crowded 
into the jails, and still the "peaceful" lawbreaking continued. Journalists from all 
over the world had watched
the Salt March, and the mounting arrests led to a flood of letters and telegrams 
protesting at the actions of the police.
The Government found that Gandhi's "pinch of salt" was not so trivial after all.
Britain released Gandhi and other Congress Party leaders and held a conference in 
London to discuss India's
problems. Nothing was decided. A second conference also failed. Gandhi returned home 
empty-handed to find that
Congress Party leaders had been imprisoned once more. He too was arrested soon after 
his arrival. All hope of
coming to a peaceful settlement with the British seemed to have gone.
On his release in 1933, Gandhi found that people no longer seemed prepared to follow 
his advice. "Civil disobedience has not gained anything," they said. "We will have to 
fight to win our freedom." Gandhi decided to give up politics and leave the running of 
the Congress Party to others.
He turned his attention to the people. For several years, Gandhi wandered the country 
talking to crowds which often
numbered thousands. He told them how to live a pure and simple life at peace with 
their neighbours-the kind of life he
lived himself.
Wherever he went, he tried to persuade the Hindus and the Muslims to stop treating 
each other as 
enemies. Gandhi saw this enmity as the greatest weakness in Indian life. The Muslims
demanded their own country, to be called Pakistan. They did not want freedom for India 
if it meant 
they would be governed by Hindus. They were outnumbered three to one by the Hindus and 
they
feared for their safety without British protection.
By now it was plain that Britain could not delay much longer in granting India her 
independence. When 
World War II ended, the British Government began arrangements to hand over power to a
Government of India. At once the fighting broke out again between Hindus and Muslims. 
Gandhi looked 
on in despair. The violence made it certain that India would not remain one
country.
In 1947 the last Viceroy, Lord Mountbatten, handed over power to two new nations - 
India and Pakistan. 
Gandhi could not rejoice at the great event. He wrote: "Was this the fruit of freedom? 
Two
wrongs do not make a right. The Hindus are just as much to blame as Muslims for giving 
way to the 
tide of hatred. The Hindus greet me with shouts of 'Long live the Mahatma! Victory to 
the
Mahatma!' Little do they know there is nothing left for me to live for, that there can 
be no victory 
for me if there cannot be peace, if Hindus and Muslims cannot live like brothers."
As Gandhi realised, younger people no longer followed him. Threats were made to kill 
him by Hindus 
who hated Pakistan and its Muslim people. Gandhi made his last stand for peace when 
the
new Indian Government refused to pay $88 million it owed to Pakistan. The old man of 
seventy-eight 
began yet another fast. The debt was paid three days later - but many Hindus were 
outraged
that Gandhi should support Pakistan in this way.
On 30 January 1948 he walked with the help of his granddaughter to a public prayer 
meeting that was 
held daily on the lawn of his house. Five hundred people were gathered to hear him. As 
he moved forward a young Hindu stepped from the crowd and fired three shots which 
killed the Mahatma.
All India was filled with shame and sorrow. Gandhi died feeling that his efforts to 
bring about peace 
and brotherhood had been worthless. But his life and work have inspired many other 
peoples
fighting for a better life for themselves, and he is regarded as one of the greatest 
men of the twentieth century.

Most of Gandhi's worldly possessions.

AVIATION IN NEW ZEALAND
3. GEORGE BOLT
by N. L. ANSTISS

George Bolt as an old man.

Barnstorming Days
The development of aviation in New Zealand owes a great deal to a gift by the British 
Government at the end of the First World War. This was a present of thirty-three 
surplus warplanes, which were given by the New Zealand Government to the Walsh 
brothers' New Zealand Flying School at 
Auckland, to the Wigram Flying School at Christchurch and to former wartime pilots.
For a number of years, these aircraft were thought useful only for training new 
pilots, or for 
joyriding, and those who were keen on flying had to go to Christchurch or Auckland for 
their "flips". 
Then
a clever showman remembered how balloon
rides had attracted large crowds to the pre-war shows, and he tried an experiment. He 
hired a flying 
school to give demonstrations of dogfighting and mock bombing (with bombs of flour) at 
one of
his carnivals: the crowds flocked to his show and loved every minute of it.
It took very little time for other organisers to copy him and before long the two 
flying schools - and other pilots as well - were fully booked for demonstrations and 
joyrides. But the carnivals did not run long enough for the 
pilots to make a fulltime occupation of flying, so the pilots arranged their own 
shows.
Soon, groups of pilots from the flying schools and adventurous lone airmen were flying 
about the 
countryside on barnstorming tours. The charge for a "flip" of a few minutes was four 
dollars, and by
the end of a good day their pockets were bulging with money.

