Page:Tales-of-Banks-Peninsula Jacobson 2ed 1893 cropped.pdf/233

—a thirty-acre section where his house now stands. The history of the Bay, as all Peninsula men know, is intimately connected with the gentleman we have mentioned. He had arrived in Canterbury in July, 1852, having come out in the “Old Samarang” with Sir Jno. Hall, Mr A. C. Knight, Mr Wright (chief postmaster of Lyttelton), Mr Brown (brewer of Christchurch) and many other old settlers. Mr Piper came down to the Peninsula in November of that year to Mr T. S. Duncan, the late Crown Solicitor, who was then cockatooing in Decanter Bay. The following May (1853) he went to Mr John Hay in Pigeon Bay, and stayed till that gentleman left for Home, at the end of that year. All the Pavitt family were sawing in Pigeon Bay at that time. There were seven of them, three pairs sawing and one man cooking. There was a great flood that autumn, and boats could float where the present road now runs. In those days Mr. E. Hay had pigs by the hundred, which were known by their tails being cut. They were fetched down to feed by blowing a cow horn. Wild pigs were of course distinguished by their long appendages. They were very plentiful, and used to come and feed with the tame ones, and strange to say the pig dogs (a breed known as McIntosh’s, half bull and half kangaroo) when let loose, never touched a short tailed pig, but always went straight for the wild ones. One day Capt. Thomas, of the Red Rover, and old “Skippy” (a whaler) saw a big wild boar running from the dogs up the road, and valiantly tried to stop him, but he quickly threw both over on their backs, strange to say without inflicting the slightest scratch. This pig was killed by Mr. Tom White ten minutes after. To show how bad these wild pigs were, Mr. Turner was stuck up for a long time on the fence at Hay’s corner by a big boar, and a man named Joe Scott, coming round from Sin-