Some of them possess from a few pounds to 700 or 800.
The new-comers include all sorts of tradesmen - tramdrivers, photographers, steel workers, Staffordshire miners, ivory turner, clerks, stationers, dairy farmers, ploughmen, artists - even a cowboy from Cripple Creek.
The assisted passengers include 65 farmers, 1 poultry farmer, 14 farm labourers, 2 ploughmen, 2 wood cutters, 1 dairyman, 2 brickmakers, and a forester.
The "assisteds" number 307 souls, which include 104 children.
The capital declared by assisted passengers to the High Commissioner runs into 7809.
Here are some of the amounts brought by individuals.
One man proves himself to possess 800 in cash, another 755.
Then the amounts run to 700, 600, 260, 250, 200, 120, 100, and so on down to 5.
The nominated passengers number 99, of whom 31 are children, and 14 are wives coming out to rejoin their husbands.
Most are booked for Wellington and Auckland, the number for the various South Island ports being as follows: - Lyttelton 34, Dunedin 36, Bluff 10, Oamaru 1, Timaru 3, Westport 18, Greymouth 2, Wanganui 13, New Plymouth 17, Port Chalmers 3, Napier 3.
Many of the second class passengers are also on the look-out for employment or investments.
• The Free Press tells of a wonderfully expert rabbit-shooter.
With a small bore hammerless breech-loading gun he gets as a rule 100 rabbits for every hundred cartridges expended.
In June last at Awamangu, he earned 32 - nearly 8 a week.
He employs ferrets to drive the rabbits from their holes, and shoots the rabbits as they run.
• Quite a large number of Europeans attended the funeral of Tommy Ah Joe at Cromwell (says the Argus), and the ceremonies at the grave as carried out by the Chinese would rather astonish those not accustomed to the Chinese funeral rites.
During the burial the clothes of the deceased were burned, and food placed round the grave, and the Europeans were treated to a glass of spirits, and were also presented with two pennies. - ODT, 10.9.1908.
