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+This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements,
+metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be
+in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES.
+
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+the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org.
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+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for
+eBook #60645 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/60645)
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-The Project Gutenberg EBook of New Zealand, by William Reeves
-
-This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
-most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
-whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
-of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
-www.gutenberg.org.  If you are not located in the United States, you'll
-have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using
-this ebook.
-
-
-
-Title: New Zealand
-
-Author: William Reeves
-
-Illustrator: F. Wright
-             W. Wright
-
-Release Date: November 7, 2019 [EBook #60645]
-
-Language: English
-
-Character set encoding: UTF-8
-
-*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK NEW ZEALAND ***
-
-
-
-
-Produced by F E H, MWS and the Online Distributed
-Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was
-produced from images generously made available by The
-Internet Archive/American Libraries.)
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-Transcriber’s Notes
-
-  Page 53—wid-winter changed to mid-winter.
-  Page 151—sullenly changed to suddenly.
-
-  The spelling of Lake Te-Anau has been retained with a hyphen
-  and the township of Te Anau without a hyphen.
-
-  Other changes made are noted at the end of the book.
-
-
-
-
-NEW ZEALAND
-
-
-
-
-AGENTS
-
-
-    AMERICA        THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
-                     64 & 66 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK
-
-    AUSTRALASIA    THE OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
-                     205 FLINDERS LANE, MELBOURNE
-
-    CANADA         THE MACMILLAN COMPANY OF CANADA, LTD.
-                     ST. MARTIN’S HOUSE, 70 BOND STREET, TORONTO
-
-    INDIA          MACMILLAN & COMPANY, LTD.
-                     MACMILLAN BUILDING, BOMBAY
-                     309 BOW BAZAAR STREET, CALCUTTA
-
-
-[Illustration: ON M’KINNON’S PASS]
-
-
-
-
-    NEW ZEALAND
-
-
-    PAINTED BY
-
-    F. AND W. WRIGHT
-
-    DESCRIBED BY
-
-    HON. WILLIAM PEMBER REEVES
-
-    HIGH COMMISSIONER FOR NEW ZEALAND
-
-    _Ultima regna canam fluido contermina mundo_
-
-    [Illustration]
-
-
-    LONDON
-    ADAM AND CHARLES BLACK
-    1908
-
-
-
-
-Contents
-
-
-    CHAPTER I
-
-      PAGE
-
-    THE ISLANDS AND THEIR CITIES 1
-
-
-    CHAPTER II
-
-    COUNTRY LIFE 28
-
-
-    CHAPTER III
-
-    SPORT AND ATHLETICS 52
-
-
-    CHAPTER IV
-
-    IN THE FOREST 76
-
-
-    CHAPTER V
-
-    FIRE AND WATER 115
-
-    CHAPTER VI
-
-    ALP, FIORD, AND SANCTUARY 160
-
-
-    CHAPTER VII
-
-    OUTLYING ISLANDS 204
-
-
-    APPENDIX
-
-    A WORD TO THE TOURIST 230
-
-
-
-
-List of Illustrations
-
-
-    1. On M’Kinnon’s Pass _Frontispiece_
-
-           FACING PAGE
-
-    2. “Paradise,” Lake Wakatipu 2
-
-    3. Te-Wenga 4
-
-    4. Diamond Lake 6
-
-    5. On the Bealey River 8
-
-    6. Wellington 18
-
-    7. Dunedin 20
-
-    8. Napier 24
-
-    9. The Bathing Pool 26
-
-    10. Nelson 28
-
-    11. On the Beach at Ngunguru 30
-
-    12. At the Foot of Lake Te-Anau 32
-
-    13. The Waikato at Ngaruawahia 34
-
-    14. Tree Ferns 38
-
-    15. A Maori Village 42
-
-    16. A Pataka 44
-
-    17. Coromandel 50
-
-    18. Cathedral Peaks 56
-
-    19. The Rees Valley and Richardson Range 58
-
-    20. At the Head of Lake Wakatipu 66
-
-    21. North Fiord, Lake Te-Anau 68
-
-    22. Christchurch 72
-
-    23. Canoe Hurdle Race 74
-
-    24. Waihi Bay, Whangaroa Harbour 74
-
-    25. The Return of the War Canoe 76
-
-    26. Okahumoko Bay, Whangaroa 78
-
-    27. Maori Fishing Party 80
-
-    28. Carved House, Ohinemutu 82
-
-    29. A Bush Road 84
-
-    30. Among the Kauri 88
-
-    31. Pohutu-kawa in Bloom, Whangaroa Harbour 90
-
-    32. Nikau Palms 94
-
-    33. On the Pelorus River 98
-
-    34. Auckland 100
-
-    35. Mount Egmont 104
-
-    36. Tarei-po-Kiore 106
-
-    37. Morning on the Wanganui River 108
-
-    38. On the Upper Wanganui 110
-
-    39. Wairua Falls 112
-
-    40. “The Dragon’s Mouth” 120
-
-    41. Huka Falls 122
-
-    42. Ara-tia-tia Rapids 124
-
-    43. Lake Taupo 130
-
-    44. In a Hot Pool 134
-
-    45. Ngongotaha Mountain 136
-
-    46. Lake and Mount Tarawera 144
-
-    47. Maori Washing-day, Ohinemutu 146
-
-    48. Wairoa Geyser 150
-
-    49. Cooking in a Hot Spring 152
-
-    50. The Champagne Cauldron 154
-
-    51. Evening on Lake Roto-rua 156
-
-    52. Planting Potatoes 158
-
-    53. The Wairau Gorge 160
-
-    54. In the Hooker Valley 162
-
-    55. Mount Cook 164
-
-    56. Mount Sefton 172
-
-    57. The Tasman Glacier 174
-
-    58. The Cecil and Walter Peaks 176
-
-    59. Manapouri 178
-
-    60. Mitre Peak 180
-
-    61. In Milford Sound 182
-
-    62. On the Clinton River 184
-
-    63. At the Head of Lake Te-Anau 186
-
-    64. The Buller River near Hawk’s Craig 192
-
-    65. Below the Junction of the Buller and Inangahua Rivers 194
-
-    66. Bream Head, Whangarei Heads 196
-
-    67. Lawyer’s Head 198
-
-    68. A Maori Chieftainess 200
-
-    69. Weaving the Kaitaka 212
-
-    70. “Te Hongi” 216
-
-    71. Wahine’s Canoe Race on the Waikato 218
-
-    72. Native Gathering 220
-
-    73. White Cliffs, Buller River 230
-
-    74. The Otira Gorge 232
-
-    75. Lake Waikare-Moana 234
-
-      _Map at end of Volume._ 242
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER I
-
-THE ISLANDS AND THEIR CITIES
-
-
-The poet who wrote the hexameter quoted on the title-page meant it to
-be the first line of a Latin epic. The epic was not written--in Latin
-at any rate,--and the poet’s change of purpose had consequences of
-moment to literature. But I have always been glad that the line quoted
-was rescued from the fire, for it fits our islands very well. They
-are, indeed, on the bounds of the watery world. Beyond their southern
-outposts the seaman meets nothing till he sees the iceblink of the
-Antarctic.
-
-From the day of its annexation, so disliked by Downing Street, to
-the passing of those experimental laws so frowned upon by orthodox
-economists, our colony has contrived to attract interest and cause
-controversy. A great deal has been written about New Zealand; indeed,
-the books and pamphlets upon it form a respectable little library. Yet
-is the picture which the average European reader forms in his mind
-anything like the islands? I doubt it. The patriotic but misleading
-name, “The Britain of the South,” is responsible for impressions
-that are scarcely correct, while the map of the world on Mercator’s
-Projection is another offender. New Zealand is not very like Great
-Britain, though spots can be found there--mainly in the province of
-Canterbury and in North Otago--where Englishmen or Scotsmen might
-almost think themselves at home. But even this likeness, pleasant as
-it is at moments, does not often extend beyond the foreground, at any
-rate as far as likeness to England is concerned. It is usually an
-effect produced by the transplanting of English trees and flowers,
-cultivation of English crops and grasses, acclimatisation of English
-birds and beasts, and the copying more or less closely of the English
-houses and dress of to-day. It is a likeness that is the work of the
-colonists themselves. They have made it, and are very proud of it. The
-resemblance to Scotland is not quite the same thing. It sometimes does
-extend to the natural features of the country. In the eastern half of
-the South Island particularly, there are landscapes where the Scot’s
-memory, one fancies, must often be carried back to the Selkirks, the
-peaks of Arran, or the Highland lochs of his native land. Always,
-however, it is Scotland under a different sky. The New Zealanders live,
-on the average, twelve degrees nearer the equator than do dwellers in
-the old country, and though the chill of the Southern Ocean makes the
-change of climate less than the difference of latitude would lead one
-to expect, it is still considerable. The skies are bluer and higher,
-the air clearer, and the sun much hotter than in the British
-Isles. The heavens are a spacious dome alive with light and wind. Ample
-as the rainfall is, and it is ample almost everywhere, the islands,
-except in the south-west, strike the traveller as a sunny as well as a
-bracing country. This is due to the ocean breezes and the strength of
-the sunshine. The average number of wet days in the year is 151; but
-even a wet day is seldom without sunshine, it may be for some hours, it
-will be at least a few gleams. Such a thing as a dry day without a ray
-of brilliance is virtually unknown over four-fifths of the colony. I
-once had the felicity of living in London during twenty-two successive
-days in which there was neither a drop of rain nor an hour of sunshine.
-If such a period were to afflict New Zealand, the inhabitants would
-assuredly imagine that Doomsday was at hand. “Truly the light is sweet,
-and a pleasant thing it is for the eyes to behold the sun,” is a text
-which might be adopted as a motto for the islands.
-
-[Illustration: “PARADISE,” LAKE WAKATIPU]
-
-In the matter of climate the islanders are certainly the spoilt
-children of Nature; and this is not because the wind does not blow
-or the rain fall in their country, but because of what Bishop Selwyn
-called “the elastic air and perpetual motion” which breed cheerfulness
-and energy all the year round. Of all European climates it resembles
-most closely, perhaps, that of the coasts of France and Spain fronting
-on the Bay of Biscay. Round New Zealand are the same blue, sparkling,
-and uneasy seas, and the same westerly winds, often wet and sometimes
-rising into strong gales. And where France and Spain join you may see
-in the Pyrenees very much such a barrier of unbroken mountains as the
-far-reaching, snowy chains that form the backbone of the islands of the
-south. Further, though mountainous, ours is an oceanic country, and
-this prevents the climate from being marked by great extremes. It is
-temperate in the most exact sense of the word. The difference between
-the mean of the hottest month and the mean of the coldest month is not
-more than fifteen degrees in most of the settlements. Christchurch is
-an exception, and even in Christchurch it is only twenty degrees. In
-Wellington the mean for the whole year is almost precisely the same
-as in St. Louis in the United States. But the annual mean is often a
-deceitful guide. St. Louis is sixteen degrees warmer in summer and
-seventeen degrees colder in winter than Wellington; and that makes all
-the difference when comfort is concerned. Wellington is slightly cooler
-than London in midsummer, and considerably warmer in winter. Finally,
-in the matter of wind, the European must not let himself be misled by
-the playful exaggerations in certain current New Zealand stories. It
-is not the case that the experienced citizen of Wellington clutches
-convulsively at his hat whenever he turns a street-corner in any city
-of the world; nor is it true that the teeth of sheep in the Canterbury
-mountain valleys are worn down in their efforts to hold on to the long
-tussock grass, so as to save themselves from being blown away by
-the north-west gales. Taken as a whole, our land is neither more nor
-less windy than the coasts of the English Channel between Dover and the
-Isle of Wight. I write with the advantage of having had many years’
-experience of both climates.
-
-[Illustration: TE-WENGA]
-
-On the map of the world New Zealand has the look of a slim insular
-strip, a Lilliputian satellite of the broad continent of Australia.
-It is, however, twelve hundred miles from the continent, and there
-are no island stations between to act as links; the Tasman Sea is an
-unbroken and often stormy stretch of water. Indeed, New Zealand is as
-close to Polynesia as to Australia, for the gap between Cape Maria Van
-Diemen and Niue or Savage Island is also about twelve hundred miles
-across. In result, then, the colony cannot be termed a member of any
-group or division, political or scientific. It is a lonely oceanic
-archipelago, remote from the great centres of the earth, but with a
-character, attractions, and a busy life of its own. Though so small on
-the map, it does not strike those who see it as a little country. Its
-scenery is marked by height and steepness; its mountain ranges and bold
-sea-cliffs impress the new-comer by size and wildness. The clear air,
-too, enables the eye to travel far; and where the gazer can hold many
-miles of country in view--country stretching away, as a rule, to lofty
-backgrounds--the adjective “small” does not easily occur to the mind.
-Countries like Holland and Belgium seem as small as they are; that is
-because they are flat, and thickly sown with cities and villages. In
-them man is everything, and Nature appears tamed and subservient. But
-New Zealand submits to man slowly, sometimes not at all. There the
-rapid rivers, long deep lakes, steep hill-sides, and mountain-chains
-rising near to or above the snow-line are features of a scenery varying
-from romantic softness to rough grandeur. Indeed the first impression
-given by the coast, when seen from the deck of an approaching ship, is
-that of the remnant of some huge drowned continent that long ago may
-have spread over degrees of longitude where now the Southern Ocean is a
-weary waste.
-
-[Illustration: DIAMOND LAKE]
-
-Nor, again, is this impression of largeness created by immense tracts
-of level monotony, as in so many continental views. There is none of
-the tiresome sameness that besets the railway passenger on the road
-from The Hague to Moscow--the succession of flat fields, sandy heaths,
-black pine woods, and dead marshes. For the keynote of our scenery is
-variety. Few countries in the world yield so rapid a series of sharp
-contrasts--contrasts between warm north and cool south; between brisk,
-clear east and moist, mild west; between the leafy, genial charm of
-the coastal bays and the snows and rocky walls of the dorsal ridges.
-The very mountains differ in character. Here are Alps with long white
-crests and bony shoulders emerging from forests of beech; there
-rise volcanoes, symmetrical cones, streaked with snow, and in some
-instances incessantly sending up steam or vapour from their summits.
-Most striking of all the differences, perhaps, is the complete change
-from the deep and ancient forests which formerly covered half
-the islands, to the long stretches of green grass or fern land where,
-before the coming of the settlers, you could ride for miles and pass
-never a tree. Of course many of these natural features are changing
-under the masterful hands of the British colonist. Forests are being
-cut down and burned, plains and open valleys ploughed up and sown,
-swamps drained, and their picturesque tangle of broad-bladed flax,
-giant reeds, and sharp-edged grasses remorselessly cleared away.
-Thousands of miles of hedges, chiefly of gorse, now seam the open
-country with green or golden lines, and divide the surface into more or
-less rectangular fields; and broom and sweetbriar, detested weeds as
-they are, brighten many a slope with gold or rose-colour in spring-time.
-
-Plantations of exotic trees grow in number and height yearly, and show
-a curious blending of the flora of England, California, and Australia.
-Most British trees and bushes thrive exceedingly, though some of them,
-as the ash, the spruce, the holly, and the whitethorn, find the summers
-too hot and the winters not frosty enough in many localities. More than
-in trees, hedgerows, or corn-crops, the handiwork of the colonist is
-seen in the ever-widening areas sown with English grasses. Everything
-has to give way to grass. The consuming passion of the New Zealand
-settler is to make grass grow where it did not grow before, or where
-it did grow before, to put better grass in its place. So trees, ferns,
-flax, and rushes have to pass away; with them have to go the wiry
-native tussock and tall, blanched snow-grass. Already thirteen million
-acres are sown with one or other mixture of cock’s-foot, timothy,
-clover, rye-grass, fescue--for the New Zealand farmer is knowing in
-grasses; and every year scores of thousands of acres are added to the
-area thus artificially grassed. Can you wonder? The carrying power of
-acres improved in this way is about nine times that of land left in
-native pasture; while as for forest and fern land, they, before man
-attacked them, could carry next to no cattle or sheep at all. In the
-progress of settlement New Zealand is sacrificing much beauty in the
-districts once clad in forest. Outside these, however, quite half the
-archipelago was already open land when the whites came, and in this
-division the work of the settler has been almost entirely improvement.
-Forty years ago it needed all the gold of the sunshine and all the
-tonic quality of the air to make the wide tracts of stunted bracken
-in the north, and even wider expanses of sparse yellowish tussock in
-the south, look anything but cheerless, empty, and half-barren. The
-pages of many early travellers testify to this and tell of an effect
-of depression now quite absent. Further, for fifteen years past the
-process of settling the soil has not been confined to breaking in the
-wilderness and enlarging the frontiers of cultivated and peopled land.
-This good work is indeed going on. But hand in hand with it there
-goes on a process of subdivision by which fresh homes rise yearly
-in districts already accounted settled; the farmstead chimneys send
-up their smoke ever nearer to each other; and the loneliness
-and consequent dulness that once half spoiled country life is being
-brightened. Very few New Zealanders now need live without neighbours
-within an easy ride, if not walk.
-
-[Illustration: ON THE BEALEY RIVER]
-
-Like the province of the Netherlands the name of which it bears, New
-Zealand is a green land where water meets the eye everywhere. There
-the resemblance ends. The dull grey tones of the atmosphere of old
-Zealand, the deep, unchanging green of its pastures, the dead level
-and slow current of its shallow and turbid waters, are conspicuously
-absent at the Antipodes. When the New Zealander thinks of water his
-thoughts go naturally to an ocean, blue and restless, and to rivers
-sometimes swollen and clouded, sometimes clear and shrunken, but always
-rapid. Even the mountain lakes, though they have their days of peace,
-are more often ruffled by breezes or lashed by gales. In a word,
-water means water in motion; and among the sounds most familiar to a
-New Zealander’s ears are the hoarse brawling of torrents, grinding
-and bearing seaward the loose shingle of the mountains, and the deep
-roar of the surf of the Pacific, borne miles inland through the long
-still nights when the winds have ceased from troubling. It is no mere
-accident, then, that rowing and sailing are among the chief pastimes of
-the well-watered islands, or that the islanders have become ship-owners
-on a considerable scale. Young countries do not always carry much
-of their own trade; but, thanks to the energy and astute management
-of their Union Steamship Company, New Zealanders not only control
-their own coasting trade, but virtually the whole of the traffic
-between their own shores, Australia, and the South Sea Islands. The
-inter-colonial trade is substantial, amounting to between £5,000,000
-and £6,000,000 a year. Much larger, of course, is the trade with the
-mother country; for our colony, with some success, does her best to
-shoulder a way in at the open but somewhat crowded door of London.
-Of her total oversea trade of about £37,000,000 a year, more than
-two-thirds is carried on with England and Scotland. Here again the
-colonial ship-owner has a share of the carrying business, for the
-best known of the four ocean steamship companies in its service is
-identified with the Dominion, and bears its name.
-
-With variety of scenery and climate there comes, of course, an equal
-variety of products. The colony is eleven hundred miles long, and lies
-nearly due north and south. The latitudes, moreover, through which it
-extends, namely, those from 34° to 47°, are well suited to diversity.
-So you get a range from the oranges and olives of the north to the
-oats and rye of colder Southland. Minerals, too, are found of more
-than one kind. At first the early settlers seemed none too quick in
-appreciating the advantages offered them by so varied a country. They
-pinned their faith to wool and wheat only, adding gold, after a time,
-to their larger exports. But experience showed that though wool and
-wheat yielded large profits, these profits fluctuated, as they still
-do. So the growers had to look round and seek for fresh outlets and
-industries. Thirty years ago, when their colony was first beginning to
-attract some sort of notice in the world’s markets, they still depended
-on wool, gold, cereals, hides, and tallow. Cereals they have now
-almost ceased to export, though they grow enough for home consumption;
-they have found other things that pay better. They produce twice as
-much gold as they did then, and grow more wool than ever. Indeed that
-important animal, the New Zealand sheep, is still the mainstay of his
-country. Last year’s export of wool brought in nearly £7,700,000. But
-to the three or four industries enumerated the colonists have added
-seven or eight more, each respectable in size and profitable in the
-return it yields. To gold their miners have added coal, the output
-of which is now two million tons a year. Another mineral--or sort of
-mineral--is the fossil resin of the giant Kauri pine, of which the
-markets of Europe and North America absorb more than half-a-million
-pounds’ worth yearly. Freezing and cold storage have become main allies
-of the New Zealand farmer, whose export of frozen mutton and lamb now
-approaches in value £4,000,000. Almost as remarkable is the effect of
-refrigerating on dairying in the islands. Hundreds of co-operative
-butter factories and creameries have been built during the last twenty
-years. It is not too much to say that they have transformed the face
-of whole provinces. It is possible to grow wool on a large scale with
-but the sparsest population, as the interior of Australia shows; but
-it is not possible to grow butter or cheese without multiplying homes
-and planting families fairly thickly on the land. In New Zealand even
-the growing of meat and wool is now chiefly done on moderate-sized
-land-holdings. The average size of our flocks is but a thousand head.
-But it is dairying that is _par excellence_ the industry of the small
-man. It was so from the first, and every decade shows a tendency to
-closer subdivision of the land devoted to producing butter and cheese.
-Within the last few years, again, yet another industry has seemed to be
-on the road to more scientific organisation. This is the manufacture
-of hemp from the fibre of the native flax. One cannot call this a new
-thing, for the colonists tried it on a fairly large scale more than
-thirty years ago; but their enterprise seemed again and again doomed
-to disappointment, for New Zealand hemp proved for a long while but
-a tricky and uncertain article of commerce. It was and is a kind of
-understudy of manilla, holding a place somewhere between that and
-sisal. For many years, however, it seemed unable to get a firm footing
-in the markets, and when the price of manilla fell was apt to be
-neglected altogether. During the last decade, however, the flax millers
-have decidedly improved its quality, and a demand for it has sprung up
-in countries outside Great Britain. It is said that Americans use it in
-lieu of hair, and that the Japanese can imitate silk with it. Certainly
-the Germans, Dutch, and French buy it, to spin into binder-twine, or,
-may be, to “blend” with other fibres.
-
-To the ordinary stranger from Europe, the most interesting of our
-industries are those that bear least likeness to the manufactures
-and agriculture of an old country. To him there is a savour of the
-strange and new in kauri-gum digging, gold-mining, timber-cutting,
-and saw-milling, and even the conversion of bushes of flax into
-bales of hemp. But if I were asked to choose two industries before
-others to describe with some minuteness, I think I should select
-the growing, freezing, and export of meat, and the application of
-the factory system to the making and export of butter and cheese.
-Though my countrymen have no monopoly of these they have from the
-first shown marked activity in organising and exploiting them. In one
-chief branch of refrigeration their produce stands first in quality,
-if not in quantity. I refer to the supply of mutton and lamb to the
-English market. In this they have to compete with the larger flocks
-of Australia and the Argentine, as well as, indirectly, with the
-huge herds and gigantic trade combinations of the United States. Of
-the competitors whose products meet at Smithfield, they are the most
-distant, and in their command of capital the least powerful. Moreover,
-they are without the advantage--if advantage it be--of cheap labour.
-Yet their meat has for many years commanded the best prices paid for
-frozen mutton and lamb in London, and the demand, far from being
-unequal to the supply, has been chiefly limited by the difficulty of
-increasing our flocks fast enough to keep pace with it. In the contest
-for English favour, our farmers, though handicapped in the manner
-mentioned above, started with three advantages--healthy flocks and
-herds, a genial climate, and an educated people. The climate enables
-their sheep and cattle to remain out all the year round. Except in the
-Southern Alps, they suffer very little loss from weather. The sunny
-air helps them to keep disease down, and, as already said, the best
-artificial grasses flourish in our islands as they flourish in very few
-countries. The standard of education makes labour, albeit highly paid,
-skilful and trustworthy. The farm-workers and meat-factory hands are
-clean, efficient, and fully alive to the need for sanitary precautions.
-The horrors described in Upton Sinclair’s “Jungle” are impossible in
-New Zealand for many reasons. Of these, the first is that the men
-employed in meat factories would not tolerate their existence.
-
-There are thirty-seven establishments in the colony for meat freezing
-and preserving, employing over three thousand hands and paying nearly
-£300,000 a year in wages. The value of their output is about £5,000,000
-a year, and the bulk of it is exported to the port of London. The
-weight of meat sent to the United Kingdom last year was two hundred and
-thirty-seven million pounds avoirdupois. Then there are about three
-hundred and twenty dairy-butter or cheese factories, without counting
-a larger outer circle of skimming stations. To these the dairy-farmers
-send their milk, getting it back after skimming. That completes their
-share of the work; expert factory hands and managers do the rest. As
-for meat-freezing, from beginning to end the industry is scientifically
-managed and carefully supervised. At its inception, a quarter of a
-century ago, the flocks of the colony were healthy and of good strains
-of blood. But they were bred chiefly to grow wool, and mainly showed a
-basis of Merino crossed with Lincoln or Leicester. Nowadays the Romney
-Marsh blood predominates in the stud flocks, especially in the North
-Island. Lincoln, Leicester, Merino, Border Leicester, Shropshire, and
-South Down follow in order. For five-and-twenty years our breeders
-have brought their skill to bear on crossing, with a view to producing
-the best meat for the freezing factory, without ruining the quality
-of their wool. They still face the cost and trouble of importing stud
-sheep from England, though their own selected animals have brought
-them good prices in South America, Australia, and South Africa.
-Flocks and herds alike are subjected to regular inspection by the
-veterinary officers of the Department of Agriculture; and though the
-slaughter-yards and factories of the freezing companies are models of
-order, speed, and cleanliness, the Government expert is there too, and
-nothing may be sold thence without his certificate, for every carcase
-must bear the official mark. From the factory to the steamer, from
-one end of the earth to the other, the frozen carcases are vigilantly
-watched, and the temperature of the air they are stored in is regulated
-with painful care. As much trouble is taken to keep freezing chambers
-cold as to keep a king’s palace warm. The shipping companies are as
-jealously anxious about the condition of their meat cargoes as they are
-for the contentment of their passengers and the safety of their ships.
-At the London Docks the meat is once more examined by a New Zealand
-official, and finally at Smithfield, as the carcases are delivered
-there in the small hours of the morning, they are scanned for the last
-time by a veterinary expert from the Antipodes. Moreover, since our
-meat goes now to other British ports as well as to London, and since,
-too, nearly half of what is discharged in the Thames no longer finds
-its way to Smithfield, our inspectors have to follow our meat into
-the provinces and report upon the condition in which it reaches such
-towns as Bristol, Cardiff, Liverpool, and Manchester. Furthermore,
-they do their best to track it a stage farther and ascertain its fate
-at the hands of the unsentimental retail trader. Most New Zealand meat
-is now honestly sold as what it is. Some of the best of it, however,
-is still palmed off on the consumer as British. On the other hand,
-South American mutton is sometimes passed off as New Zealand. The
-housewife who buys “Canterbury Lamb” because she likes all things
-Kentish is not yet altogether extinct. For all this the clumsily-drawn
-English law, which makes conviction so difficult, must be held mainly
-responsible. New Zealand butter, too, suffers at the hands of English
-manipulators. It is what Tooley Street calls a dry butter--that is to
-say, it contains on an average not more than some eleven per cent of
-moisture. This renders it a favourite for mixing with milk and for
-selling as “milk-blended” butter, a process at which makers in the
-colony can only look on wrathfully but helplessly. Otherwise they have
-little to complain about, for their butter has for years past brought
-them prices almost as high as those of good Danish, while during the
-butter famine of the first few months of 1908 as much as 150 shillings
-a hundredweight was paid for parcels of it. Before shipment in the
-colony, butter and cheese are graded by public inspectors. Every box
-bears the Government stamp. In practice the verdict of the grader is
-accepted by the English purchasers. Relatively the amount of frozen
-beef which we export is not large; but our climate and pastures are too
-well suited for beef-growing to make it likely that the discrepancy
-will continue. Probably frozen beef will give place to chilled; that
-is to say, improvements in the art of chilling will enable our beef to
-be carried at a temperature of, let us say, 30° Fahrenheit, instead
-of 12°. It will then arrive in England soft and fit for immediate
-use: thawing will not be needed, and a higher price will be obtained.
-But, however far behind New Zealand may as yet lag in the beef trade,
-enough has been done in other branches of refrigeration to show
-how scientific, well-organised, and efficient colonial industry is
-becoming, and how very far the farmers and graziers of the islands are
-from working in the rough and hand-to-mouth fashion that settlers in
-new countries are supposed to affect.
-
-[Illustration: WELLINGTON]
-
-The purpose of this sketch, however, is not to dilate upon the growth
-of our commerce and industry, remarkable as that is in a country so
-isolated and a population only now touching a million. My object,
-rather, is to give something of an outline of the archipelago itself,
-of the people who live there between the mountains and the sea, and of
-the life and society that a new-comer may expect to see. Mainly, then,
-the most striking peculiarities of the islands, as a land undergoing
-the process of occupation, are the decentralised character of this
-occupation, and the large areas, almost unpeopled, that still remain
-in a country relatively small in size. New Zealand was originally not
-so much a colony as a group of little settlements bound together none
-too comfortably. Its nine provinces, with their clashing interests and
-intense jealousies, were politically abolished more than thirty years
-ago; but some of the local feeling which they stood for and suffered
-for still remains, and will remain as long as mountain ranges and
-straits of the sea divide New Zealand. Troublesome as its divisions are
-to politicians, merchants, ship-owners, councils of defence, and many
-other persons and interests, they nevertheless have their advantages.
-They breed emulation, competition, civic patriotism; and the local
-life, parochial as it looks to observers from larger communities,
-is at least far better than the stagnation of provinces drained of
-vitality by an enormous metropolis. For in New Zealand you have four
-chief towns, large enough to be dignified with the name of cities, as
-well as twice as many brisk and aspiring seaports, each the centre and
-outlet of a respectable tract of advancing country. All these have
-to be thought of when any general scheme for opening up, defending,
-or educating the country is in question. Our University, to give one
-example, is an examining body, with five affiliated colleges; but
-these colleges lie in towns far apart, hundreds of miles from each
-other. The ocean steamship companies before mentioned have to carry
-merchandise to and from six or eight ports. Singers and actors have to
-travel to at least as many towns to find audiences. Wellington, the
-capital, is still not the largest of the four chief towns, rapid as its
-progress has been during the last generation. Auckland, with 90,000
-people, is the largest, as it is the most beautiful; Wellington, with
-70,000, holds but the second place.
-
-Decentralised as New Zealand is, large as its rural population is, and
-pleasant as its country life can be, still its four chief towns hold
-between them more than a quarter of its people, and cannot therefore
-be passed over in a sentence. Europeans are apt to be impatient of
-colonial towns, seeing in them collections of buildings neither large
-enough to be imposing nor old enough to be mellowed into beauty or
-quaintness. And it is true that in our four cities you have towns
-without architectural or historic interest, and in size only about
-equal to Hastings, Oxford, Coventry, and York. Yet these towns,
-standing where seventy years ago nothing stood, have other features of
-interest beside their newness. Cities are, after all, chiefly important
-as places in which civilised men and women can live decently and
-comfortably, and do their daily work under conditions which are healthy
-and neither degrading nor disagreeable. The first business of a city
-is to be useful, and its second to be healthy. Certainly it should not
-be hideous; but our cities are not hideous. What if the streets tend
-to straight rigidity, while the dwelling-houses are mostly of wood,
-and the brick and stone business edifices embody modern commercialism!
-The European visitor will note these features; but he will note also
-the spirit of cleanliness, order, and convenience everywhere active
-among a people as alert and sturdy as they are well fed and comfortably
-clad. The unconcealed pride of the colonist in material progress may
-sometimes jar a little on the tourist in search of the odd, barbaric,
-or picturesque. But the colonist, after all, is building up a civilised
-nation. Art, important as it is, cannot be the foundation of a young
-state.
-
-[Illustration: DUNEDIN]
-
-In the towns, then, you see bustling streets where electric tramways
-run out into roomy suburbs, and where motor-cars have already ceased to
-be a novelty. You notice that the towns are even better drained than
-paved, and that the water supply everywhere is as good as it ought
-to be in so well-watered a country. The visitor can send telegrams
-for sixpence and letters for a penny, and finds the State telephone
-system as convenient as it is cheap. If the hotels do not display
-American magnificence they do not charge American prices, for they
-give you comfort and civility for twelve-and-sixpence a day. Theatres
-and concert-halls are commodious, if not imposing; and, thanks to
-travelling companies and to famous artists passing through on their
-way to or from Australia, there is usually a good play to be seen or
-good music to be heard. Indeed, if there be an art which New Zealanders
-can be said to love, it is music. Their choral societies and
-glee clubs are many, and they have at least one choir much above the
-average. Nor are they indifferent to the sister art of painting, a
-foundation for which is laid in their State schools, where all children
-have to learn to draw. Good art schools have been founded in the larger
-towns, and in some of the smaller. Societies are buying and collecting
-pictures for their galleries. At the International Exhibition held
-in Christchurch in 1906-7 the fine display of British art, for which
-our people had to thank the English Government, was welcomed with
-the enthusiasm it deserved. The picture galleries were thronged from
-beginning to end of the Exhibition, and the many thousands of pounds
-spent in purchases gave material evidence of the capacity of New
-Zealanders to appreciate good art when they have the chance of seeing
-it.
-
-The same may be said of literature. To say that they all love books
-would be absurd; but of what nation can that be said? What can truly
-be affirmed is that all of them read newspapers; that most of them
-read books of some sort; and that all their books are not novels.
-Booksellers tell you that the demand for cheap editions of well-known
-authors is astonishing in so small a population. They try to write
-books, too, and do not always fail; and a small anthology--it would
-have to be very slender--might be filled with genuine New Zealand
-poetry. Domett’s reputation is established. Arthur Adams, Arnold Wall,
-and Miss Mackay, when at their best, are poets, and good poets.
-
-Of course, however, it is in the newspapers that we have the plainest
-evidence of the average public taste. It is a land of newspapers, town
-and country, daily and weekly, small or of substantial size. To say
-that the best of these equals the best of the English provincial papers
-is not, I fear, true. The islands contain no daily newspaper which a
-journalist can honestly call equal to the _Manchester Guardian_ or the
-_Birmingham Post_; but many of the papers are good, and some of them
-are extraordinarily good for towns the largest of which contains, with
-its suburbs, but 90,000 people. No one journal towers above the others.
-If I were asked to choose a morning, an evening, and a weekly paper, I
-should perhaps name the _Otago Daily Times_, the Wellington _Evening
-Post_, and the Christchurch _Weekly Press_; but the _Auckland Weekly
-News_ has the best illustrations, and I could understand a good judge
-making a different selection. The most characteristic of the papers are
-illustrated weekly editions of the chief dailies. These good though
-not original products of island journalism are pretty close imitations
-of their Victorian prototype, _The Australasian_. The influence of the
-Press is considerable, though not perhaps as great as might be looked
-for from the numbers and success of the newspapers. Moreover, and this
-is really curious, they influence the public less in the politics of
-the colony than in several other fields.
-
-In a book on New Zealand published ten years ago, I wrote in my haste
-the words, “There is no Colonial literature.” What I meant to express,
-and doubtless ought to have said, is that there is no body of writing
-by New Zealanders at once substantial and distinguished enough to
-be considered a literature. I did not mean to suggest that, amongst
-the considerable mass of published matter for which my countrymen
-are responsible, there is nothing of good literary quality. It would
-not have been true to say this ten years ago, and it would be still
-less true to say it now. Amongst the large body of conscientious work
-published in the colony itself during the last quarter of a century
-there is some very good writing indeed. A certain amount of it deserves
-to be better known outside our borders than it is. Putting manner aside
-for the moment, and dealing only with matter, it is, I think, true to
-say that any thorough student of New Zealand as it is to-day, or has
-been since 1880, must for authentic information mainly go to works
-published in the colony itself. I have some right to speak, for I have
-been reading about New Zealand for forty years, and all my reading
-has not been desultory. Slight as is this book, for instance, and
-partly based as it is on personal recollection and knowledge gleaned
-orally, still I could not have written it without very careful study
-of many colonial writings. In scanning my list of later authorities
-consulted, I am surprised to find what very few exceptions there are to
-the rule that they are printed at the other end of the world. To begin
-with, the weekly newspapers of the Dominion are mines of information
-to any one who knows how to work them. So are the Blue-books, and
-that bible of the student of nature and tradition in our islands,
-the _Transactions of the New Zealand Institute_. Then there is the
-_Journal of the Polynesian Society_; after which comes a long list of
-official publications. First among them rank Kirk’s _Forest Flora_ and
-Mr. Percy Smith’s _Eruption of Tarawera_. The best general sketch of
-Maori manners, customs, and beliefs, is that of Edward Tregear; far the
-best book on Maori art is A. Hamilton’s. Quite lately Mr. M’Nab, the
-present Minister of Lands, has made a very valuable contribution to the
-early chronicles of South New Zealand, in his _Muri-huku_, for which
-generations of students will be grateful. Mr. Carrick’s gossip--also
-about our South--and Mr. Ross’s mountaineering articles must not be
-passed over. Furthermore, there is an illustrated manual of our plants
-by Laing and Blackwell, which is something more than a manual, for it
-is full of reading which is enjoyable merely as reading. And there is
-a manual of our animal life in which the work of Hutton, Drummond,
-and Potts is blended with excellent results. Dr. Cockayne’s botanic
-articles, Mr. Shand’s papers on the Chathams, and Mr. Buick’s local
-Histories of Marlborough and Manawatu deserve also to be noted. Much of
-Mr. James Cowan’s writing for the Government Tourist Department is well
-above the average of that class of work.
-
-[Illustration: NAPIER]
-
-Society in the towns is made up of a mingling of what in England would
-be called the middle and upper-middle classes. In some circles the
-latter preponderate, in others the former. New Zealanders occasionally
-boast that in their country class distinctions are unknown;
-but though this is true politically--for there are no privileged
-classes and no lower orders--the line is drawn in matters social, and
-sometimes in odd and amusing ways. The townsfolk inside the line are
-financiers, lawyers, doctors, merchants, manufacturers, clergymen,
-newspaper owners, the higher officials, and the larger sort of agents
-and contractors. Here and there, _rari nantes_, are to be encountered
-men who paint or write, or are musicians, or professors, or teachers
-of colleges or secondary schools. Most of the older and some of the
-younger are British-born, but the differences between them and the
-native-born are not very apparent, though shades of difference can be
-detected. Money, birth, official position, and ability are passports
-there, much as in other countries; though it is only fair to say that
-money is not all-powerful, and that ability, if not brilliant, has a
-slightly better chance than in older societies. On the surface the
-urban middle class in the colony differs but little from people of
-the same sort in the larger provincial cities of the mother country.
-Indeed the likeness is remarkable, albeit in the colony there is no
-aristocracy, no smart set, no Army, Navy, or dominant Church; while
-underneath there is no multitude of hungry and hard-driven poor for
-the rich to shrink from or regard as dangerous. Yet, except for the
-comparative absence of frock-coats and tall silk hats, and for the
-somewhat easier and less suspicious manner, the middle class remain a
-British middle class still. It is, then, pleasant to think that, if
-they retain English prejudices, they have also the traditional virtues
-of the English official and man of business.
-
-[Illustration: THE BATHING POOL]
-
-To a social student, however, the most interesting and, on the whole,
-most cheering aspect of town life is supplied by the work-people. They
-are worth watching as they go to their shops and factories between
-eight and nine in the morning, or when, after five in the afternoon,
-they pour into the streets with their work done and something of the
-day yet left to call their own. The clean, well-ventilated work-rooms
-are worth a visit certainly. But it is the men and women, youths and
-girls themselves who, to any one acquainted with factory hands in
-the Old World, seem the best worth attention. Everywhere you note a
-decent average of health, strength, and contentment. The men do not
-look stunted or deadened, the women pinched or sallow, the children
-weedy or underfed. Most of them seem bright and self-confident, with
-colour in their faces and plenty of flesh on their frames, uniting
-something of English solidity with a good deal of American alertness.
-Seventy thousand hands--the number employed in our factories and
-workshops--may seem few enough. But forty years ago they could not
-muster seven thousand, and the proportional increase during the last
-twelve years has been very rapid. To what extent their healthy and
-comfortable condition is due to the much-discussed labour laws of
-New Zealand is a moot point which need not be discussed here. What
-is certain is that for many years past the artisans and labourers
-of the colony have increased in numbers, while earning higher
-wages and working shorter hours than formerly. At the same time the
-employers as a body have prospered as they never prospered before,
-and this prosperity shows as yet no sign of abatement. That what is
-called the labour problem has been solved in New Zealand no sensible
-man would pretend. But at least the more wasteful and ruinous forms
-of industrial conflicts have for many years been few and (with two
-exceptions) very brief, a blessing none too common in civilised
-communities. As a testimony to the condition of the New Zealand worker
-I can hardly do better than quote the opinion of the well-known English
-labour leader, Mr. Keir Hardie. Whatever my readers may think of his
-opinions--and some of them may not be among his warm admirers--they
-will admit that he is precisely the last man in the Empire likely to
-give an overflattering picture of the lot of the labourer anywhere.
-His business is to voice the grievances of his class, not to conceal
-or suppress them. Now, Mr. Hardie, after a tour round the Empire,
-deliberately picks out New Zealand as the most desirable country for
-a British emigrant workman. The standard of comfort there appears to
-him to be higher than elsewhere, and he recognises that the public
-conscience is sensitive to the fair claims of labour.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER II
-
-COUNTRY LIFE
-
-
-When all is said, however, it is not the cities which interest most
-the ordinary visitors to New Zealand. They may have a charm which it
-is no exaggeration to call loveliness, as Auckland has; or be finely
-seated on hill-sides overlooking noble harbours, as Wellington and
-Dunedin are. They may have sweetly redeeming features, like the river
-banks, public and private gardens, and the vistas of hills and distant
-mountains seen in flat Christchurch. They may be pleasant altogether
-both in themselves and their landscape, as Nelson is. But after all
-they are towns, and modern towns, whose best qualities are that they
-are wholesome and that their raw newness is passing away. It is to the
-country and the country life that travellers naturally turn for escape
-into something with a spice of novelty and maybe a touch of romance.
-Nor need they be disappointed. Country life in the islands varies with
-the locality and the year. It is not always bright, any more than is
-the New Zealand sky. It is not always prosperous, any more than
-you can claim that the seasons are always favourable. But, on the
-whole, I do not hesitate to say, that to a healthy capable farmer or
-rural worker the colony offers the most inviting life in the world.
-In the first place, the life is cheerful and healthy; in the next
-place, the work, though laborious at times, need not be killing; and
-then the solitude, that deadly accompaniment of early colonial life,
-has now ceased to be continuous except in a few scattered outposts.
-Moreover--and this is important--there is money in it. The incompetent
-or inexperienced farmer may, of course, lose his capital, just as a
-drunken or stupid labourer may fail to save out of his wages. But year
-in, year out, the farmer who knows his business and sticks to it can
-and does make money, improve his property, and see his position grow
-safer and his anxieties less. Good farmers can make profits quite apart
-from the very considerable increment which comes to the value of land
-as population spreads. Whatever may be said of this rise in price as
-a matter of public policy, it fills the pockets of individuals in a
-manner highly satisfactory to many of the present generation.
-
-[Illustration: NELSON]
-
-One of the most cheerful features in New Zealand country life, perhaps,
-is the extent to which those who own the land are taking root in the
-soil. Far the greater part of the settled country is in the hands of
-men and families who live on the land, and may go on living there as
-long as they please; no one can oust them. They are either freeholders,
-or tenants of the State or public bodies. Such tenants hold their lands
-on terms so easy that their position as working farmers is as good as
-or better than that of freeholders. As prospective sellers of land they
-may not be so well placed; but that is another story. Anyway, rural New
-Zealand is becoming filled with capable independent farmers, with farms
-of all sizes from the estate of four thousand or five thousand acres to
-the peasant holding of fifty or one hundred. Colonists still think in
-large areas when they define the degrees of land-holding and ownership.
-
-[Illustration: ON THE BEACH AT NGUNGURU]
-
-And here a New Zealander, endeavouring to make a general sketch that
-may place realities clearly before the English eye, is confronted
-with the difficulty, almost impossibility, of helping the European
-to conceive a thinly peopled territory. Suppose, for a moment, what
-the British Islands would be like if they were populated on the New
-Zealand scale--that is to say, if they held about a million souls, of
-whom fifty thousand were brown and the rest white. The brown would
-be English-speaking and half civilised, and the whites just workaday
-Britons of the middle and labouring classes, better fed, a little
-taller and rather more tanned by sun and wind. That at first sight
-does not seem to imply any revolutionary change. But imagine yourself
-standing on the deck of a steamer running up the English Channel past
-the coast as it would look if nineteen-twentieths of the British
-population, and all traces of them and the historic past of their
-country, had been swept away. The cliff edges of Cornwall and hills
-of Devon would be covered with thick forest, and perhaps a few people
-might cluster round single piers in sheltered inlets like Falmouth
-and Plymouth. The Chalk Downs of Wiltshire and Hampshire would be held
-by a score or two of sheep-farmers, tenants of the Crown, running
-their flocks over enormous areas of scanty grass. Fertile strips like
-the vale of Blackmore would be occupied by independent farmers with
-from three hundred to two thousand acres of grass and crops round
-their homesteads. Southampton would be the largest town in the British
-Islands, a flourishing and busy seaport, containing with its suburbs
-not less than 90,000 people. Its inhabitants would proudly point to
-the railway system, of which they were the terminus, and by which they
-were connected with Liverpool, the second city of the United Kingdom,
-holding with Birkenhead about 70,000 souls. Journeying from Southampton
-to Liverpool on a single line of rails, the traveller would note a
-comfortable race of small farmers established in the valley of the
-Thames, and would hear of similar conditions about the Wye and the
-Severn. But he would be struck by the almost empty look of the wide
-pastoral stretches in Berkshire and Oxfordshire, and would find axemen
-struggling with Nature in the forest of Arden, where dense thickets
-would still cover the whole of Warwickshire and spread over into the
-neighbouring counties. Arrived at Liverpool after a twelve hours’
-journey, he might wish to visit Dublin or Glasgow, the only two other
-considerable towns in the British Islands; the one about as large as
-York now is, the other the size of Northampton. He would be informed
-by the Government tourist agent in Liverpool that his easiest way to
-Glasgow would be by sea to a landing-place in the Solway Firth, where
-he would find the southern terminus of the Scotch railways. He would
-discover that England and Scotland were not yet linked by rail, though
-that great step in progress was confidently looked for within a few
-months.
-
-[Illustration: AT THE FOOT OF LAKE TE-ANAU]
-
-By all this I do not mean to suggest that there are no spots in
-New Zealand where the modern side of rural English life is already
-closely reproduced. On an earlier page I have said that there are. Our
-country life differs widely as you pass from district to district,
-and is marked by as much variety as is almost everything else in the
-islands. On the east coast of the South Island, between Southland
-and the Kaikouras, mixed farming is scientifically carried on with
-no small expenditure of skill and capital. The same can be said of
-certain districts on the west coast of the Wellington Province, and in
-the province of Hawkes Bay, within a moderate distance of the town of
-Napier. Elsewhere, with certain exceptions, farming is of a rougher
-and more primitive-looking sort than anything seen in the mother
-country, though it does not follow that a comparatively rough, unkempt
-appearance denotes lack of skill or agricultural knowledge. It may
-mean, and usually does mean, that the land is in the earlier stages of
-settlement, and that the holders have not yet had time to think much
-of appearances. Then outside the class of small or middle-sized farms
-come the large holdings of the islands, which are like nothing at all
-in the United Kingdom. They are of two kinds, freehold and Crown
-lands held under pastoral licences. Generally speaking, the freeholds
-are much the more valuable, have much more arable land, and will, in
-days to come, carry many more people. The pastoral Crown tenants have,
-by the pressure of land laws and the demands of settlement, been more
-and more restricted to the wilder and more barren areas of the islands.
-They still hold more than ten million acres; but this country chiefly
-lies in the mountainous interior, covering steep faces where the plough
-will never go, and narrow terraces and cold, stony valleys where the
-snow lies deep in winter.
-
-On these sheep stations life changes more slowly than elsewhere. If you
-wish to form an idea of what pastoral life “up-country” was forty years
-ago, you can still do so by spending a month or two at one of these
-mountain homesteads. There you may possibly have the owner and the
-owner’s family for society, but are rather more likely to be yourself
-furnishing a solitary manager with not unwelcome company. Round about
-the homestead you will still see the traditional features of colonial
-station life, the long wool-shed with high-pitched roof of shingles
-or corrugated iron, and the sheep-yards which, to the eye of the new
-chum, seem such an unmeaning labyrinth. Not far off will stand the
-men’s huts, a little larger than of yore, and more likely nowadays to
-be frame cottages than to be slab whares with the sleeping-bunks and
-low, wide chimneys of days gone by. In out-of-the-way spots the station
-store may still occasionally be found, with its atmosphere made
-odorous by hob-nailed boots, moleskin trousers, brown sugar, flannel
-shirts, tea, tar, and black tobacco. For the Truck Act does not apply
-to sheep stations, and there are still places far enough away from a
-township to make the station store a convenience to the men.
-
-[Illustration: THE WAIKATO AT NGARUAWAHIA]
-
-At such places the homestead is still probably nothing more than a
-modest cottage, roomy, but built of wood, and owing any attractiveness
-it has to its broad verandah, perhaps festooned with creepers, and
-to the garden and orchard which are now seldom absent. In the last
-generation the harder and coarser specimens of the pioneers often
-affected to hold gardens and garden-stuffs cheap, and to despise
-planting and adornment of any kind, summing them up as “fancy work.”
-This was not always mere stinginess or brute indifference to everything
-that did not directly pay, though it sometimes was. There can be no
-doubt that absentee owners or mortgagee companies were often mean
-enough in these things. But the spirit that grudged every hour of
-labour bestowed on anything except the raising of wool, mutton, or
-corn, was often the outcome of nothing worse than absorption in a
-ceaseless and unsparing battle with Nature and the fluctuations of
-markets. The first generation of settlers had to wrestle hard to keep
-their foothold; and, naturally, the men who usually survived through
-bad times were those who concentrated themselves most intensely on
-the struggle for success and existence. But time mellows everything.
-The struggle for life has still to be sustained in New Zealand. It
-is easier than of yore, however; and the continued prosperity of the
-last twelve or thirteen years has enabled settlers to bestow thought
-and money on the lighter and pleasanter side. Homesteads are brighter
-places than they were: they may not be artistic, but even the most
-remote are nearly always comfortable. More than comfort the working
-settler does not ask for.
-
-Then in estimating how far New Zealand country life may be enjoyable
-and satisfying we must remember that it is mainly a life out of
-doors. On farms and stations of all sorts and sizes the men spend
-many hours daily in the open, sometimes near the homestead, sometimes
-miles away from it. To them, therefore, climate is of more importance
-than room-space, and sunshine than furniture. If we except a handful
-of mountaineers, the country worker in New Zealand is either never
-snowbound at all, or, at the worst, is hampered by a snowstorm once
-a year. Many showery days there are, and now and again the bursts of
-wind and rain are wild enough to force ploughmen to quit work, or
-shepherds to seek cover; but apart from a few tempests there is nothing
-to keep country-folk indoors. It is never either too hot or too cold
-for out-door work, while for at least one day in three in an average
-year it is a positive pleasure to breathe the air and live under the
-pleasant skies.
-
-The contrast between the station of the back-ranges and the country
-place of the wealthy freeholder is the contrast between the first
-generation of colonial life and the third. The lord of 40,000 acres
-may be a rural settler or a rich man with interests in town as well as
-country. In either case his house is something far more costly than
-the old wooden bungalow. It is defended by plantations and approached
-by a curving carriage drive. When the proprietor arrives at his
-front door he is as likely to step out of a motor-car as to dismount
-from horseback. Within, you may find an airy billiard-room; without,
-smooth-shaven tennis lawns, and perhaps a bowling-green. The family
-and their guests wear evening dress at dinner, where the wine will
-be expensive and may even be good. In the smoking-room, cigars have
-displaced the briar-root pipes of our fathers. The stables are higher
-and more spacious than were the dwellings of the men of the early
-days. Neat grooms and trained gardeners are seen in the place of the
-“rouse-abouts” of yore. Dip and wool-shed are discreetly hidden from
-view; and a conservatory rises where meat once hung on the gallows.
-
-For a colony whose days are not threescore years and ten, ours has made
-some creditable headway in gardening. The good and bad points of our
-climate alike encourage us to cultivate the art. The combination of
-an ample rainfall with lavish sunshine helps the gardener’s skill. On
-the other hand, the winds--those gales from north-west and south-west,
-varied by the teasing persistency of the steadier north-easter,
-plague of spring afternoons--make the planting of hedgerows and
-shelter clumps an inevitable self-defence. So while, on the one hand,
-the colonist hews and burns and drains away the natural vegetation
-of forest and swamp, on the other, in the character of planter and
-gardener, he does something to make amends. The colours of England and
-New Zealand glow side by side in the flowers round his grass plots,
-while Australia and North America furnish sombre break-winds, and
-contribute some oddities of foliage and a share of colour. In seaside
-gardens the Norfolk Island pine takes the place held by the cedar of
-Lebanon on English lawns. The mimosa and jackarandah of Australia
-persist in flowering in the frosty days of our early spring. On the
-verandahs, jessamine and Virginia creeper intertwine with the clematis
-and passion-flower of the bush. The palm-lily--insulted with the
-nickname of cabbage-tree--is hardy enough to flourish anywhere despite
-its semi-tropical look; but the nikau, our true palm, requires shelter
-from bitter or violent winds. The toé-toé (a reed with golden plumes),
-the glossy native flax (a lily with leaves like the blade of a classic
-Roman sword), and two shrubs, the matipo and karaka, are less timid, so
-more serviceable. The crimson parrot’s-beak and veronicas--white, pink,
-and purple--are easily and commonly grown; and though the manuka does
-not rival the English whitethorn in popularity, the pohutu-kawa, most
-striking of flowering trees, surpasses the ruddy may and pink chestnut
-of the old country. Some English garden-charms cannot be transplanted.
-The thick sward and living green of soft lawns, the moss and mellowing
-lichens that steal slowly over bark and walls, the quaintness that
-belongs to old-fashioned landscape gardening, the venerable aspect of
-aged trees,--these cannot be looked for in gardens the eldest of which
-scarcely count half a century. But a climate in which arum lilies run
-wild in the hedgerows, and in which bougainvilleas, camellias, azaleas,
-oleanders, and even (in the north) the stephanotis, bloom in the open
-air, gives to skill great opportunities. Then the lover of ferns--and
-they have many lovers in New Zealand--has there a whole realm to call
-his own. Not that every fern will grow in every garden. Among distinct
-varieties numbering scores, there are many that naturally cling to the
-peace and moisture of deep gullies and overshadowing jungle. There,
-indeed, is found a wealth of them--ferns with trunks as thick as trees,
-and ferns with fronds as fine as hair or as delicate as lace; and there
-are filmy ferns, and such as cling to and twine round their greater
-brethren, and pendant ferns that droop from crevices and drape the
-faces of cliffs. To these add ferns that climb aloft as parasites on
-branches and among foliage, or that creep upon the ground, after the
-manner of lycopodium, or coat fallen forest trees like mosses. The
-tree-ferns are large enough to be hewn down with axes, and to spread
-their fronds as wide as the state umbrellas of Asiatic kings. Thirty
-feet is no uncommon span for the shade they cast, and their height
-has been known to reach fifty feet. They are to other ferns as the
-wandering albatross is to lesser sea-birds. The black-trunked
-are the tallest, while the silver-fronded, whose wings seem as though
-frosted on the underside, are the most beautiful. In places they stand
-together in dense groves. Attempt to penetrate these and you find a
-dusky entanglement where your feet sink into tinder and dead, brown
-litter. But look down upon a grove from above, and your eyes view a
-canopy of green intricacies, a waving covering of soft, wing-like
-fronds, and fresh, curving plumes.
-
-[Illustration: TREE FERNS]
-
-The change in country life now going on so rapidly has not meant merely
-more comfort for the employer: the position of the men also has altered
-for the better. While the land-owner’s house and surroundings show a
-measure of refinement, and even something that may at the other end
-of the earth pass for luxury, the station hands are far better cared
-for than was the case a generation or two ago. The interior of the
-“men’s huts” no longer reminds you of the foc’sle of a merchantship.
-Seek out the men’s quarters on one of the better managed estates, and
-it may easily happen that you will now find a substantial, well-built
-cottage with a broad verandah round two sides. Inside you are shown a
-commodious dining-room, and a reading-room supplied with newspapers and
-even books. To each man is assigned a separate bedroom, clean and airy,
-and a big bathroom is supplemented by decent lavatory arrangements.
-The food was always abundant--in the roughest days the estate owners
-never grudged their men plenty of “tucker.” But it is now much more
-varied and better cooked, and therefore wholesome. To some extent this
-improvement in the country labourer’s lot is due to legal enactment and
-government inspection. But it is only fair to say that in some of the
-most notable instances it comes from spontaneous action by employers
-themselves. New Zealand has developed a public conscience during the
-last twenty years in matters relating to the treatment of labour, and
-by this development the country employers have been touched as much as
-any section of the community. They were never an unkindly race, and it
-may now be fairly claimed that they compare favourably with any similar
-class of employers within the Empire.
-
-At the other end of the rural scale to the establishment of the great
-land-owner we see the home of the bush settler--the pioneer of to-day.
-Perhaps the Crown has leased a block of virgin forest to him; perhaps
-he is one of the tenants of a Maori tribe, holding on a twenty-one
-or forty-two years’ lease; perhaps he has contrived to pick up a
-freehold in the rough. At any rate he and his mate are on the ground
-armed with saw and axe for their long attack upon Nature; and as you
-note the muscles of their bared arms, and the swell of the chests
-expanding under their light singlets, you are quite ready to believe
-that Nature will come out of the contest in a damaged condition. It is
-their business to hack and grub, hew and burn, blacken and deface. The
-sooner they can set the fire running through tracts of fern or piles
-of felled bush the sooner will they be able to scatter broadcast the
-contents of certain bags of grass seed now carefully stowed away in
-their shanty under cover of tarpaulins. Sworn enemies are they of tall
-bracken and stately pines. To their eyes nothing can equal in beauty
-a landscape of black, fire-scorched stumps and charred logs--if only
-on the soil between these they may behold the green shoots of young
-grass thrusting ten million blades upward. What matter the ugliness and
-wreckage of the first stages of settlement, if, after many years, a
-tidy farm and smiling homestead are to be the outcome? In the meantime,
-while under-scrubbing and bush-felling are going on, the axemen build
-for themselves a slab hut with shingled roof. The furniture probably
-exemplifies the great art of “doing without.” The legs of their table
-are posts driven into the clay floor: to other posts are nailed the
-sacking on which their blankets are spread. A couple of sea chests
-hold their clothes and odds and ends. A sheepskin or two do duty for
-rugs. Tallow candles, or maybe kerosene, furnish light. A very few
-well-thumbed books, and a pack or two of more than well-thumbed cards,
-provide amusement. Not that there are many hours in the week for
-amusement. When cooking is done, washing and mending have to be taken
-in hand. Flannel and blue dungaree require washing after a while, and
-even garments of canvas and moleskin must be repaired sooner or later.
-A camp oven, a frying-pan, and a big teapot form the front rank of
-their cooking utensils, and fuel, at least, is abundant. Baking-powder
-helps them to make bread. Bush pork, wild birds, and fish may vary a
-diet in which mutton and sardines figure monotonously. After a while
-a few vegetables are grown behind the hut, and the settlers find time
-to milk a cow. Soon afterwards, perhaps, occurs the chief event of
-pioneer life--the coming of a wife on to the scene. With her arrival
-is the beginning of a civilised life indoors, though her earlier years
-as a housekeeper may be an era of odd shifts and desperate expedients.
-A bush household is lucky if it is near enough to a metalled road to
-enable stores to be brought within fairly easy reach. More probably
-such necessaries as flour, groceries, tools, and grass seed--anything,
-in short, from a grindstone to a bag of sugar--have to be brought by
-pack-horse along a bush-track where road-metal is an unattainable
-luxury, and which may not unfairly be described as a succession of
-mud-holes divided by logs. Along such a thoroughfare many a rain-soaked
-pioneer has guided in days past the mud-plastered pack-horse which
-has carried the first beginnings of his fortunes. For what sustains
-the average settler through the early struggles of pioneering in the
-wilderness is chiefly the example of those who have done the same
-thing before, have lived as hard a life or harder, and have emerged as
-substantial farmers and leading settlers, respected throughout their
-district. Success has crowned the achievement so many thousand times
-in the past that the back-country settler of to-day, as he fells his
-bush and toils along his muddy track, may well be sustained by hope
-and by visions of macadamised coach roads running past well-grassed,
-well-stocked sheep or dairy farms in days to come.
-
-[Illustration: A MAORI VILLAGE]
-
-Predominant as the white man is in New Zealand, the brown man is too
-interesting and important to be forgotten even in a rough and hasty
-sketch. The Maori do not dwell in towns: they are an element of our
-country life. They now number no more than a twentieth of our people;
-but whereas a generation ago they were regarded as a doomed race,
-whose end, perhaps, was not very far distant, their disappearance
-is now regarded as by no means certain. I doubt, indeed, whether it
-is even probable. Until the end of the nineteenth century official
-returns appeared to show that the race was steadily and indeed rapidly
-diminishing. More recent and more accurate figures, however, seem
-to prove either that the Maori have regained vitality, or that past
-estimates of their numbers were too low. I am inclined to think that
-the explanation is found in both these reasons. In past decades our
-Census officers never claimed to be able to reckon the strength of the
-Maori with absolute accuracy, chiefly because the Natives would give
-them little or no help in their work. It is not quite so difficult
-now as formerly to enumerate the members of the tribes. Furthermore,
-there is reason to hope that the health of the race is improving and
-that its spirit is reviving. The first shock with our civilisation and
-our overwhelming strength is over. The Maori, beaten in war with us,
-were not disgraced: though their defeat disheartened them, it did not
-lead their conquerors to despise them. Again, though they have been
-deprived of some of their land, and have sold a great part of the rest,
-the tribes are still great landlords. They hold the fee-simple of
-nearly seven million acres of land, much of it fertile. This is a large
-estate for about fifty thousand men, women, and children. Moreover,
-it is a valuable estate. I daresay its selling price might be rated
-at a higher figure than the value of the whole of New Zealand when we
-annexed it. Some of this great property is leased to white tenants;
-most of it is still retained by the native tribes. So long as they can
-continue to hold land on a considerable scale they will always have
-a chance, and may be sure of respectful treatment. At the worst they
-have had, and still have, three powerful allies. The Government of the
-colony may sometimes have erred against them, but in the main it has
-stood between them and the baser and greedier sort of whites. Maori
-children are educated free of cost. Most of them can now at least read
-and write English. Quite as useful is the work of the Department of
-Public Health. If I am not mistaken, it has been the main cause of the
-lowered Maori death-rate of the last ten years. Then the clergy of
-more than one Church have always been the Maori’s friends. Weak--too
-weak--as their hands have been, their voices have been raised again and
-again on the native’s behalf. Thirdly, the leaders of the temperance
-movement--one of the most powerful influences in our public life--have
-done all they can to save the Maori of the interior from the curse
-of drink. Allies, then, have been fighting for the Maori. Moreover,
-they are citizens with a vote at the polls and a voice in Parliament.
-Were one political party disposed to bully the natives, the other
-might be tempted to befriend them. But the better sort of white has no
-desire to bully. He may not admit that the brown man is socially his
-equal; but there is neither hatred nor loathing between the races.
-
-[Illustration: A PATAKA]
-
-In a word, the outlook for the Maori, though still doubtful, is by no
-means desperate. They will own land; they will collect substantial
-rents from white tenants; they will be educated; they will retain the
-franchise. At last they are beginning to learn the laws of sanitation
-and the uses of ventilation and hospitals. The doctors of the Health
-Department have persuaded them to pull down hundreds of dirty old huts,
-are caring for their infants, and are awaking a wholesome distrust of
-the trickeries of those mischievous conjuror-quacks, the _tohungas_.
-Some of these good physicians--Dr. Pomaré, for instance--are themselves
-Maori. More of his stamp are wanted; also more Maori lawyers like
-Mr. Apirana Ngata, M.P. Much will turn upon the ability of the race
-to master co-operative farming. That there is hope of this is shown
-by the success of the Ngatiporou tribesmen, who in recent years
-have cleared and sown sixty thousand acres of land, and now own
-eighty-three thousand sheep, more than three thousand cattle, and more
-than eight thousand pigs. Only let the sanitary lesson be learned and
-the industrial problem solved, and the qualities of the Maori may be
-trusted to do the rest. Their muscular strength and courage, their
-courtesy and vein of humour, their poetic power and artistic sense,
-are gifts that make it desirable that the race should survive and win a
-permanent place among civilised men.
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-Watching the tendencies of New Zealand life and laws to-day, one
-is tempted to look ahead and think of what country life in the
-islands may become in a generation or so, soon after the colony has
-celebrated its hundredth anniversary. It should be a pleasant life,
-even pleasanter than that of our own time; for more gaps will have
-been filled up and more angles rubbed off. Limiting laws and graduated
-taxes will have made an end of the great estates: a land-owner with
-more than £120,000 of real property will probably be unknown. Many
-land-owners will be richer than that, but it will be because a part
-of their money is invested in personalty. But in peacefully making an
-end of _latifundia_ the law-makers will not have succeeded--even if
-that were their design--in handing over the land to peasants: there
-will be no sweeping revolution. Much of the soil will still be held
-by large and substantial farmers,--eight or ten thousand in number,
-perhaps,--educated men married to wives of some culture and refinement.
-The process of subdivision will have swelled the numbers and increased
-the influence of land-holders. The unpopularity which attached
-itself to the enormous estates will pass away with them. Some of the
-farming gentlemen of the future will be descendants of members of the
-English upper and upper-middle classes. Others will be the grandsons
-of hard-headed Scotch shepherds, English rural labourers, small
-tenants, or successful men of commerce. Whatever their origin, however,
-education, intermarriage, and common habits of life will tend to level
-them into a homogeneous class. Dressed in tweed suits, wide-awake hats,
-and gaiters, riding good horses or driving in powerful motors, and with
-their alert, bony faces browned and reddened by sun and wind, they will
-look and will be a healthy, self-confident, intelligent race. Despite
-overmuch tea and tobacco, their nerves will seldom be highly strung;
-the blessed sunshine and the air of the sea and the mountains will
-save them from that. Moreover, colonial cookery will be better than
-it has been, and diet more varied. Nor will our farmers trouble the
-doctors much or poison themselves with patent drugs. Owning anything
-from half a square mile to six or seven square miles of land, they
-will be immensely proud of their stake in the country and cheerfully
-convinced of their value as the backbone of the community. They will
-not be a vicious lot; early marriage and life in the open air will
-prevent that. Nor will drunkenness be fashionable, though there will be
-gambling and probably far too much horse-racing. Varying in size from
-three or four hundred to four or five thousand acres, their properties,
-with stock and improvements, may be worth anything from five or six
-thousand to seventy or eighty thousand pounds, but amongst themselves
-the smaller and larger owners will meet on terms of easy equality. They
-will gradually form an educated rural gentry with which the wealthier
-townspeople will be very proud and eager to mix. A few of them, whose
-land is rich, may lease it out in small allotments, and try to become
-squires on a modified English pattern. But most of them will work their
-land themselves, living on it, riding over it daily, directing their
-men, and, if need be, lending a hand themselves. That will be their
-salvation, bringing them as it will into daily contact with practical
-things and working humanity. Conservative, of course, they will be,
-and in theory opposed to Socialism, yet assenting from time to time
-to Socialistic measures when persuaded of their immediate usefulness.
-Thus they will keep a keen eye on the State railways, steamships, and
-Department of Agriculture, and develop the machinery of these in their
-own interests. A few of the richer of them from time to time may find
-that life in Europe so pleases them--or their wives--that they will
-sell out and cut adrift from the colony; but there will be no class of
-absentee owners--growling, heavily taxed, and unpopular. Our working
-gentlemen will stick to the country, and will be hotly, sometimes
-boisterously, patriotic, however much they may at moments abuse
-governments and labour laws. Most of them will be freeholders. Allied
-with them will be State pastoral tenants--holding smaller runs than
-now--to be found in the mountains, on the pumice plateau, or where the
-clay is hungry. Socially these tenants will be indistinguishable from
-the freeholders.
-
-Solitude will be a thing of the past; for roads will be excellent,
-motors common, and every homestead will have its telephone. And just as
-kerosene lamps and wax candles superseded the tallow dips of the early
-settlers, so in turn will electric light reign, not here and there
-merely, but almost everywhere. Their main recreations will be shooting,
-fishing, motor-driving, riding, and sailing; for games--save polo--and
-pure athletics will be left to boys and to men placed lower in the
-social scale. They will read books, but are scarcely likely to care
-much about art, classing painting and music rather with such things as
-wood-carving and embroidery--as women’s work, something for men to look
-at rather than produce. But they will be gardeners, and their wives
-will pay the arts a certain homage. The furniture of their houses may
-seem scanty in European eyes, but will not lack a simple elegance. In
-their gardens, however, those of them who have money to spare will
-spend more freely, and on brightening these with colour and sheltering
-them with soft masses of foliage no mean amount of taste and skill
-will be lavished. These gardens will be the scenes of much of the most
-enjoyable social intercourse to be had in the country. Perhaps--who
-knows?--some painter, happy in a share of Watteau’s light grace or
-Fragonard’s eye for decorative effect in foliage, may find in the New
-Zealand garden festivals, with their music, converse, and games, and
-their framework of beauty, subjects worthy of art.
-
-[Illustration: COROMANDEL]
-
-Socially and financially beneath these country gentlemen, though
-politically their equals, and in intelligence often not inferior to
-them, will come the more numerous, rougher and poorer races of small
-farmers and country labourers. Here will be seen harder lives and
-a heavier physique--men whose thews and sinews will make Imperial
-recruiting officers sigh wistfully. Holding anything from twenty or
-thirty up to two or three hundred acres, the small farmers will have
-their times of stress and anxiety, when they will be hard put to it
-to weather a bad season combined with low prices. But their practical
-skill, strength, and industry, and their ability, at a pinch, to do
-without all but bare necessaries, will usually pull them through.
-Moreover, they too will be educated, and no mere race of dull-witted
-boors. At the worst they will always be able to take to wage-earning
-for a time, and the smaller of them will commonly pass part of each
-year in working for others. Sometimes their sons will be labourers,
-and members of trade unions, and this close contact with organised
-labour and Socialism will have curious political results. As a class
-they will be much courted by politicians, and will distrust the rich,
-especially the rich of the towns. Their main and growing grievance will
-be the difficulty of putting their sons on the land. For themselves
-they will be able to live cheaply, and in good years save money; for
-customs tariffs will be more and more modified to suit them. Some of
-their children will migrate to the towns; others will become managers,
-overseers, shepherds, drovers. They will have their share of sport, and
-from among them will come most of the best athletes of the country,
-professional and other. Nowhere will be seen a cringing tenantry,
-hat-touching peasantry, or underfed farm labourers. The country
-labourers, thoroughly organised, well paid, and active, will yet be not
-altogether ill-humoured in politics; for, by comparison with the lot of
-their class in other parts of the world, theirs will be a life of hope,
-comfort, and confidence.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER III
-
-SPORT AND ATHLETICS
-
-
-Sport in the islands resembles their climate and scenery. To name the
-distinguishing feature I have once more to employ the well-worn word,
-variety. Even if we limit the term to the pursuit of game, there is
-enough of that to enable an idle man to pass his time all the year
-round. In the autumn there is deer-shooting of the best, and in the
-early winter the sportsman may turn to wild ducks and swamp-hen. Then
-wild goats have begun to infest certain high ranges, especially the
-backbone of the province of Wellington and the mountains in central
-Otago. In stalking them the hunter may have to exhibit no small share
-of the coolness of head and stoutness of limb which are brought to
-play in Europe in the chase of the chamois, ibex, and moufflon. In
-addition to sureness of foot, the goats have already developed an
-activity and cunning unknown to their tame ancestors. They will lie or
-stand motionless and unnoticed among the bewildering rocks, letting
-the stalker seek for them in vain; and when roused they bound away at
-a speed that is no mean test of rifle-shooting, particularly when the
-marksman is hot and panting with fatigue. And when brought to a stand
-against rocks, or among the roots of mountain beeches, or on the stones
-of a river-bed, they will show fight and charge dogs and even men. The
-twisted or wrinkled horns of an old he-goat are not despicable weapons.
-As the reward of many hours’ hard clambering, varied by wading through
-ice-cold torrents, and spiced, it may be, with some danger, the goat
-hunter may secure a long pair of curving horns, or in mid-winter a
-thick, warm pelt, sometimes, though rarely, pure white. Moreover, he
-may feel that he is ridding the mountain pastures of an unlicensed
-competitor of that sacred quadruped, the sheep. Goats are by no means
-welcome on sheep-runs. Colonel Craddock, it is true, complains that it
-is not easy to regard them as wild, inasmuch as their coats retain the
-familiar colours of the domestic animals. He wishes they would change
-to some distinctive hue. This feeling is perhaps akin to the soldier’s
-dislike to shooting at men who retain the plain clothes of civilians
-instead of donning uniform--a repugnance experienced now and then by
-some of our fighting men in South Africa.
-
-Rabbits, of course, as a national scourge, are to be shot at any time,
-and though on the whole now held in check, are in some districts still
-only too abundant. Occasionally when elaborate plans are being laid
-for poisoning a tract of infested country, the owner of the land may
-wish no interference, and the man with a gun may be warned off as a
-disturber of a peace intended to lull the rabbit into security. But,
-speaking generally, any one who wishes to shoot these vermin may find
-country where he can do so to his heart’s content, and pose the while
-as a public benefactor.
-
-The largest game in the colony are the wild cattle. These, like the
-goats and pigs, are descendants of tame and respectable farm animals.
-On many mountain sheep-runs, annual cattle hunts are organised to
-thin their numbers, for the young bulls become dangerous to lonely
-shepherds and musterers, and do great damage to fences. Moreover, the
-wild herds eat their full share of grass, as their fat condition when
-shot often shows. Generations of life in the hills, fern, and bush
-have had their effect on runaway breeds. The pigs especially have
-put on an almost aristocratic air of lean savagery. Their heads and
-flanks are thinner, their shoulders higher and more muscular, their
-tusks have become formidable, and their nimbleness on steep hill-sides
-almost astonishing. A quick dog, or even an athletic man on foot, may
-keep pace with a boar on the upward track; but when going headlong
-downhill the pig leaves everything behind. The ivory tusks of an old
-boar will protrude three or four inches from his jaw, and woe to the
-dog or horse that feels their razor-edge and cruel sidelong rip. The
-hide, too, has become inches thick in places, where it would, I should
-think, be insensible to a hot branding iron. At any rate, the spear
-or sheath knife that is to pierce it must be held in clever as well
-as strong hands. Even a rifle-bullet, if striking obliquely, will
-glance off from the shield on the shoulder of a tough old boar. Wild
-pigs are among the sheep-farmer’s enemies. Boars and sows alike prey
-on his young lambs in spring-time, and every year do thousands of
-pounds’ worth of mischief in certain out-of-the-way country. So here
-again the sportsman may plume himself upon making war upon a public
-nuisance. In bygone days these destructive brutes could be found in
-numbers prowling over open grassy downs, where riders could chase them
-spear in hand, and where sheep-dogs could bring them to bay. They were
-killed without exception or mercy for age or sex; and the spectacle of
-pigs a few weeks old being speared or knifed along with their mothers
-was not exhilarating. But they were pests, and contracts were often let
-for clearing a certain piece of country of them. As evidence of their
-slaughter the contractors had to bring in their long, tufted tails.
-These the station manager counted with care, for the contract money
-was at the rate of so much a tail. I have known ninepence to be the
-reigning price. Nowadays, however, the pigs are chiefly to be found
-in remote forests, dense manuka scrub, or tall bracken, and if caught
-in the open it is when they have stolen out by moonlight on a raid
-upon lambs. The thick fern not only affords them cover but food: “the
-wild boar out of the wood doth root it up,” and finds in it a clean,
-sweet diet. Many a combat at close quarters takes place every year
-in the North Island, in fern from three to six feet high, when some
-avenging farmer makes an end of the ravager of his flocks. Numbers
-of the pigs are shot; but shooting, though a practical way of ridding
-a countryside of them, lacks, of course, the excitement and spice of
-danger that belong to the chase on foot with heavy knife or straight
-short sword. Here the hunter trusts both for success and safety to his
-dogs, who, when cunning and well-trained, will catch a boar by the ears
-and hold him till he has been stabbed. Ordinary sheep-dogs will not
-often do this; a cattle-dog, or a strong mongrel with a dash of mastiff
-or bulldog, is less likely to be shaken off. Good collies, moreover,
-are valuable animals. Not that sheep-dogs fail in eagerness for the
-chase; they will often stray off to track pigs on their own account.
-And any one who has seen and heard them when the boar, brought to bay
-against some tree trunk, rock, or high bank, makes short mad rushes at
-his tormentors, will understand how fully the average dog shares the
-hunter’s zest.
-
-[Illustration: CATHEDRAL PEAKS]
-
-Another though much rarer plague to the flock-owner are the wild
-dogs. These also prey by night and lie close by day, and if they were
-numerous the lot of farmers near rough, unoccupied stretches of country
-would be anxious indeed; for the wild dogs not only kill enough for a
-meal, but go on worrying and tearing sheep, either for their blood, or
-for the excitement and pleasure of killing. When three or four of them
-form a small pack and hunt together, the damage they can do in a few
-nights is such that the persecuted farmer counts the cost in ten-pound
-notes. They are often too fast and savage to be stopped by a shepherd’s
-dogs, and accurate rifle-shooting by moonlight--to say nothing of
-moonless nights--is not the easiest of accomplishments. Failing a lucky
-shot, poison is perhaps the most efficacious remedy. Happily these
-dogs--which are not sprung from the fat, harmless little native curs
-which the Maori once used to fondle and eat--are almost confined to a
-few remote tracts. Any notorious pack soon gets short shrift, so there
-need be no fear of any distinct race of wild hounds establishing itself
-in the wilderness.
-
-Another _hostis humani generis_, against which every man’s hand or
-gun may be turned at any season, is the kea. A wild parrot, known to
-science as _Nestor notabilis_, the kea nevertheless shows how fierce
-and hawk-like a parrot can become. His sharp, curving beak, and
-dark-green plumage, brightened by patches of red under the wings, are
-parrot-like enough. But see him in his home among the High Alps of the
-South Island, and he resembles anything rather than the grey African
-domestic who talks in cages. Nor does he suggest the white cockatoos
-that may be watched passing in flights above rivers and forest glades
-in the Australian bush. Unlike his cousin the kaka, who is a forest
-bird, the kea nests on steep rocky faces or lofty cliffs, between two
-and five thousand feet above sea-level. If he descends thence to visit
-the trees of the mountain valleys, it is usually in search of food;
-though Thomas Potts, the naturalist, says that keas will fly from the
-western flanks of the Alps to the bluffs on the sea-coast and rest
-there. One envies them that flight, for it must give them in mid-air
-an unequalled bird’s-eye view of some of the noblest scenery in the
-island. Before the coming of the settlers these bold mountaineers
-supported a harmless life on honey, seeds, insects, and such apologies
-for fruits as our sub-alpine forests afford. But as sheep spread
-into the higher pastures of the backbone ranges, the kea discovered
-the attractions of flesh, and especially of mutton fat. Beginning,
-probably, by picking up scraps of meat in the station slaughter-yards,
-he learned to prey on dead sheep, and, finally, to attack living
-animals. His favourite titbit being kidney fat, he perches on the
-unhappy sheep and thrusts his merciless beak through the wool into
-their backs. Strangely enough, it seems to take more than one assault
-of the kind to kill a sheep; but though forty years have passed since
-the kea began to practise his trick, the victims do not yet seem to
-have learned to roll over on their backs and thereby rid themselves of
-their persecutors. Even the light active sheep of the mountains are,
-it would seem, more stupid than birds of prey. Ingenious persons have
-suggested that the kea was led to peck at the sheep’s fleecy backs
-through their likeness to those odd grey masses of mossy vegetation,
-called “vegetable sheep,” which dot so many New Zealand mountain
-slopes, and which birds investigate in search of insects.
-
-[Illustration: THE REES VALLEY AND RICHARDSON RANGE]
-
-Shepherds and station hands wage war on the kea, sometimes encouraged
-thereto by a bounty; for there are run-holders and local councils who
-will give one, two, or three shillings for each bird killed. Let a pair
-of keas be seen near a shepherd’s hut, and the master runs for
-his gun, while his wife will imitate the bird’s long whining note to
-attract them downwards; for, venturesome and rapacious as the kea is,
-he is just as confiding and sociable as the gentler kaka, and can be
-lured by the same devices. Stoats and weasels, too, harass him on their
-own account. Thus the bird’s numbers are kept down, and the damage they
-do to flocks is not on the whole as great as of yore. Indeed, some
-sceptics doubt the whole story, while other flippant persons suggest
-that the kea’s ravages are chiefly in evidence when the Government
-is about to re-assess the rents of the Alpine runs. Against these
-sneers, however, may be quoted a large, indeed overwhelming, mass of
-testimony from the pastoral people of the back-country. This evidence
-seems to show that most keas do not molest sheep. The evil work is done
-by a few reprobate birds--two or three pairs out of a large flock,
-perhaps--which the shepherds nickname “butchers.” Only this year I was
-told of a flock of hoggets which, when penned up in a sheep-yard, were
-attacked by a couple of beaked marauders, who in a single night killed
-or wounded scores of them as they stood packed together and helpless.
-No laws, therefore, protect the kea, nor does any public opinion shield
-him from the gun in any month. His only defences are inaccessible
-mountain cliffs and the wild weather of winter and spring-time in the
-Southern Alps.
-
-Acclimatisation has made some woeful mistakes in New Zealand, for is
-it not responsible for the rabbit and the house-sparrow, the stoat
-and the weasel? On the other hand, it has many striking successes to
-boast of in the shape of birds, beasts, and fishes, which commerce and
-industry would never have brought to the islands in the regular way of
-business. Of these, one may select the deer among beasts, the trout
-among fishes, and the pheasant, quail, and starling among birds. Many
-colonists, it is true, would include skylarks, blackbirds, and thrushes
-among the good works for which acclimatising societies have to be
-thanked; but of late years these songsters have been compassed about
-with a great cloud of hostile witnesses who bear vehement testimony
-against them as pestilent thieves. No such complaints, however, are
-made against the red-deer, the handsomest wild animals yet introduced
-into New Zealand. Indeed, several provinces compete for the honour
-of having been their first New Zealand home. As a matter of fact, it
-would appear that as long ago as 1861 a stag and two hinds, the gift
-of Lord Petre, were turned out on the Nelson hills. Next year another
-small shipment reached Wellington safely, and were liberated in the
-Wairarapa. These came from the Royal Park at Windsor, and were secured
-by the courtesy of the Prince Consort.
-
-In 1871 some Scottish red-deer were turned loose in the Otago mountains
-near Lakes Wanaka and Hawea. In all these districts the deer have
-spread and thriven mightily, and it is possible that the herds of the
-colony now number altogether as many as ten thousand. Otago sportsmen
-boast of the unadulterated Scottish blood of their stags, whose fine
-heads are certainly worthy of any ancestry. In the Wairarapa the
-remarkable size of the deer is attributed to the strain of German blood
-in the animals imported from the Royal Park. As yet, however, the
-finest head secured in the colony was not carried by a deer belonging
-to any of the three largest and best-known shooting-grounds of the
-islands. It was obtained in 1907 from a stag shot by Mr. George Gerard
-in the Rakaia Gorge in Canterbury. The Rakaia Gorge herd only dates
-from 1897, and is still small, but astonishing stories are told of some
-of its heads. At any rate the antlers of Mr. Gerard’s stag have been
-repeatedly measured. One of them is forty-seven inches long, the other
-forty-two inches and a half.
-
-Deer-stalking in New Zealand can scarcely be recommended as an easy
-diversion for rich and elderly London gentlemen. It is not sport for
-the fat and scant-of-breath who may be suffering from sedentary living
-and a plethora of public banquets. New Zealand hills are steep, new
-Zealand forests and scrubs are dense or matted. Even the open country
-of the mountains requires lungs of leather and sinews of wire. The
-hunter when unlucky cannot solace his evenings with gay human society
-or with the best cookery to be found in a luxurious, civilised country.
-If he be an old bush-hand, skilful at camping-out, he may make himself
-fairly comfortable in a rough way, but that is all. Nor are such things
-as big drives, or slaughter on a large scale, to be had at any price.
-Shooting licences are cheap--they can be had from the secretary of an
-acclimatisation society for from one to three pounds; but the number
-of stags a man is permitted to shoot in any one district varies from
-two to six. To get these, weeks of physical labour and self-denial may
-be required. On the other hand, trustworthy guides may be engaged, and
-colonial hospitality may vary the rigours of camp life. Then, too,
-may be counted the delights of a mountain life, the scenery of which
-excels Scotland, while the freshness of the upland air is brilliant and
-exhilarating in a fashion that Britons can scarcely imagine. And to
-counterbalance loneliness, the hunter has the sensation of undisturbed
-independence and freedom from the trammels of convention, as he looks
-round him in a true wilderness which the hand of man has not yet gashed
-or fouled.
-
-Wild-fowl shooting ranges from tame butchery of trustful native pigeons
-and parrots to the pursuit of the nimble godwit, and of that wary
-bird and strong flyer, the grey duck. The godwit is so interesting a
-bird to science that one almost wonders that ornithologists do not
-petition Parliament to have it declared _tapu_. They tell us that in
-the Southern winter it migrates oversea and makes no less a journey
-than that from New Zealand to Northern Siberia by way of Formosa and
-the Sea of Okhotsk. Even if this distance is covered in easy stages
-during three months’ time, it seems a great feat of bird instinct, and
-makes one regret that the godwit so often returns to our tidal inlets
-only to fall a prey to some keen sportsmen indifferent to its migratory
-achievements.
-
-The only excuse for molesting the wood-pigeon is that he is very good
-to eat. The kaka parrot, too, another woodlander, makes a capital
-stew. Neither victim offers the slightest difficulty to the gunner--I
-cannot say sportsman. Indeed the kaka will flutter round the slayer
-as he stands with his foot on the wing of a wounded bird, a cruel but
-effective decoy-trick. Another native bird easy to hit on the wing is
-the queer-looking pukeko, a big rail with bright-red beak and rich-blue
-plumage. The pukeko, however, though he flies so heavily, can run fast
-and hide cleverly. Moreover, in addition to being good for the table,
-he is a plague to the owners of standing corn. In order to reach the
-half-ripe ears he beats down the tops of a number of stalks, and so
-constructs a light platform on which he stands and moves about, looking
-like a feathered stilt-walker, and feasting the while to his heart’s
-content. Grain-growers, therefore, show him no mercy, and follow him
-into his native swamps, where the tall flax bushes, toé-toé, and giant
-bulrushes furnish even so large a bird with ample cover. When, however,
-a dog puts him up, and he takes to the air, he is the easiest of marks,
-for any one capable of hitting a flying haystack can hit a pukeko.
-
-Very different are the wild ducks. They soon learn the fear of man and
-the fowling-piece. They are, moreover, carefully protected both by law
-and by public opinion among sportsmen. So they are still to be found
-in numbers on lakes and lagoons by the sea-coast as well as in the
-sequestered interior. Large flocks of them, for example, haunt Lake
-Ellesmere, a wide brackish stretch of shallow water not many miles from
-the city of Christchurch. But in such localities all the arts of the
-English duck-hunter have to be employed, and artificial cover, decoys,
-and first-rate markmanship must be brought into play. The grey duck,
-the shoveller, and teal, both black and red, all give good sport.
-Strong of flight and well defended by thick, close-fitting suits of
-feathers, they need quick, straight shooting. A long shot at a scared
-grey duck, as, taking the alarm, he makes off down the wind, is no
-bad test of eye and hand. In return, they are as excellent game-birds
-dead as living. This last is more than can be said for the handsomest
-game-bird of the country, the so-called paradise duck. Its plumage, so
-oddly contrasting in the dark male and reddish white-headed female,
-makes it the most easily recognised of wild-fowl. It also has developed
-a well-founded suspiciousness of man and his traps, and so manages
-to survive and occupy mountain lakes and valleys in considerable
-flocks. Unlike the grey species which are found beyond the Tasman Sea,
-the smaller and more delicately framed blue duck is peculiar to the
-islands. It is neither shy nor common, and, as it does no harm to any
-sort of crop, law and public opinion might, one would think, combine to
-save it from the gun and leave it to swim unmolested among the boulders
-and rocks of its cold streams and dripping mountain gorges.
-
-Nature did not furnish New Zealand much better with fresh-water fish
-than with quadrupeds: her allowance of both was curiously scanty. A
-worthless little bull-trout was the most common fish, and that white
-men found uneatable, though the Maoris made of it a staple article of
-diet. Large eels, indeed, are found in both lakes and rivers, and where
-they live in clear, clean, running water, are good food enough; but
-the excellent whitebait and smelts which go up the tidal rivers can
-scarcely be termed dwellers in fresh water; and for the rest, the fresh
-waters used to yield nothing but small crayfish. Here our acclimatisers
-had a fair field before them, and their efforts to stock it have been
-on the whole successful, though the success has been chequered. For
-fifty years they have striven to introduce the salmon, taking much
-care and thought, and spending many thousands of pounds on repeated
-experiments; but the salmon will not thrive in the southern rivers. The
-young, when hatched out and turned adrift, make their way down to the
-sea, but never return themselves. Many legends are current of their
-misadventures in salt water. They are said, for instance, to be pursued
-and devoured by the big barracouta, so well known to deep-sea fishermen
-in the southern ocean. But every explanation of the disappearance of
-the young salmon still lacks proof. The fact is undoubted, but its
-cause may be classed with certain other fishy mysteries of our coast.
-Why, for instance, does that delectable creature the frost-fish cast
-itself up on our beaches in the coldest weather, committing suicide for
-the pleasure of our _gourmets_? Why does that cream-coloured playfellow
-of our coasters, Pelorus Jack, dart out to frolic round the bows of
-steamships as they run through the French Pass?
-
-[Illustration: AT THE HEAD OF LAKE WAKATIPU]
-
-But if our acclimatisers have failed with salmon, fortune has been kind
-to their efforts with trout. Forty years ago there was no such fish
-in the islands. Now from north to south the rivers and lakes are well
-stocked, while certain waters may be said with literal truth to swarm
-with them. Here, they are the brown trout so well known to anglers at
-home; there, they are the rainbow kind, equally good for sport. At
-present the chief local peculiarity of both breeds seems to be the size
-to which they frequently attain. They are large enough in the rivers;
-and in many lakes they show a size and weight which could throw into
-the shade old English stories of giant pike. Fish of from fifteen to
-twenty-five pounds in weight are frequently captured by anglers. Above
-the higher of these figures, catches with the rod are rare. Indeed, the
-giant trout of the southern lakes will not look at a fly. Perhaps the
-best sport in lakes anywhere is to be had with the minnow. Trolling
-from steam-launches is a favourite amusement at Roto-rua. It seems
-generally agreed that in the rivers trout tend to decrease in size as
-they increase in numbers. The size, however, still remains large enough
-to make an English angler’s mouth water. So it has come about that
-the fame of New Zealand fishing has gone abroad into many lands, and
-that men come with rod and line from far and near to try our waters.
