Austral English Part 188

"Our game-bag was thinly lined with small curlews, oyster-catchers, and sanderlings."

1872. A. Domett, `Ranolf,' p. 274:

"Slim oyster-catcher, avocet, And tripping beach-birds, seldom met Elsewhere."

P

Pa, or Pah, n. The former is now considered the more correct spelling. A Maori word to signify a native settlement, surrounded by a stockade; a fort; a fighting village. In Maori, the verb pa means, to touch, to block up. Pa = a collection of houses to which access is blocked by means of stockades and ditches.

1769. `Captain Cook's Journal' (edition Wharton, 1893), p. 147:

"I rather think they are places of retreat or stronghold, where they defend themselves against the attack of an enemy, as some of them seemed not ill-design'd for that purpose."

Ibid. p. 156:

"Have since learnt that they have strongholds--or hippas, as they call them--which they retire to in time of danger."

[Hawkesworth spelt it, Heppahs; he = Maori definite article.]

1794. `History of New South Wales' (1818), p. 175:

"[On the coast of New Zealand] they pa.s.sed many huts and a considerable hippah, or fortified place, on a high round hill, from the neighbourhood of which six large canoes were seen coming towards the s.h.i.+p."

1842. W. R. Wade, `Journey in New Zealand' (Hobart Town), p. 27:

"A native pa, or enclosed village, is usually surrounded by a high stockade, or irregular wooden fence, the posts of which are often of great height and thickness, and sometimes headed by the frightful carving of an uncouth or indecent image."

1858. `Appendix to Journal of House of Representatives,' E-4, p. 4:

"They seem, generally speaking, at present inveterate in their adherence to their dirty native habits, and to their residence in pas."

1859. A. S. Thomson, M.D., `Story of New Zealand,' p. 132:

"The construction of the war pas ... exhibits the inventive faculty of the New Zealanders better than any other of their works... . Their shape and size depended much on the nature of the ground and the strength of the tribe. They had double rows of fences on all unprotected sides; the inner fence, twenty to thirty feet high, was formed of poles stuck in the ground, slightly bound together with supple-jacks, withes, and torotoro creepers. The outer fence, from six to eight feet high, was constructed of lighter materials. Between the two there was a dry ditch. The only openings in the outer fence were small holes; in the inner fence there were sliding bars.

Stuck in the fences were exaggerated wooden figures of men with gaping mouths and out-hanging tongues. At every corner were stages for sentinels, and in the centre scaffolds, twenty feet high, forty feet long, and six broad, from which men discharged darts at the enemy. Suspended by cords from an elevated stage hung a wooden gong twelve feet long, not unlike a canoe in shape, which, when struck with a wooden mallet, emitted a sound heard in still weather twenty miles off. Previously to a siege the women and children were sent away to places of safety."

1863. T. Moser, `Mahoe Leaves,' p. 14:

"A pah is strictly a fortified village, but it has ceased to be applied to a fortified one only, and a collection of huts forming a native settlement is generally called a pah now-a-days."

1867. F. Hochstetter, `New Zealand,' p. 22:

"They found the pah well fortified, and were not able to take it."

1879. Clement Bunbury, `Fraser's Magazine, June, p. 761:

"The celebrated Gate Pah, where English soldiers in a panic ran away from the Maoris, and left their officers to be killed."

1889. Ca.s.sell's' Picturesque Australasia,' vol. iv. p. 46:

"A sally was made from the pah, but it was easily repulsed.

Within the pah the enemy were secure."

Pachycephala, n. the scientific name for the typical genus of Pachycephalinae, founded in 1826 by Vigors and Horsfield. It is an extensive group of thick-headed shrikes, containing about fifty species, ranging in the Indian and Australian region, but not in New Zealand. The type is P. gutturalis, Lath., of Australia. (`Century.') They are singing-birds, and are called Thickheads (q.v.), and often Thrushes (q.v.). The name is from the Greek pachus, thick, and kephalae, the head.

Packer, n. used for a pack-horse.

1875. Wood and Lapham, `Waiting for Mail,' p. 59:

"The boys took notice of a horse, some old packer he looked like."

1890. `The Argus,' June 7, p. 4, col. 1:

"The Darling drover with his saddle-horses and packers."

Paddock. (1) 1n England, a small field; in Australia, the general word for any field, or for any block of land enclosed by a fence. The `Home-paddock' is the paddock near the Homestation, and usually very large.

1832. J. Bischoff, `Van Diemen's Land,' c. vi. p. 148:

"There is one paddock of 100 acres, fenced on four sides."

1844. `Port Phillip Patriot,' July 25, p. 3, col. 6:

"A 300-acre gra.s.s paddock, enclosed by a two-rail fence."

1846. C. P. Hodgson, `Reminiscences of Australia,' p. 42:

"The paddocks are so arranged that hills may afford shelter, and plains or light-timbered flats an escape from the enormous flies and other persecuting enemies."

1892. `Scribner's Magazine,' Feb., p. 141:

"`Paddocks,' as the various fields are called (some of these `paddocks' contain 12,000 acres)."

(2) An excavation made for procuring wash-dirt in shallow ground. A place built near the mouth of a shaft where quartz or wash-dirt is stored. (Brough Smyth, `Glossary of Mining Terms,' 1869.)

1895. `Otago Witness,' Nov. 21, p. 22, col. 5:

"A paddock was opened at the top of the beach, but rock-bottom was found."

Paddock, v. to divide into paddocks.

1873. A. Trollope, `Australia and New Zealand,' c. xx.

p. 302:

"When a run is paddocked shepherds are not required; but boundary riders are required."