land. Their leaders felt keenly the difficulty
of getting good school teaching for the children, a defect so well
repaired later on that the primary schools of Otago are now, perhaps,
the best in New Zealand, while Dunedin was the seat of the Colony's
first university college. They had a gaol, the prisoners of which in
early days were sometimes let out for a half-holiday, with the warning
from the gaoler, Johnnie Barr, that if they did not come back by eight
o'clock they would be locked out for the night.[1] The usual dress of
the settlers was a blue shirt, moleskin or corduroy trousers, and a
slouch hat. Their leader, Captain Cargill, wore always a blue "bonnet"
with a crimson knob thereon. They named their harbour Port Chalmers,
and a stream, hard by their city, the Water of Leith. The plodding,
brave, clannish, and cantankerous little community soon ceased to be
altogether Scotch. Indeed, the pioneers, called the Old Identities,
seemed almost swamped by the flood of gold-seekers which poured in in
the years after 1861. Nevertheless, Otago is still the headquarters
of that large and very active element in the population of the Colony
which makes the features and accent of North Britain more familiar to
New Zealanders than to most Englishmen.

[Footnote 1: An amusing article might be written on the more primitive
gaols of the early settlements. At Wanganui there were no means of
confining certain drunken bush-sawyers whose vagaries were a nuisance;
so they were fined in timber--so many feet for each orgie--and
building material for a prison thus obtained. When it was put up,
however, the sawyers had departed, and the empty house of detention
became of use as a storehouse for the gaoler's potatoes.

In a violent gale in the Southern Alps one of these wooden "lock-ups"
was lifted in air, carried bodily away and deposited in a neighbouring
thicket. Its solitary prisoner disappeared in the whirlwind. Believers
in his innocence imagined for him a celestial ascent somewhat like
that of Elijah. What is certain is that he was never seen again in
that locality.

A more comfortable gaol was that made for himself by a high and very
ingenious provincial official. Arrested for debt, he proclaimed his
own house a district prison, and as visiting Justice committed himself
to be detained therein.]

The next little colony founded in New Zealand dates its birth from
1850. Though it was to be Otago's next-door neighbour, it was neit