Passenger flight ticket issued on 21 May 1922.

Usually, the flying school groups arranged their tours before they went, but the 
happy-go-lucky lone pilots, dressed in heavy leather jackets, long leather gloves, 
silk scarves, helmets and goggles,
flew from town to town as their fancies took them.
This was the usual way of arousing interest. A pilot would choose a village - often as 
he flew by. He would announce his arrival by a long, noisy flight over the housetops 
that would bring the startled
people into the streets. Then he would lead them, like a modern Pied Piper, to the 
nearest flat field big enough to land on. To excite their spirit of adventure and to 
give them an idea of his skill, he would then 
"beat up" the haybarn on the field, or some suitable building, with breath-taking 
swoops. These
country people were never to forget the sight of their first country aeroplane roaring 
above their 
heads. Now, they were so keen to go for joyrides that they kept the "barnstorming" 
pilot busy for several days.
When people lost interest and there was no more money to be made from them, the pilot 
would take off again – a gay and dashing figure, waving from the open cockpit, his 
silk scarf streaming out behind him in the slipstream as he made his way to the next 
lucky village.
In those days, it was one of the very few ways a full-time airman had of earning a 
living, and for a 
time it was a very rewarding way of doing it.
George Bolt: Airmail Pioneer
It was during these years that pilots of the New Zealand Flying School pioneered air 
routes between 
the larger towns and cities. They received many requests for air displays, and to 
carry them out
they had to make many long-distance flights from their Auckland base to Northland, 
Waikato, Bay of 
Plenty, Hawke's Bay, and even to Wellington.
Most of these long flights were planned and led by the school's young chief 
instructor, George Bolt. 
From his youth, George had been very interested in aeronautics. While his future 
employers,
Vivian and Leo Walsh, had been building New Zealand's first successful aircraft, he 
and other keen 
young men were designing and building gliders.
Young George's first glider seemed a simple structure. It had two wings and a tail, 
with a space in 
the middle of the lower wing through which he hung, feet dangling, when it was in 
flight. This
glider he took to the top of the Cashmere Hills, near Christchurch. He launched it by 
running down a 
good slope, clutching the wings to his side, while helpers sprinted in front of him, 
pulling long
ropes. When he was in the air, the ropes were cast off.

Gliding in the Cashmere Hills, Christchurch. This is the hang-type glider. Another 
model had an undercarriage and full controls.

With this glider, George made flights of several hundred yards. George was not 
satisfied with 
such simple efforts, so he made another with wheels, but so many wheels were damaged 
on
landing that he gave up that idea. After that, he made a third with folding wings and 
later one with 
a folding body. By the time he set out to join the New Zealand Flying School at 
Auckland, he
already had a great deal of knowledge of what made aircraft fly, and many ideas on how 
to build them.
Vivian Walsh could see that George had great ability, and he asked him to remain with 
the school as 
an instructor at the end of his short course. Then, two years later, Vivian asked him 
to take
over the job of chief instructor when he himself was forced to give up flying.
George Bolt helped to establish New Zealand's first air rescues for stranded long-
distance fliers. On 
long flights he himself always took with him a carrier pigeon. It soon became the 
custom for a
pilot at the school to choose a bird from the pigeon-loft and put it into a special 
cage in his 
aircraft before setting out on a long-distance flight. All too often it was the bird, 
fluttering back 
to its loft
with a note clipped to its leg, that brought the first news that a pilot had been 
forced down on some 
lonely spot. Forced landings were usually caused by engine trouble, and George himself 
made
use of his pigeon a number of times.
The Flying School's long flights set far-sighted men thinking about speedy mail 
deliveries between towns separated by poor roads. Several unofficial mail flights had 
been made by pilots on barnstorming tours, proving that it could be done. 