-Fishing in these is not always child’s play. Most of the streams
-are swift and chilling; the wader wants boots of the stoutest, and, in
-default of guidance, must trust to his own wits to protect him among
-rapids, sharp rocks, and deep swirling pools. He may, of course, obtain
-sport in spots where everything is made easy for the visitor, as in
-the waters near Roto-rua. Or he may cast a fly in the willow-bordered,
-shingly rivers of Canterbury, among fields and hedgerows as orderly and
-comfortable-looking as anything in the south of England. But much of
-the best fishing in the islands is rougher and more solitary work, and,
-big as the baskets to be obtained are, the sport requires enthusiasm
-as well as skill. Moreover, rules have to be observed. Licences are
-cheap enough, but the acclimatisation societies are wisely despotic,
-and regulate many things, from the methods of catching to the privilege
-of sale. In the main, the satisfactory results speak for themselves,
-though of course a certain amount of poaching and illegal catching
-goes on. In certain mountain lakes, by the way, one rule--that against
-spearing--has to be relaxed; otherwise the huge trout would prey upon
-their small brethren to such an extent as to stop all increase. So
-occasionally an exciting night’s sport may be enjoyed from a boat in
-one or other of the Alpine lakes. The boatmen prepare a huge torch
-of sacking or sugar-bags wound round a pole and saturated with tar
-or kerosene. Then the boat is rowed gently into six or eight feet of
-water, and the flaring torch held steadily over the surface. Soon the
-big trout come swarming to the light, diving under the boat, knocking
-against the bow, and leaping and splashing. The spearman standing erect
-makes thrust after thrust, now transfixing his prey, now missing his
-aim, or it may be, before the night’s work is done, losing his footing
-and falling headlong into the lake, amid a roar of laughter from boat
-and shore.
-
-[Illustration: NORTH FIORD, LAKE TE-ANAU]
-
-The merest sketch of sports and amusements in New Zealand demands
-more space for the horse than I can afford to give. My countrymen are
-not, as is sometimes supposed, a nation of riders, any more than they
-are a nation of marksmen; but the proportion of men who can shoot and
-ride is far greater among them than in older countries. The horse is
-still a means of locomotion and a necessity of life everywhere outside
-the towns, while even among townsmen a respectable minority of riders
-can be found. How far the rapid increase of motors and cycles of all
-kinds is likely to displace the horse is a matter for speculation. At
-present, perhaps, the machine is more likely to interfere with the
-carriage-horse than the saddle-horse. Nor will I hazard an opinion as
-to the place that might be held by New Zealanders in a competition
-between riding nations. Australians, I fancy, consider their stockmen
-and steeplechase-riders superior to anything of the kind in our
-islands. And in a certain kind of riding--that through open bush after
-cattle, amongst standing and fallen timber--I can scarcely imagine any
-horsemen in the world surpassing the best Australian stock-riders.
-On the other hand, in a hilly country, and on wet, slippery ground,
-New Zealanders and New Zealand horses show cat-like qualities,
-which would puzzle Australians, whose experience has been gathered
-chiefly on dry plains and easy downs. Comparisons apart, the Dominion
-certainly rears clever riders and good horses. A meet of New Zealand
-harriers would not be despised even by Leicestershire fox-hunters. To
-begin with, the hare of the Antipodes, like so many other European
-animals there, has gained in size and strength, and therefore in pace.
-The horses, if rather lighter than English, have plenty of speed and
-staying-power, and their owners are a hard-riding lot. Gorse fences,
-though not, perhaps, so formidable as they look at first sight, afford
-stiff jumping. And if a spice of danger be desired, the riders who
-put their horses at them may always speculate upon the chances of
-encountering hidden wire. The legend that New Zealand horses jump wire
-almost as a matter of course has only a foundation of fact; some of
-them do, many of them do not. Nor are the somewhat wild stories of
-meets where unkempt horses with flowing manes and tails and coats never
-touched by brush or curry-comb, are bestridden by riders as untidy, to
-be taken for gospel now. Very few of those who follow the harriers in
-New Zealand at all resemble dog-fanciers bestriding mustangs. True,
-they do not dress in the faultless fashion of those English masters of
-fox-hounds whose portraits flame on the walls of the Royal Academy.
-Some at least of them do their own grooming. Yet, speaking generally,
-the impression left is neat and workmanlike, and is none the worse
-for a certain simplicity and even a touch of roughness. The meets
-are pleasant gatherings, all the more so because they are neither
-overcrowded, nor are there too many of them. Much the same may be said
-of the polo matches, where good riding and good ponies are to be seen.
-Twenty years ago trained ponies could be bought in the islands for
-£25 apiece. Now they, in common with all horseflesh, are a good deal
-more costly. However, sport in New Zealand, though more expensive than
-of yore, is still comparatively cheap, and that, and the absence of
-crowds, are among its chief attractions.
-
-As in other countries, there are tens of thousands of men and women
-who never ride a horse, but who find in horse-racing--or in attending
-race-meetings--an absorbing amusement. The number of race-meetings
-held in both islands is very great. Flat-racing, hurdle-racing,
-steeplechasing, and trotting,--all these can assemble their votaries
-in thousands. Sportsmen and others think little of traversing hundreds
-of miles of land or sea to attend one of the larger meetings. Ladies
-muster at these almost as strongly as men. As for the smaller meetings
-up-country, they, of course, are social gatherings of the easiest and
-most cheerful sort. In bygone years they not seldom degenerated towards
-evening into uproarious affairs. Nowadays, however, race-meetings,
-small and large, are marked by a sobriety which, to a former
-generation, might have seemed wasteful and depressing. To a stranger
-the chief features of the races appear to be their number, the size
-of the stakes, the average quality of the horses, and the working of
-the totalisator. This last, a betting machine, is in use wherever the
-law will allow it, and is a source of profit both to the Government
-and the racing clubs. The Government taxes its receipts, and the clubs
-retain ten per cent of them; hence the handsome stakes offered by the
-jockey club committees. The sum that passes through these machines in
-the course of the year is enormous, and represents, in the opinion of
-many, a national weakness and evil. In defence of the totalisator it
-is argued that the individual wagers which it registers are small, and
-that it has almost put an end to a more ruinous and disastrous form of
-betting, that with bookmakers. It is certainly a popular institution
-with an odd flavour of democracy about it, for it has levelled down
-betting and at the same time extended it. Indeed, it almost seems to
-exhaust the gambling element in New Zealand life; for, as compared with
-other nations, my countrymen are not especially addicted to throwing
-away their money on games of chance.
-
-Passing from what is commonly called sport to athletic games, we tread
-safer ground. One of these games, football, is quite as popular as
-horse-racing--indeed, among boys and lads more popular; and whatever
-may be its future, football has up to the present time been a clean,
-honest, genuine game, free from professionalism and excessive gambling.
-The influence of the New Zealand Rugby Union, with its net-work of
-federations and clubs, has been and still is a power for good; and
-though it is true that the famous and successful visit of the “All
-Black” team to Great Britain has lately been parodied by a professional
-tour in England and Wales, there is still hope that professionalism
-may be held at bay. For, as yet, the passion for football, which is
-perhaps the main peculiarity of New Zealand athletics, is a simple
-love of the game, and of the struggles and triumphs attending it. The
-average New Zealand lad and young man looks for nothing but a good
-hard tussle in which his side may win and he, if luck wills it, may
-distinguish himself. As yet, money-making scarcely enters into his
-thoughts. The day may come in New Zealand, as it has in England, when
-bands of skilled mercenaries, recruited from far and near, may play in
-the name of cities and districts, the population of which turns out to
-bet pounds or pence on their paid dexterity. But, as yet, a football
-match in the colony is just a whole-hearted struggle between manly
-youths whose zeal for their club and town is not based on the receipt
-of a weekly stipend.
-
-[Illustration: CHRISTCHURCH]
-
-Why cricket should lag so far behind football seems at first sight
-puzzling; for few countries would seem better suited to the most
-scientific of out-door games than the east and centre of New Zealand,
-with their sunny but not tropical climate, and their fresh sward of
-good green grass. Two reasons, probably, account for the disparity. To
-begin with, cricket, at any rate first-class cricket, takes up far more
-time than football. Its matches last for days; even practice at the
-nets consumes hours. Athletics in New Zealand are the exercise and
-recreation of men who have to work for a livelihood. The idle amateur
-and the trained professional are equally rare: you see neither the
-professional who plays to live, nor the gentleman who lives to play.
-The shorter hours of the ordinary working day, helped by the longer
-measure of daylight allowed by nature, enable a much larger class than
-in England to give a limited amount of time to athletics. But the time
-is limited, and first-class cricket therefore, with its heavy demands
-on the attention of its votaries, suffers accordingly. Cricket, again,
-is a summer game, and in summer the middle or poorer classes have a
-far larger variety of amusements to turn to than in winter. Sailing,
-rowing, cycling, lawn tennis, fishing, picnics by the sea or in the
-forest, mountain-climbing, and tramps in the wilderness, all compete
-with cricket to a much greater degree than with football. Indeed the
-horse and the gun are well-nigh the only dangerous rivals that football
-has, and they are confined to a much more limited class. So while New
-Zealand stands at the head of the list of countries that play the Rugby
-game, our cricketers could at the best furnish an eleven able to play a
-moderately strong English county. The game does, indeed, make headway,
-but is eclipsed both by the pre-eminent local success of football, and
-by the triumphs of cricket in Australia and South Africa. Meanwhile,
-cricket matches in New Zealand, if not Olympian contests, are at any
-rate pleasant games. One is not sure whether the less strenuous sort
-of cricket, when played in bright weather among surroundings where
-good-fellowship and sociability take the place of the excitement of
-yelling thousands, is not, after all, the better side of a noble game.
-
-[Illustration: CANOE HURDLE RACE]
-
-[Illustration: WAIHI BAY, WHANGAROA HARBOUR]
-
-As rowing men know, New Zealand has produced more than one sculler of
-repute, and at this moment Webb, of the Wanganui River, holds the title
-of champion of the world. With this development of sculling, there is
-a curiously contrasted lack of especial excellence in other forms of
-rowing. Indeed one is inclined to predict that aquatic skill in the
-islands will, in days to come, display itself rather in sailing. The
-South Pacific is an unquiet ocean, and long stretches of our coast
-are iron-bound cliffs or monotonous beaches. But to say nothing of
-half-a-hundred large lakes, there are at least three coastal regions
-which seem made for yachting. The most striking of these, but one
-better adapted for steam yachts than for sailing or small open craft,
-is at the butt-end of the South Island, and includes the fiords of the
-south-west coast and the harbours of eastern Stewart Island. Between
-the two Bluff Harbour lies handy as the yachtsman’s headquarters.
-The second of the three chief yachting grounds of the colony has
-been placed by nature on the southern side of Cook’s Strait among a
-multitude of channels, islands, and sheltered bays, accessible alike
-from Wellington, Nelson, or Picton, and affording a delightful change
-and refuge from bleak, wind-smitten Cook’s Strait. The best, because
-the most easily enjoyed of the three, is the Hauraki Gulf, studded with
-islands, fringed with pleasant beaches and inviting coves,
-and commanded by the most convenient of harbours in the shape of
-the Waitemata. Nor, charming and spacious as the gulf is, need the
-Auckland yachtsmen limit themselves to it. Unless entirely wedded to
-smooth water, they can run northward past the Little Barrier Island
-and visit that fine succession of beautiful inlets, Whangarei, the
-Bay of Islands, and Whangaroa. All lie within easy reach, and all are
-so extensive and so picturesquely diversified with cliffs, spurs,
-bays, and islets, that any yachtsman able to navigate a cutter with
-reasonable skill should ask for nothing better than a summer cruise to
-and about them.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER IV
-
-IN THE FOREST
-
-
-In one of the rambling myths of the Maori we are told how the hero
-Rata, wishing to build a canoe, went into the forest and felled a
-tree. In the old days of stone axes, tree-felling was not the work of
-an hour, but the toil of days. Great, therefore, was Rata’s vexation
-when, on returning to the scene of his labours, he found that the tree
-had been set up again by magic, and was standing without a trace of
-injury. Much perplexed, the woodcutter thereupon sought out a famous
-goddess or priestess, who told him that the restoration was the work
-of the Hakaturi, or wood-fairies, whom he must propitiate with certain
-ceremonies and incantations. Rata therefore once more cut the tree
-down, and having done so, hid himself close by. Presently from the
-thickets there issued a company of small bow-legged people, who,
-surrounding the fallen tree, began to chant to it somewhat as follows:--
-
-    Ah! ’tis Rata; he is felling
-    Tané’s forest, our green dwelling.
-    Yet we cry, and lo, upspring
-    Chips and splinters quivering.
-    Leap together--life will hold you!
-    Cling together--strength will fold you!
-    Yes--the tree-god’s ribs are bound
-    Now by living bark around.
-    Yes--the trembling wood is seen,
-    Standing straight and growing green.
-
-[Illustration: THE RETURN OF THE WAR CANOE]
-
-And, surely enough, as they sang, the severed trunk rose and reunited,
-and every flake and chip of bark and wood flew together straightway.
-Then Rata, calling out to them, followed the injunctions given him.
-They talked with him, and in the end he was told to go away and
-return next morning. When he came back, lo! in the sunshine lay a new
-war-canoe, glorious with black and red painting, and tufts of large
-white feathers, and with cunning spirals on prow and tall stern-post,
-carved as no human hand could carve them. In this canoe he sailed over
-the sea to attack and destroy the murderer of his father.
-
-Lovers of the New Zealand forest, who have to live in an age when axe
-and fire are doing their deadly work so fast, must regret that the
-fairies, defenders of trees, have now passed away. Of yore when the
-Maori were about to fell a tree they made propitiatory offerings to
-Tané and his elves, at any rate when the tree was one of size. For, so
-Tregear tells us, they distinguished between the aristocracy of the
-forest and the common multitude. Totara and rimu were _rangatira_, or
-gentlemen to whom sacrifice must be offered, while underbrush might be
-hacked and slashed without apology. So it would seem that when Cowley
-was writing the lines--
-
-    Hail, old patrician trees so great and good;
-    Hail, ye plebeian underwood!
-
-he was echoing a class distinction already hit upon by the fancy of
-tattooed savages in an undiscovered island. Now all things are being
-levelled. Great Tané is dead, and the children of the tree-god have few
-friends. Perhaps some uncommercial botanist or misliked rhymester may
-venture on a word for them; or some much-badgered official may mark
-out a reserve in fear and trembling. Canon Stack, who knew the Maori
-of the South Island so well, says that half a century ago the belief
-in fairies was devout, and that he often conversed with men who were
-certain that they had seen them. One narrator in particular had caught
-sight of a band of them at work amid the curling mists of a lofty
-hill-top where they were building a stockaded village. So evident was
-the faith of the man in the vision he described that Canon Stack was
-forced to think that he had seen the forms of human builders reflected
-on the mountain-mist, after the fashion of the spectre of the Brocken.
-
-[Illustration: OKAHUMOKO BAY, WHANGAROA]
-
-For myself, I could not have the heart to apply scientific analysis to
-our Maori fairy-tales, all too brief and scanty as they are. It is,
-doubtless, interesting to speculate on the possible connections of
-these with the existence of shadowy tribes who may have inhabited parts
-of New Zealand in the distant centuries, and been driven into
-inaccessible mountains and entangled woods by the Maori invader. To me,
-however, the legends seem to indicate a belief, not in one supernatural
-race, but in several. In Europe, of course, the Northern traditions
-described beings of every sort of shape, from giants and two-headed
-ogres to minute elves almost too small to be seen. And in the same
-continent, under clearer skies, were the classic myths of nymphs and
-woodland deities, human in shape, but of a beauty exceeding that of
-mankind. So Keats could dream of enchanting things that happened
-
-    Upon a time before the faëry broods
-    Drove nymph and satyr from the prosperous woods,
-    Before King Oberon’s bright diadem,
-    Sceptre and mantle clasped with dewy gem,
-    Frightened away the dryads and the fauns
-    From rushes green and brakes and cowslipp’d lawns.
-
-In much the same way do the Maori stories vary. One tells us of giant
-hunters attended by two-headed dogs. Another seems to indicate a
-tiny race of wood elves or goblins. Elsewhere the Maori story-teller
-explains that fairies were much like human beings, but white-skinned,
-and with red or yellow hair, nearly resembling the Pakeha. They haunted
-the sea-shore and the recesses of the hill-forests, whither they
-would decoy the incautious Maori by their singing. The sound of their
-cheerful songs was sweet and clear, and in the night-time the traveller
-would hear their voices among the trees, now on this side, now on
-that; or the notes would seem to rise near at hand, and then recede
-and fall, dying away on the distant hill-sides. Their women were
-beautiful, and more than one Maori ancestral chief possessed himself of
-a fairy wife. On the other hand, the fairies would carry off the women
-and maidens of the Maori, or even, sometimes, little children, who were
-never seen again, though their voices were heard by sorrowing mothers
-calling in the air over the tree-tops.
-
-[Illustration: MAORI FISHING PARTY]
-
-Sir George Grey was the first, I think, to write down any of the Maori
-fairy-tales; at any rate, two of the best of them are found in his
-book. One concerns the adventure of the chief Kahukura, who, walking
-one evening on the sea-shore in the far north of the North Island, saw
-strange footprints and canoe marks on the sands. Clearly fishermen had
-been there; but their landing and departure must have taken place in
-the night, and there was something about the marks they had left that
-was puzzling and uncanny. Kahukura went his way pondering, and “held
-fast in his heart what he had seen.” So after nightfall back he came to
-the spot, and after a while the shore was covered with fairies. Canoes
-were paddled to land dragging nets full of mackerel, and all were busy
-in securing the fish. Kahukura mingled with the throng, and was as busy
-as any, picking up fish and running a string of flax through their
-gills. Like many Maori chiefs, he was a light-complexioned man, so
-fair that in the starlight the fairies took him for one of themselves.
-Morning approached, and the fishermen were anxious to finish their
-work; but Kahukura contrived by dropping and scattering fish to
-impede and delay them until dawn. With the first streaks of daylight
-the fairies discovered that a man was among them, and fled in confusion
-by sea and land, leaving their large seine net lying on the shore. It
-is true that the net was made of rushes; but the pattern and knotting
-were so perfect and ingenious that the Maori copied them, and that is
-how they learned to make fishing-nets.
-
-Another chief, Te Kanawa, fell in with the fairies high up on a wooded
-mountain near the river Waikato. This encounter also, we are assured,
-took place long ago, before the coming of white men. Te Kanawa had
-been hunting the wingless kiwi, and, surprised by night, had to encamp
-in the forest. He made his bed of fern among the buttresses at the
-foot of a large pukatea-tree, and, protected by these and his fire,
-hoped to pass the night comfortably. Soon, however, he heard voices
-and footsteps, and fairies began to circle round about, talking and
-laughing, and peeping over the buttresses of the pukatea at the
-handsome young chief. Their women openly commented on his good looks,
-jesting with each other at their eagerness to examine him. Te Kanawa,
-however, was exceedingly terrified, and thought of nothing but of how
-he might propitiate his inquisitive admirers and save himself from some
-injury at their hands. So he took from his neck his hei-tiki, or charm
-of greenstone, and from his ears his shark’s-tooth ornaments, and hung
-them upon a wand which he held out as an offering to the fairy folk.
-At once these turned to examine the gifts with deep interest. According
-to one version of the story they made patterns of them, cut out of
-wood and leaves. According to another, they, by enchantment, took away
-the shadows or resemblances of the prized objects. In either case they
-were satisfied to leave the tangible ornaments with their owner, and
-disappeared, allowing Te Kanawa to make his way homeward. That he did
-with all possible speed, at the first glimpse of daylight, awe-struck
-but gratified by the good nature of the elves.
-
-[Illustration: CARVED HOUSE, OHINEMUTU]
-
-A third story introduces us to a husband whose young wife had been
-carried off and wedded by a fairy chief. For a while she lived with
-her captor in one of the villages of the fairies into which no living
-man has ever penetrated, though hunters in the forest have sometimes
-seen barriers of intertwined wild vines, which are the outer defences
-of an elfin _pa_. The bereaved husband at last bethought himself of
-consulting a famous _tohunga_, who, by powerful incantations, turned
-the captured wife’s thoughts back to her human husband, and restored
-the strength of her love for him. She fled, therefore, from her fairy
-dwelling, met her husband, who was lurking in the neighbourhood, and
-together they regained their old home. Thither, of course, the fairies
-followed them in hot pursuit. But the art of the _tohunga_ was equal
-to the danger. He had caused the escaped wife and the outside of her
-house to be streaked and plastered with red ochre. He had also
-instructed the people of the village to cook food on a grand scale,
-so that the air should be heavy with the smell of the cooking at the
-time of the raid of the fairies. The sight of red ochre and the smell
-of cooked food are so loathsome to the fairy people that they cannot
-endure to encounter them. So the baffled pursuers halted, fell back and
-vanished, and the wife remained peacefully with her husband, living a
-happy Maori life.
-
-The Maori might well worship Tané, the tree-god, who held up the sky
-with his feet and so let in light upon the sons of earth. For the
-forest supplied them with much more than wood for their stockades,
-canoes, and utensils. It sheltered the birds which made such an
-important part of the food of the Maori, living as they did in a land
-without four-footed beasts. Tame as the birds were, the fowlers, on
-their side, were without bows and arrows, and knew nothing of the
-blow-gun, which would have been just the weapon for our jungles. They
-had to depend mainly on snaring and spearing, and upon the aid of
-decoys. Though the snaring was ingenious enough, it was the spearing
-that needed especial skill and was altogether the more extraordinary.
-The spears were made of the tawa-tree, and while they were but an inch
-in thickness, were thirty feet long or even longer. One tree could
-only supply two of these slim weapons, which, after metals became
-known to the Maori, were tipped with iron. When not in use they were
-lashed or hung in a tree. Taking one in hand the fowler would climb
-up to a platform prepared in some tree, the flowers or berries of
-which were likely to attract wild parrots or pigeons. Then the spear
-was pushed upwards, resting against branches. All the fowler’s art
-was next exerted to draw down the birds by his decoys to a perch
-near the spear-point. That accomplished, a quick silent stab did the
-rest. Many living white men have seen this dexterous feat performed,
-though it must be almost a thing of the past now. As soon as the Maori
-began to obtain guns, and that is ninety years ago, they endeavoured
-to shoot birds with them. Having a well-founded distrust of their
-marksmanship, they would repeat as closely as possible the tactics
-they had found useful in spearing. Climbing silently and adroitly into
-the trees and as near their pigeon or kaka as possible, they waited
-until the muzzle of the gun was within a foot or two of the game, and
-then blew the unfortunate bird from the branch. Major Cruise witnessed
-this singular performance in the year 1820. Birds were among the
-delicacies which the Maori preserved for future use, storing them in
-tightly-bound calabashes, where they were covered with melted fat.
-Their favourite choice for this process was a kind of puffin or petrel,
-the mutton-bird, which goes inland to breed, and nests in underground
-burrows.
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-[Illustration: A BUSH ROAD]
-
-Though no great traveller, I have seen beautiful landscapes in fourteen
-or fifteen countries, and yet hold to it that certain views of our
-forest spreading round lakes and over hills and valleys, peaceful
-and unspoiled, are sights as lovely as are to be found. Whence
-comes their complete beauty? Of course, there are the fine contours
-of mountain and vale, cliff and shore. And the abundance of water,
-swirling in torrents, leaping in waterfalls, or winding in lakes or
-sea-gulfs, aids greatly. But to me the magic of the forest--I speak of
-it where you find it still unspoiled--comes first from its prodigal
-life and continual variety. Why, asks a naturalist, do so many of us
-wax enthusiastic over parasites and sentimental over lianas? Because,
-I suppose, these are among the most striking signs of the astonishing
-vitality and profusion which clothe almost every yard of ground and
-foot of bark, and, gaining foothold on the trees, invade the air
-itself. Nature there is not trimmed and supervised, weeded out, swept
-and garnished, as in European woods. She lets herself go, expelling
-nothing that can manage to find standing room or breathing space. Every
-rule of human forestry and gardening appears to be broken, and the
-result is an easy triumph for what seems waste and rank carelessness.
-Trees tottering with age still dispute the soil with superabundant
-saplings, or, falling, lean upon and are held up by undecaying
-neighbours. Dead trunks cumber the ground, while mosses, ferns, and
-bushes half conceal them. Creepers cover matted thickets, veiling their
-flanks and netting them into masses upon which a man may sit, and a boy
-be irresistibly tempted to walk. Aloft, one tree may grow upon another,
-and itself bear the burden of a third. Parasites twine round parasites,
-dangle in purposeless ropes, or form loops and swings in mid-air. Some
-are bare, lithe and smooth-stemmed; others trail curtains of leaves
-and pale flowers. Trees of a dozen species thrust their branches into
-each other, till it is a puzzle to tell which foliage belongs to this
-stem, which to that; and flax-like arboreal colonists fill up forks and
-dress bole and limbs fantastically. Adventurous vines ramble through
-the interspaces, linking trunk to trunk and complicating the fine
-confusion. All around is a multitudinous, incessant struggle for life;
-but it goes on in silence, and the impression left is not regret, but
-a memory of beauty. The columnar dignity of the great trees contrasts
-with the press and struggle of the undergrowth, with the airy lace-work
-of fern fronds, and the shafted grace of the stiffer palm-trees. From
-the moss and wandering lycopodium underfoot, to the victorious climber
-flowering eighty feet overhead, all is life, varied endlessly and put
-forth without stint. Of course there is death at work around you, too;
-but who notes the dying amid such a riot of energy? The earth itself
-smells moist and fresh. What seems an odour blended of resin, sappy
-wood, damp leaves, and brown tinder, hangs in the air. But the leafy
-roof is lofty enough, and the air cool and pure enough, to save you
-from the sweltering oppressiveness of an equatorial jungle. The dim
-entanglement is a quiet world, shut within itself and full of shadows.
-Yet, in bright weather, rays of sunshine shoot here and there against
-brown and grey bark, and clots of golden light, dripping through the
-foliage, dance on vivid mosses and the root-enlacement of the earth.
-
-    “The forest rears on lifted arms
-      Its leafy dome whence verdurous light
-    Shakes through the shady depths and warms
-      Proud trunk and stealthy parasite.
-    There where those cruel coils enclasp
-    The trees they strangle in their grasp.”
-
-When the sky is overcast the evergreen realm darkens. In one mood you
-think it invitingly still and mysterious; in another, its tints fade
-to a common dulness, and gloom fills its recesses. Pattering raindrops
-chill enthusiasm. The mazy paradise is filled with “the terror of
-unending trees.” The silence grows unnatural, the rustle of a chance
-bird startles. Anything from a python to a jaguar might be hidden in
-labyrinths that look so tropical. In truth there is nothing there
-larger than a wingless and timid bird; nothing more dangerous than a
-rat poaching among the branches in quest of eggs; nothing more annoying
-than a few sandflies.
-
-The European’s eye instinctively wanders over the foliage in search
-of likenesses to the flora of northern lands. He may think he detects
-a darker willow in the tawa, a brighter and taller yew in the matai,
-a giant box in the rata, a browner laburnum in the kowhai, a slender
-deodar in the rimu, and, by the sea, a scarlet-flowering ilex in
-the pohutu-kawa. The sub-alpine beech forests are indeed European,
-inferior though our small-leaved beeches are to the English. You see in
-them wide-spreading branches, an absence of underbrush and luxuriant
-climbers, and a steady repetition of the same sort and condition of
-tree, all recalling Europe. Elsewhere there is little that does this.
-In the guide-books you constantly encounter the word “pine,” but
-you will look round in vain for anything like the firs of Scotland,
-the maritime pines of Gascony, or the black and monotonous woods of
-Prussia. The nikau-palm, tree-fern, and palm-lily, the serpentine
-and leafy parasites, and such extraordinary foliage as that of the
-lance-wood, rewa-rewa, and two or three kinds of panax, add a hundred
-distinctive details to the broad impression of difference.
-
-[Illustration: AMONG THE KAURI]
-
-I suppose that most New Zealanders, if asked to name the finest trees
-of their forest, would declare for the kauri and the totara. Some
-might add the puriri to these. But then the average New Zealander
-is a practical person and is apt to estimate a forest-tree in terms
-of sawn timber. Not that a full-grown kauri is other than a great
-and very interesting tree. Its spreading branches and dark crown of
-glossy-green leaves, lifted above its fellows of the woodland, like
-Saul’s head above the people, catch and hold the eye at once. And the
-great column of its trunk impresses you like the pillar of an Egyptian
-temple, not by classic grace, but by a rotund bulk, sheer size and
-weight speaking of massive antiquity. It is not their height that makes
-even the greatest of the kauri tribe remarkable, for one hundred and
-fifty feet is nothing extraordinary. But their picked giants measure
-sixty-six feet in circumference, with a diameter that, at least in one
-case, has reached twenty-four. Moreover, the smooth grey trunks
-rise eighty or even a hundred feet without the interruption of a single
-branch. And when you come to the branches, they are as large as trees:
-some have been measured and found to be four feet through. Then, though
-the foliage is none too dense, each leaf is of a fair size. From their
-lofty roof above your head to the subsoil below your feet, all is
-odorous of resin. Leaves and twigs smell of it; it forms lumps in the
-forks, oozes from the trunk and mixes with the earth--the swelling
-humus composed of flakes of decayed bark dropped through the slow
-centuries. There are still kauri pines in plenty that must have been
-vigorous saplings when William the Norman was afforesting south-western
-Hampshire. The giants just spoken of are survivors from ages far more
-remote. For they may have been tall trees when cedars were being hewn
-on Lebanon for King Solomon’s temple. And then the kauri has a pathetic
-interest: it is doomed. At the present rate of consumption the supply
-will not last ten years. Commercially it is too valuable to be allowed
-to live undisturbed, and too slow of growth to make it worth the while
-of a money-making generation to grow it. Even the young “rickers” are
-callously slashed and burned away. Who regards a stem that may be
-valuable a quarter of a century hence, or a seedling that will not be
-worth money during the first half of the twentieth century? So the
-kauri, like the African elephant, the whale, and the bison, seems
-likely to become a rare survival. It will be kept to be looked at
-in a few State reserves. Then men may remember that once upon a time
-virtually all the town of Auckland was built of kauri timber, and that
-Von Hochstetter, riding through a freshly burned kauri “bush,” found
-the air charged with a smell as of frankincense and myrrh.
-
-Nor is the totara other than a king of the woods, albeit a lesser
-monarch than the giant. Its brown shaggy trunk looks best, to my
-thinking, when wrapped in a rough overcoat of lichens, air-lilies,
-climbing ferns, lianas, and embracing rootlets. Such a tree, from
-waist to crown, is often a world of shaggy greenery, where its own
-bristling, bushy foliage may be lit up by the crimson of the florid
-rata, or the starry whiteness of other climbers. The beauty of the
-totara is not external only. Its brown wood is handsome, and a polished
-piece of knotty or mottled totara almost vies with mottled kauri in the
-cabinet-maker’s esteem.
-
-For utility no wood in the islands, perhaps, surpasses that of the
-puriri, the teak of the country. One is tempted to say that it should
-be made a penal offence to burn a tree at once so serviceable and so
-difficult to replace. A tall puriri, too, with its fresh-green leaves
-and rose-tinted flowers, is a cheering sight, especially when you see,
-as you sometimes do, healthy specimens which have somehow managed to
-survive the cutting down and burning of the other forest trees, and
-stand in fields from which the bush has been cleared away.
-
-[Illustration: POHUTUKAWA IN BLOOM, WHANGAROA HARBOUR]
-
-Yet none of the three trees named seems to me to equal in beauty
-or distinction certain other chieftains of the forest. Surely the
-cedar-like rimu--_silvæ filia nobilis_,--with its delicate drooping
-foliage and air of slender grace, and the more compact titoki with
-polished curving leaves and black-and-crimson berries, are not easily
-to be matched. And surpassing even these in brilliance and strangeness
-are a whole group of the iron-heart family, ratas with flowers
-blood-red or white, and their cousin the “spray-sprinkled” pohutu-kawa.
-The last-named, like the kauri, puriri, tawari, and tarairi, is a
-northerner, and does not love the South Island, though a stray specimen
-or two have been found in Banks’ Peninsula. But the rata, though
-shunning the dry mid-eastern coast of the South Island, ventures much
-nearer the Antarctic. The variety named _lucida_ grows in Stewart
-Island, and forms a kind of jungle in the Auckland Isles, where, beaten
-on its knees by the furious gales, it goes down, so to speak, on all
-fours, and, lifting only its crown, spreads in bent thickets in a
-climate as wet and stormy as that of the moors of Cumberland.
-
-The rata of the south would, but for its flowers, be an ordinary tree
-enough, very hard, very slow in growing, and carrying leaves somewhat
-like those of the English box-tree. But when in flower in the later
-summer, it crowns the western forests with glory, and lights up
-mountain passes and slopes with sheets of crimson. The splendour of the
-flower comes not from its petals, but from what Kirk the botanist calls
-“the fiery crimson filaments of its innumerable stamens,” standing as
-they do in red crests, or hanging downward in feathery fringes. To win
-full admiration the rata must be seen where it spreads in profusion,
-staining cliffs, sprinkling the dark-green tree-tops with blood, and
-anon seeming in the distance to be massed in cushions of soft red.
-Trees have been found bearing golden flowers, but such are very rare.
-
-The rata _lucida_ does not climb other trees. Another and even
-brighter species, the florid rata, is a climbing plant, and so are two
-white-flowered kinds named _albiflora_ and _scandens_, both beautiful
-in their way, but lacking the distinction of the blood-hued species,
-for white is only too common a colour in our forest flora. The florid
-rata, on the other hand, is perhaps the most brilliant of the tribe.
-Winding its way up to the light, it climbs to the green roof of the
-forest, and there flaunts a bold scarlet like the crest of some gay
-bird of the Tropics. It is a snake-like vine, and, vine like, yields a
-pale rose-tinted drink, which with a little make-believe may be likened
-to rough cider. Rata wine, however, is not crushed from grapes, but
-drawn from the vine-stem. Mr. Laing states that as much as a gallon and
-a half of liquid has dripped from a piece of the stem four feet long,
-after it had been cut and kept dry for three weeks.
-
-But the most famous rata is neither the vine nor the tree of the
-south. It is the tree-killing tree of the North Island, the species
-named _robusta_. Its flowers are richer than the southerner’s, and
-whereas the latter is not often more than fifty feet high, _robusta_ is
-sometimes twice as tall as that. And it is as strong as tall, for its
-hard, heavy logs of reddish wood will lie on the ground year after year
-without decaying. But its fame comes from its extraordinary fashion of
-growing. Strong and erect as it is, and able to grow from the ground in
-the ordinary way, it prefers to begin life as an epiphyte, springing
-from seed dropped in a fork or hollow of a high tree. At any rate the
-tallest and finest specimens begin as seedlings in these airy nests.
-Thence without delay they send down roots to earth, one perhaps on one
-side of the tree trunk, one on the other. These in their turn, after
-fixing themselves in the ground, send out cross-roots to clasp each
-other--transverse pieces looking like the rungs of a rope-ladder. In
-time oblique rootlets make with these a complete net-work. Gradually
-all meet and solidify, forming a hollow pipe of living wood. This
-encloses the unhappy tree and in the end presses it to death. Many
-and many a grey perished stick has been found in the interior of the
-triumphant destroyer. In one tree only does the constrictor meet more
-than its match. In the puriri it finds a growth harder and stouter than
-itself. Iron is met by steel. The grey smooth trunk goes on expanding,
-indifferent to the rata’s grasp, and even forcing its gripping roots
-apart; and the pleasant green of the puriri’s leaves shows freshly
-among the darker foliage of the strangler.
-
-The rata itself, on gaining size and height, does not escape the
-responsibilities of arboreal life. Its own forks and hollows form
-starting-points for the growth of another handsome tree-inhabitant, the
-large or shining broadleaf. Beginning sometimes thirty feet from the
-ground, this last will grow as much as thirty feet higher, and develop
-a stem fourteen inches thick. Not satisfied with sending down roots
-outside the trunk of its supporter it will use the interior of a hollow
-tree as a channel through which to reach earth. The foliage which the
-broadleaf puts forth quite eclipses the leaves of most of the trees
-upon which it rides, but it does not seem to kill these last, if it
-kills them at all, as quickly as the iron-hearted rata.
-
-[Illustration: NIKAU PALMS]
-
-Our wild flowers, say the naturalists, show few brilliant hues. Our
-fuschias are poor, our violets white, our gentians pallid--save those
-of the Auckland isles. Our clematis is white or creamy, and our
-passion-flower faint yellow and green. Again and again we are told that
-our flowers, numerous as they are, seldom light up the sombre greens of
-the forest. This complaint may be pushed much too far. It is true that
-pale flowers are found in the islands belonging to families which in
-other countries have brightly coloured members. Though, for instance,
-three or four of our orchids are beautiful, and one falls in a cascade
-of sweet-scented blooms, most of the species are disappointing. But
-the array of our more brilliant flowers is very far from contemptible.
-Over and above the gorgeous ratas and their spray-sprinkled cousins
-are to be reckoned the golden-and-russet kowhai, the crimson
-parrot’s-beak, veronicas wine-hued or purple, the red mistletoe, the
-yellow tarata, and the rosy variety of the manuka. The stalks
-of the flax-lily make a brave show of red and yellow. The centre of
-the mountain-lily’s cup is shining gold. And when speaking of colour
-we may fairly take count of the golden glint or pinkish tinge of the
-toé-toé plumes, the lilac hue of the palm-flower, the orange-coloured
-fruit of the karaka, and the purples of the tutu and wineberry. Nor do
-flowers lack beauty because they are white,--witness the ribbon-wood
-loaded with masses of blooms, fine as those of the double cherry, and
-honey-scented to boot; witness the tawari, the hinau, the rangiora, the
-daisy-tree, the whau, and half a score more. For myself, I would not
-change the purity of our starry clematis for the most splendid parasite
-of the Tropics. Certainly the pallid-greenish and chocolate hues of
-some of our flowers are strange; they seem tinged with moonlight and
-meant for the night hours, and in the dusky jungle carry away one’s
-thoughts to “Rappaccini’s Daughter” and “Les Fleurs du Mal.”
-
-For a bit of New Zealand colour you may turn to Colenso’s description
-of a certain morning in early October when he found himself on a high
-hill-top in face of Mount Ruapehu. Snow had fallen in the night and the
-volcano was mantled heavily therewith. The forest and native village
-on the hill on which Colenso stood were sprinkled with white, and,
-though the rising sun was shining brightly, a few big flakes continued
-to flutter down. Outside the village a grove of kowhai was covered
-with golden-and-russet blossoms, all the more noticeable because the
-young leaves were only on the way. Suddenly from the evergreen forest a
-flock of kakas descended on the kowhais, chattering hoarsely. The great
-parrots, walking out on the underside of the boughs to the very end
-of the branches, began to tear open the flowers, piercing them at the
-side of their base and licking out the honey with their brush-tipped
-tongues. Brown-skinned Maori boys climbing the trees brought to the
-naturalist specimens of the blossoms thus opened by the big beaks.
-The combination of the golden-brown flowers and green forest; the
-rough-voiced parrots, olive-brown and splashed with red, swaying on the
-slender branch-tips; and the sunlight gleaming on the white snow, made,
-with the towering volcano in the background, a picture as brilliant as
-curious.
-
-Whatever the dim flowers, purple fruit, and glossy leaves of many
-of our plants might lead the imaginative to expect, the number that
-are poisonous is very small. Only two examples are conspicuous, and
-but one does any damage to speak of. Of the noxious pair the karaka,
-a handsome shrub, is a favourite garden plant, thanks to its large
-polished leaves and the deep orange colour of its fruit. It has been a
-favourite, too, with the Maori from time immemorial. They plant it near
-their villages, and they claim to have brought it in their canoes from
-Polynesia. Botanists shake their heads over this assertion, however,
-the explanation of which is somewhat similar to a famous statement by
-a certain undergraduate on the crux of the Baconian controversy. “The
-plays of Shakespeare,” said this young gentleman, “were not written by
-him, but by another fellow of the same name.” It seems that there is a
-Polynesian karaka in the islands where the Maori once dwelt, but that
-it is no relation of the New Zealand shrub. The affection of the Maori
-for the latter was based on something more practical than an ancestral
-association. They were extremely fond of the kernel of its fruit. When
-raw, this is exceedingly bitter and disagreeable--fortunately so, for
-it contains then a powerful poison. Somehow the Maori discovered that
-by long baking or persistent steaming the kernels could be freed from
-this, and they used to subject them to the process in a most patient
-and elaborate fashion. Now and then some unlucky person--usually a
-child--would chew a raw kernel and then the result was extraordinary.
-The poison distorted the limbs and then left them quite rigid, in
-unnatural postures. To avoid this the Maori would lash the arms and
-legs of the unfortunate sufferer in a natural position, and then bury
-him up to his shoulders in earth. Colenso once saw a case in which
-this strong step had not been taken, or had failed. At any rate the
-victim of karaka poison, a well-grown boy, was lying with limbs stiff
-and immovable, one arm thrust out in front, one leg twisted backwards;
-he could neither feed himself nor beat off the swarm of sandflies
-that were pestering him. White children must be more cautious than
-the Maori, for though the karaka shines in half the gardens of the
-North Island, one never hears of any harm coming from it. The other
-plant with noxious properties is the tutu, and this in times past
-did much damage among live-stock, sheep especially. Much smaller than
-the karaka, it is still an attractive-looking bush, with soft leaves
-and purple-black clusters of berries. Both berries and shoots contain
-a poison, powerful enough to interest chemists as well as botanists.
-Sheep which eat greedily of it, especially when tired and fasting after
-a journey, may die in a few hours. It kills horned cattle also, though
-horses do not seem to suffer from it. Its chief recorded achievement
-was to cause the death of a circus elephant many years ago, a result
-which followed in a few hours after a hearty meal upon a mixture of
-tutu and other vegetation. So powerful is the poison that a chemist who
-handles the shoots of the plant for an hour or two with his fingers
-will suffer nausea, pain, and a burning sensation of the skin. An
-extremely minute internal dose makes the nausea very violent indeed.
-Of course, so dangerous a plant does not get much quarter from the
-settlers, and for this and other reasons the losses caused by tutu
-among our flocks and herds are far less than was the case forty or
-fifty years ago. Strangely enough the Maoris could make a wine from
-the juice of the berries, which was said to be harmless and palatable,
-though I venture to doubt it. White men are said to have tried the
-liquor, though I have never met any of these daring drinkers. Though
-the most dangerous plant in the islands, it does not seem to have
-caused any recorded death among white people for more than forty years.
-
-[Illustration: ON THE PELORUS RIVER]
-
-Our flora has oddities as well as beauties. Some of its best-known
-members belong to the lily tribe. Several of these are as different
-from each other and as unlike the ordinary man’s notion of a lily
-as could well be. One of the commonest is a lily like a palm-tree,
-and another equally abundant is a lily like a tall flax. A third
-is a tree-dweller, a luxuriant mass of drooping blades, resembling
-sword-grass. A fourth is a black-stemmed wild vine, a coiling and
-twining parasite of the forest, familiarly named supplejack, which
-resembles nothing so much as a family of black snakes climbing about
-playfully in the foliage. Another, even more troublesome creeper, is
-no lily but a handsome bramble, known as the bush-lawyer, equipped
-with ingenious hooks of a most dilatory kind. When among trees, the
-lawyer sticks his claws into the nearest bark and mounts boldly aloft;
-but when growing in an open glade, he collapses into a sort of huddled
-bush, and cannot even propagate his species, though, oddly enough, in
-such cases, he grows hooks even more abundantly than when climbing.
-
-Members of very different families, the pen-wiper plant and the
-vegetable sheep are excellently described by their names. That is
-more than can be said for many of our forest trees. One of these, the
-aké, has leaves so viscous that in sandy or dusty spots these become
-too thickly coated with dirt to allow the tree to grow to any size.
-As a variation the para-para tree has normal leaves, but the skin of
-its fruit is so sticky that not only insects but small birds have
-been found glued thereto. A rather common trick of our trees is to
-change the form of their leaves as they grow old. The slim, straight
-lance-wood, for instance, will for many years be clothed with long,
-narrow, leathery-looking leaves, armed with hooks, growing from the
-stem and pointing stiffly downwards. So long, narrow, and rigid are
-they that the whole plant stands like an inverted umbrella stripped
-of its covering. Later in life the leaves lose both their hooks and
-their odd shape, and the lance-wood ceases to look like a survival
-from the days of the pterodactyl. At no time can it look much stranger
-than two species of dracophyllum, the nei-nei and the grass-tree. Save
-for the extremities, the limbs of these are naked. They reserve their
-energies for tufts at the tips. In one species these are like long
-wisps of grass; in the other they curve back like a pine-apple’s, and
-from among them springs a large red flower having the shape of a toy
-tree. Even the nei-nei is eclipsed by the tanekaha, or celery pine,
-which contrives to be a very handsome tree without bearing any leaves
-whatever; their place is taken by branchlets, thickened and fan-shaped.
-The raukawa has leaves scented so sweetly that the Maori women used to
-rub their skins with them as a perfume. Another more eccentric plant
-is scentless by day, but smells agreeably at night-time. Indeed, both
-by day and night the air of the forest is pleasant to the nostrils. A
-disagreeable exception among our plants is the coprosma, emphatically
-called _fœtidissima_, concerning which bushmen, entangled in its
-thickets, have used language which might turn bullock-drivers green
-with envy.
-
-[Illustration: AUCKLAND]
-
-The navigators who discovered or traded with our islands while
-they were still a No Man’s Land have recorded their admiration of
-the timber of our forests. The tall sticks of kauri and kahikatea,
-with their scores of feet of clean straight wood, roused the sailors’
-enthusiasm. It seemed to them that they had chanced upon the finest
-spars in the world. And for two generations after Captain Cook,
-trees picked out in the Auckland bush, and roughly trimmed there,
-were carried across on the decks of trading schooners to Sydney, and
-there used by Australian shipbuilders. In the year 1819 the British
-Government sent a store-ship, the _Dromedary_, to the Bay of Islands
-for a cargo of kauri spars. They were to be suitable for top-masts, so
-to be from seventy-four to eighty-four feet long and from twenty-one
-to twenty-three inches thick. After much chaffering with the native
-chiefs the spars were cut and shipped, and we owe to the expedition an
-interesting book by an officer on board the _Dromedary_. Our export of
-timber has always been mainly from Auckland, and for many years has
-been chiefly of kauri logs or sawn timber. There has been some export
-of white pine to Australia for making butter-boxes; but the kauri has
-been the mainstay of the timber trade oversea. Other woods are cut
-and sawn in large quantities, but the timber is consumed within the
-colony. How large the consumption is may be seen from the number of
-saw-mills at work--411--and their annual output, which was 432,000,000
-superficial feet last year. Add to this a considerable amount cut for
-firewood, fences, and rough carpentering, which does not pass through
-the mills. And then, great as is the total quantity made use of, the
-amount destroyed and wasted is also great. Accidental fires, sometimes
-caused by gross carelessness, ravage thousands of acres. “A swagger
-will burn down a forest to light his pipe,” said Sir Julius Vogel, and
-the epigram was doubtless true of some of the swag-carrying tribe.
-But the average swagger is a decent enough labourer on the march in
-search of work, and not to be classed with the irreclaimable vagrant
-called tramp in Britain. In any case the swagger was never the sole or
-main offender where forest fires were concerned. It would be correct
-to say that gum-diggers sometimes burn down a forest in trying to
-clear an acre of scrub. But bush fires start up from twenty different
-causes. Sparks from a saw-mill often light up a blaze which may end in
-consuming the mill and its surroundings. I have heard of a dogmatic
-settler who was so positive that his grass would not burn that he threw
-a lighted match into a tuft of it by way of demonstration. A puff of
-wind found the little flame, and before it was extinguished it had
-consumed four hundred acres of yellow but valuable pasture.
-
-And then there is the great area deliberately cut and burned to make
-way for grass. Here the defender of tree-life is faced with a more
-difficult problem. The men who are doing the melancholy work of
-destruction are doing also the work of colonisation. As a class they
-are, perhaps, the most interesting and deserving in colonial life. They
-are acting lawfully and in good faith. Yet the result is a hewing down
-and sweeping away of beauty, compared with which the conquests of the
-Goths and Vandals were conservative processes. For those noted invaders
-did not level Rome or Carthage to the ground: they left classic
-architecture standing. To the lover of beautiful Nature the work of
-our race in New Zealand seems more akin to that of the Seljuk Turks in
-Asia Minor, when they swept away population, buildings and agriculture,
-and Byzantine city and rural life together, in order to turn whole
-provinces into pasture for their sheep. Not that my countrymen are more
-blind to beauty than other colonists from Europe. It is mere accident
-which has laid upon them the burden of having ruined more natural
-beauty in the last half-century than have other pioneers. The result
-is none the less saddening. When the first white settlers landed,
-the islands were supposed still to contain some thirty million acres
-of forest. The Maori had done a share of destruction by reckless or
-accidental burning. Other causes, perhaps, had helped to devastate such
-tracts as the Canterbury plains and the kauri gum-fields. But enough,
-and more than enough, was left; indeed the bush seemed the chief
-barrier to rapid settlement. The havoc wrought by careless savages
-was a trifle compared with the wholesale destruction brought about by
-our utilising of the forests and the soil. _Quod non fecerunt Barbari
-fecere Barberini._ To-day we are told that the timber still standing
-cannot last our saw-mills more than two generations, and that a supply
-which was estimated at forty-three thousand million feet in 1905 had
-shrunk to thirty-six thousand million feet in 1907. The acreage of our
-forests must be nearer fifteen than twenty millions now. Some of this,
-covering, as it does, good alluvial soil, must go; but I am far from
-being alone in believing that four-fifths of it should be conserved,
-and that where timber is cut the same precautions should be insisted on
-as in Germany, France, India, and some intelligent portions of North
-America. Within the last two years great floods in Auckland and Hawke’s
-Bay, and, farther south, two summers hot and dry beyond precedent, seem
-to point the moral and strengthen the case for making a courageous
-stand on behalf of the moiety we have left of the woods that our
-fathers thought illimitable.
-
-[Illustration: MOUNT EGMONT]
-
-Something has already been done. Forty years ago Thomas Potts,
-naturalist and politician, raised his voice in the parliamentary
-wilderness; and in the next decade a Premier, Sir Julius Vogel, came
-forward with an official scheme of conservation which would have been
-invaluable had he pressed it home. Since then enlightened officials,
-like the late Surveyor-General, Mr. Percy Smith, have done what they
-could. From time to time reserves have been made which, all too small
-as they are, now protect some millions of acres. In the rainier
-districts most of this is not in great danger from chance fires. Nor is
-it always and everywhere true that the forest when burned does not grow
-again. It can and will do so, if cattle and goats are kept out of it.
-The lavish beauty of the primeval forest may not return, but that
-is another matter. The cry that Government reservation only saves trees
-from the axe to keep them for the fire may be dismissed as a counsel of
-despair, or--sometimes--as inspired by the saw-miller and land-grabber.
-Of late years, too, both Government and public are waking up to the
-wisdom of preserving noted and beautiful scenes. Many years ago the
-settlers of Taranaki set an example by reserving the upper and middle
-slopes of their Fusiyama, Mount Egmont. Long stretches of the draped
-cliffs of Wanganui River have been made as safe as law can make them,
-though some still remain in danger, and I am told that at Taumaranui,
-on the upper river, the hum of the saw-mills is ever in your ears.
-Societies for preserving scenery are at work elsewhere, and the
-Parliament has passed an Act and established a Board for the purpose of
-making scenic reserves. Twenty-five thousand acres have lately been set
-aside on the Board’s advice, and the area will, I assume, be added to
-yearly.
-
-Now and again, in dry, windy summers, the forest turns upon its
-destroyers and takes revenge. Dying, it involves their works and
-possessions in its own fiery death. A bush-fire is a fine sight when
-seen on windy nights, burning whole hill-sides, crawling slowly to
-windward, or rushing with the wind in leaping tongues and flakes that
-fly above the tree-tops. The roar, as of a mighty gale, the spouting
-and whirling of golden sparks, the hissing of sap and resin, and the
-glowing heat that may be felt a mile away, join grandly in furious
-energy. Nothing can be finer than the spectacle, just as nothing can
-be more dreary than the resulting ruin. A piece of bush accidentally
-burned has no touch of dignity in its wreck. It becomes merely an ugly
-and hateful jumble, begrimed, untidy, and unserviceable. A tract that
-has been cut down and fired deliberately is in a better case. Something
-more like a clean sweep has been made, and the young grass sprouting
-up gives promise of a better day. But bush through which fire has run
-too quickly is often spoiled as forest, without becoming of use to
-the farmer. The best that can be done when trees are thus scorched is
-for the saw-miller to pick out the larger timber and separate with
-his machinery the sound inside from the burned envelope. This he does
-skilfully enough, and much good wood--especially kauri--is thus saved.
-The simple-minded settler when selling scorched timber sometimes
-tries to charge for sound and injured portions alike; but the average
-saw-miller is a man of experience.
-
-[Illustration: TAREI-PO-KIORE]
-
-As I have said, fire sometimes sweeps down upon the forest’s enemies
-and carries all before it: saw-mills and their out-buildings are made
-into bonfires, and the stacks of sawn planks and litter of chips and
-sawdust help the blaze. The owner and his men are lucky if they save
-more than their portable belongings. Nor does the fire stop there.
-After making a mouthful of mills and woodcutters’ huts, it may set
-out for some small township not yet clear of stumps, dead trunks,
-and inflammable trash. All depends upon the wind. If the flames are
-being borne along upon the wings of a strong north-west wind--the
-“regular howling nor’-wester” of up-country vernacular--very
-little can be done except to take to flight, driving live-stock, and
-taking such furniture as can be piled on carts and driven away. Fences,
-house, machinery, garden, and miles of grass may be swept away in a few
-hours, the labour of half a lifetime may be consumed, and the burnt-out
-settler may be thankful if the Government comes to his aid with a loan
-to enable him to buy grass seed to scatter on his blackened acres after
-the long-desired rains have come.
-
-In an exceptionally dry summer--such an extraordinary season as came
-in January and February of this year--the fire goes to work on a grand
-scale. In a tract a hundred miles long, thirty or forty outbreaks may
-be reported within a week. Settlers looking out from their homesteads
-may see smoke and glowing skies in half-a-dozen directions at once. Now
-the blaze may approach from this direction, now from that, just as the
-wind freshens or shifts. Sheep are mustered, and, if possible, driven
-away. Threatened householders send their furniture away, or dig holes
-in the ground and bury it. When the danger comes too suddenly to give
-time for anything more, goods are hastily piled on some bare patch and
-covered with wet blankets. I have read of a prudent settler who had
-prepared for these risks of fire by excavating a cave almost large
-enough to house a band of prophets. After three years the fire came his
-way, and he duly stored away his possessions in the repository. But
-just as rain does not fall when you take out a large umbrella, so our
-provident friend found that the fire would not touch his house. He
-lost nothing but a shed.
-
-[Illustration: MORNING ON THE WANGANUI RIVER]
-
-If there appears any fair chance of beating back the flames, the men
-join together, form a line, and give battle. They do not lightly
-surrender the fruits of years of toil, but will fight rolling smoke,
-flying sparks, and even scorching flame, hour after hour. Strips
-of grass are burned off in advance, and dead timber blown up with
-dynamite. Buckets of water are passed from hand to hand, or the flames
-are beaten out with sacks or blankets. Seen at night on a burning
-hill-side, the row of masculine fighting figures stands out jet-black
-against the red glow, and the wild attitudes and desperate exertions
-are a study for an artist. Among the men, boys work gleefully; there is
-no school for them when a fire has to be beaten. Very young children
-suffer greatly from the smoke with which the air they breathe is
-laden, perhaps for days together. Even a Londoner would find its
-volumes trying. Now and again a bushman in the thick of the fight reels
-half-suffocated, or falls fainting and has to be carried away. But his
-companions work on; and grass-fires are often stopped and standing
-crops saved. But fire running through thick bush is a more formidable
-affair. The heat is terrific, the very soil seems afire; and indeed
-the flames, after devouring trunks and branches, will work down into
-the roots and consume them for many feet. Sparks and tongues of flame
-shoot across roads and streams and start a blaze on the farther side.
-Messengers riding for help, or settlers trying to reach their
-families, have often to run the gauntlet perilously on tracks which
-the fire has reached or is crossing. They gallop through when they
-can, sometimes with hair and beard singed and clothes smelling of the
-fire. Men, however, very seldom lose their lives. For one who dies by
-fire in the bush, fifty are killed by falling timber in the course of
-tree-felling. Sheep have occasionally to be left to their fate, and are
-roasted, or escape with wool half-burnt. Wild pigs save themselves; but
-many native birds perish with their trees, and the trout in the smaller
-streams die in hundreds.
-
-Many stories are told of these bush fires, and of the perils, panics,
-or displays of courage they have occasioned. Let me repeat one. In a
-certain “bush township,” or small settlement in the forest, lived a
-clergyman, who, in addition to working hard among the settlers in a
-parish half as large as an English county, was a reader of books. He
-was, I think, a bachelor, and I can well believe that his books were
-to him something not far removed from wife and children. The life of a
-parson in the bush certainly deserves some consolations in addition to
-those of religion. Well, a certain devastating fire took a turn towards
-the township in which a wooden roof sheltered our parson and his
-beloved volumes. Some householders were able to drive off with their
-goods; others stood their ground. The minister, after some reflection,
-carried his books out of doors, took a spade and began to dig a hole
-in the earth, meaning to bury them therein. Just as the interment
-was beginning, a neighbour rode up with the news that the house of
-a widow woman, not far away, had caught fire and that friends were
-trying to extinguish the burning or at least save her goods. Whether
-the book-lover gave “a splendid groan” I do not know; but leaving his
-treasures, off he ran, and was soon among the busiest of the little
-salvage corps, hauling and shouldering like a man. When all was done
-that could be done he hastened back, blackened and perspiring, to his
-own dwelling. Alas! the fire had outflanked him. Sparks and burning
-flakes had dropped upon his books and the little collection was a
-blazing pile. I have forgotten the parson’s name and do not know what
-became of him. But if any man deserved, in later life, a fine library
-at the hands of the Fates, he did. I hope that he has one, and that it
-includes a copy of Mr. Blades’s entertaining treatise on the _Enemies
-of Books_. With what gusto he must read chapter i., the title of which
-is “Fire.”
-
-[Illustration: ON THE UPPER WANGANUI]
-
-Just as a burning forest is a magnificent scene with a dismal sequel,
-so the saw-miller’s industry, though it finds a paradise and leaves a
-rubbish-yard, is, while it goes on, a picturesque business. Like many
-forms of destruction, it lends itself to the exertion of boldness,
-strength, and skill. The mill itself is probably too primitive to be
-exactly ugly, and the complicated machinery is interesting when in
-action, albeit its noises, which at a distance blend into a humming
-vibration, rise near at hand to tearing and rending, clattering and
-howling. But the smell of the clean wood is fresh and resinous, and
-nothing worse than sawdust loads the air. The strong teeth
-of the saws go through the big logs as though they were cheese.
-The speed of the transformation, the neatness and utility of the
-outcome, are pleasing enough. Then the timber-scows, those broad,
-comfortable-looking craft that go plodding along the northern coasts,
-may be said, without irony, to have a share of “Batavian grace.” But
-the more absorbing work of the timber trade begins at the other end,
-with the selecting and felling of the timber. After that comes the
-task of hauling or floating it down to the mill. Tree-felling is, one
-supposes, much the same in all countries where the American pattern of
-axe is used. With us, as elsewhere, there are sights worth watching. It
-is worth your while to look at two axemen at work on the tree, giving
-alternate blows, one swinging the axe from the right, the other from
-the left. Physically, bush-fellers are among the finest workmen in the
-islands, and not only in wood-chopping contests, but when at work,
-under contract in the bush, they make the chips fly apace. Some of
-them seem able to hew almost as well with one arm as with two; indeed,
-one-armed men have made useful fellers. Sometimes they attack a tree
-from the ground; but into the larger trunks they may drive stakes some
-few feet from the soil, or may honour a giant by building a platform
-round it. Upon this they stand, swinging their axes or working a large
-cross-cut saw. Skill, of course, is required in arranging the direction
-in which the tree shall fall, also in avoiding it when it comes down.
-Even a broken limb is a serious matter enough in the bush, far from
-surgical aid. Men thus struck down have to be carried on rough litters
-to the nearest surgeon. In one case the mates of an injured bush-feller
-carried him in this way fully sixty miles, taking turns to bear the
-burden. Even when a man has been killed outright and there is no longer
-question of surgical aid, the kindliness of the bushmen may still be
-shown. Men have been known to give up days of remunerative work in
-order to carry the body of a comrade to some settlement, where it can
-be buried in consecrated ground. Accidents are common enough in the
-bush. Only last year an “old hand” fell a victim to mischance after
-forty years of a bushman’s life. Slipping on a prostrate trunk he fell
-on the sharp edge of his axe, and was discovered lying there dead in
-solitude.
-
-[Illustration: WAIRUA FALLS]
-
-When the tree has been felled and cross-cut and the branches lopped
-off, the log may be lying many miles from the mill. Hills and ravines
-may have to be crossed or avoided. Orpheus with his lute would be
-invaluable to the New Zealand saw-miller. The local poet, though fond
-enough of addressing his stanzas to the forest trees, does not pretend
-to draw them to follow in his footsteps. Nor are our poets on the side
-of the saw-mills. So bushmen have to fall back upon mechanical devices
-and the aid of water-power. Long narrow tracks are cut, and floored
-with smooth skids. Along these logs are dragged--it may be by the wire
-rope of a traction machine, it may be by a team of bullocks. Over very
-short distances the logs are shifted by the men themselves, who “jack”
-them with a dexterity astonishing to the townsmen. Mainly, the
-journey to the mill is made either by tramway or water. Where a deep
-river is at hand, floating timber is a comparatively simple business.
-But more often the logs have to slide, be rolled or be hauled, into the
-beds of streams or creeks that may be half dry for months together. To
-obtain the needful depth of water, dams are often built, above which
-the logs accumulate in numbers and stay floating while their owners
-wait patiently for a fresh. Or the timber may remain stranded, in
-shallow creeks or in the reeds or stones of dwindled rivers. At length
-the rain-storm bursts, the sluices of the dams are hastily opened, and
-the logs in great companies start on their swim for the sea-coast. A
-heavy flood may mean loss to farmer and gardener, and be a nuisance to
-travellers; but to the saw-millers of a province it may be like the
-breaking-up of a long drought. They rub their hands and tell you that
-they have not had such a turn of luck for a twelvemonth,--“millions of
-feet were brought down yesterday!” As the rains descend and the floods
-come, their men hurry away to loosen barriers, start logs on their
-way, or steer them in their course. Wild is the rush of the timber
-as it is thus swept away, not in long orderly rafts such as one sees
-zigzagging along on the Elbe or St. Lawrence, but in a frantic mob of
-racing logs, spinning round, rolled over and over, colliding, plunging
-and reappearing in the swirling water. Rafts you may see in the
-ordinary way being towed down the Wairoa River to the Kaipara harbour
-by steam tugs. But in flood-time, when thousands of logs are taking
-an irresponsible course towards the ocean, the little steamers have
-a more exciting task. It is theirs to chase the logs, which, rolling
-and bobbing like schools of escaping whales, have to be caught and
-towed to some boom or harbourage near the saw-mill for which they are
-destined. Otherwise they may become imbedded in tidal mud, or may drift
-away to sea and be lost. Logs bearing the marks of Auckland saw-millers
-have been found ere now stranded on distant beaches after a voyage of
-several hundred miles.
-
-Like axemen and log-rollers, the river hands who look after dams and
-floating logs have their accidents and hairbreadth escapes. They have
-to trust to courage and to an amphibious dexterity, of which they
-exhibit an ample share. Watch a man standing upright on a log huge
-enough to be a mast, and poling it along as though it were a punt.
-That looks easier than it is. But watch the same man without any pole
-controlling a rolling log and steering it with feet alone. That does
-not even look easy. Some years ago, it is said, a mill hand, when
-opening a dam in a rain-storm, fell into the flood and was swept down
-among the released timber. Amid the crash of tumbling logs he was
-carried over the dam and over a waterfall farther down stream. Yet he
-reached the bank with no worse injury than a broken wrist! I tell the
-tale as it was printed in an Auckland newspaper.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER V
-
-FIRE AND WATER
-
-
-A long time ago, that is to say, in the twilight of Maori tradition,
-the chief Ngatoro and his wife, attended by a slave, landed on the
-shores of the Bay of Plenty. Thence they wandered inland through
-forests and over ferny downs, reaching at last a great central lake,
-beyond which high mountains stood sentry in the very heart of the
-island. One of these snow-clad summits they resolved to gain; but
-half-way on the climb the slave fell ill of sheer cold. Then the chief
-bethought him that in the Bay of Plenty he had noticed an island
-steaming and smoking, boiling with heat. Hot coals brought thence
-might warm the party and save the slave’s life. So Ngatoro, who was
-magician as well as chieftain, looked eastward and made incantations;
-and soon the fire rushing through the air fell at his feet. Another
-more prosaic version of the tale says that, Maori fashion, the
-kind-hearted hero despatched a messenger to bring the fire; he sent
-his wife. She, traversing land and sea at full speed, was soon back
-from White Island with a calabash full of glowing embers. From this,
-as she hurried along, sparks dropped here and there on her track. And
-wherever these fell the earth caught fire, hot springs bubbled up,
-and steam-jets burst through the fern. All her haste, however, went
-for nought; the slave died. Furious at his loss, her lord and master
-flung the red embers down one of the craters of Mount Tongariro, and
-from that day to this the mountains of Taupo have been filled with
-volcanic fires, smouldering or breaking out in eruption.[1] Such is one
-of the many legends which have grown up round the lakes and summits
-of the most famous volcanic province of New Zealand. It indicates
-the Maori understanding that the high cones south-west of Lake Taupo
-are one end of a chain of volcanic forces, and that the other end is
-White Island (Whaka-ari), the isolated crater which lifts its head
-above the sea twenty-seven miles out in the wide Bay of Plenty. It is
-a natural sulphur factory. Seen from the shores of the bay it looks
-peaceful enough. Its only peculiarity seems to be a white cloud rising
-high or streaming on the wind to leeward from the tip of its cone.
-At a distance the cloud appears not unlike other white clouds; but
-in the brightest weather it never vanishes away. I once spent three
-sunny spring days in riding round the great arc of the Bay of Plenty,
-often cantering for miles together along the sandy beach. There, out
-to sea, lay White Island always in view and always flying its white
-vapour-flag. In reality the quiet-looking islet seethes with fiery
-life. Seen at close quarters it is found to be a shell, which from
-one side looks comically like the well-worn stump of a hollow tooth.
-It is a barren crater near a thousand feet high, enclosing what was a
-lake and is now shrunk to a warm green pool, ringed with bright yellow
-sulphur. Hot springs boil and roar on the crater-lake’s surface, ever
-sending up columns of hissing and roaring steam many hundred feet
-into the air. At times, as in 1886, the steam has shot to the almost
-incredible height of fifteen thousand feet, a white pillar visible a
-hundred miles away. You may thrust a stick through the floor of the
-crater into the soft hot paste beneath. The walls of the abyss glow
-with heat, steam-jets hiss from their fissures, and on the outside is a
-thick crust of sulphur. The reek of the pit’s fumes easily outdoes that
-of the blackest and most vicious of London fogs. “It is not that soft
-smell of Roto-rua,” wrote Mr. Buddle, who smelt the place in 1906, “but
-an odour of sulphurous acid which sticks in one’s throat.” Yet commerce
-once tried to lay hands on White Island, and men were found willing to
-try and work amid its noisome activities. Commerce, however, failed to
-make Tartarus pay. Not far away from White Island lies Mayor Island,
-which once upon a time must have been an even stranger spot. It also is
-a high crater. On the rim of its yawning pit are to be seen the ruins
-of a Maori stockade, which, perched in mid-air and approachable only
-over the sea, must have been a hard nut for storming parties to crack
-in the bygone days of tribal wars. All is quiet now; the volcano has
-died out and the wars have become old tales.
-
-[1] After writing this page I found that Mr. Percy Smith, formerly
-Surveyor-General, gives another version of the legend. He tells how
-the hero Ngatoro, landing on the shore of the Bay of Plenty, went
-inland, and, with a companion named Ngauruhoe, climbed Tongariro. Near
-the summit, Ngauruhoe died of cold, and Ngatoro, himself half-frozen,
-shouted to his sisters far away in the legendary island of Hawaiki to
-bring fire. His cry reached them far across the ocean, and they started
-to his rescue. Whenever they halted--as at White Island--and lit their
-camp fire, geysers spouted up from the ground. But when at length they
-reached Tongariro, it was only to find that Ngatoro, tired of waiting
-for them, had gone back to the coast.
-
-A fourth version of the legend is contained in a paper by Mr. H. Hill
-in vol. xxiv. of the _Transactions of the N.Z. Institute_.
-
-Needless to say, the scenes between Ruapehu and the sea-coast are not
-all as terrific as this. The main charm of the volcanic province is,
-indeed, its variety. Though in a sense its inhabitants live on the lid
-of a boiler--a boiler, too, that is perforated with steam holes--still
-it is a lid between five thousand and six thousand square miles in
-size. This leaves ample room for broad tracts where peace reigns amid
-apparent solidity and security. Though it is commonly called the Hot
-Lakes District, none of its larger lakes are really hot, that is to say
-hot throughout; they are distinctly cold. Roto-mahana before it was
-blown up in the eruption of 1886 was in no part less than lukewarm; but
-in those days Roto-mahana only covered 185 acres. At Ohinemutu there
-is a pool the water of which is unmistakably hot throughout; but it is
-not more than about a hundred yards long. Usually the hot lagoons are
-patchy in temperature--boiling at one end, cool at the other. Perhaps
-the official title, Thermal Springs District, is more accurate. The
-hot water comes in the form of springs, spouts, and geysers. Boiling
-pools there are in numbers, veritable cauldrons. Boiling springs burst
-up on the beaches of the cold lakes, or bubble up through the chilly
-waters. The bather can lie floating, as the writer has, with his feet
-in hot and his head in cold water. Very agreeable the sensation is as
-the sunshine pours from a blue sky on to a lagoon fringed with ferns
-and green foliage. There are places where the pedestrian fording a
-river may feel his legs chilled to the marrow by the swift current, and
-yet find the sandy bottom on which he is treading almost burn the soles
-of his feet. The first white traveller to describe the thermal springs
-noted a cold cascade falling on an orifice from which steam was puffing
-at intervals. The resultant noise was as strange as the sight. So do
-hot and cold mingle and come into conflict in the thermal territory.
-
-[Illustration: “THE DRAGON’S MOUTH”]
-
-The area of this hydro-thermal district, which Mr. Percy Smith, the
-best living authority on the subject, calls the Taupo volcanic zone,
-is roundly about six thousand square miles. As already said, part of
-it lies under the sea, above which only White Island, Mayor Island,
-and Whale Island rise to view. Its shape, if we could see the whole
-of it, would probably be a narrow oval, like an old-fashioned silver
-hand-mirror with a slender handle. In the handle two active volcanoes
-lift their heads--Ruapehu, and Tongariro with its three cones. At
-the other end of the mirror White Island stands up, incessantly at
-work. This exhausts the list of active volcanoes; but there are six
-or seven extinct or quiescent volcanoes of first-class importance.
-Mayor Island, in the Bay of Plenty, is a dead crater rimmed by walls
-five miles round and nearly 1300 feet high, enclosing a terrible chasm
-lined with dark obsidian. Mount Edgecombe, an admirably regular cone,
-easily seen from the coast, has two craters in its summit; and the
-most appalling explosion ever known in the country occurred in the
-tract covered by Mount Tarawera and the Roto-mahana Lake. How terrific
-were the forces displayed by these extinct volcanoes in ages past
-may be judged by the vast extent of country overlaid by the pumice
-and volcanic clay belched forth from their craters. Not only is the
-volcanic zone generally overspread with this, only sparse patches
-escaping, but pumice is found outside its limits. Within these, it
-is, loosely speaking, pumice, pumice everywhere, dry, gritty, and
-useless,--a thin scattering of pumice on the hill-tops and steep
-slopes,--deep strata of pumice where it has been washed down into
-valleys and river terraces. Mingled with good soil it is mischievous,
-though two or three grasses, notably that called Chewing’s fescue, grow
-well in the mixture. Unmixed pumice is porous and barren. Fortunately
-the tracts of deep pumice are limited. They soak up the ample rainfall;
-grass grows, but soon withers; in dry weather a sharp tug will drag a
-tussock from the roots in the loose, thirsty soil. The popular belief
-is that it only needs a long-continued process of stamping and rolling
-to make these pumice expanses hold water and become fertile. Those
-who think thus point out that around certain lonely lagoons,
-where wild horses and cattle have been wont to camp and roll, rich
-green patches of grass are found. Less hopeful observers hold that the
-destiny of the pumice country is probably to grow trees, fruit-bearing
-and other, whose deep roots will reach far down to the water.
-Already the Government, acting on this belief, has taken the work of
-tree-planting in hand, and millions of young saplings are to be found
-in the Waiotapu valley and elsewhere in the pumice land. Prison-labour
-is used for the purpose; and though a camp of convicts, with movable
-prison-vans like the cages of a travelling menagerie, seems a strange
-foil to the wonders of Nature, the toil is healthy for the men as well
-as useful to the country. From the vast extent of the pumice and clay
-layers it would seem that, uneasy as the thermal territory now is, it
-has, for all its geysers, steaming cones, and innumerable springs,
-become but a fretful display of slowly dying forces. So say those who
-look upon the great catastrophe of 1886 as merely the flicker of a
-dying flame.
-
-[Illustration: HUKA FALLS]
-
-As already said, the volcanic zone is a land of lakes, many and
-beautiful. Four of the most interesting--Roto-rua, Roto-iti, Roto-ehu,
-and Roto-ma--lie in a chain, like pieces of silver loosely strung
-together. South of these Tarawera sleeps in sight of its terrible
-mountain, and south again of Tarawera the hot springs of Roto-mahana
-still draw sight-seers, though its renowned terraces are no longer
-there. Lake Okataina is near, resting amid unspoiled forest: and there
-is Roto-kakahi, the green lake, and, hard by, Tikitapu, the blue lake,
-beautiful by contrast. But, of course, among all the waters Taupo
-easily overpeers the rest. “The Sea” the Maori call it; and indeed
-it is so large, and its whole expanse so easily viewed at once from
-many heights, that it may well be taken to be greater than it is. It
-covers 242 square miles, but the first white travellers who saw it and
-wrote about it guessed it to be between three and five hundred. Hold
-a fair-sized map of the district with the eastern side uppermost and
-you will note that the shape of Taupo is that of an ass’s head with
-the ears laid back. This may seem an irreverent simile for the great
-crater lake, with its deep waters and frowning cliffs, held so sacred
-and mysterious by the Maori of old. Seldom is its surface flecked by
-any sail, and only one island of any size breaks the wide expanse. The
-glory of Taupo--apart from the noble view of the volcanoes southward
-of it--is a long rampart of cliffs that almost without a break hems
-in its western side mile after mile. At their highest they reach 1100
-feet. So steep are they that in flood-time cascades will make a clean
-leap from their summits into the lake; and the sheer descent of the
-wall continues below the surface, for, within a boat’s length of the
-overhanging cliff, sounding-leads have gone down 400 feet. Many are
-the waterfalls which in the stormier months of the year seam the rocky
-faces with white thread-like courses. On a finer scale than the others
-are the falls called Mokau, which, dashing through a leafy cleft, pour
-into the deep with a sounding plunge, and, even from a distance, look
-something broader and stronger than the usual white riband.
-
-By contrast, on the eastern side of the lake wide strips of beach are
-not uncommon, and the banks, plains, and terrace sides of whitish
-pumice, though not inconsiderable, are but tame when compared with
-the dark basaltic and trachytic heights overhanging the deep western
-waters. Many streams feed Taupo; only one river drains it. It is
-not astonishing, then, that the Maori believed that in the centre a
-terrible whirlpool circled round a great funnel down which water was
-sucked into the bowels of the earth. A variant of this legend was
-that a huge _taniwha_ or saurian monster haunted the western depths,
-ready and willing to swallow canoes and canoemen together. The river
-issuing from Taupo is the Waikato, which cuts through the rocky lip
-of the crater-lake at its north-east corner. There it speeds away as
-though rejoicing to escape, with a strong clear current about two
-hundred yards wide. Then, pent suddenly between walls of hard rock,
-it is jammed into a deep rift not more than seventy feet across.
-Boiling and raging, the whole river shoots from the face of a steep
-tree-clothed cliff with something of the force of a horizontal geyser.
-Very beautiful is the blue and silver column as it falls, with outer
-edges dissolving into spray, into the broad and almost quiet expanse
-below. This waterfall, the Huka, though one of the famous sights
-of the island, does not by any means exhaust the beauties of the
-Upper Waikato. A little lower down the Ara-tia-tia Rapids furnish a
-succession of spectacles almost as fine. There for hundreds of yards
-the river, a writhing serpent of blue and milk-white flecked with
-silver, tears and zig-zags, spins and foams, among the dripping reefs
-and between high leafy rocks, “wild with the tumult of tumbling waters.”
-
-Broadly speaking, the Taupo plateau is a region of long views. Cold
-nights are more often than not followed by sunny days. The clear and
-often brilliant air enables the eye to travel over the nearer plains
-and hills to where some far-off mountain chain almost always closes
-the prospect. The mountains are often forest-clad, the plains and
-terraces usually open. Here will be seen sheets of stunted bracken;
-there, wide expanses of yellowish tussock-grass. The white pumice and
-reddish-brown volcanic clay help to give a character to the colouring
-very different to the black earth and vivid green foliage of other
-parts of the island. The smooth glacis-like sides of the terraces,
-and the sharply-cut ridges of the hills, seem a fit setting for the
-perpetual display of volcanic forces and an adjunct in impressing
-on the traveller that he is in a land that has been fashioned on a
-strange design. Nothing in England, and very little in Europe, remotely
-resembles it. Only sometimes on the dusty tableland of Central Spain,
-in Old or New Castile, may the New Zealander be reminded of the long
-views and strong sunlight, or the shining slopes leading up to blue
-mountain ranges cutting the sky with clean lines.
-
-[Illustration: ARA-TIA-TIA RAPIDS]
-
-Some of the finest landscape views in the central North Island are
-to be seen from points of vantage on the broken plateau to the westward
-of Ruapehu. On the one side the huge volcanic mass, a sloping rampart
-many miles long, closes the scene; on the other, the land, falling
-towards the coast, is first scantily clothed with coarse tussock-grass
-and then with open park-like forest. The timber grows heavier towards
-the coast, and in the river valleys where the curling Wanganui and the
-lesser streams Waitotara and Patea run between richly-draped cliffs to
-the sea. Far westward above the green expanse of foliage--soon to be
-hewn by the axe and blackened by fire--the white triangle of Egmont’s
-cone glimmers through faint haze against the pale horizon.
-
-Between Taupo and the eastern branch of the Upper Wanganui ran a
-foot-track much used by Maori travellers in days of yore. At one point
-it wound beneath a steep hill on the side of which a projecting ledge
-of rock formed a wide shallow cave. Beneath this convenient shelf it
-is said that a gang of Maori highwaymen were once wont to lurk on the
-watch for wayfarers, solitary or in small parties. At a signal they
-sprang out upon these, clubbed them to death, and dragged their bodies
-to the cave. There these cannibal bush-rangers gorged themselves on
-the flesh of their victims. I tell the story on the authority of the
-missionary Taylor, who says that he climbed to the cave, and standing
-therein saw the ovens used for the horrid meals and the scattered bones
-of the human victims. If he was not imposed upon, the story supplies a
-curious exception to Maori customs. Their cannibalism was in the main
-practised at the expense of enemies slain or captured in inter-tribal
-wars; and they had distinct if peculiar prejudices in favour of fair
-fighting. I have read somewhere that in the Drakensberg Mountains above
-Natal a similar gang of cannibal robbers was once discovered--Kaffirs
-who systematically lured lonely victims into a certain remote ravine,
-where they disappeared.
-
-One of the curiosities of the Taupo wilderness is the flat-topped
-mountain Horo-Horo. Steep, wooded slopes lead up to an unbroken ring
-of precipices encircling an almost level table-top. To the eyes of
-riders or coach-passengers on the road between Taupo and Roto-rua, the
-brows of the cliffs seem as inaccessible as the crown of Roraima in
-British Guiana in the days before Mr. Im Thurn scaled it. The Maori own
-Horo-Horo, and have villages and cultivations on the lower slopes where
-there is soil fertile beyond what is common thereabout. Another strange
-natural fortress not far away is Pohaturoa, a tusk of lava, protruding
-some eight hundred feet hard by the course of the Waikato and in full
-view of a favourite crossing-place. Local guides are, or used to be,
-fond of comparing this eminence with Gibraltar, to which--except that
-both are rocks--it bears no manner of likeness.
-
-The Japanese, as we know, hold sacred their famous volcano Fusiyama.
-In the same way the Maori in times past regarded Tongariro and
-Ruapehu as holy ground. But, whereas the Japanese show reverence
-to Fusi by making pilgrimages to its summit in tens of thousands,
-the Maori veneration of their great cones took a precisely opposite
-shape,--they would neither climb them themselves nor allow others to
-do so. The earlier white travellers were not only refused permission
-to mount to the summit, but were not even allowed to set foot on the
-lower slopes. In 1845 the artist George French Angas could not even
-obtain leave to make a sketch of Tongariro, though he managed to do
-so by stealth. Six years earlier Bidwill eluded native vigilance
-and actually reached the summit of one of the cones, probably that
-of Ngauruhoe, but when, after peering down through the sulphurous
-clouds of the inaccessible gulf, he made his way back to the shores
-of Lake Taupo, the local chieftain gave him a very bad quarter of an
-hour indeed. This personage, known in New Zealand story as Old Te Heu
-Heu, was one of the most picturesque figures of his race. His great
-height--“nearly seven feet,” says one traveller; “a complete giant,”
-writes another--his fair complexion, almost classic features, and
-great bodily strength are repeatedly alluded to by the whites who saw
-him; not that whites had that privilege every day, for Te Heu Heu held
-himself aloof among his own people, defied the white man, and refused
-to sign the treaty of Waitangi or become a liegeman of the Queen. His
-tribesmen had a proverb--“Taupo is the Sea; Tongariro is the Mountain;
-Te Heu Heu is the Man.” This they would repeat with the air of men
-owning a proprietary interest in the Atlantic Ocean, Kinchin Junga,
-and Napoleon. He was indeed a great chief, and a perfect specimen of
-the Maori _Rangatira_ or gentleman. He considered himself the special
-guardian of the volcanoes. Like him they were _tapu_--“_tapu’d_ inches
-thick,” as the author of _Old New Zealand_ would say. Indeed, when
-his subjects journeyed by a certain road, from one turn of which they
-could view the cone of Ngauruhoe, they were expected at the critical
-spot to veil their eyes with their mats so as not to look on the holy
-summit. At any rate, Bidwill declares that they told him so. Small
-wonder, therefore, if this venturesome trespasser came in for a severe
-browbeating from the offended Te Heu Heu, who marched up and down his
-_wharé_ breaking out into passionate speech. Bidwill asserts that he
-pacified the great man by so small a present as three figs of tobacco.
-Of course, it is possible that in 1839 tobacco was more costly at Taupo
-than in after years. The Maori version of the incident differs from
-Bidwill’s.
-
-In the uneasy year of 1845 Te Heu Heu marched down to the Wanganui
-coast at the head of a strong war-party. The scared settlers were
-thankful to find that he did not attack them. He was, indeed, after
-other game, and was bent on squaring accounts with a local tribe which
-had shed the blood of his people. Bishop Selwyn, who happened to be
-then in the neighbourhood, saw and spoke with the highland chieftain,
-urging peace. The interviews must have been worth watching. On the one
-side stood the typical barbarian, eloquent, fearless, huge of limb,
-with handsome face and maize-coloured complexion, and picturesque
-in kilt, cloak, and head-feather. On the other side was a bishop in
-hard training, a Christian gentleman, as fine as English culture
-could furnish, whose clean-cut aquiline face and unyielding mouth had
-the becoming support of a tall, vigorous frame lending dignity to
-his clerical garb. Here was the heathen determined to save his tribe
-from the white man’s grasping hands and dissolving religion; there
-the missionary seeing in conversion and civilisation the only hope of
-preserving the Maori race. Death took Te Heu Heu away before he had
-time to see his policy fail. Fate was scarcely so kind to Selwyn, who
-lived to see the Ten-Years’ War wreck most of his life’s work among the
-natives.
-
-As far as I know, Te Heu Heu never crossed weapons with white men,
-though he allied himself with our enemies and gave shelter to
-fugitives. His region was regarded as inaccessible in the days of good
-Governor Grey. He was looked upon as a kind of Old Man of the Mountain,
-and in Auckland they told you stories of his valour, hospitality,
-choleric temper, and his six--or was it eight?--wives. So the old chief
-stayed unmolested, and met his end with his _mana_ in no way abated. It
-was a fitting end: the soil which he guarded so tenaciously overwhelmed
-him. The steep hill-side over his village became loosened by heavy rain
-and rotted by steam and sulphur-fumes. It began to crack and slip away.
-According to one account, a great land-slip descending in the night
-buried the _kainga_ and all in it save one man. Another story states
-that the destruction came in the day-time, and that Te Heu Heu refused
-to flee. He was said to have stood erect, confronting the avalanche,
-with flashing eyes, and with his white hair blown by the wind. At any
-rate, the soil of his ancestress the Earth (he claimed direct descent
-from her) covered him, and for a while his body lay there. After some
-time his tribe disinterred it, and laying it on a carved and ornamented
-bier, bore it into the mountains with the purpose of casting it down
-the burning crater of Tongariro. The intention was dramatic, but the
-result was something of an anticlimax. When nearing their journey’s end
-the bearers were startled by the roar of an eruption. They fled in a
-panic, leaving the remains of their hero to lie on the steep side of
-the cone on some spot never identified. There they were probably soon
-hidden by volcanic dust, and so, “ashes to ashes,” slowly mingled with
-the ancestral mass.[2]
-
-[2] The accepted tradition of Te Heu Heu’s funeral is that given
-above. After these pages went to the printer, however, I lighted upon
-a newspaper article by Mr. Malcolm Ross, in which that gentleman
-states that the bier and the body of the chief were not abandoned on
-the mountain-side, but were hidden in a cave still known to certain
-members of the tribe. The present Te Heu Heu, says Mr. Ross, talks of
-disinterring his ancestor’s remains and burying them near the village
-of Te Rapa.
-
-[Illustration: LAKE TAUPO]
-
-The chiefs of the Maori were often their own minstrels. To compose
-a panegyric on a predecessor was for them a worthy task. Te Heu Heu
-himself was no mean poet. His lament for one of his forefathers has
-beauty, and, in Mr. James Cowan’s version, is well known to
-New Zealand students. But as a poem it was fairly eclipsed by the
-funeral ode to his own memory composed and recited by his brother and
-successor. The translation of this characteristic Maori poem, which
-appeared in Surgeon-Major Thomson’s book, has been out of print for so
-many years that I may reproduce some portions of it here:--
-
-    See o’er the heights of dark Pauhara’s mount
-    The infant morning wakes. Perhaps my friend
-    Returns to me clothed in that lightsome cloud.
-    Alas! I toil alone in this lone world.
-
-                          Yes, thou art gone!
-    Go, thou mighty! go, thou dignified!
-    Go, thou who wert a spreading tree to shade
-    Thy people all when evil hovered round!
-
-    Sleep on, O Chief, in that dark, damp abode!
-    And hold within thy grasp that weapon rare
-    Bequeathed by thy renownéd ancestor.
-
-    Turn yet this once thy bold athletic frame,
-    And let me see thy skin carved o’er with lines
-    Of blue; and let me see again thy face
-    Beautifully chiselled into varied forms!
-
-    Cease, cease thy slumbers, O thou son of Rangi!
-    Wake up! and take thy battle-axe, and tell
-    Thy people of the coming signs, and what
-    Will now befall them. How the foe, tumultuous
-    As are the waves, will rush with spears uplifted,
-    And how thy people will avenge their wrongs.
-
-    No, thou art fallen; and the earth receives
-    Thee as its prey! But yet thy wondrous fame
-    Shall soar on high, resounding o’er the heavens
-
-Loosely speaking, New Zealand is a volcanic archipelago. There are hot
-pools and a noted sanatorium in the Hanmer plains in the middle of the
-Middle Island. There are warm springs far to the north of Auckland,
-near Ohaeawai, where the Maori once gave our troops a beating in the
-early days of our race-conflict with them. Auckland itself, the queen
-of New Zealand towns, is almost a crater city. At any rate, it is
-surrounded by dead craters. You are told that from a hill-top in the
-suburbs you may count sixty-three volcanic cones. Two sister towns,
-Wellington and Christchurch, have been repeatedly taken and well
-shaken by Mother Earth. Old Wellington settlers will gravely remind
-you that some sixty years ago a man, an inoffensive German baron,
-lost his life in a shock there. True, he was not swallowed up or
-crushed by falling ruins; a mirror fell from a wall on to his head.
-This earthquake was followed in 1855 by another as sharp, and one of
-the two so alarmed a number of pioneer settlers that they embarked
-on shipboard to flee from so unquiet a land. Their ship, however, so
-the story runs, went ashore near the mouth of Wellington harbour, and
-they returned to remain, and, in some cases, make their fortunes. In
-1888 a double shock of earthquake wrecked some feet of the cathedral
-spire at Christchurch, nipping off the point of it and the gilded iron
-cross which it sustained, so that it stood for many months looking
-like a broken lead-pencil. A dozen years later, Cheviot, Amuri, and
-Waiau were sharply shaken by an earthquake that showed scant mercy
-to brick chimneys and houses of the material known as cob-and-clay.
-Finally, in the little Kermadec islets, far to the north of Cape
-Maria Van Diemen, we encounter hot pools and submarine explosions,
-and passing seamen have noted there sheets of ejected pumice floating
-and forming a scum on the surface of the ocean. As might be supposed,
-guides and hangers-on about Roto-rua and Taupo revel in tales of
-hairbreadth escapes and hair-raising fatalities. Nine generations ago,
-say the Maori, a sudden explosion of a geyser scalded to death half
-the villagers of Ohinemutu. In the way of smaller mishaps you are told
-how, as two Maori children walked together by Roto-mahana one slipped
-and broke through the crust of silica into the scalding mud beneath.
-The other, trying to lift him out, was himself dragged in and both were
-boiled alive. Near Ohinemutu, three revellers, overfull of confidence
-and bad rum, stepped off a narrow track at night and perished together
-in sulphurous mud and scalding steam. At the extremity of Boiling Point
-a village, or part of a village, is said to have been suddenly engulfed
-in the waters of Roto-rua. At the southern end of Taupo there is, or
-was, a legend current that a large _wharé_ filled with dancers met,
-in a moment, a similar fate. In one case of which I heard, that of a
-Maori woman, who fell into a pool of a temperature above boiling-point,
-a witness assured me that she did not appear to suffer pain long: the
-nervous system was killed by the shock. Near Roto-rua a bather with
-a weak heart was picked up dead. He had heedlessly plunged into a
-pool the fumes and chemical action of which are too strong for a weak
-man. And a certain young English tourist sitting in the pool nicknamed
-Painkiller was half-poisoned by mephitic vapour, and only saved by the
-quickness of a Maori guide. That was a generation ago: nowadays the
-traveller need run no risks. Guides and good medical advice are to be
-had by all who will use them. No sensible person need incur any danger
-whatever.
-
-Among stories of the boiling pools the most pathetic I can recall is of
-a collie dog. His master, a shepherd of the Taupo plateau, stood one
-day on the banks of a certain cauldron idly watching the white steam
-curling over the bubbling surface. His well-loved dog lay stretched on
-the mud crust beside him. In a thoughtless moment the shepherd flung a
-stick into the clear blue pool. In a flash the dog had sprung after it
-into the water of death. Maddened by the poor creature’s yell of pain,
-his master rushed to the brink, mechanically tearing off his coat as he
-ran. In another instant he too would have flung himself to destruction.
-Fortunately an athletic Maori who was standing by caught the poor man
-round the knees, threw him on to his back and held him down till all
-was over with the dog.
