Page 23
a bank, and it was necessary to climb steps to enter them. The big building known as "Conway's Hotel", which was eventually burnt down, stood next to the present Fire Brigade Station. For very many years no cable cars climbed the hill, the principal mode of locomotion being drays or shanks' pony, until there appeared for hire Scott's two-horse cab twice daily; fare 1/- per head. In time came the opening of the Roslyn cable car to the Town Belt, the first of its kind in the Southern Hemisphere. Fatal accidents followed its initial stages, but soon the difficulties were overcome, and now we have its extension to the Kaikorai Valley and Maori Hill. Some twenty years ago its healthy rival the Kaikorai line appeared, and established a direct service to the Valley.
All impetus was given to the settlement of Roslyn by the opening of the Roslyn Woollen and Worsted Mills at Kaikorai in 1879. This materially helped in the course of time towards the need of a larger and more commodious school than previously existed in the district. The original schools were under the old Provincial Government, but the present one was established under the Education Board of Otago. The boys and girls who attended the schools in the early sixties and seventies experienced a great deal more of the hardships and severity of life than any of the present-day pupils. The weather conditions were more severe then than now. The presence of so much bush and water kept the place cold and wet, and boys and girls had often to grease their boots to keep out the wet, and keep them soft to enable them to get them over their chilblains. "Maori-heads" were common in the marshy grounds, and it was a source of joy to the boys to jump from one to another on their way to and from school. Asphalt footways and school grounds were then unknown; there was little coddling and nursing of pupils then. Measles and mumps and toothache were rife enough in those days, and to get back to school as soon as possible was the rule of the day. Mothers had also frequent recourse to the use of the little comb to keep the "little varmin" well under, for somehow or other those "early settlers" visited the boys and girls! How time changes! Today the Government school inspectors give the scholars an overhaul and the health inspectors keep the parents tip to the mark, and say how long the scholar shall be isolated and the house and school disinfected. But after all health is the most important thing in life. In our day we attended to cleanliness by attaching a rag to a piece of string and tying it to our slate which we carried home daily. The girls, being more careful, provided a sponge and a medicine bottle of water; but today, except for war conditions, slates were fast going out of use, a liberal, if not in