RIGHT. George Bolt before the Boeing Seaplane in which he made the first airmail 
flight with Leo Walsh on 16 December 1919.
LEFT. George Bolt, helping to build flying boat hulls at the Flying School.

And so, arrangements were made for the first official mail flight to be flown by 
George Bolt on 16 December 1919, from Auckland to Dargaville.
On that morning, George brought a Boeing seaplane skimming across the Waitemata 
Harbour to a special floating platform tied to the launch steps by the ferry wharf. As 
it approached, a roar of welcome went up from the crowds on the nearby wharves and 
ships, in the windows and on the roofs of 
buildings along the waterfront. It grew louder when the Royal Mail sign on the 
fuselage was
noticed, then suddenly died away when the big clock on the Ferry Buildings solemnly 
struck ten. Heads 
turned to look at the clock.
"Right on time," someone said.
A rope was thrown from the Boeing and tied to the platform, and as the pilot and 
passenger climbed from the aircraft they heard parents on the wharf above saying to 
their children:
"That's George Bolt, the one with the woollen scarf. He flies the 'plane. Can you see 
him?"
"There's Leo Walsh. That one getting out now."
George and Leo waved back to them before going up to the Post Office officials waiting 
on the far end of the platform.
George was sworn in as Official Mail Carrier; important people made short speeches, 
then the heavy bag of mail was
loaded into the seaplane. In the bag were newspapers and letters with Per Air Mail or 
By Air Mall carefully hand-written on each. George and Leo then got into the aircraft.
The Boeing taxied away from the wharf, followed by farewell calls. When it was clear 
of the anchored vessels in the
stream, it took off: destination, Dargaville.
The flight route had been carefully planned so that the seaplane should fly over water 
as much as possible in case of
engine trouble. Except for a short hop from the east coast to the west, between 
Mangawhai and Kaiwaka, the Boeing
would be within gliding distance of water for the whole trip.
Safety checks on the seaplane's progress had been equally well planned. In certain 
towns over which the Boeing
would pass, men were waiting, watching and listening. Their fingers were poised near 
morse keys, ready to flash
reports back to the officials in the Chief Post Office.
To the two pioneers heading northwards in the seaplane, all seemed to be going well. 
They had hardly settled down
for the long trip before they were over the hills of the Whangaparaoa Peninsula. From 
a town below them, the first
message dit-dashed its way back to Auckland.
Cruising northwards still, they passed Kawau Island to the east and Mullet Point to 
the west. The town of Leigh soon
followed them. George guided the Boeing on over brown land and blue sea to the turning 
place at Mangawhai. Morse
signals flashed away as they passed, pin-pointing their progress.
Over Mangawhai, the seaplane banked left for the quick dash across country. 

The first airmail flight route, Auckland-Dargaville.

Without a falter, the Boeing flew westwards to where the broad mouth of the Wairoa 
River opened on to the Kaipara Harbour. Guided by the banks of the river, they flew 
northwards once more to the town at its head which was their destination.
George brought the seaplane down on the river a short distance away from Dargaville, 
and taxied towards the town.
They had completed the first stage of the journey. George turned to Leo and gave him a 
huge grin and a wave. Behind
him Leo patted the side of the Boeing.

Boeing seaplane being pulled alongside the loading stage at Dargaville.