-
-[Illustration: IN A HOT POOL]
-
-Near a well-known lake and in a _wharé_ so surrounded by boiling mud,
-scalding steam, hot water, and burning sulphur as to be difficult of
-approach, there lived many years ago two friends. One was a teetotaller
-and a deeply religious man--characteristics not universal in the Hot
-Lakes district at that precise epoch. The other inhabitant was
-more nearly normal in tastes and beliefs. The serious-minded friend
-became noted for having--unpaid, and with his own hands--built a chapel
-in the wilderness. Yet, unhappily, returning home on a thick rainy
-evening he slipped and fell into a boiling pool, where next day he was
-found--dead, of course. In vain the oldest inhabitants of the district
-sought to warn the survivor. He declined to be terrified, or to change
-either his dangerous abode or his path thereto. He persisted in walking
-home late at night whenever it suited him to do so. The “old hands” of
-the district shook their heads and prophesied that there could be but
-one end to such recklessness. And, sure enough, on a stormy night the
-genial and defiant Johnnie slipped in his turn and fell headlong into
-the pool which had boiled his mate. One wild shout he gave, and men
-who were within earshot tore to the spot--“Poor old Johnnie! Gone at
-last! We always said he would!” Out of the darkness and steam, however,
-they were greeted with a sound of vigorous splashing and of expressions
-couched in strong vernacular.
-
-“Why, Johnnie man, aren’t you dead? Aren’t you boiled to death?”
-
-“Not I! There’s no water in this ---- country hot enough to boil me.
-Help me out!”
-
-It appeared that the torrents of rain which had been falling had
-flooded a cold stream hard by, and this, overflowing into the pool, had
-made it pleasantly tepid.
-
-[Illustration: NGONGOTAHA MOUNTAIN]
-
-Needless to say, there is one fatal event, the story of which
-overshadows all other stories told of the thermal zone. It is the one
-convulsion of Nature there, since the settlement of New Zealand, that
-has been great enough to become tragically famous throughout the world,
-apart from its interest to science. The eruption of Mount Tarawera was
-a magnificent and terrible spectacle. Accompanied as it was by the
-blowing-up of Lake Roto-mahana, it destroyed utterly the beautiful
-and extraordinary Pink and White Terraces. There can be no doubt that
-most of those who saw them thought the lost Pink and White Terraces
-the finest sight in the thermal region. They had not the grandeur of
-the volcanoes and the lakes, or the glorious energy of the geysers;
-but they were an astonishing combination of beauty of form and colour,
-of what looked like rocky massiveness with the life and heat of water
-in motion. Then there was nothing else of their kind on the earth at
-all equal to them in scale and completeness. So they could fairly be
-called unique, and the gazer felt on beholding them that in a sense
-this was the vision of a lifetime. Could those who saw them have known
-that the spectacle was to be so transient, this feeling must have been
-much keener. For how many ages they existed in the ferny wilderness,
-seen only by a few savages, geologists may guess at. Only for about
-twelve years were they the resort of any large number of civilised
-men. It is strange how little their fame had gone abroad before
-Hochstetter described them after seeing them in 1859. Bidwill, who was
-twice at Roto-rua in 1839, never mentions them. The naturalist
-Dieffenbach, who saw them in 1842, dismisses them in a paragraph,
-laudatory but short. George French Angas, the artist, who was the
-guest of Te Heu Heu in 1845, and managed, against express orders, to
-sketch Tongariro, does not seem to have heard of them. Yet he of all
-men might have been expected to get wind of such a marvel. For a marvel
-they were, and short as was the space during which they were known to
-the world, their fame must last until the Fish of Maui is engulfed in
-the ocean. There, amid the green manuka and rusty-green bracken, on
-two hill-sides sloping down to a lake of moderate size--Roto-mahana or
-Warm Lake,--strong boiling springs gushed out. They rose from two broad
-platforms, each about a hundred yards square, the flooring of craters
-with reddish-brown sides streaked and patched with sulphur. Their
-hot water, after seething and swirling in two deep pools, descended
-to the lake over a series of ledges, basins, or hollowed terraces,
-which curved out as boldly as the swelling canvas of a ship, so that
-the balustrades or battlements--call them what you will--seemed the
-segments of broken circles. Their irregular height varied from two to
-six feet, and visitors could scale them, as in Egypt they climb the
-pyramids. One terrace, or rather set of terraces, was called White,
-the other Pink: but the White were tinged lightly with pink in spots,
-and their rosy sisters paled here and there, so as to become nearly
-colourless in places. “White,” moreover, scarcely conveys the exact
-impression of Te Tarata, except from a distance or under strong light.
-Domett’s “cataract of marble” summed it up finely. But to be precise,
-where it was smoothest and where water and the play of light made
-the surface gleam or glisten, the silica coating of the White ledges
-reminded you rather of old ivory, or polished bone tinted a faint
-yellow. As for the “Pink” staircase, one traveller would describe it as
-bright salmon-pink, another as pale rose, for eyes in different heads
-see the same things differently. The White Terrace was the higher of
-the two, and descended with a gentler slope than the other. The skirts
-of both spread out into the lake, so that its waters flowed over them.
-The number and fine succession of these ivory arcs and rosy battlements
-made but half their charm. The hot water as it trickled from shelf to
-shelf left its flinty sediment in delicate incrustations--here like the
-folds of a mantle, there resembling fringing lace-work, milk outpoured
-and frozen, trailing parasites or wild arabesques. Or it made you think
-of wreathed sea-foam, snow half-melted, or the coral of South Sea
-reefs. Then among it lay the blue pools, pool after pool, warm, richly
-coloured, glowing; while over every edge and step fell the water,
-trickling, spurting, sparkling, and steaming as it slowly cooled on its
-downward way. So that, though there was a haunting reminder of human
-architecture and sculpture, there was none of the smug finish of man’s
-buildings, nothing of the cold dead lifelessness of carved stone-work.
-The sun shone upon it, the wind played with the water-drops. The blue
-sky--pale by contrast--overarched the deeper blue of the pools. Green
-mosses and vivid ferns grew and flourished on the very edge of the
-steam. What sculptor’s frieze or artist’s structure ever had such a
-framework? In the genial water the bathers, choosing their temperature,
-could float or sit, breathing unconfined air and wondering at the
-softness and strange intensity of colour. They could bathe in the
-day-time when all was sunshine, or on summer nights when the moonlight
-turned the ledges to alabaster. Did the tribute of his provinces build
-for Caracalla such imperial baths as these? No wonder that Nature,
-after showing such loveliness to our age for a moment, snatched it away
-from the desecration of scribbling, defacing, civilised men!
-
-The eruption of Tarawera was preceded by many signs of disturbance.
-Science in chronicling them seems to turn gossip and collect portents
-with the gusto of Plutarch or Froissart. The calamity came on the 10th
-of June, and therefore in early winter. The weather had been stormy
-but had cleared, so no warning could be extracted from its behaviour.
-But, six months before, the cauldron on the uppermost platform of Te
-Tarata had broken out in strange fashion. Again and again the water
-had shrunk far down, and had even been sucked in to the supplying
-pipe, leaving the boiling pit, thirty yards across and as many feet
-deep, quite dry. Then suddenly the water had boiled up and a geyser, a
-mounting column or dome many feet in thickness, had shot up into the
-air, struggling aloft to the height of a hundred and fifty feet. From
-it there went up a pillar of steam four or five times as high, with a
-sound heard far and wide. Geyser-like as the action of the terrace-pool
-had been, nothing on this scale had been recorded before. Then from the
-Bay of Plenty came the news that thousands of dead fish had been cast
-up on the beaches, poisoned by the fumes of some submarine explosion.
-Furthermore, the crater-lake in White Island suddenly went dry--another
-novelty. Next, keen-eyed observers saw steam issuing from the top of
-Ruapehu. They could scarcely believe their eyes, for Ruapehu had been
-quiescent as far back as man’s memory went. But there was no doubt of
-it. Two athletic surveyors clambered up through the snows, and there,
-as they looked down four hundred feet on the crater-lake from the
-precipices that ringed it in, they saw the surface of the water lifted
-and shaken, and steam rising into the icy air. Later on, just before
-the catastrophe, the Maori by Roto-mahana lost their chief by sickness.
-As he lay dying some of his tribe saw a strange canoe, paddled by
-phantom warriors, glide across the lake and disappear. The number of
-men in the canoe was thirteen, and as they flitted by their shape
-changed and they became spirits with dogs’ heads. The tribe, struck
-with terror, gave up hope for their chief. He died, and his body lay
-not yet buried when the fatal night came. Lastly, on the day before
-the eruption, without apparent cause, waves rose and swept across
-the calm surface of Lake Tarawera, to the alarm of the last party of
-tourists who visited the Terrace. Dr. Ralph, one of these, noted also
-that soft mud had apparently just been ejected from the boiler of the
-Pink Terrace, and lay strewn about twenty-five yards away. He and his
-friends hastened away, depressed and uneasy.
-
-No one, however, Maori or white, seriously conceived of anything like
-the destruction that was impending. The landlord of the Wairoa hotel
-grumbled at the native guide Sophia for telling of these ominous
-incidents. And a Maori chief, with some followers, went to camp upon
-two little islets in Roto-mahana lying handy for the hot bathing-pools.
-Why should any one expect that the flat-topped, heavy looking mountain
-of Tarawera would burst out like Krakatoa? True, Tarawera means
-“burning peak,” but the hill, and its companion Ruawahia, must have
-been quiescent for many hundred years. For were not trees growing in
-clefts near the summits with trunks as thick as the height of a tall
-man? Nor was there any tradition of explosions on the spot. Thirteen
-generations ago, said the Maori, a famous chief had been interred
-in or near one of the craters, and Nature had never disturbed his
-resting-place. The surprise, therefore, was almost complete, and only
-the winter season was responsible for the small number of tourists in
-the district on the 10th of June. It was about an hour past midnight
-when the convulsion began. First came slight shocks of earthquake;
-then noises, booming, muttering, and swelling to a roar. The shocks
-became sharper. Some of them seemed like strokes of a gigantic hammer
-striking upwards. Then, after a shock felt for fifty miles round,
-an enormous cloud rose above Tarawera and the mountain spouted fire,
-stones, and dust to the heavens. The burning crater illumined the
-cloud, so that it glowed like a “pillar of fire by night.” And above
-the glow an immense black canopy began to open out and spread for at
-least sixty miles, east, north-east and south-east. Seen from far
-off it had the shape of a monstrous mushroom. In the earlier hours
-of the eruption the outer edges of the mushroom shape were lit up by
-vivid streams and flashes of lightning, shooting upward, downward, or
-stabbing the dark mass with fierce sidelong thrusts. Forked bolts sped
-in fiery zig-zags, or ascended, rocket-fashion, to burst and fall in
-flaming fragments. Sounds followed them like the crackling of musketry.
-Brilliantly coloured, the flashes were blue, golden or orange, while
-some were burning bars of white that stood out, hot and distinct,
-across the red of the vomiting crater. But more appalling even than the
-cloudy canopy with its choking dust, the tempest, the rocking earth,
-or the glare of lightning, was the noise. After two o’clock it became
-an awful and unceasing roar, deafening the ears, benumbing the nerves,
-and bewildering the senses of the unhappy beings within the ring of
-death or imminent danger. It made the windows rattle in the streets
-of Auckland one hundred and fifty miles away, and awoke many sleepers
-in Nelson at a more incredible distance. And with the swelling of the
-roar thick darkness settled down--darkness that covered half a province
-for hours. Seven hours after the destruction began, settlers far away
-on the sea-coast to the east were eating their morning meals--if they
-cared to eat at all--by candle-light. To say that it was a darkness
-that could be felt would be to belittle its horrors absurdly--at any
-rate near Tarawera. For miles out from the mountain it was a darkness
-that smote and killed you--made up as it was of mud and fire, burning
-stones, and suffocating dust. Whence came the mud? Partly, no doubt, it
-was formed by steam acting on the volcanic dust-cloud; but, in part,
-it was the scattered contents of Roto-mahana--a whole lake hurled
-skyward, water and ooze together. With Roto-mahana went its shores,
-the Terraces, several neighbouring smaller lakes and many springs. Yet
-so tremendous was the outburst that even this wreck was not physically
-the chief feature of the destruction. That was the great rift, an
-irregular cleft, fourteen or fifteen miles long, opened across the
-Tarawera and its companion heights. This earth-crack, or succession of
-cracks, varied in depth from three hundred to nine hundred feet. To any
-one looking down into it from one of the hill-tops commanding it, it
-seemed half as deep again. It, and the surrounding black scoria cast up
-from its depths, soon became cold and dead; but, continuing as it did
-to bear the marks of the infernal fires that had filled it, the great
-fissure remained in after years the plainest evidence of that dark
-night’s work. When I had a sight of it in 1891, it was the centre of
-a landscape still clothed with desolation. The effect was dreary and
-unnatural. The deep wound looked an injury to the earth as malign as
-it was gigantic. It was precisely such a scene as would have suggested
-to a zealot of the Middle Ages a vision of the pit of damnation.
-
-[Illustration: LAKE AND MOUNT TARAWERA]
-
-Until six in the morning the eruption did not slacken at all. Hot
-stones and fireballs were carried for miles, and as they fell set huts
-and forests on fire. Along with their devastation came a rain of mud,
-loading the roofs of habitations and breaking down the branches of
-trees. Blasts of hot air were felt, but usually the wind--and it blew
-violently--was bitter cold. At one moment a kind of cyclone or tornado
-rushed over Lake Tikitapu, prostrating and splintering, as it passed,
-the trees close by, and so wrecking a forest famous for its beauty.[3]
-What went on at the centre of the eruption no eye ever saw--the great
-cloud hid it. The dust shot aloft is variously computed to have risen
-six or eight miles. The dust-cloud did not strike down the living as
-did the rain of mud, fire, and stones. But its mischief extended over a
-much wider area. Half a day’s journey out from the crater it deposited
-a layer three inches thick, and it coated even islands miles off the
-east coast. By the sea-shore one observer thought the sound of its
-falling was like a gentle rain. But the effect of the black sand and
-mouse-coloured dust was the opposite of that of rain; for it killed
-the pasture, and the settlers could only save their cattle and sheep
-by driving them hastily off. Insect life was half destroyed, and many
-of the smaller birds shared the fate of the insects. By Lake Roto-iti,
-fourteen miles to the north of the crater, Major Mair, listening
-to the dropping of the sand and dust, compared it to a soft ooze like
-falling snow. It turned the waters of the lake to a sort of soapy grey,
-and overspread the surrounding hills with an unbroken grey sheet.
-The small bull-trout and crayfish of the lake floated dead on the
-surface of the water. After a while birds starved or disappeared. Wild
-pheasants came to the school-house seeking for chance crumbs of food,
-and hungry rats were seen roaming about on the smooth carpet of dust.
-
-[3] See _The Eruption of Tarawera_, by S. Percy Smith.
-
-[Illustration: MAORI WASHING-DAY, OHINEMUTU]
-
-How did the human inhabitants of the district fare at Roto-rua and
-Ohinemutu? Close at hand as they were, no damage was done to life
-or limb. They were outside the range of the destroying messengers.
-But nearer to the volcano, in and about Roto-mahana, utter ruin was
-wrought, and here unfortunately the natives of the Ngati Rangitihi,
-living at Wairoa and on some other spots, could not escape. Some of
-them, indeed, were encamped at the time on islets in Roto-mahana
-itself, and they of course were instantly annihilated in the midst
-of the convulsion. Their fellow tribesmen at Wairoa went through a
-more lingering ordeal, to meet, nearly all of them, the same death.
-About an hour after midnight Mr. Hazard, the Government teacher of the
-native school at Wairoa, was with his family roused by the earthquake
-shocks. Looking out into the night they saw the flaming cloud go up
-from Tarawera, ten miles away. As they watched the spectacle, half in
-admiration, half in terror, the father said to his daughter, “If we
-were to live a hundred years, we should not see such a sight again.”
-He himself did not live three hours, for he died, crushed by the ruin
-of his house as it broke down under falling mud and stones. The wreck
-of the building was set alight by a shower of fireballs, yet the
-schoolmaster’s wife, who was pinned under it by a beam, was dug out
-next day and lived. Two daughters survived with her; three children
-perished. Other Europeans in Wairoa took refuge in a hotel, where for
-hours they stayed, praying and wondering how soon the downpour of
-fire, hot stones, mud and dust would break in upon them. In the end
-all escaped save one English tourist named Bainbridge. The Maori in
-their frail thatched huts were less fortunate; they made little effort
-to save themselves, and nearly the whole tribe was blotted out. One
-of them, the aged wizard Tukoto, is said to have been dug out alive
-after four days: but his hair and beard were matted with the volcanic
-stuff that had been rained upon him. The rescuers cut away the hair,
-and Tukoto’s strength thereupon departed like Samson’s. At any rate
-the old fellow gave up the ghost. In after days he became the chief
-figure in a Maori legend, which now accounts for the eruption. It
-seems that a short while before it, the wife of a neighbouring chief
-had denounced Tukoto for causing the death of her child. Angry at an
-unjust charge, the old wizard prayed aloud to the god of earthquakes,
-and to the spirit of Ngatoro, the magician who kindled Tongariro, to
-send down death upon the chief’s wife and her people. In due
-course destruction came, but the gods did not nicely discriminate, so
-Tukoto and those round him were overwhelmed along with his enemies.
-At another native village not far away the Maori were more fortunate.
-They had living among them Sophia the guide, whose _wharé_ was larger
-and more strongly built than the common run of their huts. Sophia, too,
-was a fine woman, a half-caste, who had inherited calculating power and
-presence of mind from her Scotch father. Under her roof half a hundred
-scared neighbours came crowding, trusting that the strong supporting
-poles would prevent the rain of death from battering it down. When it
-showed signs of giving way, Sophia, who kept cool, set the refugees
-to work to shore it up with any props that could be found; and in the
-end the plucky old woman could boast that no one of those who sought
-shelter with her lost their lives.
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-The township of Roto-rua, with its side-shows Ohinemutu and
-Whaka-rewa-rewa, escaped in the great eruption scot free, or at any
-rate with a light powdering of dust. The place survived to become the
-social centre of the thermal country, and now offers no suggestion
-of ruin or devastation. It has been taken in hand by the Government,
-and is bright, pleasant, and, if anything, too thoroughly comfortable
-and modern. It is scientifically drained and lighted with electric
-light. Hotels and tidy lodging-houses look out upon avenues planted
-with exotic trees. The public gardens cover a peninsula jutting out
-into the lake, and their flowery winding paths lead to lawns and
-tennis-courts. Tea is served there by Maori waitresses whose caps and
-white aprons might befit Kensington Gardens; and a band plays. If the
-visitors to Roto-rua do not exactly “dance on the slopes of a volcano,”
-at least they chat and listen to music within sight of the vapour of
-fumaroles and the steam of hot springs. A steam launch will carry them
-from one lake to another, or coaches convey them to watch geysers
-made to spout for their diversion. They may picnic and eat sandwiches
-in spots where they can listen to muddy cauldrons of what looks like
-boiling porridge, sucking and gurgling in disagreeable fashion. Or they
-may watch gouts of dun-coloured mud fitfully issuing from cones like
-ant-hills--mud volcanoes, to wit.
-
-For the country around is not dead or even sleeping, and within a
-circuit of ten miles from Roto-rua there is enough to be seen to
-interest an intelligent sight-seer for many days. Personally I do not
-think Roto-rua the finest spot in the thermal region. Taupo, with its
-lake, river, and great volcanoes, has, to my mind, higher claims. Much
-as Roto-rua has to show, I suspect that the Waiotapu valley offers a
-still better field to the man of science. However, the die has been
-cast, and Roto-rua, as the terminus of the railway and the seat of the
-Government sanatorium, has become a kind of thermal capital. There is
-no need to complain of this. Its attractions are many, and, when they
-are exhausted, you can go thence to any other point of the region. You
-may drive to Taupo by one coach-road and return by another, or may
-easily reach Waiotapu in a forenoon. Anglers start out from Roto-rua to
-fish in a lake and rivers where trout are more than usually abundant.
-You can believe if you like that the chief difficulty met with by
-Roto-rua fishermen is the labour of carrying home their enormous
-catches. But it is, I understand, true that the weight of trout caught
-by fly or minnow in a season exceeds forty tons. At any rate--to drop
-the style of auctioneers’ advertisements--the trout, chiefly of the
-rainbow kind, are very plentiful, and the sport very good. I would say
-no harder thing of the attractions of Roto-rua and its circuit than
-this,--those who have spent a week there must not imagine that they
-have seen the thermal region. They have not even “done” it, still less
-do they know it. Almost every part of it has much to interest, and
-Roto-rua is the beginning, not the end of it all. I know an energetic
-colonist who, when travelling through Italy, devoted one whole day to
-seeing Rome. Even he, however, agrees with me that a month is all too
-short a time for the New Zealand volcanic zone. Sociable or elderly
-tourists have a right to make themselves snug at Roto-rua or Wairakei.
-But there are other kinds of travellers; and holiday-makers and lovers
-of scenery, students of science, sportsmen, and workers seeking for
-the space and fresh air of the wilderness, will do well to go farther
-afield.
-
-At Roto-rua, as at other spots in the zone, you are in a realm of
-sulphur. It is in the air as well as the water, tickles your throat,
-and blackens the silver in your pocket. Amongst many compensating
-returns it brightens patches of the landscape with brilliant streaks
-of many hues--not yellow or golden only, but orange, green, blue,
-blood-red, and even purple. Often where the volcanic mud would be most
-dismal the sulphur colours and glorifies it. Alum is found frequently
-alongside it, whitening banks and pool in a way that makes Englishmen
-think of their chalk downs. One mountain, Maunga Kakaramea (Mount
-Striped-Earth), has slopes that suggest an immense Scottish plaid.
-
-[Illustration: WAIROA GEYSER]
-
-But more beautiful than the sulphur stripes or the coloured pools,
-and startling and uncommon in a way that neither lakes nor mountains
-can be, are the geysers. Since the Pink and White Terraces were blown
-up, they are, perhaps, the most striking and uncommon feature of the
-region, which, if it had nothing else to display, would still be well
-worth a visit. They rival those of the Yellowstone and surpass those
-of Iceland. New Zealanders have made a study of geysers, and know that
-they are a capricious race. They burst into sudden activity, and as
-unexpectedly go to sleep again. The steam-jet of Orakei-Korako, which
-shot out of the bank of the Waikato at such an odd angle and astonished
-all beholders for a few years, died down inexplicably. So did the
-wonderful Waimangu, which threw a column of mud, stones, steam, and
-boiling water at least 1500 feet into mid-air. The Waikité Geyser,
-after a long rest, began to play again at the time of the Tarawera
-eruption. That was natural enough. But why did it suddenly cease to
-move after the opening of the railway to Roto-rua, two miles away? Mr.
-Ruskin might have sympathised with it for so resenting the intrusion of
-commercialism; but tourists did not. Great was the rejoicing when, in
-1907, Waikité awoke after a sleep of thirteen years. Curiously enough,
-another geyser, Pohutu, seems likewise attentive to public events, for
-on the day upon which the Colony became a Dominion it spouted for no
-less than fourteen hours, fairly eclipsing the numerous outpourings of
-oratory from human rivals which graced the occasion. There are geysers
-enough and to spare in the volcanic zone, to say nothing of the chances
-of a new performer gushing out at any moment. Some are large enough to
-be terrific, others small enough to be playful or even amusing. The
-hydrodynamics of Nature are well understood at Roto-rua, where Mr.
-Malfroy’s ingenious toy, the artificial geyser, is an exact imitation
-of their structure and action. The curious may examine this, or they
-may visit the extinct geyser, Te Waro, down the empty pipe of which
-a man may be lowered. At fifteen feet below the surface he will find
-himself in a vaulted chamber twice as roomy as a ship’s cabin and paved
-and plastered with silica. From the floor another pipe leads to lower
-subterranean depths. In the days of Te Waro’s activity steam rushing
-up into this cavern from below would from time to time force the
-water there violently upward: so the geyser played. To-day there are
-geysers irritable enough to be set in motion by slices of soap, just
-as there are solfataras which a lighted match can make to roar, and
-excitable pools which a handful of earth will stir into effervescence.
-More impressive are the geysers which spout often, but whose precise
-time for showing energy cannot be counted on--which are, in fact, the
-unexpected which is always happening. Very beautiful are the larger
-geysers, as, after their first roaring outburst and ascent, they stand,
-apparently climbing up, their effort to overcome the force of gravity
-seeming to grow greater and greater as they climb. Every part of the
-huge column seems to be alive; and, indeed, all is in motion within
-it. Innumerable little fountains gush up on its sides, to curl back
-and fall earthwards. The sunlight penetrates the mass of water, foam,
-and steam, catching the crystal drops and painting rainbows which
-quiver and dance in the wind. Bravely the column holds up, till, its
-strength spent, it falters and sways, and at last falls or sinks slowly
-down, subsiding into a seething whirlpool. Brief, as a rule, is the
-spectacle, but while the fountain is striving to mount skyward it is
-“all a wonder and a wild desire.”
-
-[Illustration: COOKING IN A HOT SPRING]
-
-Two Maori villages, one at Ohinemutu, the other at Whaka-rewa-rewa, are
-disordered collections of irregular huts. Among them the brown natives
-of the thermal district live and move with a gravity and dignity
-that even their half-gaudy, half-dingy European garb cannot wholly
-spoil. Passing their lives as they do on the edge of the cold lake,
-and surrounded by hot pools and steam-jets, they seem a more or less
-amphibious race, quite untroubled by anxiety about subterranean
-action. They make all the use they can of Nature’s forces, employing
-the steam and hot water for various daily wants. Of course they bathe
-incessantly and wash clothes in the pools. They will sit up to their
-necks in the warm fluid, and smoke luxuriously in a bath that does
-not turn cold. But more interesting to watch is their cooking. Here
-the steam of the blow-holes is their servant; or they will lay their
-food in baskets of flax in some clean boiling spring, choosing, of
-course, water that is tasteless. Cooking food by steam was and still is
-the favourite method of the Maori. Where Nature does not provide the
-steam, they dig ovens in the earth called _hangi_, and, wrapping their
-food in leaves, place it therein on red-hot stones. Then they spread
-more leaves over them, pour water upon these, and cover the hole with
-earth. When the oven is opened the food is found thoroughly cooked,
-and in this respect much more palatable than some of the cookery of
-the colonists. In their culinary work the Maoris have always been neat
-and clean. This makes their passion for those two terrible delicacies,
-putrid maize and dried shark, something of a puzzle.
-
-Life at Roto-rua is not all sight-seeing; there is a serious side to
-it. Invalids resort thither, as they do to Taupo, in ever-increasing
-numbers. The State sanatorium, with its brand-new bath-house, is as
-well equipped now as good medical bathing-places are in Europe, and is
-directed by a physician who was in former years a doctor of repute at
-Bath. Amid the _embarras des richesses_ offered by the thermal springs
-of the zone, Roto-rua has been selected as his headquarters, because
-there two chief and distinct kinds of hot healing waters are found in
-close neighbourhood, and can be used in the same establishment. The two
-are acid-sulphur and alkaline-sulphur, and both are heavily loaded with
-silica. Unlike European springs they gush out at boiling-point, and
-their potency is undoubted. Sufferers tormented with gout or crippled
-with rheumatism seek the acid waters; the alkaline act as a nervous
-sedative and cure various skin diseases. There are swimming baths for
-holiday-makers who have nothing the matter with them, and massage and
-the douche for the serious patients. Persons without money are cared
-for by the servants of the Government. Wonderful cures are reported,
-and as the fame of the healing waters becomes better and better
-established the number of successful cases steadily increases. For
-the curable come confidently expecting to be benefited, and this, of
-course, is no small factor in the efficacy of the baths, indisputable
-as their strength is. Apart, too, from its springs, Roto-rua is a
-sunny place, a thousand feet above the sea. The air is light even in
-midsummer, and the drainage through the porous pumice and silica is
-complete. In such a climate, amid such healing influences and such
-varied and interesting surroundings, the sufferer who cannot gain
-health at Roto-rua must be in a bad way indeed.
-
-[Illustration: THE CHAMPAGNE CAULDRON]
-
-In the middle of Roto-rua Lake, a green hill in the broad blue
-surface, rises the isle of Mokoia. There is nothing extraordinary in
-the way of beauty there. Still, it is high and shapely, with enough
-foliage to feather the rocks and soften the outlines. Botanists
-know it as one of the few spots away from the sea-beach where the
-crimson-flowering pohutu-kawa has deigned to grow. In any case, the
-scene of the legend of Hinemoa is sure of a warm corner in all New
-Zealand hearts. The story of the chief’s daughter, and her swim by
-night across the lake to join her lover on the island, has about it
-that quality of grace with which most Maori tales are but scantily
-draped. How many versions of it are to be found in print I do not dare
-to guess, and shall not venture to add another to their number. For
-two of New Zealand’s Prime Ministers have told the story well, and I
-can refer my readers to the prose of Grey and the verse of Domett.
-Only do I wish that I had heard Maning, the Pakeha Maori, repeat the
-tale, standing on the shore of Mokoia, as he repeated it there to Dr.
-Moore. In passing I may, however, do homage to one of the few bits
-of sweet romance to be found in New Zealand literature. Long may my
-countrymen steadfastly refuse to disbelieve a word of it! For myself,
-as one who has bathed in Hinemoa’s bath, I hold by every sentence of
-the tradition, and am fully persuaded that Hinemoa’s love-sick heart
-was soothed, as she sat on her flat-topped rock on the mainshore, by
-the soft music of the native trumpet blown by her hero on the island.
-After all, the intervening water was some miles broad, and even that
-terrific instrument, a native trumpet, might be softened by such a
-distance.
-
-Long after the happy union of its lovers, Mokoia saw another sight when
-Hongi, “eater of men,” marched down with his Ngapuhi musketeers from
-the north to exterminate the Arawa of the lake country. To the Roto-rua
-people Mokoia had in times past been a sure refuge. In camp there, they
-commanded the lake with their canoes; no invader could reach them,
-for no invader could bring a fleet overland. So it had always been,
-and the Mokoians trusting thereto, paddled about the lake defying and
-insulting Hongi and his men in their camp on the farther shore. Yet
-so sure of victory were the Ngapuhi chiefs that each of the leaders
-selected as his own booty the war-canoe that seemed handsomest in his
-eyes. Hongi had never heard of the device by which Mahomet II. captured
-Constantinople, but he was a man of original methods, and he decided
-that canoes could be dragged twenty miles or more from the sea-coast
-to Lake Roto-iti. It is said that an Arawa slave or renegade in his
-camp suggested the expedient and pointed out the easiest road. At any
-rate the long haul was successfully achieved, and the canoes of the
-Plumed Ones--Ngapuhi--paddled from Roto-iti into Roto-rua. Then all was
-over except the slaughter, for the Mokoians had but half-a-dozen guns,
-and Hongi’s musketeers from their canoes could pick them off without
-landing.
-
-[Illustration: EVENING ON LAKE ROTO-RUA]
-
-Fifteen hundred men, women, and children are said to have perished
-in the final massacre. Whether these figures were “official” I cannot
-say. The numbers of the slain computed in the Maori stories of their
-wars between 1816 and 1836 are sometimes staggering; but scant mercy
-was shown, and all tradition concurs in rating the death-roll far
-higher than anything known before or after. And Mokoia was crowded with
-refugees when it fell before Hongi’s warriors. Of course, many of the
-islanders escaped. Among them a strong swimmer, Hori (George) Haupapa,
-took to the lake and managed to swim to the farther shore. The life
-he thus saved on that day of death proved to be long, for Haupapa was
-reputed to be a hundred years old when he died in peace.
-
-The famous Hongi was certainly a savage of uncommon quickness
-of perception, as his circumventing of the Mokoians in their
-lake-stronghold shows. He had shrewdness enough to perceive that the
-Maori tribe which should first secure firearms would hold New Zealand
-at its mercy; and he was sufficient of a man of business to act upon
-this theory with success and utter ruthlessness. He probably did more
-to destroy his race than any white or score of whites; yet his memory
-is not, so far as I know, held in special detestation by the Maori.
-Two or three better qualities this destructive cannibal seems to have
-had, for he protected the missionaries and advised his children to
-do so likewise. Then he had a soft voice and courteous manner, and,
-though not great of stature, must have been tough, for the bullet-wound
-in his chest which finally killed him took two years in doing so.
-Moreover, his dying exhortation to his sons, “Be strong, be brave!” was
-quite in the right spirit for the last words of a Maori warrior.
-
-Hongi would seem to be an easy name enough to pronounce. Yet none has
-suffered more from “the taste and fancy of the speller” in books,
-whether written by Englishmen or Colonists. Polack calls him E’Ongi,
-and other early travellers, Shongee, Shongi, and Shungie. Finally Mr.
-J. A. Froude, not to be outdone in inaccuracy, pleasantly disposes of
-him, in _Oceana_, as “Hangi.”
-
-“Old Colonial,” in an article written in the _Pall Mall Gazette_, gives
-Mokoia as the scene of a notable encounter between Bishop Selwyn and
-Tukoto, a Maori tohunga or wizard. To Selwyn, who claimed to be the
-servant of an all-powerful God, the tohunga is reported to have said,
-as he held out a brown withered leaf, “Can you, then, by invoking your
-God, make this dead leaf green again?” The Bishop answered that no man
-could do that. Thereupon Tukoto, after chanting certain incantations,
-threw the leaf into the air, and, lo! its colour changed, and it
-fluttered to earth fresh and green once more.
-
-[Illustration: PLANTING POTATOES]
-
-Among many odd stories told of the juggling feats of the vanishing race
-of tohungas this is one of the most curious. More than one version of
-it is to be found. For example, my friend Edward Tregear, in his book
-_The Maori Race_, relates it as an episode of a meeting between Selwyn
-and Te Heu Heu, where the trick was the _riposte_ of the chief to
-an appeal by the Bishop to him to change his faith. In that case the
-place of the encounter could scarcely have been Mokoia, or the tohunga
-have been Tukoto.
-
-Whatever may be said--and a great deal may be said--against the
-tohunga as the foe of healing and knowledge, the religious prophets
-who from time to time rise among the Maori are not always entirely
-bad influences. A certain Rua, who just now commands belief among his
-countrymen, has managed to induce a following to found a well-built
-village on a hill-side among the forests of the Uriwera country. There,
-attended by several wives, he inhabits a comfortable house. Hard
-by rises a large circular temple, a wonderful effort of his native
-workmen. He has power enough to prohibit tobacco and alcohol in his
-settlement, to enforce sanitary rules, and to make his disciples clear
-and cultivate a large farm. Except that he forbids children from going
-to school, he does not appear to set himself against the Government. He
-poses, I understand, as a successor of Christ, and is supposed to be
-able to walk on the surface of water. His followers were anxious for
-ocular proof of this, and a hint of their desire was conveyed to the
-prophet. He assembled them on a river’s bank and gravely inquired, “Do
-you all from your hearts believe that I can walk on that water?” “We
-do,” was the response. “Then it is not necessary for me to do it,” said
-he, and walked composedly back to his hut.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER VI
-
-ALP, FIORD, AND SANCTUARY
-
-
-[Illustration: THE WAIRAU GORGE]
-
-In one way the south-western is the most enjoyable division of
-picturesque New Zealand. There is little here to regret or fear for.
-Unlike the beauty of the northern forests, here is a grandeur that will
-not pass away. Even in the thermal zone you are haunted by the memory
-of the lost terraces; but among the alps and fiords of the south-west
-Nature sits very strongly entrenched. From the Buller Gorge to Puysegur
-Point, and from Lake Menzies to Lake Hau-roto, both the climate and
-the lie of the land combine to keep man’s destructiveness at bay.
-Longitudinal ridges seam this territory from north to south--not a
-single dividing chain, but half-a-dozen ranges, lofty, steep, and
-entangled. Rivers thread every valley, and are the swiftest, coldest,
-and most dangerous of that treacherous race, the mountain torrents
-of our islands. On the eastern and drier side, settlement can do
-little to spoil the impressiveness of the mountains; for the great
-landscapes--at any rate north of Lake Hawea--usually begin at or near
-the snow-line. The edge of this is several thousand feet lower
-than in Switzerland. Below it comes a zone sometimes dotted with
-beech-woods, monotonous and seldom very high, but beautiful in their
-vesture of grey-green lichen, and carpeted with green and golden moss,
-often deep and not always soaked and slimy underneath. Or in the open
-the sub-alpine zone is redeemed by an abundance of ground-flowers such
-as our lower country cannot show. For this is the home of the deep,
-bowl-shaped buttercup called the shepherd’s lily, of mountain-daisies
-and veronicas many and varied, and of those groves of the ribbon-wood
-that are more lovely than orchards of almond-trees in spring-time. On
-the rocks above them the mountaineer who has climbed in Switzerland
-will recognise the edelweiss. Among the blanched snow-grass and coarse
-tussocks, the thorny “Wild Irishman,” and the spiky “Spaniard,” with
-its handsome _chevaux-de-frise_ of yellow-green bayonets, conspire
-to make riding difficult on the flats and terraces. These last often
-attract the eye by their high faces, bold curves, and curious, almost
-smooth, regularity. For the rest, the more eastern of the mountains
-usually become barer and duller as the watershed is left farther
-behind. Oases of charm they have, where the flora of some sheltered
-ravine or well-hidden lake detains the botanist; but, as a rule, their
-brilliant sunshine and exhilarating air, their massive forms and wild
-intersecting rivers, have much to do to save them from being summed up
-as stony, arid, bleak, and tiresome.
-
-[Illustration: IN THE HOOKER VALLEY]
-
-At its worst, however, the eastern region may claim to be serviceable
-to the lover of scenery as well as to the sheep-farmer. Its
-thinly-grassed slopes, bare rocks, and fan-shaped shingle-slips
-furnish, at any rate, a foil to the grandeur of the central range and
-the luxuriance of the west. It is, indeed, not easy to believe that
-such glaciers and passes, such lakes and sea-gulfs, lie beyond the
-stern barrier, and the enjoyment, when wonderland is penetrated, is all
-the greater. For the rest, any English reader who cares to feel himself
-among our tussock-clad ranges will find a masterly sketch of them and
-their atmosphere in the first chapters of Samuel Butler’s _Erewhon_.
-Butler’s sheep-station, “Mesopotamia” by name, lay among the alps of
-Canterbury, and the satirist himself did some exploring work in his
-pastoral days, work concerning which I recall a story told me by an old
-settler whom I will call the Sheriff. This gentleman, meeting Butler
-one day in Christchurch in the early sixties, noticed that his face and
-neck were burned to the colour of red-chocolate. “Hullo, my friend,”
-said he, “you have been among the snow!” “Hush!” answered Butler in an
-apprehensive whisper, and looking round the smoking-room nervously,
-“how do you know that?” “By the colour of your face; nothing more,”
-was the reply. They talked a while, and Butler presently admitted that
-he had been up to the dividing range and had seen a great sight away
-beyond it. “I’ve found a hundred thousand acres of ‘country,’” said
-he. “Naturally I wish you to keep this quiet till I have proved
-it and applied to the Government for a pastoral licence.” “Well, I
-congratulate you,” said the Sheriff. “If it will carry sheep you’ve
-made your fortune, that’s all”; but he intimated his doubts as to
-whether the blue expanse seen from far off could be grass country. And
-indeed, when next he met Butler, the latter shook his head ruefully:
-“You were quite right; it was all bush.” I have often wondered whether
-that experience was the basis of the passage that tells of the
-thrilling discovery of Erewhon beyond the pass guarded by the great
-images.
-
-In one of his letters about the infant Canterbury settlement Butler
-gives a description of Aorangi, or Mount Cook, which, so far as I know,
-is the earliest sketch of the mountain by a writer of note. It was,
-however, not an Englishman, but a German man of science, Sir Julius
-von Haast, who published the first careful and connected account of
-the Southern Alps. Von Haast was not a mountaineer, but a geologist,
-and though he attacked Aorangi, he did not ascend more than two-thirds
-of it. But he could write, and had an eye for scenery as well as for
-strata. The book which he published on the geology of Canterbury and
-Westland did very much the same service to the Southern Alps that von
-Hochstetter’s contemporary work did for the hot lakes. The two German
-_savants_ brought to the knowledge of the world outside two very
-different but remarkable regions. It is true that the realm of flowery
-uplands, glaciers, ice-walls, and snow-fields told of by von Haast, had
-nothing in it so uncommon as the geysers and so strange as the pink
-and white terraces made familiar by von Hochstetter. But the higher
-Southern Alps, when once you are among them, may fairly challenge
-comparison with those of Switzerland. Their elevation is not equal by
-two or three thousand feet, but the lower level of their snow-line just
-about makes up the disparity. Then, too, on the flanks of their western
-side the mountains of the south have a drapery of forest far more
-varied and beautiful than the Swiss pine woods. On the western side,
-too, the foot of the mountain rampart is virtually washed by the ocean.
-Take the whole mountain territory of the south-west with its passes,
-lakes, glaciers, river-gorges, and fiords, and one need not hesitate to
-assert that it holds its own when compared with what Nature has done in
-Switzerland, Savoy, and Dauphiny.
-
-[Illustration: MOUNT COOK]
-
-Aorangi, with its 12,349 feet, exceeds the peak of Teneriffe by 159
-feet. It is the highest point in our islands, for Mount Tasman, its
-neighbour, which comes second, fails to equal it by 874 feet. Only
-two or three other summits surpass 11,000 feet, and the number which
-attain to anything over 10,000 is not great. From the south-west,
-Aorangi, with the ridge attached to it, resembles the high-pitched
-roof of a Gothic church with a broad, massive spire standing up from
-the northern end. When, under strong sunlight, the ice glitters on the
-steep crags, and the snow-fields, unearthly in their purity, contrast
-with the green tint of the crawling glaciers, the great mountain is a
-spectacle worthy of its fame. Yet high and shapely as it is, and
-worthy of its name, Cloud-in-the-Heavens, it is not the most beautiful
-mountain in the islands. That honour may be claimed by Egmont, just
-as Tongariro may demand precedence as the venerated centre of Maori
-reverence and legend. Nor, formidable as Aorangi looks, is it, I should
-imagine, as impracticable as one or two summits farther south, notably
-Mount Balloon. However, unlike Kosciusko in Australia, it is a truly
-imposing height, and worthy of its premier place. With it the story
-of New Zealand alpine-climbing has been bound up for a quarter of a
-century, and such romance as that story has to show is chiefly found
-in attempts, successful and unsuccessful, to reach the topmost point
-of Aorangi. Canterbury had been settled for thirty-two years before
-the first of these was made. For the low snow-line, great cliffs, and
-enormous glaciers of the Southern Alps have their especial cause of
-origin. They bespeak an extraordinary steepness in the rock faces, and
-a boisterous climate with rapid and baffling changes of temperature.
-Not a climber or explorer amongst them but has been beaten back at
-times by tempests, or held a prisoner for many hours, listening
-through a sleepless night to the howling of north-west or south-west
-wind--lucky if he is not drenched to the skin by rain or flood. As for
-the temperature, an observer once noted a fall of fifty-three degrees
-in a few hours. On the snow-fields the hot sun blisters the skin of
-your face and neck, and even at a lower level makes a heavy coat an
-intolerable burden; but the same coat--flung impatiently on the ground
-and left there--may be picked up next morning frozen as stiff as a
-board. These extremes of heat and cold, these sudden and furious gales,
-are partly, I imagine, the cause of the loose and rotten state of much
-of the rock-surface, of the incessant falls of stones, ice-blocks, and
-snow, and of the number and size of the avalanches. At any rate, the
-higher alps showed a front which, to ordinary dwellers on our plains,
-seemed terrific, and which even gave pause to mountain-climbers of
-some Swiss experience. So even von Haast’s book did not do much more
-than increase the number of visitors to the more accessible glaciers
-and sub-alpine valleys. The spirit of mountaineering lay dormant year
-after year, and it was not until 1882 that an unexpected invader from
-Europe delivered the sudden and successful stroke that awoke it. The
-raider was Mr. Green, an Irish clergyman, who, with two Swiss guides,
-Boss and Kaufmann, landed in the autumn of 1882. His object was the
-ascent of Aorangi; he had crossed the world to make it. He found our
-inner mountains just as Nature had left them, and, before beginning
-his climb, had to leave human life behind, and camp at the foot of the
-mountain with so much of the resources of civilisation as he could take
-with him. One of his first encounters with a New Zealand river in a
-hurry ended in the loss of his light cart, which was washed away. Its
-wrecked and stranded remains lay for years in the river-bed a battered
-relic of a notable expedition. To cap his troubles, a pack-horse
-carrying flour, tea, sugar, and spare clothing, coolly lay down when
-fording a shallow torrent, and rolled on its back--and therefore on
-its pack--in the rapid water. Ten days of preliminary tramping and
-clambering, during which five separate camps were formed, only carried
-the party with their provisions and apparatus to a height of less
-than 4000 feet above the sea. They had toiled over moraine boulders,
-been entangled in dense and prickly scrubs, and once driven back by a
-fierce north-wester. On the other hand the scenery was glorious and
-the air exhilarating. Nothing round them seemed tame except the wild
-birds. Keas, wekas, and blue ducks were as confiding and fearless as
-our birds are wont to be till man has taught them distrust and terror.
-Among these the Swiss obtained the raw material of a supper almost
-as easily as in a farmyard. On the 25th of February the final ascent
-was begun. But Aorangi did not yield at the first summons. Days were
-consumed in futile attempts from the south and east. On their first
-day they were checked by finding themselves on a crumbling knife-like
-ridge, from which protruded spines of rock that shook beneath their
-tread. A kick, so it seemed, would have sent the surface into the abyss
-on either side. The bridge that leads to the Mahometan paradise could
-not be a more fearful passage. Two days later they were baffled on the
-east side by walls of rock from which even Boss and Kaufmann turned
-hopelessly away. It was not until March 2, after spending a night above
-the clouds, that they hit upon a new glacier, the Linda, over which
-they found a winding route to the north-eastern ridge which joins
-Cook to Tasman. The day’s work was long and severe, and until late in
-the afternoon the issue was doubtful. A gale burst upon them from the
-north-west, and they had to go on through curling mists and a wind that
-chilled them to the bone. It was six o’clock in the evening when they
-found themselves standing on the icy scalp of the obstinate mountain,
-and even then they did not attain the highest point. There was not a
-moment to lose if they were to regain some lower point of comparative
-security; for March is the first month of autumn in South New Zealand,
-and the evenings then begin to draw in. So Mr. Green had to retreat
-when within either a few score feet or a few score yards of the actual
-goal. As it was, night closed in on the party when they were but a
-short way down, and they spent the dark hours on a ledge less than two
-feet wide, high over an icy ravine. Sleep or faintness alike meant
-death. They stood there hour after hour singing, stamping, talking, and
-listening to the rain pattering on rock and hissing on snow. All night
-long the wind howled: the wall at their backs vibrated to the roar of
-the avalanches: water streaming down its face soaked their clothing.
-For food they had three meat lozenges each. They sucked at empty
-pipes, and pinched and nudged each other to drive sleep away. By the
-irony of fate it happened that close beneath them were wide and almost
-comfortable shelves. But night is not the time to wander about the face
-of a precipice, looking for sleeping berths, 10,000 feet above the sea.
-Mr. Green and his guides were happy to escape with life and limb, and
-not to have to pay such a price for victory as was paid by Whymper’s
-party after scaling the Matterhorn.
-
-Mr. Green’s climb, the tale of which is told easily in his own bright
-and workmanlike book, gave an enlivening shock to young New Zealand.
-It had been left to a European to show them the way; but the lesson
-was not wasted. They now understood that mountains were something
-more than rough country, some of which carried sheep, while some did
-not. They learned that they had an alpine playground equal to any in
-the Old World--a new realm where danger might be courted and exploits
-put on record. The dormant spirit of mountaineering woke up at last.
-Many difficulties confronted the colonial lads. They had everything
-to learn and no one to teach them. Without guides, equipment, or
-experience--without detailed maps, or any preliminary smoothing of the
-path, they had to face unforeseen obstacles and uncommon risks. They
-had to do everything for themselves. Only by endangering their necks
-could they learn the use of rope and ice-axe. Only by going under
-fire, and being grazed or missed by stones and showers of ice, could
-they learn which hours of the day and conditions of the weather were
-most dangerous, and when slopes might be sought and when ravines must
-be shunned. They had to teach themselves the trick of the _glissade_
-and the method of crossing frail bridges of snow. Appliances they
-could import from Europe. As for guides, some of them turned guides
-themselves. Of course they started with a general knowledge of the
-climate, of “roughing it” in the hills, and of life in the open. They
-could scramble to the heights to which sheep scramble, and could turn
-round in the wilderness without losing their way. Thews and sinews,
-pluck and enthusiasm, had to do the rest, and gradually did it. As
-Mr. Malcolm Ross, one of the adventurous band, has pointed out with
-legitimate pride, their experience was gained and their work done
-without a single fatal accident--a happy record, all the more striking
-by contrast with the heavy toll of life levied by the rivers of our
-mountain territory. The company of climbers, therefore, must have
-joined intelligence to resolution, for, up to the present, they have
-broken nothing but records. Mr. Mannering, one of the earliest of them,
-attacked Aorangi five times within five years. After being thwarted by
-such accidents as rain-storms, the illness of a companion, and--most
-irritating of all--the dropping of a “swag” holding necessaries,
-he, with his friend Mr. Dixon, at last attained to the ice-cap in
-December 1890. Their final climb was a signal exhibition of courage and
-endurance. They left their bivouac (7480 feet in air) at four o’clock
-in the morning, and, after nine hours of plodding upward in soft snow
-had to begin the labour of cutting ice-steps. In the morning they were
-roasted by the glaring sun; in the shade of the afternoon their rope
-and coats were frozen stiff, and the skin from their hands stuck to the
-steel of their ice-axes. Dixon, a thirteen-stone man, fell through a
-snow-wreath, and was only saved by a supreme effort. Pelted by falling
-ice the two amateurs cut their way onward, and at half-past five in
-the evening found themselves unscathed and only about a hundred feet
-below the point gained by Mr. Green and his Swiss. They made an effort
-to hew steps up to the apex of the ice-cap, but time was too short and
-the wind was freshening; as it was they had to work their way down by
-lantern light. Now they had to creep backwards, now to clean out the
-steps cut in the daylight; now their way was lost, again they found
-it, and discovered that some gulf had grown wider. They did not regain
-their bivouac till nearly three in the morning after twenty-three hours
-of strain to body and mind.[4]
-
-[4] For Mr. Mannering’s narrative see _With Axe and Rope in the New
-Zealand Alps_, London, 1891.
-
-[Illustration: MOUNT SEFTON]
-
-Four years later came victory, final and complete, and won in a fashion
-peculiarly gratifying to young New Zealand. News came that Mr. E. A.
-Fitzgerald, a skilled mountaineer, was coming from Europe to achieve
-the technical success which Green and Mannering had just missed.
-Some climbers of South Canterbury resolved to anticipate him, and,
-for the honour of the colony, be the first to stand on the coveted
-pinnacle. A party of three--Messrs. Clark, Graham, and Fyfe--left
-Timaru, accordingly, and on Christmas Day 1894 achieved their object.
-Mr. Fitzgerald arrived only to find that he had been forestalled,
-and must find other peaks to conquer. Of these there was no lack;
-he had some interesting experiences. After his return to England he
-remarked to the writer that climbing in the Andes was plain and
-easy in comparison with the dangers and difficulties of the Southern
-Alps. One of his severest struggles, however, was not with snow and
-ice, but with a river and forest in Westland. Years before, Messrs.
-Harper and Blakiston had surmounted the saddle--or, more properly
-speaking, wall--at the head of the Hooker glacier, and looking over
-into Westland, had ascertained that it would be possible to go down
-to the coast by that way. Government surveyors had confirmed this
-impression, but no one had traversed the pass. It remained for Mr.
-Fitzgerald to do this and show that the route was practicable. He and
-his guide Zurbriggen accomplished the task. They must, however, have
-greatly underestimated the difficulties which beset those who would
-force a passage along the bed of an untracked western torrent. Pent
-in a precipitous gorge, they had to wade and stumble along a wild
-river-trough. Here they clung to or clambered over dripping rocks,
-there they were numbed in the ice-cold and swirling water. Enormous
-boulders encumbered and almost barred the ravine, so that the river
-itself had had to scoop out subterranean passages through which the
-explorers were fain to creep. Taking to the shore, as they won their
-way downward, they tried to penetrate the matted scrubs. Even had they
-been bushmen, and armed with tomahawks and slashers, they would have
-found this no easy task. As it was they returned to the river-bed and
-trudged along, wet and weary; their provisions gave out, and Fitzgerald
-had to deaden the pangs of hunger by chewing black tobacco. He
-found the remedy effectual, but very nauseating. Without gun or powder
-and shot, and knowing nothing of the botany of the country, they
-ran very close to starvation, and must have lost their lives had a
-sudden flood filled the rivers’ tributaries and so cut them off from
-the coast. As it was they did the final forty-eight hours of walking
-without food, and were on their last legs when they heard the dogs
-barking in a surveyor’s camp, where their adventure ended.
-
-Not caring to follow in the wake of others, Mr. Fitzgerald left Aorangi
-alone, but Zurbriggen climbed thither on his own account in 1895.
-An Anglo-Colonial party gained the top ten years later, so that the
-ice-cap may now almost be classed among familiar spots. Still, as late
-as 1906 something still remained to be done on the mountain--namely,
-to go up on one side and go down on the other. This feat, so simple
-to state, but so difficult to perform, was accomplished last year by
-three New Zealanders and an Englishman. To make sure of having time
-enough, they started from their camp--which was at a height of between
-6000 and 7000 feet on the eastern side--three-quarters of an hour
-before midnight. Hours of night walking followed over moonlit snows,
-looked down upon by ghostly crests. When light came the day was fine
-and grew bright and beautiful,--so clear that looking down they could
-see the ocean beyond the eastern shore, the homesteads standing out on
-the yellow-green plains, and on the snows, far, very far down, their
-own footprints dotting the smooth whiteness beneath them. It took
-them, however, nearly fourteen hours to reach the summit, and then
-the most dangerous part of their work only began. They had to gain
-the Hooker glacier by creeping down frosted rocks as slippery as an
-ice-slide. Long bouts of step-cutting had to be done, and in places the
-men had to be lowered by the rope one at a time. Instead of reaching
-their goal--the Hermitage Inn below the glacier--in twenty hours,
-they consumed no less than thirty-six. During these they were almost
-incessantly in motion, and as a display of stamina the performance, one
-imagines, must rank high among the exertions of mountaineers. Many fine
-spectacles repaid them. One of these, a western view from the rocks
-high above the Hooker glacier, is thus described by Mr. Malcolm Ross,
-who was of the party:--
-
-“The sun dipped to the rim of the sea, and the western heavens were
-glorious with colour, heightened by the distant gloom. Almost on a
-level with us, away beyond Sefton, a bank of flame-coloured cloud
-stretched seaward from the lesser mountains towards the ocean, and
-beyond that again was a far-away continent of cloud, sombre and
-mysterious as if it were part of another world. The rugged mountains
-and the forests and valleys of southern Westland were being gripped in
-the shades of night. A long headland, still thousands of feet below on
-the south-west, stretched itself out into the darkened sea, a thin line
-of white at its base indicating the tumbling breakers of the Pacific
-Ocean.”
-
-[Illustration: THE TASMAN GLACIER]
-
-Mr. Green, as he looked out from a half-way halting-place on the ascent
-of Aorangi, and took in the succession of crowded, shining crests
-and peaks surging up to the north and north-east of him, felt the
-Alpine-climber’s spirit glow within him. Here was a wealth of peaks
-awaiting conquest; here was adventure enough for the hands and feet
-of a whole generation of mountaineers. Scarcely one of the heights
-had then been scaled. This is not so now. Peak after peak of the
-Southern Alps has fallen to European or Colonial enterprise, and the
-ambitious visitor to the Mount Cook region, in particular, will have
-some trouble to find much that remains virgin and yet accessible. For
-the unambitious, on the other hand, everything has been made easy. The
-Government and its tourist department has taken the district in hand
-almost as thoroughly as at Roto-rua, and the holiday-maker may count
-on being housed, fed, driven about, guided, and protected efficiently
-and at a reasonable price. Happily, too, nothing staring or vulgar
-defaces the landscape. Nor do tourists, yet, throng the valleys in
-those insufferable crowds that spoil so much romance in Switzerland
-and Italy. Were they more numerous than they are, the scale of the
-ranges and glaciers is too large to allow the vantage-spots to be
-mobbed. Take the glaciers: take those that wind along the flanks of
-the Mount Cook range on its eastern and western sides, and, converging
-to the south, are drained by the river Tasman. The Tasman glacier
-itself is eighteen miles long; its greatest width is over two miles;
-its average width over a mile. The Murchison glacier, which joins the
-Tasman below the glacier ice, is more than ten miles long. And to the
-west and south-west of the range aforesaid, the Hooker and Mueller
-glaciers are on a scale not much less striking. The number of tributary
-glaciers that feed these enormous ice-serpents has not, I fancy, been
-closely estimated, but from heights lofty enough to overlook most
-of the glacier system that veins the Aorangi region, explorers have
-counted over fifty seen from one spot. Perhaps the finest sight in the
-alpine country--at any rate to those who do not scale peaks--is the
-Hochstetter ice-fall. This frozen cataract comes down from a great snow
-plateau, some 9000 feet above the sea, to the east of Aorangi. The
-fall descends, perhaps, 4000 feet to the Tasman glacier. It is much
-more than a mile in breadth, and has the appearance of tumbling water,
-storm-beaten, broken, confused, surging round rocks. It has, indeed,
-something more than the mere appearance of wild unrest, for water pours
-through its clefts, and cubes and toppling pinnacles of ice break away
-and crash as they fall from hour to hour.
-
-[Illustration: THE CECIL AND WALTER PEAKS]
-
-If the Hochstetter has a rival of its own kind in the island, that
-would seem to be the Douglas glacier. This, scarcely known before 1907,
-was then visited and examined by Dr. Mackintosh Bell. By his account
-it surpasses the Hochstetter in this, that instead of confronting the
-stern grandeur of an Alpine valley, it looks down upon the evergreen
-forest and unbroken foliage of Westland. The glacier itself comes down
-from large, high-lying snow-fields over a mighty cliff, estimated
-to be 3000 feet in height. The upper half of the wall is clothed
-with rugged ice; but the lower rock-face is too steep for this, and
-its perpendicular front is bare. Beneath it the glacier continues.
-Waterfall succeeds waterfall: thirty-five in all stream down from the
-ice above to the ice below. Mingled with the sound of their downpouring
-the explorers heard the crashing of the avalanches. Every few minutes
-one of these slid or shot into the depths. Roar followed roar like
-cannon fired in slow succession, so that the noise echoing among the
-mountains drowned the voices of the wondering beholders.
-
-Oddly enough the lakes of the South Island are nearly all on the
-drier side of the watershed. Kanieri and Mahinapua, two well-known
-exceptions, are charming, but small. A third exception, Brunner, is
-large, but lies among wooded hills without any special pretensions
-to grandeur. For the rest the lakes are to the east of the dividing
-range, and may be regarded as the complement of the fiords to the
-west thereof. But their line stretches out much farther to the north,
-for they may be said to include Lake Roto-roa, a long, narrow, but
-beautiful water, folded among the mountains of Nelson. Then come
-Brunner and Sumner, and the series continues in fine succession
-southwards, ending with Lake Hau-roto near the butt-end of the
-island. Broadly speaking, the lake scenery improves as you go south.
-Wakatipu is in advance of Wanaka and Hawea, Te Anau of Wakatipu;
-while Manapouri, beautiful in irregularity, fairly surpasses all
-its fellows. The northern half of Wakatipu is, indeed, hard to beat;
-but the southern arm, though grand, curves among steeps too hard and
-treeless to please the eye altogether. In the same way Te Anau would
-be the finest lake in the islands were it not for the flatness of most
-of the eastern shore; the three long western arms are magnificent,
-and so is the northern part of the main water. But of Manapouri one
-may write without ifs and buts. Its deep, clear waters moving round a
-multitude of islets; its coves and cliff-points, gulf beyond gulf and
-cape beyond cape; the steeps that overhang it, so terrific, yet so
-richly clothed; the unscathed foliage sprinkled with tree-flowers,--all
-form as faultless a combination of lovely scenes as a wilderness can
-well show. From the western arm that reaches out as though to penetrate
-to the sea-fiords not far away beyond the mountains, to the eastern
-bay, whence the deep volume of the Waiau flows out, there is nothing
-to spoil the charm. What Lucerne is to Switzerland Manapouri is to New
-Zealand. Man has not helped it with historical associations and touches
-of foreign colour. On the other hand, man has not yet spoiled it with
-big hotels, blatant advertisements, and insufferable press of tourists.
-
-[Illustration: MANAPOURI]
-
-In one respect--their names--our South Island lakes are more lucky
-than our mountains. Most of them have been allowed to keep the names
-given them by the Maori. When the Polynesian syllables are given fair
-play--which is not always the case in the white man’s mouth--they
-are usually liquid or dignified. Manapouri, Te Anau, Roto-roa, and
-Hau-roto, are fair examples. Fortunately the lakes which we have chosen
-to rechristen have seldom been badly treated. Coleridge, Christabel,
-Alabaster, Tennyson, Ellesmere, Marian, Hilda, are pleasant in sound
-and suggestion. Our mountains have not come off so well--in the South
-Island at any rate. Some have fared better than others. Mount Aspiring,
-Mount Pisa, the Sheerdown, the Remarkables, Mounts Aurum, Somnus,
-Cosmos, Fourpeaks, Hamilton, Wakefield, Darwin, Brabazon, Alexander,
-Rolleston, Franklin, Mitre Peak, Terror Peak, and the Pinnacle, are
-not names to cavil at. But I cannot think that such appellations as
-Cook, Hutt, Brown, Stokes, Jukes, Largs, Hopkins, Dick, Thomas, Harris,
-Pillans, Hankinson, Thompson, and Skelmorlies, do much to heighten
-scenic grandeur. However, there they are, and there, doubtless, they
-will remain; for we are used to them, so do not mind them. We should
-even, it may be, be sorry to lose them.
-
-[Illustration: MITRE PEAK]
-
-The Sounds--the watery labyrinth of the south-west coast--have but one
-counterpart in the northern hemisphere, the fiords of Norway. Whether
-their number should be reckoned to be fifteen or nineteen is of no
-consequence. Enough that between Big Bay and Puysegur Point they indent
-the littoral with successive inlets winding between cliffs, straying
-round islets and bluffs, and penetrating deep into the heart of the
-Alps. They should be called fiords, for that name alone gives any
-suggestion of their slender length and of the towering height of the
-mountains that confine them. But the pioneers and sailors of three
-generations ago chose to dub them “The Sounds,” so The Sounds they
-remain. It is best to approach them from the south, beginning with
-Perseverance Inlet and ending with Milford Sound. For the heights round
-Milford are the loftiest of any, and after their sublimity the softer
-aspect of some of the other gulfs is apt to lose impressiveness. The
-vast monotony and chilly uneasiness of the ocean without heightens
-the contrast at the entrances. Outside the guardian headlands all is
-cold and uneasy. Between one inlet and another the sea beats on sheer
-faces of cruel granite. Instantaneous is the change when the gates
-are entered, and the voyager finds his vessel floating on a surface
-narrower than a lake and more peaceful than a river. The very throbbing
-of a steamer’s engines becomes gentler and reaches the ears softly
-like heart-beats. The arms of the mountains seem stretched to shut out
-tumult and distraction. Milford, for instance, is a dark-green riband
-of salt water compressed between cliffs less than a mile apart, and
-in one pass narrowing to a width of five hundred yards. Yet though
-the bulwarks of your ship are near firm earth, the keel is far above
-it. All the Sounds are deep: when Captain Cook moored the _Endeavour_
-in Dusky Sound her yards interlocked with the branches of trees. But
-Milford is probably the deepest of all. There the sounding-line has
-reached bottom at nearly thirteen hundred feet. Few swirling currents
-seem to disturb these quiet gulfs; and the sweep of the western
-gales, too, is shut out from most of the bays and reaches. The force
-that seems at work everywhere and always is water. Clouds and mists
-in a thousand changing shapes fleet above the mountain crests, are
-wreathed round peaks, or drift along the fronts of the towering cliffs.
-When they settle down the rain falls in sheets: an inch or thereabouts
-may be registered daily for weeks. But it does not always rain in
-the Sounds, and when it ceases and the sunshine streams down, the
-innumerable waterfalls are a spectacle indeed. At any time the number
-of cascades and cataracts is great: the roar of the larger and the
-murmur of the smaller are the chief sounds heard; they take the place
-of the wind that has been left outside the great enclosures. But after
-heavy rain--and most rains on that coast are heavy--the number of
-waterfalls defies computation. They seam the mountain-sides with white
-lines swiftly moving, embroider green precipices with silver, and churn
-up the calm sea-water with their plunging shock. The highest of them
-all, the Sutherland, is not on the sea-shore, but lies fourteen miles
-up a densely-wooded valley. It is so high--1904 feet--that the three
-cascades of its descent seem almost too slender a thread for the mighty
-amphitheatre behind and around them. Than the cliffs themselves nothing
-could well be finer. Lofty as they are, however, they are surpassed
-by some of the walls that hem in Milford; for these are computed to
-rise nearly five thousand feet. They must be a good second to those
-stupendous sea-faces in eastern Formosa which are said to exceed six
-thousand feet. Nor in volume or energy is the Sutherland at all equal
-to the Bowen, which falls on the sea-beach at Milford in two leaps. Its
-height in all is, perhaps, but six hundred feet. But the upper fall
-dives into a bowl of hard rock with such weight that the whole watery
-mass rebounds in a noble curve to plunge white and foaming to the sea’s
-edge.
-
-There is no need to measure heights, calculate bulk, or compare one
-sight with another in a territory where beauty and grandeur are spent
-so freely. The glory of the Sounds is not found in this cliff or that
-waterfall, in the elevation of any one range or the especial grace
-of any curve or channel. It comes from the astonishing succession,
-yet variety, of grand yet beautiful prospects, of charm near at hand
-contrasted with the sternness of the rocky and snowy wilderness which
-forms the aerial boundary of the background. The exact height of cliffs
-and mountain-steeps matters little. What is important is that--except
-on the steepest of the great walls of Milford--almost every yard of
-their surface is beautified with a drapery of frond and foliage.
-Where the angle is too acute for trees to root themselves ferns and
-creepers cloak the faces; where even these fail green mosses save the
-rocks from bareness, and contrast softly with the sparkling threads of
-ever-present water.
-
-[Illustration: IN MILFORD SOUND]
-
-Scarcely anywhere can the eye take in the whole of an inlet at once.
-The narrower fiords wind, the wider are sprinkled with islets. As the
-vessel slowly moves on, the scene changes; a fresh vista opens
-out with every mile; the gazer comes to every bend with undiminished
-expectation. The two longest of the gulfs measure twenty-two miles
-from gates to inmost ends. Milford is barely nine miles long--but how
-many scenes are met with in those nine! No sooner does the sense of
-confinement between dark and terrific heights become oppressive than
-some high prospect opens out to the upward gaze, and the sunshine
-lightens up the wooded shoulders and glittering snow-fields of some
-distant mount. Then the whole realm is so utterly wild, so unspoiled
-and unprofaned. Man has done nothing to injure or wreck it. Nowhere
-have you to avert your eyes to avoid seeing blackened tracts, the work
-of axe and fire. The absurdities of man’s architecture are not here,
-nor his litter, dirt and stenches. The clean, beautiful wilderness goes
-on and on, far as the eye can travel and farther by many a league.
-Protected on one side by the ocean, on the other by the mountainous
-labyrinth, it stretches with its deep gulfs and virgin valleys to
-remain the delight and refreshment of generations wearied with the
-smoke and soilure of the cities of men.
-
-[Illustration: ON THE CLINTON RIVER]
-
-We often call this largest of our national parks a paradise. To
-apply the term to such a wilderness is a curious instance of change
-in the use of words. The Persian “paradise” was a hunting-ground
-where the great king could chase wild beasts without interruption.
-In our south-west, on the contrary, guns and bird-snaring are alike
-forbidden, and animal life is preserved, not to be hunted, but to be
-observed. As most of my readers know, the birds of our islands, by
-their variety and singularity, atone for the almost complete absence
-of four-footed mammals. The most curious are the flightless kinds.
-Not that these comprise all that is interesting in our bird-life by
-any means. The rare stitch-bird; those beautiful singers, the tui,
-bell-bird, and saddle-back; many marine birds, and those friendly
-little creatures the robins and fantails of the bush, amuse others as
-well as the zoologists. But the flightless birds--the roa, the grey
-kiwi, the takahé, the kakapo, the flightless duck of the Aucklands,
-and the weka--are our chief scientific treasures, unless the tuatara
-lizard and the short-tailed bat may be considered to rival them. Some
-of our ground-birds have the further claim on the attention of science,
-that they are the relatives of the extinct and gigantic moa. That
-monstrous, and probably harmless, animal was exterminated by fires and
-Maori hunters centuries ago. Bones, eggs, and feathers remain to attest
-its former numbers, and the roa and kiwi to give the unscientific a
-notion of its looks and habits. The story of the thigh-bone which found
-its way to Sir Richard Owen seventy years ago, and of his diagnosis
-therefrom of a walking bird about the size of an ostrich, is one of
-the romances of zoology. The earlier moas were far taller and more
-ponderous than any ostrich. Their relationship to the ancient moas of
-Madagascar, as well as their colossal stature, are further suggestions
-that New Zealand is what it looks--the relics of a submerged
-southern continent. After the discovery of moa skeletons there
-were great hopes that living survivors of some of the tall birds would
-yet be found, and the unexplored and intricate south-west was by common
-consent the most promising field in which to search. In 1848 a rail
-over three feet high--the takahé--was caught by sealers in Dusky Sound.
-Fifty years later, when hope had almost died out, another takahé was
-taken alive--the bird that now stands stuffed in a German museum. But,
-alas! this rail is the solitary “find” that has rewarded us in the last
-sixty years, and the expectation of lighting upon any flightless bird
-larger than a roa flutters very faintly now. All the more, therefore,
-ought we to bestow thought on the preservation of the odd and curious
-wild life that is left to us. The outlook for our native birds has long
-been very far from bright. Many years ago the Norway rat had penetrated
-every corner of the islands. Cats, descended from wanderers of the
-domestic species, are to be found in forest and mountain, and have
-grown fiercer and more active with each decade. Sparrows, blackbirds,
-and thrushes compete for Nature’s supplies of honey and insects. Last,
-and, perhaps, their worst enemies of all, are the stoats, weasels, and
-ferrets, which sheep-farmers were foolish enough to import a quarter
-of a century ago to combat the rabbit. Luckily, more effectual methods
-of coping with rabbits have since been perfected, for had we to trust
-to imported vermin our pastures would be in a bad case. As it is, the
-stoat and weasel levy toll on many a poultry yard, and their ravages
-among the unhappy wild birds of the forest are more deplorable still.
-In both islands they have found their way across from the east coast
-to the west: rivers, lakes, rock, snow, and ice have been powerless
-to stop them. Even the native birds that can fly lose their eggs and
-nestlings. The flightless birds are helpless. Weasels can kill much
-more formidable game than kiwi and kakapo; a single weasel has been
-known to dispose of a kea parrot in captivity. Pressed, then, by
-these and their other foes, the native birds are disappearing in wide
-tracts of the main islands. Twenty years ago this was sufficiently
-notorious; and at length in the ’nineties the Government was aroused
-to do something to save a remnant. Throughout the whole of the Great
-Reserve of the south-west shooting was, and still is, discouraged. But
-this is not enough. Only on islets off the coast can the birds be safe
-from ferrets and similar vermin, to say nothing of human collectors and
-sportsmen.
-
-[Illustration: AT THE HEAD OF LAKE TE-ANAU]
-
-It was decided, therefore, to set aside such island sanctuaries, and to
-station paid care-takers on them. There are now three of these insular
-refuges: Resolution Island, off Dusky Sound; Kapiti, in Cook’s Strait;
-and the Little Barrier Island, at the mouth of the Hauraki Gulf. The
-broken and richly-wooded Resolution contains some 50,000 acres, and
-is as good a place for its present uses as could be found. Remote
-from settlement, drenched by continual rains, it attracts no one but
-a casual sight-seer. On the other hand, its care-taker is in close
-touch with the whole region of the fiords, and can watch over and
-to some extent guard the wild life therein. The experiences of this
-officer, Mr. Richard Henry, are uncommon enough. For twelve years he
-lived near lakes Manapouri and Te Anau studying the birds on that side
-of the wilderness. Since 1900 he has been stationed on the western
-coast, at Pigeon Island, near Resolution. There, with such society as a
-boy and a dog can afford him, this guardian of birds passes year after
-year in a climate where the rainfall ranges, I suppose, from 140 inches
-to 200 in the twelvemonth. Inured to solitude and sandflies Mr. Henry
-appears sufficiently happy in watching the habits of his favourite
-birds, their enemies the beasts, and their neighbours the sea-fish. He
-can write as well as observe, and his reports and papers are looked for
-by all who care for Nature in our country.
-
-It is odd that in so vast a wilderness, and one so densely clothed with
-vegetation as are the mountains and valleys of the south-west, there
-should not be room enough and to spare for the European singing-birds
-as well as the native kind. But if we are to believe the care-taker at
-Resolution Island--and better testimony than his could not easily be
-had,--the sparrow alone, to say nothing of the thrush and blackbird,
-is almost as deadly an enemy as the flightless birds have. For the
-sparrow not only takes a share of the insects which are supposed to be
-his food, but consumes more than his share of the honey of the rata
-and other native flowers. Six sparrows which Mr. Henry managed to kill
-with a lucky shot one summer morning were found to be plump and full
-of honey--it oozed out of their beaks. Thrushes and blackbirds are just
-as ready to take to a vegetable diet, so that the angry care-taker is
-driven to denounce the birds of Europe as “jabbering sparrows and other
-musical humbugs that come here under false pretences.” Then the native
-birds themselves are not always forbearing to each other. The wekas,
-the commonest and most active of the flightless birds, are remorseless
-thieves, and will steal the eggs of wild ducks or farm poultry
-indifferently. Though as big as a domestic fowl, wekas are no great
-fighters: a bantam cock, or even a bantam hen, will rout the biggest of
-them. On the other hand, Mr. Henry has seen a weka tackle a bush rat
-and pin it down in its hole under a log. That the weka will survive in
-considerable numbers even on the mainland seems likely. The fate of the
-two kinds of kiwi, the big brown roa and his small grey cousin, seems
-more doubtful.
-
-Both are the most timid, harmless, and helpless of birds. All their
-strength and faculties seem concentrated in the long and sensitive
-beaks with which they probe the ground or catch insects that flutter
-near it. In soft peat or moss they will pierce as deeply as ten inches
-to secure a worm; and the extraordinary powers of hearing and scent
-which enable them to detect prey buried so far beneath the surface are
-nothing short of mysterious. Their part in the world that man controls
-would seem to be that of insect destroyers in gardens and orchards.
-Perhaps had colonists been wiser they would have been preserved and
-bred for this purpose for the last fifty years. As it is man has
-preferred to let the kiwis go and to import insectivorous allies, most
-of which have turned out to be doubtful blessings. Among both kiwis and
-wekas the males are the most dutiful of husbands and fathers. After the
-eggs are laid they do most of the sitting, and at a later stage provide
-the chicks with food. The female kiwi, too, is the larger bird, and has
-the longer beak--points of interest in the avifauna of a land where
-women’s franchise is law. Very different is the division of labour
-between the sexes in the case of the kakapo or night-parrot. This also
-is classed among flightless birds, not because it has no wings--for
-its wings are well developed--but because ages ago it lost the art of
-flying. Finding ground food plentiful in the wet mountain forests, and
-having no foes to fear, the night-parrot waxed fat and flightless.
-Now, after the coming of the stoat and weasel, it is too late for its
-habits to change. The male kakapo are famous for a peculiar drumming
-love-song, an odd tremulous sound that can be heard miles away. But
-though musical courtiers, they are by no means such self-sacrificing
-husbands as other flightless birds. They leave hatching and other
-work to the mothers, who are so worn by the process that the race
-only breeds in intermittent years. Tame and guileless as most native
-birds are apt to be, the kakapo exceeds them all in a kind of sleepy
-apathy. Mr. Henry tells how he once noticed one sitting on wood under
-a drooping fern. He nudged it with his finger and spoke to it, but the
-bird only muttered hoarsely, and appeared to go to sleep again as the
-disturber moved away.
-
-Kapiti, in Cook’s Strait, containing, as it does, barely 5000 acres, is
-the smallest of the three island sanctuaries, but unlike the other two
-it has made some figure in New Zealand history. In the blood-stained
-years before annexation it was seized by the noted marauder Rauparaha,
-whose acute eye saw in it a stronghold at once difficult to attack,
-and excellently placed for raids upon the main islands, both north
-and south. From Kapiti, with his Ngatitoa warriors and his fleet of
-war-canoes, he became a terror to his race. His expeditions, marked
-with the usual treachery, massacre, and cannibalism of Maori warfare,
-reached as far south as Akaroa in Banks’ Peninsula, and indirectly led
-to the invasion of the Chathams, and the almost complete extirpation
-of the inoffensive Moriori. Rauparaha’s early life might have taught
-him pity, for he was himself a fugitive who, with his people, had
-been hunted away first from Kawhia, then from Taranaki, by the
-stronger Waikato. He lived to wreak vengeance--on the weaker tribes
-of the south. No mean captain, he seems only to have suffered one
-reverse in the South Island--a surprise by Tuhawaiki (Bloody Jack).
-Certainly his only fight with white men--that which we choose to
-call the Wairau massacre--was disastrous enough to us. In Kapiti
-itself, in the days before the hoisting of the Union Jack, Rauparaha
-had white neighbours--I had almost said friends--in the shape of the
-shore whalers, whose long boats were then a feature of our coastal
-waters. They called him “Rowbulla,” and affected to regard him with
-the familiarity which breeds contempt. On his side he found that they
-served his purpose--which in their case was trade--well enough. Both
-Maori and whaler have long since passed away from Kapiti, and scarce a
-trace of them remains, save the wild goats which roam about the heights
-and destroy the undergrowth of the forest. The island itself resembles
-one side of a high-pitched roof. To the west, a long cliff, 1700 feet
-high, faces the famous north-west gales of Cook’s Strait, and shows
-the wearing effects of wind and wave. Eastward from the ridge the land
-slopes at a practicable angle, and most of it is covered with a thick,
-though not very imposing forest. Among the ratas, karakas, tree ferns
-and scrub of the gullies, wild pigeons, bell-birds, tuis, whiteheads,
-and other native birds still hold their own. Plants from the north and
-south mingle in a fashion that charms botanists like Dr. Cockayne. This
-gentleman has lately conveyed to Kapiti a number of specimens from the
-far-away Auckland isles, and if the Government will be pleased to have
-the goats and cattle killed off, and interlopers, like the sparrows and
-the Californian quail, kept down, there is no reason why Kapiti should
-not become a centre of refuge for the rarer species of our harassed
-fauna and flora.
-
-[Illustration: THE BULLER RIVER NEAR HAWK’S CRAIG]
-
-Twice as large as Kapiti, and quite twice as picturesque, the Little
-Barrier Island, the northern bird-sanctuary, is otherwise little known.
-It has no history to speak of, though Mr. Shakespear, its care-taker,
-has gathered one or two traditions. A sharp fight, for instance,
-between two bands of Maori was decided on its shore; and for many years
-thereafter a tree which stood there was pointed out as the “gallows” on
-which the cannibal victors hung the bodies of their slain enemies. At
-another spot on the boulders of the beach an unhappy fugitive is said
-to have paddled in his canoe, flying from a defeat on the mainland.
-Landing exhausted, he found the islanders as merciless as the foes
-behind, and was promptly clubbed and eaten. However, the Little Barrier
-is to-day as peaceful an asylum as the heart of a persecuted bird could
-desire. The stitch-bird, no longer hunted by collectors, is once more
-increasing in numbers there, and has for companion the bell-bird--the
-sweetest of our songsters, save one,--which has been driven from its
-habitat on the main North Island. Godwits, wearied with their long
-return journey from Siberia, are fain, “spent with the vast and howling
-main,” to rest on the Little Barrier before passing on their way across
-the Hauraki Gulf. Fantails and other wild feathered things flutter
-round the care-taker’s house, for--so he tells us--he does not suffer
-any birds--not even the friendless and much-disliked cormorant--to
-be injured. Along with the birds, the tuatara lizard (and the kauri,
-pohutu-kawa, and other trees, quite as much in need of asylum as the
-birds) may grow and decay unmolested in the quiet ravines. The island
-lies forty-five miles from Auckland, and nearly twenty from
-the nearest mainland, so there is no need for it to be disturbed by
-anything worse than the warm and rainy winds that burst upon it from
-north-east and north-west.
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-Water, the force that beautifies the west and south-west, has been
-the chief foe of their explorers. The first whites to penetrate their
-gorges and wet forests found their main obstacles in rivers, lakes,
-and swamps. Unlike pioneers elsewhere, they had nothing to fear from
-savages, beasts, reptiles, or fever. Brunner, one of the earliest
-to enter Westland, spent more than a year away from civilisation,
-encountering hardship, but never in danger of violence from man
-or beast. Still, such a rugged and soaking labyrinth could not be
-traversed and mapped out without loss. There is a death-roll, though
-not a very long one. Nearly all the deaths were due to drowning. Mr.
-Charlton Howitt, one of the Anglo-Victorian family of writers and
-explorers, was lost with two companions in Lake Brunner. The one
-survivor of Howitt’s party died from the effects of hardship. Mr.
-Townsend, a Government officer, who searched Lake Brunner for Howitt’s
-body, was himself drowned not long after, also with two companions.
-Mr. Whitcombe, surveyor, perished in trying to cross the Teremakau in
-a canoe. Von Haast’s friend, the botanist Dr. Sinclair, was drowned
-in a torrent in the Alps of Canterbury. Quintin M’Kinnon, who did as
-much as any one to open up the region between the southern lakes and
-the Sounds, sank in a squall while sailing alone in Lake Te Anau.
-Professor Brown, of the University of Otago, who disappeared in the
-wilds to the west of Manapouri, is believed to have been swept away in
-a stream there. The surveyor Quill, the only man who has yet climbed
-to the top of the Sutherland Falls, lost his life afterwards in the
-Wakatipu wilderness. Only one death by man’s violence is to be noted
-in the list--that of Dobson, a young surveyor of much promise, who was
-murdered by bush-rangers in northern Westland about forty years ago. I
-have named victims well known and directly engaged in exploring. The
-number of gold-diggers, shepherds, swagmen, and nondescripts who have
-gone down in the swift and ice-cold rivers of our mountains is large.
-Among them are not a few nameless adventurers drawn westward by the
-gold rushes of the ’sixties. It is a difficult matter to gauge from
-the bank the precise amount of risk to be faced in fording a clouded
-torrent as it swirls down over hidden boulders and shifting shingle.
-Even old hands miscalculate sometimes. When once a swagman stumbles
-badly and loses his balance, he is swept away, and the struggle is soon
-over. There is a cry; a man and a swag are rolled over and over; he
-drops his burden and one or both are sucked under in an eddy--perhaps
-to reappear, perhaps not. It may be that the body is stranded on a
-shallow, or it may be that the current bears it down to a grave in the
-sea.
-
-[Illustration: BELOW THE JUNCTION OF THE BULLER AND INANGAHUA RIVERS]
-
-The south-western coast was the first part of our islands seen by a
-European. Tasman sighted the mountains of Westland in 1642. Cook
-visited the Sounds more than once, and spent some time in Dusky Sound
-in 1771. Vancouver, who served under Cook, anchored there in command
-of an expedition in 1789; and Malaspina, a Spanish navigator, took his
-ship among the fiords towards the end of the eighteenth century. But
-Tasman did not land; and though the others did, and it is interesting
-to remember that such noted explorers of the southern seas came there
-in the old days of three-cornered hats, pigtails, and scurvy, still it
-must be admitted that their doings in our south-western havens were
-entirely commonplace. Vancouver and the Spaniards had no adventures.
-Nothing that concerns Cook can fail to interest the student; and the
-story of his anchorages and surveys, of the “spruce beer” which he
-brewed from a mixture of sprigs of rimu and leaves of manuka, and
-of his encounters with the solitary family of Maori met with on the
-coast, is full of meaning to the few who pore over the scraps of
-narrative which compose the history of our country prior to 1800. There
-is satisfaction in knowing that the stumps of the trees cut down by
-Cook’s men are still to be recognised. To the general reader, however,
-any stirring elements found in the early story of the South Island
-were brought in by the sealers and whalers who came in the wake of
-the famous navigators, rather than by the discoverers themselves. One
-lasting service the first seamen did to the Sounds: they left plain and
-expressive names on most of the gulfs, coves, and headlands. Doubtful
-Sound, Dusky Sound, Wet Jacket Arm, Chalky Island, Parrot Island,
-Wood Hen Cove, speak of the rough experiences and everyday life of the
-sailors. Resolution, Perseverance, Discovery have a salt savour of
-difficulties sought out and overcome. For the rest the charm of the
-south-west comes but in slight degree from old associations. It is a
-paradise without a past.
-
-[Illustration: BREAM HEAD, WHANGAREI HEADS]
-
-The sealers and whalers of the first four decades of the nineteenth
-century knew our outlying islands well. Of the interior of our mainland
-they knew nothing whatever; but they searched every bay and cove of the
-butt-end of the South Island, of Rakiura, and of the smaller islets
-for the whale and fur seal. The schooners and brigs that carried these
-rough-handed adventurers commonly hailed either from Sydney, Boston,
-or Nantucket, places that were not in those days schools of marine
-politeness or forbearance. The captains and crews that they sent out
-to southern seas looked on the New Zealand coast as a No Man’s Land,
-peopled by ferocious cannibals, who were to be traded with, or killed,
-as circumstances might direct. The Maori met them very much in the
-same spirit. Many are the stories told of the dealings, peaceable or
-warlike, of the white ruffians with the brown savages. In 1823, for
-instance, the schooner _Snapper_ brought away from Rakiura to Sydney a
-certain James Caddell, a white seaman with a tattooed face. This man
-had, so he declared, been landed on Stewart Island seventeen years
-earlier, as one of a party of seal-hunters. They were at once set upon
-by the natives, and all killed save Caddell, who saved his life by
-clutching the sacred mantle of a chief and thus obtaining the benefit
-of the law of Tapu. He was allowed to join the tribe, to become one of
-the fighting men, and to marry a chief’s daughter. At any rate, that
-was his story. It may have been true, for he is said to have turned his
-back on Sydney and deliberately returned to live among the Maori.
-
-A more dramatic tale is that of the fate of a boat’s crew from the
-_General Gates_, American sealing ship. In 1821 her captain landed a
-party of six men somewhere near Puysegur Point to collect seal-skins.
-So abundant were the fur seals on our south-west coast in those days
-that in six weeks the men had taken and salted 3563 skins. Suddenly
-a party of Maori burst into their hut about midnight, seized the
-unlucky Americans, and, after looting the place, marched them off as
-prisoners. According to the survivors, they were compelled to trudge
-between three and four hundred miles, and were finally taken to a big
-sandy bay on the west coast of the South Island. Here they were tied
-to trees and left without food till they were ravenously hungry. Then
-one of them, John Rawton, was killed with a club. His head was buried
-in the ground; his body dressed, cooked, and eaten. On each of the next
-three days another of the wretched seamen was seized and devoured in
-the same way, their companions looking on like Ulysses in the cave of
-the Cyclops. As a crowning horror the starving seamen were offered some
-of the baked human flesh and ate it. After four days of this torment
-there came a storm with thunder and lightning, which drove the natives
-away to take shelter. Left thus unguarded, Price and West, the two
-remaining prisoners, contrived to slip their bonds of flax. A canoe
-was lying on the beach, and rough as the surf was, they managed to
-launch her. Scarcely were they afloat before the natives returned and
-rushed into the sea after them, yelling loudly. The Americans had just
-sufficient start and no more. Paddling for dear life, they left the
-land behind, and had the extraordinary fortune, after floating about
-for three days, to be picked up, half dead, by the trading schooner
-_Margery_. The story of their capture and escape is to be found in
-Polack’s _New Zealand_, published in 1838. Recently, Mr. Robert M’Nab
-has unearthed contemporary references to the _General Gates_, and, in
-his book _Muri-huku_, has given an extended account of the adventures
-of her skipper and crew. The captain, Abimelech Riggs by name, seems
-to have been a very choice salt-water blackguard. He began his career
-at the Antipodes by enlisting convicts in Sydney, and carrying them
-off as seamen. For this he was arrested in New Zealand waters, and had
-to stand his trial in Sydney. In Mr. M’Nab’s opinion, he lost two if
-not three parties of his men on the New Zealand coast, where he seems
-to have left them to take their chance, sailing off and remaining away
-with the finest indifference. Finally, he appears to have taken revenge
-by running down certain canoes manned by Maori which he chanced to meet
-in Foveaux Straits. After that _coup_, Captain Abimelech Riggs
-vanishes from our stage, a worthy precursor of Captain Stewart of the
-brig _Elisabeth_, the blackest scoundrel of our Alsatian period.
-
-[Illustration: LAWYER’S HEAD]
-
-Maori history does not contribute very much to the romance of the
-south-west. A broken tribe, the Ngatimamoe, were in the eighteenth
-century driven back to lurk among the mountains and lakes there. Once
-they had owned the whole South Island. Their pitiless supplanters, the
-Ngaitahu, would not let them rest even in their unenviable mountain
-refuges. They were chased farther and farther westward, and finally
-exterminated. A few still existed when the first navigators cast anchor
-in the fiords. For many years explorers hoped to find some tiny clan
-hidden away in the tangled recesses of Fiordland; but it would seem
-that they are gone, like the moa.
-
-The whites came in time to witness the beginning of a fresh process
-of raiding and dispossession--the attacks on the Ngaitahu by other
-tribes from the north. The raids of Rauparaha among the Ngaitahu of
-the eastern coast of the South Island have often been described; for,
-thanks to Mr. Travers, Canon Stack, and other chroniclers, many of
-their details have been preserved. Much less is known of the doings
-of Rauparaha’s lieutenants on the western coast, though one of their
-expeditions passed through the mountains and the heart of Otago.
-Probably enough, his Ngatitoa turned their steps towards Westland
-in the hope of annexing the tract wherein is found the famous
-greenstone--a nephrite prized by the Maori at once for its hardness and
-beauty. In their stone age--that is to say, until the earlier decades
-of the nineteenth century--it furnished them with their most effective
-tools and deadliest weapons. The best of it is so hard that steel will
-not scratch its surface, while its clear colour, varying from light to
-the darkest green, is far richer than the hue of oriental jade. Many
-years--as much as two generations--might be consumed in cutting and
-polishing a greenstone _meré_ fit for a great chief.[5] When perfected,
-such a weapon became a sacred heirloom, the loss of which would be
-wailed over as a blow to its owner’s tribe.
-
-[5] See Mr. Justice Chapman’s paper on the working of greenstone in the
-_Transactions of the N.Z. Institute_.
-
-[Illustration: A MAORI CHIEFTAINESS]
-
-The country of the greenstone lies between the Arahura and Hokitika
-rivers in Westland, a territory by no means easy to invade eighty
-years ago. The war parties of the Ngatitoa reached it, however,
-creeping along the rugged sea-coast, and, where the beaches ended,
-scaling cliffs by means of ladders. They conquered the greenstone
-district (from which the whole South Island takes its Maori name,
-Te Wai Pounamou), and settled down there among the subdued natives.
-Then, one might fancy, the Ngatitoa would have halted. South of the
-Teremakau valley there was no greenstone; for the stone, _tangi-wai_,
-found near Milford Sound, though often classed with greenstone, is
-a distinct mineral, softer and much less valuable. Nor were there
-any more tribes with villages worth plundering. Save for a few
-wandering fugitives, the mountains and coast of the south-west were
-empty, or peopled only by the Maori imagination with ogres and fairies,
-dangerous to the intruder. Beyond this drenched and difficult country,
-however, the Ngatitoa resolved to pass. They learned--from captives,
-one supposes--of the existence of a low saddle, by which a man may
-cross from the west coast to the lakes of Otago without mounting two
-thousand feet. By this way, the Haast Pass, they resolved to march, and
-fall with musket and _meré_ upon the unexpecting Ngaitahu of Otago.