From the town, a launch came puttering across the still water to meet 
them. George cut the Boeing's engine, the
launch stopped, and for a second the land was held in silence. Suddenly, 
the whole river bank seemed to explode
with sound, as men, women, children, factory whistles, barking dogs, the 
wild clanging of a firebell, all joined in to
welcome them.
When the noise had died down, speeches were made and then the mail was 
handed over. After an official luncheon at
a hotel, George and Leo headed south with a return bag of mail. They went 
by a more direct route, with most of the
journey over land. Again the morse messages kept a check on their 
progress.
They flew back down the Wairoa River, across the Kaipara Harbour, 
overland to Riverhead, then finally homing in
along the Waitemata Harbour. They taxied to the floating platform that 
they had left that morning and delivered the
bag of mail. They had flown just under two hundred miles, and people in 
Dargaville and Auckland were reading letters
that had arrived at their destination a few hours after they had been 
posted. The first airmail flight was a success and the future of such a swift service 
seemed bright.
Following the Auckland-Dargaville flight, George pioneered new airmail 
routes to Whangarei, Thames, Whakatane and
Opotiki. He also pioneered non-stop delivery to post offices on the way. 
He did this by aiming his aircraft at the post
office flagpole, swooping down, holding the bag of mail out of the cockpit. 
Then, taking a last quick sighting on a
sheet stretched out on the ground, he would drop the bag like a bomb, as he 
straightened up and flew past. If the bag
contained letters only, this worked quite well.
It was not very long before officials realised that the future of airmails 
was not quite as bright as it had at first
appeared. People quickly lost interest when they learned that postage had 
to be increased to cover the extra costs of
the special service. It was not a year after the first flights that airmail 
flights had to be stopped through lack of mail.
All the same, the pioneering that had been done by George Bolt and 
others was not wasted, for the experience
and information that had been gained were to be extremely useful when 
regular passenger and mail services were
introduced years later.
The failure of the airmails at that time hardly interrupted George Bolt's 
flying career. In 1921, he flew a Supermarine
flying boat from Auckland to Wellington, making only one stop on the way. 
The actual flying time of five hours
astounded New Zealanders, who began to ask in wonder if it was possible to 
have an early breakfast in the first city
and lunch in the other.
When the Government bought the New Zealand Flying School in 1935, it was 
the aircraft and the equipment that was
required. The pilots, no longer needed, split up after years of working 
together as a team and found places of their
own in the aviation industry that was slowly developing.
George Bolt went to Wellington, where his initiative, knowledge and 
foresight helped to develop regular, safe mail and
passenger flights across Cook Strait. After a special trip to England, he 
chose reliable De Havilland Rapides. These
were to fly a dozen flights a day between the North and South Islands.

Supermarine Channel flying boat in Wellington Harbour, after the first 
flight from Auckland, 4 October 1921. It was flown by George Bolt, with Leo Walsh and 
R. J. Johnson as passengers.
During the Second World War, George served as Director of Aeronautical 
Production for the R.N.Z.A.F. When the war
was over, Tasman Empire Airways Limited (which later became Air New 
Zealand) made him Chief Engineer, a
position he held until three years before his death.
This is only a very short account of a man who grew up with aviation in New Zealand 
and whose life was spent in helping its development. He built and flew some of its 
first gliders and 
aircraft and he lived to see airliners flying above
the seas between distant lands. His life and work are commemorated by a 
road leading to Auckland's International
Airport at Mangere: George Bolt Drive.

FOSSILS
by C. W. MAUGHAN

Mammoth.

The Frozen Mammoth
A long time ago, on a cliff top in Siberia, Russia, there stood a large 
elephant. At least he looked like an elephant - with a huge body, large trunk, and big 
curving tusks - but he was covered in thick woolly hair and had small ears.
Although it was spring-time, the snow still lay on the ground in some 
places.
The "elephant" was very hungry and, as he stood there, he tore up clumps of grass and 
flowers. Then he saw an especially tempting bunch of buttercups just over the edge of 
the cliff. 
If there was one thing that he couldn't resist it was buttercups. He swung his long 
trunk down to pick them, but they were just out of reach. He tried again and nearly 
got them. One last effort, he thought, and he leaned right forward. This time he 
succeeded, but just as he got
the buttercups into his mouth the ground gave way underneath him.
He died instantly, when he hit the bottom. The huge body lay in a pile of snow, with 
both its front legs broken and its chest smashed in by the force of the fall. No 
animals came near and disturbed 
the body, because it was hard to get near the bottom
of the cliff, and all summer the shadow of the cliff stopped the
 snow from melting. Winter came and with it bitter, bitter cold, and 
snow. The body vanished completely, frozen solid
and buried
under the snow.
Winter followed winter and thousands of years went by, but no one came near the place. 
Then, one day in 1900, a Russian hunter was attracted by the barking of his dogs to 
that very spot.
He found them gathered round something sticking out of the snow and ice. It was an 
animal carcase and wolves and other animals had been gnawing at it during the winter 
months. At first, he thought it was a bear, but then he realised how huge the carcase 
was. 
In fact the more he looked at it the more
puzzled
he became. It had tusks and a trunk. It looked like an elephant.
But what was an elephant doing in Siberia? Everyone knew that elephants 
lived in Africa and in India or in zoos.
Scientists came to study this strange "elephant" and became very excited when they 
realised what it was. It was a mammoth, not an 
elephant, and no mammoth had lived on the earth for
thousands of years. All of the mammoths had died out and become extinct 
and this was the first time that anyone
had seen what they really used to look like. They could even tell how it 
died, because of its injuries, and what it liked
eating, because the buttercups were still inside its mouth, frozen 
solid. Since that mammoth was found in Russia, several other frozen 
mammoths have been found, mainly in Alaska. These animals have been perfectly 
preserved by the intense cold for as long as 25,000 years,
and they are one type of fossil. There are many other types of fossil because the word 
"fossil" comes from
an old  Latin word - fossilis (meaning "something dug up"), 
and it has been used to describe many different kinds of objects found in the ground. 
Let us look at some of 
these objects and see how are formed.

Direct Evidence of Past Life: Unaltered Fossils
First of all, there are the fossils, usually plants or animals 
that lived many thousands of years ago, which have been preserved in an unaltered 
form. The frozen mammoth was one of them. These are usually found in conditions of 
intense cold (e.g., the mammoth) or dry heat. For instance, a well-preserved 
extinct ground sloth was found in a desert in New Mexico. They are also
found in soil saturated with oil, inside peat swamps, in caves covered with bat 
droppings, and in beds of tar.
To be preserved in a form like this, the conditions must be just right, for when an 
animal or plant dies it usually decays 
and disappears. This decay is caused by tiny living things called bacteria that
feed on the body, and an animal can be preserved only if these bacteria are not 
present. Since bacteria do not like intense 
cold, some of the best preserved, unaltered fossils are found in the ice.

Leg bones and thighs of a giant moa (Dinornis Maximus)

Most of the other unaltered fossils are not nearly so well preserved and only the very 
hard parts of the body remain, for instance, moa bones. 
But even though they may have been preserved for tens of 
thousands of years, this length of time is very short when we look
at the history of the earth. For the earth has been in existence
for about 4,000 million years, and life in some form has been
on the earth for 2,700 million years or more. No dead animal
or plant could survive in an unaltered form for these lengths
of time.
Direct Evidence of Past Life: Altered Fossils
A dead animal or plant can survive in an altered form, and most of the fossils we know 
of are of this kind. These fossils 
look like real skeletons or real sea shells, but they seem to be made out of
stone. What has happened to cause this? The process is known as petrification (from 
the Latin "making into stone"), but it 
does not mean that the original object has somehow been turned to stone.
This is what has actually happened. Water dripping through the ground carries with it 
various minerals. As the water comes 
into contact with, say, a bone, minerals from the water replace the bone
atom by atom. In fact, the bone disappears and an exact copy of it is left, made out 
of the minerals in the water. Some of 
the most common minerals to do this are silicon dioxide, calcium carbonate
and pyrite.
Sometimes, and this particularly happens with sea shells, the original shell falls 
into a bed of fine mud. After thousands of 
years, the shell disappears, but leaves a perfect imprint, or mould of itself, in
the mud. This is filled in with more mud and silt, and then gradually the silt becomes 
hardened and changes into rock. The 
original shell has long since disappeared, but the mould of the shell
remains embedded in the rock, as part of the rock.

1. See "The Men who Lived with Moas", School Journal, Part 3, No. 3,
1967.

Sometimes, too, tiny insects are trapped in the resin that oozes out of trees. Over 
millions of years the insect disappears, but a perfect natural mould of it is left in 
the fossilised resin. Fossilised
resin is known as amber.
Another way in which animals and plants are preserved in
altered form is by a process called carbonisation. Although this sounds 
a difficult word to understand, you will all
have seen carbonised plants because that is what coal is. Millions of years ago, there 
were great tropical forests growing in swampy ground in various parts of the world. As 
the trees died, they fell into the
swamp and were gradually changed. As they decayed, they gave off
gas, water and carbon dioxide and left more and more behind. In time, the 
swamps dried out and the forests
and new layers of silt and sediment came on top of the old
forests. The weight of these new layers squashed (or compressed) the  
carbon and gradually changed it into the coal
we now use. These  are the two main types of fossil, altered and unaltered
remains of plants and animals, and these are the direct evidence of  extinct or long 
dead plant and animal life.