-Their leader in this daring project was a certain Puoho. We may believe
-that the successes of Rauparaha on the east coast, and the fall, one
-after the other, of Omihi, the two stockades of Akaroa, and the famous
-_pa_ of Kaiapoi, had fired the blood of his young men, and that Puoho
-dreamed of nothing less than the complete conquest of the south. He
-nearly effected it. By a daring canoe voyage from Port Nicholson to
-southern Westland, and by landing there and crossing the Haast Saddle,
-this tattooed Hannibal turned the higher Alps and descended upon Lake
-Hawea, surprising there a village of the Ngaitahu. Only one of the
-inhabitants escaped, a lad who was saved to guide the marauders to
-the camp of a family living at Lake Wanaka. The boy managed to slip
-away from the two captors who were his guards, and ran all the way
-to Wanaka to warn the threatened family--his own relatives. When the
-two guards gave chase, they found the intended victims prepared for
-them; they fell into an ambuscade and were both killed--tomahawked.
-Before the main body of the invaders came up, the Ngaitahu family was
-far away. At Wanaka, Puoho’s daring scheme became more daring still,
-for he conceived and executed no less a plan than that of paddling
-down the Clutha River on rafts made of flax sticks--crazy craft for
-such a river. The flower stalks or sticks of the native flax are
-buoyant enough when dead and dry; but they soon become water-logged
-and are absurdly brittle. They supply such rafts as small boys love to
-construct for the navigation of small lagoons. And that strange river,
-the Clutha, while about half as long as the Thames, tears down to the
-sea bearing far more water than the Nile. Nevertheless the Clutha did
-not drown Puoho and his men: they made their way to the sea through the
-open country of the south-east. Then passing on to the river Mataura,
-they took another village somewhere between the sea and the site of a
-town that now rejoices in the name of Gore. Then indeed the fate of the
-Ngaitahu hung in the balance, and the Otago branches of the tribe were
-threatened with the doom of those of the northern half of the island.
-They were saved because in Southland there was at the moment their one
-capable leader in their later days of trouble--the chief Tuhawaiki,
-whom the sealers of the south coast called Bloody Jack. Hurrying up
-with all the warriors he could collect, and reinforced by some of the
-white sealers aforesaid, this personage attacked the Ngatitoa by the
-Mataura, took their stockade by escalade, and killed or captured the
-band. Puoho himself was shot by a chief who lived to tell of the
-fray for more than sixty years afterwards. So the Ngaitahu escaped
-the slavery or extinction which they in earlier days had inflicted on
-the Ngatimamoe. For, three years after Puoho’s raid, the New Zealand
-Company appeared in Cook’s Strait, and thereafter Rauparaha and his
-braves harried the South Island no more.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER VII
-
-OUTLYING ISLANDS
-
-
-The New Zealand mainland--if the word may be used for anything so
-slender and fragmentary--is long as well as slight. Nearly eleven
-hundred miles divide the south end of Stewart Island from Cape Maria
-Van Diemen. If the outposts of the main are counted in, then the
-Dominion becomes a much larger, though more watery, expanse. Its
-length is about doubled, and the contrast between the sunny Kermadecs
-and the storm-beaten Aucklands becomes one of those things in which
-Science delights. It is a far cry from the trepang and tropic birds
-(the salmon-pink bo’suns) of the northern rocks to the sea-lions that
-yawn at the casual visitor to Disappointment Island. The Kermadecs--to
-employ an overworked expression--bask in the smiles of perpetual
-summer. The Three Kings, lying thirty-eight miles beyond the tip of
-the North Island, might be Portuguese isles, and the Chathams--as far
-as climate goes--bits of France. But the peaty groups of the shivering
-South lie right across the pathway of the Antarctic gales. Even on
-their quieter days the grey sky that overhangs them looks down on
-a sea that is a welter of cold indigo laced with white. Relentless
-erosion by ocean rollers from the south-west has worn away their
-western and south-western shores into steep cliffs, cut by sharp-edged
-fissures and pitted by deep caves. For their vegetation you must
-seek their eastern slopes and valleys, or the shores of land-locked
-harbours. On some of the smaller of them, parakeets and other
-land-birds learn to fly little and fly low, lest they should be blown
-out to sea. The wild ducks of the Aucklands are flightless, and in the
-same group are found flies without wings. In the Snares the mutton-bird
-tree lies down on its stomach to escape the buffeting blasts, clutching
-the treacherous peat with fresh rootlets as it grows or crawls along.
-The western front of the Aucklands shows a wall of dark basalt, thirty
-miles long, and from four hundred to twelve hundred feet high. No beach
-skirts it; no trees soften it; only one inlet breaks it. Innumerable
-jets and little cascades stream from its sharp upper edge, but--so say
-eye-witnesses--none appear to reach the sea: the pitiless gusts seize
-the water, scatter it into spray-smoke and blow it into air. The wind
-keeps the waterfalls from falling, and their vapour, driven upward, has
-been mistaken for smoke from the fires of castaway seamen.
-
-There is, however, one race to whom even the smallest and wildest
-of our islets are a source of unceasing interest and ever-fresh, if
-malodorous, pleasure. Zoologists know them for the procreant cradles of
-Antarctic sea-fowl. And that, from the Kermadecs to the Bounties and
-the Antipodes, they assuredly are. On Raoul--the largest Kermadec--you
-may walk among thousands of mutton-birds and kick them off their nests.
-On the West King, gannets and mackerel gulls cover acre after acre so
-thickly that you cannot help breaking eggs as you tread, or stumbling
-against mother-gannets, sharp in the beak. On dismal Antipodes Island,
-the dreary green of grass and sedge is picked out with big white birds
-like white rosettes. In the Aucklands, the wandering albatross is found
-in myriads, and may be studied as it sits guarding its solitary egg
-on the rough nest from which only brute force will move it. On the
-spongy Snares, penguins have their rookeries; mutton-birds swarm, not
-in thousands, but millions; sea-hawks prey on the young of other birds,
-and will fly fiercely at man, the strange intruder. Earth, air, and
-sea, all are possessed by birds of unimaginable number and intolerable
-smell. Penguins describe curves in the air as they dive neatly from the
-rocks. Mutton-birds burrow in the ground, whence their odd noises mount
-up strangely. Their subterranean clamour mingles with the deafening
-discords of the rookeries above ground. On large patches the vegetation
-is worn away and the surface defiled. All the water is fouled. The
-odour, like the offence of Hamlet’s uncle, “is rank: it smells to
-Heaven.” Mr. Justice Chapman found it strong a mile out to sea. In
-that, however, the Snares must cede the palm to the Bounties; dreadful
-and barren rocks on which a few insects--a cricket notably--alone
-find room to exist among the sea-birds. In violent tempests the foam
-is said to search every corner of the Bounties, cleansing them for the
-nonce from their ordure. But the purity, such as it is, is short lived.
-All who have smelt them are satisfied to hope that surf and sea-birds
-may ever retain possession there. Indeed, as much may be said for the
-Snares. Science may sometimes perambulate them, just as Science--with
-a handkerchief to her nose--may occasionally pick her steps about the
-Bounties; but none save _savants_ and sea-lions are likely to claim any
-interest in these noisome castles of the sea-fowl.
-
-Some of our larger outposts in the ocean are not repulsive by any
-means. If human society were of no account, the Kermadecs would be
-pleasant enough. One or two of them seem much more like Robinson
-Crusoe’s fertile island, as we read of it in Defoe’s pages, than
-is Juan Fernandez. Even the wild goats are not lacking. Flowering
-trees grow on well-wooded and lofty Raoul; Meyer Island has a useful
-boat-harbour; good fish abound in the warm and pellucid sea. To
-complete the geniality, the largest island--some seven or eight
-thousand acres in size--has a hot bathing-pool. One heroic family defy
-solitude there, cultivate the fertile soil, and grow coffee, bananas,
-figs, vines, olives, melons, peaches, lemons, citrons, and, it would
-seem, anything from grenadilloes to potatoes. Twenty years ago, or
-thereabout, our Government tempted a handful of settlers to try life
-there. A volcanic disturbance scared them away, however, and the one
-family has since plodded on alone. Stories are told of the life
-its members live, of their skill in swimming and diving, and their
-struggles with armies of rats and other troubles. Once when the steamer
-that visits them yearly was late, its captain found the mother of the
-family reduced to her last nib--with which she nevertheless had kept
-up her diary. On board the steamer was the lady’s eldest daughter, a
-married woman living in New Zealand. She was making a rough voyage of
-a thousand miles to see her mother--for two days. Sooner or later--if
-talk means anything--Auckland enterprise will set up a fish-curing
-station on Meyer Island. That, I suppose, will be an answer to the
-doubts which beset the minds of the Lords of the British Admiralty
-when this group, with its Breton name, was annexed to New Zealand. The
-colony asked for it, and the Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty were
-duly consulted. Their secretary wrote a laconic reply to the Colonial
-Office observing that if New Zealand wanted the Kermadecs my Lords saw
-“no particular reason” why “that colony” should not have “these islands
-or islets”; but of what possible use they could be to New Zealand my
-Lords couldn’t imagine.
-
-The Three Kings mark a point in our history. It was on the 5th of
-January that Tasman discovered them. So he named them after the three
-wise kings of the East--Caspar, Melchior, and Balthasar. The Great
-King, the largest of them, is not very great, for it contains, perhaps,
-six or seven hundred acres. It is cliff-bound, but a landing may
-usually be made on one side or the other, for its shape resembles the
-device of the Isle of Man. Into one of its coves a cascade comes down,
-tumbling two hundred feet from a green and well-timbered valley above.
-Tasman saw the cascade; and as the _Heemskirk_ and her cockle-shell of
-a consort were short of fresh water, he sent “Francis Jacobsz in our
-shallop, and Mr. Gillimans, the supercargo,” with casks to be filled.
-When, however, the two boats neared the rocks, the men found thereon
-fierce-looking, well-armed natives, who shouted to them in hoarse
-voices. Moreover, the surf ran too high for an easy landing. So the
-Dutchmen turned from the white cascade, and pulled back to Tasman,
-who took them aboard again, and sailed away, to discover the Friendly
-Islands. Thus it came about that though he discovered our country, and
-spent many days on our coasts, neither he nor any of his men ever set
-foot on shore there. Did Francis Jacobsz, one wonders, really think the
-surf at Great King so dangerous? Or was it that good Mr. Gillimans,
-supercargo and man of business, disliked the uncomfortable-looking
-spears and _patu-patu_ in the hands of the Rarewa men? Tasman, at any
-rate, came to no harm at the Three Kings, which is more than can be
-said of all shipmasters; for they are beset with tusky reefs and strong
-currents. A noted wreck there was that of the steamship _Elingamite_,
-which went down six years ago, not far from the edge of the deep ocean
-chasm where the submarine foundations of New Zealand seem to end
-suddenly in a deep cleft of ocean.
-
-Thanks to a thick white fog, she ran on a reef in daylight on a quiet
-Sunday morning. She was carrying fifty-eight of a crew and about twice
-as many passengers. There was but a moderate sea, and, as those on
-board kept cool, four boats and two rafts were launched. Though one
-boat was capsized, and though waves washed several persons off the
-wreck, nearly every one swam to a boat or was picked up. One woman,
-however, was picked up dead. No great loss or sufferings need have
-followed but for the fog. As it was, the shipwrecked people were
-caught by currents, and had to row or drift about blindly. Their
-fates were various. The largest boat, with fifty-two souls, was
-luckiest: it reached Hohoura on the mainland after but twenty-five
-hours of wretchedness. There the Maori--like the barbarous people of
-Melita--showed them no small kindness. It is recorded that one native
-hurried down to the beach with a large loaf, which was quickly divided
-into fifty-two morsels. Others came with horses, and the castaways,
-helped up to the _kainga_, had hot tea and food served out to them.
-Whale-boats then put out and intercepted a passing steamer, which at
-once made for the Three Kings. There, on Tuesday, eighty-nine more of
-the shipwrecked were discovered and rescued. One party of these had
-come within a hundred and fifty yards of an islet, only to be swept
-away by a current against which they struggled vainly. Finally, they
-made Great King, and supported life on raw shell-fish till, on the
-third day after the wreck, the sun, coming out, enabled them (with the
-aid of their watch-glasses) to dry the six matches which they had
-with them. Five of these failed to ignite; the sixth gave them fire,
-and, with fire, hope and comparative comfort. They even gave chase to
-the wild goats of the island, but, needless to say, neither caught nor
-killed any.
-
-One of the rafts, unhappily, failed to make land at all. A strong
-current carried it away to sea, and in four days it drifted sixty-two
-miles. Fifteen men and one woman were on it, without food or water,
-miserably clothed, and drenched incessantly by the wash or spray. The
-woman gave up part of her clothing to half-naked men, dying herself
-on the third day. Four others succumbed through exhaustion; two threw
-themselves into the sea in delirium. Three steamers were out searching
-for the unfortunates. It was the _Penguin_, a King’s ship, which found
-them, as the fifth day of their sufferings was beginning, and when
-but one man could stand upright. The captain of the man-of-war had
-carefully gauged the strength of the current, and followed the raft far
-out to the north-east.
-
-Gold and silver, to the value of £17,000, went down with the
-_Elingamite_. Treasure-seekers have repeatedly tried to fish it up, but
-in vain.
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-[Illustration: WEAVING THE KAITAKA]
-
-Five hundred miles to the east of Banks’ Peninsula lie the pleasant
-group called the Chatham Islands. They owe their auspicious name
-to their luck in being discovered in 1790 by the Government ship
-_Chatham_. Otherwise they might have been named after Lord Auckland,
-or Mr. Robert Campbell, or Stewart the sealer, as have others of our
-islands. They are fabled of old to have been, like Delos, floating
-isles, borne hither and thither by sea and wind. The Apollo who brought
-them to anchor was the demi-god Kahu. The myth, perhaps, had its
-origin in the powerful currents which are still a cause of anxiety to
-shipmasters navigating the seas round their shores. They are fertile
-spots, neither flat nor lofty, but altogether habitable. The soft air
-is full of sunshine, tempered by the ocean haze, and in it groves of
-karaka-trees, with their large polished leaves and gleaming fruit,
-flourish as they flourish nowhere else. Neither too hot nor cold,
-neither large nor impossibly small--they are about two and a half
-times the size of the Isle of Wight,--the Chathams, one would think,
-should have nothing in their story but pleasantness and peace. And,
-as far as we know, the lot of their old inhabitants, the Moriori,
-was for centuries marked neither by bloodshed nor dire disaster. The
-Moriori were Polynesians akin to, yet distinct from, the Maori. Perhaps
-they were the last separate remnant of some earlier immigrants to New
-Zealand; or it is possible that their canoes brought them from the
-South Seas to the Chathams direct; at any rate they found the little
-land to their liking, and living there undisturbed, increased till,
-a hundred years ago, they mustered some two thousand souls. Unlike
-the Maori, they were not skilled gardeners; but they knew how to cook
-fern-root, and how to render the poisonous karaka berries innocuous.
-Their rocks and reefs were nesting-places for albatrosses and
-mutton-birds; so they had fowl and eggs in plenty. A large and
-very deep lagoon on their main island--said to be the crater of a
-volcano--swarmed with eels.
-
-They were clever fishermen, and would put to sea on extraordinary
-rafts formed of flax sticks buoyed up by the bladders of the giant
-kelp. Their beaches were well furnished with shell-fish. Finally, the
-fur seal haunted their shores in numbers, and supplied them with the
-warmest of clothing. Indeed, though they could weave mantles of flax,
-and dye them more artistically than the Maori, they gradually lost
-the art: their sealskin mantles were enough for them. As the life of
-savages goes, theirs seems to have been, until eighty years ago, as
-happy as it was peaceful and absolutely harmless. For the Moriori
-did not fight among themselves, and having, so far as they knew, no
-enemies, knew not the meaning of war. They were rather expert at making
-simple tools of stone and wood, but had no weapons, or any use therefor.
-
-Upon these altogether inoffensive and unprovocative islanders came a
-series of misfortunes which in a couple of decades wiped out most of
-the little race, broke its spirit, and doomed it to extinction. What
-had they done to deserve this--the fate of the Tasmanians? They were
-not unteachable and repulsive like the Tasmanians. Thomas Potts, a
-trained observer, has minutely described one of them, a survivor of
-their calamitous days. He saw in the Moriori a man “robust in figure,
-tall of stature, not darker in colour perhaps than many a Maori, but
-of a dull, dusky hue, rather than of the rich brown” so common in the
-Maori. Prominent brows, almond eyes, and a curved, somewhat fleshy nose
-gave the face a Jewish cast. The eyes seemed quietly watchful--the eyes
-of a patient animal “not yet attacked, but preparing or prepared for
-defence.” Otherwise the man’s demeanour was quiet and stolid. Bishop
-Selwyn, too, who visited the Chathams in 1848, bears witness to the
-courteous and attractive bearing of the Moriori. They were not drunken,
-irreclaimably vicious, or especially slothful. They were simply
-ignorant, innocent, and kindly, and so unfitted for wicked times and a
-reign of cruelty.
-
-White sealers and whalers coming in friendly guise began their
-destruction, exterminating their seals, scaring away their sea-fowl,
-infecting them with loathsome diseases. Worse was to come. In the
-sealing schooners casual Maori seamen visited the Chathams, and saw in
-them a nook as pleasant and defenceless as the city of Laish. One of
-these wanderers on his return home painted a picture of the group to an
-audience of the Ngatiawa tribe in words which Mr. Shand thus renders:--
-
-“There is an island out in the ocean not far from here to the
-eastward. It is full of birds--both land and sea-birds--of all kinds,
-some living in the peaty soil, with albatross in plenty on the outlying
-islands. There is abundance of sea and shell-fish; the lakes swarm
-with eels; and it is a land of the karaka. The inhabitants are very
-numerous, but they do not know how to fight, and have no weapons.”
-
-[Illustration: “TE HONGI”]
-
-His hearers saw a vision of a Maori El Dorado! But how was it to be
-reached? In canoes they could not venture so far, nor did they know the
-way. Doubtless, however, they remembered how Stewart of the _Elisabeth_
-had carried Rauparaha and his warriors to Akaroa in the hold of his
-brig a few years before. Another brig, the _Rodney_, was in Cook’s
-Strait now, seeking a cargo of scraped flax. Her captain, Harewood, was
-not such a villain as Stewart; but if he could not be bribed he could
-be terrified--so thought the Ngatiawa. In Port Nicholson (Wellington
-harbour) lies a little islet with a patch of trees on it, like a tuft
-of hair on a shaven scalp. Nowadays it is used as a quarantine place
-for dogs and other doubtful immigrants. Thither the Ngatiawa decoyed
-Harewood and a boat’s crew, and then seizing the men, cajoled or
-frightened the skipper into promising to carry them across the sea
-to their prey. Whether Harewood made much ado about transporting the
-filibustering cannibals to the Chathams will probably never be known.
-He seems to have had some scruples, but they were soon overcome, either
-by fear or greed. Once the bargain was struck he performed his part
-of it without flinching. The work of transport was no light task. No
-less than nine hundred of the Maori of Cook’s Strait had resolved
-to take part in the enterprise, so much had Rauparaha’s freebooting
-exploits in the south inflamed and unsettled his tribe. To carry this
-invading horde to the scene of their enterprise the _Rodney_ had to
-make two trips. On the first of them the Maori were packed in the
-hold like the negroes on a slaver, and when water ran short suffered
-miseries of thirst. Had the Moriori known anything of war they might
-easily have repelled their enemies. As it was, the success of the
-invasion was prompt and complete. Without losing a man the Maori soon
-took possession of the Chathams and their inhabitants. The land was
-parcelled out among the new-comers, and the Moriori and their women
-tasted the bitterness of enslavement by insolent and brutal savages.
-They seem to have done all that submissiveness could do to propitiate
-their swaggering lords. But no submissiveness could save them from
-the cruelty of barbarians drunk with easy success. Misunderstandings
-between master and slave would be settled with a blow from a tomahawk.
-On at least two occasions there were massacres, the results either of
-passion or panic. In one of these fifty Moriori were killed; in the
-other, perhaps three times that number of all ages and sexes. On the
-second occasion the dead were laid out in a line on the sea-beach,
-parents and children together, so that the bodies touched each other.
-The dead were of course eaten; it is said that as many as fifty were
-baked in one oven. I have read, moreover, that the Maori coolly kept
-a number of their miserable slaves penned up, feeding them well, and
-killed them from time to time like sheep when butcher’s meat was
-wanted. This last story is, I should think, doubtful, for as the whole
-island was but one large slave-pen, there could be no object in
-keeping victims shut up in a yard. The same story has been told of
-Rauparaha’s treatment of the islanders of Kapiti. But Kapiti is but
-a few miles from the main shore, and one of his destined victims, a
-woman, is said to have swum across the strait with her baby on her
-back. The unhappy Moriori had nowhere to flee to, unless they were to
-throw themselves into the sea. The white traders and sealers on the
-coast were virtually in league with their oppressors. The only escape
-was death, and that way they were not slow to take. Chroniclers differ
-as to the precise disease which played havoc with them, but I should
-imagine that the pestilence which walked among them in the noonday was
-Despair. At any rate their number, which had been 2000 in 1836, was
-found to be 212 in 1855. The bulk of the race had then found peace in
-the grave. It is a relief to know that the sufferings of the survivors
-had by that time come to an end. Long before 1855 the British flag had
-been hoisted on the Chathams and slavery abolished. After a while the
-New Zealand Government insisted upon a certain amount of land being
-given back to the Moriori. It was a small estate, but it was something.
-The white man, now lord of all, made no distinction between the two
-brown races, and in process of time the Maori, themselves reduced to
-a remnant, learned to treat the Moriori as equals. These better days,
-however, came too late. The Moriori recognised this. For in 1855,
-seeing that their race was doomed, they met together and solemnly
-agreed that the chronicles of their people should be arranged and
-written down, so that when the last was dead, their name and story
-should not be forgotten. The conquering Maori themselves did not fare
-so much better. They stood the test of their easy success as badly as
-did Pizarro’s filibusters in Peru. They quarrelled with their friends,
-the white traders and sealers, and suffered in an unprovoked onslaught
-by the crew of a certain French ship, the _Jean Bart_. Then two of
-the conquering clans fell out and fought with each other. In the end
-a number of them returned to New Zealand, and the remainder failed to
-multiply or keep up their strength in the Chathams. In the present day
-Moriori and Maori together--for their blood has mingled--do not number
-two hundred souls.
-
-[Illustration: WAHINE’S CANOE RACE ON THE WAIKATO]
-
-The affair of the _Jean Bart_ is a curious story. The vessel, a
-French whaler, anchored off the Chathams in 1839. Eager to trade, the
-Maori clambered on board in numbers. They began chaffering, and also
-quarrelling with one another, in a fashion that alarmed the captain.
-He gave wine to some of his dangerous visitors, and tried to persuade
-them to go ashore again. Many did so, but several score were still in
-the ship when she slipped her cable and stood out to sea. Then the
-Frenchmen, armed with guns and lances, attacked the Maori, who were
-without weapons, and cleared the decks of them. The fight, however,
-did not end there. A number of the Ngatiawa were below, whither the
-whites did not venture to follow them. They presently made their way
-into a storeroom, found muskets there, and opened fire on the crew. Two
-of the Frenchmen fell, and the remainder in panic launched three
-boats and left the ship. By this time the _Jean Bart_ was out of sight
-of land, but the Maori managed to sail back. She went ashore, and was
-looted and burnt. About forty natives had been killed in the strange
-bungling and causeless slaughter. The whalers and their boats were
-heard of no more. It is thought that they were lost in the endeavour to
-make New Zealand.[6]
-
-[6] In the _Journal of the Polynesian Society_, vol. i., Mr. A. Shand
-summarises and compares the various versions of this odd business.
-
-We have seen how the Maori began their invasion of the Chathams by
-the seizure of the _Rodney_ at Port Nicholson. It is curious that the
-best-known incident of the subsequent history of the group was almost
-the exact converse of this--I mean the seizure at the Chathams of the
-schooner _Rifleman_ in July 1868. In this case, too, the aggressors
-were Maori, though they did not belong to the Chathams. They were
-prisoners of war or suspected natives deported thither from the North
-Island, and kept there under loose supervision by a weak guard. Their
-leader, Te Kooti, had never borne arms against us, and had been
-imprisoned and exiled on suspicion merely. A born leader of men, he
-contrived the capture of the _Rifleman_ very cleverly, and sailed her
-back to the North Island successfully, taking with him one hundred and
-sixty-three men and one hundred and thirty-five women and children. The
-schooner was carrying a respectable cargo of ammunition, accoutrements,
-food, and tobacco; but the fugitives could muster between them only
-about thirty rifles and guns. Yet with this scanty supply of weapons
-Te Kooti managed to kindle a flame in the Poverty Bay district that
-took years to extinguish. Finally, after massacring many settlers, and
-winning or losing a series of fights with our militia and their native
-allies, his forces were scattered, and he was hunted away with a few
-followers into the country of the Maori king. There he was allowed to
-settle undisturbed. He lived long enough to be forgiven, to have his
-hand shaken by our Native Minister, and to have a house with a bit of
-land given to him by the Government. He was not a chivalrous opponent.
-A savage, he made war in savage fashion. But he was a capable person;
-and I cannot resist the conclusion that in being banished to the
-Chathams and kept there without trial, he was given reason to think
-himself most unjustly used.
-
-[Illustration: NATIVE GATHERING]
-
-The only trouble given by the natives at the Chathams in later days
-took the form of a little comedy. The Maori there own a good deal
-of live-stock, including some thousands of sheep and a number of
-unpleasant and objectionable dogs. The Maori _kuri_, an unattractive
-mongrel at the best, is never popular with white settlers; but in the
-year 1890 the _kuri_ of the Chathams became a distinct nuisance. A
-dog-tax was levied on the owners, but this failed either to make them
-reduce the number of their dogs or restrain them from worrying the
-flocks of the white settlers. If I remember rightly, the Maori simply
-declined to pay the dog-tax. When they were prosecuted and fined, they
-refused to pay the fines. The Government of the day, with more
-vigour than humour, despatched a steamer to the Chathams, arrested
-some forty of the recalcitrants, brought them to the South Island, and
-lodged them in Lyttelton Gaol. The Maori, who have a keen sense of
-the ridiculous, offered no resistance whatever. I suspect that they
-did not greatly dislike the trip; it enabled them to see the world.
-Their notion of hard labour and prison discipline was to eat well, to
-smoke tobacco, and to bask in the sunshine of the prison yard. It was
-impossible to treat them harshly. After a while they were sent home,
-where their adventure formed food for conversation in many and many
-a nocturnal _korero_. In the meantime their dogs lived and continued
-to chase sheep. At this stage the writer of these pages joined the
-New Zealand Government, and the unhappy white flock-owners laid their
-troubles before him. At first the little knot did not seem, to an
-inexperienced Minister, quite easy to untie. After some cogitation,
-however, a way was found of ending the comedy of errors. What that was
-is another story. Since then, no more terrible incident has disturbed
-the Chathams than the grounding of an Antarctic iceberg on their
-coast--a somewhat startling apparition in latitude 44° south.
-
-Otherwise the Chatham islanders have gone on for the last forty years
-living quietly in the soft sea-air of their little Arcadia, without
-roads and without progress. They grow wool and export it; for the
-rest, they exist. A small steamer visits them half-a-dozen times a
-year, and brings news, groceries, and clothes, also the correct
-time. Great is the tribulation when her coming is delayed. A friend
-of mine who witnessed a belated arrival tells me that the boat found
-a famine raging. The necessaries lacking, however, were not food, but
-tobacco and hairpins. The 60,000 sheep depastured on the islands have
-played havoc with some of the native vegetation, and have brought
-down retribution in the shape of moving drifts of blown sea-sand,
-whereby many acres of good pasture have been overwhelmed. However,
-that wonderful binding grass, the marram, has been used to stop the
-sand, and is said to have stayed the scourge. Much native “bush” is
-still left, and shows the curious spectacle of a forest where trees
-spread luxuriantly but do not grow to much more than twenty feet in
-height. That, says Professor Dendy, is due to the sea-winds--not cold,
-but laden with salt. In this woodland you may see a veronica which
-has become a tree, a kind of sandalwood, and a palm peculiar to the
-islands. That beautiful flower, the Chatham Island lily--which, by the
-way, is not a lily,--blooms in many a New Zealand garden.
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-The Auckland Isles lie some three hundred miles south of our mainland.
-They are nearly four times the size of St. Helena, where, as we know,
-several thousand people have in the past managed to live, chiefly
-on beef and a British garrison. No one, however, now lives in the
-Aucklands. New Zealanders speak of their climate in much the same
-strain as Frenchmen use when talking of November fogs in London. There
-are, however, worse climates in several parts of the United Kingdom.
-It does not always rain there; there are many spots where you are
-sheltered from the wind. It is not so cold but that tree-ferns will
-grow--the group is their southern limit. The leaning or bowed habits
-of the forest are due as much, perhaps, to the peaty soil as to the
-sou’westers. Vegetables flourish; goats, pigs, and cattle thrive.
-So far are the valleys and hill-sides from being barren that their
-plant-life is a joy to the New Zealand botanists, who pray for nothing
-so much as that settlement may hold its hand and not molest this floral
-paradise. Pleurophyllums, celmisias, gentians, veronicas, grass-trees,
-spread beside the sea-gulfs as though in sub-alpine meadows. The leaves
-are luxuriant, the flowers richer in colour than on our main islands.
-The jungle of crouching rata tinges the winding shores with its summer
-scarlet. Dense as are the wind-beaten groves, the scrub that covers the
-higher slopes is still more closely woven. The forest you may creep
-through; the scrub is virtually impenetrable. A friend of mine, anxious
-to descend a steep slope covered with it, did so by lying down and
-rolling on the matted surface. He likened it to a wire-mattress--with a
-broken wire sticking up here and there.
-
-In addition to their botanical fame, the Aucklands have a sinister
-renown among seafaring men. Nature has provided the group with nearly a
-dozen good harbours. Two among these, Port Ross and Carnley Harbour,
-have found champions enthusiastic enough to style them the finest
-seaports in the world. Yet, despite this abundance of shelter, the
-isles are infamous as the scene of shipwrecks. They are in the track
-of Australian ships making for Cape Horn by passing to the south of
-New Zealand. In trying to give a wide berth to the Snares, captains
-sometimes go perilously near the Aucklands. To go no further back,
-eight wrecks upon them have been recorded during the last forty-five
-years; while earlier, in 1845, there are said to have been three in one
-year. The excellent harbours, unluckily, open towards the east; the
-ships running before the westerly winds are dashed against the terrible
-walls of rock which make the windward face of the group. The survivors
-find themselves on desolate and inclement shores hundreds of miles from
-humanity. Many are the tales of their sufferings. Even now, though the
-Government of New Zealand keeps up two well-stocked depôts of food and
-clothing there, and despatches a steamer to search for castaways once
-or twice a year, we still read of catastrophes followed by prolonged
-misery. Five men from a crew of the _Grafton_, lost in 1864, spent no
-less than eighteen months on the islands. At length they patched up the
-ship’s pinnace sufficiently to carry three of them to Stewart’s Island,
-where they crept into Port Adventure in the last stage of exhaustion.
-The two comrades they had left behind were at once sent for and brought
-away. Less lucky were four sailors who, after the wreck of the _General
-Grant_, two years later, tried to repeat the feat of a boat-voyage
-to Stewart Island. They were lost on the way. Indeed, of eighty-three
-poor souls cast away with the _General Grant_, only ten were ultimately
-rescued, after spending a forlorn six months on the isles. The case of
-the _General Grant_ was especially noteworthy. She did not run blindly
-against the cliffs in a tempest, but spent hours tacking on and off
-the western coast in ordinary weather. Finally, she found her way into
-a cave, where she went down with most of those on board her. At least
-£30,000 in gold went with her, and in the effort to find the wreck and
-recover the money, the cutter _Daphne_ was afterwards cast away, with
-the loss of six lives more.
-
-Cruel indeed was the ill-luck of the crew of the four-masted barque
-_Dundonald_ which struck on the Aucklands in March 1907. They saw
-a cliff looming out just over their bows shortly after midnight.
-An attempt to wear the ship merely ended in her being hurled stern
-foremost into a kind of tunnel. The bow sank, and huge seas washed
-overboard the captain, his son, and nine of the crew. Sixteen took
-refuge in the tops, and one of them, a Russian, crept from a yard-arm
-on to a ledge of the cliff. After daylight a rope was flung to him
-and doubled, and along this bridge--sixty feet in air above the
-surges--fifteen men contrived to crawl. On reaching the summit of
-the cliff they discovered the full extent of their bad fortune. They
-had been cast away, not on the larger Aucklands, but on the peaked
-rock ominously named Disappointment Island. It contains but four or
-five square miles, and is five miles away from the next of the group.
-Heart-stricken at the discovery, the chief mate lay down and died in
-a few days. The second mate’s health also gave way. The carpenter and
-sail-maker, whose skill would have been worth so much to the castaways,
-had been drowned with the captain. A few damp matches and some canvas
-and rope were almost all that was saved from the ship before she
-disappeared in deep water.
-
-For seven months the survivors managed to live on Disappointment
-Island, showing both pluck and ingenuity. For a day or two they had to
-eat raw sea-birds. Then, when their matches had dried, they managed
-to kindle a fire of peat--a fire which they did not allow to expire
-for seven months. They learned a better way of cooking sea-fowl than
-by roasting them. At the coming of winter weather they dug holes in
-the peat, and building over these roofs of sods and tussock-grass,
-lay warm and dry thereunder. These shelters, which have been likened
-to Kaffir kraals, appear to have been modelled on Russian pig-sties.
-The seamen found a plant with large creeping stems, full of starch,
-and edible--by desperate men. When the seals came to the islands they
-mistook them for sea-serpents, but presently finding out their mistake,
-they lowered hunters armed with clubs to the foot of the cliffs, and
-learned, after many experiments, that the right place to hit a seal
-is above the nose. They found penguins tough eating, and seal’s flesh
-something to be reserved for dire extremity. Their regular ration of
-sea-birds, they said, was three molly-hawks a day for each man. As to
-that, one can only say, with Dominie Sampson, “Prodigious!” Searching
-their islet they lighted upon a crack in the ring of cliff where a
-waterfall tumbled into a quiet little boat-harbour, the bathing-pool
-of sea-lions. Then they determined to build a boat and reach that
-elysium, the main island, with its depôt of stores. With greased canvas
-and crooked boughs cut from the gnarled veronica, which was their only
-timber, they managed to botch up something between a caricature of a
-Welsh coracle and “the rotten carcase of a boat” in which Antonio and
-the King of Naples turned Prospero and Miranda adrift. Rowing this
-leaky curiosity with forked sticks, three picked adventurers reached
-the main island--only to return without reaching the depôt. Another
-boat, and yet another, had to be built before a second transit could
-be achieved; and when the second crossing was effected, the coracle
-sank as the rowers scrambled on shore. This, however, completed the
-catalogue of their disasters, and was “the last of their sea-sorrow.”
-The depôt was reached in September, and in the boat found there the
-tenants of Disappointment Island were removed to comfort and good
-feeding at Port Ross. With the help of an old gun they did some
-cattle-shooting on Enderby Island hard by, and in the end were taken
-off by the Government steamer _Hinemoa_ in December.
-
-Campbell Island, another habitable though sad-coloured spot, is a kind
-of understudy of the Aucklands--like them, but smaller, with less
-striking scenery and scantier plant life. It has, however, a local
-legend odd enough to be worth repeating. In the hodden-grey solitude
-there are certain graves of shipwrecked men and others. Among them
-is one called the Grave of the Frenchwoman. On the strength of this
-name, and of a patch of Scottish heather blooming near it, a tale has
-grown up, or been constructed, which would be excellent and pathetic
-if there were the slightest reason to suppose it true. It is that the
-Frenchwoman who sleeps her last sleep in rainy Campbell Island was a
-natural daughter of Charles Edward, the Young Pretender. She has even
-been identified with the daughter of Prince Charles and Clementina
-Walkenshaw, the Scottish lady who met him at Bannockburn House in the
-’45, and long afterwards joined him abroad. This daughter--says the
-New Zealand story--became, when she grew up, an object of suspicion
-to the Prince’s Jacobite followers. They believed that she was a spy
-in the pay of the English Court. So they induced Stewart, a Scottish
-sea-captain, to kidnap the girl and carry her to some distant land.
-Stewart--whose name remains on our Stewart Island--did his work as
-thoroughly as possible by sailing with her to the antipodes of France.
-On the way he gained her affections, and established her at Campbell
-Island, where she died and was buried. Such is the story; sentiment has
-even been expended on the connection between Bonnie Prince Charlie and
-the patch of heather aforesaid.
-
-It is true certainly that there was a daughter named Charlotte or
-Caroline, or both, born to the Prince and Miss Walkenshaw in the year
-1753. But it was the mother, not the daughter, who was suspected of
-being a spy in English pay. Clementina left the Prince, driven away by
-his sottish brutalities, just as did his legal wife, the Countess of
-Albany. The Countess adjusted her account by running away with Alfieri
-the poet. Abandoned by both women, Charles seems to have found some
-consolation in the society of his daughter Charlotte, to whom, even in
-his last degraded years, he showed his better side. He went through
-the form of making her Duchess of Albany. She remained with him till
-his death in 1788, and seems to have followed him to the grave a year
-afterwards. In any case, Stewart, the sea-captain of the legend, did
-not find his way to our southern isles till the earlier years of the
-nineteenth century. That was too late by a generation for Jacobite
-exiles to be concerned about the treachery of English agents. He is
-described in Surgeon-Major Thomson’s book as a man “who had seen the
-world and drunk Burgundy,” so it is possible that the story may have
-had a Burgundian origin. Who the buried Frenchwoman was I cannot say,
-but French seamen and explorers, as the map shows, have visited and
-examined Campbell Island. It would be a desolate spot for a Frenchwoman
-to live in; but when we are under earth, then, if the grave be deep
-enough, all lands, I suppose, are much alike.
-
-
-
-
-APPENDIX
-
-A WORD TO THE TOURIST
-
-
-[Illustration: WHITE CLIFFS, BULLER RIVER]
-
-Passengers to New Zealand may be roughly divided into two kinds--those
-who go to settle there, and those who go as visitors merely. The
-visitors, again, may be separated into sportsmen, invalids, and
-ordinary tourists who land in the country in order to look round
-and depart, “to glance and nod and hurry by.” Now by passengers and
-travellers of all sorts and conditions I, a Government official, may be
-forgiven if I advise them to make all possible use of the Government
-of the Dominion. For it is a Government ready and willing to give
-them help and information. I may be pardoned for reminding English
-readers that the Dominion has an office in London with a bureau, where
-inquirers are cheerfully welcomed and inquiries dealt with. Official
-pamphlets and statistics may not be stimulating or exciting reading;
-but, though dry and cautious, they are likely to be fairly accurate. So
-much for the information to be got in England. When the passenger lands
-in New Zealand, I can only repeat the advice--let him make every use
-he can of the Government. If he be in search of land, he cannot
-do better than make his way to the nearest office of the Lands and
-Survey Department. If he be a skilled labourer whose capital is chiefly
-in his muscles and trade knowledge, the Department of Labour will
-tell him where he can best seek for employment. Last, but not least,
-if he be a tourist of any of the three descriptions above mentioned,
-he cannot easily miss the Tourist Department, for that ubiquitous
-organisation has agents in every part of the islands. Once in their
-hands, and brought by them into touch with the State and the facilities
-its railways offer, the traveller’s path is made as smooth as ample
-knowledge and good advice can make it. The journey from Auckland to
-Wellington may now be made by railway, while the voyage from Wellington
-to Lyttelton is but a matter of ten to eleven hours. Old colonists will
-understand what a saving of time and discomfort these changes mean.
-
-The visitor need not overburden himself with any cumbrous or
-extravagant outfit. He is going to a civilised country with a temperate
-climate. The sort of kit that might be taken for an autumn journey
-through the west of Ireland will be sufficient for a run through New
-Zealand. A sportsman may take very much what he would take for a
-hunting or fishing holiday in the highlands of Scotland; and, speaking
-broadly, the mountaineer who has climbed Switzerland will know what to
-take to New Zealand. Of course any one who contemplates camping out
-must add the apparatus for sleeping, cooking, and washing; but these
-things can be bought in the larger New Zealand towns at reasonable
-prices.
-
-A much more complicated question is the route which the traveller
-should follow on landing. The districts for deer-shooting are well
-known. Indeed, the sportsman need have no difficulty in mapping out
-a course for himself. All will depend on the season of the year and
-the special game he is after. Any one interested in the progress of
-settlement and colonisation may be recommended to pass through the
-farming district between the Waiau River in Southland and the river
-of the same name which runs into the sea about sixty miles north of
-Christchurch. Next he should make a journey from Wellington to New
-Plymouth, along the south-west coast of New Zealand, and again from
-Wellington to Napier, threading the districts of Wairarapa, the Seventy
-Mile Bush, and Hawke’s Bay. The city of Auckland and its neighbourhood,
-and the valley of the Waikato River also, he should not miss.
-
-[Illustration: THE OTIRA GORGE]
-
-Let me suppose, however, that what the tourist wants is rather the
-wilderness and its scenery than prosaic evidence of the work of
-subduing the one and wrecking the other. His route then will very much
-depend on the port that is his starting-point. Should he land at Bluff
-Harbour he will find himself within easy striking distance of the Otago
-mountain lakes, all of which are worth a visit, while one of them,
-Manapouri, is perhaps as romantic a piece of wild lake scenery as the
-earth has to show. The sounds or fiords of the south-west coast can
-be comfortably reached by excursion steamer in the autumn. The
-tougher stamp of pedestrian can get to them at other times in the year
-by following one of the tracks which cross the mountains from the lake
-district aforesaid to the western coast. The beauty of the route from
-Te Anau through the Clinton Valley, and by way of the Sutherland Falls
-to Milford Sound, is unsurpassed in the island.
-
-Aorangi, the highest peak of the Southern Alps, and the centre of
-the chief glaciers, is best approached from Timaru, a seaport on the
-eastern coast a hundred and twelve miles south of Christchurch. Any
-one, however, who is able to travel on horseback may be promised a
-rich reward if he follows the west coast, southward from the town of
-Hokitika, and passes between Aorangi and the sea, on that side. Between
-Hokitika and the Canterbury Plains the journey by rail and coach is for
-half its distance a succession of beautiful sights, the finest of which
-is found in the deep gorge of the Otira River, into which the traveller
-plunges on the western side of the dividing range. Inferior, but well
-worth seeing, is the gorge of the Buller River, to be seen by those who
-make the coach journey from Westport to Nelson. Nelson itself is finely
-placed at the inner end of the grand arc of Blind Bay. The drive thence
-to Picton on Queen Charlotte Sound, passing on the way through Havelock
-and the Rai Valley, has charming points of view.
-
-The better scenery of the North Island is not found in the southern
-portion unless the traveller is prepared to leave the beaten track and
-do some rough scrambling in the Tararua and Ruahiné Mountains. Then,
-indeed, he will have his reward. Otherwise, after taking in the fine
-panorama of Wellington Harbour, he may be recommended to make his way
-with all convenient speed to New Plymouth and the forest-clad slopes of
-Mount Egmont. Thence he should turn to the interior and reach the Hot
-Lakes district by way of one of the river valleys. That of the Mokau
-is extremely beautiful in its rich covering of virgin forest. But the
-gorges of the Wanganui are not only equal to anything of the kind in
-beauty, but may be ascended in the most comfortable fashion. Arrived at
-the upper end of the navigable river, the traveller will make his way
-by coach across country to Lake Taupo and the famous volcanoes of its
-plateau.
-
-[Illustration: LAKE WAIKARE-MOANA]
-
-More often the tourist gains the volcanoes and thermal springs by
-coming thither southward from the town of Auckland. And here let
-me observe that Auckland and its surroundings make the pleasantest
-urban district in the islands. Within thirty miles of the city there
-is much that is charming both on sea and land. Nor will a longer
-journey be wasted if a visit be paid to the chief bays and inlets of
-the northern peninsula, notably to Whangaroa, Whangarei, Hokianga,
-and the Bay of Islands. Still, nothing in the province of Auckland
-is likely to rival in magnetic power the volcanic district of which
-Roto-rua is the official centre. To its other attractions have now
-been added a connection by road with the unspoiled loveliness of Lake
-Waikarémoana and the forest and mountain region of the Uriwera
-tribe, into which before the ’nineties white men seldom ventured, save
-in armed force. Rising like a wall to the east of the Rangitaiki River
-the Uriwera country is all the more striking by reason of the utter
-contrast it affords to the desolate, half-barren plains of pumice which
-separate it from the Hot Lakes. These last and their district include
-Taupo, with its hot pools and giant cones. But the most convenient
-point among them for a visitor’s headquarters is undoubtedly Roto-rua.
-
-
-
-
-Index
-
-
-Acclimatisation, 59
-
-Acclimatisers, 65
-
-Adams, Arthur, 21
-
-Akaroa, 190, 201, 215
-
-Albatrosses, 213
-
-Alps, 6, 160, 166, 179
-
-Antipodes Island, 206
-
-Aorangi, 163, 164, 165, 167, 170, 173, 175, 233
-
-Ara-tia-tia Rapids, 123
-
-Art, 20, 21, 49
-
-Auckland, 19, 28, 75, 90, 101, 104, 114, 129, 132, 142, 193, 231, 232,
-234 Isles, 91, 94, 184, 191, 204, 205, 206, 222, 223, 225
-
-Australia, 5, 10, 11, 20, 37, 73, 101, 165
-
-Australian stock-riders, 68
-
-
-Bay of Plenty, 115, 116, 117, 120, 140
-
-Beech, 87 woods, 161
-
-Bell, Dr. Mackintosh, 176
-
-Bell-bird, 192
-
-Bidwill, 128, 136
-
-Blackwell, 24
-
-Blue duck, 64
-
-Bounties, the, 206, 207
-
-Bowen, the 182
-
-British trees, 7
-
-Broadleaf, the large or shining, 94
-
-Brunner, 177, 193
-
-Buddle, Mr., 117
-
-Buick, 24
-
-Buller River, 160, 233
-
-Bush-fire, 105 lawyer, 99 settler, 40
-
-Butler, Samuel, 162, 163
-
-Butter, 12, 13, 14, 16, 17 factories, 11
-
-
-Caddell, James, 196, 197
-
-Campbell Island, 227, 228, 229
-
-Canoe, 76, 77
-
-Cape Maria Van Diemen, 133, 204
-
-Carrick, Mr., 24
-
-Chapman, Mr. Justice, 200, 206
-
-Charles Edward, the young Pretender, 228
-
-Chatham Island lily, 222
-
-Chatham Islands, the, 190, 204, 211, 212, 214, 215, 216, 217, 218, 219,
-220, 221
-
-Cheese, 12, 13, 14, 17
-
-Chief towns, 18
-
-Christchurch, 28, 132, 162, 232, 233
-
-Clematis, 37, 94, 95
-
-Climate, 2, 3, 4, 5, 10, 14, 35, 36, 38, 52, 165, 170, 187, 222
-
-Clutha River, 202
-
-Cockayne, Dr., 24, 191
-
-Colenso, 95, 97
-
-Contrasts, 6
-
-Cook, Captain, 168, 180, 195
-
-Coprosma, 100
-
-Country labourers, 50 life, 28, 29, 32, 35, 39 life tendencies, 46
-
-Cowan, Mr. James, 24, 130
-
-Craddock, Colonel, 53
-
-Cricket, 72, 73
-
-
-Decentralised colony, 19
-
-Deer-stalking, 61
-
-Department of Public Health, 44
-
-Disappointment Island, 204, 226, 227
-
-Domett, 21, 138, 155
-
-Douglas glacier, 176
-
-Drummond, Mr. James, 24
-
-_Dundonald_, the barque, 225
-
-Dunedin, 28
-
-Dusky Sound, 180, 186 Sound in 1771, 195
-
-
-Eels, 65, 213, 214
-
-Egmont, Mount, 105, 125, 165, 234
-
-_Elingamite_, 211
-
-English trees and flowers, 2
-
-Eruption of Tarawera, 139, 144
-
-
-Factories, 26
-
-Factory hands, 26
-
-Fairies, 77, 78, 79, 81, 82, 83
-
-Fairy-tales, 80
-
-Farm labourers, 14, 51
-
-Farmers, 8, 13, 17, 29, 30, 31, 46, 47, 50, 106
-
-Farming, 32
-
-Fern, 55, 86
-
-Ferns, 38, 85, 116, 119
-
-Fiords, 179
-
-Fire, 77, 102, 106, 107, 108, 110, 125, 183
-
-Fish, 65
-
-Fishing, 49
-
-Fitzgerald, E. A., 171, 172, 173
-
-Flax, 12, 13, 37, 86, 95, 99, 202, 213
-
-Flightless birds, 184, 186, 188 duck, 184, 204
-
-Football, 71, 72
-
-Forests, 104, 105
-
-Freeholders, 48
-
-Freezing, 13 factory, 15
-
-Frozen beef, 17 mutton, 11
-
-Fuchsias, 94
-
-
-Garden, 34, 49, 107
-
-Gardening, 36, 85
-
-_General Gates_, the, 197
-
-_General Grant_, the, 224, 225
-
-Gentians, 94, 223
-
-Gerard, Mr. George, 61
-
-Geyser, 116, 119, 139, 148, 150, 151, 152, 164
-
-Goats, 52, 53, 54, 104, 191, 223
-
-Godwits, 62, 192
-
-Gold-mining, 13
-
-_Grafton_, the, 224
-
-Grass, 2, 7, 41, 72, 102, 106, 107, 108, 120, 121, 124, 125, 163, 222,
-226
-
-Green, Mr., 166, 168, 171, 175
-
-Green’s climb, Mr., 169
-
-Greenstone, 200
-
-Grey, Sir George, 80, 129, 155
-
-Grey duck, 62, 64 kiwi, 184
-
-
-Hamilton, A., 24
-
-Hardie, Mr. Keir, 27
-
-Harewood, 215
-
-Hauraki Gulf, 74, 186, 192
-
-Hau-roto, 160, 177, 179
-
-Hawke’s Bay, 104, 232
-
-Hazard, Mr., 145
-
-Healing waters, 154
-
-Health Department, 45
-
-Hemp, 12, 13
-
-Henry, Mr. Richard, 187, 188, 189
-
-High Alps, 57
-
-Hinemoa, 155
-
-Hochstetter, 136, 163 ice-fall, 176
-
-Hongi, 156, 157, 158
-
-Hooker glacier, 172, 174, 176
-
-Hori Haupapa, 157
-
-Horo-Horo, 126
-
-Horses, 68, 69, 71
-
-Hotels, 20
-
-Hot Lakes, 134, 234, 235 Lakes District, 118
-
-House-sparrow, 60
-
-Howitt, Mr. Charlton, 193
-
-Huka, 123
-
-Hutton, 24
-
-
-Inter-colonial trade, 10
-
-Island sanctuaries, 186
-
-
-_Jean Bart_, the, 218, 219
-
-_Journal of the Polynesian Society_, 24, 219
-
-
-Kahikatea, 101
-
-Kahukura, 80
-
-Kaka, 57, 63, 84, 96
-
-Kakapo, 184, 186, 189
-
-Kapiti, 186, 190, 191, 217
-
-Karaka, 37, 95, 96, 97, 98, 191, 212, 214
-
-Kauri, 11, 88, 89, 90, 91, 101, 103, 106, 192 gum, 13
-
-Kea, 57, 58, 167, 186
-
-Kermadecs, 133, 204, 207, 208
-
-Kirk, 91
-
-Kirk’s _Forest Flora_, 24
-
-Kiwi, 186, 188, 189
-
-Kowhai, 87, 94, 95, 96
-
-Krakatoa, 141
-
-
-Laing, 24, 92
-
-Lake Taupo, 116, 127, 234 Tikitapu, 144
-
-Lakes of the South Island, 177
-
-Lance-wood, 88, 100
-
-Likeness to England, 2
-
-Literature, 21, 22, 23
-
-Little Barrier Island, 75, 186, 191, 192
-
-
-Mackay, Miss, 21
-
-Manapouri, 177, 179, 187, 192, 232
-
-Mannering, Mr., 170, 171
-
-Manuka, 37, 55, 95
-
-Maori--their belief in fairies, 77, 78, 79 boys, 96 burning of forest,
-103 cannibalism, 126 canoes, 198 chief, 141 children, 44 cooking, 153
-of Cook’s Strait, 215 dogs, 57, 220 drink, 44 fairy-tales, 80 fight,
-192 their food, 83 gentleman, 128 guide, 134 guns, 84 their health,
-43 history, 199 Horo-Horo, 126 hunters, 184 karaka, their use of the,
-97, 98 kindness, 210 Lake Taupo, 116, 122, 123 their lands, 44  as
-minstrels, 130 myths, 76 their numbers, 43, 218 offerings to Tané, 77
-their outlook, 45 poem, 131 prophets, 159 their qualities, 45 race,
-129, 158 ruins of stockade, 118 solitary family, 195 tradition, 115
-travellers, 125 tribe, 40, 157 villages, 152 warrior, 158 woman, 133
-women, 100
-
-Matai, 87
-
-Matipo, 37
-
-Mayor Island, 118, 119, 120
-
-Meat, 13, 14, 16 freezing, 14
-
-Middle class, 25
-
-Milford Sound, 180, 181, 182, 183, 200
-
-Mistletoe, 94
-
-M’Kinnon, Quintin, 193
-
-M’Nab, Mr., 24, 198
-
-Moa, 184, 199
-
-Mokoia, 155, 156, 157, 158, 159
-
-Moriori, 190, 212, 213, 214, 216, 217, 218
-
-Motor-driving, 49
-
-Mount Cook, 163, 175 Ruapehu, 95 Tasman, 164
-
-Mountain-lily. See Shepherd’s lily
-
-Murchison glacier, 176
-
-Music, 21, 49
-
-Mutton, 13, 16, 34, 41, 58
-
-Mutton-bird, 84, 206, 213
-
-
-Names of lakes and mountains, 178
-
-Napier, 232
-
-National parks, 183
-
-Native pigeons, 62
-
-Nei-nei, 100
-
-Nelson, 28, 74, 142, 177, 233
-
-Newspapers, 22, 23
-
-New Zealand harriers, 69
-
-Ngaitahu, 199, 202, 203
-
-Ngata, Mr. Apirana, M.P., 45
-
-Ngatimamoe, 199, 203
-
-Ngatoro, 115, 116, 146
-
-Ngauruhoe, 116, 128
-
-Nikau, 37, 88
-
-
-Ohinemutu, 118, 133, 145, 152
-
-Orchids, 94
-
-Otira River, 233
-
-Over-sea trade, 10
-
-
-Palm-lily, 37, 88
-
-Palm-tree, 86, 99
-
-Panax, 88
-
-Paradise duck, 64
-
-Parrots, 62, 96
-
-Parrot’s-beak, 94
-
-Passion-flower, 94
-
-Pelorus Jack, 66
-
-Picton, 233
-
-Pigeon, 84
-
-Pigs, 233
-
-Pink and White Terraces, 136, 137, 150, 164
-
-Poetry, 21
-
-Pohaturoa, 126
-
-Pohutu, 151
-
-Pohutu-kawa, 37, 87, 91, 192
-
-Polack, 158
-
-Polo, 49, 70
-
-Pomaré, Dr., 45
-
-Potts, Thomas, 24, 57, 104, 213
-
-Products, 10
-
-Provinces, 18
-
-Pukeko, 63
-
-Pumice, 120, 121, 124
-
-Puoho, 201, 202
-
-Puriri, 88, 90, 91, 93
-
-
-Rabbit, 53, 59, 185
-
-Rata, 76, 77, 87, 90, 91, 92, 93, 94, 187, 191, 223
-
-Rauparaha, 190, 199, 201, 203, 215, 217
-
-Recreations, 49
-
-Red-deer, 60
-
-Resemblance to Scotland, 2
-
-Resolution Island, 186, 187, 196
-
-Rewa-rewa, 88
-
-Ribbon-wood, 95, 161
-
-Riding, 49, 68
-
-_Rifleman_, the, 219
-
-Riggs, Captain Abimelech, 199
-
-Rimu, 77, 87, 91
-
-Roa, 184
-
-_Rodney_, the, 215
-
-Ross, Mr., 24, 130, 170, 174
-
-Roto-ehu, 121
-
-Roto-iti, 121, 144, 156
-
-Roto-kakahi, 121
-
-Roto-ma, 121
-
-Roto-mahana, 118, 120, 121, 133, 136, 137, 140, 141, 143, 145
-
-Roto-roa, 179
-
-Roto-rua, 66, 67, 117, 121, 126, 133, 136, 145, 147, 148, 149, 151,
-153, 154, 156, 175, 234, 235
-
-Rua, 159
-
-Ruapehu, 118, 119, 125, 126, 140
-
-
-Salmon, 65
-
-Saw-miller, 110, 112, 114 mills, 101, 102, 103, 105, 106
-
-Scenery, 5, 6, 10, 52
-
-Scenic reserves, 105
-
-Selwyn, Bishop, 3, 128, 158, 214
-
-Settlement, 8, 41, 160
-
-Settlements, 18
-
-Settler, 42, 106, 107, 162
-
-Settlers, 49, 108, 128, 142, 207
-
-Shand, Mr., 24, 214
-
-Sheep, 11, 15, 45, 53, 56, 58, 59, 98, 103, 107, 109, 144, 163, 170,
-220 stations, 33
-
-Shepherd’s lily, 95, 161
-
-Shipping companies, 15
-
-Shipwrecks, 224
-
-Shooting, 49
-
-Smith, Mr. Percy, 24, 104, 116, 119
-
-Snares, 205, 206, 207
-
-Snaring, 83
-
-Societies, 25
-
-Society, 24
-
-Sophia, the guide, 141, 147
-
-Sounds, the, 179, 180, 182, 193, 195
-
-Southern Alps, 14, 59, 163, 165, 233
-
-Sparrows, 185, 187, 188, 191
-
-Spearing, 67, 83
-
-Sport, 50, 52, 66, 67, 70, 71, 149
-
-Stack, Canon, 78, 199
-
-State sanatorium, 153
-
-Station, 35 hands, 39, 58
-
-Steamship companies, 10, 19
-
-Stewart, the sea-captain, 212, 228, 229
-
-Stitch-bird, 192
-
-Stoats, 59, 60, 185
-
-Supplejack, 99
-
-Sutherland Falls, the, 181, 182, 192 Falls to Milford Sound, 233
-
-
-Takahé, 184
-
-Tané, 78, 83
-
-Tapu, 197
-
-Tarata, 95
-
-Tarawera, 120, 121, 136, 139, 140, 141, 142, 143, 145, 151
-
-Tasman, 194, 195, 208, 209 glacier, 175, 176 Sea, 5
-
-Taupo, 116, 119, 122, 123, 124, 125, 126, 127, 133, 134, 148, 149, 153,
-235
-
-Tawa, 87
-
-Te Anau, 177, 178, 179, 187, 192, 233
-
-Te Heu Heu, 127, 128, 129, 130, 137, 158
-
-Te Kanawa, 81, 82
-
-Te Kooti, 219, 220
-
-Terrace, 140, 143
-
-Terraces, the, Pink and White, 136, 137, 150, 164
-
-Te Waro, 151
-
-Thermal Springs District, 118
-
-Three Kings, the, 204, 208
-
-Tikitapu, 121
-
-Timber, 101, 103, 106, 108, 113, 125 cutting, 13
-
-Titoki, 91
-
-Toé-toé, 37, 95
-
-Tohunga, 82, 158
-
-Tongariro, 116, 119, 126, 127, 137, 146
-
-Totalisator, 71
-
-Totara, 77, 88, 90
-
-Tourist Department, Government, 24, 175, 231
-
-Towns, 19, 20, 22, 24, 28
-
-_Transactions of the N.Z. Institute_, 24, 116, 200
-
-Tree-felling, 109, 111 ferns, 38, 88, 191, 223
-
-Tregear, Edward, 24, 77, 158
-
-Trout, 66, 67, 109, 149
-
-Tuhawaiki, 190, 202
-
-Tukoto, 146, 147, 158, 159
-
-Tutu, 95, 98
-
-
-Union Steamship Company, 9
-
-University, 18
-
-Uriwera, 159, 235
-
-
-Vegetable sheep, 58, 99
-
-Veronicas, 37, 161, 223
-
-Vogel, Sir Julius, 102, 104
-
-Volcanoes, 6, 120, 234
-
-Von Haast, 163, 166, 193 Hochstetter, 90, 164
-
-
-Waikarémoana, 234
-
-Waikato, 81, 123, 126, 150, 190, 232
-
-Waikité Geyser, 150, 151
-
-Waimangu, 150
-
-Wairakei, 149
-
-Wairoa, 145, 146
-
-Wakatipu, 177, 178, 194
-
-Walkenshaw, Clementina, 228, 229
-
-Wall, Arnold, 21
-
-Wandering albatross, 38, 206
-
-Wanganui, 105, 125, 128, 234
-
-Weasels, 59, 60, 185, 186
-
-Webb, 74
-
-Wekas, 188, 189
-
-Wellington, 19, 28, 74, 132, 231, 232 Harbour, 234
-
-Whaka-rewa-rewa, 147
-
-Whangarei, 75, 234
-
-Whangaroa, 75, 234
-
-White Island, 115, 116, 117, 119, 140
-
-Wild cattle, 54 dogs, 56 ducks, 63, 205 ducks--flightless, 184, 204
-fowl shooting, 62 goats, 52, 53, 54, 104, 191, 223 parrots, 84 pigs,
-54, 55, 109
-
-Wood-fairies, 76 pigeon, 63
-
-Wool, 10, 11, 12, 15, 34, 221
-
-Working gentlemen, 48
-
-Wreck of the steamship _Elingamite_, 209
-
-
-Yachts, 74
-
-_Printed by_ R. & R. CLARK, LIMITED, _Edinburgh_.
-
-[Illustration: Map of New Zealand]
-MAP ACCOMPANYING “NEW ZEALAND,” by the Hon. W. PEMBER REEVES and F. & W.
-WRIGHT.  (A. & C. BLACK, LONDON).
-_F. W. Flanagan, delt. Sept 1882._
-
-
-    Transcriber’s Notes
-
-    The changes are as follows:
-
-    Page viii in the index—Aratiatia changed to Ara-tia-tia.
-    Page 6—pine-woods changed to pine woods.
-    Page 10—over sea changed to oversea.
-    Page 31—axe-men changed to axemen.
-    Page 35—outdoor changed to out-door.
-    Page 71—network changed to net-work.
-    Page 100—lancewood changed to lance-wood.
-    Page 107—grass-seed changed to grass seed.
-    Page 124—ARATIATIA changed to ARA-TIA-TIA.
-    Page 187—sand-flies changed to sandflies.
-    Page 194—bushrangers changed to bush-rangers.
-    Page 207—bathing pool changed to bathing-pool.
-    Page 215—sea birds changed to sea-birds.
-    Page 215—shell fish changed to shell-fish.
-    Page 232—mountain-lakes changed to mountain lakes.
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of New Zealand, by William Reeves
-
-*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK NEW ZEALAND ***
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-<pre>
-
-The Project Gutenberg EBook of New Zealand, by William Reeves
-
-This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
-most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
-whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
-of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
-www.gutenberg.org.  If you are not located in the United States, you'll
-have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using
-this ebook.
-
-
-
-Title: New Zealand
-
-Author: William Reeves
-
-Illustrator: F. Wright
-             W. Wright
-
-Release Date: November 7, 2019 [EBook #60645]
-
-Language: English
-
-Character set encoding: UTF-8
-
-*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK NEW ZEALAND ***
-
-
-
-
-Produced by F E H, MWS and the Online Distributed
-Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was
-produced from images generously made available by The
-Internet Archive/American Libraries.)
-
-
-
-
-
-
-</pre>
-
-
-
-
-
-<h1 class="faux">NEW ZEALAND</h1>
-
-<div class="transnote">
-<h2 class="nopagebreak" title="">Transcriber’s Notes</h2>
-
-  <p><a href="#Page_53" title="">Page 53</a>&mdash;wid-winter changed to mid-winter.</p>
-  <p><a href="#Page_151" title="">Page 151</a>&mdash;sullenly changed to suddenly.</p>
-
-  <p>The spelling of Lake Te-Anau has been retained with a hyphen and the township of
-  Te Anau without a hyphen.</p>
-
-  <p>A larger version of the map on page 242 at the end of the project, can be viewed by clicking on the map in a
-    web browser only as HTML.</p>
-
-  <p>Other changes made are noted at the <a href="#end_note" title="Go to the End Note">end of the book.</a></p>
-</div>
-
-<div class="center">
-<img src="images/i_cover.jpg" alt="cover" width="500" height="728" />
-</div>
-
-<hr class="tb" />
-
-<p class="center">AGENTS</p>
-<table summary="Agents">
-  <tr>
-      <td class="country"><span class="smcap">America</span></td>
-      <td class="co"><span class="smcap">The Macmillan Company</span><br />
-            <span class="smcap">64 &amp; 66 Fifth Avenue, New York</span></td>
-  </tr>
-  <tr>
-      <td class="country"><span class="smcap">Australasia</span></td>
-      <td class="co">The Oxford University Press<br />
-            <span class="smcap">205 Flinders Lane, Melbourne</span></td>
-  </tr>
-  <tr>
-      <td class="country"><span class="smcap">Canada</span></td>
-      <td class="co">The Macmillan Company of Canada, Ltd.<br />
-            <span class="smcap"><abbr title="Saint">St.</abbr> Martin’s House, 70 Bond Street, Toronto</span></td>
-
-  </tr>
-  <tr>
-      <td class="country"><span class="smcap">India</span></td>
-      <td class="co">Macmillan &amp; Company, Ltd.<br />
-            <span class="smcap">Macmillan Building, Bombay</span><br />
-            <span class="smcap">309 Bow Bazaar Street, Calcutta</span></td>
-  </tr>
-</table>
-
-<hr class="tb" />
-
-<div class="figcenter">
-<a id="image_frontis" name="image_frontis"><img src="images/i_frontis.jpg" alt="" width="363" height="600" /></a>
-<p class="captioncenter">ON M’KINNON’S PASS</p>
-</div>
-
-
-<p class="center space-above"></p>
-<div class="title-page">
-<p class="p18 center">NEW ZEALAND</p>
-
-
-<p class="p08 center">PAINTED BY</p>
-
-<p class="center">F. <small>AND</small> W. WRIGHT</p>
-
-<p class="center space-above"></p>
-
-<p class="p08 center">DESCRIBED BY</p>
-
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Hon.</span> WILLIAM PEMBER REEVES</p>
-
-<p class="p06 center">HIGH COMMISSIONER FOR NEW ZEALAND</p>
-
-<p class="center space-above"></p>
-
-<p class="p08 center"><i lang="la" xml:lang="la">Ultima regna canam fluido contermina mundo</i></p>
-
-<div class="center">
-<img src="images/i_title.jpg" alt="" width="70" height="131" />
-</div>
-
-
-<p class="p06 center">LONDON</p>
-<p class="p06 center">ADAM AND CHARLES BLACK</p>
-<p class="p06 center">1908</p>
-</div>
-
-<hr class="chap" />
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_v" id="Page_v">[v]</a></span></p>
-
-<h2>Contents</h2>
-<table class="toc" summary="Contents">
-<tr>
-  <td class="ccn" colspan="2">CHAPTER <abbr title="1">I</abbr></td>
-  <td></td>
-</tr>
-<tr>
-  <td>&nbsp;&nbsp;</td>
-  <td class="tdr1"><small>PAGE</small></td>
-</tr>
-<tr>
-  <td class="cht"><span class="smcap">The Islands and their Cities</span></td>
-  <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_1">1</a></td>
-</tr><tr>
-  <td class="ccn" colspan="2">CHAPTER <abbr title="2">II</abbr></td>
-</tr><tr>
-  <td class="cht"><span class="smcap">Country Life</span></td>
-  <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_28">28</a></td>
-</tr><tr>
-  <td class="ccn" colspan="2">CHAPTER <abbr title="3">III</abbr></td>
-</tr><tr>
-  <td class="cht"><span class="smcap">Sport and Athletics</span></td>
-  <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_52">52</a></td>
-</tr>
-<tr>
-  <td class="ccn" colspan="2">CHAPTER <abbr title="4">IV</abbr></td>
-  <td></td>
-</tr><tr>
-  <td class="cht"><span class="smcap">In the Forest</span></td>
-  <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_76">76</a></td>
-</tr><tr>
-  <td class="ccn" colspan="2">CHAPTER <abbr title="5">V</abbr></td>
-</tr><tr>
-  <td class="cht"><span class="smcap">Fire and Water</span></td>
-  <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_115">115</a></td>
-</tr><tr>
-  <td class="ccn" colspan="2">CHAPTER <abbr title="6">VI</abbr></td>
-  <td><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_vi" id="Page_vi">[vi]</a></span></td>
-</tr><tr>
-  <td class="cht"><span class="smcap">Alp, Fiord, and Sanctuary</span></td>
-  <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_160">160</a></td>
-</tr><tr>
-  <td class="ccn" colspan="2">CHAPTER <abbr title="7">VII</abbr></td>
-</tr><tr>
-  <td class="cht"><span class="smcap">Outlying Islands</span></td>
-  <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_204">204</a></td>
-</tr><tr>
-  <td class="ccn" colspan="2">APPENDIX</td>
-</tr><tr>
-  <td class="cht"><span class="smcap">A Word to the Tourist</span></td>
-  <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_230">230</a></td>
-</tr>
-</table>
-
-<hr class="chap" />
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_vii" id="Page_vii">[vii]</a></span></p>
-
-
-
-<h2><a name="List_of_Illustrations" id="List_of_Illustrations">List of Illustrations</a></h2>
-<table summary="Illustrations">
-<tr>
-  <td class="chn">1.</td>
-  <td class="cht">On M’Kinnon’s Pass</td>
-  <td class="tdr"><a href="#image_frontis" title=""><i>Frontispiece</i></a></td>
-</tr><tr>
-  <th></th>
-  <th></th>
-  <th class="tdr"><small><small>FACING PAGE</small></small></th>
-</tr><tr>
-  <td class="chn">2.</td>
-  <td class="cht">“Paradise,” Lake Wakatipu</td>
-  <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_2">2</a></td>
-</tr><tr>
-  <td class="chn">3.</td>
-  <td class="cht">Te-Wenga</td>
-  <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_4">4</a></td>
-</tr><tr>
-  <td class="chn">4.</td>
-  <td class="cht">Diamond Lake</td>
-  <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_6">6</a></td>
-</tr><tr>
-  <td class="chn">5.</td>
-  <td class="cht">On the Bealey River</td>
-  <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_8">8</a></td>
-</tr><tr>
-  <td class="chn">6.</td>
-  <td class="cht">Wellington</td>
-  <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_18">18</a></td>
-</tr><tr>
-  <td class="chn">7.</td>
-  <td class="cht">Dunedin</td>
-  <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_20">20</a></td>
-</tr><tr>
-  <td class="chn">8.</td>
-  <td class="cht">Napier</td>
-  <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_24">24</a></td>
-</tr><tr>
-  <td class="chn">9.</td>
-  <td class="cht">The Bathing Pool</td>
-  <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_26">26</a></td>
-</tr><tr>
-  <td class="chn">10.</td>
-  <td class="cht">Nelson</td>
-  <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_28">28</a></td>
-</tr><tr>
-  <td class="chn">11.</td>
-  <td class="cht">On the Beach at Ngunguru</td>
-  <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_30">30</a></td>
-</tr><tr>
-  <td class="chn">12.</td>
-  <td class="cht">At the Foot of Lake Te-Anau</td>
-  <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_32">32</a></td>
-</tr><tr>
-  <td class="chn">13.</td>
-  <td class="cht">The Waikato at Ngaruawahia</td>
-  <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_34">34</a></td>
-</tr><tr>
-  <td class="chn">14.</td>
-  <td class="cht">Tree Ferns</td>
-  <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_38">38</a></td>
-</tr><tr>
-  <td class="chn">15.</td>
-  <td class="cht"> A Maori Village</td>
-  <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_42">42</a></td>
-</tr><tr>
-  <td class="chn">16.</td>
-  <td class="cht">A Pataka</td>
-  <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_44">44</a></td>
-</tr><tr>
-  <td class="chn">17.</td>
-  <td class="cht">Coromandel</td>
-  <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_50">50</a></td>
-</tr><tr>
-  <td class="chn">18.</td>
-  <td class="cht">Cathedral Peaks</td>
-  <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_56">56</a></td>
-</tr><tr>
-  <td class="chn">19.</td>
-  <td class="cht">The Rees Valley and Richardson Range</td>
-  <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_58">58</a></td>
-</tr><tr>
-  <td class="chn">20.</td>
-  <td class="cht">At the Head of Lake Wakatipu</td>
-  <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_66">66</a></td>
-</tr><tr>
-  <td class="chn">21.</td>
-  <td class="cht">North Fiord, Lake Te-Anau</td>
-  <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_68">68</a></td>
-</tr><tr>
-  <td class="chn">22.</td>
-  <td class="cht"> Christchurch</td>
-  <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_72">72</a></td>
-</tr><tr>
-  <td class="chn">23.</td>
-  <td class="cht">Canoe Hurdle Race</td>
-  <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_74">74</a><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_viii" id="Page_viii">[viii]</a></span></td>
-</tr><tr>
-  <td class="chn">24.</td>
-  <td class="cht">Waihi Bay, Whangaroa Harbour</td>
-  <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_74">74</a></td>
-</tr><tr>
-  <td class="chn">25.</td>
-  <td class="cht">The Return of the War Canoe</td>
-  <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_76">76</a></td>
-</tr><tr>
-  <td class="chn">26.</td>
-  <td class="cht">Okahumoko Bay, Whangaroa</td>
-  <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_78">78</a></td>
-</tr><tr>
-  <td class="chn">27.</td>
-  <td class="cht">Maori Fishing Party</td>
-  <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_80">80</a></td>
-</tr><tr>
-  <td class="chn">28.</td>
-  <td class="cht">Carved House, Ohinemutu</td>
-  <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_82">82</a></td>
-</tr><tr>
-  <td class="chn">29.</td>
-  <td class="cht">A Bush Road</td>
-  <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_84">84</a></td>
-</tr><tr>
-  <td class="chn">30.</td>
-  <td class="cht">Among the Kauri</td>
-  <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_88">88</a></td>
-</tr><tr>
-  <td class="chn">31.</td>
-  <td class="cht">Pohutu-kawa in Bloom, Whangaroa Harbour</td>
-  <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_90">90</a></td>
-</tr><tr>
-  <td class="chn">32.</td>
-  <td class="cht">Nikau Palms</td>
-  <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_94">94</a></td>
-</tr><tr>
-  <td class="chn">33.</td>
-  <td class="cht">On the Pelorus River</td>
-  <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_98">98</a></td>
-</tr><tr>
-  <td class="chn">34.</td>
-  <td class="cht">Auckland</td>
-  <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_100">100</a></td>
-</tr><tr>
-  <td class="chn">35.</td>
-  <td class="cht">Mount Egmont</td>
-  <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_104">104</a></td>
-</tr><tr>
-  <td class="chn">36.</td>
-  <td class="cht">Tarei-po-Kiore</td>
-  <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_106">106</a></td>
-</tr><tr>
-  <td class="chn">37.</td>
-  <td class="cht">Morning on the Wanganui River</td>
-  <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_108">108</a></td>
-</tr><tr>
-  <td class="chn">38.</td>
-  <td class="cht">On the Upper Wanganui</td>
-  <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_110">110</a></td>
-</tr><tr>
-  <td class="chn">39.</td>
-  <td class="cht">Wairua Falls</td>
-  <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_112">112</a></td>
-</tr><tr>
-  <td class="chn">40.</td>
-  <td class="cht">“The Dragon’s Mouth”</td>
-  <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_120">120</a></td>
-</tr><tr>
-  <td class="chn">41.</td>
-  <td class="cht">Huka Falls</td>
-  <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_122">122</a></td>
-</tr><tr>
-  <td class="chn">42.</td>
-  <td class="cht">Ara-tia-tia Rapids</td>
-  <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_124">124</a></td>
-</tr><tr>
-  <td class="chn">43.</td>
-  <td class="cht">Lake Taupo</td>
-  <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_130">130</a></td>
-</tr><tr>
-  <td class="chn">44.</td>
-  <td class="cht">In a Hot Pool</td>
-  <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_134">134</a></td>
-</tr><tr>
-  <td class="chn">45.</td>
-  <td class="cht">Ngongotaha Mountain</td>
-  <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_136">136</a></td>
-</tr><tr>
-  <td class="chn">46.</td>
-  <td class="cht">Lake and Mount Tarawera</td>
-  <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_144">144</a></td>
-</tr><tr>
-  <td class="chn">47.</td>
-  <td class="cht">Maori Washing-day, Ohinemutu</td>
-  <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_146">146</a></td>
-</tr><tr>
-  <td class="chn">48.</td>
-  <td class="cht">Wairoa Geyser</td>
-  <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_150">150</a></td>
-</tr><tr>
-  <td class="chn">49.</td>
-  <td class="cht">Cooking in a Hot Spring</td>
-  <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_152">152</a></td>
-</tr><tr>
-  <td class="chn">50.</td>
-  <td class="cht">The Champagne Cauldron</td>
-  <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_154">154</a></td>
-</tr><tr>
-  <td class="chn">51.</td>
-  <td class="cht">Evening on Lake Roto-rua</td>
-  <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_156">156</a></td>
-</tr><tr>
-  <td class="chn">52.</td>
-  <td class="cht">Planting Potatoes</td>
-  <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_158">158</a></td>
-</tr><tr>
-  <td class="chn">53.</td>
-  <td class="cht">The Wairau Gorge</td>
-  <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_160">160</a></td>
-</tr><tr>
-  <td class="chn">54.</td>
-  <td class="cht">In the Hooker Valley</td>
-  <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_162">162</a></td>
-</tr><tr>
-  <td class="chn">55.</td>
-  <td class="cht">Mount Cook</td>
-  <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_164">164</a><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_ix" id="Page_ix">[ix]</a></span></td>
-</tr><tr>
-  <td class="chn">56.</td>
-  <td class="cht">Mount Sefton</td>
-  <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_172">172</a></td>
-</tr><tr>
-  <td class="chn">57.</td>
-  <td class="cht">The Tasman Glacier</td>
-  <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_174">174</a></td>
-</tr><tr>
-  <td class="chn">58.</td>
-  <td class="cht">The Cecil and Walter Peaks</td>
-  <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_176">176</a></td>
-</tr><tr>
-  <td class="chn">59.</td>
-  <td class="cht">Manapouri</td>
-  <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_178">178</a></td>
-</tr><tr>
-  <td class="chn">60.</td>
-  <td class="cht">Mitre Peak</td>
-  <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_180">180</a></td>
-</tr><tr>
-  <td class="chn">61.</td>
-  <td class="cht">In Milford Sound</td>
-  <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_182">182</a></td>
-</tr><tr>
-  <td class="chn">62.</td>
-  <td class="cht">On the Clinton River</td>
-  <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_184">184</a></td>
-</tr><tr>
-  <td class="chn">63.</td>
-  <td class="cht">At the Head of Lake Te-Anau</td>
-  <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_186">186</a></td>
-</tr><tr>
-  <td class="chn">64.</td>
-  <td class="cht">The Buller River near Hawk’s Craig</td>
-  <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_192">192</a></td>
-</tr><tr>
-  <td class="chn">65.</td>
-  <td class="cht">Below the Junction of the Buller and Inangahua Rivers</td>
-  <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_194">194</a></td>
-</tr><tr>
-  <td class="chn">66.</td>
-  <td class="cht">Bream Head, Whangarei Heads</td>
-  <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_196">196</a></td>
-</tr><tr>
-  <td class="chn">67.</td>
-  <td class="cht">Lawyer’s Head</td>
-  <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_198">198</a></td>
-</tr><tr>
-  <td class="chn">68.</td>
-  <td class="cht">A Maori Chieftainess</td>
-  <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_200">200</a></td>
-</tr><tr>
-  <td class="chn">69.</td>
-  <td class="cht">Weaving the Kaitaka</td>
-  <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_212">212</a></td>
-</tr><tr>
-  <td class="chn">70.</td>
-  <td class="cht">“Te Hongi”</td>
-  <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_216">216</a></td>
-</tr><tr>
-  <td class="chn">71.</td>
-  <td class="cht"> Wahine’s Canoe Race on the Waikato</td>
-  <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_218">218</a></td>
-</tr><tr>
-  <td class="chn">72.</td>
-  <td class="cht">Native Gathering</td>
-  <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_220">220</a></td>
-</tr>
-<tr>
-  <td class="chn">73.</td>
-  <td class="cht">White Cliffs, Buller River</td>
-  <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_230">230</a></td>
-</tr><tr>
-  <td class="chn">74.</td>
-  <td class="cht">The Otira Gorge</td>
-  <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_232">232</a></td>
-</tr><tr>
-  <td class="chn">75.</td>
-  <td class="cht">Lake Waikare-Moana</td>
-  <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_234">234</a></td>
-</tr><tr>
-  <td class="tdr">&nbsp;</td>
-  <td class="tdl"><i>Map at end of Volume.</i></td>
-  <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_242">242</a></td>
-</tr>
-
-</table>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1">[1]</a></span></p>
-
-
-<hr class="chap" />
-<div class="chapter"></div>
-<h2><a name="CHAPTER_I" id="CHAPTER_I">CHAPTER <abbr title="1">I</abbr></a></h2>
-<p class="center">THE ISLANDS AND THEIR CITIES</p>
-
-
-<p>The poet who wrote the hexameter quoted on the
-title-page meant it to be the first line of a Latin epic.
-The epic was not written&mdash;in Latin at any rate,&mdash;and
-the poet’s change of purpose had consequences of
-moment to literature. But I have always been glad
-that the line quoted was rescued from the fire, for it
-fits our islands very well. They are, indeed, on the
-bounds of the watery world. Beyond their southern
-outposts the seaman meets nothing till he sees the iceblink
-of the Antarctic.</p>
-
-<p>From the day of its annexation, so disliked by Downing
-Street, to the passing of those experimental laws
-so frowned upon by orthodox economists, our colony
-has contrived to attract interest and cause controversy.
-A great deal has been written about New Zealand;
-indeed, the books and pamphlets upon it form a
-respectable little library. Yet is the picture which
-the average European reader forms in his mind anything
-like the islands? I doubt it. The patriotic
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_2" id="Page_2">[2]</a></span>but misleading name, “The Britain of the South,” is
-responsible for impressions that are scarcely correct,
-while the map of the world on Mercator’s Projection
-is another offender. New Zealand is not very like
-Great Britain, though spots can be found there&mdash;mainly
-in the province of Canterbury and in North Otago&mdash;where
-Englishmen or Scotsmen might almost think
-themselves at home. But even this likeness, pleasant
-as it is at moments, does not often extend beyond the
-foreground, at any rate as far as likeness to England is
-concerned. It is usually an effect produced by the
-transplanting of English trees and flowers, cultivation
-of English crops and grasses, acclimatisation of English
-birds and beasts, and the copying more or less closely
-of the English houses and dress of to-day. It is a
-likeness that is the work of the colonists themselves.
-They have made it, and are very proud of it. The
-resemblance to Scotland is not quite the same thing.
-It sometimes does extend to the natural features of the
-country. In the eastern half of the South Island particularly,
-there are landscapes where the Scot’s memory,
-one fancies, must often be carried back to the Selkirks,
-the peaks of Arran, or the Highland lochs of his
-native land. Always, however, it is Scotland under a
-different sky. The New Zealanders live, on the average,
-twelve degrees nearer the equator than do dwellers in
-the old country, and though the chill of the Southern
-Ocean makes the change of climate less than the difference
-of latitude would lead one to expect, it is still
-considerable. The skies are bluer and higher, the air
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[3]</a></span>clearer, and the sun much hotter than in the British
-Isles. The heavens are a spacious dome alive with
-light and wind. Ample as the rainfall is, and it is
-ample almost everywhere, the islands, except in the
-south-west, strike the traveller as a sunny as well as
-a bracing country. This is due to the ocean breezes
-and the strength of the sunshine. The average number
-of wet days in the year is 151; but even a wet day is
-seldom without sunshine, it may be for some hours, it
-will be at least a few gleams. Such a thing as a dry
-day without a ray of brilliance is virtually unknown
-over four-fifths of the colony. I once had the felicity
-of living in London during twenty-two successive days
-in which there was neither a drop of rain nor an hour
-of sunshine. If such a period were to afflict New
-Zealand, the inhabitants would assuredly imagine that
-Doomsday was at hand. “Truly the light is sweet,
-and a pleasant thing it is for the eyes to behold the
-sun,” is a text which might be adopted as a motto for
-the islands.</p>
-
-<p class="center space-above"></p>
-<div class="figcenter">
-<img src="images/i_002.jpg" alt="" width="700" height="466" />
-<p class="captioncenter">“PARADISE,” LAKE WAKATIPU</p>
-</div>
-<p class="center space-above"></p>
-
-<p>In the matter of climate the islanders are certainly
-the spoilt children of Nature; and this is not because
-the wind does not blow or the rain fall in their country,
-but because of what Bishop Selwyn called “the elastic
-air and perpetual motion” which breed cheerfulness
-and energy all the year round. Of all European
-climates it resembles most closely, perhaps, that of the
-coasts of France and Spain fronting on the Bay of
-Biscay. Round New Zealand are the same blue,
-sparkling, and uneasy seas, and the same westerly winds,
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[4]</a></span>often wet and sometimes rising into strong gales. And
-where France and Spain join you may see in the
-Pyrenees very much such a barrier of unbroken
-mountains as the far-reaching, snowy chains that form
-the backbone of the islands of the south. Further,
-though mountainous, ours is an oceanic country, and
-this prevents the climate from being marked by great
-extremes. It is temperate in the most exact sense of
-the word. The difference between the mean of the
-hottest month and the mean of the coldest month is
-not more than fifteen degrees in most of the settlements.
-Christchurch is an exception, and even in Christchurch
-it is only twenty degrees. In Wellington the mean for
-the whole year is almost precisely the same as in <abbr title="Saint">St.</abbr>
-Louis in the United States. But the annual mean is
-often a deceitful guide. <abbr title="Saint">St.</abbr> Louis is sixteen degrees
-warmer in summer and seventeen degrees colder in
-winter than Wellington; and that makes all the
-difference when comfort is concerned. Wellington
-is slightly cooler than London in midsummer, and
-considerably warmer in winter. Finally, in the matter
-of wind, the European must not let himself be misled
-by the playful exaggerations in certain current
-New Zealand stories. It is not the case that the
-experienced citizen of Wellington clutches convulsively
-at his hat whenever he turns a street-corner in any
-city of the world; nor is it true that the teeth of
-sheep in the Canterbury mountain valleys are worn
-down in their efforts to hold on to the long tussock
-grass, so as to save themselves from being blown away
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[5]</a></span>by the north-west gales. Taken as a whole, our
-land is neither more nor less windy than the coasts
-of the English Channel between Dover and the Isle of
-Wight. I write with the advantage of having had many
-years’ experience of both climates.</p>
-
-<p class="center space-above"></p>
-<div class="figcenter">
-<img src="images/i_004.jpg" alt="" width="700" height="450" />
-<p class="captioncenter">TE-WENGA</p>
-</div>
-<p class="center space-above"></p>
-
-<p>On the map of the world New Zealand has the look
-of a slim insular strip, a Lilliputian satellite of the
-broad continent of Australia. It is, however, twelve
-hundred miles from the continent, and there are no
-island stations between to act as links; the Tasman
-Sea is an unbroken and often stormy stretch of water.
-Indeed, New Zealand is as close to Polynesia as to
-Australia, for the gap between Cape Maria Van Diemen
-and Niue or Savage Island is also about twelve hundred
-miles across. In result, then, the colony cannot be
-termed a member of any group or division, political or
-scientific. It is a lonely oceanic archipelago, remote
-from the great centres of the earth, but with a character,
-attractions, and a busy life of its own. Though so
-small on the map, it does not strike those who see it
-as a little country. Its scenery is marked by height
-and steepness; its mountain ranges and bold sea-cliffs
-impress the new-comer by size and wildness. The clear
-air, too, enables the eye to travel far; and where the
-gazer can hold many miles of country in view&mdash;country
-stretching away, as a rule, to lofty backgrounds&mdash;the
-adjective “small” does not easily occur to the mind.
-Countries like Holland and Belgium seem as small as
-they are; that is because they are flat, and thickly
-sown with cities and villages. In them man is everything,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[6]</a></span>
-and Nature appears tamed and subservient. But
-New Zealand submits to man slowly, sometimes not at
-all. There the rapid rivers, long deep lakes, steep hill-sides,
-and mountain-chains rising near to or above
-the snow-line are features of a scenery varying from
-romantic softness to rough grandeur. Indeed the first
-impression given by the coast, when seen from the deck
-of an approaching ship, is that of the remnant of some
-huge drowned continent that long ago may have spread
-over degrees of longitude where now the Southern
-Ocean is a weary waste.</p>
-
-<p class="center space-above"></p>
-<div class="figcenter">
-<img src="images/i_006.jpg" alt="" width="700" height="439" />
-<p class="captioncenter">DIAMOND LAKE</p>
-</div>
-<p class="center space-above"></p>
-
-<p>Nor, again, is this impression of largeness created by
-immense tracts of level monotony, as in so many continental
-views. There is none of the tiresome sameness
-that besets the railway passenger on the road from The
-Hague to Moscow&mdash;the succession of flat fields, sandy
-heaths, black pine woods, and dead marshes. For the
-keynote of our scenery is variety. Few countries in
-the world yield so rapid a series of sharp contrasts&mdash;contrasts
-between warm north and cool south; between
-brisk, clear east and moist, mild west; between the
-leafy, genial charm of the coastal bays and the snows
-and rocky walls of the dorsal ridges. The very
-mountains differ in character. Here are Alps with
-long white crests and bony shoulders emerging from
-forests of beech; there rise volcanoes, symmetrical
-cones, streaked with snow, and in some instances incessantly
-sending up steam or vapour from their
-summits. Most striking of all the differences, perhaps,
-is the complete change from the deep and
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[7]</a></span>ancient forests which formerly covered half the islands,
-to the long stretches of green grass or fern land
-where, before the coming of the settlers, you could
-ride for miles and pass never a tree. Of course many
-of these natural features are changing under the masterful
-hands of the British colonist. Forests are being cut
-down and burned, plains and open valleys ploughed up
-and sown, swamps drained, and their picturesque tangle
-of broad-bladed flax, giant reeds, and sharp-edged
-grasses remorselessly cleared away. Thousands of miles
-of hedges, chiefly of gorse, now seam the open country
-with green or golden lines, and divide the surface into
-more or less rectangular fields; and broom and sweetbriar,
-detested weeds as they are, brighten many a slope
-with gold or rose-colour in spring-time.</p>
-
-<p>Plantations of exotic trees grow in number and
-height yearly, and show a curious blending of the flora
-of England, California, and Australia. Most British
-trees and bushes thrive exceedingly, though some of
-them, as the ash, the spruce, the holly, and the whitethorn,
-find the summers too hot and the winters not
-frosty enough in many localities. More than in trees,
-hedgerows, or corn-crops, the handiwork of the
-colonist is seen in the ever-widening areas sown with
-English grasses. Everything has to give way to grass.
-The consuming passion of the New Zealand settler
-is to make grass grow where it did not grow
-before, or where it did grow before, to put better
-grass in its place. So trees, ferns, flax, and rushes
-have to pass away; with them have to go the wiry
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[8]</a></span>native tussock and tall, blanched snow-grass. Already
-thirteen million acres are sown with one or other
-mixture of cock’s-foot, timothy, clover, rye-grass,
-fescue&mdash;for the New Zealand farmer is knowing in
-grasses; and every year scores of thousands of acres
-are added to the area thus artificially grassed. Can you
-wonder? The carrying power of acres improved in
-this way is about nine times that of land left in native
-pasture; while as for forest and fern land, they, before
-man attacked them, could carry next to no cattle or
-sheep at all. In the progress of settlement New
-Zealand is sacrificing much beauty in the districts once
-clad in forest. Outside these, however, quite half the
-archipelago was already open land when the whites came,
-and in this division the work of the settler has been
-almost entirely improvement. Forty years ago it needed
-all the gold of the sunshine and all the tonic quality of
-the air to make the wide tracts of stunted bracken in
-the north, and even wider expanses of sparse yellowish
-tussock in the south, look anything but cheerless, empty,
-and half-barren. The pages of many early travellers
-testify to this and tell of an effect of depression now
-quite absent. Further, for fifteen years past the
-process of settling the soil has not been confined to
-breaking in the wilderness and enlarging the frontiers
-of cultivated and peopled land. This good work is
-indeed going on. But hand in hand with it there
-goes on a process of subdivision by which fresh homes
-rise yearly in districts already accounted settled; the
-farmstead chimneys send up their smoke ever nearer
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[9]</a></span>to each other; and the loneliness and consequent
-dulness that once half spoiled country life is being
-brightened. Very few New Zealanders now need live
-without neighbours within an easy ride, if not walk.</p>
-
-<p class="center space-above"></p>
-<div class="figcenter">
-<img src="images/i_008.jpg" alt="" width="700" height="471" />
-<p class="captioncenter">ON THE BEALEY RIVER</p>
-</div>
-<p class="center space-above"></p>
-
-<p>Like the province of the Netherlands the name of
-which it bears, New Zealand is a green land where
-water meets the eye everywhere. There the resemblance
-ends. The dull grey tones of the atmosphere of
-old Zealand, the deep, unchanging green of its pastures,
-the dead level and slow current of its shallow and turbid
-waters, are conspicuously absent at the Antipodes.
-When the New Zealander thinks of water his thoughts
-go naturally to an ocean, blue and restless, and to
-rivers sometimes swollen and clouded, sometimes clear
-and shrunken, but always rapid. Even the mountain
-lakes, though they have their days of peace, are more
-often ruffled by breezes or lashed by gales. In a
-word, water means water in motion; and among
-the sounds most familiar to a New Zealander’s ears
-are the hoarse brawling of torrents, grinding and
-bearing seaward the loose shingle of the mountains, and
-the deep roar of the surf of the Pacific, borne miles
-inland through the long still nights when the winds
-have ceased from troubling. It is no mere accident,
-then, that rowing and sailing are among the chief
-pastimes of the well-watered islands, or that the
-islanders have become ship-owners on a considerable
-scale. Young countries do not always carry much of
-their own trade; but, thanks to the energy and astute
-management of their Union Steamship Company, New
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[10]</a></span>Zealanders not only control their own coasting trade,
-but virtually the whole of the traffic between their own
-shores, Australia, and the South Sea Islands. The
-inter-colonial trade is substantial, amounting to
-between £5,000,000 and £6,000,000 a year. Much
-larger, of course, is the trade with the mother country;
-for our colony, with some success, does her best to
-shoulder a way in at the open but somewhat crowded
-door of London. Of her total oversea trade of about
-£37,000,000 a year, more than two-thirds is carried on
-with England and Scotland. Here again the colonial
-ship-owner has a share of the carrying business, for the
-best known of the four ocean steamship companies in
-its service is identified with the Dominion, and bears its
-name.</p>
-
-<p>With variety of scenery and climate there comes,
-of course, an equal variety of products. The colony is
-eleven hundred miles long, and lies nearly due north
-and south. The latitudes, moreover, through which it
-extends, namely, those from 34° to 47°, are well suited
-to diversity. So you get a range from the oranges and
-olives of the north to the oats and rye of colder Southland.
-Minerals, too, are found of more than one kind.
-At first the early settlers seemed none too quick in
-appreciating the advantages offered them by so varied
-a country. They pinned their faith to wool and wheat
-only, adding gold, after a time, to their larger exports.
-But experience showed that though wool and wheat
-yielded large profits, these profits fluctuated, as they
-still do. So the growers had to look round and seek
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[11]</a></span>for fresh outlets and industries. Thirty years ago,
-when their colony was first beginning to attract some
-sort of notice in the world’s markets, they still depended
-on wool, gold, cereals, hides, and tallow. Cereals they
-have now almost ceased to export, though they grow
-enough for home consumption; they have found other
-things that pay better. They produce twice as much
-gold as they did then, and grow more wool than ever.
-Indeed that important animal, the New Zealand sheep,
-is still the mainstay of his country. Last year’s export
-of wool brought in nearly £7,700,000. But to the
-three or four industries enumerated the colonists have
-added seven or eight more, each respectable in size and
-profitable in the return it yields. To gold their miners
-have added coal, the output of which is now two million
-tons a year. Another mineral&mdash;or sort of mineral&mdash;is
-the fossil resin of the giant Kauri pine, of which the
-markets of Europe and North America absorb more
-than half-a-million pounds’ worth yearly. Freezing and
-cold storage have become main allies of the New Zealand
-farmer, whose export of frozen mutton and lamb now
-approaches in value £4,000,000. Almost as remarkable
-is the effect of refrigerating on dairying in the
-islands. Hundreds of co-operative butter factories and
-creameries have been built during the last twenty
-years. It is not too much to say that they have transformed
-the face of whole provinces. It is possible to
-grow wool on a large scale with but the sparsest population,
-as the interior of Australia shows; but it is not
-possible to grow butter or cheese without multiplying
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[12]</a></span>homes and planting families fairly thickly on the land.
-In New Zealand even the growing of meat and wool
-is now chiefly done on moderate-sized land-holdings.
-The average size of our flocks is but a thousand head.
-But it is dairying that is <em>par excellence</em> the industry of
-the small man. It was so from the first, and every
-decade shows a tendency to closer subdivision of the
-land devoted to producing butter and cheese. Within
-the last few years, again, yet another industry has seemed
-to be on the road to more scientific organisation. This
-is the manufacture of hemp from the fibre of the native
-flax. One cannot call this a new thing, for the colonists
-tried it on a fairly large scale more than thirty years
-ago; but their enterprise seemed again and again doomed
-to disappointment, for New Zealand hemp proved for a
-long while but a tricky and uncertain article of commerce.
-It was and is a kind of understudy of manilla,
-holding a place somewhere between that and sisal. For
-many years, however, it seemed unable to get a firm
-footing in the markets, and when the price of manilla
-fell was apt to be neglected altogether. During the
-last decade, however, the flax millers have decidedly
-improved its quality, and a demand for it has sprung
-up in countries outside Great Britain. It is said that
-Americans use it in lieu of hair, and that the Japanese
-can imitate silk with it. Certainly the Germans, Dutch,
-and French buy it, to spin into binder-twine, or, may
-be, to “blend” with other fibres.</p>
-
-<p>To the ordinary stranger from Europe, the most
-interesting of our industries are those that bear least
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[13]</a></span>likeness to the manufactures and agriculture of an old
-country. To him there is a savour of the strange and
-new in kauri-gum digging, gold-mining, timber-cutting,
-and saw-milling, and even the conversion of bushes of
-flax into bales of hemp. But if I were asked to choose
-two industries before others to describe with some
-minuteness, I think I should select the growing, freezing,
-and export of meat, and the application of the factory
-system to the making and export of butter and cheese.
-Though my countrymen have no monopoly of these
-they have from the first shown marked activity in
-organising and exploiting them. In one chief branch
-of refrigeration their produce stands first in quality,
-if not in quantity. I refer to the supply of mutton
-and lamb to the English market. In this they have
-to compete with the larger flocks of Australia and the
-Argentine, as well as, indirectly, with the huge herds
-and gigantic trade combinations of the United States.
-Of the competitors whose products meet at Smithfield,
-they are the most distant, and in their command of
-capital the least powerful. Moreover, they are without
-the advantage&mdash;if advantage it be&mdash;of cheap labour.
-Yet their meat has for many years commanded the best
-prices paid for frozen mutton and lamb in London,
-and the demand, far from being unequal to the supply,
-has been chiefly limited by the difficulty of increasing
-our flocks fast enough to keep pace with it. In the
-contest for English favour, our farmers, though
-handicapped in the manner mentioned above, started
-with three advantages&mdash;healthy flocks and herds, a genial
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[14]</a></span>climate, and an educated people. The climate enables
-their sheep and cattle to remain out all the year round.
-Except in the Southern Alps, they suffer very little
-loss from weather. The sunny air helps them to keep
-disease down, and, as already said, the best artificial
-grasses flourish in our islands as they flourish in very
-few countries. The standard of education makes
-labour, albeit highly paid, skilful and trustworthy.
-The farm-workers and meat-factory hands are clean,
-efficient, and fully alive to the need for sanitary
-precautions. The horrors described in Upton Sinclair’s
-“Jungle” are impossible in New Zealand for many
-reasons. Of these, the first is that the men employed
-in meat factories would not tolerate their existence.</p>
-
-<p>There are thirty-seven establishments in the colony
-for meat freezing and preserving, employing over three
-thousand hands and paying nearly £300,000 a year in
-wages. The value of their output is about £5,000,000
-a year, and the bulk of it is exported to the port of
-London. The weight of meat sent to the United
-Kingdom last year was two hundred and thirty-seven
-million pounds avoirdupois. Then there are about three
-hundred and twenty dairy-butter or cheese factories,
-without counting a larger outer circle of skimming
-stations. To these the dairy-farmers send their milk,
-getting it back after skimming. That completes their
-share of the work; expert factory hands and managers
-do the rest. As for meat-freezing, from beginning to
-end the industry is scientifically managed and carefully
-supervised. At its inception, a quarter of a century ago,
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[15]</a></span>the flocks of the colony were healthy and of good
-strains of blood. But they were bred chiefly to grow
-wool, and mainly showed a basis of Merino crossed with
-Lincoln or Leicester. Nowadays the Romney Marsh
-blood predominates in the stud flocks, especially in the
-North Island. Lincoln, Leicester, Merino, Border
-Leicester, Shropshire, and South Down follow in order.
-For five-and-twenty years our breeders have brought
-their skill to bear on crossing, with a view to producing
-the best meat for the freezing factory, without ruining the
-quality of their wool. They still face the cost and trouble
-of importing stud sheep from England, though their own
-selected animals have brought them good prices in
-South America, Australia, and South Africa. Flocks
-and herds alike are subjected to regular inspection by
-the veterinary officers of the Department of Agriculture;
-and though the slaughter-yards and factories of the
-freezing companies are models of order, speed, and
-cleanliness, the Government expert is there too, and
-nothing may be sold thence without his certificate, for
-every carcase must bear the official mark. From the
-factory to the steamer, from one end of the earth to
-the other, the frozen carcases are vigilantly watched,
-and the temperature of the air they are stored in is
-regulated with painful care. As much trouble is taken
-to keep freezing chambers cold as to keep a king’s
-palace warm. The shipping companies are as jealously
-anxious about the condition of their meat cargoes as
-they are for the contentment of their passengers and
-the safety of their ships. At the London Docks the
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[16]</a></span>meat is once more examined by a New Zealand official,
-and finally at Smithfield, as the carcases are delivered
-there in the small hours of the morning, they are scanned
-for the last time by a veterinary expert from the
-Antipodes. Moreover, since our meat goes now to
-other British ports as well as to London, and since, too,
-nearly half of what is discharged in the Thames no
-longer finds its way to Smithfield, our inspectors have to
-follow our meat into the provinces and report upon the
-condition in which it reaches such towns as Bristol,
-Cardiff, Liverpool, and Manchester. Furthermore, they
-do their best to track it a stage farther and ascertain its
-fate at the hands of the unsentimental retail trader.
-Most New Zealand meat is now honestly sold as what
-it is. Some of the best of it, however, is still palmed
-off on the consumer as British. On the other hand,
-South American mutton is sometimes passed off as
-New Zealand. The housewife who buys “Canterbury
-Lamb” because she likes all things Kentish is not yet
-altogether extinct. For all this the clumsily-drawn
-English law, which makes conviction so difficult, must
-be held mainly responsible. New Zealand butter, too,
-suffers at the hands of English manipulators. It is what
-Tooley Street calls a dry butter&mdash;that is to say, it contains
-on an average not more than some eleven per cent
-of moisture. This renders it a favourite for mixing with
-milk and for selling as “milk-blended” butter, a process
-at which makers in the colony can only look on
-wrathfully but helplessly. Otherwise they have little
-to complain about, for their butter has for years past
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[17]</a></span>brought them prices almost as high as those of good
-Danish, while during the butter famine of the first few
-months of 1908 as much as 150 shillings a hundredweight
-was paid for parcels of it. Before shipment in the
-colony, butter and cheese are graded by public inspectors.
-Every box bears the Government stamp. In practice
-the verdict of the grader is accepted by the English
-purchasers. Relatively the amount of frozen beef
-which we export is not large; but our climate and
-pastures are too well suited for beef-growing to make it
-likely that the discrepancy will continue. Probably
-frozen beef will give place to chilled; that is to say,
-improvements in the art of chilling will enable our beef
-to be carried at a temperature of, let us say, 30° Fahrenheit,
-instead of 12°. It will then arrive in England soft
-and fit for immediate use: thawing will not be needed,
-and a higher price will be obtained. But, however far
-behind New Zealand may as yet lag in the beef trade,
-enough has been done in other branches of refrigeration
-to show how scientific, well-organised, and efficient
-colonial industry is becoming, and how very far the
-farmers and graziers of the islands are from working
-in the rough and hand-to-mouth fashion that settlers in
-new countries are supposed to affect.</p>
-
-<p class="center space-above"></p>
-<div class="figcenter">
-<img src="images/i_018.jpg" alt="" width="700" height="461" />
-<p class="captioncenter">WELLINGTON</p>
-</div>
-<p class="center space-above"></p>
-
-<p>The purpose of this sketch, however, is not to dilate
-upon the growth of our commerce and industry, remarkable
-as that is in a country so isolated and a
-population only now touching a million. My object,
-rather, is to give something of an outline of the archipelago
-itself, of the people who live there between the
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[18]</a></span>mountains and the sea, and of the life and society that
-a new-comer may expect to see. Mainly, then, the
-most striking peculiarities of the islands, as a land
-undergoing the process of occupation, are the decentralised
-character of this occupation, and the large
-areas, almost unpeopled, that still remain in a country
-relatively small in size. New Zealand was originally
-not so much a colony as a group of little settlements
-bound together none too comfortably. Its nine
-provinces, with their clashing interests and intense
-jealousies, were politically abolished more than thirty
-years ago; but some of the local feeling which they
-stood for and suffered for still remains, and will remain
-as long as mountain ranges and straits of the sea divide
-New Zealand. Troublesome as its divisions are to
-politicians, merchants, ship-owners, councils of defence,
-and many other persons and interests, they nevertheless
-have their advantages. They breed emulation, competition,
-civic patriotism; and the local life, parochial as it
-looks to observers from larger communities, is at least
-far better than the stagnation of provinces drained of
-vitality by an enormous metropolis. For in New
-Zealand you have four chief towns, large enough to be
-dignified with the name of cities, as well as twice as
-many brisk and aspiring seaports, each the centre and
-outlet of a respectable tract of advancing country. All
-these have to be thought of when any general scheme
-for opening up, defending, or educating the country is
-in question. Our University, to give one example, is
-an examining body, with five affiliated colleges; but
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[19]</a></span>these colleges lie in towns far apart, hundreds of miles
-from each other. The ocean steamship companies
-before mentioned have to carry merchandise to and
-from six or eight ports. Singers and actors have to
-travel to at least as many towns to find audiences.
-Wellington, the capital, is still not the largest of the
-four chief towns, rapid as its progress has been during
-the last generation. Auckland, with 90,000 people,
-is the largest, as it is the most beautiful; Wellington,
-with 70,000, holds but the second place.</p>
-
-<p>Decentralised as New Zealand is, large as its rural
-population is, and pleasant as its country life can be,
-still its four chief towns hold between them more than
-a quarter of its people, and cannot therefore be passed
-over in a sentence. Europeans are apt to be impatient
-of colonial towns, seeing in them collections of buildings
-neither large enough to be imposing nor old
-enough to be mellowed into beauty or quaintness.
-And it is true that in our four cities you have towns
-without architectural or historic interest, and in size
-only about equal to Hastings, Oxford, Coventry, and
-York. Yet these towns, standing where seventy years
-ago nothing stood, have other features of interest beside
-their newness. Cities are, after all, chiefly important as
-places in which civilised men and women can live decently
-and comfortably, and do their daily work under conditions
-which are healthy and neither degrading nor disagreeable.
-The first business of a city is to be useful,
-and its second to be healthy. Certainly it should not
-be hideous; but our cities are not hideous. What if
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[20]</a></span>the streets tend to straight rigidity, while the dwelling-houses
-are mostly of wood, and the brick and stone
-business edifices embody modern commercialism! The
-European visitor will note these features; but he will
-note also the spirit of cleanliness, order, and convenience
-everywhere active among a people as alert and sturdy
-as they are well fed and comfortably clad. The
-unconcealed pride of the colonist in material progress
-may sometimes jar a little on the tourist in search of
-the odd, barbaric, or picturesque. But the colonist,
-after all, is building up a civilised nation. Art, important
-as it is, cannot be the foundation of a young
-state.</p>
-
-<p class="center space-above"></p>
-<div class="figcenter">
-<img src="images/i_020.jpg" alt="" width="700" height="413" />
-<p class="captioncenter">DUNEDIN</p>
-</div>
-<p class="center space-above"></p>
-
-<p>In the towns, then, you see bustling streets where
-electric tramways run out into roomy suburbs, and
-where motor-cars have already ceased to be a novelty.
-You notice that the towns are even better drained than
-paved, and that the water supply everywhere is as good
-as it ought to be in so well-watered a country. The
-visitor can send telegrams for sixpence and letters for
-a penny, and finds the State telephone system as convenient
-as it is cheap. If the hotels do not display
-American magnificence they do not charge American
-prices, for they give you comfort and civility for
-twelve-and-sixpence a day. Theatres and concert-halls
-are commodious, if not imposing; and, thanks to
-travelling companies and to famous artists passing
-through on their way to or from Australia, there is
-usually a good play to be seen or good music to be
-heard. Indeed, if there be an art which New Zealanders
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[21]</a></span>can be said to love, it is music. Their choral societies
-and glee clubs are many, and they have at least one
-choir much above the average. Nor are they indifferent
-to the sister art of painting, a foundation for which
-is laid in their State schools, where all children have to
-learn to draw. Good art schools have been founded in
-the larger towns, and in some of the smaller. Societies
-are buying and collecting pictures for their galleries.
-At the International Exhibition held in Christchurch in
-1906-7 the fine display of British art, for which our
-people had to thank the English Government, was
-welcomed with the enthusiasm it deserved. The
-picture galleries were thronged from beginning to end
-of the Exhibition, and the many thousands of pounds
-spent in purchases gave material evidence of the capacity
-of New Zealanders to appreciate good art when
-they have the chance of seeing it.</p>
-
-<p>The same may be said of literature. To say that
-they all love books would be absurd; but of what
-nation can that be said? What can truly be affirmed
-is that all of them read newspapers; that most of them
-read books of some sort; and that all their books are
-not novels. Booksellers tell you that the demand for
-cheap editions of well-known authors is astonishing in
-so small a population. They try to write books, too,
-and do not always fail; and a small anthology&mdash;it
-would have to be very slender&mdash;might be filled with
-genuine New Zealand poetry. Domett’s reputation is
-established. Arthur Adams, Arnold Wall, and Miss
-Mackay, when at their best, are poets, and good poets.</p>
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[22]</a></span></p>
-<p>Of course, however, it is in the newspapers that we
-have the plainest evidence of the average public taste.
-It is a land of newspapers, town and country, daily and
-weekly, small or of substantial size. To say that the
-best of these equals the best of the English provincial
-papers is not, I fear, true. The islands contain no daily
-newspaper which a journalist can honestly call equal to
-the <cite>Manchester Guardian</cite> or the <cite>Birmingham Post</cite>; but
-many of the papers are good, and some of them are
-extraordinarily good for towns the largest of which
-contains, with its suburbs, but 90,000 people. No one
-journal towers above the others. If I were asked to
-choose a morning, an evening, and a weekly paper,
-I should perhaps name the <cite>Otago Daily Times</cite>, the
-Wellington <cite>Evening Post</cite>, and the Christchurch <cite>Weekly
-Press</cite>; but the <cite>Auckland Weekly News</cite> has the best
-illustrations, and I could understand a good judge
-making a different selection. The most characteristic
-of the papers are illustrated weekly editions of the chief
-dailies. These good though not original products of
-island journalism are pretty close imitations of their
-Victorian prototype, <cite>The Australasian</cite>. The influence
-of the Press is considerable, though not perhaps as great
-as might be looked for from the numbers and success
-of the newspapers. Moreover, and this is really curious,
-they influence the public less in the politics of the
-colony than in several other fields.</p>
-
-<p>In a book on New Zealand published ten years ago,
-I wrote in my haste the words, “There is no Colonial
-literature.” What I meant to express, and doubtless
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[23]</a></span>ought to have said, is that there is no body of writing
-by New Zealanders at once substantial and distinguished
-enough to be considered a literature. I did not mean to
-suggest that, amongst the considerable mass of published
-matter for which my countrymen are responsible, there
-is nothing of good literary quality. It would not have
-been true to say this ten years ago, and it would be still
-less true to say it now. Amongst the large body of
-conscientious work published in the colony itself during
-the last quarter of a century there is some very good
-writing indeed. A certain amount of it deserves to
-be better known outside our borders than it is. Putting
-manner aside for the moment, and dealing only with
-matter, it is, I think, true to say that any thorough
-student of New Zealand as it is to-day, or has been
-since 1880, must for authentic information mainly go
-to works published in the colony itself. I have some
-right to speak, for I have been reading about New
-Zealand for forty years, and all my reading has not
-been desultory. Slight as is this book, for instance,
-and partly based as it is on personal recollection
-and knowledge gleaned orally, still I could not have
-written it without very careful study of many colonial
-writings. In scanning my list of later authorities consulted,
-I am surprised to find what very few exceptions
-there are to the rule that they are printed at the
-other end of the world. To begin with, the weekly
-newspapers of the Dominion are mines of information
-to any one who knows how to work them. So are the
-Blue-books, and that bible of the student of nature and
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[24]</a></span>tradition in our islands, the <cite>Transactions of the New
-Zealand Institute</cite>. Then there is the <cite>Journal of the
-Polynesian Society</cite>; after which comes a long list of official
-publications. First among them rank Kirk’s <cite>Forest
-Flora</cite> and Mr. Percy Smith’s <cite>Eruption of Tarawera</cite>.
-The best general sketch of Maori manners, customs,
-and beliefs, is that of Edward Tregear; far the best
-book on Maori art is A. Hamilton’s. Quite lately
-Mr. M’Nab, the present Minister of Lands, has made
-a very valuable contribution to the early chronicles of
-South New Zealand, in his <cite>Muri-huku</cite>, for which
-generations of students will be grateful. Mr. Carrick’s
-gossip&mdash;also about our South&mdash;and Mr. Ross’s mountaineering
-articles must not be passed over. Furthermore,
-there is an illustrated manual of our plants by
-Laing and Blackwell, which is something more than a
-manual, for it is full of reading which is enjoyable
-merely as reading. And there is a manual of our
-animal life in which the work of Hutton, Drummond,
-and Potts is blended with excellent results. Dr.
-Cockayne’s botanic articles, Mr. Shand’s papers on the
-Chathams, and Mr. Buick’s local Histories of Marlborough
-and Manawatu deserve also to be noted.
-Much of Mr. James Cowan’s writing for the Government
-Tourist Department is well above the average of that
-class of work.</p>
-
-<p class="center space-above"></p>
-<div class="figcenter">
-<img src="images/i_024.jpg" alt="" width="700" height="461" />
-<p class="captioncenter">NAPIER</p>
-</div>
-<p class="center space-above"></p>
-
-<p>Society in the towns is made up of a mingling of
-what in England would be called the middle and upper-middle
-classes. In some circles the latter preponderate,
-in others the former. New Zealanders occasionally
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[25]</a></span>boast that in their country class distinctions are unknown;
-but though this is true politically&mdash;for there
-are no privileged classes and no lower orders&mdash;the line
-is drawn in matters social, and sometimes in odd and
-amusing ways. The townsfolk inside the line are
-financiers, lawyers, doctors, merchants, manufacturers,
-clergymen, newspaper owners, the higher officials, and
-the larger sort of agents and contractors. Here and
-there, <i lang="la" xml:lang="la">rari nantes</i>, are to be encountered men who paint
-or write, or are musicians, or professors, or teachers of
-colleges or secondary schools. Most of the older and
-some of the younger are British-born, but the differences
-between them and the native-born are not very
-apparent, though shades of difference can be detected.
-Money, birth, official position, and ability are passports
-there, much as in other countries; though it is only fair
-to say that money is not all-powerful, and that ability,
-if not brilliant, has a slightly better chance than in older
-societies. On the surface the urban middle class in the
-colony differs but little from people of the same sort in
-the larger provincial cities of the mother country.
-Indeed the likeness is remarkable, albeit in the colony
-there is no aristocracy, no smart set, no Army, Navy, or
-dominant Church; while underneath there is no multitude
-of hungry and hard-driven poor for the rich to
-shrink from or regard as dangerous. Yet, except for the
-comparative absence of frock-coats and tall silk hats,
-and for the somewhat easier and less suspicious manner,
-the middle class remain a British middle class still. It
-is, then, pleasant to think that, if they retain English
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[26]</a></span>prejudices, they have also the traditional virtues of the
-English official and man of business.</p>
-
-<p class="center space-above"></p>
-<div class="figcenter">
-<img src="images/i_026.jpg" alt="" width="700" height="465" />
-<p class="captioncenter">THE BATHING POOL</p>
-</div>
-<p class="center space-above"></p>
-
-<p>To a social student, however, the most interesting
-and, on the whole, most cheering aspect of town life
-is supplied by the work-people. They are worth
-watching as they go to their shops and factories between
-eight and nine in the morning, or when, after five in
-the afternoon, they pour into the streets with their
-work done and something of the day yet left to call
-their own. The clean, well-ventilated work-rooms are
-worth a visit certainly. But it is the men and women,
-youths and girls themselves who, to any one acquainted
-with factory hands in the Old World, seem the best
-worth attention. Everywhere you note a decent average
-of health, strength, and contentment. The men
-do not look stunted or deadened, the women pinched
-or sallow, the children weedy or underfed. Most of
-them seem bright and self-confident, with colour in
-their faces and plenty of flesh on their frames, uniting
-something of English solidity with a good deal of
-American alertness. Seventy thousand hands&mdash;the
-number employed in our factories and workshops&mdash;may
-seem few enough. But forty years ago they could not
-muster seven thousand, and the proportional increase
-during the last twelve years has been very rapid. To
-what extent their healthy and comfortable condition is
-due to the much-discussed labour laws of New Zealand
-is a moot point which need not be discussed here.
-What is certain is that for many years past the artisans
-and labourers of the colony have increased in numbers,
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[27]</a></span>while earning higher wages and working shorter hours
-than formerly. At the same time the employers as a
-body have prospered as they never prospered before,
-and this prosperity shows as yet no sign of abatement.
-That what is called the labour problem has been solved
-in New Zealand no sensible man would pretend. But
-at least the more wasteful and ruinous forms of industrial
-conflicts have for many years been few and (with two
-exceptions) very brief, a blessing none too common in
-civilised communities. As a testimony to the condition
-of the New Zealand worker I can hardly do better than
-quote the opinion of the well-known English labour
-leader, Mr. Keir Hardie. Whatever my readers may
-think of his opinions&mdash;and some of them may not be
-among his warm admirers&mdash;they will admit that he
-is precisely the last man in the Empire likely to give
-an overflattering picture of the lot of the labourer anywhere.
-His business is to voice the grievances of his
-class, not to conceal or suppress them. Now, Mr.
-Hardie, after a tour round the Empire, deliberately
-picks out New Zealand as the most desirable country
-for a British emigrant workman. The standard of
-comfort there appears to him to be higher than elsewhere,
-and he recognises that the public conscience is
-sensitive to the fair claims of labour.</p>
-<hr class="chap" />
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[28]</a></span></p>
-
-
-<div class="chapter"></div>
-<h2><a name="CHAPTER_II" id="CHAPTER_II">CHAPTER <abbr title="2">II</abbr></a></h2>
-
-<p class="center">COUNTRY LIFE</p>
-
-
-<p>When all is said, however, it is not the cities which
-interest most the ordinary visitors to New Zealand.
-They may have a charm which it is no exaggeration to
-call loveliness, as Auckland has; or be finely seated
-on hill-sides overlooking noble harbours, as Wellington
-and Dunedin are. They may have sweetly redeeming
-features, like the river banks, public and private
-gardens, and the vistas of hills and distant mountains
-seen in flat Christchurch. They may be pleasant
-altogether both in themselves and their landscape, as
-Nelson is. But after all they are towns, and modern
-towns, whose best qualities are that they are wholesome
-and that their raw newness is passing away. It
-is to the country and the country life that travellers
-naturally turn for escape into something with a
-spice of novelty and maybe a touch of romance.
-Nor need they be disappointed. Country life in
-the islands varies with the locality and the year.
-It is not always bright, any more than is the New
-Zealand sky. It is not always prosperous, any more
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[29]</a></span>than you can claim that the seasons are always favourable.
-But, on the whole, I do not hesitate to say, that
-to a healthy capable farmer or rural worker the colony
-offers the most inviting life in the world. In the first
-place, the life is cheerful and healthy; in the next place,
-the work, though laborious at times, need not be
-killing; and then the solitude, that deadly accompaniment
-of early colonial life, has now ceased to be continuous
-except in a few scattered outposts. Moreover&mdash;and
-this is important&mdash;there is money in it. The
-incompetent or inexperienced farmer may, of course,
-lose his capital, just as a drunken or stupid labourer
-may fail to save out of his wages. But year in, year
-out, the farmer who knows his business and sticks to it
-can and does make money, improve his property, and
-see his position grow safer and his anxieties less. Good
-farmers can make profits quite apart from the very
-considerable increment which comes to the value of
-land as population spreads. Whatever may be said of
-this rise in price as a matter of public policy, it fills the
-pockets of individuals in a manner highly satisfactory
-to many of the present generation.</p>
-
-<p class="center space-above"></p>
-<div class="figcenter">
-<img src="images/i_028.jpg" alt="" width="700" height="469" />
-<p class="captioncenter">NELSON</p>
-</div>
-<p class="center space-above"></p>
-
-<p>One of the most cheerful features in New Zealand
-country life, perhaps, is the extent to which those who
-own the land are taking root in the soil. Far the
-greater part of the settled country is in the hands
-of men and families who live on the land, and may go
-on living there as long as they please; no one can oust
-them. They are either freeholders, or tenants of the
-State or public bodies. Such tenants hold their lands
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[30]</a></span>on terms so easy that their position as working farmers
-is as good as or better than that of freeholders. As
-prospective sellers of land they may not be so well
-placed; but that is another story. Anyway, rural
-New Zealand is becoming filled with capable independent
-farmers, with farms of all sizes from the estate of
-four thousand or five thousand acres to the peasant
-holding of fifty or one hundred. Colonists still think
-in large areas when they define the degrees of land-holding
-and ownership.</p>
-
-<p class="center space-above"></p>
-<div class="figcenter">
-<img src="images/i_030.jpg" alt="" width="700" height="417" />
-<p class="captioncenter">ON THE BEACH AT NGUNGURU</p>
-</div>
-<p class="center space-above"></p>
-
-<p>And here a New Zealander, endeavouring to make a
-general sketch that may place realities clearly before the
-English eye, is confronted with the difficulty, almost
-impossibility, of helping the European to conceive a
-thinly peopled territory. Suppose, for a moment, what
-the British Islands would be like if they were populated
-on the New Zealand scale&mdash;that is to say, if they held
-about a million souls, of whom fifty thousand were
-brown and the rest white. The brown would be
-English-speaking and half civilised, and the whites just
-workaday Britons of the middle and labouring classes,
-better fed, a little taller and rather more tanned by sun
-and wind. That at first sight does not seem to imply
-any revolutionary change. But imagine yourself standing
-on the deck of a steamer running up the English Channel
-past the coast as it would look if nineteen-twentieths
-of the British population, and all traces of them and the
-historic past of their country, had been swept away.
-The cliff edges of Cornwall and hills of Devon would
-be covered with thick forest, and perhaps a few people
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[31]</a></span>might cluster round single piers in sheltered inlets
-like Falmouth and Plymouth. The Chalk Downs of
-Wiltshire and Hampshire would be held by a score or
-two of sheep-farmers, tenants of the Crown, running
-their flocks over enormous areas of scanty grass. Fertile
-strips like the vale of Blackmore would be occupied by
-independent farmers with from three hundred to two
-thousand acres of grass and crops round their homesteads.
-Southampton would be the largest town in the
-British Islands, a flourishing and busy seaport, containing
-with its suburbs not less than 90,000 people.
-Its inhabitants would proudly point to the railway
-system, of which they were the terminus, and by which
-they were connected with Liverpool, the second city of
-the United Kingdom, holding with Birkenhead about
-70,000 souls. Journeying from Southampton to Liverpool
-on a single line of rails, the traveller would note a
-comfortable race of small farmers established in the
-valley of the Thames, and would hear of similar conditions
-about the Wye and the Severn. But he would be
-struck by the almost empty look of the wide pastoral
-stretches in Berkshire and Oxfordshire, and would find
-axemen struggling with Nature in the forest of Arden,
-where dense thickets would still cover the whole of
-Warwickshire and spread over into the neighbouring
-counties. Arrived at Liverpool after a twelve hours’
-journey, he might wish to visit Dublin or Glasgow, the
-only two other considerable towns in the British Islands;
-the one about as large as York now is, the other the
-size of Northampton. He would be informed by the
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[32]</a></span>Government tourist agent in Liverpool that his easiest
-way to Glasgow would be by sea to a landing-place in
-the Solway Firth, where he would find the southern
-terminus of the Scotch railways. He would discover
-that England and Scotland were not yet linked by
-rail, though that great step in progress was confidently
-looked for within a few months.</p>
-
-<p class="center space-above"></p>
-<div class="figcenter">
-<img src="images/i_032.jpg" alt="" width="700" height="448" />
-<p class="captioncenter">AT THE FOOT OF LAKE TE-ANAU</p>
-</div>
-<p class="center space-above"></p>
-
-<p>By all this I do not mean to suggest that there are
-no spots in New Zealand where the modern side of
-rural English life is already closely reproduced. On an
-earlier page I have said that there are. Our country life
-differs widely as you pass from district to district, and
-is marked by as much variety as is almost everything
-else in the islands. On the east coast of the South
-Island, between Southland and the Kaikouras, mixed
-farming is scientifically carried on with no small expenditure
-of skill and capital. The same can be said
-of certain districts on the west coast of the Wellington
-Province, and in the province of Hawkes Bay, within a
-moderate distance of the town of Napier. Elsewhere,
-with certain exceptions, farming is of a rougher and
-more primitive-looking sort than anything seen in the
-mother country, though it does not follow that a comparatively
-rough, unkempt appearance denotes lack of skill
-or agricultural knowledge. It may mean, and usually
-does mean, that the land is in the earlier stages of
-settlement, and that the holders have not yet had time
-to think much of appearances. Then outside the class
-of small or middle-sized farms come the large holdings
-of the islands, which are like nothing at all in the
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[33]</a></span>United Kingdom. They are of two kinds, freehold
-and Crown lands held under pastoral licences. Generally
-speaking, the freeholds are much the more valuable,
-have much more arable land, and will, in days to come,
-carry many more people. The pastoral Crown tenants
-have, by the pressure of land laws and the demands of
-settlement, been more and more restricted to the wilder
-and more barren areas of the islands. They still hold
-more than ten million acres; but this country chiefly
-lies in the mountainous interior, covering steep faces
-where the plough will never go, and narrow terraces
-and cold, stony valleys where the snow lies deep in
-winter.</p>
-
-<p>On these sheep stations life changes more slowly
-than elsewhere. If you wish to form an idea of what
-pastoral life “up-country” was forty years ago, you
-can still do so by spending a month or two at one of
-these mountain homesteads. There you may possibly
-have the owner and the owner’s family for society, but
-are rather more likely to be yourself furnishing a solitary
-manager with not unwelcome company. Round about
-the homestead you will still see the traditional features
-of colonial station life, the long wool-shed with high-pitched
-roof of shingles or corrugated iron, and the
-sheep-yards which, to the eye of the new chum, seem
-such an unmeaning labyrinth. Not far off will stand
-the men’s huts, a little larger than of yore, and more
-likely nowadays to be frame cottages than to be slab
-whares with the sleeping-bunks and low, wide chimneys
-of days gone by. In out-of-the-way spots the station
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[34]</a></span>store may still occasionally be found, with its atmosphere
-made odorous by hob-nailed boots, moleskin
-trousers, brown sugar, flannel shirts, tea, tar, and black
-tobacco. For the Truck Act does not apply to sheep
-stations, and there are still places far enough away from
-a township to make the station store a convenience to
-the men.</p>
-
-<p class="center space-above"></p>
-<div class="figcenter">
-<img src="images/i_034.jpg" alt="" width="700" height="452" />
-<p class="captioncenter">THE WAIKATO AT NGARUAWAHIA</p>
-</div>
-<p class="center space-above"></p>
-
-<p>At such places the homestead is still probably
-nothing more than a modest cottage, roomy, but built
-of wood, and owing any attractiveness it has to its broad
-verandah, perhaps festooned with creepers, and to the
-garden and orchard which are now seldom absent. In
-the last generation the harder and coarser specimens
-of the pioneers often affected to hold gardens and
-garden-stuffs cheap, and to despise planting and adornment
-of any kind, summing them up as “fancy work.”
-This was not always mere stinginess or brute indifference
-to everything that did not directly pay, though it
-sometimes was. There can be no doubt that absentee
-owners or mortgagee companies were often mean enough
-in these things. But the spirit that grudged every hour
-of labour bestowed on anything except the raising of
-wool, mutton, or corn, was often the outcome of nothing
-worse than absorption in a ceaseless and unsparing
-battle with Nature and the fluctuations of markets.
-The first generation of settlers had to wrestle hard to
-keep their foothold; and, naturally, the men who usually
-survived through bad times were those who concentrated
-themselves most intensely on the struggle for
-success and existence. But time mellows everything.
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[35]</a></span>The struggle for life has still to be sustained in New
-Zealand. It is easier than of yore, however; and the
-continued prosperity of the last twelve or thirteen
-years has enabled settlers to bestow thought and money
-on the lighter and pleasanter side. Homesteads are
-brighter places than they were: they may not be
-artistic, but even the most remote are nearly always
-comfortable. More than comfort the working settler
-does not ask for.</p>
-
-<p>Then in estimating how far New Zealand country
-life may be enjoyable and satisfying we must remember
-that it is mainly a life out of doors. On farms and
-stations of all sorts and sizes the men spend many hours
-daily in the open, sometimes near the homestead, sometimes
-miles away from it. To them, therefore, climate
-is of more importance than room-space, and sunshine
-than furniture. If we except a handful of mountaineers,
-the country worker in New Zealand is either never
-snowbound at all, or, at the worst, is hampered by a
-snowstorm once a year. Many showery days there are,
-and now and again the bursts of wind and rain are
-wild enough to force ploughmen to quit work, or
-shepherds to seek cover; but apart from a few tempests
-there is nothing to keep country-folk indoors.
-It is never either too hot or too cold for out-door work,
-while for at least one day in three in an average year
-it is a positive pleasure to breathe the air and live under
-the pleasant skies.</p>
-
-<p>The contrast between the station of the back-ranges
-and the country place of the wealthy freeholder is the
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[36]</a></span>contrast between the first generation of colonial life
-and the third. The lord of 40,000 acres may be a
-rural settler or a rich man with interests in town as
-well as country. In either case his house is something
-far more costly than the old wooden bungalow. It is
-defended by plantations and approached by a curving
-carriage drive. When the proprietor arrives at his
-front door he is as likely to step out of a motor-car
-as to dismount from horseback. Within, you may
-find an airy billiard-room; without, smooth-shaven
-tennis lawns, and perhaps a bowling-green. The
-family and their guests wear evening dress at dinner,
-where the wine will be expensive and may even be
-good. In the smoking-room, cigars have displaced
-the briar-root pipes of our fathers. The stables are
-higher and more spacious than were the dwellings of
-the men of the early days. Neat grooms and trained
-gardeners are seen in the place of the “rouse-abouts” of
-yore. Dip and wool-shed are discreetly hidden from
-view; and a conservatory rises where meat once hung
-on the gallows.</p>
-
-<p>For a colony whose days are not threescore years
-and ten, ours has made some creditable headway in
-gardening. The good and bad points of our climate
-alike encourage us to cultivate the art. The combination
-of an ample rainfall with lavish sunshine helps the
-gardener’s skill. On the other hand, the winds&mdash;those
-gales from north-west and south-west, varied by the
-teasing persistency of the steadier north-easter, plague
-of spring afternoons&mdash;make the planting of hedgerows
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[37]</a></span>and shelter clumps an inevitable self-defence. So while,
-on the one hand, the colonist hews and burns and drains
-away the natural vegetation of forest and swamp, on
-the other, in the character of planter and gardener, he
-does something to make amends. The colours of
-England and New Zealand glow side by side in the
-flowers round his grass plots, while Australia and North
-America furnish sombre break-winds, and contribute
-some oddities of foliage and a share of colour. In
-seaside gardens the Norfolk Island pine takes the place
-held by the cedar of Lebanon on English lawns. The
-mimosa and jackarandah of Australia persist in flowering
-in the frosty days of our early spring. On the
-verandahs, jessamine and Virginia creeper intertwine
-with the clematis and passion-flower of the bush. The
-palm-lily&mdash;insulted with the nickname of cabbage-tree&mdash;is
-hardy enough to flourish anywhere despite its
-semi-tropical look; but the nikau, our true palm,
-requires shelter from bitter or violent winds. The
-toé-toé (a reed with golden plumes), the glossy native
-flax (a lily with leaves like the blade of a classic Roman
-sword), and two shrubs, the matipo and karaka, are
-less timid, so more serviceable. The crimson parrot’s-beak
-and veronicas&mdash;white, pink, and purple&mdash;are
-easily and commonly grown; and though the manuka
-does not rival the English whitethorn in popularity,
-the pohutu-kawa, most striking of flowering trees, surpasses
-the ruddy may and pink chestnut of the old
-country. Some English garden-charms cannot be transplanted.
-The thick sward and living green of soft
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[38]</a></span>lawns, the moss and mellowing lichens that steal slowly
-over bark and walls, the quaintness that belongs to
-old-fashioned landscape gardening, the venerable aspect
-of aged trees,&mdash;these cannot be looked for in gardens
-the eldest of which scarcely count half a century. But
-a climate in which arum lilies run wild in the hedgerows,
-and in which bougainvilleas, camellias, azaleas,
-oleanders, and even (in the north) the stephanotis,
-bloom in the open air, gives to skill great opportunities.
-Then the lover of ferns&mdash;and they have many lovers
-in New Zealand&mdash;has there a whole realm to call his
-own. Not that every fern will grow in every garden.
-Among distinct varieties numbering scores, there are
-many that naturally cling to the peace and moisture
-of deep gullies and overshadowing jungle. There,
-indeed, is found a wealth of them&mdash;ferns with trunks
-as thick as trees, and ferns with fronds as fine as hair or
-as delicate as lace; and there are filmy ferns, and such
-as cling to and twine round their greater brethren, and
-pendant ferns that droop from crevices and drape the
-faces of cliffs. To these add ferns that climb aloft as
-parasites on branches and among foliage, or that creep
-upon the ground, after the manner of lycopodium,
-or coat fallen forest trees like mosses. The tree-ferns
-are large enough to be hewn down with axes, and to
-spread their fronds as wide as the state umbrellas of
-Asiatic kings. Thirty feet is no uncommon span for
-the shade they cast, and their height has been known to
-reach fifty feet. They are to other ferns as the wandering
-albatross is to lesser sea-birds. The black-trunked<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[39]</a></span>
-are the tallest, while the silver-fronded, whose
-wings seem as though frosted on the underside, are
-the most beautiful. In places they stand together in
-dense groves. Attempt to penetrate these and you
-find a dusky entanglement where your feet sink into
-tinder and dead, brown litter. But look down upon
-a grove from above, and your eyes view a canopy of
-green intricacies, a waving covering of soft, wing-like
-fronds, and fresh, curving plumes.</p>
-
-<p class="center space-above"></p>
-<div class="figcenter">
-<img src="images/i_038.jpg" alt="" width="380" height="600" />
-<p class="captioncenter">TREE FERNS</p>
-</div>
-<p class="center space-above"></p>
-
-<p>The change in country life now going on so rapidly
-has not meant merely more comfort for the employer:
-the position of the men also has altered for the better.
-While the land-owner’s house and surroundings show a
-measure of refinement, and even something that may
-at the other end of the earth pass for luxury, the station
-hands are far better cared for than was the case a
-generation or two ago. The interior of the “men’s
-huts” no longer reminds you of the foc’sle of a
-merchantship. Seek out the men’s quarters on one of
-the better managed estates, and it may easily happen
-that you will now find a substantial, well-built cottage
-with a broad verandah round two sides. Inside you
-are shown a commodious dining-room, and a reading-room
-supplied with newspapers and even books. To
-each man is assigned a separate bedroom, clean and
-airy, and a big bathroom is supplemented by decent
-lavatory arrangements. The food was always abundant&mdash;in
-the roughest days the estate owners never grudged
-their men plenty of “tucker.” But it is now much
-more varied and better cooked, and therefore wholesome.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[40]</a></span>
-To some extent this improvement in the
-country labourer’s lot is due to legal enactment and
-government inspection. But it is only fair to say that
-in some of the most notable instances it comes
-from spontaneous action by employers themselves.
-New Zealand has developed a public conscience
-during the last twenty years in matters relating to the
-treatment of labour, and by this development the
-country employers have been touched as much as any
-section of the community. They were never an
-unkindly race, and it may now be fairly claimed that
-they compare favourably with any similar class of
-employers within the Empire.</p>
-
-<p>At the other end of the rural scale to the establishment
-of the great land-owner we see the home of the
-bush settler&mdash;the pioneer of to-day. Perhaps the Crown
-has leased a block of virgin forest to him; perhaps he is
-one of the tenants of a Maori tribe, holding on a twenty-one
-or forty-two years’ lease; perhaps he has contrived
-to pick up a freehold in the rough. At any rate he
-and his mate are on the ground armed with saw and axe
-for their long attack upon Nature; and as you note the
-muscles of their bared arms, and the swell of the chests
-expanding under their light singlets, you are quite
-ready to believe that Nature will come out of the
-contest in a damaged condition. It is their business to
-hack and grub, hew and burn, blacken and deface.
-The sooner they can set the fire running through tracts
-of fern or piles of felled bush the sooner will they be
-able to scatter broadcast the contents of certain bags of
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[41]</a></span>grass seed now carefully stowed away in their shanty
-under cover of tarpaulins. Sworn enemies are they of
-tall bracken and stately pines. To their eyes nothing
-can equal in beauty a landscape of black, fire-scorched
-stumps and charred logs&mdash;if only on the soil between
-these they may behold the green shoots of young grass
-thrusting ten million blades upward. What matter the
-ugliness and wreckage of the first stages of settlement,
-if, after many years, a tidy farm and smiling homestead
-are to be the outcome? In the meantime, while under-scrubbing
-and bush-felling are going on, the axemen
-build for themselves a slab hut with shingled roof. The
-furniture probably exemplifies the great art of “doing
-without.” The legs of their table are posts driven into
-the clay floor: to other posts are nailed the sacking
-on which their blankets are spread. A couple of sea
-chests hold their clothes and odds and ends. A sheepskin
-or two do duty for rugs. Tallow candles, or maybe
-kerosene, furnish light. A very few well-thumbed
-books, and a pack or two of more than well-thumbed
-cards, provide amusement. Not that there are many
-hours in the week for amusement. When cooking is
-done, washing and mending have to be taken in hand.
-Flannel and blue dungaree require washing after a
-while, and even garments of canvas and moleskin must
-be repaired sooner or later. A camp oven, a frying-pan,
-and a big teapot form the front rank of their
-cooking utensils, and fuel, at least, is abundant. Baking-powder
-helps them to make bread. Bush pork, wild
-birds, and fish may vary a diet in which mutton and
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[42]</a></span>sardines figure monotonously. After a while a few
-vegetables are grown behind the hut, and the settlers
-find time to milk a cow. Soon afterwards, perhaps,
-occurs the chief event of pioneer life&mdash;the coming of a
-wife on to the scene. With her arrival is the beginning
-of a civilised life indoors, though her earlier years as a
-housekeeper may be an era of odd shifts and desperate
-expedients. A bush household is lucky if it is near
-enough to a metalled road to enable stores to be brought
-within fairly easy reach. More probably such necessaries
-as flour, groceries, tools, and grass seed&mdash;anything, in
-short, from a grindstone to a bag of sugar&mdash;have to be
-brought by pack-horse along a bush-track where road-metal
-is an unattainable luxury, and which may not unfairly
-be described as a succession of mud-holes divided
-by logs. Along such a thoroughfare many a rain-soaked
-pioneer has guided in days past the mud-plastered pack-horse
-which has carried the first beginnings of his
-fortunes. For what sustains the average settler through
-the early struggles of pioneering in the wilderness is
-chiefly the example of those who have done the same
-thing before, have lived as hard a life or harder, and
-have emerged as substantial farmers and leading settlers,
-respected throughout their district. Success has
-crowned the achievement so many thousand times in
-the past that the back-country settler of to-day, as he
-fells his bush and toils along his muddy track, may well
-be sustained by hope and by visions of macadamised
-coach roads running past well-grassed, well-stocked
-sheep or dairy farms in days to come.</p>
-
-<p class="center space-above"></p>
-<div class="figcenter">
-<img src="images/i_042.jpg" alt="" width="700" height="471" />
-<p class="captioncenter">A MAORI VILLAGE</p>
-</div>
-<p class="center space-above"></p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[43]</a></span></p>
-<p>Predominant as the white man is in New Zealand,
-the brown man is too interesting and important to be
-forgotten even in a rough and hasty sketch. The Maori
-do not dwell in towns: they are an element of our
-country life. They now number no more than a
-twentieth of our people; but whereas a generation ago
-they were regarded as a doomed race, whose end,
-perhaps, was not very far distant, their disappearance is
-now regarded as by no means certain. I doubt, indeed,
-whether it is even probable. Until the end of the
-nineteenth century official returns appeared to show
-that the race was steadily and indeed rapidly diminishing.
-More recent and more accurate figures, however,
-seem to prove either that the Maori have regained
-vitality, or that past estimates of their numbers were
-too low. I am inclined to think that the explanation
-is found in both these reasons. In past decades our
-Census officers never claimed to be able to reckon the
-strength of the Maori with absolute accuracy, chiefly
-because the Natives would give them little or no help in
-their work. It is not quite so difficult now as formerly
-to enumerate the members of the tribes. Furthermore,
-there is reason to hope that the health of the race is
-improving and that its spirit is reviving. The first
-shock with our civilisation and our overwhelming
-strength is over. The Maori, beaten in war with us,
-were not disgraced: though their defeat disheartened
-them, it did not lead their conquerors to despise them.
-Again, though they have been deprived of some of
-their land, and have sold a great part of the rest, the
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[44]</a></span>tribes are still great landlords. They hold the fee-simple
-of nearly seven million acres of land, much of it
-fertile. This is a large estate for about fifty thousand
-men, women, and children. Moreover, it is a valuable
-estate. I daresay its selling price might be rated at a
-higher figure than the value of the whole of New
-Zealand when we annexed it. Some of this great
-property is leased to white tenants; most of it is still
-retained by the native tribes. So long as they can
-continue to hold land on a considerable scale they will
-always have a chance, and may be sure of respectful
-treatment. At the worst they have had, and still have,
-three powerful allies. The Government of the colony
-may sometimes have erred against them, but in the
-main it has stood between them and the baser and
-greedier sort of whites. Maori children are educated
-free of cost. Most of them can now at least read and
-write English. Quite as useful is the work of the
-Department of Public Health. If I am not mistaken, it
-has been the main cause of the lowered Maori death-rate
-of the last ten years. Then the clergy of more than one
-Church have always been the Maori’s friends. Weak&mdash;too
-weak&mdash;as their hands have been, their voices have
-been raised again and again on the native’s behalf.
-Thirdly, the leaders of the temperance movement&mdash;one
-of the most powerful influences in our public life&mdash;have
-done all they can to save the Maori of the interior
-from the curse of drink. Allies, then, have been
-fighting for the Maori. Moreover, they are citizens
-with a vote at the polls and a voice in Parliament.
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[45]</a></span>Were one political party disposed to bully the natives,
-the other might be tempted to befriend them. But
-the better sort of white has no desire to bully. He
-may not admit that the brown man is socially his
-equal; but there is neither hatred nor loathing between
-the races.</p>
-
-<p class="center space-above"></p>
-<div class="figcenter">
-<img src="images/i_044.jpg" alt="" width="700" height="467" />
-<p class="captioncenter">A PATAKA</p>
-</div>
-<p class="center space-above"></p>
-
-<p>In a word, the outlook for the Maori, though still
-doubtful, is by no means desperate. They will own
-land; they will collect substantial rents from white
-tenants; they will be educated; they will retain the
-franchise. At last they are beginning to learn the laws
-of sanitation and the uses of ventilation and hospitals.
-The doctors of the Health Department have persuaded
-them to pull down hundreds of dirty old huts, are caring
-for their infants, and are awaking a wholesome distrust
-of the trickeries of those mischievous conjuror-quacks,
-the  <i lang="mi" xml:lang="mi">tohungas</i>. Some of these good physicians&mdash;Dr.
-Pomaré, for instance&mdash;are themselves Maori. More of
-his stamp are wanted; also more Maori lawyers like
-Mr. Apirana Ngata, M.P. Much will turn upon
-the ability of the race to master co-operative farming.
-That there is hope of this is shown by the success of
-the Ngatiporou tribesmen, who in recent years have
-cleared and sown sixty thousand acres of land, and now
-own eighty-three thousand sheep, more than three
-thousand cattle, and more than eight thousand pigs.
-Only let the sanitary lesson be learned and the industrial
-problem solved, and the qualities of the Maori may be
-trusted to do the rest. Their muscular strength and
-courage, their courtesy and vein of humour, their
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[46]</a></span>poetic power and artistic sense, are gifts that make it
-desirable that the race should survive and win a permanent
-place among civilised men.</p>
-
-<hr class="tb" />
-
-<p>Watching the tendencies of New Zealand life and
-laws to-day, one is tempted to look ahead and think
-of what country life in the islands may become in a
-generation or so, soon after the colony has celebrated
-its hundredth anniversary. It should be a pleasant life,
-even pleasanter than that of our own time; for more
-gaps will have been filled up and more angles rubbed
-off. Limiting laws and graduated taxes will have made
-an end of the great estates: a land-owner with more
-than £120,000 of real property will probably be
-unknown. Many land-owners will be richer than that,
-but it will be because a part of their money is invested
-in personalty. But in peacefully making an end of
-<i lang="la" xml:lang="la">latifundia</i> the law-makers will not have succeeded&mdash;even
-if that were their design&mdash;in handing over the
-land to peasants: there will be no sweeping revolution.
-Much of the soil will still be held by large and substantial
-farmers,&mdash;eight or ten thousand in number,
-perhaps,&mdash;educated men married to wives of some
-culture and refinement. The process of subdivision
-will have swelled the numbers and increased the influence
-of land-holders. The unpopularity which attached
-itself to the enormous estates will pass away with them.
-Some of the farming gentlemen of the future will be
-descendants of members of the English upper and
-upper-middle classes. Others will be the grandsons of
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[47]</a></span>hard-headed Scotch shepherds, English rural labourers,
-small tenants, or successful men of commerce. Whatever
-their origin, however, education, intermarriage, and
-common habits of life will tend to level them into a
-homogeneous class. Dressed in tweed suits, wide-awake
-hats, and gaiters, riding good horses or driving in
-powerful motors, and with their alert, bony faces
-browned and reddened by sun and wind, they will look
-and will be a healthy, self-confident, intelligent race.
-Despite overmuch tea and tobacco, their nerves will
-seldom be highly strung; the blessed sunshine and the air
-of the sea and the mountains will save them from that.
-Moreover, colonial cookery will be better than it has
-been, and diet more varied. Nor will our farmers
-trouble the doctors much or poison themselves with
-patent drugs. Owning anything from half a square
-mile to six or seven square miles of land, they will be
-immensely proud of their stake in the country and
-cheerfully convinced of their value as the backbone of
-the community. They will not be a vicious lot; early
-marriage and life in the open air will prevent that.
-Nor will drunkenness be fashionable, though there will
-be gambling and probably far too much horse-racing.
-Varying in size from three or four hundred to four or
-five thousand acres, their properties, with stock and
-improvements, may be worth anything from five or
-six thousand to seventy or eighty thousand pounds, but
-amongst themselves the smaller and larger owners will
-meet on terms of easy equality. They will gradually
-form an educated rural gentry with which the wealthier
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[48]</a></span>townspeople will be very proud and eager to mix. A
-few of them, whose land is rich, may lease it out in
-small allotments, and try to become squires on a
-modified English pattern. But most of them will work
-their land themselves, living on it, riding over it daily,
-directing their men, and, if need be, lending a hand
-themselves. That will be their salvation, bringing
-them as it will into daily contact with practical things
-and working humanity. Conservative, of course, they
-will be, and in theory opposed to Socialism, yet assenting
-from time to time to Socialistic measures when
-persuaded of their immediate usefulness. Thus they
-will keep a keen eye on the State railways, steamships,
-and Department of Agriculture, and develop the
-machinery of these in their own interests. A few of
-the richer of them from time to time may find that
-life in Europe so pleases them&mdash;or their wives&mdash;that
-they will sell out and cut adrift from the colony; but
-there will be no class of absentee owners&mdash;growling,
-heavily taxed, and unpopular. Our working gentlemen
-will stick to the country, and will be hotly,
-sometimes boisterously, patriotic, however much they
-may at moments abuse governments and labour laws.
-Most of them will be freeholders. Allied with them
-will be State pastoral tenants&mdash;holding smaller runs
-than now&mdash;to be found in the mountains, on the
-pumice plateau, or where the clay is hungry. Socially
-these tenants will be indistinguishable from the
-freeholders.</p>
-
-<p>Solitude will be a thing of the past; for roads will
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[49]</a></span>be excellent, motors common, and every homestead
-will have its telephone. And just as kerosene lamps
-and wax candles superseded the tallow dips of the early
-settlers, so in turn will electric light reign, not here and
-there merely, but almost everywhere. Their main
-recreations will be shooting, fishing, motor-driving,
-riding, and sailing; for games&mdash;save polo&mdash;and pure
-athletics will be left to boys and to men placed lower
-in the social scale. They will read books, but are
-scarcely likely to care much about art, classing painting
-and music rather with such things as wood-carving and
-embroidery&mdash;as women’s work, something for men to
-look at rather than produce. But they will be gardeners,
-and their wives will pay the arts a certain homage.
-The furniture of their houses may seem scanty in
-European eyes, but will not lack a simple elegance.
-In their gardens, however, those of them who have
-money to spare will spend more freely, and on brightening
-these with colour and sheltering them with soft
-masses of foliage no mean amount of taste and skill
-will be lavished. These gardens will be the scenes of
-much of the most enjoyable social intercourse to be
-had in the country. Perhaps&mdash;who knows?&mdash;some
-painter, happy in a share of Watteau’s light grace or
-Fragonard’s eye for decorative effect in foliage, may
-find in the New Zealand garden festivals, with their
-music, converse, and games, and their framework of
-beauty, subjects worthy of art.</p>
-
-<p class="center space-above"></p>
-<div class="figcenter">
-<img src="images/i_050.jpg" alt="" width="700" height="467" />
-<p class="captioncenter">COROMANDEL</p>
-</div>
-<p class="center space-above"></p>
-
-<p>Socially and financially beneath these country gentlemen,
-though politically their equals, and in intelligence
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[50]</a></span>often not inferior to them, will come the more numerous,
-rougher and poorer races of small farmers and country
-labourers. Here will be seen harder lives and a heavier
-physique&mdash;men whose thews and sinews will make
-Imperial recruiting officers sigh wistfully. Holding
-anything from twenty or thirty up to two or three
-hundred acres, the small farmers will have their times of
-stress and anxiety, when they will be hard put to it to
-weather a bad season combined with low prices. But
-their practical skill, strength, and industry, and their
-ability, at a pinch, to do without all but bare necessaries,
-will usually pull them through. Moreover, they too
-will be educated, and no mere race of dull-witted boors.
-At the worst they will always be able to take to wage-earning
-for a time, and the smaller of them will
-commonly pass part of each year in working for others.
-Sometimes their sons will be labourers, and members
-of trade unions, and this close contact with organised
-labour and Socialism will have curious political results.
-As a class they will be much courted by politicians,
-and will distrust the rich, especially the rich of the
-towns. Their main and growing grievance will be
-the difficulty of putting their sons on the land. For
-themselves they will be able to live cheaply, and in
-good years save money; for customs tariffs will be
-more and more modified to suit them. Some of their
-children will migrate to the towns; others will become
-managers, overseers, shepherds, drovers. They will
-have their share of sport, and from among them will
-come most of the best athletes of the country, professional<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[51]</a></span>
-and other. Nowhere will be seen a cringing
-tenantry, hat-touching peasantry, or underfed farm
-labourers. The country labourers, thoroughly organised,
-well paid, and active, will yet be not altogether
-ill-humoured in politics; for, by comparison with the
-lot of their class in other parts of the world, theirs will
-be a life of hope, comfort, and confidence.</p>
-<hr class="chap" />
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[52]</a></span></p>
-
-
-<div class="chapter"></div>
-<h2><a name="CHAPTER_III" id="CHAPTER_III">CHAPTER <abbr title="3">III</abbr></a></h2>
-
-<p class="center">SPORT AND ATHLETICS</p>
-
-
-<p>Sport in the islands resembles their climate and
-scenery. To name the distinguishing feature I have
-once more to employ the well-worn word, variety.
-Even if we limit the term to the pursuit of game, there
-is enough of that to enable an idle man to pass his time
-all the year round. In the autumn there is deer-shooting
-of the best, and in the early winter the
-sportsman may turn to wild ducks and swamp-hen.
-Then wild goats have begun to infest certain high
-ranges, especially the backbone of the province of
-Wellington and the mountains in central Otago. In
-stalking them the hunter may have to exhibit no small
-share of the coolness of head and stoutness of limb
-which are brought to play in Europe in the chase of
-the chamois, ibex, and moufflon. In addition to
-sureness of foot, the goats have already developed an
-activity and cunning unknown to their tame ancestors.
-They will lie or stand motionless and unnoticed among
-the bewildering rocks, letting the stalker seek for them
-in vain; and when roused they bound away at a speed
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[53]</a></span>that is no mean test of rifle-shooting, particularly when
-the marksman is hot and panting with fatigue. And
-when brought to a stand against rocks, or among the
-roots of mountain beeches, or on the stones of a river-bed,
-they will show fight and charge dogs and even
-men. The twisted or wrinkled horns of an old he-goat
-are not despicable weapons. As the reward of many
-hours’ hard clambering, varied by wading through ice-cold
-torrents, and spiced, it may be, with some danger,
-the goat hunter may secure a long pair of curving
-horns, or in mid-winter a thick, warm pelt, sometimes,
-though rarely, pure white. Moreover, he may feel
-that he is ridding the mountain pastures of an unlicensed
-competitor of that sacred quadruped, the sheep.
-Goats are by no means welcome on sheep-runs.
-Colonel Craddock, it is true, complains that it is not
-easy to regard them as wild, inasmuch as their coats
-retain the familiar colours of the domestic animals.
-He wishes they would change to some distinctive hue.
-This feeling is perhaps akin to the soldier’s dislike to
-shooting at men who retain the plain clothes of civilians
-instead of donning uniform&mdash;a repugnance experienced
-now and then by some of our fighting men in South
-Africa.</p>
-
-<p>Rabbits, of course, as a national scourge, are to be
-shot at any time, and though on the whole now held
-in check, are in some districts still only too abundant.
-Occasionally when elaborate plans are being laid for
-poisoning a tract of infested country, the owner of the
-land may wish no interference, and the man with a gun
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[54]</a></span>may be warned off as a disturber of a peace intended to
-lull the rabbit into security. But, speaking generally,
-any one who wishes to shoot these vermin may find
-country where he can do so to his heart’s content,
-and pose the while as a public benefactor.</p>
-
-<p>The largest game in the colony are the wild cattle.
-These, like the goats and pigs, are descendants of tame
-and respectable farm animals. On many mountain
-sheep-runs, annual cattle hunts are organised to thin
-their numbers, for the young bulls become dangerous
-to lonely shepherds and musterers, and do great damage
-to fences. Moreover, the wild herds eat their full share
-of grass, as their fat condition when shot often shows.
-Generations of life in the hills, fern, and bush have
-had their effect on runaway breeds. The pigs especially
-have put on an almost aristocratic air of lean savagery.
-Their heads and flanks are thinner, their shoulders
-higher and more muscular, their tusks have become
-formidable, and their nimbleness on steep hill-sides
-almost astonishing. A quick dog, or even an athletic
-man on foot, may keep pace with a boar on the upward
-track; but when going headlong downhill the pig
-leaves everything behind. The ivory tusks of an old
-boar will protrude three or four inches from his jaw,
-and woe to the dog or horse that feels their razor-edge
-and cruel sidelong rip. The hide, too, has become
-inches thick in places, where it would, I should think,
-be insensible to a hot branding iron. At any rate,
-the spear or sheath knife that is to pierce it must be
-held in clever as well as strong hands. Even a rifle-bullet,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[55]</a></span>
-if striking obliquely, will glance off from the
-shield on the shoulder of a tough old boar. Wild pigs
-are among the sheep-farmer’s enemies. Boars and sows
-alike prey on his young lambs in spring-time, and every
-year do thousands of pounds’ worth of mischief in
-certain out-of-the-way country. So here again the
-sportsman may plume himself upon making war upon
-a public nuisance. In bygone days these destructive
-brutes could be found in numbers prowling over open
-grassy downs, where riders could chase them spear in
-hand, and where sheep-dogs could bring them to bay.
-They were killed without exception or mercy for age or
-sex; and the spectacle of pigs a few weeks old being
-speared or knifed along with their mothers was not
-exhilarating. But they were pests, and contracts were
-often let for clearing a certain piece of country of
-them. As evidence of their slaughter the contractors
-had to bring in their long, tufted tails. These the
-station manager counted with care, for the contract
-money was at the rate of so much a tail. I have
-known ninepence to be the reigning price. Nowadays,
-however, the pigs are chiefly to be found in remote
-forests, dense manuka scrub, or tall bracken, and if
-caught in the open it is when they have stolen out by
-moonlight on a raid upon lambs. The thick fern not
-only affords them cover but food: “the wild boar out
-of the wood doth root it up,” and finds in it a clean,
-sweet diet. Many a combat at close quarters takes
-place every year in the North Island, in fern from three
-to six feet high, when some avenging farmer makes an
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[56]</a></span>end of the ravager of his flocks. Numbers of the pigs
-are shot; but shooting, though a practical way of
-ridding a countryside of them, lacks, of course, the
-excitement and spice of danger that belong to the chase
-on foot with heavy knife or straight short sword.
-Here the hunter trusts both for success and safety to
-his dogs, who, when cunning and well-trained, will
-catch a boar by the ears and hold him till he has been
-stabbed. Ordinary sheep-dogs will not often do this;
-a cattle-dog, or a strong mongrel with a dash of mastiff
-or bulldog, is less likely to be shaken off. Good collies,
-moreover, are valuable animals. Not that sheep-dogs
-fail in eagerness for the chase; they will often stray
-off to track pigs on their own account. And any one
-who has seen and heard them when the boar, brought
-to bay against some tree trunk, rock, or high bank,
-makes short mad rushes at his tormentors, will understand
-how fully the average dog shares the hunter’s zest.</p>
-
-<p class="center space-above"></p>
-<div class="figcenter">
-<img src="images/i_056.jpg" alt="" width="700" height="447" />
-<p class="captioncenter">CATHEDRAL PEAKS</p>
-</div>
-<p class="center space-above"></p>
-
-<p>Another though much rarer plague to the flock-owner
-are the wild dogs. These also prey by night
-and lie close by day, and if they were numerous the lot
-of farmers near rough, unoccupied stretches of country
-would be anxious indeed; for the wild dogs not only
-kill enough for a meal, but go on worrying and tearing
-sheep, either for their blood, or for the excitement and
-pleasure of killing. When three or four of them form
-a small pack and hunt together, the damage they can
-do in a few nights is such that the persecuted farmer
-counts the cost in ten-pound notes. They are often too
-fast and savage to be stopped by a shepherd’s dogs, and
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[57]</a></span>accurate rifle-shooting by moonlight&mdash;to say nothing of
-moonless nights&mdash;is not the easiest of accomplishments.
-Failing a lucky shot, poison is perhaps the most
-efficacious remedy. Happily these dogs&mdash;which are not
-sprung from the fat, harmless little native curs which
-the Maori once used to fondle and eat&mdash;are almost
-confined to a few remote tracts. Any notorious pack
-soon gets short shrift, so there need be no fear of any
-distinct race of wild hounds establishing itself in the
-wilderness.</p>
-
-<p>Another <i lang="la" xml:lang="la">hostis humani generis</i>, against which every
-man’s hand or gun may be turned at any season, is the
-kea. A wild parrot, known to science as <i lang="la" xml:lang="la">Nestor notabilis</i>,
-the kea nevertheless shows how fierce and hawk-like a
-parrot can become. His sharp, curving beak, and dark-green
-plumage, brightened by patches of red under the
-wings, are parrot-like enough. But see him in his
-home among the High Alps of the South Island, and he
-resembles anything rather than the grey African domestic
-who talks in cages. Nor does he suggest the white
-cockatoos that may be watched passing in flights above
-rivers and forest glades in the Australian bush. Unlike
-his cousin the kaka, who is a forest bird, the kea nests
-on steep rocky faces or lofty cliffs, between two and five
-thousand feet above sea-level. If he descends thence to
-visit the trees of the mountain valleys, it is usually in
-search of food; though Thomas Potts, the naturalist,
-says that keas will fly from the western flanks of the
-Alps to the bluffs on the sea-coast and rest there. One
-envies them that flight, for it must give them in mid-air
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[58]</a></span>an unequalled bird’s-eye view of some of the noblest
-scenery in the island. Before the coming of the
-settlers these bold mountaineers supported a harmless life
-on honey, seeds, insects, and such apologies for fruits
-as our sub-alpine forests afford. But as sheep
-spread into the higher pastures of the backbone ranges,
-the kea discovered the attractions of flesh, and especially
-of mutton fat. Beginning, probably, by picking up
-scraps of meat in the station slaughter-yards, he learned
-to prey on dead sheep, and, finally, to attack living
-animals. His favourite titbit being kidney fat, he
-perches on the unhappy sheep and thrusts his merciless
-beak through the wool into their backs. Strangely
-enough, it seems to take more than one assault of the
-kind to kill a sheep; but though forty years have
-passed since the kea began to practise his trick, the
-victims do not yet seem to have learned to roll over
-on their backs and thereby rid themselves of their
-persecutors. Even the light active sheep of the
-mountains are, it would seem, more stupid than birds
-of prey. Ingenious persons have suggested that the kea
-was led to peck at the sheep’s fleecy backs through their
-likeness to those odd grey masses of mossy vegetation,
-called “vegetable sheep,” which dot so many New
-Zealand mountain slopes, and which birds investigate
-in search of insects.</p>
-
-<p class="center space-above"></p>
-<div class="figcenter">
-<img src="images/i_058.jpg" alt="" width="700" height="459" />
-<p class="captioncenter">THE REES VALLEY AND RICHARDSON RANGE</p>
-</div>
-<p class="center space-above"></p>
-
-<p>Shepherds and station hands wage war on the kea,
-sometimes encouraged thereto by a bounty; for there
-are run-holders and local councils who will give one, two,
-or three shillings for each bird killed. Let a pair of
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[59]</a></span>keas be seen near a shepherd’s hut, and the master runs
-for his gun, while his wife will imitate the bird’s long
-whining note to attract them downwards; for, venturesome
-and rapacious as the kea is, he is just as confiding
-and sociable as the gentler kaka, and can be lured by
-the same devices. Stoats and weasels, too, harass him
-on their own account. Thus the bird’s numbers are
-kept down, and the damage they do to flocks is not on
-the whole as great as of yore. Indeed, some sceptics
-doubt the whole story, while other flippant persons
-suggest that the kea’s ravages are chiefly in evidence
-when the Government is about to re-assess the rents of
-the Alpine runs. Against these sneers, however, may
-be quoted a large, indeed overwhelming, mass of testimony
-from the pastoral people of the back-country.
-This evidence seems to show that most keas do not
-molest sheep. The evil work is done by a few reprobate
-birds&mdash;two or three pairs out of a large flock,
-perhaps&mdash;which the shepherds nickname “butchers.”
-Only this year I was told of a flock of hoggets
-which, when penned up in a sheep-yard, were attacked
-by a couple of beaked marauders, who in a single night
-killed or wounded scores of them as they stood packed
-together and helpless. No laws, therefore, protect the
-kea, nor does any public opinion shield him from the
-gun in any month. His only defences are inaccessible
-mountain cliffs and the wild weather of winter and
-spring-time in the Southern Alps.</p>
-
-<p>Acclimatisation has made some woeful mistakes in
-New Zealand, for is it not responsible for the rabbit
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[60]</a></span>and the house-sparrow, the stoat and the weasel? On
-the other hand, it has many striking successes to boast
-of in the shape of birds, beasts, and fishes, which commerce
-and industry would never have brought to the
-islands in the regular way of business. Of these, one
-may select the deer among beasts, the trout among
-fishes, and the pheasant, quail, and starling among birds.
-Many colonists, it is true, would include skylarks,
-blackbirds, and thrushes among the good works for
-which acclimatising societies have to be thanked; but
-of late years these songsters have been compassed
-about with a great cloud of hostile witnesses who bear
-vehement testimony against them as pestilent thieves.
-No such complaints, however, are made against the
-red-deer, the handsomest wild animals yet introduced
-into New Zealand. Indeed, several provinces compete
-for the honour of having been their first New Zealand
-home. As a matter of fact, it would appear that as
-long ago as 1861 a stag and two hinds, the gift of
-Lord Petre, were turned out on the Nelson hills. Next
-year another small shipment reached Wellington safely,
-and were liberated in the Wairarapa. These came from
-the Royal Park at Windsor, and were secured by the
-courtesy of the Prince Consort.</p>
-
-<p>In 1871 some Scottish red-deer were turned loose
-in the Otago mountains near Lakes Wanaka and Hawea.
-In all these districts the deer have spread and thriven
-mightily, and it is possible that the herds of the colony
-now number altogether as many as ten thousand. Otago
-sportsmen boast of the unadulterated Scottish blood of
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[61]</a></span>their stags, whose fine heads are certainly worthy of
-any ancestry. In the Wairarapa the remarkable size of
-the deer is attributed to the strain of German blood in
-the animals imported from the Royal Park. As yet,
-however, the finest head secured in the colony was not
-carried by a deer belonging to any of the three largest
-and best-known shooting-grounds of the islands. It
-was obtained in 1907 from a stag shot by Mr. George
-Gerard in the Rakaia Gorge in Canterbury. The Rakaia
-Gorge herd only dates from 1897, and is still small, but
-astonishing stories are told of some of its heads. At
-any rate the antlers of Mr. Gerard’s stag have been
-repeatedly measured. One of them is forty-seven
-inches long, the other forty-two inches and a half.</p>
-
-<p>Deer-stalking in New Zealand can scarcely be
-recommended as an easy diversion for rich and elderly
-London gentlemen. It is not sport for the fat and
-scant-of-breath who may be suffering from sedentary
-living and a plethora of public banquets. New Zealand
-hills are steep, new Zealand forests and scrubs are dense
-or matted. Even the open country of the mountains
-requires lungs of leather and sinews of wire. The
-hunter when unlucky cannot solace his evenings with
-gay human society or with the best cookery to be found
-in a luxurious, civilised country. If he be an old bush-hand,
-skilful at camping-out, he may make himself
-fairly comfortable in a rough way, but that is all. Nor
-are such things as big drives, or slaughter on a large
-scale, to be had at any price. Shooting licences are
-cheap&mdash;they can be had from the secretary of an
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[62]</a></span>acclimatisation society for from one to three pounds;
-but the number of stags a man is permitted to shoot in
-any one district varies from two to six. To get these,
-weeks of physical labour and self-denial may be required.
-On the other hand, trustworthy guides may be engaged,
-and colonial hospitality may vary the rigours of camp
-life. Then, too, may be counted the delights of a
-mountain life, the scenery of which excels Scotland,
-while the freshness of the upland air is brilliant and
-exhilarating in a fashion that Britons can scarcely
-imagine. And to counterbalance loneliness, the hunter
-has the sensation of undisturbed independence and
-freedom from the trammels of convention, as he looks
-round him in a true wilderness which the hand of man
-has not yet gashed or fouled.</p>
-
-<p>Wild-fowl shooting ranges from tame butchery of
-trustful native pigeons and parrots to the pursuit of the
-nimble godwit, and of that wary bird and strong flyer,
-the grey duck. The godwit is so interesting a bird to
-science that one almost wonders that ornithologists do
-not petition Parliament to have it declared <i lang="mi" xml:lang="mi">tapu</i>. They
-tell us that in the Southern winter it migrates oversea
-and makes no less a journey than that from New
-Zealand to Northern Siberia by way of Formosa and
-the Sea of Okhotsk. Even if this distance is covered
-in easy stages during three months’ time, it seems a
-great feat of bird instinct, and makes one regret that the
-godwit so often returns to our tidal inlets only to fall a
-prey to some keen sportsmen indifferent to its migratory
-achievements.</p>
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[63]</a></span></p>
-<p>The only excuse for molesting the wood-pigeon is
-that he is very good to eat. The kaka parrot, too,
-another woodlander, makes a capital stew. Neither
-victim offers the slightest difficulty to the gunner&mdash;I
-cannot say sportsman. Indeed the kaka will flutter
-round the slayer as he stands with his foot on the wing
-of a wounded bird, a cruel but effective decoy-trick.
-Another native bird easy to hit on the wing is the
-queer-looking pukeko, a big rail with bright-red
-beak and rich-blue plumage. The pukeko, however,
-though he flies so heavily, can run fast and hide
-cleverly. Moreover, in addition to being good for
-the table, he is a plague to the owners of standing corn.
-In order to reach the half-ripe ears he beats down the
-tops of a number of stalks, and so constructs a light
-platform on which he stands and moves about, looking
-like a feathered stilt-walker, and feasting the
-while to his heart’s content. Grain-growers, therefore,
-show him no mercy, and follow him into his
-native swamps, where the tall flax bushes, toé-toé, and
-giant bulrushes furnish even so large a bird with ample
-cover. When, however, a dog puts him up, and he
-takes to the air, he is the easiest of marks, for any one
-capable of hitting a flying haystack can hit a pukeko.</p>
-
-<p>Very different are the wild ducks. They soon learn
-the fear of man and the fowling-piece. They are,
-moreover, carefully protected both by law and by public
-opinion among sportsmen. So they are still to be
-found in numbers on lakes and lagoons by the sea-coast
-as well as in the sequestered interior. Large flocks of
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[64]</a></span>them, for example, haunt Lake Ellesmere, a wide
-brackish stretch of shallow water not many miles from
-the city of Christchurch. But in such localities all the
-arts of the English duck-hunter have to be employed,
-and artificial cover, decoys, and first-rate markmanship
-must be brought into play. The grey duck, the
-shoveller, and teal, both black and red, all give good
-sport. Strong of flight and well defended by thick, close-fitting
-suits of feathers, they need quick, straight shooting.
-A long shot at a scared grey duck, as, taking the alarm,
-he makes off down the wind, is no bad test of eye and
-hand. In return, they are as excellent game-birds dead
-as living. This last is more than can be said for the
-handsomest game-bird of the country, the so-called
-paradise duck. Its plumage, so oddly contrasting in
-the dark male and reddish white-headed female, makes
-it the most easily recognised of wild-fowl. It also has
-developed a well-founded suspiciousness of man and
-his traps, and so manages to survive and occupy
-mountain lakes and valleys in considerable flocks. Unlike
-the grey species which are found beyond the
-Tasman Sea, the smaller and more delicately framed
-blue duck is peculiar to the islands. It is neither shy
-nor common, and, as it does no harm to any sort of
-crop, law and public opinion might, one would think,
-combine to save it from the gun and leave it to swim
-unmolested among the boulders and rocks of its cold
-streams and dripping mountain gorges.</p>
-
-<p>Nature did not furnish New Zealand much better
-with fresh-water fish than with quadrupeds: her allowance<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[65]</a></span>
-of both was curiously scanty. A worthless little
-bull-trout was the most common fish, and that white
-men found uneatable, though the Maoris made of it a
-staple article of diet. Large eels, indeed, are found in
-both lakes and rivers, and where they live in clear, clean,
-running water, are good food enough; but the excellent
-whitebait and smelts which go up the tidal rivers
-can scarcely be termed dwellers in fresh water; and for
-the rest, the fresh waters used to yield nothing but
-small crayfish. Here our acclimatisers had a fair field
-before them, and their efforts to stock it have been
-on the whole successful, though the success has been
-chequered. For fifty years they have striven to introduce
-the salmon, taking much care and thought, and
-spending many thousands of pounds on repeated experiments;
-but the salmon will not thrive in the
-southern rivers. The young, when hatched out and
-turned adrift, make their way down to the sea, but
-never return themselves. Many legends are current of
-their misadventures in salt water. They are said, for
-instance, to be pursued and devoured by the big barracouta,
-so well known to deep-sea fishermen in the
-southern ocean. But every explanation of the disappearance
-of the young salmon still lacks proof. The
-fact is undoubted, but its cause may be classed with
-certain other fishy mysteries of our coast. Why, for
-instance, does that delectable creature the frost-fish
-cast itself up on our beaches in the coldest weather,
-committing suicide for the pleasure of our <em>gourmets</em>?
-Why does that cream-coloured playfellow of our
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[66]</a></span>coasters, Pelorus Jack, dart out to frolic round the
-bows of steamships as they run through the French
-Pass?</p>
-
-<p class="center space-above"></p>
-<div class="figcenter">
-<img src="images/i_066.jpg" alt="" width="700" height="441" />
-<p class="captioncenter">AT THE HEAD OF LAKE WAKATIPU</p>
-</div>
-<p class="center space-above"></p>
-
-<p>But if our acclimatisers have failed with salmon,
-fortune has been kind to their efforts with trout.
-Forty years ago there was no such fish in the islands.
-Now from north to south the rivers and lakes are well
-stocked, while certain waters may be said with literal
-truth to swarm with them. Here, they are the brown
-trout so well known to anglers at home; there, they
-are the rainbow kind, equally good for sport. At
-present the chief local peculiarity of both breeds seems
-to be the size to which they frequently attain. They
-are large enough in the rivers; and in many lakes they
-show a size and weight which could throw into the
-shade old English stories of giant pike. Fish of from
-fifteen to twenty-five pounds in weight are frequently
-captured by anglers. Above the higher of these figures,
-catches with the rod are rare. Indeed, the giant trout
-of the southern lakes will not look at a fly. Perhaps
-the best sport in lakes anywhere is to be had with the
-minnow. Trolling from steam-launches is a favourite
-amusement at Roto-rua. It seems generally agreed that
-in the rivers trout tend to decrease in size as they
-increase in numbers. The size, however, still remains
-large enough to make an English angler’s mouth water.
-So it has come about that the fame of New Zealand
-fishing has gone abroad into many lands, and that men
-come with rod and line from far and near to try our
-waters. Fishing in these is not always child’s play.
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[67]</a></span>Most of the streams are swift and chilling; the wader
-wants boots of the stoutest, and, in default of guidance,
-must trust to his own wits to protect him among rapids,
-sharp rocks, and deep swirling pools. He may, of
-course, obtain sport in spots where everything is made
-easy for the visitor, as in the waters near Roto-rua.
-Or he may cast a fly in the willow-bordered, shingly
-rivers of Canterbury, among fields and hedgerows as
-orderly and comfortable-looking as anything in the
-south of England. But much of the best fishing in the
-islands is rougher and more solitary work, and, big
-as the baskets to be obtained are, the sport requires
-enthusiasm as well as skill. Moreover, rules have to
-be observed. Licences are cheap enough, but the
-acclimatisation societies are wisely despotic, and regulate
-many things, from the methods of catching to the
-privilege of sale. In the main, the satisfactory results
-speak for themselves, though of course a certain
-amount of poaching and illegal catching goes on. In
-certain mountain lakes, by the way, one rule&mdash;that
-against spearing&mdash;has to be relaxed; otherwise the
-huge trout would prey upon their small brethren to
-such an extent as to stop all increase. So occasionally
-an exciting night’s sport may be enjoyed from a boat in
-one or other of the Alpine lakes. The boatmen prepare
-a huge torch of sacking or sugar-bags wound round a
-pole and saturated with tar or kerosene. Then the
-boat is rowed gently into six or eight feet of water, and
-the flaring torch held steadily over the surface. Soon
-the big trout come swarming to the light, diving under
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[68]</a></span>the boat, knocking against the bow, and leaping and
-splashing. The spearman standing erect makes thrust
-after thrust, now transfixing his prey, now missing his
-aim, or it may be, before the night’s work is done,
-losing his footing and falling headlong into the lake,
-amid a roar of laughter from boat and shore.</p>
-
-<p class="center space-above"></p>
-<div class="figcenter">
-<img src="images/i_068.jpg" alt="" width="700" height="472" />
-<p class="captioncenter">NORTH FIORD, LAKE TE-ANAU</p>
-</div>
-<p class="center space-above"></p>
-
-<p>The merest sketch of sports and amusements in
-New Zealand demands more space for the horse than I
-can afford to give. My countrymen are not, as is
-sometimes supposed, a nation of riders, any more than
-they are a nation of marksmen; but the proportion of
-men who can shoot and ride is far greater among them
-than in older countries. The horse is still a means of
-locomotion and a necessity of life everywhere outside
-the towns, while even among townsmen a respectable
-minority of riders can be found. How far the rapid
-increase of motors and cycles of all kinds is likely to
-displace the horse is a matter for speculation. At
-present, perhaps, the machine is more likely to interfere
-with the carriage-horse than the saddle-horse. Nor will
-I hazard an opinion as to the place that might be held
-by New Zealanders in a competition between riding
-nations. Australians, I fancy, consider their stockmen
-and steeplechase-riders superior to anything of the kind
-in our islands. And in a certain kind of riding&mdash;that
-through open bush after cattle, amongst standing and
-fallen timber&mdash;I can scarcely imagine any horsemen in
-the world surpassing the best Australian stock-riders.
-On the other hand, in a hilly country, and on wet,
-slippery ground, New Zealanders and New Zealand
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[69]</a></span>horses show cat-like qualities, which would puzzle
-Australians, whose experience has been gathered chiefly
-on dry plains and easy downs. Comparisons apart, the
-Dominion certainly rears clever riders and good horses.
-A meet of New Zealand harriers would not be despised
-even by Leicestershire fox-hunters. To begin with,
-the hare of the Antipodes, like so many other European
-animals there, has gained in size and strength, and
-therefore in pace. The horses, if rather lighter than
-English, have plenty of speed and staying-power, and
-their owners are a hard-riding lot. Gorse fences,
-though not, perhaps, so formidable as they look at first
-sight, afford stiff jumping. And if a spice of danger
-be desired, the riders who put their horses at them
-may always speculate upon the chances of encountering
-hidden wire. The legend that New Zealand horses
-jump wire almost as a matter of course has only a
-foundation of fact; some of them do, many of them
-do not. Nor are the somewhat wild stories of meets
-where unkempt horses with flowing manes and tails
-and coats never touched by brush or curry-comb,
-are bestridden by riders as untidy, to be taken for gospel
-now. Very few of those who follow the harriers in
-New Zealand at all resemble dog-fanciers bestriding
-mustangs. True, they do not dress in the faultless
-fashion of those English masters of fox-hounds whose
-portraits flame on the walls of the Royal Academy.
-Some at least of them do their own grooming. Yet,
-speaking generally, the impression left is neat and
-workmanlike, and is none the worse for a certain
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[70]</a></span>simplicity and even a touch of roughness. The
-meets are pleasant gatherings, all the more so because
-they are neither overcrowded, nor are there too many
-of them. Much the same may be said of the polo
-matches, where good riding and good ponies are to
-be seen. Twenty years ago trained ponies could be
-bought in the islands for £25 apiece. Now they, in
-common with all horseflesh, are a good deal more
-costly. However, sport in New Zealand, though more
-expensive than of yore, is still comparatively cheap,
-and that, and the absence of crowds, are among its
-chief attractions.</p>
-
-<p>As in other countries, there are tens of thousands of
-men and women who never ride a horse, but who find
-in horse-racing&mdash;or in attending race-meetings&mdash;an
-absorbing amusement. The number of race-meetings
-held in both islands is very great. Flat-racing, hurdle-racing,
-steeplechasing, and trotting,&mdash;all these can
-assemble their votaries in thousands. Sportsmen and
-others think little of traversing hundreds of miles of
-land or sea to attend one of the larger meetings.
-Ladies muster at these almost as strongly as men. As
-for the smaller meetings up-country, they, of course,
-are social gatherings of the easiest and most cheerful
-sort. In bygone years they not seldom degenerated
-towards evening into uproarious affairs. Nowadays,
-however, race-meetings, small and large, are marked by
-a sobriety which, to a former generation, might have
-seemed wasteful and depressing. To a stranger the
-chief features of the races appear to be their number,
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[71]</a></span>the size of the stakes, the average quality of the horses,
-and the working of the totalisator. This last, a betting
-machine, is in use wherever the law will allow it, and is
-a source of profit both to the Government and the
-racing clubs. The Government taxes its receipts, and
-the clubs retain ten per cent of them; hence the handsome
-stakes offered by the jockey club committees.
-The sum that passes through these machines in the
-course of the year is enormous, and represents, in the
-opinion of many, a national weakness and evil. In
-defence of the totalisator it is argued that the individual
-wagers which it registers are small, and that it has
-almost put an end to a more ruinous and disastrous
-form of betting, that with bookmakers. It is certainly
-a popular institution with an odd flavour of democracy
-about it, for it has levelled down betting and at the
-same time extended it. Indeed, it almost seems to
-exhaust the gambling element in New Zealand life; for,
-as compared with other nations, my countrymen are
-not especially addicted to throwing away their money
-on games of chance.</p>
-
-<p>Passing from what is commonly called sport to
-athletic games, we tread safer ground. One of these
-games, football, is quite as popular as horse-racing&mdash;indeed,
-among boys and lads more popular; and whatever
-may be its future, football has up to the present
-time been a clean, honest, genuine game, free from
-professionalism and excessive gambling. The influence
-of the New Zealand Rugby Union, with its net-work of
-federations and clubs, has been and still is a power for
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[72]</a></span>good; and though it is true that the famous and
-successful visit of the “All Black” team to Great
-Britain has lately been parodied by a professional tour
-in England and Wales, there is still hope that professionalism
-may be held at bay. For, as yet, the
-passion for football, which is perhaps the main
-peculiarity of New Zealand athletics, is a simple love
-of the game, and of the struggles and triumphs attending
-it. The average New Zealand lad and young man
-looks for nothing but a good hard tussle in which his
-side may win and he, if luck wills it, may distinguish
-himself. As yet, money-making scarcely enters into his
-thoughts. The day may come in New Zealand, as it has
-in England, when bands of skilled mercenaries, recruited
-from far and near, may play in the name of cities and
-districts, the population of which turns out to bet pounds
-or pence on their paid dexterity. But, as yet, a football
-match in the colony is just a whole-hearted struggle
-between manly youths whose zeal for their club and
-town is not based on the receipt of a weekly stipend.</p>
-
-<p class="center space-above"></p>
-<div class="figcenter">
-<img src="images/i_072.jpg" alt="" width="700" height="484" />
-<p class="captioncenter">CHRISTCHURCH</p>
-</div>
-<p class="center space-above"></p>
-
-<p>Why cricket should lag so far behind football seems
-at first sight puzzling; for few countries would seem
-better suited to the most scientific of out-door games
-than the east and centre of New Zealand, with their
-sunny but not tropical climate, and their fresh sward of
-good green grass. Two reasons, probably, account for
-the disparity. To begin with, cricket, at any rate first-class
-cricket, takes up far more time than football. Its
-matches last for days; even practice at the nets
-consumes hours. Athletics in New Zealand are the
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[73]</a></span>exercise and recreation of men who have to work for a
-livelihood. The idle amateur and the trained professional
-are equally rare: you see neither the professional
-who plays to live, nor the gentleman who lives
-to play. The shorter hours of the ordinary working
-day, helped by the longer measure of daylight allowed
-by nature, enable a much larger class than in England
-to give a limited amount of time to athletics. But the
-time is limited, and first-class cricket therefore, with its
-heavy demands on the attention of its votaries, suffers
-accordingly. Cricket, again, is a summer game, and in
-summer the middle or poorer classes have a far larger
-variety of amusements to turn to than in winter. Sailing,
-rowing, cycling, lawn tennis, fishing, picnics by
-the sea or in the forest, mountain-climbing, and tramps
-in the wilderness, all compete with cricket to a much
-greater degree than with football. Indeed the horse
-and the gun are well-nigh the only dangerous rivals
-that football has, and they are confined to a much more
-limited class. So while New Zealand stands at the
-head of the list of countries that play the Rugby game,
-our cricketers could at the best furnish an eleven able
-to play a moderately strong English county. The game
-does, indeed, make headway, but is eclipsed both by
-the pre-eminent local success of football, and by the
-triumphs of cricket in Australia and South Africa.