Fossilised fly preserved in amber 30 million years ago.

Indirect Evidence of Past Life
However, sometimes another type of evidence is found - indirect evidence. Just as 
shells are preserved by leaving a
mould, so sometimes are the footprints of animals preserved, for these 
are natural moulds.
Many of these have been made in what was once mud or sand, but which 
hardened over millions of years to become
rock. Burrows made by animals and castings left by worms are sometimes 
preserved like this, too. The Devil's
Corkscrews in Nebraska, which are twisted lumps of rock found in the 
ground, are really fossil beaver holes. The old
burrow in which the beaver lived has been filled with silt and the silt 
has hardened to become rock.
Other indirect evidence that is found is the fossilised droppings of 
animals (which is known by the long name of
coprolites) and the gizzard stones of animals. Some animals do not have 
teeth, for instance, birds, and in order to
grind up food they swallow stones and keep them in a sort of special 
stomach, called a gizzard. (The moas used to do this.) When they eat, the stones help 
grind up the food. These stones become very worn and take on a distinctive appearance, 
and when the animal dies the stones stay together even if the skeleton disappears. The 
very big moas
had as many as 220 stones in their gizzards, weighing about 51 pounds and 
these collections of stones are
frequently found with moa skeletons.

Coprolites found in siltstones at Kawhia Harbour. They are the fossilised droppings of 
an unknown marine animal. Jurassic age (145 million years ago). The large specimen is 
3 ¼ inches long.

Cliffs made of layers of marine sandstones, pumice beds and conglomerates, near Cape 
Kidnappers. When laid down two or three million years ago, the layers were horizontal, 
but they have since been tilted by earth movements. Conglomerates are rocks made up of 
pebbles and gravel cemented together.

Interpretation of Fossils
All of the objects I have described are called fossils. Once upon a time, before 
people knew much about them, many types of rock which had no connection with fossils, 
were called fossils and 
all kinds of pretty stones, such as quartz,
were included. But gradually a more scientific approach was adopted to 
these objects and the word fossil came to be
used mainly of the remains or traces of living things.
The development of this scientific approach to fossils has taken a long 
time, because, only a few hundred years ago,
people still believed that fossils were trick objects made by the devil to fool 
people, or that they were 
animals gradually growing out of the rock and coming
alive. It was not until people realised that they were once living things that 
any progress was made.
But, if fossils were once living things, they asked, how were sea shells found on 
mountain tops and animal bones under layer after 
layer of rock? Could this mean that seas had once gone across the mountain 
tops and the form of the land had been
changed? People then began to realise that the fossils had formed a long time ago,  
usually in the silt and sediment of seas and lakes that had vanished long ago. More 
sediment (new layers on top of
the old)
has been  deposited, and over a long time the ground had gradually folded or buckled. 
The sediment under pressure had hardened
into rock  and this new rock (called sedimentary rock) had been squeezed up into the 
air to make mountain ranges. (Remember
how I described this happening in the article on earthquakes.) 
From this, people realised a simple but important fact. If
There are layers of sedimentary rock, the layer on top will be younger than the layer 
at the bottom. They had, in fact, devised a very rough system of putting fossils in a 
time period. The oldest fossils came from the lowest layers of rocks and the most 
recent from the top layers of rock.
And there knowledge rested for a while, because no one knew how long rock took to 
form.
Classification  of Fossils
At this time, people who collected fossils did little more than pick up any 
they found and put them in a show case.
However,
gradually they realised the importance of getting some order into their 
collections. To do this, they had to give them
names and arrange them in groups which looked alike.
A Swedish philosopher, Linnaeus, was the first to divide the living world into two 
major kingdoms: plants and animals.
Then he sub-divided each of these kingdoms into smaller and smaller groups.
Thus, a cat belongs to the animal kingdom. Within the animal kingdom it belongs to the 
phylum (or 
tribe) called chordata. Within that phylum, it belongs to the class of mammals, or
warm-blooded animals. It is distinguished from some other mammals, such as cows, by 
being carnivorous 
(meat-eating) and so it belongs  to the order of carnivora.
Again to further distinguish it from, say, dogs, which are also carnivorous we say it 
belongs to the 
family of cats (or felidae). Then, to distinguish it from lions and tigers, we say it 
belongs to the
genus felix. As a last name, we say it belongs to the domestic species.
It seems a very long-winded way of describing an ordinary cat, but it allows us to 
describe every 
living thing very accurately and say in what ways it is like other living animals. For 
instance, a
whale and a man might not seem to have much in common, but they are both mammals and 
have a lot more 
in common than, say, a whale and a crocodile, which is a reptile.
Once this classification system was evolved, all of the fossils could be arranged in 
some sort of 
pattern. When this was done, two things became immediately clear. The first was that 
many of
the fossils were the remains of creatures which no longer existed; the second was 
that, although many 
fossil creatures no longer existed, they were sufficiently like creatures still living 
to fit into
the classification.
It also became clear that the place where fossils were found gave some more important 
information. If 
the fossils were grouped according to the layers of rock in which they were found, it 
could
be shown that some fossils appeared in exactly similar form in several different 
layers of rock; 
others appeared in slightly different forms in different layers; and yet others could 
be found only in
one layer of rock. It also became clear that some types of fossils could be found 
anywhere in the 
world and others could be found only in certain places.
Some species had died out completely (the ones in only one layer of rock);