-Meanwhile, cricket matches in New Zealand, if not
-Olympian contests, are at any rate pleasant games.
-One is not sure whether the less strenuous sort of
-cricket, when played in bright weather among surroundings<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[74]</a></span>
-where good-fellowship and sociability take the
-place of the excitement of yelling thousands, is not,
-after all, the better side of a noble game.</p>
-
-<p class="center space-above"></p>
-<div class="figcenter">
-<img src="images/i_074a.jpg" alt="" width="700" height="455" />
-<p class="captioncenter">CANOE HURDLE RACE</p>
-</div>
-<p class="center space-above"></p>
-
-<div class="figcenter">
-<img src="images/i_074b.jpg" alt="" width="700" height="474" />
-<p class="captioncenter">WAIHI BAY, WHANGAROA HARBOUR</p>
-</div>
-<p class="center space-above"></p>
-
-<p>As rowing men know, New Zealand has produced
-more than one sculler of repute, and at this moment
-Webb, of the Wanganui River, holds the title of
-champion of the world. With this development of
-sculling, there is a curiously contrasted lack of especial
-excellence in other forms of rowing. Indeed one is
-inclined to predict that aquatic skill in the islands will,
-in days to come, display itself rather in sailing. The
-South Pacific is an unquiet ocean, and long stretches of
-our coast are iron-bound cliffs or monotonous beaches.
-But to say nothing of half-a-hundred large lakes, there
-are at least three coastal regions which seem made for
-yachting. The most striking of these, but one better
-adapted for steam yachts than for sailing or small open
-craft, is at the butt-end of the South Island, and
-includes the fiords of the south-west coast and the
-harbours of eastern Stewart Island. Between the two
-Bluff Harbour lies handy as the yachtsman’s headquarters.
-The second of the three chief yachting
-grounds of the colony has been placed by nature on
-the southern side of Cook’s Strait among a multitude
-of channels, islands, and sheltered bays, accessible alike
-from Wellington, Nelson, or Picton, and affording a
-delightful change and refuge from bleak, wind-smitten
-Cook’s Strait. The best, because the most easily
-enjoyed of the three, is the Hauraki Gulf, studded
-with islands, fringed with pleasant beaches and inviting
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[75]</a></span>coves, and commanded by the most convenient of
-harbours in the shape of the Waitemata. Nor, charming
-and spacious as the gulf is, need the Auckland
-yachtsmen limit themselves to it. Unless entirely
-wedded to smooth water, they can run northward past
-the Little Barrier Island and visit that fine succession
-of beautiful inlets, Whangarei, the Bay of Islands, and
-Whangaroa. All lie within easy reach, and all are so
-extensive and so picturesquely diversified with cliffs,
-spurs, bays, and islets, that any yachtsman able to
-navigate a cutter with reasonable skill should ask for
-nothing better than a summer cruise to and about
-them.</p>
-<hr class="chap" />
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[76]</a></span></p>
-
-<div class="chapter"></div>
-<h2><a name="CHAPTER_IV" id="CHAPTER_IV">CHAPTER <abbr title="4">IV</abbr></a></h2>
-
-<p class="center">IN THE FOREST</p>
-
-
-<p>In one of the rambling myths of the Maori we are
-told how the hero Rata, wishing to build a canoe,
-went into the forest and felled a tree. In the old
-days of stone axes, tree-felling was not the work of
-an hour, but the toil of days. Great, therefore, was
-Rata’s vexation when, on returning to the scene of
-his labours, he found that the tree had been set up
-again by magic, and was standing without a trace of
-injury. Much perplexed, the woodcutter thereupon
-sought out a famous goddess or priestess, who
-told him that the restoration was the work of the
-Hakaturi, or wood-fairies, whom he must propitiate
-with certain ceremonies and incantations. Rata therefore
-once more cut the tree down, and having
-done so, hid himself close by. Presently from the
-thickets there issued a company of small bow-legged
-people, who, surrounding the fallen tree, began to
-chant to it somewhat as follows:&mdash;</p>
-
-<div class="poetry-container">
-  <div class="poetry">
-    <div class="stanza">
-      <div class="verse">Ah! ’tis Rata; he is felling</div>
-      <div class="verse">Tané’s forest, our green dwelling.</div>
-      <div class="verse">Yet we cry, and lo, upspring <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[77]</a></span></div>
-      <div class="verse">Chips and splinters quivering.</div>
-      <div class="verse">Leap together&mdash;life will hold you!</div>
-      <div class="verse">Cling together&mdash;strength will fold you!</div>
-      <div class="verse">Yes&mdash;the tree-god’s ribs are bound</div>
-      <div class="verse">Now by living bark around.</div>
-      <div class="verse">Yes&mdash;the trembling wood is seen,</div>
-      <div class="verse">Standing straight and growing green.</div>
-  </div>
- </div>
-</div>
-
-<p class="center space-above"></p>
-
-<div class="figcenter">
-<img src="images/i_076.jpg" alt="" width="700" height="426" />
-<p class="captioncenter">THE RETURN OF THE WAR CANOE</p>
-</div>
-<p class="center space-above"></p>
-
-<p>And, surely enough, as they sang, the severed trunk
-rose and reunited, and every flake and chip of bark and
-wood flew together straightway. Then Rata, calling
-out to them, followed the injunctions given him.
-They talked with him, and in the end he was told to
-go away and return next morning. When he came
-back, lo! in the sunshine lay a new war-canoe, glorious
-with black and red painting, and tufts of large white
-feathers, and with cunning spirals on prow and tall
-stern-post, carved as no human hand could carve
-them. In this canoe he sailed over the sea to attack
-and destroy the murderer of his father.</p>
-
-<p>Lovers of the New Zealand forest, who have to
-live in an age when axe and fire are doing their deadly
-work so fast, must regret that the fairies, defenders of
-trees, have now passed away. Of yore when the
-Maori were about to fell a tree they made propitiatory
-offerings to Tané and his elves, at any rate when
-the tree was one of size. For, so Tregear tells us,
-they distinguished between the aristocracy of the forest
-and the common multitude. Totara and rimu were
-<i lang="mi" xml:lang="mi">rangatira</i>, or gentlemen to whom sacrifice must be
-offered, while underbrush might be hacked and slashed
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[78]</a></span>without apology. So it would seem that when Cowley
-was writing the lines&mdash;</p>
-
-<div class="poetry-container">
-  <div class="poetry">
-    <div class="stanza">
-      <div class="verse">Hail, old patrician trees so great and good;</div>
-      <div class="verse indent4">Hail, ye plebeian underwood!</div>
-  </div>
- </div>
-
-<p class="p1">he was echoing a class distinction already hit upon
-by the fancy of tattooed savages in an undiscovered
-island. Now all things are being levelled. Great
-Tané is dead, and the children of the tree-god have
-few friends. Perhaps some uncommercial botanist or
-misliked rhymester may venture on a word for them;
-or some much-badgered official may mark out a
-reserve in fear and trembling. Canon Stack, who
-knew the Maori of the South Island so well, says that
-half a century ago the belief in fairies was devout,
-and that he often conversed with men who were certain
-that they had seen them. One narrator in particular
-had caught sight of a band of them at work amid the
-curling mists of a lofty hill-top where they were
-building a stockaded village. So evident was the
-faith of the man in the vision he described that Canon
-Stack was forced to think that he had seen the forms
-of human builders reflected on the mountain-mist,
-after the fashion of the spectre of the Brocken.</p>
-
-<p class="center space-above"></p>
-<div class="figcenter">
-<img src="images/i_078.jpg" alt="" width="700" height="472" />
-<p class="captioncenter">OKAHUMOKO BAY, WHANGAROA</p>
-</div>
-<p class="center space-above"></p>
-
-<p>For myself, I could not have the heart to apply
-scientific analysis to our Maori fairy-tales, all too brief
-and scanty as they are. It is, doubtless, interesting to
-speculate on the possible connections of these with
-the existence of shadowy tribes who may have inhabited
-parts of New Zealand in the distant centuries, and been
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[79]</a></span>driven into inaccessible mountains and entangled woods
-by the Maori invader. To me, however, the legends
-seem to indicate a belief, not in one supernatural race,
-but in several. In Europe, of course, the Northern
-traditions described beings of every sort of shape, from
-giants and two-headed ogres to minute elves almost
-too small to be seen. And in the same continent,
-under clearer skies, were the classic myths of nymphs
-and woodland deities, human in shape, but of a beauty
-exceeding that of mankind. So Keats could dream of
-enchanting things that happened</p>
-
-<div class="poetry-container">
-  <div class="poetry">
-    <div class="stanza">
-      <div class="verse">Upon a time before the faëry broods</div>
-      <div class="verse">Drove nymph and satyr from the prosperous woods,</div>
-      <div class="verse">Before King Oberon’s bright diadem,</div>
-      <div class="verse">Sceptre and mantle clasped with dewy gem,</div>
-      <div class="verse">Frightened away the dryads and the fauns</div>
-      <div class="verse">From rushes green and brakes and cowslipp’d lawns.</div>
-  </div>
- </div>
-</div>
-
-<p>In much the same way do the Maori stories vary. One
-tells us of giant hunters attended by two-headed dogs.
-Another seems to indicate a tiny race of wood elves or
-goblins. Elsewhere the Maori story-teller explains
-that fairies were much like human beings, but white-skinned,
-and with red or yellow hair, nearly resembling
-the Pakeha. They haunted the sea-shore and the
-recesses of the hill-forests, whither they would decoy
-the incautious Maori by their singing. The sound of
-their cheerful songs was sweet and clear, and in the
-night-time the traveller would hear their voices among
-the trees, now on this side, now on that; or the notes
-would seem to rise near at hand, and then recede and
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[80]</a></span>fall, dying away on the distant hill-sides. Their
-women were beautiful, and more than one Maori
-ancestral chief possessed himself of a fairy wife. On
-the other hand, the fairies would carry off the women
-and maidens of the Maori, or even, sometimes, little
-children, who were never seen again, though their
-voices were heard by sorrowing mothers calling in the
-air over the tree-tops.</p>
-
-<p class="center space-above"></p>
-<div class="figcenter">
-<img src="images/i_080.jpg" alt="" width="412" height="600" />
-<p class="captioncenter">MAORI FISHING PARTY</p>
-</div>
-<p class="center space-above"></p>
-
-<p>Sir George Grey was the first, I think, to write down
-any of the Maori fairy-tales; at any rate, two of the
-best of them are found in his book. One concerns the
-adventure of the chief Kahukura, who, walking one
-evening on the sea-shore in the far north of the North
-Island, saw strange footprints and canoe marks on the
-sands. Clearly fishermen had been there; but their
-landing and departure must have taken place in the
-night, and there was something about the marks
-they had left that was puzzling and uncanny. Kahukura
-went his way pondering, and “held fast in his
-heart what he had seen.” So after nightfall back
-he came to the spot, and after a while the shore was
-covered with fairies. Canoes were paddled to land
-dragging nets full of mackerel, and all were busy in
-securing the fish. Kahukura mingled with the throng,
-and was as busy as any, picking up fish and running a
-string of flax through their gills. Like many Maori
-chiefs, he was a light-complexioned man, so fair that
-in the starlight the fairies took him for one of themselves.
-Morning approached, and the fishermen were
-anxious to finish their work; but Kahukura contrived
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[81]</a></span>by dropping and scattering fish to impede and delay
-them until dawn. With the first streaks of daylight
-the fairies discovered that a man was among them,
-and fled in confusion by sea and land, leaving their
-large seine net lying on the shore. It is true that the
-net was made of rushes; but the pattern and knotting
-were so perfect and ingenious that the Maori copied
-them, and that is how they learned to make fishing-nets.</p>
-
-<p>Another chief, Te Kanawa, fell in with the fairies
-high up on a wooded mountain near the river
-Waikato. This encounter also, we are assured, took
-place long ago, before the coming of white men.
-Te Kanawa had been hunting the wingless kiwi, and,
-surprised by night, had to encamp in the forest. He
-made his bed of fern among the buttresses at the foot
-of a large pukatea-tree, and, protected by these and
-his fire, hoped to pass the night comfortably. Soon,
-however, he heard voices and footsteps, and fairies
-began to circle round about, talking and laughing,
-and peeping over the buttresses of the pukatea at the
-handsome young chief. Their women openly commented
-on his good looks, jesting with each other
-at their eagerness to examine him. Te Kanawa, however,
-was exceedingly terrified, and thought of nothing
-but of how he might propitiate his inquisitive admirers
-and save himself from some injury at their hands. So
-he took from his neck his hei-tiki, or charm of greenstone,
-and from his ears his shark’s-tooth ornaments,
-and hung them upon a wand which he held out as an
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[82]</a></span>offering to the fairy folk. At once these turned to
-examine the gifts with deep interest. According to
-one version of the story they made patterns of them,
-cut out of wood and leaves. According to another,
-they, by enchantment, took away the shadows or
-resemblances of the prized objects. In either case they
-were satisfied to leave the tangible ornaments with
-their owner, and disappeared, allowing Te Kanawa
-to make his way homeward. That he did with
-all possible speed, at the first glimpse of daylight,
-awe-struck but gratified by the good nature of the
-elves.</p>
-
-<p class="center space-above"></p>
-<div class="figcenter">
-<img src="images/i_082.jpg" alt="" width="700" height="464" />
-<p class="captioncenter">CARVED HOUSE, OHINEMUTU</p>
-</div>
-<p class="center space-above"></p>
-
-<p>A third story introduces us to a husband whose young
-wife had been carried off and wedded by a fairy chief.
-For a while she lived with her captor in one of the
-villages of the fairies into which no living man has ever
-penetrated, though hunters in the forest have sometimes
-seen barriers of intertwined wild vines, which are
-the outer defences of an elfin <i lang="mi" xml:lang="mi">pa</i>. The bereaved
-husband at last bethought himself of consulting a
-famous <i lang="mi" xml:lang="mi">tohunga</i>, who, by powerful incantations, turned
-the captured wife’s thoughts back to her human husband,
-and restored the strength of her love for him. She
-fled, therefore, from her fairy dwelling, met her
-husband, who was lurking in the neighbourhood, and
-together they regained their old home. Thither, of
-course, the fairies followed them in hot pursuit. But
-the art of the <i lang="mi" xml:lang="mi">tohunga</i> was equal to the danger. He
-had caused the escaped wife and the outside of her
-house to be streaked and plastered with red ochre.
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[83]</a></span>He had also instructed the people of the village to
-cook food on a grand scale, so that the air should be
-heavy with the smell of the cooking at the time of the
-raid of the fairies. The sight of red ochre and the
-smell of cooked food are so loathsome to the fairy
-people that they cannot endure to encounter them. So
-the baffled pursuers halted, fell back and vanished, and
-the wife remained peacefully with her husband, living
-a happy Maori life.</p>
-
-<p>The Maori might well worship Tané, the tree-god,
-who held up the sky with his feet and so let in light
-upon the sons of earth. For the forest supplied them
-with much more than wood for their stockades, canoes,
-and utensils. It sheltered the birds which made such
-an important part of the food of the Maori, living as
-they did in a land without four-footed beasts. Tame
-as the birds were, the fowlers, on their side, were without
-bows and arrows, and knew nothing of the blow-gun,
-which would have been just the weapon for our jungles.
-They had to depend mainly on snaring and spearing,
-and upon the aid of decoys. Though the snaring
-was ingenious enough, it was the spearing that needed
-especial skill and was altogether the more extraordinary.
-The spears were made of the tawa-tree, and while
-they were but an inch in thickness, were thirty feet
-long or even longer. One tree could only supply two
-of these slim weapons, which, after metals became
-known to the Maori, were tipped with iron. When
-not in use they were lashed or hung in a tree. Taking
-one in hand the fowler would climb up to a platform
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[84]</a></span>prepared in some tree, the flowers or berries of which
-were likely to attract wild parrots or pigeons. Then
-the spear was pushed upwards, resting against branches.
-All the fowler’s art was next exerted to draw down the
-birds by his decoys to a perch near the spear-point.
-That accomplished, a quick silent stab did the rest.
-Many living white men have seen this dexterous feat
-performed, though it must be almost a thing of the
-past now. As soon as the Maori began to obtain guns,
-and that is ninety years ago, they endeavoured to shoot
-birds with them. Having a well-founded distrust of
-their marksmanship, they would repeat as closely as
-possible the tactics they had found useful in spearing.
-Climbing silently and adroitly into the trees and as
-near their pigeon or kaka as possible, they waited until
-the muzzle of the gun was within a foot or two of the
-game, and then blew the unfortunate bird from the
-branch. Major Cruise witnessed this singular performance
-in the year 1820. Birds were among the delicacies
-which the Maori preserved for future use, storing them
-in tightly-bound calabashes, where they were covered
-with melted fat. Their favourite choice for this process
-was a kind of puffin or petrel, the mutton-bird,
-which goes inland to breed, and nests in underground
-burrows.</p>
-
-<hr class="tb" />
-
-<p class="center space-above"></p>
-<div class="figcenter">
-<img src="images/i_084.jpg" alt="" width="700" height="464" />
-<p class="captioncenter">A BUSH ROAD</p>
-</div>
-<p class="center space-above"></p>
-
-<p>Though no great traveller, I have seen beautiful
-landscapes in fourteen or fifteen countries, and yet hold
-to it that certain views of our forest spreading round
-lakes and over hills and valleys, peaceful and unspoiled,
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[85]</a></span>are sights as lovely as are to be found. Whence
-comes their complete beauty? Of course, there are
-the fine contours of mountain and vale, cliff and shore.
-And the abundance of water, swirling in torrents,
-leaping in waterfalls, or winding in lakes or sea-gulfs,
-aids greatly. But to me the magic of the forest&mdash;I
-speak of it where you find it still unspoiled&mdash;comes
-first from its prodigal life and continual variety. Why,
-asks a naturalist, do so many of us wax enthusiastic
-over parasites and sentimental over lianas? Because,
-I suppose, these are among the most striking signs of
-the astonishing vitality and profusion which clothe
-almost every yard of ground and foot of bark, and,
-gaining foothold on the trees, invade the air itself.
-Nature there is not trimmed and supervised, weeded
-out, swept and garnished, as in European woods. She
-lets herself go, expelling nothing that can manage to
-find standing room or breathing space. Every rule of
-human forestry and gardening appears to be broken,
-and the result is an easy triumph for what seems waste
-and rank carelessness. Trees tottering with age still
-dispute the soil with superabundant saplings, or, falling,
-lean upon and are held up by undecaying neighbours.
-Dead trunks cumber the ground, while mosses, ferns,
-and bushes half conceal them. Creepers cover matted
-thickets, veiling their flanks and netting them into
-masses upon which a man may sit, and a boy be irresistibly
-tempted to walk. Aloft, one tree may grow upon
-another, and itself bear the burden of a third. Parasites
-twine round parasites, dangle in purposeless ropes, or
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[86]</a></span>form loops and swings in mid-air. Some are bare, lithe
-and smooth-stemmed; others trail curtains of leaves
-and pale flowers. Trees of a dozen species thrust their
-branches into each other, till it is a puzzle to tell which
-foliage belongs to this stem, which to that; and flax-like
-arboreal colonists fill up forks and dress bole and
-limbs fantastically. Adventurous vines ramble through
-the interspaces, linking trunk to trunk and complicating
-the fine confusion. All around is a multitudinous, incessant
-struggle for life; but it goes on in silence, and
-the impression left is not regret, but a memory of beauty.
-The columnar dignity of the great trees contrasts with
-the press and struggle of the undergrowth, with the airy
-lace-work of fern fronds, and the shafted grace of
-the stiffer palm-trees. From the moss and wandering
-lycopodium underfoot, to the victorious climber flowering
-eighty feet overhead, all is life, varied endlessly and put
-forth without stint. Of course there is death at work
-around you, too; but who notes the dying amid such
-a riot of energy? The earth itself smells moist and
-fresh. What seems an odour blended of resin, sappy
-wood, damp leaves, and brown tinder, hangs in the air.
-But the leafy roof is lofty enough, and the air cool
-and pure enough, to save you from the sweltering
-oppressiveness of an equatorial jungle. The dim entanglement
-is a quiet world, shut within itself and full
-of shadows. Yet, in bright weather, rays of sunshine
-shoot here and there against brown and grey bark, and
-clots of golden light, dripping through the foliage, dance
-on vivid mosses and the root-enlacement of the earth.</p>
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[87]</a></span></p>
-
-<div class="poetry-container">
-  <div class="poetry">
-    <div class="stanza">
-      <div class="verse">“The forest rears on lifted arms</div>
-      <div class="verse indent4">Its leafy dome whence verdurous light</div>
-      <div class="verse">Shakes through the shady depths and warms</div>
-      <div class="verse indent4">Proud trunk and stealthy parasite.</div>
-      <div class="verse">There where those cruel coils enclasp</div>
-      <div class="verse">The trees they strangle in their grasp.”</div>
-   </div>
- </div>
-</div>
-
-<p>When the sky is overcast the evergreen realm
-darkens. In one mood you think it invitingly still and
-mysterious; in another, its tints fade to a common
-dulness, and gloom fills its recesses. Pattering raindrops
-chill enthusiasm. The mazy paradise is filled
-with “the terror of unending trees.” The silence
-grows unnatural, the rustle of a chance bird startles.
-Anything from a python to a jaguar might be hidden
-in labyrinths that look so tropical. In truth there is
-nothing there larger than a wingless and timid bird;
-nothing more dangerous than a rat poaching among
-the branches in quest of eggs; nothing more annoying
-than a few sandflies.</p>
-
-<p>The European’s eye instinctively wanders over the
-foliage in search of likenesses to the flora of northern
-lands. He may think he detects a darker willow in
-the tawa, a brighter and taller yew in the matai, a giant
-box in the rata, a browner laburnum in the kowhai, a
-slender deodar in the rimu, and, by the sea, a scarlet-flowering
-ilex in the pohutu-kawa. The sub-alpine
-beech forests are indeed European, inferior though our
-small-leaved beeches are to the English. You see in
-them wide-spreading branches, an absence of underbrush
-and luxuriant climbers, and a steady repetition of the
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[88]</a></span>same sort and condition of tree, all recalling Europe.
-Elsewhere there is little that does this. In the guide-books
-you constantly encounter the word “pine,” but
-you will look round in vain for anything like the firs
-of Scotland, the maritime pines of Gascony, or the
-black and monotonous woods of Prussia. The nikau-palm,
-tree-fern, and palm-lily, the serpentine and leafy
-parasites, and such extraordinary foliage as that of the
-lance-wood, rewa-rewa, and two or three kinds of panax,
-add a hundred distinctive details to the broad impression
-of difference.</p>
-
-<p class="center space-above"></p>
-<div class="figcenter">
-<img src="images/i_088.jpg" alt="" width="415" height="600" />
-<p class="captioncenter">AMONG THE KAURI</p>
-</div>
-<p class="center space-above"></p>
-
-<p>I suppose that most New Zealanders, if asked to
-name the finest trees of their forest, would declare for
-the kauri and the totara. Some might add the puriri
-to these. But then the average New Zealander is a
-practical person and is apt to estimate a forest-tree
-in terms of sawn timber. Not that a full-grown kauri
-is other than a great and very interesting tree. Its
-spreading branches and dark crown of glossy-green
-leaves, lifted above its fellows of the woodland,
-like Saul’s head above the people, catch and hold the
-eye at once. And the great column of its trunk
-impresses you like the pillar of an Egyptian temple,
-not by classic grace, but by a rotund bulk, sheer size
-and weight speaking of massive antiquity. It is not
-their height that makes even the greatest of the kauri
-tribe remarkable, for one hundred and fifty feet is
-nothing extraordinary. But their picked giants
-measure sixty-six feet in circumference, with a diameter
-that, at least in one case, has reached twenty-four.
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[89]</a></span>Moreover, the smooth grey trunks rise eighty or even
-a hundred feet without the interruption of a single
-branch. And when you come to the branches,
-they are as large as trees: some have been measured
-and found to be four feet through. Then, though
-the foliage is none too dense, each leaf is of a
-fair size. From their lofty roof above your head to
-the subsoil below your feet, all is odorous of resin.
-Leaves and twigs smell of it; it forms lumps in
-the forks, oozes from the trunk and mixes with
-the earth&mdash;the swelling humus composed of flakes of
-decayed bark dropped through the slow centuries.
-There are still kauri pines in plenty that must have
-been vigorous saplings when William the Norman
-was afforesting south-western Hampshire. The giants
-just spoken of are survivors from ages far more remote.
-For they may have been tall trees when cedars were
-being hewn on Lebanon for King Solomon’s temple.
-And then the kauri has a pathetic interest: it is
-doomed. At the present rate of consumption the
-supply will not last ten years. Commercially it is too
-valuable to be allowed to live undisturbed, and too
-slow of growth to make it worth the while of a
-money-making generation to grow it. Even the
-young “rickers” are callously slashed and burned
-away. Who regards a stem that may be valuable a
-quarter of a century hence, or a seedling that will not
-be worth money during the first half of the twentieth
-century? So the kauri, like the African elephant, the
-whale, and the bison, seems likely to become a rare
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[90]</a></span>survival. It will be kept to be looked at in a few
-State reserves. Then men may remember that once
-upon a time virtually all the town of Auckland was
-built of kauri timber, and that Von Hochstetter, riding
-through a freshly burned kauri “bush,” found the air
-charged with a smell as of frankincense and myrrh.</p>
-
-<p>Nor is the totara other than a king of the woods,
-albeit a lesser monarch than the giant. Its brown
-shaggy trunk looks best, to my thinking, when
-wrapped in a rough overcoat of lichens, air-lilies,
-climbing ferns, lianas, and embracing rootlets. Such a
-tree, from waist to crown, is often a world of shaggy
-greenery, where its own bristling, bushy foliage may
-be lit up by the crimson of the florid rata, or the starry
-whiteness of other climbers. The beauty of the totara
-is not external only. Its brown wood is handsome,
-and a polished piece of knotty or mottled totara
-almost vies with mottled kauri in the cabinet-maker’s
-esteem.</p>
-
-<p>For utility no wood in the islands, perhaps, surpasses
-that of the puriri, the teak of the country. One is
-tempted to say that it should be made a penal offence
-to burn a tree at once so serviceable and so difficult to
-replace. A tall puriri, too, with its fresh-green leaves
-and rose-tinted flowers, is a cheering sight, especially
-when you see, as you sometimes do, healthy specimens
-which have somehow managed to survive the cutting
-down and burning of the other forest trees, and stand
-in fields from which the bush has been cleared away.</p>
-
-<p class="center space-above"></p>
-<div class="figcenter">
-<img src="images/i_090.jpg" alt="" width="700" height="456" />
-<p class="captioncenter">POHUTUKAWA IN BLOOM, WHANGAROA HARBOUR</p>
-</div>
-<p class="center space-above"></p>
-
-<p>Yet none of the three trees named seems to me to
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[91]</a></span>equal in beauty or distinction certain other chieftains of
-the forest. Surely the cedar-like rimu&mdash;<i lang="la" xml:lang="la">silvæ filia nobilis</i>,&mdash;with
-its delicate drooping foliage and air of slender
-grace, and the more compact titoki with polished
-curving leaves and black-and-crimson berries, are not
-easily to be matched. And surpassing even these in
-brilliance and strangeness are a whole group of the
-iron-heart family, ratas with flowers blood-red or
-white, and their cousin the “spray-sprinkled” pohutu-kawa.
-The last-named, like the kauri, puriri, tawari,
-and tarairi, is a northerner, and does not love the South
-Island, though a stray specimen or two have been
-found in Banks’ Peninsula. But the rata, though
-shunning the dry mid-eastern coast of the South Island,
-ventures much nearer the Antarctic. The variety
-named <i lang="la" xml:lang="la">lucida</i> grows in Stewart Island, and forms a
-kind of jungle in the Auckland Isles, where, beaten
-on its knees by the furious gales, it goes down, so to
-speak, on all fours, and, lifting only its crown, spreads
-in bent thickets in a climate as wet and stormy as that
-of the moors of Cumberland.</p>
-
-<p>The rata of the south would, but for its flowers, be an
-ordinary tree enough, very hard, very slow in growing,
-and carrying leaves somewhat like those of the English
-box-tree. But when in flower in the later summer, it
-crowns the western forests with glory, and lights up
-mountain passes and slopes with sheets of crimson.
-The splendour of the flower comes not from its petals,
-but from what Kirk the botanist calls “the fiery
-crimson filaments of its innumerable stamens,” standing
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[92]</a></span>as they do in red crests, or hanging downward in
-feathery fringes. To win full admiration the rata
-must be seen where it spreads in profusion, staining
-cliffs, sprinkling the dark-green tree-tops with blood,
-and anon seeming in the distance to be massed in
-cushions of soft red. Trees have been found bearing
-golden flowers, but such are very rare.</p>
-
-<p>The rata <i lang="la" xml:lang="la">lucida</i> does not climb other trees. Another
-and even brighter species, the florid rata, is a climbing
-plant, and so are two white-flowered kinds named
-<i lang="la" xml:lang="la">albiflora</i> and <i lang="la" xml:lang="la">scandens</i>, both beautiful in their way, but
-lacking the distinction of the blood-hued species, for
-white is only too common a colour in our forest flora.
-The florid rata, on the other hand, is perhaps the most
-brilliant of the tribe. Winding its way up to the light,
-it climbs to the green roof of the forest, and there
-flaunts a bold scarlet like the crest of some gay bird of
-the Tropics. It is a snake-like vine, and, vine like,
-yields a pale rose-tinted drink, which with a little
-make-believe may be likened to rough cider. Rata
-wine, however, is not crushed from grapes, but drawn
-from the vine-stem. Mr. Laing states that as much as
-a gallon and a half of liquid has dripped from a piece
-of the stem four feet long, after it had been cut and
-kept dry for three weeks.</p>
-
-<p>But the most famous rata is neither the vine nor
-the tree of the south. It is the tree-killing tree of the
-North Island, the species named <i lang="la" xml:lang="la">robusta</i>. Its flowers
-are richer than the southerner’s, and whereas the latter
-is not often more than fifty feet high, <i lang="la" xml:lang="la">robusta</i> is
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[93]</a></span>sometimes twice as tall as that. And it is as strong
-as tall, for its hard, heavy logs of reddish wood will
-lie on the ground year after year without decaying.
-But its fame comes from its extraordinary fashion of
-growing. Strong and erect as it is, and able to grow
-from the ground in the ordinary way, it prefers to
-begin life as an epiphyte, springing from seed dropped
-in a fork or hollow of a high tree. At any rate
-the tallest and finest specimens begin as seedlings in
-these airy nests. Thence without delay they send
-down roots to earth, one perhaps on one side of the
-tree trunk, one on the other. These in their turn,
-after fixing themselves in the ground, send out cross-roots
-to clasp each other&mdash;transverse pieces looking
-like the rungs of a rope-ladder. In time oblique
-rootlets make with these a complete net-work.
-Gradually all meet and solidify, forming a hollow
-pipe of living wood. This encloses the unhappy
-tree and in the end presses it to death. Many
-and many a grey perished stick has been found in
-the interior of the triumphant destroyer. In one tree
-only does the constrictor meet more than its match.
-In the puriri it finds a growth harder and stouter than
-itself. Iron is met by steel. The grey smooth trunk
-goes on expanding, indifferent to the rata’s grasp, and
-even forcing its gripping roots apart; and the pleasant
-green of the puriri’s leaves shows freshly among the
-darker foliage of the strangler.</p>
-
-<p>The rata itself, on gaining size and height, does not
-escape the responsibilities of arboreal life. Its own
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[94]</a></span>forks and hollows form starting-points for the growth
-of another handsome tree-inhabitant, the large or shining
-broadleaf. Beginning sometimes thirty feet from the
-ground, this last will grow as much as thirty feet
-higher, and develop a stem fourteen inches thick.
-Not satisfied with sending down roots outside the
-trunk of its supporter it will use the interior of a
-hollow tree as a channel through which to reach earth.
-The foliage which the broadleaf puts forth quite eclipses
-the leaves of most of the trees upon which it rides, but
-it does not seem to kill these last, if it kills them at all,
-as quickly as the iron-hearted rata.</p>
-
-<p class="center space-above"></p>
-<div class="figcenter">
-<img src="images/i_094.jpg" alt="" width="387" height="600" />
-<p class="captioncenter">NIKAU PALMS</p>
-</div>
-<p class="center space-above"></p>
-
-<p>Our wild flowers, say the naturalists, show few
-brilliant hues. Our fuschias are poor, our violets white,
-our gentians pallid&mdash;save those of the Auckland isles.
-Our clematis is white or creamy, and our passion-flower
-faint yellow and green. Again and again we are told
-that our flowers, numerous as they are, seldom light up
-the sombre greens of the forest. This complaint may
-be pushed much too far. It is true that pale flowers
-are found in the islands belonging to families which
-in other countries have brightly coloured members.
-Though, for instance, three or four of our orchids
-are beautiful, and one falls in a cascade of sweet-scented
-blooms, most of the species are disappointing. But the
-array of our more brilliant flowers is very far from contemptible.
-Over and above the gorgeous ratas and their
-spray-sprinkled cousins are to be reckoned the golden-and-russet
-kowhai, the crimson parrot’s-beak, veronicas
-wine-hued or purple, the red mistletoe, the yellow
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[95]</a></span>tarata, and the rosy variety of the manuka. The
-stalks of the flax-lily make a brave show of red and
-yellow. The centre of the mountain-lily’s cup is
-shining gold. And when speaking of colour we may
-fairly take count of the golden glint or pinkish tinge
-of the toé-toé plumes, the lilac hue of the palm-flower,
-the orange-coloured fruit of the karaka, and the purples
-of the tutu and wineberry. Nor do flowers lack
-beauty because they are white,&mdash;witness the ribbon-wood
-loaded with masses of blooms, fine as those of
-the double cherry, and honey-scented to boot; witness
-the tawari, the hinau, the rangiora, the daisy-tree,
-the whau, and half a score more. For myself,
-I would not change the purity of our starry clematis
-for the most splendid parasite of the Tropics. Certainly
-the pallid-greenish and chocolate hues of some of our
-flowers are strange; they seem tinged with moonlight
-and meant for the night hours, and in the dusky jungle
-carry away one’s thoughts to “Rappaccini’s Daughter”
-and “Les Fleurs du Mal.”</p>
-
-<p>For a bit of New Zealand colour you may turn to
-Colenso’s description of a certain morning in early
-October when he found himself on a high hill-top in
-face of Mount Ruapehu. Snow had fallen in the night
-and the volcano was mantled heavily therewith. The
-forest and native village on the hill on which Colenso
-stood were sprinkled with white, and, though the rising
-sun was shining brightly, a few big flakes continued to
-flutter down. Outside the village a grove of kowhai
-was covered with golden-and-russet blossoms, all the
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[96]</a></span>more noticeable because the young leaves were only on
-the way. Suddenly from the evergreen forest a flock of
-kakas descended on the kowhais, chattering hoarsely.
-The great parrots, walking out on the underside of the
-boughs to the very end of the branches, began to tear
-open the flowers, piercing them at the side of their base
-and licking out the honey with their brush-tipped
-tongues. Brown-skinned Maori boys climbing the trees
-brought to the naturalist specimens of the blossoms thus
-opened by the big beaks. The combination of the
-golden-brown flowers and green forest; the rough-voiced
-parrots, olive-brown and splashed with red, swaying
-on the slender branch-tips; and the sunlight
-gleaming on the white snow, made, with the towering
-volcano in the background, a picture as brilliant as
-curious.</p>
-
-<p>Whatever the dim flowers, purple fruit, and glossy
-leaves of many of our plants might lead the imaginative
-to expect, the number that are poisonous is very small.
-Only two examples are conspicuous, and but one does
-any damage to speak of. Of the noxious pair the
-karaka, a handsome shrub, is a favourite garden plant,
-thanks to its large polished leaves and the deep orange
-colour of its fruit. It has been a favourite, too, with the
-Maori from time immemorial. They plant it near their
-villages, and they claim to have brought it in their
-canoes from Polynesia. Botanists shake their heads
-over this assertion, however, the explanation of which is
-somewhat similar to a famous statement by a certain
-undergraduate on the crux of the Baconian controversy.
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[97]</a></span>“The plays of Shakespeare,” said this young gentleman,
-“were not written by him, but by another fellow of the
-same name.” It seems that there is a Polynesian karaka
-in the islands where the Maori once dwelt, but that it is
-no relation of the New Zealand shrub. The affection
-of the Maori for the latter was based on something
-more practical than an ancestral association. They were
-extremely fond of the kernel of its fruit. When raw,
-this is exceedingly bitter and disagreeable&mdash;fortunately
-so, for it contains then a powerful poison. Somehow
-the Maori discovered that by long baking or persistent
-steaming the kernels could be freed from this, and they
-used to subject them to the process in a most patient and
-elaborate fashion. Now and then some unlucky person&mdash;usually
-a child&mdash;would chew a raw kernel and then
-the result was extraordinary. The poison distorted the
-limbs and then left them quite rigid, in unnatural
-postures. To avoid this the Maori would lash the
-arms and legs of the unfortunate sufferer in a natural
-position, and then bury him up to his shoulders in earth.
-Colenso once saw a case in which this strong step had
-not been taken, or had failed. At any rate the victim of
-karaka poison, a well-grown boy, was lying with limbs
-stiff and immovable, one arm thrust out in front, one
-leg twisted backwards; he could neither feed himself
-nor beat off the swarm of sandflies that were pestering
-him. White children must be more cautious than
-the Maori, for though the karaka shines in half the
-gardens of the North Island, one never hears of any
-harm coming from it. The other plant with noxious
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[98]</a></span>properties is the tutu, and this in times past did much
-damage among live-stock, sheep especially. Much
-smaller than the karaka, it is still an attractive-looking
-bush, with soft leaves and purple-black clusters of
-berries. Both berries and shoots contain a poison,
-powerful enough to interest chemists as well as botanists.
-Sheep which eat greedily of it, especially when tired and
-fasting after a journey, may die in a few hours. It kills
-horned cattle also, though horses do not seem to suffer
-from it. Its chief recorded achievement was to cause
-the death of a circus elephant many years ago, a result
-which followed in a few hours after a hearty meal upon
-a mixture of tutu and other vegetation. So powerful is
-the poison that a chemist who handles the shoots of the
-plant for an hour or two with his fingers will suffer
-nausea, pain, and a burning sensation of the skin. An
-extremely minute internal dose makes the nausea very
-violent indeed. Of course, so dangerous a plant does
-not get much quarter from the settlers, and for this and
-other reasons the losses caused by tutu among our flocks
-and herds are far less than was the case forty or fifty
-years ago. Strangely enough the Maoris could make a
-wine from the juice of the berries, which was said to be
-harmless and palatable, though I venture to doubt it.
-White men are said to have tried the liquor, though I
-have never met any of these daring drinkers. Though
-the most dangerous plant in the islands, it does not
-seem to have caused any recorded death among white
-people for more than forty years.</p>
-
-<p class="center space-above"></p>
-<div class="figcenter">
-<img src="images/i_098.jpg" alt="" width="700" height="458" />
-<p class="captioncenter">ON THE PELORUS RIVER</p>
-</div>
-<p class="center space-above"></p>
-
-<p>Our flora has oddities as well as beauties. Some of
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[99]</a></span>its best-known members belong to the lily tribe. Several
-of these are as different from each other and as unlike
-the ordinary man’s notion of a lily as could well be.
-One of the commonest is a lily like a palm-tree, and
-another equally abundant is a lily like a tall flax. A
-third is a tree-dweller, a luxuriant mass of drooping
-blades, resembling sword-grass. A fourth is a black-stemmed
-wild vine, a coiling and twining parasite of the
-forest, familiarly named supplejack, which resembles
-nothing so much as a family of black snakes climbing
-about playfully in the foliage. Another, even more
-troublesome creeper, is no lily but a handsome bramble,
-known as the bush-lawyer, equipped with ingenious hooks
-of a most dilatory kind. When among trees, the lawyer
-sticks his claws into the nearest bark and mounts boldly
-aloft; but when growing in an open glade, he collapses
-into a sort of huddled bush, and cannot even propagate
-his species, though, oddly enough, in such cases, he
-grows hooks even more abundantly than when climbing.</p>
-
-<p>Members of very different families, the pen-wiper
-plant and the vegetable sheep are excellently described by
-their names. That is more than can be said for many
-of our forest trees. One of these, the aké, has leaves
-so viscous that in sandy or dusty spots these become too
-thickly coated with dirt to allow the tree to grow to
-any size. As a variation the para-para tree has normal
-leaves, but the skin of its fruit is so sticky that not
-only insects but small birds have been found glued thereto.
-A rather common trick of our trees is to change
-the form of their leaves as they grow old. The slim,
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[100]</a></span>straight lance-wood, for instance, will for many years be
-clothed with long, narrow, leathery-looking leaves,
-armed with hooks, growing from the stem and pointing
-stiffly downwards. So long, narrow, and rigid are they
-that the whole plant stands like an inverted umbrella
-stripped of its covering. Later in life the leaves lose
-both their hooks and their odd shape, and the lance-wood
-ceases to look like a survival from the days of the
-pterodactyl. At no time can it look much stranger
-than two species of dracophyllum, the nei-nei and the
-grass-tree. Save for the extremities, the limbs of these
-are naked. They reserve their energies for tufts at the
-tips. In one species these are like long wisps of grass;
-in the other they curve back like a pine-apple’s, and
-from among them springs a large red flower having the
-shape of a toy tree. Even the nei-nei is eclipsed by
-the tanekaha, or celery pine, which contrives to be a
-very handsome tree without bearing any leaves whatever;
-their place is taken by branchlets, thickened and
-fan-shaped. The raukawa has leaves scented so sweetly
-that the Maori women used to rub their skins with
-them as a perfume. Another more eccentric plant is
-scentless by day, but smells agreeably at night-time.
-Indeed, both by day and night the air of the forest is
-pleasant to the nostrils. A disagreeable exception
-among our plants is the coprosma, emphatically called
-<i lang="la" xml:lang="la">fœtidissima</i>, concerning which bushmen, entangled in its
-thickets, have used language which might turn bullock-drivers
-green with envy.</p>
-
-<p class="center space-above"></p>
-<div class="figcenter">
-<img src="images/i_100.jpg" alt="" width="700" height="408" />
-<p class="captioncenter">AUCKLAND</p>
-</div>
-<p class="center space-above"></p>
-
-<p>The navigators who discovered or traded with our
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[101]</a></span>islands while they were still a No Man’s Land have
-recorded their admiration of the timber of our forests.
-The tall sticks of kauri and kahikatea, with their
-scores of feet of clean straight wood, roused the
-sailors’ enthusiasm. It seemed to them that they had
-chanced upon the finest spars in the world. And for
-two generations after Captain Cook, trees picked out
-in the Auckland bush, and roughly trimmed there,
-were carried across on the decks of trading schooners
-to Sydney, and there used by Australian shipbuilders.
-In the year 1819 the British Government sent a store-ship,
-the <em>Dromedary</em>, to the Bay of Islands for a cargo
-of kauri spars. They were to be suitable for top-masts,
-so to be from seventy-four to eighty-four feet long
-and from twenty-one to twenty-three inches thick.
-After much chaffering with the native chiefs the spars
-were cut and shipped, and we owe to the expedition an
-interesting book by an officer on board the <em>Dromedary</em>.
-Our export of timber has always been mainly from
-Auckland, and for many years has been chiefly of kauri
-logs or sawn timber. There has been some export of
-white pine to Australia for making butter-boxes; but
-the kauri has been the mainstay of the timber trade
-oversea. Other woods are cut and sawn in large
-quantities, but the timber is consumed within the
-colony. How large the consumption is may be seen
-from the number of saw-mills at work&mdash;411&mdash;and
-their annual output, which was 432,000,000 superficial
-feet last year. Add to this a considerable amount cut
-for firewood, fences, and rough carpentering, which
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[102]</a></span>does not pass through the mills. And then, great as
-is the total quantity made use of, the amount destroyed
-and wasted is also great. Accidental fires, sometimes
-caused by gross carelessness, ravage thousands of acres.
-“A swagger will burn down a forest to light his pipe,”
-said Sir Julius Vogel, and the epigram was doubtless
-true of some of the swag-carrying tribe. But the
-average swagger is a decent enough labourer on the
-march in search of work, and not to be classed with
-the irreclaimable vagrant called tramp in Britain. In
-any case the swagger was never the sole or main
-offender where forest fires were concerned. It would
-be correct to say that gum-diggers sometimes burn
-down a forest in trying to clear an acre of scrub. But
-bush fires start up from twenty different causes. Sparks
-from a saw-mill often light up a blaze which may end
-in consuming the mill and its surroundings. I have
-heard of a dogmatic settler who was so positive that
-his grass would not burn that he threw a lighted match
-into a tuft of it by way of demonstration. A puff of
-wind found the little flame, and before it was extinguished
-it had consumed four hundred acres of
-yellow but valuable pasture.</p>
-
-<p>And then there is the great area deliberately cut
-and burned to make way for grass. Here the defender
-of tree-life is faced with a more difficult problem. The
-men who are doing the melancholy work of destruction
-are doing also the work of colonisation. As a class
-they are, perhaps, the most interesting and deserving in
-colonial life. They are acting lawfully and in good
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[103]</a></span>faith. Yet the result is a hewing down and sweeping
-away of beauty, compared with which the conquests of
-the Goths and Vandals were conservative processes.
-For those noted invaders did not level Rome or
-Carthage to the ground: they left classic architecture
-standing. To the lover of beautiful Nature the work of
-our race in New Zealand seems more akin to that of the
-Seljuk Turks in Asia Minor, when they swept away
-population, buildings and agriculture, and Byzantine
-city and rural life together, in order to turn whole
-provinces into pasture for their sheep. Not that my
-countrymen are more blind to beauty than other
-colonists from Europe. It is mere accident which has
-laid upon them the burden of having ruined more
-natural beauty in the last half-century than have other
-pioneers. The result is none the less saddening.
-When the first white settlers landed, the islands were
-supposed still to contain some thirty million acres of
-forest. The Maori had done a share of destruction by
-reckless or accidental burning. Other causes, perhaps,
-had helped to devastate such tracts as the Canterbury
-plains and the kauri gum-fields. But enough, and
-more than enough, was left; indeed the bush seemed the
-chief barrier to rapid settlement. The havoc wrought
-by careless savages was a trifle compared with the
-wholesale destruction brought about by our utilising of
-the forests and the soil. <i lang="la" xml:lang="la">Quod non fecerunt Barbari
-fecere Barberini.</i> To-day we are told that the timber
-still standing cannot last our saw-mills more than two
-generations, and that a supply which was estimated at
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[104]</a></span>forty-three thousand million feet in 1905 had shrunk
-to thirty-six thousand million feet in 1907. The
-acreage of our forests must be nearer fifteen than
-twenty millions now. Some of this, covering, as it
-does, good alluvial soil, must go; but I am far from
-being alone in believing that four-fifths of it should be
-conserved, and that where timber is cut the same
-precautions should be insisted on as in Germany,
-France, India, and some intelligent portions of North
-America. Within the last two years great floods in
-Auckland and Hawke’s Bay, and, farther south, two
-summers hot and dry beyond precedent, seem to point
-the moral and strengthen the case for making a
-courageous stand on behalf of the moiety we have
-left of the woods that our fathers thought illimitable.</p>
-
-<p class="center space-above"></p>
-<div class="figcenter">
-<img src="images/i_104.jpg" alt="" width="700" height="457" />
-<p class="captioncenter">MOUNT EGMONT</p>
-</div>
-<p class="center space-above"></p>
-
-<p>Something has already been done. Forty years ago
-Thomas Potts, naturalist and politician, raised his voice
-in the parliamentary wilderness; and in the next decade
-a Premier, Sir Julius Vogel, came forward with an
-official scheme of conservation which would have been
-invaluable had he pressed it home. Since then enlightened
-officials, like the late Surveyor-General, Mr. Percy
-Smith, have done what they could. From time to time
-reserves have been made which, all too small as they are,
-now protect some millions of acres. In the rainier districts
-most of this is not in great danger from chance
-fires. Nor is it always and everywhere true that the
-forest when burned does not grow again. It can and
-will do so, if cattle and goats are kept out of it. The
-lavish beauty of the primeval forest may not return,
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[105]</a></span>but that is another matter. The cry that Government
-reservation only saves trees from the axe to keep them
-for the fire may be dismissed as a counsel of despair,
-or&mdash;sometimes&mdash;as inspired by the saw-miller and
-land-grabber. Of late years, too, both Government and
-public are waking up to the wisdom of preserving noted
-and beautiful scenes. Many years ago the settlers of
-Taranaki set an example by reserving the upper and
-middle slopes of their Fusiyama, Mount Egmont.
-Long stretches of the draped cliffs of Wanganui River
-have been made as safe as law can make them, though
-some still remain in danger, and I am told that at
-Taumaranui, on the upper river, the hum of the saw-mills
-is ever in your ears. Societies for preserving
-scenery are at work elsewhere, and the Parliament has
-passed an Act and established a Board for the purpose of
-making scenic reserves. Twenty-five thousand acres
-have lately been set aside on the Board’s advice, and
-the area will, I assume, be added to yearly.</p>
-
-<p>Now and again, in dry, windy summers, the forest
-turns upon its destroyers and takes revenge. Dying, it
-involves their works and possessions in its own fiery
-death. A bush-fire is a fine sight when seen on windy
-nights, burning whole hill-sides, crawling slowly to windward,
-or rushing with the wind in leaping tongues and
-flakes that fly above the tree-tops. The roar, as of a
-mighty gale, the spouting and whirling of golden sparks,
-the hissing of sap and resin, and the glowing heat that
-may be felt a mile away, join grandly in furious energy.
-Nothing can be finer than the spectacle, just as nothing
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[106]</a></span>can be more dreary than the resulting ruin. A piece of
-bush accidentally burned has no touch of dignity in its
-wreck. It becomes merely an ugly and hateful jumble,
-begrimed, untidy, and unserviceable. A tract that has
-been cut down and fired deliberately is in a better case.
-Something more like a clean sweep has been made, and
-the young grass sprouting up gives promise of a
-better day. But bush through which fire has run too
-quickly is often spoiled as forest, without becoming of
-use to the farmer. The best that can be done when
-trees are thus scorched is for the saw-miller to pick out
-the larger timber and separate with his machinery the
-sound inside from the burned envelope. This he does
-skilfully enough, and much good wood&mdash;especially
-kauri&mdash;is thus saved. The simple-minded settler when
-selling scorched timber sometimes tries to charge for
-sound and injured portions alike; but the average saw-miller
-is a man of experience.</p>
-
-<p class="center space-above"></p>
-<div class="figcenter">
-<img src="images/i_106.jpg" alt="" width="700" height="470" />
-<p class="captioncenter">TAREI-PO-KIORE</p>
-</div>
-<p class="center space-above"></p>
-
-<p>As I have said, fire sometimes sweeps down upon
-the forest’s enemies and carries all before it: saw-mills
-and their out-buildings are made into bonfires,
-and the stacks of sawn planks and litter of chips and
-sawdust help the blaze. The owner and his men are
-lucky if they save more than their portable belongings.
-Nor does the fire stop there. After making a mouthful
-of mills and woodcutters’ huts, it may set out for some
-small township not yet clear of stumps, dead trunks, and
-inflammable trash. All depends upon the wind. If
-the flames are being borne along upon the wings of a
-strong north-west wind&mdash;the <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[107]</a></span>“regular howling nor’-wester”
-of up-country vernacular&mdash;very little can be
-done except to take to flight, driving live-stock, and
-taking such furniture as can be piled on carts and driven
-away. Fences, house, machinery, garden, and miles of
-grass may be swept away in a few hours, the labour of
-half a lifetime may be consumed, and the burnt-out
-settler may be thankful if the Government comes to his
-aid with a loan to enable him to buy grass seed to
-scatter on his blackened acres after the long-desired rains
-have come.</p>
-
-<p>In an exceptionally dry summer&mdash;such an extraordinary
-season as came in January and February of
-this year&mdash;the fire goes to work on a grand scale. In a
-tract a hundred miles long, thirty or forty outbreaks
-may be reported within a week. Settlers looking out
-from their homesteads may see smoke and glowing
-skies in half-a-dozen directions at once. Now the
-blaze may approach from this direction, now from that,
-just as the wind freshens or shifts. Sheep are mustered,
-and, if possible, driven away. Threatened householders
-send their furniture away, or dig holes in the ground
-and bury it. When the danger comes too suddenly to
-give time for anything more, goods are hastily piled on
-some bare patch and covered with wet blankets. I
-have read of a prudent settler who had prepared for
-these risks of fire by excavating a cave almost large
-enough to house a band of prophets. After three years
-the fire came his way, and he duly stored away his
-possessions in the repository. But just as rain does not
-fall when you take out a large umbrella, so our provident
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[108]</a></span>friend found that the fire would not touch his house.
-He lost nothing but a shed.</p>
-
-<p class="center space-above"></p>
-<div class="figcenter">
-<img src="images/i_108.jpg" alt="" width="700" height="471" />
-<p class="captioncenter">MORNING ON THE WANGANUI RIVER</p>
-</div>
-<p class="center space-above"></p>
-
-<p>If there appears any fair chance of beating back the
-flames, the men join together, form a line, and give
-battle. They do not lightly surrender the fruits of
-years of toil, but will fight rolling smoke, flying sparks,
-and even scorching flame, hour after hour. Strips of
-grass are burned off in advance, and dead timber blown
-up with dynamite. Buckets of water are passed from
-hand to hand, or the flames are beaten out with sacks or
-blankets. Seen at night on a burning hill-side, the row
-of masculine fighting figures stands out jet-black against
-the red glow, and the wild attitudes and desperate
-exertions are a study for an artist. Among the men,
-boys work gleefully; there is no school for them
-when a fire has to be beaten. Very young children
-suffer greatly from the smoke with which the air they
-breathe is laden, perhaps for days together. Even a
-Londoner would find its volumes trying. Now and
-again a bushman in the thick of the fight reels half-suffocated,
-or falls fainting and has to be carried away.
-But his companions work on; and grass-fires are often
-stopped and standing crops saved. But fire running
-through thick bush is a more formidable affair. The
-heat is terrific, the very soil seems afire; and indeed
-the flames, after devouring trunks and branches, will
-work down into the roots and consume them for many
-feet. Sparks and tongues of flame shoot across roads
-and streams and start a blaze on the farther side.
-Messengers riding for help, or settlers trying to reach
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[109]</a></span>their families, have often to run the gauntlet perilously
-on tracks which the fire has reached or is crossing.
-They gallop through when they can, sometimes with hair
-and beard singed and clothes smelling of the fire.
-Men, however, very seldom lose their lives. For one
-who dies by fire in the bush, fifty are killed by falling
-timber in the course of tree-felling. Sheep have occasionally
-to be left to their fate, and are roasted, or escape
-with wool half-burnt. Wild pigs save themselves; but
-many native birds perish with their trees, and the trout
-in the smaller streams die in hundreds.</p>
-
-<p>Many stories are told of these bush fires, and of the
-perils, panics, or displays of courage they have occasioned.
-Let me repeat one. In a certain “bush township,”
-or small settlement in the forest, lived a clergyman, who,
-in addition to working hard among the settlers in a
-parish half as large as an English county, was a reader
-of books. He was, I think, a bachelor, and I can well
-believe that his books were to him something not far
-removed from wife and children. The life of a parson
-in the bush certainly deserves some consolations in
-addition to those of religion. Well, a certain devastating
-fire took a turn towards the township in which a
-wooden roof sheltered our parson and his beloved
-volumes. Some householders were able to drive off
-with their goods; others stood their ground. The
-minister, after some reflection, carried his books out of
-doors, took a spade and began to dig a hole in the earth,
-meaning to bury them therein. Just as the interment
-was beginning, a neighbour rode up with the news that
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[110]</a></span>the house of a widow woman, not far away, had caught
-fire and that friends were trying to extinguish the burning
-or at least save her goods. Whether the book-lover
-gave “a splendid groan” I do not know; but leaving
-his treasures, off he ran, and was soon among the busiest
-of the little salvage corps, hauling and shouldering like
-a man. When all was done that could be done he
-hastened back, blackened and perspiring, to his own
-dwelling. Alas! the fire had outflanked him. Sparks
-and burning flakes had dropped upon his books and the
-little collection was a blazing pile. I have forgotten
-the parson’s name and do not know what became of
-him. But if any man deserved, in later life, a fine
-library at the hands of the Fates, he did. I hope that
-he has one, and that it includes a copy of Mr. Blades’s
-entertaining treatise on the <cite>Enemies of Books</cite>. With
-what gusto he must read chapter i., the title of which
-is “Fire.”</p>
-
-<p class="center space-above"></p>
-<div class="figcenter">
-<img src="images/i_110.jpg" alt="" width="700" height="464" />
-<p class="captioncenter">ON THE UPPER WANGANUI</p>
-</div>
-<p class="center space-above"></p>
-
-<p>Just as a burning forest is a magnificent scene with
-a dismal sequel, so the saw-miller’s industry, though it
-finds a paradise and leaves a rubbish-yard, is, while it
-goes on, a picturesque business. Like many forms of
-destruction, it lends itself to the exertion of boldness,
-strength, and skill. The mill itself is probably too
-primitive to be exactly ugly, and the complicated
-machinery is interesting when in action, albeit its noises,
-which at a distance blend into a humming vibration,
-rise near at hand to tearing and rending, clattering
-and howling. But the smell of the clean wood is fresh
-and resinous, and nothing worse than sawdust loads
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[111]</a></span>the air. The strong teeth of the saws go through the
-big logs as though they were cheese. The speed of the
-transformation, the neatness and utility of the outcome,
-are pleasing enough. Then the timber-scows, those
-broad, comfortable-looking craft that go plodding along
-the northern coasts, may be said, without irony, to have
-a share of “Batavian grace.” But the more absorbing
-work of the timber trade begins at the other end, with
-the selecting and felling of the timber. After that
-comes the task of hauling or floating it down to the
-mill. Tree-felling is, one supposes, much the same in
-all countries where the American pattern of axe is used.
-With us, as elsewhere, there are sights worth watching.
-It is worth your while to look at two axemen at work
-on the tree, giving alternate blows, one swinging the
-axe from the right, the other from the left. Physically,
-bush-fellers are among the finest workmen in the islands,
-and not only in wood-chopping contests, but when at
-work, under contract in the bush, they make the chips
-fly apace. Some of them seem able to hew almost as
-well with one arm as with two; indeed, one-armed men
-have made useful fellers. Sometimes they attack a
-tree from the ground; but into the larger trunks they
-may drive stakes some few feet from the soil, or may
-honour a giant by building a platform round it. Upon
-this they stand, swinging their axes or working a large
-cross-cut saw. Skill, of course, is required in arranging
-the direction in which the tree shall fall, also in avoiding
-it when it comes down. Even a broken limb is a
-serious matter enough in the bush, far from surgical
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[112]</a></span>aid. Men thus struck down have to be carried on
-rough litters to the nearest surgeon. In one case the
-mates of an injured bush-feller carried him in this way
-fully sixty miles, taking turns to bear the burden.
-Even when a man has been killed outright and there
-is no longer question of surgical aid, the kindliness of
-the bushmen may still be shown. Men have been
-known to give up days of remunerative work in order
-to carry the body of a comrade to some settlement,
-where it can be buried in consecrated ground.
-Accidents are common enough in the bush. Only last
-year an “old hand” fell a victim to mischance after
-forty years of a bushman’s life. Slipping on a prostrate
-trunk he fell on the sharp edge of his axe, and was
-discovered lying there dead in solitude.</p>
-
-<p class="center space-above"></p>
-<div class="figcenter">
-<img src="images/i_112.jpg" alt="" width="700" height="464" />
-<p class="captioncenter">WAIRUA FALLS</p>
-</div>
-<p class="center space-above"></p>
-
-<p>When the tree has been felled and cross-cut and the
-branches lopped off, the log may be lying many miles
-from the mill. Hills and ravines may have to be
-crossed or avoided. Orpheus with his lute would be
-invaluable to the New Zealand saw-miller. The local
-poet, though fond enough of addressing his stanzas to the
-forest trees, does not pretend to draw them to follow in
-his footsteps. Nor are our poets on the side of the saw-mills.
-So bushmen have to fall back upon mechanical
-devices and the aid of water-power. Long narrow tracks
-are cut, and floored with smooth skids. Along these
-logs are dragged&mdash;it may be by the wire rope of a
-traction machine, it may be by a team of bullocks.
-Over very short distances the logs are shifted by
-the men themselves, who “jack” them with a dexterity
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[113]</a></span>astonishing to the townsmen. Mainly, the journey to
-the mill is made either by tramway or water. Where a
-deep river is at hand, floating timber is a comparatively
-simple business. But more often the logs have to
-slide, be rolled or be hauled, into the beds of streams
-or creeks that may be half dry for months together.
-To obtain the needful depth of water, dams are often
-built, above which the logs accumulate in numbers
-and stay floating while their owners wait patiently for
-a fresh. Or the timber may remain stranded, in shallow
-creeks or in the reeds or stones of dwindled rivers.
-At length the rain-storm bursts, the sluices of the
-dams are hastily opened, and the logs in great companies
-start on their swim for the sea-coast. A heavy flood
-may mean loss to farmer and gardener, and be a
-nuisance to travellers; but to the saw-millers of a
-province it may be like the breaking-up of a long
-drought. They rub their hands and tell you that they
-have not had such a turn of luck for a twelvemonth,&mdash;“millions
-of feet were brought down yesterday!”
-As the rains descend and the floods come, their men
-hurry away to loosen barriers, start logs on their
-way, or steer them in their course. Wild is the rush of
-the timber as it is thus swept away, not in long orderly
-rafts such as one sees zigzagging along on the Elbe
-or <abbr title="Saint">St.</abbr> Lawrence, but in a frantic mob of racing logs,
-spinning round, rolled over and over, colliding, plunging
-and reappearing in the swirling water. Rafts you
-may see in the ordinary way being towed down the
-Wairoa River to the Kaipara harbour by steam tugs.
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[114]</a></span>But in flood-time, when thousands of logs are taking
-an irresponsible course towards the ocean, the little
-steamers have a more exciting task. It is theirs to
-chase the logs, which, rolling and bobbing like schools
-of escaping whales, have to be caught and towed to
-some boom or harbourage near the saw-mill for which
-they are destined. Otherwise they may become imbedded
-in tidal mud, or may drift away to sea and be lost.
-Logs bearing the marks of Auckland saw-millers have
-been found ere now stranded on distant beaches after
-a voyage of several hundred miles.</p>
-
-<p>Like axemen and log-rollers, the river hands who
-look after dams and floating logs have their accidents
-and hairbreadth escapes. They have to trust to courage
-and to an amphibious dexterity, of which they exhibit
-an ample share. Watch a man standing upright on a log
-huge enough to be a mast, and poling it along as though
-it were a punt. That looks easier than it is. But
-watch the same man without any pole controlling a
-rolling log and steering it with feet alone. That does
-not even look easy. Some years ago, it is said, a mill
-hand, when opening a dam in a rain-storm, fell into the
-flood and was swept down among the released timber.
-Amid the crash of tumbling logs he was carried over
-the dam and over a waterfall farther down stream.
-Yet he reached the bank with no worse injury than
-a broken wrist! I tell the tale as it was printed in an
-Auckland newspaper.</p>
-<hr class="chap" />
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[115]</a></span></p>
-
-
-<div class="chapter"></div>
-<h2><a name="CHAPTER_V" id="CHAPTER_V">CHAPTER <abbr title="5">V</abbr></a></h2>
-
-<p class="center">FIRE AND WATER</p>
-
-
-<p>A long time ago, that is to say, in the twilight of
-Maori tradition, the chief Ngatoro and his wife,
-attended by a slave, landed on the shores of the Bay of
-Plenty. Thence they wandered inland through forests
-and over ferny downs, reaching at last a great central
-lake, beyond which high mountains stood sentry in the
-very heart of the island. One of these snow-clad
-summits they resolved to gain; but half-way on the
-climb the slave fell ill of sheer cold. Then the chief
-bethought him that in the Bay of Plenty he had
-noticed an island steaming and smoking, boiling with
-heat. Hot coals brought thence might warm the party
-and save the slave’s life. So Ngatoro, who was
-magician as well as chieftain, looked eastward and made
-incantations; and soon the fire rushing through the air
-fell at his feet. Another more prosaic version of the
-tale says that, Maori fashion, the kind-hearted hero
-despatched a messenger to bring the fire; he sent his
-wife. She, traversing land and sea at full speed, was
-soon back from White Island with a calabash full of
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[116]</a></span>glowing embers. From this, as she hurried along,
-sparks dropped here and there on her track. And
-wherever these fell the earth caught fire, hot springs
-bubbled up, and steam-jets burst through the fern. All her
-haste, however, went for nought; the slave died. Furious
-at his loss, her lord and master flung the red embers
-down one of the craters of Mount Tongariro, and from
-that day to this the mountains of Taupo have been
-filled with volcanic fires, smouldering or breaking out
-in eruption.<a name="FNanchor_1_1" id="FNanchor_1_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_1_1" class="fnanchor">[1]</a>Such is one of the many legends which
-have grown up round the lakes and summits of the
-most famous volcanic province of New Zealand. It
-indicates the Maori understanding that the high cones
-south-west of Lake Taupo are one end of a chain of
-volcanic forces, and that the other end is White Island
-(Whaka-ari), the isolated crater which lifts its head
-above the sea twenty-seven miles out in the wide Bay of
-Plenty. It is a natural sulphur factory. Seen from
-the shores of the bay it looks peaceful enough. Its
-only peculiarity seems to be a white cloud rising high or
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[117]</a></span>streaming on the wind to leeward from the tip of its cone.
-At a distance the cloud appears not unlike other white
-clouds; but in the brightest weather it never vanishes
-away. I once spent three sunny spring days in riding
-round the great arc of the Bay of Plenty, often cantering
-for miles together along the sandy beach. There, out
-to sea, lay White Island always in view and always
-flying its white vapour-flag. In reality the quiet-looking
-islet seethes with fiery life. Seen at close
-quarters it is found to be a shell, which from one side
-looks comically like the well-worn stump of a hollow
-tooth. It is a barren crater near a thousand feet high,
-enclosing what was a lake and is now shrunk to a warm
-green pool, ringed with bright yellow sulphur. Hot
-springs boil and roar on the crater-lake’s surface, ever
-sending up columns of hissing and roaring steam many
-hundred feet into the air. At times, as in 1886, the
-steam has shot to the almost incredible height of fifteen
-thousand feet, a white pillar visible a hundred miles
-away. You may thrust a stick through the floor of the
-crater into the soft hot paste beneath. The walls of
-the abyss glow with heat, steam-jets hiss from their
-fissures, and on the outside is a thick crust of sulphur.
-The reek of the pit’s fumes easily outdoes that of the
-blackest and most vicious of London fogs. “It is not
-that soft smell of Roto-rua,” wrote Mr. Buddle, who
-smelt the place in 1906, “but an odour of sulphurous
-acid which sticks in one’s throat.” Yet commerce once
-tried to lay hands on White Island, and men were
-found willing to try and work amid its noisome
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[118]</a></span>activities. Commerce, however, failed to make Tartarus
-pay. Not far away from White Island lies Mayor
-Island, which once upon a time must have been an even
-stranger spot. It also is a high crater. On the rim of
-its yawning pit are to be seen the ruins of a Maori
-stockade, which, perched in mid-air and approachable
-only over the sea, must have been a hard nut for
-storming parties to crack in the bygone days of tribal
-wars. All is quiet now; the volcano has died out and
-the wars have become old tales.</p>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-<p><a name="Footnote_1_1" id="Footnote_1_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_1_1"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> After writing this page I found that Mr. Percy Smith, formerly
-Surveyor-General, gives another version of the legend. He tells how
-the hero Ngatoro, landing on the shore of the Bay of Plenty, went
-inland, and, with a companion named Ngauruhoe, climbed Tongariro. Near
-the summit, Ngauruhoe died of cold, and Ngatoro, himself half-frozen,
-shouted to his sisters far away in the legendary island of Hawaiki to
-bring fire. His cry reached them far across the ocean, and they started
-to his rescue. Whenever they halted&mdash;as at White Island&mdash;and lit their
-camp fire, geysers spouted up from the ground. But when at length they
-reached Tongariro, it was only to find that Ngatoro, tired of waiting
-for them, had gone back to the coast.</p>
-
-<p>A fourth version of the legend is contained in a paper by Mr. H. Hill
-in vol. xxiv. of the <cite>Transactions of the N.Z. Institute</cite>.</p></div>
-
-<p>Needless to say, the scenes between Ruapehu and the
-sea-coast are not all as terrific as this. The main
-charm of the volcanic province is, indeed, its variety.
-Though in a sense its inhabitants live on the lid of a
-boiler&mdash;a boiler, too, that is perforated with steam
-holes&mdash;still it is a lid between five thousand and six
-thousand square miles in size. This leaves ample room
-for broad tracts where peace reigns amid apparent
-solidity and security. Though it is commonly called
-the Hot Lakes District, none of its larger lakes are
-really hot, that is to say hot throughout; they are
-distinctly cold. Roto-mahana before it was blown up
-in the eruption of 1886 was in no part less than lukewarm;
-but in those days Roto-mahana only covered
-185 acres. At Ohinemutu there is a pool the water of
-which is unmistakably hot throughout; but it is not
-more than about a hundred yards long. Usually the
-hot lagoons are patchy in temperature&mdash;boiling at one
-end, cool at the other. Perhaps the official title, Thermal
-Springs District, is more accurate. The hot water comes
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[119]</a></span>in the form of springs, spouts, and geysers. Boiling
-pools there are in numbers, veritable cauldrons. Boiling
-springs burst up on the beaches of the cold lakes, or
-bubble up through the chilly waters. The bather can
-lie floating, as the writer has, with his feet in hot and
-his head in cold water. Very agreeable the sensation is
-as the sunshine pours from a blue sky on to a lagoon
-fringed with ferns and green foliage. There are places
-where the pedestrian fording a river may feel his legs
-chilled to the marrow by the swift current, and yet find
-the sandy bottom on which he is treading almost burn
-the soles of his feet. The first white traveller to
-describe the thermal springs noted a cold cascade falling
-on an orifice from which steam was puffing at intervals.
-The resultant noise was as strange as the sight. So do
-hot and cold mingle and come into conflict in the
-thermal territory.</p>
-
-<p class="center space-above"></p>
-<div class="figcenter">
-<img src="images/i_120.jpg" alt="" width="403" height="600" />
-<p class="captioncenter">“THE DRAGON’S MOUTH”</p>
-</div>
-<p class="center space-above"></p>
-
-<p>The area of this hydro-thermal district, which Mr.
-Percy Smith, the best living authority on the subject,
-calls the Taupo volcanic zone, is roundly about six
-thousand square miles. As already said, part of it lies
-under the sea, above which only White Island, Mayor
-Island, and Whale Island rise to view. Its shape, if we
-could see the whole of it, would probably be a narrow
-oval, like an old-fashioned silver hand-mirror with a
-slender handle. In the handle two active volcanoes
-lift their heads&mdash;Ruapehu, and Tongariro with its three
-cones. At the other end of the mirror White Island
-stands up, incessantly at work. This exhausts the list
-of active volcanoes; but there are six or seven extinct
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[120]</a></span>or quiescent volcanoes of first-class importance.
-Mayor Island, in the Bay of Plenty, is a dead crater
-rimmed by walls five miles round and nearly 1300
-feet high, enclosing a terrible chasm lined with dark
-obsidian. Mount Edgecombe, an admirably regular
-cone, easily seen from the coast, has two craters in its
-summit; and the most appalling explosion ever known
-in the country occurred in the tract covered by Mount
-Tarawera and the Roto-mahana Lake. How terrific
-were the forces displayed by these extinct volcanoes in
-ages past may be judged by the vast extent of country
-overlaid by the pumice and volcanic clay belched forth
-from their craters. Not only is the volcanic zone
-generally overspread with this, only sparse patches escaping,
-but pumice is found outside its limits. Within
-these, it is, loosely speaking, pumice, pumice everywhere,
-dry, gritty, and useless,&mdash;a thin scattering of
-pumice on the hill-tops and steep slopes,&mdash;deep strata of
-pumice where it has been washed down into valleys and
-river terraces. Mingled with good soil it is mischievous,
-though two or three grasses, notably that called
-Chewing’s fescue, grow well in the mixture. Unmixed
-pumice is porous and barren. Fortunately the tracts
-of deep pumice are limited. They soak up the ample
-rainfall; grass grows, but soon withers; in dry weather
-a sharp tug will drag a tussock from the roots in the
-loose, thirsty soil. The popular belief is that it only
-needs a long-continued process of stamping and rolling
-to make these pumice expanses hold water and become
-fertile. Those who think thus point out that around
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[121]</a></span>certain lonely lagoons, where wild horses and cattle
-have been wont to camp and roll, rich green patches of
-grass are found. Less hopeful observers hold that the
-destiny of the pumice country is probably to grow trees,
-fruit-bearing and other, whose deep roots will reach far
-down to the water. Already the Government, acting
-on this belief, has taken the work of tree-planting in
-hand, and millions of young saplings are to be found in
-the Waiotapu valley and elsewhere in the pumice land.
-Prison-labour is used for the purpose; and though a
-camp of convicts, with movable prison-vans like the
-cages of a travelling menagerie, seems a strange foil to
-the wonders of Nature, the toil is healthy for the men
-as well as useful to the country. From the vast extent
-of the pumice and clay layers it would seem that, uneasy
-as the thermal territory now is, it has, for all its geysers,
-steaming cones, and innumerable springs, become but a
-fretful display of slowly dying forces. So say those
-who look upon the great catastrophe of 1886 as merely
-the flicker of a dying flame.</p>
-
-<p class="center space-above"></p>
-<div class="figcenter">
-<img src="images/i_122.jpg" alt="" width="400" height="600" />
-<p class="captioncenter">HUKA FALLS</p>
-</div>
-<p class="center space-above"></p>
-
-<p>As already said, the volcanic zone is a land of lakes,
-many and beautiful. Four of the most interesting&mdash;Roto-rua,
-Roto-iti, Roto-ehu, and Roto-ma&mdash;lie in a
-chain, like pieces of silver loosely strung together.
-South of these Tarawera sleeps in sight of its terrible
-mountain, and south again of Tarawera the hot springs of
-Roto-mahana still draw sight-seers, though its renowned
-terraces are no longer there. Lake Okataina is near,
-resting amid unspoiled forest: and there is Roto-kakahi,
-the green lake, and, hard by, Tikitapu, the blue lake,
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[122]</a></span>beautiful by contrast. But, of course, among all the
-waters Taupo easily overpeers the rest. “The Sea” the
-Maori call it; and indeed it is so large, and its whole
-expanse so easily viewed at once from many heights,
-that it may well be taken to be greater than it is.
-It covers 242 square miles, but the first white
-travellers who saw it and wrote about it guessed it
-to be between three and five hundred. Hold a fair-sized
-map of the district with the eastern side uppermost
-and you will note that the shape of Taupo is that
-of an ass’s head with the ears laid back. This may
-seem an irreverent simile for the great crater lake, with
-its deep waters and frowning cliffs, held so sacred and
-mysterious by the Maori of old. Seldom is its surface
-flecked by any sail, and only one island of any size
-breaks the wide expanse. The glory of Taupo&mdash;apart
-from the noble view of the volcanoes southward of it&mdash;is
-a long rampart of cliffs that almost without a break hems
-in its western side mile after mile. At their highest
-they reach 1100 feet. So steep are they that in
-flood-time cascades will make a clean leap from their
-summits into the lake; and the sheer descent of the
-wall continues below the surface, for, within a boat’s
-length of the overhanging cliff, sounding-leads have
-gone down 400 feet. Many are the waterfalls which
-in the stormier months of the year seam the rocky
-faces with white thread-like courses. On a finer scale
-than the others are the falls called Mokau, which,
-dashing through a leafy cleft, pour into the deep with
-a sounding plunge, and, even from a distance, look
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[123]</a></span>something broader and stronger than the usual white
-riband.</p>
-
-<p>By contrast, on the eastern side of the lake wide
-strips of beach are not uncommon, and the banks,
-plains, and terrace sides of whitish pumice, though not
-inconsiderable, are but tame when compared with the
-dark basaltic and trachytic heights overhanging the
-deep western waters. Many streams feed Taupo;
-only one river drains it. It is not astonishing, then,
-that the Maori believed that in the centre a terrible
-whirlpool circled round a great funnel down which
-water was sucked into the bowels of the earth. A
-variant of this legend was that a huge <i lang="mi" xml:lang="mi">taniwha</i> or saurian
-monster haunted the western depths, ready and willing
-to swallow canoes and canoemen together. The river
-issuing from Taupo is the Waikato, which cuts through
-the rocky lip of the crater-lake at its north-east corner.
-There it speeds away as though rejoicing to escape,
-with a strong clear current about two hundred yards
-wide. Then, pent suddenly between walls of hard rock,
-it is jammed into a deep rift not more than seventy feet
-across. Boiling and raging, the whole river shoots from
-the face of a steep tree-clothed cliff with something of
-the force of a horizontal geyser. Very beautiful is the
-blue and silver column as it falls, with outer edges dissolving
-into spray, into the broad and almost quiet
-expanse below. This waterfall, the Huka, though one
-of the famous sights of the island, does not by any
-means exhaust the beauties of the Upper Waikato. A
-little lower down the Ara-tia-tia Rapids furnish a
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[124]</a></span>succession of spectacles almost as fine. There for
-hundreds of yards the river, a writhing serpent of
-blue and milk-white flecked with silver, tears and zig-zags,
-spins and foams, among the dripping reefs and
-between high leafy rocks, “wild with the tumult of
-tumbling waters.”</p>
-
-<p>Broadly speaking, the Taupo plateau is a region of
-long views. Cold nights are more often than not
-followed by sunny days. The clear and often brilliant
-air enables the eye to travel over the nearer plains and
-hills to where some far-off mountain chain almost always
-closes the prospect. The mountains are often forest-clad,
-the plains and terraces usually open. Here will
-be seen sheets of stunted bracken; there, wide expanses
-of yellowish tussock-grass. The white pumice and
-reddish-brown volcanic clay help to give a character to
-the colouring very different to the black earth and vivid
-green foliage of other parts of the island. The smooth
-glacis-like sides of the terraces, and the sharply-cut
-ridges of the hills, seem a fit setting for the perpetual
-display of volcanic forces and an adjunct in impressing
-on the traveller that he is in a land that has been
-fashioned on a strange design. Nothing in England,
-and very little in Europe, remotely resembles it. Only
-sometimes on the dusty tableland of Central Spain, in
-Old or New Castile, may the New Zealander be
-reminded of the long views and strong sunlight, or
-the shining slopes leading up to blue mountain ranges
-cutting the sky with clean lines.</p>
-
-<p class="center space-above"></p>
-<div class="figcenter">
-<img src="images/i_124.jpg" alt="" width="700" height="453" />
-<p class="captioncenter">ARA-TIA-TIA RAPIDS</p>
-</div>
-<p class="center space-above"></p>
-
-<p>Some of the finest landscape views in the central
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[125]</a></span>North Island are to be seen from points of vantage on
-the broken plateau to the westward of Ruapehu. On
-the one side the huge volcanic mass, a sloping rampart
-many miles long, closes the scene; on the other,
-the land, falling towards the coast, is first scantily
-clothed with coarse tussock-grass and then with open
-park-like forest. The timber grows heavier towards the
-coast, and in the river valleys where the curling Wanganui
-and the lesser streams Waitotara and Patea run
-between richly-draped cliffs to the sea. Far westward
-above the green expanse of foliage&mdash;soon to be hewn
-by the axe and blackened by fire&mdash;the white triangle
-of Egmont’s cone glimmers through faint haze against
-the pale horizon.</p>
-
-<p>Between Taupo and the eastern branch of the Upper
-Wanganui ran a foot-track much used by Maori
-travellers in days of yore. At one point it wound
-beneath a steep hill on the side of which a projecting
-ledge of rock formed a wide shallow cave. Beneath
-this convenient shelf it is said that a gang of Maori
-highwaymen were once wont to lurk on the watch for
-wayfarers, solitary or in small parties. At a signal
-they sprang out upon these, clubbed them to death,
-and dragged their bodies to the cave. There these
-cannibal bush-rangers gorged themselves on the flesh of
-their victims. I tell the story on the authority of the
-missionary Taylor, who says that he climbed to the
-cave, and standing therein saw the ovens used for the
-horrid meals and the scattered bones of the human
-victims. If he was not imposed upon, the story
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[126]</a></span>supplies a curious exception to Maori customs. Their
-cannibalism was in the main practised at the expense
-of enemies slain or captured in inter-tribal wars; and
-they had distinct if peculiar prejudices in favour of fair
-fighting. I have read somewhere that in the Drakensberg
-Mountains above Natal a similar gang of cannibal
-robbers was once discovered&mdash;Kaffirs who systematically
-lured lonely victims into a certain remote ravine, where
-they disappeared.</p>
-
-<p>One of the curiosities of the Taupo wilderness is the
-flat-topped mountain Horo-Horo. Steep, wooded
-slopes lead up to an unbroken ring of precipices
-encircling an almost level table-top. To the eyes of
-riders or coach-passengers on the road between Taupo
-and Roto-rua, the brows of the cliffs seem as inaccessible
-as the crown of Roraima in British Guiana in the days
-before Mr. Im Thurn scaled it. The Maori own
-Horo-Horo, and have villages and cultivations on the
-lower slopes where there is soil fertile beyond what is
-common thereabout. Another strange natural fortress
-not far away is Pohaturoa, a tusk of lava, protruding
-some eight hundred feet hard by the course of the
-Waikato and in full view of a favourite crossing-place.
-Local guides are, or used to be, fond of comparing this
-eminence with Gibraltar, to which&mdash;except that both
-are rocks&mdash;it bears no manner of likeness.</p>
-
-<p>The Japanese, as we know, hold sacred their famous
-volcano Fusiyama. In the same way the Maori in
-times past regarded Tongariro and Ruapehu as holy
-ground. But, whereas the Japanese show reverence to
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[127]</a></span>Fusi by making pilgrimages to its summit in tens of
-thousands, the Maori veneration of their great cones
-took a precisely opposite shape,&mdash;they would neither
-climb them themselves nor allow others to do so. The
-earlier white travellers were not only refused permission
-to mount to the summit, but were not even
-allowed to set foot on the lower slopes. In 1845 the
-artist George French Angas could not even obtain
-leave to make a sketch of Tongariro, though he
-managed to do so by stealth. Six years earlier Bidwill
-eluded native vigilance and actually reached the summit
-of one of the cones, probably that of Ngauruhoe, but
-when, after peering down through the sulphurous clouds
-of the inaccessible gulf, he made his way back to the
-shores of Lake Taupo, the local chieftain gave him a
-very bad quarter of an hour indeed. This personage,
-known in New Zealand story as Old Te Heu Heu, was
-one of the most picturesque figures of his race. His
-great height&mdash;“nearly seven feet,” says one traveller;
-“a complete giant,” writes another&mdash;his fair complexion,
-almost classic features, and great bodily
-strength are repeatedly alluded to by the whites who
-saw him; not that whites had that privilege every day,
-for Te Heu Heu held himself aloof among his own people,
-defied the white man, and refused to sign the treaty of
-Waitangi or become a liegeman of the Queen. His
-tribesmen had a proverb&mdash;“Taupo is the Sea; Tongariro
-is the Mountain; Te Heu Heu is the Man.”
-This they would repeat with the air of men owning a
-proprietary interest in the Atlantic Ocean, Kinchin
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[128]</a></span>Junga, and Napoleon. He was indeed a great chief,
-and a perfect specimen of the Maori <i lang="mi" xml:lang="mi">Rangatira</i> or
-gentleman. He considered himself the special guardian
-of the volcanoes. Like him they were <i lang="mi" xml:lang="mi">tapu</i>&mdash;“<i lang="mi" xml:lang="mi">tapu’d</i>
-inches thick,” as the author of <cite>Old New Zealand</cite> would
-say. Indeed, when his subjects journeyed by a certain
-road, from one turn of which they could view the cone
-of Ngauruhoe, they were expected at the critical spot to
-veil their eyes with their mats so as not to look on the
-holy summit. At any rate, Bidwill declares that
-they told him so. Small wonder, therefore, if this
-venturesome trespasser came in for a severe browbeating
-from the offended Te Heu Heu, who marched
-up and down his <i lang="mi" xml:lang="mi">wharé</i> breaking out into passionate
-speech. Bidwill asserts that he pacified the great man
-by so small a present as three figs of tobacco. Of
-course, it is possible that in 1839 tobacco was more
-costly at Taupo than in after years. The Maori
-version of the incident differs from Bidwill’s.</p>
-
-<p>In the uneasy year of 1845 Te Heu Heu marched
-down to the Wanganui coast at the head of a strong
-war-party. The scared settlers were thankful to find
-that he did not attack them. He was, indeed, after
-other game, and was bent on squaring accounts with a
-local tribe which had shed the blood of his people.
-Bishop Selwyn, who happened to be then in the
-neighbourhood, saw and spoke with the highland
-chieftain, urging peace. The interviews must have
-been worth watching. On the one side stood the
-typical barbarian, eloquent, fearless, huge of limb, with
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[129]</a></span>handsome face and maize-coloured complexion, and
-picturesque in kilt, cloak, and head-feather. On the
-other side was a bishop in hard training, a Christian
-gentleman, as fine as English culture could furnish,
-whose clean-cut aquiline face and unyielding mouth
-had the becoming support of a tall, vigorous frame
-lending dignity to his clerical garb. Here was the
-heathen determined to save his tribe from the white
-man’s grasping hands and dissolving religion; there
-the missionary seeing in conversion and civilisation the
-only hope of preserving the Maori race. Death took
-Te Heu Heu away before he had time to see his
-policy fail. Fate was scarcely so kind to Selwyn, who
-lived to see the Ten-Years’ War wreck most of his
-life’s work among the natives.</p>
-
-<p>As far as I know, Te Heu Heu never crossed
-weapons with white men, though he allied himself with
-our enemies and gave shelter to fugitives. His region
-was regarded as inaccessible in the days of good
-Governor Grey. He was looked upon as a kind of
-Old Man of the Mountain, and in Auckland they told
-you stories of his valour, hospitality, choleric temper,
-and his six&mdash;or was it eight?&mdash;wives. So the old
-chief stayed unmolested, and met his end with his
-<i lang="mi" xml:lang="mi">mana</i> in no way abated. It was a fitting end: the
-soil which he guarded so tenaciously overwhelmed him.
-The steep hill-side over his village became loosened by
-heavy rain and rotted by steam and sulphur-fumes. It
-began to crack and slip away. According to one
-account, a great land-slip descending in the night
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[130]</a></span>buried the <i lang="mi" xml:lang="mi">kainga</i> and all in it save one man. Another
-story states that the destruction came in the day-time,
-and that Te Heu Heu refused to flee. He was said
-to have stood erect, confronting the avalanche, with
-flashing eyes, and with his white hair blown by the
-wind. At any rate, the soil of his ancestress the Earth
-(he claimed direct descent from her) covered him, and
-for a while his body lay there. After some time his
-tribe disinterred it, and laying it on a carved and
-ornamented bier, bore it into the mountains with the
-purpose of casting it down the burning crater of Tongariro.
-The intention was dramatic, but the result
-was something of an anticlimax. When nearing their
-journey’s end the bearers were startled by the roar of
-an eruption. They fled in a panic, leaving the remains
-of their hero to lie on the steep side of the cone on
-some spot never identified. There they were probably
-soon hidden by volcanic dust, and so, “ashes to ashes,”
-slowly mingled with the ancestral mass.<a name="FNanchor_2_2" id="FNanchor_2_2"></a><a href="#Footnote_2_2" class="fnanchor">[2]</a></p>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-<p><a name="Footnote_2_2" id="Footnote_2_2"></a><a href="#FNanchor_2_2"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> The accepted tradition of Te Heu Heu’s funeral is that given
-above. After these pages went to the printer, however, I lighted upon
-a newspaper article by Mr. Malcolm Ross, in which that gentleman
-states that the bier and the body of the chief were not abandoned on
-the mountain-side, but were hidden in a cave still known to certain
-members of the tribe. The present Te Heu Heu, says Mr. Ross, talks of
-disinterring his ancestor’s remains and burying them near the village
-of Te Rapa.</p></div>
-
-<p class="center space-above"></p>
-<div class="figcenter">
-<img src="images/i_130.jpg" alt="" width="700" height="461" />
-<p class="captioncenter">LAKE TAUPO</p>
-</div>
-<p class="center space-above"></p>
-
-<p>The chiefs of the Maori were often their own
-minstrels. To compose a panegyric on a predecessor
-was for them a worthy task. Te Heu Heu himself
-was no mean poet. His lament for one of his forefathers
-has beauty, and, in Mr. James Cowan’s version,
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[131]</a></span>is well known to New Zealand students. But as a
-poem it was fairly eclipsed by the funeral ode to his
-own memory composed and recited by his brother and
-successor. The translation of this characteristic Maori
-poem, which appeared in Surgeon-Major Thomson’s
-book, has been out of print for so many years that I
-may reproduce some portions of it here:&mdash;</p>
-
-<div class="poetry-container">
-  <div class="poetry">
-    <div class="stanza">
-      <div class="verse">See o’er the heights of dark Pauhara’s mount</div>
-      <div class="verse">The infant morning wakes. Perhaps my friend</div>
-      <div class="verse">Returns to me clothed in that lightsome cloud.</div>
-      <div class="verse">Alas! I toil alone in this lone world.</div>
-  </div>
-  <div class="stanza">
-      <div class="verse indent12">Yes, thou art gone!</div>
-      <div class="verse">Go, thou mighty! go, thou dignified!</div>
-      <div class="verse">Go, thou who wert a spreading tree to shade</div>
-      <div class="verse">Thy people all when evil hovered round!</div>
-  </div>
-  <div class="stanza">
-      <div class="verse">Sleep on, O Chief, in that dark, damp abode!</div>
-      <div class="verse">And hold within thy grasp that weapon rare</div>
-      <div class="verse">Bequeathed by thy renownéd ancestor.</div>
-  </div>
-  <div class="stanza">
-      <div class="verse">Turn yet this once thy bold athletic frame,</div>
-      <div class="verse">And let me see thy skin carved o’er with lines</div>
-      <div class="verse">Of blue; and let me see again thy face</div>
-      <div class="verse">Beautifully chiselled into varied forms!</div>
-  </div>
-  <div class="stanza">
-      <div class="verse">Cease, cease thy slumbers, O thou son of Rangi!</div>
-      <div class="verse">Wake up! and take thy battle-axe, and tell</div>
-      <div class="verse">Thy people of the coming signs, and what</div>
-      <div class="verse">Will now befall them. How the foe, tumultuous</div>
-      <div class="verse">As are the waves, will rush with spears uplifted,</div>
-      <div class="verse">And how thy people will avenge their wrongs.</div>
-  </div>
-  <div class="stanza">
-      <div class="verse">No, thou art fallen; and the earth receives</div>
-      <div class="verse">Thee as its prey! But yet thy wondrous fame</div>
-      <div class="verse">Shall soar on high, resounding o’er the heavens</div>
-      <div class="verse"></div>
-   </div>
-  </div>
- </div>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[132]</a></span></p>
-<p>Loosely speaking, New Zealand is a volcanic
-archipelago. There are hot pools and a noted
-sanatorium in the Hanmer plains in the middle of
-the Middle Island. There are warm springs far to
-the north of Auckland, near Ohaeawai, where the
-Maori once gave our troops a beating in the early days
-of our race-conflict with them. Auckland itself, the
-queen of New Zealand towns, is almost a crater city.
-At any rate, it is surrounded by dead craters. You are
-told that from a hill-top in the suburbs you may count
-sixty-three volcanic cones. Two sister towns, Wellington
-and Christchurch, have been repeatedly taken and well
-shaken by Mother Earth. Old Wellington settlers
-will gravely remind you that some sixty years ago a
-man, an inoffensive German baron, lost his life in a
-shock there. True, he was not swallowed up or
-crushed by falling ruins; a mirror fell from a wall on
-to his head. This earthquake was followed in 1855
-by another as sharp, and one of the two so alarmed
-a number of pioneer settlers that they embarked on
-shipboard to flee from so unquiet a land. Their ship,
-however, so the story runs, went ashore near the mouth
-of Wellington harbour, and they returned to remain,
-and, in some cases, make their fortunes. In 1888 a
-double shock of earthquake wrecked some feet of the
-cathedral spire at Christchurch, nipping off the point
-of it and the gilded iron cross which it sustained, so
-that it stood for many months looking like a broken
-lead-pencil. A dozen years later, Cheviot, Amuri, and
-Waiau were sharply shaken by an earthquake that
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[133]</a></span>showed scant mercy to brick chimneys and houses of
-the material known as cob-and-clay. Finally, in the
-little Kermadec islets, far to the north of Cape Maria
-Van Diemen, we encounter hot pools and submarine
-explosions, and passing seamen have noted there sheets
-of ejected pumice floating and forming a scum on the
-surface of the ocean. As might be supposed, guides and
-hangers-on about Roto-rua and Taupo revel in tales of
-hairbreadth escapes and hair-raising fatalities. Nine
-generations ago, say the Maori, a sudden explosion of a
-geyser scalded to death half the villagers of Ohinemutu.
-In the way of smaller mishaps you are told how, as two
-Maori children walked together by Roto-mahana one
-slipped and broke through the crust of silica into the
-scalding mud beneath. The other, trying to lift him
-out, was himself dragged in and both were boiled
-alive. Near Ohinemutu, three revellers, overfull of
-confidence and bad rum, stepped off a narrow track at
-night and perished together in sulphurous mud and
-scalding steam. At the extremity of Boiling Point
-a village, or part of a village, is said to have been
-suddenly engulfed in the waters of Roto-rua. At the
-southern end of Taupo there is, or was, a legend
-current that a large <i lang="mi" xml:lang="mi">wharé</i> filled with dancers met, in
-a moment, a similar fate. In one case of which I
-heard, that of a Maori woman, who fell into a pool
-of a temperature above boiling-point, a witness assured
-me that she did not appear to suffer pain long: the
-nervous system was killed by the shock. Near Roto-rua
-a bather with a weak heart was picked up dead. He
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[134]</a></span>had heedlessly plunged into a pool the fumes and chemical
-action of which are too strong for a weak man. And
-a certain young English tourist sitting in the pool nicknamed
-Painkiller was half-poisoned by mephitic vapour,
-and only saved by the quickness of a Maori guide.
-That was a generation ago: nowadays the traveller need
-run no risks. Guides and good medical advice are to
-be had by all who will use them. No sensible person
-need incur any danger whatever.</p>
-
-<p>Among stories of the boiling pools the most pathetic
-I can recall is of a collie dog. His master, a shepherd
-of the Taupo plateau, stood one day on the banks of a
-certain cauldron idly watching the white steam curling
-over the bubbling surface. His well-loved dog lay
-stretched on the mud crust beside him. In a thoughtless
-moment the shepherd flung a stick into the clear
-blue pool. In a flash the dog had sprung after it into
-the water of death. Maddened by the poor creature’s
-yell of pain, his master rushed to the brink, mechanically
-tearing off his coat as he ran. In another instant he
-too would have flung himself to destruction. Fortunately
-an athletic Maori who was standing by caught
-the poor man round the knees, threw him on to his
-back and held him down till all was over with the dog.</p>
-
-<p class="center space-above"></p>
-<div class="figcenter">
-<img src="images/i_134.jpg" alt="" width="700" height="459" />
-<p class="captioncenter">IN A HOT POOL</p>
-</div>
-<p class="center space-above"></p>
-
-<p>Near a well-known lake and in a <i lang="mi" xml:lang="mi">wharé</i> so surrounded
-by boiling mud, scalding steam, hot water, and burning
-sulphur as to be difficult of approach, there lived many
-years ago two friends. One was a teetotaller and a
-deeply religious man&mdash;characteristics not universal in
-the Hot Lakes district at that precise epoch. The
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[135]</a></span>other inhabitant was more nearly normal in tastes and
-beliefs. The serious-minded friend became noted for
-having&mdash;unpaid, and with his own hands&mdash;built a
-chapel in the wilderness. Yet, unhappily, returning
-home on a thick rainy evening he slipped and fell
-into a boiling pool, where next day he was found&mdash;dead,
-of course. In vain the oldest inhabitants of
-the district sought to warn the survivor. He declined
-to be terrified, or to change either his dangerous
-abode or his path thereto. He persisted in walking
-home late at night whenever it suited him to
-do so. The “old hands” of the district shook their
-heads and prophesied that there could be but one end
-to such recklessness. And, sure enough, on a stormy
-night the genial and defiant Johnnie slipped in his turn
-and fell headlong into the pool which had boiled his
-mate. One wild shout he gave, and men who were
-within earshot tore to the spot&mdash;“Poor old Johnnie!
-Gone at last! We always said he would!” Out of
-the darkness and steam, however, they were greeted
-with a sound of vigorous splashing and of expressions
-couched in strong vernacular.</p>
-
-<p>“Why, Johnnie man, aren’t you dead? Aren’t
-you boiled to death?”</p>
-
-<p>“Not I! There’s no water in this &mdash;&mdash; country
-hot enough to boil me. Help me out!”</p>
-
-<p>It appeared that the torrents of rain which had been
-falling had flooded a cold stream hard by, and this,
-overflowing into the pool, had made it pleasantly tepid.</p>
-
-<p class="center space-above"></p>
-<div class="figcenter">
-<img src="images/i_136.jpg" alt="" width="700" height="446" />
-<p class="captioncenter">NGONGOTAHA MOUNTAIN</p>
-</div>
-<p class="center space-above"></p>
-
-<p>Needless to say, there is one fatal event, the story of
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[136]</a></span>which overshadows all other stories told of the thermal
-zone. It is the one convulsion of Nature there, since
-the settlement of New Zealand, that has been great
-enough to become tragically famous throughout the
-world, apart from its interest to science. The eruption
-of Mount Tarawera was a magnificent and terrible
-spectacle. Accompanied as it was by the blowing-up
-of Lake Roto-mahana, it destroyed utterly the beautiful
-and extraordinary Pink and White Terraces. There
-can be no doubt that most of those who saw them
-thought the lost Pink and White Terraces the finest
-sight in the thermal region. They had not the
-grandeur of the volcanoes and the lakes, or the glorious
-energy of the geysers; but they were an astonishing
-combination of beauty of form and colour, of what
-looked like rocky massiveness with the life and heat of
-water in motion. Then there was nothing else of their
-kind on the earth at all equal to them in scale and
-completeness. So they could fairly be called unique,
-and the gazer felt on beholding them that in a sense
-this was the vision of a lifetime. Could those who
-saw them have known that the spectacle was to be so
-transient, this feeling must have been much keener.
-For how many ages they existed in the ferny wilderness,
-seen only by a few savages, geologists may guess at.
-Only for about twelve years were they the resort of
-any large number of civilised men. It is strange how
-little their fame had gone abroad before Hochstetter
-described them after seeing them in 1859. Bidwill,
-who was twice at Roto-rua in 1839, never mentions
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[137]</a></span>them. The naturalist Dieffenbach, who saw them in
-1842, dismisses them in a paragraph, laudatory but
-short. George French Angas, the artist, who was the
-guest of Te Heu Heu in 1845, and managed, against
-express orders, to sketch Tongariro, does not seem to
-have heard of them. Yet he of all men might have
-been expected to get wind of such a marvel. For a
-marvel they were, and short as was the space during
-which they were known to the world, their fame must
-last until the Fish of Maui is engulfed in the ocean.
-There, amid the green manuka and rusty-green bracken,
-on two hill-sides sloping down to a lake of moderate
-size&mdash;Roto-mahana or Warm Lake,&mdash;strong boiling
-springs gushed out. They rose from two broad platforms,
-each about a hundred yards square, the flooring
-of craters with reddish-brown sides streaked and
-patched with sulphur. Their hot water, after seething
-and swirling in two deep pools, descended to the lake
-over a series of ledges, basins, or hollowed terraces,
-which curved out as boldly as the swelling canvas of a
-ship, so that the balustrades or battlements&mdash;call them
-what you will&mdash;seemed the segments of broken circles.
-Their irregular height varied from two to six feet, and
-visitors could scale them, as in Egypt they climb the
-pyramids. One terrace, or rather set of terraces, was
-called White, the other Pink: but the White were tinged
-lightly with pink in spots, and their rosy sisters paled
-here and there, so as to become nearly colourless
-in places. “White,” moreover, scarcely conveys the
-exact impression of Te Tarata, except from a distance
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[138]</a></span>or under strong light. Domett’s “cataract of marble”
-summed it up finely. But to be precise, where it was
-smoothest and where water and the play of light made
-the surface gleam or glisten, the silica coating of the
-White ledges reminded you rather of old ivory, or
-polished bone tinted a faint yellow. As for the
-“Pink” staircase, one traveller would describe it as
-bright salmon-pink, another as pale rose, for eyes in
-different heads see the same things differently. The
-White Terrace was the higher of the two, and
-descended with a gentler slope than the other. The
-skirts of both spread out into the lake, so that its
-waters flowed over them. The number and fine succession
-of these ivory arcs and rosy battlements made
-but half their charm. The hot water as it trickled
-from shelf to shelf left its flinty sediment in delicate
-incrustations&mdash;here like the folds of a mantle, there
-resembling fringing lace-work, milk outpoured and
-frozen, trailing parasites or wild arabesques. Or it
-made you think of wreathed sea-foam, snow half-melted,
-or the coral of South Sea reefs. Then among
-it lay the blue pools, pool after pool, warm, richly
-coloured, glowing; while over every edge and step fell
-the water, trickling, spurting, sparkling, and steaming as
-it slowly cooled on its downward way. So that, though
-there was a haunting reminder of human architecture
-and sculpture, there was none of the smug finish of
-man’s buildings, nothing of the cold dead lifelessness
-of carved stone-work. The sun shone upon it, the
-wind played with the water-drops. The blue sky&mdash;pale
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[139]</a></span>by contrast&mdash;overarched the deeper blue of the pools.
-Green mosses and vivid ferns grew and flourished on
-the very edge of the steam. What sculptor’s frieze
-or artist’s structure ever had such a framework? In
-the genial water the bathers, choosing their temperature,
-could float or sit, breathing unconfined air and wondering
-at the softness and strange intensity of colour.
-They could bathe in the day-time when all was sunshine,
-or on summer nights when the moonlight turned
-the ledges to alabaster. Did the tribute of his provinces
-build for Caracalla such imperial baths as these?
-No wonder that Nature, after showing such loveliness
-to our age for a moment, snatched it away from the
-desecration of scribbling, defacing, civilised men!</p>
-
-<p>The eruption of Tarawera was preceded by many
-signs of disturbance. Science in chronicling them
-seems to turn gossip and collect portents with the
-gusto of Plutarch or Froissart. The calamity came
-on the 10th of June, and therefore in early winter.
-The weather had been stormy but had cleared, so no
-warning could be extracted from its behaviour. But,
-six months before, the cauldron on the uppermost
-platform of Te Tarata had broken out in strange
-fashion. Again and again the water had shrunk far
-down, and had even been sucked in to the supplying
-pipe, leaving the boiling pit, thirty yards across and as
-many feet deep, quite dry. Then suddenly the water
-had boiled up and a geyser, a mounting column or
-dome many feet in thickness, had shot up into the
-air, struggling aloft to the height of a hundred and
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[140]</a></span>fifty feet. From it there went up a pillar of steam four
-or five times as high, with a sound heard far and wide.
-Geyser-like as the action of the terrace-pool had been,
-nothing on this scale had been recorded before. Then
-from the Bay of Plenty came the news that thousands
-of dead fish had been cast up on the beaches, poisoned
-by the fumes of some submarine explosion. Furthermore,
-the crater-lake in White Island suddenly went dry&mdash;another
-novelty. Next, keen-eyed observers saw steam
-issuing from the top of Ruapehu. They could scarcely
-believe their eyes, for Ruapehu had been quiescent as far
-back as man’s memory went. But there was no doubt
-of it. Two athletic surveyors clambered up through
-the snows, and there, as they looked down four hundred
-feet on the crater-lake from the precipices that ringed
-it in, they saw the surface of the water lifted and
-shaken, and steam rising into the icy air. Later on,
-just before the catastrophe, the Maori by Roto-mahana
-lost their chief by sickness. As he lay dying some of
-his tribe saw a strange canoe, paddled by phantom
-warriors, glide across the lake and disappear. The
-number of men in the canoe was thirteen, and as they
-flitted by their shape changed and they became spirits
-with dogs’ heads. The tribe, struck with terror, gave
-up hope for their chief. He died, and his body lay
-not yet buried when the fatal night came. Lastly, on
-the day before the eruption, without apparent cause,
-waves rose and swept across the calm surface of Lake
-Tarawera, to the alarm of the last party of tourists who
-visited the Terrace. Dr. Ralph, one of these, noted
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[141]</a></span>also that soft mud had apparently just been ejected from
-the boiler of the Pink Terrace, and lay strewn about
-twenty-five yards away. He and his friends hastened
-away, depressed and uneasy.</p>
-
-<p>No one, however, Maori or white, seriously conceived
-of anything like the destruction that was impending.
-The landlord of the Wairoa hotel grumbled
-at the native guide Sophia for telling of these ominous
-incidents. And a Maori chief, with some followers,
-went to camp upon two little islets in Roto-mahana
-lying handy for the hot bathing-pools. Why should
-any one expect that the flat-topped, heavy looking
-mountain of Tarawera would burst out like Krakatoa?
-True, Tarawera means “burning peak,” but the hill,
-and its companion Ruawahia, must have been quiescent
-for many hundred years. For were not trees growing
-in clefts near the summits with trunks as thick as the
-height of a tall man? Nor was there any tradition of
-explosions on the spot. Thirteen generations ago, said
-the Maori, a famous chief had been interred in or near
-one of the craters, and Nature had never disturbed his
-resting-place. The surprise, therefore, was almost complete,
-and only the winter season was responsible for
-the small number of tourists in the district on the 10th
-of June. It was about an hour past midnight when
-the convulsion began. First came slight shocks of
-earthquake; then noises, booming, muttering, and
-swelling to a roar. The shocks became sharper. Some
-of them seemed like strokes of a gigantic hammer
-striking upwards. Then, after a shock felt for fifty<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[142]</a></span>
-miles round, an enormous cloud rose above Tarawera
-and the mountain spouted fire, stones, and dust to the
-heavens. The burning crater illumined the cloud, so
-that it glowed like a “pillar of fire by night.” And
-above the glow an immense black canopy began to
-open out and spread for at least sixty miles, east, north-east
-and south-east. Seen from far off it had the shape
-of a monstrous mushroom. In the earlier hours of the
-eruption the outer edges of the mushroom shape were
-lit up by vivid streams and flashes of lightning, shooting
-upward, downward, or stabbing the dark mass with
-fierce sidelong thrusts. Forked bolts sped in fiery zig-zags,
-or ascended, rocket-fashion, to burst and fall in
-flaming fragments. Sounds followed them like the
-crackling of musketry. Brilliantly coloured, the flashes
-were blue, golden or orange, while some were burning
-bars of white that stood out, hot and distinct, across
-the red of the vomiting crater. But more appalling
-even than the cloudy canopy with its choking dust, the
-tempest, the rocking earth, or the glare of lightning,
-was the noise. After two o’clock it became an awful
-and unceasing roar, deafening the ears, benumbing the
-nerves, and bewildering the senses of the unhappy beings
-within the ring of death or imminent danger. It made
-the windows rattle in the streets of Auckland one
-hundred and fifty miles away, and awoke many sleepers
-in Nelson at a more incredible distance. And with
-the swelling of the roar thick darkness settled down&mdash;darkness
-that covered half a province for hours. Seven
-hours after the destruction began, settlers far away on
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[143]</a></span>the sea-coast to the east were eating their morning
-meals&mdash;if they cared to eat at all&mdash;by candle-light. To
-say that it was a darkness that could be felt would
-be to belittle its horrors absurdly&mdash;at any rate near
-Tarawera. For miles out from the mountain it was a
-darkness that smote and killed you&mdash;made up as it was
-of mud and fire, burning stones, and suffocating dust.
-Whence came the mud? Partly, no doubt, it was
-formed by steam acting on the volcanic dust-cloud;
-but, in part, it was the scattered contents of Roto-mahana&mdash;a
-whole lake hurled skyward, water and ooze
-together. With Roto-mahana went its shores, the
-Terraces, several neighbouring smaller lakes and many
-springs. Yet so tremendous was the outburst that
-even this wreck was not physically the chief feature of
-the destruction. That was the great rift, an irregular
-cleft, fourteen or fifteen miles long, opened across the
-Tarawera and its companion heights. This earth-crack,
-or succession of cracks, varied in depth from three
-hundred to nine hundred feet. To any one looking
-down into it from one of the hill-tops commanding it,
-it seemed half as deep again. It, and the surrounding
-black scoria cast up from its depths, soon became cold
-and dead; but, continuing as it did to bear the marks
-of the infernal fires that had filled it, the great fissure
-remained in after years the plainest evidence of that
-dark night’s work. When I had a sight of it in 1891,
-it was the centre of a landscape still clothed with
-desolation. The effect was dreary and unnatural.
-The deep wound looked an injury to the earth as
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[144]</a></span>malign as it was gigantic. It was precisely such a
-scene as would have suggested to a zealot of the
-Middle Ages a vision of the pit of damnation.</p>
-
-<p class="center space-above"></p>
-<div class="figcenter">
-<img src="images/i_144.jpg" alt="" width="700" height="445" />
-<p class="captioncenter">LAKE AND MOUNT TARAWERA</p>
-</div>
-<p class="center space-above"></p>
-
-<p>Until six in the morning the eruption did not
-slacken at all. Hot stones and fireballs were carried
-for miles, and as they fell set huts and forests on fire.
-Along with their devastation came a rain of mud,
-loading the roofs of habitations and breaking down the
-branches of trees. Blasts of hot air were felt, but
-usually the wind&mdash;and it blew violently&mdash;was bitter
-cold. At one moment a kind of cyclone or tornado
-rushed over Lake Tikitapu, prostrating and splintering,
-as it passed, the trees close by, and so wrecking a forest
-famous for its beauty.<a name="FNanchor_3_3" id="FNanchor_3_3"></a><a href="#Footnote_3_3" class="fnanchor">[3]</a> What went on at the centre of
-the eruption no eye ever saw&mdash;the great cloud hid it.
-The dust shot aloft is variously computed to have risen
-six or eight miles. The dust-cloud did not strike down
-the living as did the rain of mud, fire, and stones.
-But its mischief extended over a much wider area.
-Half a day’s journey out from the crater it deposited
-a layer three inches thick, and it coated even islands
-miles off the east coast. By the sea-shore one observer
-thought the sound of its falling was like a gentle rain.
-But the effect of the black sand and mouse-coloured
-dust was the opposite of that of rain; for it killed the
-pasture, and the settlers could only save their cattle
-and sheep by driving them hastily off. Insect life was
-half destroyed, and many of the smaller birds shared
-the fate of the insects. By Lake Roto-iti, fourteen
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[145]</a></span>miles to the north of the crater, Major Mair, listening
-to the dropping of the sand and dust, compared it to
-a soft ooze like falling snow. It turned the waters of
-the lake to a sort of soapy grey, and overspread the
-surrounding hills with an unbroken grey sheet. The
-small bull-trout and crayfish of the lake floated dead on
-the surface of the water. After a while birds starved
-or disappeared. Wild pheasants came to the school-house
-seeking for chance crumbs of food, and hungry
-rats were seen roaming about on the smooth carpet
-of dust.</p>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-<p><a name="Footnote_3_3" id="Footnote_3_3"></a><a href="#FNanchor_3_3"><span class="label">[3]</span></a> See <cite>The Eruption of Tarawera</cite>, by S. Percy Smith.</p></div>
-
-<p class="center space-above"></p>
-<div class="figcenter">
-<img src="images/i_146.jpg" alt="" width="700" height="473" />
-<p class="captioncenter">MAORI WASHING-DAY, OHINEMUTU</p>
-</div>
-<p class="center space-above"></p>
-
-<p>How did the human inhabitants of the district fare
-at Roto-rua and Ohinemutu? Close at hand as they
-were, no damage was done to life or limb. They were
-outside the range of the destroying messengers. But
-nearer to the volcano, in and about Roto-mahana, utter
-ruin was wrought, and here unfortunately the natives
-of the Ngati Rangitihi, living at Wairoa and on some
-other spots, could not escape. Some of them, indeed,
-were encamped at the time on islets in Roto-mahana
-itself, and they of course were instantly annihilated in
-the midst of the convulsion. Their fellow tribesmen
-at Wairoa went through a more lingering ordeal, to
-meet, nearly all of them, the same death. About an
-hour after midnight Mr. Hazard, the Government
-teacher of the native school at Wairoa, was with his
-family roused by the earthquake shocks. Looking
-out into the night they saw the flaming cloud go up
-from Tarawera, ten miles away. As they watched the
-spectacle, half in admiration, half in terror, the father
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[146]</a></span>said to his daughter, “If we were to live a hundred
-years, we should not see such a sight again.” He
-himself did not live three hours, for he died, crushed
-by the ruin of his house as it broke down under falling
-mud and stones. The wreck of the building was set
-alight by a shower of fireballs, yet the schoolmaster’s
-wife, who was pinned under it by a beam, was dug out
-next day and lived. Two daughters survived with her;
-three children perished. Other Europeans in Wairoa
-took refuge in a hotel, where for hours they stayed,
-praying and wondering how soon the downpour of fire,
-hot stones, mud and dust would break in upon them.
-In the end all escaped save one English tourist named
-Bainbridge. The Maori in their frail thatched huts
-were less fortunate; they made little effort to save
-themselves, and nearly the whole tribe was blotted out.
-One of them, the aged wizard Tukoto, is said to have
-been dug out alive after four days: but his hair and
-beard were matted with the volcanic stuff that had
-been rained upon him. The rescuers cut away the
-hair, and Tukoto’s strength thereupon departed like
-Samson’s. At any rate the old fellow gave up the
-ghost. In after days he became the chief figure in
-a Maori legend, which now accounts for the eruption.
-It seems that a short while before it, the wife of a neighbouring
-chief had denounced Tukoto for causing the
-death of her child. Angry at an unjust charge, the old
-wizard prayed aloud to the god of earthquakes, and
-to the spirit of Ngatoro, the magician who kindled
-Tongariro, to send down death upon the chief’s wife
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[147]</a></span>and her people. In due course destruction came, but
-the gods did not nicely discriminate, so Tukoto and
-those round him were overwhelmed along with his
-enemies. At another native village not far away the
-Maori were more fortunate. They had living among
-them Sophia the guide, whose <i lang="mi" xml:lang="mi">wharé</i> was larger and
-more strongly built than the common run of their huts.
-Sophia, too, was a fine woman, a half-caste, who had
-inherited calculating power and presence of mind from
-her Scotch father. Under her roof half a hundred
-scared neighbours came crowding, trusting that the
-strong supporting poles would prevent the rain of
-death from battering it down. When it showed signs
-of giving way, Sophia, who kept cool, set the refugees
-to work to shore it up with any props that could be
-found; and in the end the plucky old woman could
-boast that no one of those who sought shelter with her
-lost their lives.</p>
-
-<hr class="tb" />
-
-<p>The township of Roto-rua, with its side-shows
-Ohinemutu and Whaka-rewa-rewa, escaped in the great
-eruption scot free, or at any rate with a light powdering
-of dust. The place survived to become the social
-centre of the thermal country, and now offers no suggestion
-of ruin or devastation. It has been taken in hand
-by the Government, and is bright, pleasant, and, if
-anything, too thoroughly comfortable and modern.
-It is scientifically drained and lighted with electric
-light. Hotels and tidy lodging-houses look out upon
-avenues planted with exotic trees. The public gardens
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[148]</a></span>cover a peninsula jutting out into the lake, and their
-flowery winding paths lead to lawns and tennis-courts.
-Tea is served there by Maori waitresses whose caps and
-white aprons might befit Kensington Gardens; and a
-band plays. If the visitors to Roto-rua do not exactly
-“dance on the slopes of a volcano,” at least they chat
-and listen to music within sight of the vapour of
-fumaroles and the steam of hot springs. A steam
-launch will carry them from one lake to another, or
-coaches convey them to watch geysers made to spout
-for their diversion. They may picnic and eat sandwiches
-in spots where they can listen to muddy cauldrons
-of what looks like boiling porridge, sucking and
-gurgling in disagreeable fashion. Or they may watch
-gouts of dun-coloured mud fitfully issuing from cones
-like ant-hills&mdash;mud volcanoes, to wit.</p>
-
-<p>For the country around is not dead or even sleeping,
-and within a circuit of ten miles from Roto-rua there is
-enough to be seen to interest an intelligent sight-seer for
-many days. Personally I do not think Roto-rua the
-finest spot in the thermal region. Taupo, with its lake,
-river, and great volcanoes, has, to my mind, higher
-claims. Much as Roto-rua has to show, I suspect that
-the Waiotapu valley offers a still better field to the man
-of science. However, the die has been cast, and Roto-rua,
-as the terminus of the railway and the seat of the
-Government sanatorium, has become a kind of thermal
-capital. There is no need to complain of this. Its
-attractions are many, and, when they are exhausted, you
-can go thence to any other point of the region. You may
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[149]</a></span>drive to Taupo by one coach-road and return by another,
-or may easily reach Waiotapu in a forenoon. Anglers
-start out from Roto-rua to fish in a lake and rivers
-where trout are more than usually abundant. You can
-believe if you like that the chief difficulty met with by
-Roto-rua fishermen is the labour of carrying home their
-enormous catches. But it is, I understand, true that
-the weight of trout caught by fly or minnow in a season
-exceeds forty tons. At any rate&mdash;to drop the style of
-auctioneers’ advertisements&mdash;the trout, chiefly of the
-rainbow kind, are very plentiful, and the sport very
-good. I would say no harder thing of the attractions
-of Roto-rua and its circuit than this,&mdash;those who have
-spent a week there must not imagine that they have
-seen the thermal region. They have not even “done”
-it, still less do they know it. Almost every part of it
-has much to interest, and Roto-rua is the beginning,
-not the end of it all. I know an energetic colonist
-who, when travelling through Italy, devoted one whole
-day to seeing Rome. Even he, however, agrees with
-me that a month is all too short a time for the New
-Zealand volcanic zone. Sociable or elderly tourists
-have a right to make themselves snug at Roto-rua or
-Wairakei. But there are other kinds of travellers; and
-holiday-makers and lovers of scenery, students of
-science, sportsmen, and workers seeking for the space
-and fresh air of the wilderness, will do well to go
-farther afield.</p>
-
-<p>At Roto-rua, as at other spots in the zone, you are
-in a realm of sulphur. It is in the air as well as the
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[150]</a></span>water, tickles your throat, and blackens the silver in
-your pocket. Amongst many compensating returns
-it brightens patches of the landscape with brilliant
-streaks of many hues&mdash;not yellow or golden only, but
-orange, green, blue, blood-red, and even purple. Often
-where the volcanic mud would be most dismal the
-sulphur colours and glorifies it. Alum is found frequently
-alongside it, whitening banks and pool in a
-way that makes Englishmen think of their chalk
-downs. One mountain, Maunga Kakaramea (Mount
-Striped-Earth), has slopes that suggest an immense
-Scottish plaid.</p>
-
-<p class="center space-above"></p>
-<div class="figcenter">
-<img src="images/i_150.jpg" alt="" width="385" height="600" />
-<p class="captioncenter">WAIROA GEYSER</p>
-</div>
-<p class="center space-above"></p>
-
-<p>But more beautiful than the sulphur stripes or the
-coloured pools, and startling and uncommon in a way
-that neither lakes nor mountains can be, are the geysers.
-Since the Pink and White Terraces were blown up,
-they are, perhaps, the most striking and uncommon
-feature of the region, which, if it had nothing else to
-display, would still be well worth a visit. They rival
-those of the Yellowstone and surpass those of Iceland.
-New Zealanders have made a study of geysers, and
-know that they are a capricious race. They burst into
-sudden activity, and as unexpectedly go to sleep again.
-The steam-jet of Orakei-Korako, which shot out of
-the bank of the Waikato at such an odd angle and
-astonished all beholders for a few years, died down
-inexplicably. So did the wonderful Waimangu, which
-threw a column of mud, stones, steam, and boiling
-water at least 1500 feet into mid-air. The Waikité
-Geyser, after a long rest, began to play again at the
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[151]</a></span>time of the Tarawera eruption. That was natural
-enough. But why did it suddenly cease to move after
-the opening of the railway to Roto-rua, two miles
-away? Mr. Ruskin might have sympathised with it
-for so resenting the intrusion of commercialism; but
-tourists did not. Great was the rejoicing when, in
-1907, Waikité awoke after a sleep of thirteen years.
-Curiously enough, another geyser, Pohutu, seems likewise
-attentive to public events, for on the day upon
-which the Colony became a Dominion it spouted for
-no less than fourteen hours, fairly eclipsing the numerous
-outpourings of oratory from human rivals which
-graced the occasion. There are geysers enough and to
-spare in the volcanic zone, to say nothing of the chances
-of a new performer gushing out at any moment. Some
-are large enough to be terrific, others small enough
-to be playful or even amusing. The hydrodynamics of
-Nature are well understood at Roto-rua, where Mr.
-Malfroy’s ingenious toy, the artificial geyser, is an exact
-imitation of their structure and action. The curious
-may examine this, or they may visit the extinct geyser,
-Te Waro, down the empty pipe of which a man may
-be lowered. At fifteen feet below the surface he will
-find himself in a vaulted chamber twice as roomy as a
-ship’s cabin and paved and plastered with silica. From
-the floor another pipe leads to lower subterranean depths.
-In the days of Te Waro’s activity steam rushing up
-into this cavern from below would from time to time
-force the water there violently upward: so the geyser
-played. To-day there are geysers irritable enough to
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">[152]</a></span>be set in motion by slices of soap, just as there are
-solfataras which a lighted match can make to roar, and
-excitable pools which a handful of earth will stir into
-effervescence. More impressive are the geysers which
-spout often, but whose precise time for showing energy
-cannot be counted on&mdash;which are, in fact, the unexpected
-which is always happening. Very beautiful are
-the larger geysers, as, after their first roaring outburst
-and ascent, they stand, apparently climbing up, their
-effort to overcome the force of gravity seeming to
-grow greater and greater as they climb. Every part
-of the huge column seems to be alive; and, indeed, all
-is in motion within it. Innumerable little fountains
-gush up on its sides, to curl back and fall earthwards.
-The sunlight penetrates the mass of water, foam, and
-steam, catching the crystal drops and painting rainbows
-which quiver and dance in the wind. Bravely the
-column holds up, till, its strength spent, it falters and
-sways, and at last falls or sinks slowly down, subsiding
-into a seething whirlpool. Brief, as a rule, is the
-spectacle, but while the fountain is striving to mount
-skyward it is “all a wonder and a wild desire.”</p>
-
-<p class="center space-above"></p>
-<div class="figcenter">
-<img src="images/i_152.jpg" alt="" width="381" height="600" />
-<p class="captioncenter">COOKING IN A HOT SPRING</p>
-</div>
-<p class="center space-above"></p>
-
-<p>Two Maori villages, one at Ohinemutu, the other at
-Whaka-rewa-rewa, are disordered collections of irregular
-huts. Among them the brown natives of the thermal
-district live and move with a gravity and dignity that
-even their half-gaudy, half-dingy European garb cannot
-wholly spoil. Passing their lives as they do on the
-edge of the cold lake, and surrounded by hot pools and
-steam-jets, they seem a more or less amphibious race,
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[153]</a></span>quite untroubled by anxiety about subterranean action.
-They make all the use they can of Nature’s forces,
-employing the steam and hot water for various daily
-wants. Of course they bathe incessantly and wash
-clothes in the pools. They will sit up to their necks in
-the warm fluid, and smoke luxuriously in a bath that
-does not turn cold. But more interesting to watch is
-their cooking. Here the steam of the blow-holes is
-their servant; or they will lay their food in baskets
-of flax in some clean boiling spring, choosing, of course,
-water that is tasteless. Cooking food by steam was and
-still is the favourite method of the Maori. Where
-Nature does not provide the steam, they dig ovens in
-the earth called <i lang="mi" xml:lang="mi">hangi</i>, and, wrapping their food in
-leaves, place it therein on red-hot stones. Then they
-spread more leaves over them, pour water upon these,
-and cover the hole with earth. When the oven is
-opened the food is found thoroughly cooked, and in
-this respect much more palatable than some of the
-cookery of the colonists. In their culinary work the
-Maoris have always been neat and clean. This makes
-their passion for those two terrible delicacies, putrid
-maize and dried shark, something of a puzzle.</p>
-
-<p>Life at Roto-rua is not all sight-seeing; there is a
-serious side to it. Invalids resort thither, as they do
-to Taupo, in ever-increasing numbers. The State
-sanatorium, with its brand-new bath-house, is as well
-equipped now as good medical bathing-places are in
-Europe, and is directed by a physician who was in
-former years a doctor of repute at Bath. Amid the
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">[154]</a></span><i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">embarras des richesses</i> offered by the thermal springs
-of the zone, Roto-rua has been selected as his headquarters,
-because there two chief and distinct kinds
-of hot healing waters are found in close neighbourhood,
-and can be used in the same establishment.
-The two are acid-sulphur and alkaline-sulphur, and
-both are heavily loaded with silica. Unlike European
-springs they gush out at boiling-point, and their
-potency is undoubted. Sufferers tormented with gout
-or crippled with rheumatism seek the acid waters;
-the alkaline act as a nervous sedative and cure various
-skin diseases. There are swimming baths for holiday-makers
-who have nothing the matter with them, and
-massage and the douche for the serious patients.
-Persons without money are cared for by the servants of
-the Government. Wonderful cures are reported, and
-as the fame of the healing waters becomes better and
-better established the number of successful cases steadily
-increases. For the curable come confidently expecting
-to be benefited, and this, of course, is no small
-factor in the efficacy of the baths, indisputable as their
-strength is. Apart, too, from its springs, Roto-rua
-is a sunny place, a thousand feet above the sea. The
-air is light even in midsummer, and the drainage
-through the porous pumice and silica is complete.
-In such a climate, amid such healing influences and
-such varied and interesting surroundings, the sufferer
-who cannot gain health at Roto-rua must be in a bad
-way indeed.</p>
-
-<p class="center space-above"></p>
-<div class="figcenter">
-<img src="images/i_154.jpg" alt="" width="394" height="600" />
-<p class="captioncenter">THE CHAMPAGNE CAULDRON</p>
-</div>
-<p class="center space-above"></p>
-
-<p>In the middle of Roto-rua Lake, a green hill in the
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[155]</a></span>broad blue surface, rises the isle of Mokoia. There is
-nothing extraordinary in the way of beauty there. Still,
-it is high and shapely, with enough foliage to feather
-the rocks and soften the outlines. Botanists know it as
-one of the few spots away from the sea-beach where
-the crimson-flowering pohutu-kawa has deigned to
-grow. In any case, the scene of the legend of Hinemoa
-is sure of a warm corner in all New Zealand hearts.
-The story of the chief’s daughter, and her swim by
-night across the lake to join her lover on the island,
-has about it that quality of grace with which most
-Maori tales are but scantily draped. How many
-versions of it are to be found in print I do not dare to
-guess, and shall not venture to add another to their
-number. For two of New Zealand’s Prime Ministers
-have told the story well, and I can refer my readers to
-the prose of Grey and the verse of Domett. Only do
-I wish that I had heard Maning, the Pakeha Maori,
-repeat the tale, standing on the shore of Mokoia,
-as he repeated it there to Dr. Moore. In passing I
-may, however, do homage to one of the few bits of
-sweet romance to be found in New Zealand literature.
-Long may my countrymen steadfastly refuse to disbelieve
-a word of it! For myself, as one who has
-bathed in Hinemoa’s bath, I hold by every sentence of
-the tradition, and am fully persuaded that Hinemoa’s
-love-sick heart was soothed, as she sat on her flat-topped
-rock on the mainshore, by the soft music
-of the native trumpet blown by her hero on the
-island. After all, the intervening water was some
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">[156]</a></span>miles broad, and even that terrific instrument, a native
-trumpet, might be softened by such a distance.</p>
-
-<p>Long after the happy union of its lovers, Mokoia
-saw another sight when Hongi, “eater of men,”
-marched down with his Ngapuhi musketeers from
-the north to exterminate the Arawa of the lake
-country. To the Roto-rua people Mokoia had in
-times past been a sure refuge. In camp there, they
-commanded the lake with their canoes; no invader
-could reach them, for no invader could bring a fleet
-overland. So it had always been, and the Mokoians
-trusting thereto, paddled about the lake defying and
-insulting Hongi and his men in their camp on the
-farther shore. Yet so sure of victory were the Ngapuhi
-chiefs that each of the leaders selected as his own booty
-the war-canoe that seemed handsomest in his eyes.
-Hongi had never heard of the device by which Mahomet II.
-captured Constantinople, but he was a man of original
-methods, and he decided that canoes could be dragged
-twenty miles or more from the sea-coast to Lake
-Roto-iti. It is said that an Arawa slave or renegade
-in his camp suggested the expedient and pointed out
-the easiest road. At any rate the long haul was
-successfully achieved, and the canoes of the Plumed
-Ones&mdash;Ngapuhi&mdash;paddled from Roto-iti into Roto-rua.
-Then all was over except the slaughter, for the
-Mokoians had but half-a-dozen guns, and Hongi’s
-musketeers from their canoes could pick them off
-without landing.</p>
-
-<p class="center space-above"></p>
-<div class="figcenter">
-<img src="images/i_156.jpg" alt="" width="700" height="450" />
-<p class="captioncenter">EVENING ON LAKE ROTO-RUA</p>
-</div>
-<p class="center space-above"></p>
-
-<p>Fifteen hundred men, women, and children are said
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">[157]</a></span>to have perished in the final massacre. Whether these
-figures were “official” I cannot say. The numbers of
-the slain computed in the Maori stories of their wars
-between 1816 and 1836 are sometimes staggering; but
-scant mercy was shown, and all tradition concurs in
-rating the death-roll far higher than anything known
-before or after. And Mokoia was crowded with refugees
-when it fell before Hongi’s warriors. Of course, many
-of the islanders escaped. Among them a strong
-swimmer, Hori (George) Haupapa, took to the lake
-and managed to swim to the farther shore. The life
-he thus saved on that day of death proved to be long,
-for Haupapa was reputed to be a hundred years old
-when he died in peace.</p>
-
-<p>The famous Hongi was certainly a savage of
-uncommon quickness of perception, as his circumventing
-of the Mokoians in their lake-stronghold shows. He
-had shrewdness enough to perceive that the Maori tribe
-which should first secure firearms would hold New
-Zealand at its mercy; and he was sufficient of a man
-of business to act upon this theory with success and
-utter ruthlessness. He probably did more to destroy
-his race than any white or score of whites; yet his
-memory is not, so far as I know, held in special
-detestation by the Maori. Two or three better
-qualities this destructive cannibal seems to have had,
-for he protected the missionaries and advised his
-children to do so likewise. Then he had a soft voice
-and courteous manner, and, though not great of
-stature, must have been tough, for the bullet-wound in
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">[158]</a></span>his chest which finally killed him took two years
-in doing so. Moreover, his dying exhortation to his
-sons, “Be strong, be brave!” was quite in the right
-spirit for the last words of a Maori warrior.</p>
-
-<p>Hongi would seem to be an easy name enough to
-pronounce. Yet none has suffered more from “the taste
-and fancy of the speller” in books, whether written by
-Englishmen or Colonists. Polack calls him E’Ongi,
-and other early travellers, Shongee, Shongi, and Shungie.
-Finally Mr. J. A. Froude, not to be outdone in inaccuracy,
-pleasantly disposes of him, in <cite>Oceana</cite>, as
-“Hangi.”</p>
-
-<p>“Old Colonial,” in an article written in the <cite>Pall
-Mall Gazette</cite>, gives Mokoia as the scene of a notable
-encounter between Bishop Selwyn and Tukoto, a
-Maori tohunga or wizard. To Selwyn, who claimed
-to be the servant of an all-powerful God, the tohunga
-is reported to have said, as he held out a brown withered
-leaf, “Can you, then, by invoking your God, make
-this dead leaf green again?” The Bishop answered
-that no man could do that. Thereupon Tukoto, after
-chanting certain incantations, threw the leaf into the
-air, and, lo! its colour changed, and it fluttered to earth
-fresh and green once more.</p>
-
-<p class="center space-above"></p>
-<div class="figcenter">
-<img src="images/i_158.jpg" alt="" width="400" height="600" />
-<p class="captioncenter">PLANTING POTATOES</p>
-</div>
-<p class="center space-above"></p>
-
-<p>Among many odd stories told of the juggling feats
-of the vanishing race of tohungas this is one of the
-most curious. More than one version of it is to be
-found. For example, my friend Edward Tregear, in his
-book <cite>The Maori Race</cite>, relates it as an episode of a
-meeting between Selwyn and Te Heu Heu, where
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">[159]</a></span>the trick was the <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">riposte</i> of the chief to an appeal by
-the Bishop to him to change his faith. In that case
-the place of the encounter could scarcely have been
-Mokoia, or the tohunga have been Tukoto.</p>
-
-<p>Whatever may be said&mdash;and a great deal may be
-said&mdash;against the tohunga as the foe of healing and
-knowledge, the religious prophets who from time to
-time rise among the Maori are not always entirely bad
-influences. A certain Rua, who just now commands
-belief among his countrymen, has managed to induce
-a following to found a well-built village on a hill-side
-among the forests of the Uriwera country. There,
-attended by several wives, he inhabits a comfortable
-house. Hard by rises a large circular temple, a
-wonderful effort of his native workmen. He has
-power enough to prohibit tobacco and alcohol in his
-settlement, to enforce sanitary rules, and to make his
-disciples clear and cultivate a large farm. Except
-that he forbids children from going to school, he does
-not appear to set himself against the Government. He
-poses, I understand, as a successor of Christ, and is
-supposed to be able to walk on the surface of water.
-His followers were anxious for ocular proof of this,
-and a hint of their desire was conveyed to the
-prophet. He assembled them on a river’s bank and
-gravely inquired, “Do you all from your hearts believe
-that I can walk on that water?” “We do,”  was the
-response. “Then it is not necessary for me to do it,”
-said he, and walked composedly back to his hut.</p>
-<hr class="chap" />
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">[160]</a></span></p>
-
-
-<div class="chapter"></div>
-<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VI" id="CHAPTER_VI">CHAPTER <abbr title="6">VI</abbr></a></h2>
-
-<p class="center">ALP, FIORD, AND SANCTUARY</p>
-
-
-<p class="center space-above"></p>
-<div class="figcenter">
-<img src="images/i_160.jpg" alt="" width="700" height="464" />
-<p class="captioncenter">THE WAIRAU GORGE</p>
-</div>
-<p class="center space-above"></p>
-
-<p>In one way the south-western is the most enjoyable
-division of picturesque New Zealand. There is little
-here to regret or fear for. Unlike the beauty of the
-northern forests, here is a grandeur that will not pass
-away. Even in the thermal zone you are haunted by
-the memory of the lost terraces; but among the alps
-and fiords of the south-west Nature sits very strongly
-entrenched. From the Buller Gorge to Puysegur
-Point, and from Lake Menzies to Lake Hau-roto, both
-the climate and the lie of the land combine to keep
-man’s destructiveness at bay. Longitudinal ridges
-seam this territory from north to south&mdash;not a single
-dividing chain, but half-a-dozen ranges, lofty, steep, and
-entangled. Rivers thread every valley, and are the
-swiftest, coldest, and most dangerous of that treacherous
-race, the mountain torrents of our islands. On the
-eastern and drier side, settlement can do little to
-spoil the impressiveness of the mountains; for the
-great landscapes&mdash;at any rate north of Lake Hawea&mdash;usually
-begin at or near the snow-line. The edge
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">[161]</a></span>of this is several thousand feet lower than in
-Switzerland. Below it comes a zone sometimes
-dotted with beech-woods, monotonous and seldom
-very high, but beautiful in their vesture of grey-green
-lichen, and carpeted with green and golden
-moss, often deep and not always soaked and slimy
-underneath. Or in the open the sub-alpine zone is
-redeemed by an abundance of ground-flowers such as
-our lower country cannot show. For this is the
-home of the deep, bowl-shaped buttercup called the
-shepherd’s lily, of mountain-daisies and veronicas many
-and varied, and of those groves of the ribbon-wood that
-are more lovely than orchards of almond-trees in spring-time.
-On the rocks above them the mountaineer who
-has climbed in Switzerland will recognise the edelweiss.
-Among the blanched snow-grass and coarse tussocks,
-the thorny “Wild Irishman,” and the spiky “Spaniard,”
-with its handsome <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">chevaux-de-frise</i> of yellow-green
-bayonets, conspire to make riding difficult on the flats
-and terraces. These last often attract the eye by their
-high faces, bold curves, and curious, almost smooth,
-regularity. For the rest, the more eastern of the
-mountains usually become barer and duller as the
-watershed is left farther behind. Oases of charm
-they have, where the flora of some sheltered ravine
-or well-hidden lake detains the botanist; but, as a
-rule, their brilliant sunshine and exhilarating air, their
-massive forms and wild intersecting rivers, have much
-to do to save them from being summed up as stony,
-arid, bleak, and tiresome.</p>
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">[162]</a></span></p>
-
-<p class="center space-above"></p>
-<div class="figcenter">
-<img src="images/i_162.jpg" alt="" width="700" height="453" />
-<p class="captioncenter">IN THE HOOKER VALLEY</p>
-</div>
-<p class="center space-above"></p>
-
-<p>At its worst, however, the eastern region may claim
-to be serviceable to the lover of scenery as well as to
-the sheep-farmer. Its thinly-grassed slopes, bare rocks,
-and fan-shaped shingle-slips furnish, at any rate, a foil
-to the grandeur of the central range and the luxuriance
-of the west. It is, indeed, not easy to believe that such
-glaciers and passes, such lakes and sea-gulfs, lie beyond
-the stern barrier, and the enjoyment, when wonderland
-is penetrated, is all the greater. For the rest, any
-English reader who cares to feel himself among our
-tussock-clad ranges will find a masterly sketch of
-them and their atmosphere in the first chapters of
-Samuel Butler’s <em>Erewhon</em>. Butler’s sheep-station,
-“Mesopotamia” by name, lay among the alps of
-Canterbury, and the satirist himself did some exploring
-work in his pastoral days, work concerning which
-I recall a story told me by an old settler whom I will
-call the Sheriff. This gentleman, meeting Butler one
-day in Christchurch in the early sixties, noticed that
-his face and neck were burned to the colour of red-chocolate.
-“Hullo, my friend,” said he, “you have
-been among the snow!” “Hush!”  answered Butler
-in an apprehensive whisper, and looking round the
-smoking-room nervously, “how do you know that?”
-“By the colour of your face; nothing more,” was
-the reply. They talked a while, and Butler presently
-admitted that he had been up to the dividing range and
-had seen a great sight away beyond it. “I’ve found
-a hundred thousand acres of ‘country,’” said he.
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">[163]</a></span>“Naturally I wish you to keep this quiet till I have
-proved it and applied to the Government for a pastoral
-licence.” “Well, I congratulate you,” said the Sheriff.
-“If it will carry sheep you’ve made your fortune, that’s
-all”; but he intimated his doubts as to whether the
-blue expanse seen from far off could be grass country.
-And indeed, when next he met Butler, the latter shook
-his head ruefully: “You were quite right; it was all
-bush.” I have often wondered whether that experience
-was the basis of the passage that tells of the thrilling
-discovery of Erewhon beyond the pass guarded by
-the great images.</p>
-
-<p>In one of his letters about the infant Canterbury
-settlement Butler gives a description of Aorangi, or
-Mount Cook, which, so far as I know, is the earliest
-sketch of the mountain by a writer of note. It was,
-however, not an Englishman, but a German man of
-science, Sir Julius von Haast, who published the first
-careful and connected account of the Southern Alps.
-Von Haast was not a mountaineer, but a geologist, and
-though he attacked Aorangi, he did not ascend more
-than two-thirds of it. But he could write, and had an
-eye for scenery as well as for strata. The book which he
-published on the geology of Canterbury and Westland
-did very much the same service to the Southern Alps
-that von Hochstetter’s contemporary work did for the
-hot lakes. The two German <em>savants</em> brought to the
-knowledge of the world outside two very different but
-remarkable regions. It is true that the realm of flowery
-uplands, glaciers, ice-walls, and snow-fields told of by
-von Haast, had nothing in it so uncommon as the
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">[164]</a></span>geysers and so strange as the pink and white terraces
-made familiar by von Hochstetter. But the higher
-Southern Alps, when once you are among them, may
-fairly challenge comparison with those of Switzerland.
-Their elevation is not equal by two or three thousand
-feet, but the lower level of their snow-line just about
-makes up the disparity. Then, too, on the flanks of
-their western side the mountains of the south have a
-drapery of forest far more varied and beautiful than the
-Swiss pine woods. On the western side, too, the foot of
-the mountain rampart is virtually washed by the ocean.
-Take the whole mountain territory of the south-west
-with its passes, lakes, glaciers, river-gorges, and fiords,
-and one need not hesitate to assert that it holds its
-own when compared with what Nature has done in
-Switzerland, Savoy, and Dauphiny.</p>
-
-<p class="center space-above"></p>
-<div class="figcenter">
-<img src="images/i_164.jpg" alt="" width="700" height="459" />
-<p class="captioncenter">MOUNT COOK</p>
-</div>
-<p class="center space-above"></p>
-
-<p>Aorangi, with its 12,349 feet, exceeds the peak of
-Teneriffe by 159 feet. It is the highest point in our
-islands, for Mount Tasman, its neighbour, which
-comes second, fails to equal it by 874 feet. Only
-two or three other summits surpass 11,000 feet, and
-the number which attain to anything over 10,000 is
-not great. From the south-west, Aorangi, with the
-ridge attached to it, resembles the high-pitched roof
-of a Gothic church with a broad, massive spire standing
-up from the northern end. When, under strong sunlight,
-the ice glitters on the steep crags, and the snow-fields,
-unearthly in their purity, contrast with the green
-tint of the crawling glaciers, the great mountain is a
-spectacle worthy of its fame. Yet high and shapely
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">[165]</a></span>as it is, and worthy of its name, Cloud-in-the-Heavens,
-it is not the most beautiful mountain in the islands.
-That honour may be claimed by Egmont, just as
-Tongariro may demand precedence as the venerated
-centre of Maori reverence and legend. Nor, formidable
-as Aorangi looks, is it, I should imagine, as impracticable
-as one or two summits farther south, notably Mount
-Balloon. However, unlike Kosciusko in Australia, it
-is a truly imposing height, and worthy of its premier
-place. With it the story of New Zealand alpine-climbing
-has been bound up for a quarter of a century, and such
-romance as that story has to show is chiefly found in
-attempts, successful and unsuccessful, to reach the topmost
-point of Aorangi. Canterbury had been settled
-for thirty-two years before the first of these was made.
-For the low snow-line, great cliffs, and enormous glaciers
-of the Southern Alps have their especial cause of origin.
-They bespeak an extraordinary steepness in the rock
-faces, and a boisterous climate with rapid and baffling
-changes of temperature. Not a climber or explorer
-amongst them but has been beaten back at times by
-tempests, or held a prisoner for many hours, listening
-through a sleepless night to the howling of north-west
-or south-west wind&mdash;lucky if he is not drenched to the
-skin by rain or flood. As for the temperature, an
-observer once noted a fall of fifty-three degrees in a
-few hours. On the snow-fields the hot sun blisters
-the skin of your face and neck, and even at a lower
-level makes a heavy coat an intolerable burden; but
-the same coat&mdash;flung impatiently on the ground and
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">[166]</a></span>left there&mdash;may be picked up next morning frozen as
-stiff as a board. These extremes of heat and cold,
-these sudden and furious gales, are partly, I imagine,
-the cause of the loose and rotten state of much of the
-rock-surface, of the incessant falls of stones, ice-blocks,
-and snow, and of the number and size of the avalanches.
-At any rate, the higher alps showed a front which, to
-ordinary dwellers on our plains, seemed terrific, and
-which even gave pause to mountain-climbers of some
-Swiss experience. So even von Haast’s book did not
-do much more than increase the number of visitors to
-the more accessible glaciers and sub-alpine valleys. The
-spirit of mountaineering lay dormant year after year,
-and it was not until 1882 that an unexpected invader
-from Europe delivered the sudden and successful stroke
-that awoke it. The raider was Mr. Green, an Irish
-clergyman, who, with two Swiss guides, Boss and
-Kaufmann, landed in the autumn of 1882. His
-object was the ascent of Aorangi; he had crossed the
-world to make it. He found our inner mountains just
-as Nature had left them, and, before beginning his climb,
-had to leave human life behind, and camp at the foot
-of the mountain with so much of the resources of
-civilisation as he could take with him. One of his
-first encounters with a New Zealand river in a hurry
-ended in the loss of his light cart, which was washed
-away. Its wrecked and stranded remains lay for years
-in the river-bed a battered relic of a notable expedition.
-To cap his troubles, a pack-horse carrying flour, tea,
-sugar, and spare clothing, coolly lay down when fording<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">[167]</a></span>
-a shallow torrent, and rolled on its back&mdash;and
-therefore on its pack&mdash;in the rapid water. Ten days
-of preliminary tramping and clambering, during which
-five separate camps were formed, only carried the party
-with their provisions and apparatus to a height of less
-than 4000 feet above the sea. They had toiled over
-moraine boulders, been entangled in dense and prickly
-scrubs, and once driven back by a fierce north-wester.
-On the other hand the scenery was glorious and the
-air exhilarating. Nothing round them seemed tame
-except the wild birds. Keas, wekas, and blue ducks
-were as confiding and fearless as our birds are wont
-to be till man has taught them distrust and terror.
-Among these the Swiss obtained the raw material of a
-supper almost as easily as in a farmyard. On the 25th
-of February the final ascent was begun. But Aorangi
-did not yield at the first summons. Days were consumed
-in futile attempts from the south and east. On
-their first day they were checked by finding themselves
-on a crumbling knife-like ridge, from which protruded
-spines of rock that shook beneath their tread. A
-kick, so it seemed, would have sent the surface into
-the abyss on either side. The bridge that leads to
-the Mahometan paradise could not be a more fearful
-passage. Two days later they were baffled on the
-east side by walls of rock from which even Boss and
-Kaufmann turned hopelessly away. It was not until
-March 2, after spending a night above the clouds, that
-they hit upon a new glacier, the Linda, over which
-they found a winding route to the north-eastern
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">[168]</a></span>ridge which joins Cook to Tasman. The day’s work
-was long and severe, and until late in the afternoon
-the issue was doubtful. A gale burst upon them from
-the north-west, and they had to go on through curling
-mists and a wind that chilled them to the bone. It was
-six o’clock in the evening when they found themselves
-standing on the icy scalp of the obstinate mountain,
-and even then they did not attain the highest point.
-There was not a moment to lose if they were to regain
-some lower point of comparative security; for March
-is the first month of autumn in South New Zealand,
-and the evenings then begin to draw in. So Mr. Green
-had to retreat when within either a few score feet or a
-few score yards of the actual goal. As it was, night
-closed in on the party when they were but a short way
-down, and they spent the dark hours on a ledge less
-than two feet wide, high over an icy ravine. Sleep or
-faintness alike meant death. They stood there hour
-after hour singing, stamping, talking, and listening to
-the rain pattering on rock and hissing on snow. All
-night long the wind howled: the wall at their backs
-vibrated to the roar of the avalanches: water streaming
-down its face soaked their clothing. For food they
-had three meat lozenges each. They sucked at empty
-pipes, and pinched and nudged each other to drive
-sleep away. By the irony of fate it happened that
-close beneath them were wide and almost comfortable
-shelves. But night is not the time to wander
-about the face of a precipice, looking for sleeping
-berths, 10,000 feet above the sea. Mr. Green and his
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">[169]</a></span>guides were happy to escape with life and limb, and
-not to have to pay such a price for victory as was
-paid by Whymper’s party after scaling the Matterhorn.</p>
-
-<p>Mr. Green’s climb, the tale of which is told easily
-in his own bright and workmanlike book, gave an
-enlivening shock to young New Zealand. It had been
-left to a European to show them the way; but the
-lesson was not wasted. They now understood that
-mountains were something more than rough country,
-some of which carried sheep, while some did not. They
-learned that they had an alpine playground equal to
-any in the Old World&mdash;a new realm where danger might
-be courted and exploits put on record. The dormant
-spirit of mountaineering woke up at last. Many difficulties
-confronted the colonial lads. They had everything
-to learn and no one to teach them. Without
-guides, equipment, or experience&mdash;without detailed maps,
-or any preliminary smoothing of the path, they had to
-face unforeseen obstacles and uncommon risks. They
-had to do everything for themselves. Only by endangering
-their necks could they learn the use of rope
-and ice-axe. Only by going under fire, and being
-grazed or missed by stones and showers of ice, could
-they learn which hours of the day and conditions of the
-weather were most dangerous, and when slopes might
-be sought and when ravines must be shunned. They
-had to teach themselves the trick of the <em>glissade</em> and the
-method of crossing frail bridges of snow. Appliances
-they could import from Europe. As for guides, some of
-them turned guides themselves. Of course they started
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">[170]</a></span>with a general knowledge of the climate, of “roughing
-it” in the hills, and of life in the open. They could
-scramble to the heights to which sheep scramble, and
-could turn round in the wilderness without losing their
-way. Thews and sinews, pluck and enthusiasm, had to
-do the rest, and gradually did it. As Mr. Malcolm
-Ross, one of the adventurous band, has pointed out
-with legitimate pride, their experience was gained and
-their work done without a single fatal accident&mdash;a happy
-record, all the more striking by contrast with the heavy
-toll of life levied by the rivers of our mountain territory.
-The company of climbers, therefore, must have joined
-intelligence to resolution, for, up to the present, they
-have broken nothing but records. Mr. Mannering, one
-of the earliest of them, attacked Aorangi five times
-within five years. After being thwarted by such accidents
-as rain-storms, the illness of a companion, and&mdash;most
-irritating of all&mdash;the dropping of a “swag” holding
-necessaries, he, with his friend Mr. Dixon, at last
-attained to the ice-cap in December 1890. Their final
-climb was a signal exhibition of courage and endurance.
-They left their bivouac (7480 feet in air) at four
-o’clock in the morning, and, after nine hours of plodding
-upward in soft snow had to begin the labour of
-cutting ice-steps. In the morning they were roasted by
-the glaring sun; in the shade of the afternoon their
-rope and coats were frozen stiff, and the skin from their
-hands stuck to the steel of their ice-axes. Dixon, a
-thirteen-stone man, fell through a snow-wreath, and was
-only saved by a supreme effort. Pelted by falling ice
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">[171]</a></span>the two amateurs cut their way onward, and at half-past
-five in the evening found themselves unscathed and
-only about a hundred feet below the point gained by
-Mr. Green and his Swiss. They made an effort to hew
-steps up to the apex of the ice-cap, but time was too
-short and the wind was freshening; as it was they had to
-work their way down by lantern light. Now they had
-to creep backwards, now to clean out the steps cut in
-the daylight; now their way was lost, again they found
-it, and discovered that some gulf had grown wider.
-They did not regain their bivouac till nearly three in
-the morning after twenty-three hours of strain to body
-and mind.<a name="FNanchor_4_4" id="FNanchor_4_4"></a><a href="#Footnote_4_4" class="fnanchor">[4]</a></p>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-<p><a name="Footnote_4_4" id="Footnote_4_4"></a><a href="#FNanchor_4_4"><span class="label">[4]</span></a> For Mr. Mannering’s narrative see <cite>With Axe and Rope in the New
-Zealand Alps</cite>, London, 1891.</p></div>
-
-<p class="center space-above"></p>
-<div class="figcenter">
-<img src="images/i_172.jpg" alt="" width="397" height="600" />
-<p class="captioncenter">MOUNT SEFTON</p>
-</div>
-<p class="center space-above"></p>
-
-<p>Four years later came victory, final and complete,
-and won in a fashion peculiarly gratifying to young
-New Zealand. News came that Mr. E. A. Fitzgerald,
-a skilled mountaineer, was coming from Europe to
-achieve the technical success which Green and Mannering
-had just missed. Some climbers of South Canterbury
-resolved to anticipate him, and, for the honour of the
-colony, be the first to stand on the coveted pinnacle.
-A party of three&mdash;Messrs. Clark, Graham, and Fyfe&mdash;left
-Timaru, accordingly, and on Christmas Day 1894
-achieved their object. Mr. Fitzgerald arrived only to
-find that he had been forestalled, and must find other
-peaks to conquer. Of these there was no lack; he
-had some interesting experiences. After his return to
-England he remarked to the writer that climbing in
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">[172]</a></span>the Andes was plain and easy in comparison with the
-dangers and difficulties of the Southern Alps. One of
-his severest struggles, however, was not with snow
-and ice, but with a river and forest in Westland. Years
-before, Messrs. Harper and Blakiston had surmounted
-the saddle&mdash;or, more properly speaking, wall&mdash;at the
-head of the Hooker glacier, and looking over into
-Westland, had ascertained that it would be possible to
-go down to the coast by that way. Government surveyors
-had confirmed this impression, but no one had
-traversed the pass. It remained for Mr. Fitzgerald to
-do this and show that the route was practicable. He
-and his guide Zurbriggen accomplished the task. They
-must, however, have greatly underestimated the difficulties
-which beset those who would force a passage
-along the bed of an untracked western torrent. Pent
-in a precipitous gorge, they had to wade and stumble
-along a wild river-trough. Here they clung to or
-clambered over dripping rocks, there they were numbed
-in the ice-cold and swirling water. Enormous boulders
-encumbered and almost barred the ravine, so that the
-river itself had had to scoop out subterranean passages
-through which the explorers were fain to creep. Taking
-to the shore, as they won their way downward, they
-tried to penetrate the matted scrubs. Even had they
-been bushmen, and armed with tomahawks and slashers,
-they would have found this no easy task. As it was
-they returned to the river-bed and trudged along, wet
-and weary; their provisions gave out, and Fitzgerald
-had to deaden the pangs of hunger by chewing black
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">[173]</a></span>tobacco. He found the remedy effectual, but very
-nauseating. Without gun or powder and shot, and
-knowing nothing of the botany of the country, they
-ran very close to starvation, and must have lost their
-lives had a sudden flood filled the rivers’ tributaries and
-so cut them off from the coast. As it was they did the
-final forty-eight hours of walking without food, and
-were on their last legs when they heard the dogs barking
-in a surveyor’s camp, where their adventure ended.</p>
-
-<p>Not caring to follow in the wake of others, Mr.
-Fitzgerald left Aorangi alone, but Zurbriggen climbed
-thither on his own account in 1895. An Anglo-Colonial
-party gained the top ten years later, so that the ice-cap
-may now almost be classed among familiar spots. Still,
-as late as 1906 something still remained to be done on
-the mountain&mdash;namely, to go up on one side and go
-down on the other. This feat, so simple to state, but
-so difficult to perform, was accomplished last year by
-three New Zealanders and an Englishman. To make
-sure of having time enough, they started from
-their camp&mdash;which was at a height of between 6000
-and 7000 feet on the eastern side&mdash;three-quarters of
-an hour before midnight. Hours of night walking
-followed over moonlit snows, looked down upon by
-ghostly crests. When light came the day was fine
-and grew bright and beautiful,&mdash;so clear that looking
-down they could see the ocean beyond the eastern shore,
-the homesteads standing out on the yellow-green plains,
-and on the snows, far, very far down, their own footprints
-dotting the smooth whiteness beneath them. It
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">[174]</a></span>took them, however, nearly fourteen hours to reach the
-summit, and then the most dangerous part of their
-work only began. They had to gain the Hooker
-glacier by creeping down frosted rocks as slippery as an
-ice-slide. Long bouts of step-cutting had to be done,
-and in places the men had to be lowered by the rope
-one at a time. Instead of reaching their goal&mdash;the
-Hermitage Inn below the glacier&mdash;in twenty hours,
-they consumed no less than thirty-six. During these
-they were almost incessantly in motion, and as a display
-of stamina the performance, one imagines, must rank
-high among the exertions of mountaineers. Many fine
-spectacles repaid them. One of these, a western view
-from the rocks high above the Hooker glacier, is
-thus described by Mr. Malcolm Ross, who was of
-the party:&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>“The sun dipped to the rim of the sea, and the
-western heavens were glorious with colour, heightened
-by the distant gloom. Almost on a level with us,
-away beyond Sefton, a bank of flame-coloured cloud
-stretched seaward from the lesser mountains towards
-the ocean, and beyond that again was a far-away
-continent of cloud, sombre and mysterious as if it were
-part of another world. The rugged mountains and the
-forests and valleys of southern Westland were being
-gripped in the shades of night. A long headland, still
-thousands of feet below on the south-west, stretched
-itself out into the darkened sea, a thin line of white
-at its base indicating the tumbling breakers of the
-Pacific Ocean.”</p>
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">[175]</a></span></p>
-
-<p class="center space-above"></p>
-<div class="figcenter">
-<img src="images/i_174.jpg" alt="" width="700" height="464" />
-<p class="captioncenter">THE TASMAN GLACIER</p>
-</div>
-<p class="center space-above"></p>
-
-<p>Mr. Green, as he looked out from a half-way
-halting-place on the ascent of Aorangi, and took in
-the succession of crowded, shining crests and peaks
-surging up to the north and north-east of him, felt
-the Alpine-climber’s spirit glow within him. Here
-was a wealth of peaks awaiting conquest; here was
-adventure enough for the hands and feet of a whole
-generation of mountaineers. Scarcely one of the
-heights had then been scaled. This is not so now.
-Peak after peak of the Southern Alps has fallen to
-European or Colonial enterprise, and the ambitious
-visitor to the Mount Cook region, in particular, will
-have some trouble to find much that remains virgin and
-yet accessible. For the unambitious, on the other hand,
-everything has been made easy. The Government and
-its tourist department has taken the district in hand
-almost as thoroughly as at Roto-rua, and the holiday-maker
-may count on being housed, fed, driven about,
-guided, and protected efficiently and at a reasonable
-price. Happily, too, nothing staring or vulgar defaces
-the landscape. Nor do tourists, yet, throng the valleys
-in those insufferable crowds that spoil so much romance
-in Switzerland and Italy. Were they more numerous
-than they are, the scale of the ranges and glaciers is too
-large to allow the vantage-spots to be mobbed. Take
-the glaciers: take those that wind along the flanks of
-the Mount Cook range on its eastern and western sides,
-and, converging to the south, are drained by the river
-Tasman. The Tasman glacier itself is eighteen miles
-long; its greatest width is over two miles; its average
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">[176]</a></span>width over a mile. The Murchison glacier, which
-joins the Tasman below the glacier ice, is more than
-ten miles long. And to the west and south-west of the
-range aforesaid, the Hooker and Mueller glaciers are
-on a scale not much less striking. The number of
-tributary glaciers that feed these enormous ice-serpents
-has not, I fancy, been closely estimated, but from
-heights lofty enough to overlook most of the glacier
-system that veins the Aorangi region, explorers have
-counted over fifty seen from one spot. Perhaps the
-finest sight in the alpine country&mdash;at any rate to those
-who do not scale peaks&mdash;is the Hochstetter ice-fall.
-This frozen cataract comes down from a great snow
-plateau, some 9000 feet above the sea, to the east of
-Aorangi. The fall descends, perhaps, 4000 feet to the
-Tasman glacier. It is much more than a mile in
-breadth, and has the appearance of tumbling water,
-storm-beaten, broken, confused, surging round rocks.
-It has, indeed, something more than the mere appearance
-of wild unrest, for water pours through its clefts,
-and cubes and toppling pinnacles of ice break away and
-crash as they fall from hour to hour.</p>
-
-<p class="center space-above"></p>
-<div class="figcenter">
-<img src="images/i_176.jpg" alt="" width="700" height="474" />
-<p class="captioncenter">THE CECIL AND WALTER PEAKS</p>
-</div>
-<p class="center space-above"></p>
-
-<p>If the Hochstetter has a rival of its own kind in
-the island, that would seem to be the Douglas glacier.
-This, scarcely known before 1907, was then visited
-and examined by Dr. Mackintosh Bell. By his account
-it surpasses the Hochstetter in this, that instead of
-confronting the stern grandeur of an Alpine valley, it
-looks down upon the evergreen forest and unbroken
-foliage of Westland. The glacier itself comes down
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">[177]</a></span>from large, high-lying snow-fields over a mighty cliff,
-estimated to be 3000 feet in height. The upper half of
-the wall is clothed with rugged ice; but the lower rock-face
-is too steep for this, and its perpendicular front is
-bare. Beneath it the glacier continues. Waterfall
-succeeds waterfall: thirty-five in all stream down from
-the ice above to the ice below. Mingled with the
-sound of their downpouring the explorers heard the
-crashing of the avalanches. Every few minutes one of
-these slid or shot into the depths. Roar followed
-roar like cannon fired in slow succession, so that the
-noise echoing among the mountains drowned the voices
-of the wondering beholders.</p>
-
-<p>Oddly enough the lakes of the South Island are nearly
-all on the drier side of the watershed. Kanieri and
-Mahinapua, two well-known exceptions, are charming,
-but small. A third exception, Brunner, is large, but
-lies among wooded hills without any special pretensions
-to grandeur. For the rest the lakes are to the east of
-the dividing range, and may be regarded as the complement
-of the fiords to the west thereof. But their line
-stretches out much farther to the north, for they may
-be said to include Lake Roto-roa, a long, narrow, but
-beautiful water, folded among the mountains of Nelson.
-Then come Brunner and Sumner, and the series continues
-in fine succession southwards, ending with Lake
-Hau-roto near the butt-end of the island. Broadly
-speaking, the lake scenery improves as you go south.
-Wakatipu is in advance of Wanaka and Hawea, Te
-Anau of Wakatipu; while Manapouri, beautiful in
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">[178]</a></span>irregularity, fairly surpasses all its fellows. The
-northern half of Wakatipu is, indeed, hard to beat; but
-the southern arm, though grand, curves among steeps
-too hard and treeless to please the eye altogether. In
-the same way Te Anau would be the finest lake in the
-islands were it not for the flatness of most of the
-eastern shore; the three long western arms are
-magnificent, and so is the northern part of the main
-water. But of Manapouri one may write without ifs
-and buts. Its deep, clear waters moving round a
-multitude of islets; its coves and cliff-points, gulf
-beyond gulf and cape beyond cape; the steeps that
-overhang it, so terrific, yet so richly clothed; the
-unscathed foliage sprinkled with tree-flowers,&mdash;all form
-as faultless a combination of lovely scenes as a wilderness
-can well show. From the western arm that reaches
-out as though to penetrate to the sea-fiords not far
-away beyond the mountains, to the eastern bay, whence
-the deep volume of the Waiau flows out, there is
-nothing to spoil the charm. What Lucerne is to
-Switzerland Manapouri is to New Zealand. Man has
-not helped it with historical associations and touches of
-foreign colour. On the other hand, man has not yet
-spoiled it with big hotels, blatant advertisements, and
-insufferable press of tourists.</p>
-
-<p class="center space-above"></p>
-<div class="figcenter">
-<img src="images/i_178.jpg" alt="" width="700" height="464" />
-<p class="captioncenter">MANAPOURI</p>
-</div>
-<p class="center space-above"></p>
-
-<p>In one respect&mdash;their names&mdash;our South Island lakes
-are more lucky than our mountains. Most of them
-have been allowed to keep the names given them by
-the Maori. When the Polynesian syllables are given
-fair play&mdash;which is not always the case in the white man’s
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">[179]</a></span>mouth&mdash;they are usually liquid or dignified. Manapouri,
-Te Anau, Roto-roa, and Hau-roto, are fair
-examples. Fortunately the lakes which we have chosen
-to rechristen have seldom been badly treated. Coleridge,
-Christabel, Alabaster, Tennyson, Ellesmere,
-Marian, Hilda, are pleasant in sound and suggestion.
-Our mountains have not come off so well&mdash;in the
-South Island at any rate. Some have fared better than
-others. Mount Aspiring, Mount Pisa, the Sheerdown,
-the Remarkables, Mounts Aurum, Somnus, Cosmos,
-Fourpeaks, Hamilton, Wakefield, Darwin, Brabazon,
-Alexander, Rolleston, Franklin, Mitre Peak, Terror
-Peak, and the Pinnacle, are not names to cavil at.
-But I cannot think that such appellations as Cook,
-Hutt, Brown, Stokes, Jukes, Largs, Hopkins, Dick,
-Thomas, Harris, Pillans, Hankinson, Thompson,
-and Skelmorlies, do much to heighten scenic grandeur.
-However, there they are, and there, doubtless, they
-will remain; for we are used to them, so do not mind
-them. We should even, it may be, be sorry to lose
-them.</p>
-
-<p class="center space-above"></p>
-<div class="figcenter">
-<img src="images/i_180.jpg" alt="" width="700" height="459" />
-<p class="captioncenter">MITRE PEAK</p>
-</div>
-<p class="center space-above"></p>
-
-<p>The Sounds&mdash;the watery labyrinth of the south-west
-coast&mdash;have but one counterpart in the northern hemisphere,
-the fiords of Norway. Whether their number
-should be reckoned to be fifteen or nineteen is of no
-consequence. Enough that between Big Bay and Puysegur
-Point they indent the littoral with successive
-inlets winding between cliffs, straying round islets and
-bluffs, and penetrating deep into the heart of the Alps.
-They should be called fiords, for that name alone gives
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">[180]</a></span>any suggestion of their slender length and of the towering
-height of the mountains that confine them. But
-the pioneers and sailors of three generations ago chose
-to dub them “The Sounds,” so The Sounds they remain.
-It is best to approach them from the south, beginning
-with Perseverance Inlet and ending with Milford Sound.
-For the heights round Milford are the loftiest of any,
-and after their sublimity the softer aspect of some of
-the other gulfs is apt to lose impressiveness. The vast
-monotony and chilly uneasiness of the ocean without
-heightens the contrast at the entrances. Outside
-the guardian headlands all is cold and uneasy. Between
-one inlet and another the sea beats on sheer
-faces of cruel granite. Instantaneous is the change when
-the gates are entered, and the voyager finds his vessel
-floating on a surface narrower than a lake and more
-peaceful than a river. The very throbbing of a
-steamer’s engines becomes gentler and reaches the ears
-softly like heart-beats. The arms of the mountains
-seem stretched to shut out tumult and distraction.
-Milford, for instance, is a dark-green riband of salt
-water compressed between cliffs less than a mile apart,
-and in one pass narrowing to a width of five hundred
-yards. Yet though the bulwarks of your ship are near
-firm earth, the keel is far above it. All the Sounds are
-deep: when Captain Cook moored the <em>Endeavour</em> in
-Dusky Sound her yards interlocked with the branches
-of trees. But Milford is probably the deepest of all.
-There the sounding-line has reached bottom at nearly
-thirteen hundred feet. Few swirling currents seem to
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">[181]</a></span>disturb these quiet gulfs; and the sweep of the western
-gales, too, is shut out from most of the bays and
-reaches. The force that seems at work everywhere
-and always is water. Clouds and mists in a thousand
-changing shapes fleet above the mountain crests, are
-wreathed round peaks, or drift along the fronts of the
-towering cliffs. When they settle down the rain falls
-in sheets: an inch or thereabouts may be registered
-daily for weeks. But it does not always rain in the
-Sounds, and when it ceases and the sunshine streams
-down, the innumerable waterfalls are a spectacle indeed.
-At any time the number of cascades and cataracts is
-great: the roar of the larger and the murmur of the
-smaller are the chief sounds heard; they take the
-place of the wind that has been left outside the great
-enclosures. But after heavy rain&mdash;and most rains on
-that coast are heavy&mdash;the number of waterfalls defies
-computation. They seam the mountain-sides with white
-lines swiftly moving, embroider green precipices with
-silver, and churn up the calm sea-water with their
-plunging shock. The highest of them all, the Sutherland,
-is not on the sea-shore, but lies fourteen miles up a
-densely-wooded valley. It is so high&mdash;1904 feet&mdash;that
-the three cascades of its descent seem almost too slender
-a thread for the mighty amphitheatre behind and around
-them. Than the cliffs themselves nothing could well
-be finer. Lofty as they are, however, they are surpassed
-by some of the walls that hem in Milford;
-for these are computed to rise nearly five thousand feet.
-They must be a good second to those stupendous sea-faces<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">[182]</a></span>
-in eastern Formosa which are said to exceed six
-thousand feet. Nor in volume or energy is the Sutherland
-at all equal to the Bowen, which falls on the sea-beach
-at Milford in two leaps. Its height in all is,
-perhaps, but six hundred feet. But the upper fall
-dives into a bowl of hard rock with such weight that
-the whole watery mass rebounds in a noble curve to
-plunge white and foaming to the sea’s edge.</p>
-
-<p>There is no need to measure heights, calculate bulk,
-or compare one sight with another in a territory
-where beauty and grandeur are spent so freely. The
-glory of the Sounds is not found in this cliff or that
-waterfall, in the elevation of any one range or the especial
-grace of any curve or channel. It comes from the
-astonishing succession, yet variety, of grand yet beautiful
-prospects, of charm near at hand contrasted with the
-sternness of the rocky and snowy wilderness which
-forms the aerial boundary of the background. The
-exact height of cliffs and mountain-steeps matters little.
-What is important is that&mdash;except on the steepest of
-the great walls of Milford&mdash;almost every yard of their
-surface is beautified with a drapery of frond and foliage.
-Where the angle is too acute for trees to root themselves
-ferns and creepers cloak the faces; where even
-these fail green mosses save the rocks from bareness,
-and contrast softly with the sparkling threads of ever-present
-water.</p>
-
-<p class="center space-above"></p>
-<div class="figcenter">
-<img src="images/i_182.jpg" alt="" width="700" height="460" />
-<p class="captioncenter">IN MILFORD SOUND</p>
-</div>
-<p class="center space-above"></p>
-
-<p>Scarcely anywhere can the eye take in the whole of
-an inlet at once. The narrower fiords wind, the wider
-are sprinkled with islets. As the vessel slowly moves
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">[183]</a></span>on, the scene changes; a fresh vista opens out with
-every mile; the gazer comes to every bend with undiminished
-expectation. The two longest of the gulfs
-measure twenty-two miles from gates to inmost ends.
-Milford is barely nine miles long&mdash;but how many
-scenes are met with in those nine! No sooner does
-the sense of confinement between dark and terrific
-heights become oppressive than some high prospect
-opens out to the upward gaze, and the sunshine
-lightens up the wooded shoulders and glittering snow-fields
-of some distant mount. Then the whole realm
-is so utterly wild, so unspoiled and unprofaned. Man
-has done nothing to injure or wreck it. Nowhere
-have you to avert your eyes to avoid seeing blackened
-tracts, the work of axe and fire. The absurdities of
-man’s architecture are not here, nor his litter, dirt
-and stenches. The clean, beautiful wilderness goes
-on and on, far as the eye can travel and farther by
-many a league. Protected on one side by the ocean,
-on the other by the mountainous labyrinth, it stretches
-with its deep gulfs and virgin valleys to remain the
-delight and refreshment of generations wearied with
-the smoke and soilure of the cities of men.</p>
-
-<p class="center space-above"></p>
-<div class="figcenter">
-<img src="images/i_184.jpg" alt="" width="401" height="600" />
-<p class="captioncenter">ON THE CLINTON RIVER</p>
-</div>
-<p class="center space-above"></p>
-
-<p>We often call this largest of our national parks a
-paradise. To apply the term to such a wilderness
-is a curious instance of change in the use of words.
-The Persian “paradise” was a hunting-ground where
-the great king could chase wild beasts without interruption.
-In our south-west, on the contrary, guns and
-bird-snaring are alike forbidden, and animal life is
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">[184]</a></span>preserved, not to be hunted, but to be observed. As most
-of my readers know, the birds of our islands, by their
-variety and singularity, atone for the almost complete
-absence of four-footed mammals. The most curious
-are the flightless kinds. Not that these comprise all that
-is interesting in our bird-life by any means. The
-rare stitch-bird; those beautiful singers, the tui, bell-bird,
-and saddle-back; many marine birds, and those
-friendly little creatures the robins and fantails of the
-bush, amuse others as well as the zoologists. But the
-flightless birds&mdash;the roa, the grey kiwi, the takahé, the
-kakapo, the flightless duck of the Aucklands, and the
-weka&mdash;are our chief scientific treasures, unless the
-tuatara lizard and the short-tailed bat may be considered
-to rival them. Some of our ground-birds have the
-further claim on the attention of science, that they are
-the relatives of the extinct and gigantic moa. That
-monstrous, and probably harmless, animal was exterminated
-by fires and Maori hunters centuries ago.
-Bones, eggs, and feathers remain to attest its former
-numbers, and the roa and kiwi to give the unscientific
-a notion of its looks and habits. The story of the
-thigh-bone which found its way to Sir Richard Owen
-seventy years ago, and of his diagnosis therefrom of a
-walking bird about the size of an ostrich, is one of the
-romances of zoology. The earlier moas were far taller
-and more ponderous than any ostrich. Their relationship
-to the ancient moas of Madagascar, as well as
-their colossal stature, are further suggestions that New
-Zealand is what it looks&mdash;the relics of a submerged
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">[185]</a></span>southern continent. After the discovery of moa
-skeletons there were great hopes that living survivors
-of some of the tall birds would yet be found, and the
-unexplored and intricate south-west was by common
-consent the most promising field in which to search.
-In 1848 a rail over three feet high&mdash;the takahé&mdash;was
-caught by sealers in Dusky Sound. Fifty years later,
-when hope had almost died out, another takahé was
-taken alive&mdash;the bird that now stands stuffed in a
-German museum. But, alas! this rail is the solitary
-“find” that has rewarded us in the last sixty years,
-and the expectation of lighting upon any flightless bird
-larger than a roa flutters very faintly now. All the
-more, therefore, ought we to bestow thought on the
-preservation of the odd and curious wild life that is
-left to us. The outlook for our native birds has long
-been very far from bright. Many years ago the
-Norway rat had penetrated every corner of the islands.
-Cats, descended from wanderers of the domestic species,
-are to be found in forest and mountain, and have grown
-fiercer and more active with each decade. Sparrows,
-blackbirds, and thrushes compete for Nature’s supplies
-of honey and insects. Last, and, perhaps, their worst
-enemies of all, are the stoats, weasels, and ferrets,
-which sheep-farmers were foolish enough to import a
-quarter of a century ago to combat the rabbit. Luckily,
-more effectual methods of coping with rabbits have
-since been perfected, for had we to trust to imported
-vermin our pastures would be in a bad case. As it is,
-the stoat and weasel levy toll on many a poultry yard,
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">[186]</a></span>and their ravages among the unhappy wild birds of the
-forest are more deplorable still. In both islands they
-have found their way across from the east coast to the
-west: rivers, lakes, rock, snow, and ice have been
-powerless to stop them. Even the native birds that
-can fly lose their eggs and nestlings. The flightless
-birds are helpless. Weasels can kill much more formidable
-game than kiwi and kakapo; a single weasel
-has been known to dispose of a kea parrot in captivity.
-Pressed, then, by these and their other foes, the native
-birds are disappearing in wide tracts of the main
-islands. Twenty years ago this was sufficiently
-notorious; and at length in the ’nineties the Government
-was aroused to do something to save a remnant.
-Throughout the whole of the Great Reserve of the
-south-west shooting was, and still is, discouraged. But
-this is not enough. Only on islets off the coast can
-the birds be safe from ferrets and similar vermin, to
-say nothing of human collectors and sportsmen.</p>
-
-<p class="center space-above"></p>
-<div class="figcenter">
-<img src="images/i_186.jpg" alt="" width="700" height="466" />
-<p class="captioncenter">AT THE HEAD OF LAKE TE-ANAU</p>
-</div>
-<p class="center space-above"></p>
-
-<p>It was decided, therefore, to set aside such island
-sanctuaries, and to station paid care-takers on them.
-There are now three of these insular refuges: Resolution
-Island, off Dusky Sound; Kapiti, in Cook’s Strait; and
-the Little Barrier Island, at the mouth of the Hauraki
-Gulf. The broken and richly-wooded Resolution
-contains some 50,000 acres, and is as good a place for
-its present uses as could be found. Remote from
-settlement, drenched by continual rains, it attracts no
-one but a casual sight-seer. On the other hand, its
-care-taker is in close touch with the whole region of the
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">[187]</a></span>fiords, and can watch over and to some extent guard
-the wild life therein. The experiences of this officer,
-Mr. Richard Henry, are uncommon enough. For
-twelve years he lived near lakes Manapouri and Te
-Anau studying the birds on that side of the wilderness.
-Since 1900 he has been stationed on the western coast,
-at Pigeon Island, near Resolution. There, with such
-society as a boy and a dog can afford him, this guardian
-of birds passes year after year in a climate where the
-rainfall ranges, I suppose, from 140 inches to 200 in
-the twelvemonth. Inured to solitude and sandflies
-Mr. Henry appears sufficiently happy in watching the
-habits of his favourite birds, their enemies the beasts,
-and their neighbours the sea-fish. He can write as
-well as observe, and his reports and papers are looked
-for by all who care for Nature in our country.</p>
-
-<p>It is odd that in so vast a wilderness, and one so
-densely clothed with vegetation as are the mountains
-and valleys of the south-west, there should not be room
-enough and to spare for the European singing-birds as
-well as the native kind. But if we are to believe the
-care-taker at Resolution Island&mdash;and better testimony
-than his could not easily be had,&mdash;the sparrow alone,
-to say nothing of the thrush and blackbird, is almost as
-deadly an enemy as the flightless birds have. For the
-sparrow not only takes a share of the insects which are
-supposed to be his food, but consumes more than his
-share of the honey of the rata and other native flowers.
-Six sparrows which Mr. Henry managed to kill with a
-lucky shot one summer morning were found to be
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">[188]</a></span>plump and full of honey&mdash;it oozed out of their beaks.
-Thrushes and blackbirds are just as ready to take to a
-vegetable diet, so that the angry care-taker is driven to
-denounce the birds of Europe as “jabbering sparrows
-and other musical humbugs that come here under false
-pretences.” Then the native birds themselves are not
-always forbearing to each other. The wekas, the commonest
-and most active of the flightless birds, are
-remorseless thieves, and will steal the eggs of wild
-ducks or farm poultry indifferently. Though as big as
-a domestic fowl, wekas are no great fighters: a bantam
-cock, or even a bantam hen, will rout the biggest of
-them. On the other hand, Mr. Henry has seen a weka
-tackle a bush rat and pin it down in its hole under
-a log. That the weka will survive in considerable
-numbers even on the mainland seems likely. The
-fate of the two kinds of kiwi, the big brown roa and
-his small grey cousin, seems more doubtful.</p>
-
-<p>Both are the most timid, harmless, and helpless of
-birds. All their strength and faculties seem concentrated
-in the long and sensitive beaks with which they
-probe the ground or catch insects that flutter near it.
-In soft peat or moss they will pierce as deeply as ten
-inches to secure a worm; and the extraordinary powers
-of hearing and scent which enable them to detect prey
-buried so far beneath the surface are nothing short of
-mysterious. Their part in the world that man controls
-would seem to be that of insect destroyers in gardens
-and orchards. Perhaps had colonists been wiser they
-would have been preserved and bred for this purpose
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">[189]</a></span>for the last fifty years. As it is man has preferred to
-let the kiwis go and to import insectivorous allies, most
-of which have turned out to be doubtful blessings.
-Among both kiwis and wekas the males are the most
-dutiful of husbands and fathers. After the eggs are
-laid they do most of the sitting, and at a later stage
-provide the chicks with food. The female kiwi, too,
-is the larger bird, and has the longer beak&mdash;points of
-interest in the avifauna of a land where women’s
-franchise is law. Very different is the division of labour
-between the sexes in the case of the kakapo or night-parrot.
-This also is classed among flightless birds, not
-because it has no wings&mdash;for its wings are well developed&mdash;but
-because ages ago it lost the art of flying. Finding
-ground food plentiful in the wet mountain forests, and
-having no foes to fear, the night-parrot waxed fat and
-flightless. Now, after the coming of the stoat and
-weasel, it is too late for its habits to change. The male
-kakapo are famous for a peculiar drumming love-song,
-an odd tremulous sound that can be heard miles away.
-But though musical courtiers, they are by no means
-such self-sacrificing husbands as other flightless birds.
-They leave hatching and other work to the mothers,
-who are so worn by the process that the race only
-breeds in intermittent years. Tame and guileless as
-most native birds are apt to be, the kakapo exceeds
-them all in a kind of sleepy apathy. Mr. Henry
-tells how he once noticed one sitting on wood under
-a drooping fern. He nudged it with his finger and
-spoke to it, but the bird only muttered hoarsely, and
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">[190]</a></span>appeared to go to sleep again as the disturber moved
-away.</p>
-
-<p>Kapiti, in Cook’s Strait, containing, as it does,
-barely 5000 acres, is the smallest of the three island
-sanctuaries, but unlike the other two it has made some
-figure in New Zealand history. In the blood-stained
-years before annexation it was seized by the noted
-marauder Rauparaha, whose acute eye saw in it a
-stronghold at once difficult to attack, and excellently
-placed for raids upon the main islands, both north and
-south. From Kapiti, with his Ngatitoa warriors and
-his fleet of war-canoes, he became a terror to his race.
-His expeditions, marked with the usual treachery,
-massacre, and cannibalism of Maori warfare, reached as
-far south as Akaroa in Banks’ Peninsula, and indirectly
-led to the invasion of the Chathams, and the almost
-complete extirpation of the inoffensive Moriori.
-Rauparaha’s early life might have taught him pity, for
-he was himself a fugitive who, with his people, had
-been hunted away first from Kawhia, then from
-Taranaki, by the stronger Waikato. He lived to
-wreak vengeance&mdash;on the weaker tribes of the south.
-No mean captain, he seems only to have suffered one
-reverse in the South Island&mdash;a surprise by Tuhawaiki
-(Bloody Jack). Certainly his only fight with white
-men&mdash;that which we choose to call the Wairau massacre&mdash;was
-disastrous enough to us. In Kapiti itself,
-in the days before the hoisting of the Union Jack,
-Rauparaha had white neighbours&mdash;I had almost said
-friends&mdash;in the shape of the shore whalers, whose
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">[191]</a></span>long boats were then a feature of our coastal waters.