1. An animal with a notochord, which is a rod of tissue lying along the  back below 
the nerve cord.

some had survived without changing (the ones in similar forms in different layers of 
rock); and others had survived by changing (the ones with changed appearances in 
different layers of rock). But somehow all of them fitted together into a succession 
of life.
At about the time that all of these things were being learned about fossils, Charles 
Darwin was working on his theory of evolution. This theory suggested that no living 
thing had always existed in
its present form (not even man). Instead, they were all the result of slowly changing 
and adapting to 
the world about them; and all of them were somehow linked together long ago. Some had
adapted to water and stayed in the sea, others had adapted to air and grown wings, yet 
others had 
learned to live on the land. Still others had not adapted to changed circumstances and 
had
died out.

Charles Darwin, aged 40.

Dating of Fossils
The fossil record seemed to prove this theory, but at that time (and it is not much 
more than a 
hundred years ago) people thought the earth was only 4,000 years old, and it did not 
seem possible
that living creatures had changed so much in so short a time. But it became more and 
more obvious 
that many facts could not be explained if the earth was only 4,000 years old. Once 
scientists
understood that many types of rock were formed from sediment and silt, they realised 
that layers of 
sediment could not form quickly enough over such a short period of time to account for 
all the
sedimentary rocks. By measuring the rate at which sediment actually formed in the 
modern world, they 
could, however, make a rough guess of how long it took to form the older rocks in 
which
fossils were embedded. This led them to believe that the earth was not thousands, but 
millions, of 
years old.
This method was still not accurate enough to date fossils and rock formations. You 
will remember in 
the article on the universe that everything is made out of clouds of atoms (tiny 
particles of
matter), and as time goes on these clouds or swarms of atoms change. The big clouds 
(or heavy atoms) 
lose part of their swarm and get smaller and, because of this, one element changes to
another. Well, certain swarms of atoms get smaller (or decay) at a known rate. For 
instance, uranium 
and other heavy elements change to lead over a known time, and potassium changes to
argon. Because of this, it is possible, by measuring the amount of, say, potassium 
compared with the 
amount of argon in a rock, to find out how much the potassium has decayed. By this
method a fairly accurate idea of the age of the rock can be discovered.
All of these discoveries led to a much greater understanding of life and of the earth 
itself, because 
they showed just how many millions of years both had been in existence. Because of the
enormous length of time involved (about 2,700 million years for some kind of life on 
earth), 
evolution was shown to be possible. The fossils, all in their various categories, 
could be pieced 
together to show the vast parade of life that had passed and gone on the earth's 
surface long before man was present. Of course, not all of the links in this chain of 
life 
were represented by fossils, because fossils can be formed only in fairly rare 
circumstances, as we
have seen. Not everything that dies is going to die in a convenient peat swamp, or in 
bitter cold, or 
in fine sediment. In particular, soft-bodied animals will not be nearly as well 
represented as hard-bodied creatures.
Even so, much can be learned of the former life on earth. If a representative of each 
species of 
plant and animal that is alive today were set out in a line, each species being placed 
one foot from
the other, they would stretch for 284 miles. But if a representative of every species 
of plant and 
animal that has ever lived were set out in the same fashion they would stretch four or 
more times
round the earth.
The vast bulk of all of them has died off. The giant reptiles, the dinosaur, and weird 
early mammals 
have all gone. Some of them lived on the earth for hundreds of millions of years, but 
they too
went, probably killed off by changes in climate and environment. Man, or a man-like 
animal, is very 
recent on the earth and probably has been around for only about two million years. 
This is only
a moment in terms of geological time.
Because the length of time is so great, it is impossible to speak of individual years 
as we, for 
instance, say 1970. Instead, geological history is divided into long time spans called 
eras, and these
are sub-divided into periods with rather hard names. On page 56 there is a list of the 
main eras and 
what was happening in New Zealand in these times.

Fossilised ammonite. Ammonites, which were like squids living in   coiled shells, died 
out in the Cretaceous age.

Fossils in New Zealand
New Zealand is not so rich in fossils as some other countries, and the best 
known ones are the moa bones which are
very very recent in terms of geology, but there are many places where 
fossils can be found, particularly marine and
plant fossils. These are almost always found in sedimentary rock and the 
map on the opposite page shows the main
places they can be found.
Why not see if you can find some fossils and find out how to classify them 
and how old they are?
Follow-up Work
1. Find fossils or look at them in a museum.
2. Try to find a fossil made by (a) petrification (b) carbonisation (c) 
unaltered survival (bone).
3. Try to date the fossils you find and find out how to classify  them.
4. Are there any living relatives of the fossil you have found?

Fossilised shark's tooth, 5 inches long, from Cape Foulwind. Miocene age (25 million 
years ago).
OPPOSITE. Map showing localities of plant fossils.

EVENTS IN FOSSIL HISTORY
Millions of Years Ago 
Era 
Period

Tertiary 
New Zealand in grip of ice age in the late tertiary.
First men, seals, moths and butterflies, grasses, whales,
monkeys,bats, moas, geese, giant penguins. Coconuts grew in New
Zealand in early tertiary. Most New Zealand coal is of early
tertiary age.
Cretaceous
Ammonites and giant reptiles died out.
Ostriches and related birds, marsupial mammals appear. Giant
sea-going reptiles in New Zealand waters.
 Jurassic
 First birds, modern frogs, flies appear.
Ammonite fossils at Kawhia.
White pine and related trees growing in New Zealand.
Triassic
First mammals appear. Tuataras living.
The Southern Alps and 'backbone' of New Zealand being laid
down in deep sea.
Permian
Beetles, dragonflies, and reptiles appear.
Oldest fossil New Zealand plants.
Carboniferous 
Pine trees evolve and the first of the flying insects.
Fossils not known in New Zealand.
Devonian 
Newts and salamanders appear.
Coral limestone in Nelson.
Silurian
Sharks and first modern fish develop. Fossils not known in New Zealand. Lampreys and 
related fish appear.
Ordovician
Primitive marine animals found in Fiordland and Mt. Arthur (Nelson) rocks. 
Cambrian
Sponges, jellyfish, starfish, worm trails, sea shells.
Precambrian 
First fossil evidence of life. Some rocks in Nelson-Westland classed
here. No New Zealand fossils. 

ABOVE. Fossilised starfish, 3 ½ inches across, preserved as a mould in a rock from the 
Motu River, Bay of Plenty. Cast of latex rubber on the right. Cretaceous age (105 
million years ago).
BELOW. Fossilised fern, 1 ¼ inches long, from the Waikato Heads. Jurassic age (about 
145 million years ago).
ABOVE. Bird's footprint, probably of a Kiwi, preserved as a mould in shale from the 
Glenroy River, Murchison District. The large central toe is 4 inches long. Upper 
Miocene age (12 million years ago).
BELOW. Moa gizzard stones.