-They called him “Rowbulla,” and affected to regard
-him with the familiarity which breeds contempt.
-On his side he found that they served his purpose&mdash;which
-in their case was trade&mdash;well enough. Both
-Maori and whaler have long since passed away from
-Kapiti, and scarce a trace of them remains, save the
-wild goats which roam about the heights and destroy
-the undergrowth of the forest. The island itself
-resembles one side of a high-pitched roof. To the
-west, a long cliff, 1700 feet high, faces the famous
-north-west gales of Cook’s Strait, and shows the
-wearing effects of wind and wave. Eastward from
-the ridge the land slopes at a practicable angle, and
-most of it is covered with a thick, though not very
-imposing forest. Among the ratas, karakas, tree ferns
-and scrub of the gullies, wild pigeons, bell-birds, tuis,
-whiteheads, and other native birds still hold their
-own. Plants from the north and south mingle in a
-fashion that charms botanists like Dr. Cockayne.
-This gentleman has lately conveyed to Kapiti a number
-of specimens from the far-away Auckland isles, and if
-the Government will be pleased to have the goats and
-cattle killed off, and interlopers, like the sparrows
-and the Californian quail, kept down, there is no reason
-why Kapiti should not become a centre of refuge for
-the rarer species of our harassed fauna and flora.</p>
-
-<p class="center space-above"></p>
-<div class="figcenter">
-<img src="images/i_192.jpg" alt="" width="700" height="466" />
-<p class="captioncenter">THE BULLER RIVER NEAR HAWK’S CRAIG</p>
-</div>
-<p class="center space-above"></p>
-
-<p>Twice as large as Kapiti, and quite twice as picturesque,
-the Little Barrier Island, the northern
-bird-sanctuary, is otherwise little known. It has no
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">[192]</a></span>history to speak of, though Mr. Shakespear, its care-taker,
-has gathered one or two traditions. A sharp
-fight, for instance, between two bands of Maori was
-decided on its shore; and for many years thereafter a
-tree which stood there was pointed out as the
-“gallows” on which the cannibal victors hung the
-bodies of their slain enemies. At another spot on the
-boulders of the beach an unhappy fugitive is said to
-have paddled in his canoe, flying from a defeat on the
-mainland. Landing exhausted, he found the islanders
-as merciless as the foes behind, and was promptly
-clubbed and eaten. However, the Little Barrier is
-to-day as peaceful an asylum as the heart of a persecuted
-bird could desire. The stitch-bird, no longer
-hunted by collectors, is once more increasing in
-numbers there, and has for companion the bell-bird&mdash;the
-sweetest of our songsters, save one,&mdash;which has
-been driven from its habitat on the main North
-Island. Godwits, wearied with their long return
-journey from Siberia, are fain, “spent with the vast
-and howling main,” to rest on the Little Barrier before
-passing on their way across the Hauraki Gulf. Fantails
-and other wild feathered things flutter round the
-care-taker’s house, for&mdash;so he tells us&mdash;he does not
-suffer any birds&mdash;not even the friendless and much-disliked
-cormorant&mdash;to be injured. Along with the
-birds, the tuatara lizard (and the kauri, pohutu-kawa,
-and other trees, quite as much in need of asylum as
-the birds) may grow and decay unmolested in the
-quiet ravines. The island lies forty-five miles from
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">[193]</a></span>Auckland, and nearly twenty from the nearest mainland,
-so there is no need for it to be disturbed by anything
-worse than the warm and rainy winds that burst upon
-it from north-east and north-west.</p>
-
-<hr class="tb" />
-
-<p>Water, the force that beautifies the west and south-west,
-has been the chief foe of their explorers. The
-first whites to penetrate their gorges and wet forests
-found their main obstacles in rivers, lakes, and swamps.
-Unlike pioneers elsewhere, they had nothing to fear
-from savages, beasts, reptiles, or fever. Brunner, one
-of the earliest to enter Westland, spent more than a
-year away from civilisation, encountering hardship, but
-never in danger of violence from man or beast. Still,
-such a rugged and soaking labyrinth could not be
-traversed and mapped out without loss. There is a
-death-roll, though not a very long one. Nearly all the
-deaths were due to drowning. Mr. Charlton Howitt,
-one of the Anglo-Victorian family of writers and
-explorers, was lost with two companions in Lake
-Brunner. The one survivor of Howitt’s party died
-from the effects of hardship. Mr. Townsend, a
-Government officer, who searched Lake Brunner for
-Howitt’s body, was himself drowned not long after,
-also with two companions. Mr. Whitcombe, surveyor,
-perished in trying to cross the Teremakau in a canoe.
-Von Haast’s friend, the botanist Dr. Sinclair, was
-drowned in a torrent in the Alps of Canterbury. Quintin
-M’Kinnon, who did as much as any one to open up
-the region between the southern lakes and the Sounds,
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">[194]</a></span>sank in a squall while sailing alone in Lake Te Anau.
-Professor Brown, of the University of Otago, who
-disappeared in the wilds to the west of Manapouri, is
-believed to have been swept away in a stream there.
-The surveyor Quill, the only man who has yet climbed
-to the top of the Sutherland Falls, lost his life afterwards
-in the Wakatipu wilderness. Only one death by man’s
-violence is to be noted in the list&mdash;that of Dobson, a
-young surveyor of much promise, who was murdered
-by bush-rangers in northern Westland about forty years
-ago. I have named victims well known and directly
-engaged in exploring. The number of gold-diggers,
-shepherds, swagmen, and nondescripts who have gone
-down in the swift and ice-cold rivers of our mountains is
-large. Among them are not a few nameless adventurers
-drawn westward by the gold rushes of the ’sixties. It
-is a difficult matter to gauge from the bank the precise
-amount of risk to be faced in fording a clouded torrent
-as it swirls down over hidden boulders and shifting
-shingle. Even old hands miscalculate sometimes.
-When once a swagman stumbles badly and loses his
-balance, he is swept away, and the struggle is soon over.
-There is a cry; a man and a swag are rolled over and
-over; he drops his burden and one or both are sucked
-under in an eddy&mdash;perhaps to reappear, perhaps not.
-It may be that the body is stranded on a shallow, or
-it may be that the current bears it down to a grave in
-the sea.</p>
-
-<p class="center space-above"></p>
-<div class="figcenter">
-<img src="images/i_194.jpg" alt="" width="700" height="461" />
-<p class="captioncenter">BELOW THE JUNCTION OF THE BULLER
-AND INANGAHUA RIVERS</p>
-</div>
-<p class="center space-above"></p>
-
-<p>The south-western coast was the first part of our
-islands seen by a European. Tasman sighted the
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">[195]</a></span>mountains of Westland in 1642. Cook visited the
-Sounds more than once, and spent some time in Dusky
-Sound in 1771. Vancouver, who served under Cook,
-anchored there in command of an expedition in 1789;
-and Malaspina, a Spanish navigator, took his ship
-among the fiords towards the end of the eighteenth
-century. But Tasman did not land; and though the
-others did, and it is interesting to remember that such
-noted explorers of the southern seas came there in the
-old days of three-cornered hats, pigtails, and scurvy,
-still it must be admitted that their doings in our south-western
-havens were entirely commonplace. Vancouver
-and the Spaniards had no adventures. Nothing that
-concerns Cook can fail to interest the student; and the
-story of his anchorages and surveys, of the “spruce
-beer” which he brewed from a mixture of sprigs of
-rimu and leaves of manuka, and of his encounters with
-the solitary family of Maori met with on the coast, is
-full of meaning to the few who pore over the scraps of
-narrative which compose the history of our country
-prior to 1800. There is satisfaction in knowing that
-the stumps of the trees cut down by Cook’s men are
-still to be recognised. To the general reader, however,
-any stirring elements found in the early story of the
-South Island were brought in by the sealers and whalers
-who came in the wake of the famous navigators, rather
-than by the discoverers themselves. One lasting service
-the first seamen did to the Sounds: they left plain
-and expressive names on most of the gulfs, coves, and
-headlands. Doubtful Sound, Dusky Sound, Wet Jacket
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">[196]</a></span>Arm, Chalky Island, Parrot Island, Wood Hen Cove,
-speak of the rough experiences and everyday life of
-the sailors. Resolution, Perseverance, Discovery have
-a salt savour of difficulties sought out and overcome.
-For the rest the charm of the south-west comes but in
-slight degree from old associations. It is a paradise
-without a past.</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter">
-<img src="images/i_196.jpg" alt="" width="700" height="416" />
-<p class="captioncenter">BREAM HEAD, WHANGAREI HEADS</p>
-</div>
-
-<p>The sealers and whalers of the first four decades
-of the nineteenth century knew our outlying islands
-well. Of the interior of our mainland they knew
-nothing whatever; but they searched every bay and
-cove of the butt-end of the South Island, of Rakiura,
-and of the smaller islets for the whale and fur seal.
-The schooners and brigs that carried these rough-handed
-adventurers commonly hailed either from
-Sydney, Boston, or Nantucket, places that were not
-in those days schools of marine politeness or forbearance.
-The captains and crews that they sent out to
-southern seas looked on the New Zealand coast as a
-No Man’s Land, peopled by ferocious cannibals, who
-were to be traded with, or killed, as circumstances
-might direct. The Maori met them very much in
-the same spirit. Many are the stories told of the
-dealings, peaceable or warlike, of the white ruffians with
-the brown savages. In 1823, for instance, the schooner
-<em>Snapper</em> brought away from Rakiura to Sydney a certain
-James Caddell, a white seaman with a tattooed face.
-This man had, so he declared, been landed on Stewart
-Island seventeen years earlier, as one of a party of
-seal-hunters. They were at once set upon by the
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">[197]</a></span>natives, and all killed save Caddell, who saved his life
-by clutching the sacred mantle of a chief and thus
-obtaining the benefit of the law of Tapu. He was
-allowed to join the tribe, to become one of the fighting
-men, and to marry a chief’s daughter. At any rate,
-that was his story. It may have been true, for he is
-said to have turned his back on Sydney and deliberately
-returned to live among the Maori.</p>
-
-<p>A more dramatic tale is that of the fate of a boat’s
-crew from the <em>General Gates</em>, American sealing ship.
-In 1821 her captain landed a party of six men somewhere
-near Puysegur Point to collect seal-skins. So
-abundant were the fur seals on our south-west coast
-in those days that in six weeks the men had taken and
-salted 3563 skins. Suddenly a party of Maori burst
-into their hut about midnight, seized the unlucky
-Americans, and, after looting the place, marched them
-off as prisoners. According to the survivors, they
-were compelled to trudge between three and four
-hundred miles, and were finally taken to a big sandy
-bay on the west coast of the South Island. Here they
-were tied to trees and left without food till they were
-ravenously hungry. Then one of them, John Rawton,
-was killed with a club. His head was buried in the
-ground; his body dressed, cooked, and eaten. On each
-of the next three days another of the wretched seamen
-was seized and devoured in the same way, their companions
-looking on like Ulysses in the cave of the
-Cyclops. As a crowning horror the starving seamen
-were offered some of the baked human flesh and ate it.
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">[198]</a></span>After four days of this torment there came a storm
-with thunder and lightning, which drove the natives
-away to take shelter. Left thus unguarded, Price and
-West, the two remaining prisoners, contrived to slip
-their bonds of flax. A canoe was lying on the beach,
-and rough as the surf was, they managed to launch her.
-Scarcely were they afloat before the natives returned
-and rushed into the sea after them, yelling loudly.
-The Americans had just sufficient start and no more.
-Paddling for dear life, they left the land behind, and
-had the extraordinary fortune, after floating about for
-three days, to be picked up, half dead, by the trading
-schooner <em>Margery</em>. The story of their capture and
-escape is to be found in Polack’s <cite>New Zealand</cite>,
-published in 1838. Recently, Mr. Robert M’Nab
-has unearthed contemporary references to the <i>General
-Gates</i>, and, in his book <cite>Muri-huku</cite>, has given an
-extended account of the adventures of her skipper
-and crew. The captain, Abimelech Riggs by name,
-seems to have been a very choice salt-water blackguard.
-He began his career at the Antipodes by
-enlisting convicts in Sydney, and carrying them off as
-seamen. For this he was arrested in New Zealand
-waters, and had to stand his trial in Sydney. In Mr.
-M’Nab’s opinion, he lost two if not three parties of his
-men on the New Zealand coast, where he seems to have
-left them to take their chance, sailing off and remaining
-away with the finest indifference. Finally, he appears
-to have taken revenge by running down certain canoes
-manned by Maori which he chanced to meet in Foveaux
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">[199]</a></span>Straits. After that <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">coup</i>, Captain Abimelech Riggs
-vanishes from our stage, a worthy precursor of Captain
-Stewart of the brig <em>Elisabeth</em>, the blackest scoundrel of
-our Alsatian period.</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter">
-<img src="images/i_198.jpg" alt="" width="700" height="457" />
-<p class="captioncenter">LAWYER’S HEAD</p>
-</div>
-
-<p>Maori history does not contribute very much to
-the romance of the south-west. A broken tribe, the
-Ngatimamoe, were in the eighteenth century driven
-back to lurk among the mountains and lakes there.
-Once they had owned the whole South Island. Their
-pitiless supplanters, the Ngaitahu, would not let them
-rest even in their unenviable mountain refuges. They
-were chased farther and farther westward, and finally
-exterminated. A few still existed when the first
-navigators cast anchor in the fiords. For many years
-explorers hoped to find some tiny clan hidden away in
-the tangled recesses of Fiordland; but it would seem
-that they are gone, like the moa.</p>
-
-<p>The whites came in time to witness the beginning
-of a fresh process of raiding and dispossession&mdash;the
-attacks on the Ngaitahu by other tribes from the
-north. The raids of Rauparaha among the Ngaitahu
-of the eastern coast of the South Island have often
-been described; for, thanks to Mr. Travers, Canon
-Stack, and other chroniclers, many of their details
-have been preserved. Much less is known of the
-doings of Rauparaha’s lieutenants on the western coast,
-though one of their expeditions passed through the
-mountains and the heart of Otago. Probably enough,
-his Ngatitoa turned their steps towards Westland in
-the hope of annexing the tract wherein is found the
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">[200]</a></span>famous greenstone&mdash;a nephrite prized by the Maori at
-once for its hardness and beauty. In their stone age&mdash;that
-is to say, until the earlier decades of the nineteenth
-century&mdash;it furnished them with their most
-effective tools and deadliest weapons. The best of it
-is so hard that steel will not scratch its surface, while
-its clear colour, varying from light to the darkest green,
-is far richer than the hue of oriental jade. Many years&mdash;as
-much as two generations&mdash;might be consumed in
-cutting and polishing a greenstone <i lang="mi" xml:lang="mi">meré</i> fit for a great
-chief.<a name="FNanchor_5_5" id="FNanchor_5_5"></a><a href="#Footnote_5_5" class="fnanchor">[5]</a> When perfected, such a weapon became a sacred
-heirloom, the loss of which would be wailed over as a
-blow to its owner’s tribe.</p>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-<p><a name="Footnote_5_5" id="Footnote_5_5"></a><a href="#FNanchor_5_5"><span class="label">[5]</span></a> See Mr. Justice Chapman’s paper on the working of greenstone in the
-<cite>Transactions of the N.Z. Institute</cite>.</p></div>
-
-<div class="figcenter">
-<img src="images/i_200.jpg" alt="" width="374" height="600" />
-<p class="captioncenter">A MAORI CHIEFTAINESS</p>
-</div>
-
-<p>The country of the greenstone lies between the
-Arahura and Hokitika rivers in Westland, a territory
-by no means easy to invade eighty years ago. The
-war parties of the Ngatitoa reached it, however, creeping
-along the rugged sea-coast, and, where the beaches
-ended, scaling cliffs by means of ladders. They conquered
-the greenstone district (from which the whole
-South Island takes its Maori name, Te Wai Pounamou),
-and settled down there among the subdued natives.
-Then, one might fancy, the Ngatitoa would have halted.
-South of the Teremakau valley there was no greenstone;
-for the stone, <i lang="mi" xml:lang="mi">tangi-wai</i>, found near Milford
-Sound, though often classed with greenstone, is a
-distinct mineral, softer and much less valuable. Nor
-were there any more tribes with villages worth
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201">[201]</a></span>plundering. Save for a few wandering fugitives, the
-mountains and coast of the south-west were empty, or
-peopled only by the Maori imagination with ogres and
-fairies, dangerous to the intruder. Beyond this drenched
-and difficult country, however, the Ngatitoa resolved to
-pass. They learned&mdash;from captives, one supposes&mdash;of
-the existence of a low saddle, by which a man may
-cross from the west coast to the lakes of Otago without
-mounting two thousand feet. By this way, the Haast
-Pass, they resolved to march, and fall with musket and
-<i lang="mi" xml:lang="mi">meré</i> upon the unexpecting Ngaitahu of Otago. Their
-leader in this daring project was a certain Puoho. We
-may believe that the successes of Rauparaha on the east
-coast, and the fall, one after the other, of Omihi, the
-two stockades of Akaroa, and the famous <i lang="mi" xml:lang="mi">pa</i> of Kaiapoi,
-had fired the blood of his young men, and that Puoho
-dreamed of nothing less than the complete conquest of
-the south. He nearly effected it. By a daring canoe
-voyage from Port Nicholson to southern Westland, and
-by landing there and crossing the Haast Saddle, this
-tattooed Hannibal turned the higher Alps and descended
-upon Lake Hawea, surprising there a village of the
-Ngaitahu. Only one of the inhabitants escaped, a lad
-who was saved to guide the marauders to the camp of a
-family living at Lake Wanaka. The boy managed to
-slip away from the two captors who were his guards,
-and ran all the way to Wanaka to warn the threatened
-family&mdash;his own relatives. When the two guards gave
-chase, they found the intended victims prepared for
-them; they fell into an ambuscade and were both
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">[202]</a></span>killed&mdash;tomahawked. Before the main body of the
-invaders came up, the Ngaitahu family was far away.
-At Wanaka, Puoho’s daring scheme became more
-daring still, for he conceived and executed no less a
-plan than that of paddling down the Clutha River on
-rafts made of flax sticks&mdash;crazy craft for such a river.
-The flower stalks or sticks of the native flax are
-buoyant enough when dead and dry; but they soon
-become water-logged and are absurdly brittle. They
-supply such rafts as small boys love to construct for
-the navigation of small lagoons. And that strange
-river, the Clutha, while about half as long as the
-Thames, tears down to the sea bearing far more water
-than the Nile. Nevertheless the Clutha did not drown
-Puoho and his men: they made their way to the sea
-through the open country of the south-east. Then
-passing on to the river Mataura, they took another
-village somewhere between the sea and the site of a town
-that now rejoices in the name of Gore. Then indeed
-the fate of the Ngaitahu hung in the balance, and the
-Otago branches of the tribe were threatened with the
-doom of those of the northern half of the island.
-They were saved because in Southland there was at the
-moment their one capable leader in their later days
-of trouble&mdash;the chief Tuhawaiki, whom the sealers of
-the south coast called Bloody Jack. Hurrying up with
-all the warriors he could collect, and reinforced by some
-of the white sealers aforesaid, this personage attacked
-the Ngatitoa by the Mataura, took their stockade
-by escalade, and killed or captured the band. Puoho
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">[203]</a></span>himself was shot by a chief who lived to tell of the
-fray for more than sixty years afterwards. So the
-Ngaitahu escaped the slavery or extinction which they
-in earlier days had inflicted on the Ngatimamoe. For,
-three years after Puoho’s raid, the New Zealand Company
-appeared in Cook’s Strait, and thereafter Rauparaha
-and his braves harried the South Island no more.</p>
-<hr class="chap" />
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204">[204]</a></span></p>
-
-
-<div class="chapter"></div>
-<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VII" id="CHAPTER_VII">CHAPTER <abbr title="7">VII</abbr></a></h2>
-
-<p class="center">OUTLYING ISLANDS</p>
-
-
-<p>The New Zealand mainland&mdash;if the word may be used
-for anything so slender and fragmentary&mdash;is long as
-well as slight. Nearly eleven hundred miles divide the
-south end of Stewart Island from Cape Maria Van
-Diemen. If the outposts of the main are counted in,
-then the Dominion becomes a much larger, though
-more watery, expanse. Its length is about doubled,
-and the contrast between the sunny Kermadecs and the
-storm-beaten Aucklands becomes one of those things
-in which Science delights. It is a far cry from the
-trepang and tropic birds (the salmon-pink bo’suns)
-of the northern rocks to the sea-lions that yawn at
-the casual visitor to Disappointment Island. The
-Kermadecs&mdash;to employ an overworked expression&mdash;bask
-in the smiles of perpetual summer. The Three
-Kings, lying thirty-eight miles beyond the tip of the
-North Island, might be Portuguese isles, and the
-Chathams&mdash;as far as climate goes&mdash;bits of France. But
-the peaty groups of the shivering South lie right across
-the pathway of the Antarctic gales. Even on their
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205">[205]</a></span>quieter days the grey sky that overhangs them looks
-down on a sea that is a welter of cold indigo laced with
-white. Relentless erosion by ocean rollers from the
-south-west has worn away their western and south-western
-shores into steep cliffs, cut by sharp-edged
-fissures and pitted by deep caves. For their vegetation
-you must seek their eastern slopes and valleys, or the
-shores of land-locked harbours. On some of the
-smaller of them, parakeets and other land-birds learn
-to fly little and fly low, lest they should be blown out
-to sea. The wild ducks of the Aucklands are flightless,
-and in the same group are found flies without wings.
-In the Snares the mutton-bird tree lies down on its
-stomach to escape the buffeting blasts, clutching the
-treacherous peat with fresh rootlets as it grows or
-crawls along. The western front of the Aucklands
-shows a wall of dark basalt, thirty miles long, and from
-four hundred to twelve hundred feet high. No beach
-skirts it; no trees soften it; only one inlet breaks it.
-Innumerable jets and little cascades stream from its
-sharp upper edge, but&mdash;so say eye-witnesses&mdash;none
-appear to reach the sea: the pitiless gusts seize the
-water, scatter it into spray-smoke and blow it into air.
-The wind keeps the waterfalls from falling, and their
-vapour, driven upward, has been mistaken for smoke
-from the fires of castaway seamen.</p>
-
-<p>There is, however, one race to whom even the
-smallest and wildest of our islets are a source of unceasing
-interest and ever-fresh, if malodorous, pleasure.
-Zoologists know them for the procreant cradles of
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206">[206]</a></span>Antarctic sea-fowl. And that, from the Kermadecs to
-the Bounties and the Antipodes, they assuredly are.
-On Raoul&mdash;the largest Kermadec&mdash;you may walk
-among thousands of mutton-birds and kick them off
-their nests. On the West King, gannets and mackerel
-gulls cover acre after acre so thickly that you cannot
-help breaking eggs as you tread, or stumbling against
-mother-gannets, sharp in the beak. On dismal Antipodes
-Island, the dreary green of grass and sedge is
-picked out with big white birds like white rosettes.
-In the Aucklands, the wandering albatross is found in
-myriads, and may be studied as it sits guarding its
-solitary egg on the rough nest from which only brute
-force will move it. On the spongy Snares, penguins
-have their rookeries; mutton-birds swarm, not in
-thousands, but millions; sea-hawks prey on the young
-of other birds, and will fly fiercely at man, the strange
-intruder. Earth, air, and sea, all are possessed by
-birds of unimaginable number and intolerable smell.
-Penguins describe curves in the air as they dive neatly
-from the rocks. Mutton-birds burrow in the ground,
-whence their odd noises mount up strangely. Their
-subterranean clamour mingles with the deafening discords
-of the rookeries above ground. On large patches
-the vegetation is worn away and the surface defiled.
-All the water is fouled. The odour, like the offence
-of Hamlet’s uncle, “is rank: it smells to Heaven.”
-Mr. Justice Chapman found it strong a mile out to sea.
-In that, however, the Snares must cede the palm to the
-Bounties; dreadful and barren rocks on which a few
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207">[207]</a></span>insects&mdash;a cricket notably&mdash;alone find room to exist
-among the sea-birds. In violent tempests the foam is
-said to search every corner of the Bounties, cleansing
-them for the nonce from their ordure. But the purity,
-such as it is, is short lived. All who have smelt them
-are satisfied to hope that surf and sea-birds may ever
-retain possession there. Indeed, as much may be said
-for the Snares. Science may sometimes perambulate
-them, just as Science&mdash;with a handkerchief to her nose&mdash;may
-occasionally pick her steps about the Bounties;
-but none save <i>savants</i> and sea-lions are likely to claim
-any interest in these noisome castles of the sea-fowl.</p>
-
-<p>Some of our larger outposts in the ocean are not
-repulsive by any means. If human society were of no
-account, the Kermadecs would be pleasant enough.
-One or two of them seem much more like Robinson
-Crusoe’s fertile island, as we read of it in Defoe’s pages,
-than is Juan Fernandez. Even the wild goats are not
-lacking. Flowering trees grow on well-wooded and
-lofty Raoul; Meyer Island has a useful boat-harbour;
-good fish abound in the warm and pellucid sea. To
-complete the geniality, the largest island&mdash;some seven
-or eight thousand acres in size&mdash;has a hot bathing-pool.
-One heroic family defy solitude there, cultivate the
-fertile soil, and grow coffee, bananas, figs, vines, olives,
-melons, peaches, lemons, citrons, and, it would seem,
-anything from grenadilloes to potatoes. Twenty years
-ago, or thereabout, our Government tempted a handful
-of settlers to try life there. A volcanic disturbance
-scared them away, however, and the one family has
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208">[208]</a></span>since plodded on alone. Stories are told of the life its
-members live, of their skill in swimming and diving,
-and their struggles with armies of rats and other
-troubles. Once when the steamer that visits them
-yearly was late, its captain found the mother of the
-family reduced to her last nib&mdash;with which she nevertheless
-had kept up her diary. On board the steamer
-was the lady’s eldest daughter, a married woman living
-in New Zealand. She was making a rough voyage of
-a thousand miles to see her mother&mdash;for two days.
-Sooner or later&mdash;if talk means anything&mdash;Auckland
-enterprise will set up a fish-curing station on Meyer
-Island. That, I suppose, will be an answer to the
-doubts which beset the minds of the Lords of the
-British Admiralty when this group, with its Breton
-name, was annexed to New Zealand. The colony
-asked for it, and the Lords Commissioners of the
-Admiralty were duly consulted. Their secretary wrote
-a laconic reply to the Colonial Office observing that if
-New Zealand wanted the Kermadecs my Lords saw
-“no particular reason” why “that colony” should not
-have “these islands or islets”; but of what possible
-use they could be to New Zealand my Lords couldn’t
-imagine.</p>
-
-<p>The Three Kings mark a point in our history. It
-was on the 5th of January that Tasman discovered
-them. So he named them after the three wise kings of
-the East&mdash;Caspar, Melchior, and Balthasar. The Great
-King, the largest of them, is not very great, for it contains,
-perhaps, six or seven hundred acres. It is cliff-bound,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209">[209]</a></span>
-but a landing may usually be made on one side
-or the other, for its shape resembles the device of the
-Isle of Man. Into one of its coves a cascade comes
-down, tumbling two hundred feet from a green and
-well-timbered valley above. Tasman saw the cascade;
-and as the <em>Heemskirk</em> and her cockle-shell of a consort
-were short of fresh water, he sent “Francis Jacobsz in
-our shallop, and Mr. Gillimans, the supercargo,” with
-casks to be filled. When, however, the two boats neared
-the rocks, the men found thereon fierce-looking, well-armed
-natives, who shouted to them in hoarse voices.
-Moreover, the surf ran too high for an easy landing.
-So the Dutchmen turned from the white cascade, and
-pulled back to Tasman, who took them aboard again,
-and sailed away, to discover the Friendly Islands.
-Thus it came about that though he discovered our
-country, and spent many days on our coasts, neither he
-nor any of his men ever set foot on shore there. Did
-Francis Jacobsz, one wonders, really think the surf at
-Great King so dangerous? Or was it that good Mr.
-Gillimans, supercargo and man of business, disliked the
-uncomfortable-looking spears and <i lang="mi" xml:lang="mi">patu-patu</i> in the
-hands of the Rarewa men? Tasman, at any rate, came
-to no harm at the Three Kings, which is more than
-can be said of all shipmasters; for they are beset with
-tusky reefs and strong currents. A noted wreck there
-was that of the steamship <em>Elingamite</em>, which went down
-six years ago, not far from the edge of the deep ocean
-chasm where the submarine foundations of New Zealand
-seem to end suddenly in a deep cleft of ocean.</p>
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210">[210]</a></span></p>
-<p>Thanks to a thick white fog, she ran on a reef in
-daylight on a quiet Sunday morning. She was carrying
-fifty-eight of a crew and about twice as many passengers.
-There was but a moderate sea, and, as those on
-board kept cool, four boats and two rafts were launched.
-Though one boat was capsized, and though waves
-washed several persons off the wreck, nearly every one
-swam to a boat or was picked up. One woman, however,
-was picked up dead. No great loss or sufferings
-need have followed but for the fog. As it was, the
-shipwrecked people were caught by currents, and had
-to row or drift about blindly. Their fates were various.
-The largest boat, with fifty-two souls, was luckiest: it
-reached Hohoura on the mainland after but twenty-five
-hours of wretchedness. There the Maori&mdash;like the
-barbarous people of Melita&mdash;showed them no small
-kindness. It is recorded that one native hurried down
-to the beach with a large loaf, which was quickly
-divided into fifty-two morsels. Others came with
-horses, and the castaways, helped up to the <i lang="mi" xml:lang="mi">kainga</i>, had
-hot tea and food served out to them. Whale-boats
-then put out and intercepted a passing steamer, which
-at once made for the Three Kings. There, on Tuesday,
-eighty-nine more of the shipwrecked were discovered
-and rescued. One party of these had come within a
-hundred and fifty yards of an islet, only to be swept
-away by a current against which they struggled vainly.
-Finally, they made Great King, and supported life on
-raw shell-fish till, on the third day after the wreck, the
-sun, coming out, enabled them (with the aid of their
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211">[211]</a></span>watch-glasses) to dry the six matches which they had
-with them. Five of these failed to ignite; the sixth
-gave them fire, and, with fire, hope and comparative
-comfort. They even gave chase to the wild goats of
-the island, but, needless to say, neither caught nor
-killed any.</p>
-
-<p>One of the rafts, unhappily, failed to make land at
-all. A strong current carried it away to sea, and in
-four days it drifted sixty-two miles. Fifteen men and
-one woman were on it, without food or water, miserably
-clothed, and drenched incessantly by the wash or spray.
-The woman gave up part of her clothing to half-naked
-men, dying herself on the third day. Four others
-succumbed through exhaustion; two threw themselves
-into the sea in delirium. Three steamers were out
-searching for the unfortunates. It was the <em>Penguin</em>, a
-King’s ship, which found them, as the fifth day of their
-sufferings was beginning, and when but one man could
-stand upright. The captain of the man-of-war had
-carefully gauged the strength of the current, and
-followed the raft far out to the north-east.</p>
-
-<p>Gold and silver, to the value of £17,000, went
-down with the <em>Elingamite</em>. Treasure-seekers have
-repeatedly tried to fish it up, but in vain.</p>
-
-<hr class="tb" />
-
-<div class="figcenter">
-<img src="images/i_212.jpg" alt="" width="700" height="476" />
-<p class="captioncenter">WEAVING THE KAITAKA</p>
-</div>
-
-<p>Five hundred miles to the east of Banks’ Peninsula
-lie the pleasant group called the Chatham Islands.
-They owe their auspicious name to their luck in being
-discovered in 1790 by the Government ship <em>Chatham</em>.
-Otherwise they might have been named after Lord
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_212" id="Page_212">[212]</a></span>Auckland, or Mr. Robert Campbell, or Stewart the
-sealer, as have others of our islands. They are fabled
-of old to have been, like Delos, floating isles, borne
-hither and thither by sea and wind. The Apollo who
-brought them to anchor was the demi-god Kahu. The
-myth, perhaps, had its origin in the powerful currents
-which are still a cause of anxiety to shipmasters navigating
-the seas round their shores. They are fertile
-spots, neither flat nor lofty, but altogether habitable.
-The soft air is full of sunshine, tempered by the ocean
-haze, and in it groves of karaka-trees, with their large
-polished leaves and gleaming fruit, flourish as they
-flourish nowhere else. Neither too hot nor cold, neither
-large nor impossibly small&mdash;they are about two and a
-half times the size of the Isle of Wight,&mdash;the Chathams,
-one would think, should have nothing in their story but
-pleasantness and peace. And, as far as we know, the lot
-of their old inhabitants, the Moriori, was for centuries
-marked neither by bloodshed nor dire disaster. The
-Moriori were Polynesians akin to, yet distinct from, the
-Maori. Perhaps they were the last separate remnant
-of some earlier immigrants to New Zealand; or it is
-possible that their canoes brought them from the South
-Seas to the Chathams direct; at any rate they found
-the little land to their liking, and living there undisturbed,
-increased till, a hundred years ago, they mustered
-some two thousand souls. Unlike the Maori, they were
-not skilled gardeners; but they knew how to cook fern-root,
-and how to render the poisonous karaka berries
-innocuous. Their rocks and reefs were nesting-places
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213">[213]</a></span>for albatrosses and mutton-birds; so they had fowl and
-eggs in plenty. A large and very deep lagoon on their
-main island&mdash;said to be the crater of a volcano&mdash;swarmed
-with eels.</p>
-
-<p>They were clever fishermen, and would put to sea on
-extraordinary rafts formed of flax sticks buoyed up by
-the bladders of the giant kelp. Their beaches were
-well furnished with shell-fish. Finally, the fur seal
-haunted their shores in numbers, and supplied them
-with the warmest of clothing. Indeed, though they
-could weave mantles of flax, and dye them more artistically
-than the Maori, they gradually lost the art: their
-sealskin mantles were enough for them. As the life of
-savages goes, theirs seems to have been, until eighty
-years ago, as happy as it was peaceful and absolutely
-harmless. For the Moriori did not fight among themselves,
-and having, so far as they knew, no enemies,
-knew not the meaning of war. They were rather
-expert at making simple tools of stone and wood, but
-had no weapons, or any use therefor.</p>
-
-<p>Upon these altogether inoffensive and unprovocative
-islanders came a series of misfortunes which in a couple
-of decades wiped out most of the little race, broke its
-spirit, and doomed it to extinction. What had they
-done to deserve this&mdash;the fate of the Tasmanians?
-They were not unteachable and repulsive like the
-Tasmanians. Thomas Potts, a trained observer, has
-minutely described one of them, a survivor of their
-calamitous days. He saw in the Moriori a man <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214">[214]</a></span>“robust
-in figure, tall of stature, not darker in colour perhaps
-than many a Maori, but of a dull, dusky hue, rather
-than of the rich brown” so common in the Maori.
-Prominent brows, almond eyes, and a curved, somewhat
-fleshy nose gave the face a Jewish cast. The eyes
-seemed quietly watchful&mdash;the eyes of a patient animal
-“not yet attacked, but preparing or prepared for
-defence.” Otherwise the man’s demeanour was quiet
-and stolid. Bishop Selwyn, too, who visited the
-Chathams in 1848, bears witness to the courteous and
-attractive bearing of the Moriori. They were not
-drunken, irreclaimably vicious, or especially slothful.
-They were simply ignorant, innocent, and kindly,
-and so unfitted for wicked times and a reign of
-cruelty.</p>
-
-<p>White sealers and whalers coming in friendly guise
-began their destruction, exterminating their seals, scaring
-away their sea-fowl, infecting them with loathsome
-diseases. Worse was to come. In the sealing schooners
-casual Maori seamen visited the Chathams, and saw
-in them a nook as pleasant and defenceless as the
-city of Laish. One of these wanderers on his return
-home painted a picture of the group to an audience
-of the Ngatiawa tribe in words which Mr. Shand thus
-renders:&mdash;</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215">[215]</a></span></p>
-
-<p>“There is an island out in the ocean not far from
-here to the eastward. It is full of birds&mdash;both land and
-sea-birds&mdash;of all kinds, some living in the peaty soil,
-with albatross in plenty on the outlying islands. There
-is abundance of sea and shell-fish; the lakes swarm
-with eels; and it is a land of the karaka. The inhabitants
-are very numerous, but they do not know how to
-fight, and have no weapons.”</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter">
-<img src="images/i_216.jpg" alt="" width="700" height="466" />
-<p class="captioncenter">“TE HONGI”</p>
-</div>
-
-<p>His hearers saw a vision of a Maori El Dorado!
-But how was it to be reached? In canoes they could
-not venture so far, nor did they know the way.
-Doubtless, however, they remembered how Stewart of
-the <em>Elisabeth</em> had carried Rauparaha and his warriors to
-Akaroa in the hold of his brig a few years before.
-Another brig, the <em>Rodney</em>, was in Cook’s Strait now,
-seeking a cargo of scraped flax. Her captain, Harewood,
-was not such a villain as Stewart; but if he
-could not be bribed he could be terrified&mdash;so thought
-the Ngatiawa. In Port Nicholson (Wellington harbour)
-lies a little islet with a patch of trees on it, like
-a tuft of hair on a shaven scalp. Nowadays it is used
-as a quarantine place for dogs and other doubtful
-immigrants. Thither the Ngatiawa decoyed Harewood
-and a boat’s crew, and then seizing the men, cajoled
-or frightened the skipper into promising to carry them
-across the sea to their prey. Whether Harewood made
-much ado about transporting the filibustering cannibals
-to the Chathams will probably never be known. He
-seems to have had some scruples, but they were soon
-overcome, either by fear or greed. Once the bargain
-was struck he performed his part of it without flinching.
-The work of transport was no light task. No less
-than nine hundred of the Maori of Cook’s Strait had
-resolved to take part in the enterprise, so much had
-Rauparaha’s freebooting exploits in the south inflamed
-and unsettled his tribe. To carry this invading horde
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_216" id="Page_216">[216]</a></span>to the scene of their enterprise the <em>Rodney</em> had to make
-two trips. On the first of them the Maori were packed
-in the hold like the negroes on a slaver, and when
-water ran short suffered miseries of thirst. Had the
-Moriori known anything of war they might easily have
-repelled their enemies. As it was, the success of the
-invasion was prompt and complete. Without losing a
-man the Maori soon took possession of the Chathams
-and their inhabitants. The land was parcelled out
-among the new-comers, and the Moriori and their
-women tasted the bitterness of enslavement by insolent
-and brutal savages. They seem to have done all that
-submissiveness could do to propitiate their swaggering
-lords. But no submissiveness could save them from the
-cruelty of barbarians drunk with easy success. Misunderstandings
-between master and slave would be settled with
-a blow from a tomahawk. On at least two occasions
-there were massacres, the results either of passion or
-panic. In one of these fifty Moriori were killed; in
-the other, perhaps three times that number of all ages
-and sexes. On the second occasion the dead were laid
-out in a line on the sea-beach, parents and children
-together, so that the bodies touched each other. The
-dead were of course eaten; it is said that as many as
-fifty were baked in one oven. I have read, moreover,
-that the Maori coolly kept a number of their miserable
-slaves penned up, feeding them well, and killed them
-from time to time like sheep when butcher’s meat was
-wanted. This last story is, I should think, doubtful,
-for as the whole island was but one large slave-pen,
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_217" id="Page_217">[217]</a></span>there could be no object in keeping victims shut up in
-a yard. The same story has been told of Rauparaha’s
-treatment of the islanders of Kapiti. But Kapiti is but
-a few miles from the main shore, and one of his destined
-victims, a woman, is said to have swum across the strait
-with her baby on her back. The unhappy Moriori
-had nowhere to flee to, unless they were to throw themselves
-into the sea. The white traders and sealers on
-the coast were virtually in league with their oppressors.
-The only escape was death, and that way they were not
-slow to take. Chroniclers differ as to the precise
-disease which played havoc with them, but I should
-imagine that the pestilence which walked among them
-in the noonday was Despair. At any rate their
-number, which had been 2000 in 1836, was found to
-be 212 in 1855. The bulk of the race had then found
-peace in the grave. It is a relief to know that the
-sufferings of the survivors had by that time come to
-an end. Long before 1855 the British flag had been
-hoisted on the Chathams and slavery abolished. After
-a while the New Zealand Government insisted upon a
-certain amount of land being given back to the Moriori.
-It was a small estate, but it was something. The white
-man, now lord of all, made no distinction between the
-two brown races, and in process of time the Maori,
-themselves reduced to a remnant, learned to treat the
-Moriori as equals. These better days, however, came
-too late. The Moriori recognised this. For in 1855,
-seeing that their race was doomed, they met together
-and solemnly agreed that the chronicles of their people
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_218" id="Page_218">[218]</a></span>should be arranged and written down, so that when the
-last was dead, their name and story should not be forgotten.
-The conquering Maori themselves did not
-fare so much better. They stood the test of their easy
-success as badly as did Pizarro’s filibusters in Peru.
-They quarrelled with their friends, the white traders
-and sealers, and suffered in an unprovoked onslaught
-by the crew of a certain French ship, the <em>Jean Bart</em>.
-Then two of the conquering clans fell out and fought
-with each other. In the end a number of them returned
-to New Zealand, and the remainder failed to multiply
-or keep up their strength in the Chathams. In the
-present day Moriori and Maori together&mdash;for their
-blood has mingled&mdash;do not number two hundred souls.</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter">
-<img src="images/i_218.jpg" alt="" width="700" height="450" />
-<p class="captioncenter">WAHINE’S CANOE RACE ON THE WAIKATO</p>
-</div>
-
-<p>The affair of the <i>Jean Bart</i> is a curious story. The
-vessel, a French whaler, anchored off the Chathams in
-1839. Eager to trade, the Maori clambered on board
-in numbers. They began chaffering, and also quarrelling
-with one another, in a fashion that alarmed the captain.
-He gave wine to some of his dangerous visitors, and
-tried to persuade them to go ashore again. Many did
-so, but several score were still in the ship when she
-slipped her cable and stood out to sea. Then the
-Frenchmen, armed with guns and lances, attacked the
-Maori, who were without weapons, and cleared the
-decks of them. The fight, however, did not end there.
-A number of the Ngatiawa were below, whither the
-whites did not venture to follow them. They presently
-made their way into a storeroom, found muskets there,
-and opened fire on the crew. Two of the Frenchmen
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_219" id="Page_219">[219]</a></span>fell, and the remainder in panic launched three boats
-and left the ship. By this time the <i>Jean Bart</i> was out
-of sight of land, but the Maori managed to sail back.
-She went ashore, and was looted and burnt. About
-forty natives had been killed in the strange bungling
-and causeless slaughter. The whalers and their boats
-were heard of no more. It is thought that they were
-lost in the endeavour to make New Zealand.<a name="FNanchor_6_6" id="FNanchor_6_6"></a><a href="#Footnote_6_6" class="fnanchor">[6]</a></p>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-<p><a name="Footnote_6_6" id="Footnote_6_6"></a><a href="#FNanchor_6_6"><span class="label">[6]</span></a> In the <cite>Journal of the Polynesian Society</cite>, vol. i., Mr. A. Shand
-summarises and compares the various versions of this odd business.</p></div>
-
-<p>We have seen how the Maori began their invasion
-of the Chathams by the seizure of the <em>Rodney</em> at Port
-Nicholson. It is curious that the best-known incident
-of the subsequent history of the group was almost the
-exact converse of this&mdash;I mean the seizure at the
-Chathams of the schooner <em>Rifleman</em> in July 1868. In
-this case, too, the aggressors were Maori, though they
-did not belong to the Chathams. They were prisoners
-of war or suspected natives deported thither from the
-North Island, and kept there under loose supervision
-by a weak guard. Their leader, Te Kooti, had never
-borne arms against us, and had been imprisoned and
-exiled on suspicion merely. A born leader of men, he
-contrived the capture of the <em>Rifleman</em> very cleverly, and
-sailed her back to the North Island successfully, taking
-with him one hundred and sixty-three men and one
-hundred and thirty-five women and children. The
-schooner was carrying a respectable cargo of ammunition,
-accoutrements, food, and tobacco; but the fugitives
-could muster between them only about thirty
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220">[220]</a></span>rifles and guns. Yet with this scanty supply of weapons
-Te Kooti managed to kindle a flame in the Poverty
-Bay district that took years to extinguish. Finally, after
-massacring many settlers, and winning or losing a series
-of fights with our militia and their native allies, his
-forces were scattered, and he was hunted away with a
-few followers into the country of the Maori king.
-There he was allowed to settle undisturbed. He lived
-long enough to be forgiven, to have his hand shaken
-by our Native Minister, and to have a house with a bit
-of land given to him by the Government. He was
-not a chivalrous opponent. A savage, he made war in
-savage fashion. But he was a capable person; and I
-cannot resist the conclusion that in being banished to
-the Chathams and kept there without trial, he was
-given reason to think himself most unjustly used.</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter">
-<img src="images/i_220.jpg" alt="" width="700" height="468" />
-<p class="captioncenter">NATIVE GATHERING</p>
-</div>
-
-<p>The only trouble given by the natives at the
-Chathams in later days took the form of a little
-comedy. The Maori there own a good deal of live-stock,
-including some thousands of sheep and a number
-of unpleasant and objectionable dogs. The Maori
-<i lang="mi" xml:lang="mi">kuri</i>, an unattractive mongrel at the best, is never
-popular with white settlers; but in the year 1890 the
-<i lang="mi" xml:lang="mi">kuri</i> of the Chathams became a distinct nuisance. A
-dog-tax was levied on the owners, but this failed either
-to make them reduce the number of their dogs or
-restrain them from worrying the flocks of the white
-settlers. If I remember rightly, the Maori simply
-declined to pay the dog-tax. When they were prosecuted
-and fined, they refused to pay the fines. The
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_221" id="Page_221">[221]</a></span>Government of the day, with more vigour than humour,
-despatched a steamer to the Chathams, arrested some
-forty of the recalcitrants, brought them to the South
-Island, and lodged them in Lyttelton Gaol. The
-Maori, who have a keen sense of the ridiculous, offered
-no resistance whatever. I suspect that they did not
-greatly dislike the trip; it enabled them to see the
-world. Their notion of hard labour and prison discipline
-was to eat well, to smoke tobacco, and to bask in
-the sunshine of the prison yard. It was impossible to
-treat them harshly. After a while they were sent home,
-where their adventure formed food for conversation in
-many and many a nocturnal <i lang="mi" xml:lang="mi">korero</i>. In the meantime
-their dogs lived and continued to chase sheep. At
-this stage the writer of these pages joined the New
-Zealand Government, and the unhappy white flock-owners
-laid their troubles before him. At first the
-little knot did not seem, to an inexperienced Minister,
-quite easy to untie. After some cogitation, however,
-a way was found of ending the comedy of errors.
-What that was is another story. Since then, no more
-terrible incident has disturbed the Chathams than the
-grounding of an Antarctic iceberg on their coast&mdash;a
-somewhat startling apparition in latitude 44° south.</p>
-
-<p>Otherwise the Chatham islanders have gone on for
-the last forty years living quietly in the soft sea-air of
-their little Arcadia, without roads and without progress.
-They grow wool and export it; for the rest, they
-exist. A small steamer visits them half-a-dozen times
-a year, and brings news, groceries, and clothes, also
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222">[222]</a></span>the correct time. Great is the tribulation when her
-coming is delayed. A friend of mine who witnessed a
-belated arrival tells me that the boat found a famine
-raging. The necessaries lacking, however, were not
-food, but tobacco and hairpins. The 60,000 sheep depastured
-on the islands have played havoc with some of
-the native vegetation, and have brought down retribution
-in the shape of moving drifts of blown sea-sand,
-whereby many acres of good pasture have been overwhelmed.
-However, that wonderful binding grass,
-the marram, has been used to stop the sand, and is
-said to have stayed the scourge. Much native “bush”
-is still left, and shows the curious spectacle of a forest
-where trees spread luxuriantly but do not grow to
-much more than twenty feet in height. That, says
-Professor Dendy, is due to the sea-winds&mdash;not cold,
-but laden with salt. In this woodland you may see a
-veronica which has become a tree, a kind of sandalwood,
-and a palm peculiar to the islands. That
-beautiful flower, the Chatham Island lily&mdash;which, by
-the way, is not a lily,&mdash;blooms in many a New Zealand
-garden.</p>
-
-<hr class="tb" />
-
-<p>The Auckland Isles lie some three hundred miles
-south of our mainland. They are nearly four times
-the size of <abbr title="Saint">St.</abbr> Helena, where, as we know, several
-thousand people have in the past managed to live,
-chiefly on beef and a British garrison. No one, however,
-now lives in the Aucklands. New Zealanders
-speak of their climate in much the same strain as
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223">[223]</a></span>Frenchmen use when talking of November fogs in
-London. There are, however, worse climates in several
-parts of the United Kingdom. It does not always rain
-there; there are many spots where you are sheltered
-from the wind. It is not so cold but that tree-ferns
-will grow&mdash;the group is their southern limit. The
-leaning or bowed habits of the forest are due as much,
-perhaps, to the peaty soil as to the sou’westers. Vegetables
-flourish; goats, pigs, and cattle thrive. So far are the
-valleys and hill-sides from being barren that their
-plant-life is a joy to the New Zealand botanists, who
-pray for nothing so much as that settlement may hold
-its hand and not molest this floral paradise. Pleurophyllums,
-celmisias, gentians, veronicas, grass-trees,
-spread beside the sea-gulfs as though in sub-alpine
-meadows. The leaves are luxuriant, the flowers richer
-in colour than on our main islands. The jungle of
-crouching rata tinges the winding shores with its
-summer scarlet. Dense as are the wind-beaten groves,
-the scrub that covers the higher slopes is still more
-closely woven. The forest you may creep through;
-the scrub is virtually impenetrable. A friend of mine,
-anxious to descend a steep slope covered with it, did so
-by lying down and rolling on the matted surface. He
-likened it to a wire-mattress&mdash;with a broken wire
-sticking up here and there.</p>
-
-<p>In addition to their botanical fame, the Aucklands
-have a sinister renown among seafaring men. Nature
-has provided the group with nearly a dozen good
-harbours. Two among these, Port Ross and Carnley
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224">[224]</a></span>Harbour, have found champions enthusiastic enough to
-style them the finest seaports in the world. Yet,
-despite this abundance of shelter, the isles are infamous
-as the scene of shipwrecks. They are in the track of
-Australian ships making for Cape Horn by passing to
-the south of New Zealand. In trying to give a wide
-berth to the Snares, captains sometimes go perilously
-near the Aucklands. To go no further back, eight
-wrecks upon them have been recorded during the
-last forty-five years; while earlier, in 1845, there are
-said to have been three in one year. The excellent
-harbours, unluckily, open towards the east; the ships
-running before the westerly winds are dashed against
-the terrible walls of rock which make the windward
-face of the group. The survivors find themselves on
-desolate and inclement shores hundreds of miles from
-humanity. Many are the tales of their sufferings.
-Even now, though the Government of New Zealand
-keeps up two well-stocked depôts of food and clothing
-there, and despatches a steamer to search for castaways
-once or twice a year, we still read of catastrophes
-followed by prolonged misery. Five men from a crew
-of the <em>Grafton</em>, lost in 1864, spent no less than eighteen
-months on the islands. At length they patched up
-the ship’s pinnace sufficiently to carry three of them to
-Stewart’s Island, where they crept into Port Adventure
-in the last stage of exhaustion. The two comrades
-they had left behind were at once sent for and brought
-away. Less lucky were four sailors who, after the
-wreck of the <em>General Grant</em>, two years later, tried to
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_225" id="Page_225">[225]</a></span>repeat the feat of a boat-voyage to Stewart Island.
-They were lost on the way. Indeed, of eighty-three
-poor souls cast away with the <em>General Grant</em>, only ten
-were ultimately rescued, after spending a forlorn six
-months on the isles. The case of the <em>General Grant</em>
-was especially noteworthy. She did not run blindly
-against the cliffs in a tempest, but spent hours tacking
-on and off the western coast in ordinary weather.
-Finally, she found her way into a cave, where she
-went down with most of those on board her. At least
-£30,000 in gold went with her, and in the effort to
-find the wreck and recover the money, the cutter
-<em>Daphne</em> was afterwards cast away, with the loss of six
-lives more.</p>
-
-<p>Cruel indeed was the ill-luck of the crew of the
-four-masted barque <em>Dundonald</em> which struck on the
-Aucklands in March 1907. They saw a cliff looming
-out just over their bows shortly after midnight. An
-attempt to wear the ship merely ended in her being
-hurled stern foremost into a kind of tunnel. The
-bow sank, and huge seas washed overboard the captain,
-his son, and nine of the crew. Sixteen took refuge in
-the tops, and one of them, a Russian, crept from a
-yard-arm on to a ledge of the cliff. After daylight a
-rope was flung to him and doubled, and along this
-bridge&mdash;sixty feet in air above the surges&mdash;fifteen men
-contrived to crawl. On reaching the summit of the
-cliff they discovered the full extent of their bad
-fortune. They had been cast away, not on the larger
-Aucklands, but on the peaked rock ominously named
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_226" id="Page_226">[226]</a></span>Disappointment Island. It contains but four or five
-square miles, and is five miles away from the next of
-the group. Heart-stricken at the discovery, the chief
-mate lay down and died in a few days. The second
-mate’s health also gave way. The carpenter and sail-maker,
-whose skill would have been worth so much to
-the castaways, had been drowned with the captain. A
-few damp matches and some canvas and rope were
-almost all that was saved from the ship before she
-disappeared in deep water.</p>
-
-<p>For seven months the survivors managed to live on
-Disappointment Island, showing both pluck and ingenuity.
-For a day or two they had to eat raw sea-birds.
-Then, when their matches had dried, they
-managed to kindle a fire of peat&mdash;a fire which they did
-not allow to expire for seven months. They learned a
-better way of cooking sea-fowl than by roasting them.
-At the coming of winter weather they dug holes in the
-peat, and building over these roofs of sods and tussock-grass,
-lay warm and dry thereunder. These shelters,
-which have been likened to Kaffir kraals, appear to
-have been modelled on Russian pig-sties. The seamen
-found a plant with large creeping stems, full of starch,
-and edible&mdash;by desperate men. When the seals came
-to the islands they mistook them for sea-serpents,
-but presently finding out their mistake, they lowered
-hunters armed with clubs to the foot of the cliffs, and
-learned, after many experiments, that the right place to
-hit a seal is above the nose. They found penguins
-tough eating, and seal’s flesh something to be reserved
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_227" id="Page_227">[227]</a></span>for dire extremity. Their regular ration of sea-birds,
-they said, was three molly-hawks a day for each man.
-As to that, one can only say, with Dominie Sampson,
-“Prodigious!” Searching their islet they lighted upon
-a crack in the ring of cliff where a waterfall tumbled
-into a quiet little boat-harbour, the bathing-pool of
-sea-lions. Then they determined to build a boat and
-reach that elysium, the main island, with its depôt of
-stores. With greased canvas and crooked boughs cut
-from the gnarled veronica, which was their only timber,
-they managed to botch up something between a caricature
-of a Welsh coracle and “the rotten carcase of a
-boat” in which Antonio and the King of Naples turned
-Prospero and Miranda adrift. Rowing this leaky
-curiosity with forked sticks, three picked adventurers
-reached the main island&mdash;only to return without reaching
-the depôt. Another boat, and yet another, had to
-be built before a second transit could be achieved; and
-when the second crossing was effected, the coracle sank
-as the rowers scrambled on shore. This, however,
-completed the catalogue of their disasters, and was “the
-last of their sea-sorrow.” The depôt was reached in
-September, and in the boat found there the tenants of
-Disappointment Island were removed to comfort and
-good feeding at Port Ross. With the help of an old
-gun they did some cattle-shooting on Enderby Island
-hard by, and in the end were taken off by the Government
-steamer <em>Hinemoa</em> in December.</p>
-
-<p>Campbell Island, another habitable though sad-coloured
-spot, is a kind of understudy of the Auck<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_228" id="Page_228">[228]</a></span>lands&mdash;like
-them, but smaller, with less striking scenery
-and scantier plant life. It has, however, a local legend
-odd enough to be worth repeating. In the hodden-grey
-solitude there are certain graves of shipwrecked men
-and others. Among them is one called the Grave of
-the Frenchwoman. On the strength of this name, and
-of a patch of Scottish heather blooming near it, a tale
-has grown up, or been constructed, which would be
-excellent and pathetic if there were the slightest reason
-to suppose it true. It is that the Frenchwoman who
-sleeps her last sleep in rainy Campbell Island was a
-natural daughter of Charles Edward, the Young Pretender.
-She has even been identified with the daughter
-of Prince Charles and Clementina Walkenshaw, the
-Scottish lady who met him at Bannockburn House in
-the ’45, and long afterwards joined him abroad. This
-daughter&mdash;says the New Zealand story&mdash;became, when
-she grew up, an object of suspicion to the Prince’s
-Jacobite followers. They believed that she was a spy
-in the pay of the English Court. So they induced
-Stewart, a Scottish sea-captain, to kidnap the girl and
-carry her to some distant land. Stewart&mdash;whose name
-remains on our Stewart Island&mdash;did his work as
-thoroughly as possible by sailing with her to the antipodes
-of France. On the way he gained her affections,
-and established her at Campbell Island, where she died
-and was buried. Such is the story; sentiment has even
-been expended on the connection between Bonnie Prince
-Charlie and the patch of heather aforesaid.</p>
-
-<p>It is true certainly that there was a daughter named
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_229" id="Page_229">[229]</a></span>Charlotte or Caroline, or both, born to the Prince and
-Miss Walkenshaw in the year 1753. But it was the
-mother, not the daughter, who was suspected of being
-a spy in English pay. Clementina left the Prince,
-driven away by his sottish brutalities, just as did his
-legal wife, the Countess of Albany. The Countess
-adjusted her account by running away with Alfieri the
-poet. Abandoned by both women, Charles seems to
-have found some consolation in the society of his
-daughter Charlotte, to whom, even in his last degraded
-years, he showed his better side. He went through
-the form of making her Duchess of Albany. She
-remained with him till his death in 1788, and seems to
-have followed him to the grave a year afterwards. In
-any case, Stewart, the sea-captain of the legend, did not
-find his way to our southern isles till the earlier years
-of the nineteenth century. That was too late by a
-generation for Jacobite exiles to be concerned about
-the treachery of English agents. He is described in
-Surgeon-Major Thomson’s book as a man “who had
-seen the world and drunk Burgundy,” so it is possible
-that the story may have had a Burgundian origin.
-Who the buried Frenchwoman was I cannot say, but
-French seamen and explorers, as the map shows, have
-visited and examined Campbell Island. It would be
-a desolate spot for a Frenchwoman to live in; but
-when we are under earth, then, if the grave be deep
-enough, all lands, I suppose, are much alike.</p>
-<hr class="chap" />
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_230" id="Page_230">[230]</a></span></p>
-
-
-
-<h2><a name="APPENDIX" id="APPENDIX">APPENDIX</a></h2>
-
-<p class="center">A WORD TO THE TOURIST</p>
-
-
-<div class="figcenter">
-<img src="images/i_230.jpg" alt="" width="700" height="452" />
-<p class="captioncenter">WHITE CLIFFS, BULLER RIVER</p>
-</div>
-
-<p>Passengers to New Zealand may be roughly divided
-into two kinds&mdash;those who go to settle there, and those
-who go as visitors merely. The visitors, again, may be
-separated into sportsmen, invalids, and ordinary tourists
-who land in the country in order to look round and
-depart, “to glance and nod and hurry by.” Now by
-passengers and travellers of all sorts and conditions I, a
-Government official, may be forgiven if I advise them
-to make all possible use of the Government of the
-Dominion. For it is a Government ready and willing
-to give them help and information. I may be pardoned
-for reminding English readers that the Dominion
-has an office in London with a bureau, where inquirers
-are cheerfully welcomed and inquiries dealt
-with. Official pamphlets and statistics may not be
-stimulating or exciting reading; but, though dry and
-cautious, they are likely to be fairly accurate. So much
-for the information to be got in England. When the
-passenger lands in New Zealand, I can only repeat the
-advice&mdash;let him make every use he can of the Government.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_231" id="Page_231">[231]</a></span>
-If he be in search of land, he cannot do better
-than make his way to the nearest office of the Lands
-and Survey Department. If he be a skilled labourer
-whose capital is chiefly in his muscles and trade knowledge,
-the Department of Labour will tell him where he
-can best seek for employment. Last, but not least, if
-he be a tourist of any of the three descriptions above
-mentioned, he cannot easily miss the Tourist Department,
-for that ubiquitous organisation has agents in every
-part of the islands. Once in their hands, and brought
-by them into touch with the State and the facilities its
-railways offer, the traveller’s path is made as smooth as
-ample knowledge and good advice can make it. The
-journey from Auckland to Wellington may now be
-made by railway, while the voyage from Wellington to
-Lyttelton is but a matter of ten to eleven hours. Old
-colonists will understand what a saving of time and discomfort
-these changes mean.</p>
-
-<p>The visitor need not overburden himself with any
-cumbrous or extravagant outfit. He is going to a
-civilised country with a temperate climate. The sort
-of kit that might be taken for an autumn journey
-through the west of Ireland will be sufficient for a run
-through New Zealand. A sportsman may take very
-much what he would take for a hunting or fishing
-holiday in the highlands of Scotland; and, speaking
-broadly, the mountaineer who has climbed Switzerland
-will know what to take to New Zealand. Of course
-any one who contemplates camping out must add the
-apparatus for sleeping, cooking, and washing; but
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_232" id="Page_232">[232]</a></span>these things can be bought in the larger New Zealand
-towns at reasonable prices.</p>
-
-<p>A much more complicated question is the route which
-the traveller should follow on landing. The districts
-for deer-shooting are well known. Indeed, the sportsman
-need have no difficulty in mapping out a course
-for himself. All will depend on the season of the year
-and the special game he is after. Any one interested in
-the progress of settlement and colonisation may be
-recommended to pass through the farming district
-between the Waiau River in Southland and the river
-of the same name which runs into the sea about sixty
-miles north of Christchurch. Next he should make a
-journey from Wellington to New Plymouth, along the
-south-west coast of New Zealand, and again from
-Wellington to Napier, threading the districts of
-Wairarapa, the Seventy Mile Bush, and Hawke’s Bay.
-The city of Auckland and its neighbourhood, and the
-valley of the Waikato River also, he should not miss.</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter">
-<img src="images/i_232.jpg" alt="" width="700" height="461" />
-<p class="captioncenter">THE OTIRA GORGE</p>
-</div>
-
-<p>Let me suppose, however, that what the tourist wants
-is rather the wilderness and its scenery than prosaic
-evidence of the work of subduing the one and wrecking
-the other. His route then will very much depend on
-the port that is his starting-point. Should he land at
-Bluff Harbour he will find himself within easy striking
-distance of the Otago mountain lakes, all of which are
-worth a visit, while one of them, Manapouri, is perhaps
-as romantic a piece of wild lake scenery as the earth has
-to show. The sounds or fiords of the south-west
-coast can be comfortably reached by excursion steamer
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_233" id="Page_233">[233]</a></span>in the autumn. The tougher stamp of pedestrian can
-get to them at other times in the year by following one
-of the tracks which cross the mountains from the lake
-district aforesaid to the western coast. The beauty of
-the route from Te Anau through the Clinton Valley,
-and by way of the Sutherland Falls to Milford Sound,
-is unsurpassed in the island.</p>
-
-<p>Aorangi, the highest peak of the Southern Alps,
-and the centre of the chief glaciers, is best approached
-from Timaru, a seaport on the eastern coast a hundred
-and twelve miles south of Christchurch. Any one,
-however, who is able to travel on horseback may be
-promised a rich reward if he follows the west coast,
-southward from the town of Hokitika, and passes
-between Aorangi and the sea, on that side. Between
-Hokitika and the Canterbury Plains the journey by
-rail and coach is for half its distance a succession of
-beautiful sights, the finest of which is found in the deep
-gorge of the Otira River, into which the traveller
-plunges on the western side of the dividing range.
-Inferior, but well worth seeing, is the gorge of the
-Buller River, to be seen by those who make the coach
-journey from Westport to Nelson. Nelson itself is
-finely placed at the inner end of the grand arc of Blind
-Bay. The drive thence to Picton on Queen Charlotte
-Sound, passing on the way through Havelock and the
-Rai Valley, has charming points of view.</p>
-
-<p>The better scenery of the North Island is not found
-in the southern portion unless the traveller is prepared
-to leave the beaten track and do some rough scrambling
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_234" id="Page_234">[234]</a></span>in the Tararua and Ruahiné Mountains. Then, indeed,
-he will have his reward. Otherwise, after taking in the
-fine panorama of Wellington Harbour, he may be recommended
-to make his way with all convenient speed
-to New Plymouth and the forest-clad slopes of Mount
-Egmont. Thence he should turn to the interior and
-reach the Hot Lakes district by way of one of the river
-valleys. That of the Mokau is extremely beautiful in
-its rich covering of virgin forest. But the gorges of
-the Wanganui are not only equal to anything of the
-kind in beauty, but may be ascended in the most
-comfortable fashion. Arrived at the upper end of the
-navigable river, the traveller will make his way by
-coach across country to Lake Taupo and the famous
-volcanoes of its plateau.</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter">
-<img src="images/i_234.jpg" alt="" width="700" height="452" />
-<p class="captioncenter">LAKE WAIKARE-MOANA</p>
-</div>
-
-<p>More often the tourist gains the volcanoes and
-thermal springs by coming thither southward from the
-town of Auckland. And here let me observe that
-Auckland and its surroundings make the pleasantest
-urban district in the islands. Within thirty miles of
-the city there is much that is charming both on sea and
-land. Nor will a longer journey be wasted if a visit
-be paid to the chief bays and inlets of the northern
-peninsula, notably to Whangaroa, Whangarei, Hokianga,
-and the Bay of Islands. Still, nothing in the province
-of Auckland is likely to rival in magnetic power the
-volcanic district of which Roto-rua is the official centre.
-To its other attractions have now been added a connection
-by road with the unspoiled loveliness of Lake
-Waikarémoana and the forest and mountain region of
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_235" id="Page_235">[235]</a></span>the Uriwera tribe, into which before the ’nineties white
-men seldom ventured, save in armed force. Rising
-like a wall to the east of the Rangitaiki River the
-Uriwera country is all the more striking by reason of
-the utter contrast it affords to the desolate, half-barren
-plains of pumice which separate it from the Hot Lakes.
-These last and their district include Taupo, with its
-hot pools and giant cones. But the most convenient
-point among them for a visitor’s headquarters is undoubtedly
-Roto-rua.</p>
-<hr class="chap" />
-
-
-
-
-<h2 id="Index">Index</h2>
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_237" id="Page_237">[237]</a></span></p>
-<ul class="index">
-
-<li class="ifrst">   Acclimatisation, <a href="#Page_59">59</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Acclimatisers, <a href="#Page_65">65</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Adams, Arthur, <a href="#Page_21">21</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Akaroa, <a href="#Page_190">190</a>, <a href="#Page_201">201</a>, <a href="#Page_215">215</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Albatrosses, <a href="#Page_213">213</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Alps, <a href="#Page_6">6</a>, <a href="#Page_160">160</a>, <a href="#Page_166">166</a>, <a href="#Page_179">179</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Antipodes Island, <a href="#Page_206">206</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Aorangi, <a href="#Page_163">163</a>, <a href="#Page_164">164</a>, <a href="#Page_165">165</a>, <a href="#Page_167">167</a>, <a href="#Page_170">170</a>, <a href="#Page_173">173</a>, <a href="#Page_175">175</a>, <a href="#Page_233">233</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Ara-tia-tia Rapids, <a href="#Page_123">123</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Art, <a href="#Page_20">20</a>, <a href="#Page_21">21</a>, <a href="#Page_49">49</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Auckland, <a href="#Page_19">19</a>, <a href="#Page_28">28</a>, <a href="#Page_75">75</a>, <a href="#Page_90">90</a>, <a href="#Page_101">101</a>, <a href="#Page_104">104</a>, <a href="#Page_114">114</a>, <a href="#Page_129">129</a>, <a href="#Page_132">132</a>, <a href="#Page_142">142</a>, <a href="#Page_193">193</a>, <a href="#Page_231">231</a>, <a href="#Page_232">232</a>, <a href="#Page_234">234</a></li>
-<li class="isub2">Isles, <a href="#Page_91">91</a>, <a href="#Page_94">94</a>, <a href="#Page_184">184</a>, <a href="#Page_191">191</a>, <a href="#Page_204">204</a>, <a href="#Page_205">205</a>, <a href="#Page_206">206</a>, <a href="#Page_222">222</a>, <a href="#Page_223">223</a>, <a href="#Page_225">225</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Australia, <a href="#Page_5">5</a>, <a href="#Page_10">10</a>, <a href="#Page_11">11</a>, <a href="#Page_20">20</a>, <a href="#Page_37">37</a>, <a href="#Page_73">73</a>, <a href="#Page_101">101</a>, <a href="#Page_165">165</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Australian stock-riders, <a href="#Page_68">68</a></li>
-
-
-<li class="ifrst">    Bay of Plenty, <a href="#Page_115">115</a>, <a href="#Page_116">116</a>, <a href="#Page_117">117</a>, <a href="#Page_120">120</a>, <a href="#Page_140">140</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Beech, <a href="#Page_87">87</a></li>
-<li class="isub2">woods, <a href="#Page_161">161</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Bell, Dr. Mackintosh, <a href="#Page_176">176</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Bell-bird, <a href="#Page_192">192</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Bidwill, <a href="#Page_128">128</a>, <a href="#Page_136">136</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Blackwell, <a href="#Page_24">24</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Blue duck, <a href="#Page_64">64</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Bounties, the, <a href="#Page_206">206</a>, <a href="#Page_207">207</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Bowen, the <a href="#Page_182">182</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    British trees, <a href="#Page_7">7</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Broadleaf, the large or shining, <a href="#Page_94">94</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Brunner, <a href="#Page_177">177</a>, <a href="#Page_193">193</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Buddle, Mr., <a href="#Page_117">117</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Buick, <a href="#Page_24">24</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Buller River, <a href="#Page_160">160</a>, <a href="#Page_233">233</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Bush-fire, <a href="#Page_105">105</a></li>
-<li class="isub2">lawyer, <a href="#Page_99">99</a></li>
-<li class="isub2">settler, <a href="#Page_40">40</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Butler, Samuel, <a href="#Page_162">162</a>, <a href="#Page_163">163</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Butter, <a href="#Page_12">12</a>, <a href="#Page_13">13</a>, <a href="#Page_14">14</a>, <a href="#Page_16">16</a>, <a href="#Page_17">17</a></li>
-<li class="isub2">factories, <a href="#Page_11">11</a></li>
-
-
-<li class="ifrst">    Caddell, James, <a href="#Page_196">196</a>, <a href="#Page_197">197</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Campbell Island, <a href="#Page_227">227</a>, <a href="#Page_228">228</a>, <a href="#Page_229">229</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Canoe, <a href="#Page_76">76</a>, <a href="#Page_77">77</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Cape Maria Van Diemen, <a href="#Page_133">133</a>, <a href="#Page_204">204</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Carrick, Mr., <a href="#Page_24">24</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Chapman, Mr. Justice, <a href="#Page_200">200</a>, <a href="#Page_206">206</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Charles Edward, the young Pretender, <a href="#Page_228">228</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Chatham Island lily, <a href="#Page_222">222</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Chatham Islands, the, <a href="#Page_190">190</a>, <a href="#Page_204">204</a>, <a href="#Page_211">211</a>, <a href="#Page_212">212</a>, <a href="#Page_214">214</a>, <a href="#Page_215">215</a>, <a href="#Page_216">216</a>, <a href="#Page_217">217</a>, <a href="#Page_218">218</a>, <a href="#Page_219">219</a>, <a href="#Page_220">220</a>, <a href="#Page_221">221</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Cheese, <a href="#Page_12">12</a>, <a href="#Page_13">13</a>, <a href="#Page_14">14</a>, <a href="#Page_17">17</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Chief towns, <a href="#Page_18">18</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Christchurch, <a href="#Page_28">28</a>, <a href="#Page_132">132</a>, <a href="#Page_162">162</a>, <a href="#Page_232">232</a>, <a href="#Page_233">233</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Clematis, <a href="#Page_37">37</a>, <a href="#Page_94">94</a>, <a href="#Page_95">95</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Climate, <a href="#Page_2">2</a>, <a href="#Page_3">3</a>, <a href="#Page_4">4</a>, <a href="#Page_5">5</a>, <a href="#Page_10">10</a>, <a href="#Page_14">14</a>, <a href="#Page_35">35</a>, <a href="#Page_36">36</a>, <a href="#Page_38">38</a>, <a href="#Page_52">52</a>, <a href="#Page_165">165</a>, <a href="#Page_170">170</a>, <a href="#Page_187">187</a>, <a href="#Page_222">222</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Clutha River, <a href="#Page_202">202</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Cockayne, Dr., <a href="#Page_24">24</a>, <a href="#Page_191">191</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Colenso, <a href="#Page_95">95</a>, <a href="#Page_97">97</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Contrasts, <a href="#Page_6">6</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Cook, Captain, <a href="#Page_168">168</a>, <a href="#Page_180">180</a>, <a href="#Page_195">195</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Coprosma, <a href="#Page_100">100</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Country labourers, <a href="#Page_50">50</a></li>
-<li class="isub2">life, <a href="#Page_28">28</a>, <a href="#Page_29">29</a>, <a href="#Page_32">32</a>, <a href="#Page_35">35</a>, <a href="#Page_39">39</a></li>
-<li class="isub2">life tendencies, <a href="#Page_46">46</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Cowan, Mr. James, <a href="#Page_24">24</a>, <a href="#Page_130">130</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Craddock, Colonel, <a href="#Page_53">53</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Cricket, <a href="#Page_72">72</a>, <a href="#Page_73">73</a></li>
-
-
-<li class="ifrst">    Decentralised colony, <a href="#Page_19">19</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Deer-stalking, <a href="#Page_61">61</a><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_238" id="Page_238">[238]</a></span></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Department of Public Health, <a href="#Page_44">44</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Disappointment Island, <a href="#Page_204">204</a>, <a href="#Page_226">226</a>, <a href="#Page_227">227</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Domett, <a href="#Page_21">21</a>, <a href="#Page_138">138</a>, <a href="#Page_155">155</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Douglas glacier, <a href="#Page_176">176</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Drummond, Mr. James, <a href="#Page_24">24</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    <i>Dundonald</i>, the barque, <a href="#Page_225">225</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Dunedin, <a href="#Page_28">28</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Dusky Sound, <a href="#Page_180">180</a>, <a href="#Page_186">186</a></li>
-<li class="isub2">Sound in 1771, <a href="#Page_195">195</a></li>
-
-
-<li class="ifrst">    Eels, <a href="#Page_65">65</a>, <a href="#Page_213">213</a>, <a href="#Page_214">214</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Egmont, Mount, <a href="#Page_105">105</a>, <a href="#Page_125">125</a>, <a href="#Page_165">165</a>, <a href="#Page_234">234</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    <i>Elingamite</i>, <a href="#Page_211">211</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    English trees and flowers, <a href="#Page_2">2</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Eruption of Tarawera, <a href="#Page_139">139</a>, <a href="#Page_144">144</a></li>
-
-
-<li class="ifrst">    Factories, <a href="#Page_26">26</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Factory hands, <a href="#Page_26">26</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Fairies, <a href="#Page_77">77</a>, <a href="#Page_78">78</a>, <a href="#Page_79">79</a>, <a href="#Page_81">81</a>, <a href="#Page_82">82</a>, <a href="#Page_83">83</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Fairy-tales, <a href="#Page_80">80</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Farm labourers, <a href="#Page_14">14</a>, <a href="#Page_51">51</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Farmers, <a href="#Page_8">8</a>, <a href="#Page_13">13</a>, <a href="#Page_17">17</a>, <a href="#Page_29">29</a>, <a href="#Page_30">30</a>, <a href="#Page_31">31</a>, <a href="#Page_46">46</a>, <a href="#Page_47">47</a>, <a href="#Page_50">50</a>, <a href="#Page_106">106</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Farming, <a href="#Page_32">32</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Fern, <a href="#Page_55">55</a>, <a href="#Page_86">86</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Ferns, <a href="#Page_38">38</a>, <a href="#Page_85">85</a>, <a href="#Page_116">116</a>, <a href="#Page_119">119</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Fiords, <a href="#Page_179">179</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Fire, <a href="#Page_77">77</a>, <a href="#Page_102">102</a>, <a href="#Page_106">106</a>, <a href="#Page_107">107</a>, <a href="#Page_108">108</a>, <a href="#Page_110">110</a>, <a href="#Page_125">125</a>, <a href="#Page_183">183</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Fish, <a href="#Page_65">65</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Fishing, <a href="#Page_49">49</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Fitzgerald, E. A., <a href="#Page_171">171</a>, <a href="#Page_172">172</a>, <a href="#Page_173">173</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Flax, <a href="#Page_12">12</a>, <a href="#Page_13">13</a>, <a href="#Page_37">37</a>, <a href="#Page_86">86</a>, <a href="#Page_95">95</a>, <a href="#Page_99">99</a>, <a href="#Page_202">202</a>, <a href="#Page_213">213</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Flightless birds, <a href="#Page_184">184</a>, <a href="#Page_186">186</a>, <a href="#Page_188">188</a></li>
-<li class="isub2">duck, <a href="#Page_184">184</a>, <a href="#Page_204">204</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Football, <a href="#Page_71">71</a>, <a href="#Page_72">72</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Forests, <a href="#Page_104">104</a>, <a href="#Page_105">105</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Freeholders, <a href="#Page_48">48</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Freezing, <a href="#Page_13">13</a></li>
-<li class="isub2">factory, <a href="#Page_15">15</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Frozen beef, <a href="#Page_17">17</a></li>
-<li class="isub2">mutton, <a href="#Page_11">11</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Fuchsias, <a href="#Page_94">94</a></li>
-
-
-<li class="ifrst">    Garden, <a href="#Page_34">34</a>, <a href="#Page_49">49</a>, <a href="#Page_107">107</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Gardening, <a href="#Page_36">36</a>, <a href="#Page_85">85</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    <i>General Gates</i>, the, <a href="#Page_197">197</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    <i>General Grant</i>, the, <a href="#Page_224">224</a>, <a href="#Page_225">225</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Gentians, <a href="#Page_94">94</a>, <a href="#Page_223">223</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Gerard, Mr. George, <a href="#Page_61">61</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Geyser, <a href="#Page_116">116</a>, <a href="#Page_119">119</a>, <a href="#Page_139">139</a>, <a href="#Page_148">148</a>, <a href="#Page_150">150</a>, <a href="#Page_151">151</a>, <a href="#Page_152">152</a>, <a href="#Page_164">164</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Goats, <a href="#Page_52">52</a>, <a href="#Page_53">53</a>, <a href="#Page_54">54</a>, <a href="#Page_104">104</a>, <a href="#Page_191">191</a>, <a href="#Page_223">223</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Godwits, <a href="#Page_62">62</a>, <a href="#Page_192">192</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Gold-mining, <a href="#Page_13">13</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    <i>Grafton</i>, the, <a href="#Page_224">224</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Grass, <a href="#Page_2">2</a>, <a href="#Page_7">7</a>, <a href="#Page_41">41</a>, <a href="#Page_72">72</a>, <a href="#Page_102">102</a>, <a href="#Page_106">106</a>, <a href="#Page_107">107</a>, <a href="#Page_108">108</a>, <a href="#Page_120">120</a>, <a href="#Page_121">121</a>, <a href="#Page_124">124</a>, <a href="#Page_125">125</a>, <a href="#Page_163">163</a>, <a href="#Page_222">222</a>, <a href="#Page_226">226</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Green, Mr., <a href="#Page_166">166</a>, <a href="#Page_168">168</a>, <a href="#Page_171">171</a>, <a href="#Page_175">175</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Green’s climb, Mr., <a href="#Page_169">169</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Greenstone, <a href="#Page_200">200</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Grey, Sir George, <a href="#Page_80">80</a>, <a href="#Page_129">129</a>, <a href="#Page_155">155</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Grey duck, <a href="#Page_62">62</a>, <a href="#Page_64">64</a></li>
-<li class="isub2">kiwi, <a href="#Page_184">184</a></li>
-
-
-<li class="ifrst">    Hamilton, A., <a href="#Page_24">24</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Hardie, Mr. Keir, <a href="#Page_27">27</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Harewood, <a href="#Page_215">215</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Hauraki Gulf, <a href="#Page_74">74</a>, <a href="#Page_186">186</a>, <a href="#Page_192">192</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Hau-roto, <a href="#Page_160">160</a>, <a href="#Page_177">177</a>, <a href="#Page_179">179</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Hawke’s Bay, <a href="#Page_104">104</a>, <a href="#Page_232">232</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Hazard, Mr., <a href="#Page_145">145</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Healing waters, <a href="#Page_154">154</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Health Department, <a href="#Page_45">45</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Hemp, <a href="#Page_12">12</a>, <a href="#Page_13">13</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Henry, Mr. Richard, <a href="#Page_187">187</a>, <a href="#Page_188">188</a>, <a href="#Page_189">189</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    High Alps, <a href="#Page_57">57</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Hinemoa, <a href="#Page_155">155</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Hochstetter, <a href="#Page_136">136</a>, <a href="#Page_163">163</a></li>
-<li class="isub2">ice-fall, <a href="#Page_176">176</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Hongi, <a href="#Page_156">156</a>, <a href="#Page_157">157</a>, <a href="#Page_158">158</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Hooker glacier, <a href="#Page_172">172</a>, <a href="#Page_174">174</a>, <a href="#Page_176">176</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Hori Haupapa, <a href="#Page_157">157</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Horo-Horo, <a href="#Page_126">126</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Horses, <a href="#Page_68">68</a>, <a href="#Page_69">69</a>, <a href="#Page_71">71</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Hotels, <a href="#Page_20">20</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Hot Lakes, <a href="#Page_134">134</a>, <a href="#Page_234">234</a>, <a href="#Page_235">235</a></li>
-<li class="isub2">Lakes District, <a href="#Page_118">118</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    House-sparrow, <a href="#Page_60">60</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Howitt, Mr. Charlton, <a href="#Page_193">193</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Huka, <a href="#Page_123">123</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Hutton, <a href="#Page_24">24</a></li>
-
-
-<li class="ifrst">    Inter-colonial trade, <a href="#Page_10">10</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Island sanctuaries, <a href="#Page_186">186</a></li>
-
-
-<li class="ifrst">    <i>Jean Bart</i>, the, <a href="#Page_218">218</a>, <a href="#Page_219">219</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    <i>Journal of the Polynesian Society</i>, <a href="#Page_24">24</a>, <a href="#Page_219">219</a></li>
-
-
-<li class="ifrst">    Kahikatea, <a href="#Page_101">101</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Kahukura, <a href="#Page_80">80</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Kaka, <a href="#Page_57">57</a>, <a href="#Page_63">63</a>, <a href="#Page_84">84</a>, <a href="#Page_96">96</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Kakapo, <a href="#Page_184">184</a>, <a href="#Page_186">186</a>, <a href="#Page_189">189</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Kapiti, <a href="#Page_186">186</a>, <a href="#Page_190">190</a>, <a href="#Page_191">191</a>, <a href="#Page_217">217</a><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_239" id="Page_239">[239]</a></span></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Karaka, <a href="#Page_37">37</a>, <a href="#Page_95">95</a>, <a href="#Page_96">96</a>, <a href="#Page_97">97</a>, <a href="#Page_98">98</a>, <a href="#Page_191">191</a>, <a href="#Page_212">212</a>, <a href="#Page_214">214</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Kauri, <a href="#Page_11">11</a>, <a href="#Page_88">88</a>, <a href="#Page_89">89</a>, <a href="#Page_90">90</a>, <a href="#Page_91">91</a>, <a href="#Page_101">101</a>, <a href="#Page_103">103</a>, <a href="#Page_106">106</a>, <a href="#Page_192">192</a></li>
-<li class="isub2">gum, <a href="#Page_13">13</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Kea, <a href="#Page_57">57</a>, <a href="#Page_58">58</a>, <a href="#Page_167">167</a>, <a href="#Page_186">186</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Kermadecs, <a href="#Page_133">133</a>, <a href="#Page_204">204</a>, <a href="#Page_207">207</a>, <a href="#Page_208">208</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Kirk, <a href="#Page_91">91</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Kirk’s <i>Forest Flora</i>, <a href="#Page_24">24</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Kiwi, <a href="#Page_186">186</a>, <a href="#Page_188">188</a>, <a href="#Page_189">189</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Kowhai, <a href="#Page_87">87</a>, <a href="#Page_94">94</a>, <a href="#Page_95">95</a>, <a href="#Page_96">96</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Krakatoa, <a href="#Page_141">141</a></li>
-
-
-<li class="ifrst">    Laing, <a href="#Page_24">24</a>, <a href="#Page_92">92</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Lake Taupo, <a href="#Page_116">116</a>, <a href="#Page_127">127</a>, <a href="#Page_234">234</a></li>
-<li class="isub2">Tikitapu, <a href="#Page_144">144</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Lakes of the South Island, <a href="#Page_177">177</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Lance-wood, <a href="#Page_88">88</a>, <a href="#Page_100">100</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Likeness to England, <a href="#Page_2">2</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Literature, <a href="#Page_21">21</a>, <a href="#Page_22">22</a>, <a href="#Page_23">23</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Little Barrier Island, <a href="#Page_75">75</a>, <a href="#Page_186">186</a>, <a href="#Page_191">191</a>, <a href="#Page_192">192</a></li>
-
-
-<li class="ifrst">    Mackay, Miss, <a href="#Page_21">21</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Manapouri, <a href="#Page_177">177</a>, <a href="#Page_179">179</a>, <a href="#Page_187">187</a>, <a href="#Page_192">192</a>, <a href="#Page_232">232</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Mannering, Mr., <a href="#Page_170">170</a>, <a href="#Page_171">171</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Manuka, <a href="#Page_37">37</a>, <a href="#Page_55">55</a>, <a href="#Page_95">95</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Maori&mdash;their belief in fairies, <a href="#Page_77">77</a>, <a href="#Page_78">78</a>, <a href="#Page_79">79</a></li>
-<li class="isub2">boys, <a href="#Page_96">96</a></li>
-<li class="isub2">burning of forest, <a href="#Page_103">103</a></li>
-<li class="isub2">cannibalism, <a href="#Page_126">126</a></li>
-<li class="isub2">canoes, <a href="#Page_198">198</a></li>
-<li class="isub2">chief, <a href="#Page_141">141</a></li>
-<li class="isub2">children, <a href="#Page_44">44</a></li>
-<li class="isub2">cooking, <a href="#Page_153">153</a></li>
-<li class="isub2">of Cook’s Strait, <a href="#Page_215">215</a></li>
-<li class="isub2">dogs, <a href="#Page_57">57</a>, <a href="#Page_220">220</a></li>
-<li class="isub2">drink, <a href="#Page_44">44</a></li>
-<li class="isub2">fairy-tales, <a href="#Page_80">80</a></li>
-<li class="isub2">fight, <a href="#Page_192">192</a></li>
-<li class="isub2">their food, <a href="#Page_83">83</a></li>
-<li class="isub2">gentleman, <a href="#Page_128">128</a></li>
-<li class="isub2">guide, <a href="#Page_134">134</a></li>
-<li class="isub2">guns, <a href="#Page_84">84</a></li>
-<li class="isub2">their health, <a href="#Page_43">43</a></li>
-<li class="isub2">history, <a href="#Page_199">199</a></li>
-<li class="isub2">Horo-Horo, <a href="#Page_126">126</a></li>
-<li class="isub2">hunters, <a href="#Page_184">184</a></li>
-<li class="isub2">karaka, their use of the, <a href="#Page_97">97</a>, <a href="#Page_98">98</a></li>
-<li class="isub2">kindness, <a href="#Page_210">210</a></li>
-<li class="isub2">Lake Taupo, <a href="#Page_116">116</a>, <a href="#Page_122">122</a>, <a href="#Page_123">123</a></li>
-<li class="isub2">their lands, <a href="#Page_44">44</a></li>
-<li class="isub2">as minstrels, <a href="#Page_130">130</a></li>
-<li class="isub2">myths, <a href="#Page_76">76</a></li>
-<li class="isub2">their numbers, <a href="#Page_43">43</a>, <a href="#Page_218">218</a></li>
-<li class="isub2">offerings to Tané, <a href="#Page_77">77</a></li>
-<li class="isub2">their outlook, <a href="#Page_45">45</a></li>
-<li class="isub2">poem, <a href="#Page_131">131</a></li>
-<li class="isub2">prophets, <a href="#Page_159">159</a></li>
-<li class="isub2">their qualities, <a href="#Page_45">45</a></li>
-<li class="isub2">race, <a href="#Page_129">129</a>, <a href="#Page_158">158</a></li>
-<li class="isub2">ruins of stockade, <a href="#Page_118">118</a></li>
-<li class="isub2">solitary family, <a href="#Page_195">195</a></li>
-<li class="isub2">tradition, <a href="#Page_115">115</a></li>
-<li class="isub2">travellers, <a href="#Page_125">125</a></li>
-<li class="isub2">tribe, <a href="#Page_40">40</a>, <a href="#Page_157">157</a></li>
-<li class="isub2">villages, <a href="#Page_152">152</a></li>
-<li class="isub2">warrior, <a href="#Page_158">158</a></li>
-<li class="isub2">woman, <a href="#Page_133">133</a></li>
-<li class="isub2">women, <a href="#Page_100">100</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Matai, <a href="#Page_87">87</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Matipo, <a href="#Page_37">37</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Mayor Island, <a href="#Page_118">118</a>, <a href="#Page_119">119</a>, <a href="#Page_120">120</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Meat, <a href="#Page_13">13</a>, <a href="#Page_14">14</a>, <a href="#Page_16">16</a></li>
-<li class="isub2">freezing, <a href="#Page_14">14</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Middle class, <a href="#Page_25">25</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Milford Sound, <a href="#Page_180">180</a>, <a href="#Page_181">181</a>, <a href="#Page_182">182</a>, <a href="#Page_183">183</a>, <a href="#Page_200">200</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Mistletoe, <a href="#Page_94">94</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    M’Kinnon, Quintin, <a href="#Page_193">193</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    M’Nab, Mr., <a href="#Page_24">24</a>, <a href="#Page_198">198</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Moa, <a href="#Page_184">184</a>, <a href="#Page_199">199</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Mokoia, <a href="#Page_155">155</a>, <a href="#Page_156">156</a>, <a href="#Page_157">157</a>, <a href="#Page_158">158</a>, <a href="#Page_159">159</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Moriori, <a href="#Page_190">190</a>, <a href="#Page_212">212</a>, <a href="#Page_213">213</a>, <a href="#Page_214">214</a>, <a href="#Page_216">216</a>, <a href="#Page_217">217</a>, <a href="#Page_218">218</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Motor-driving, <a href="#Page_49">49</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Mount Cook, <a href="#Page_163">163</a>, <a href="#Page_175">175</a></li>
-<li class="isub2">Ruapehu, <a href="#Page_95">95</a></li>
-<li class="isub2">Tasman, <a href="#Page_164">164</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Mountain-lily. See Shepherd’s lily</li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Murchison glacier, <a href="#Page_176">176</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Music, <a href="#Page_21">21</a>, <a href="#Page_49">49</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Mutton, <a href="#Page_13">13</a>, <a href="#Page_16">16</a>, <a href="#Page_34">34</a>, <a href="#Page_41">41</a>, <a href="#Page_58">58</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Mutton-bird, <a href="#Page_84">84</a>, <a href="#Page_206">206</a>, <a href="#Page_213">213</a></li>
-
-
-<li class="ifrst">    Names of lakes and mountains, <a href="#Page_178">178</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Napier, <a href="#Page_232">232</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    National parks, <a href="#Page_183">183</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Native pigeons, <a href="#Page_62">62</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Nei-nei, <a href="#Page_100">100</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Nelson, <a href="#Page_28">28</a>, <a href="#Page_74">74</a>, <a href="#Page_142">142</a>, <a href="#Page_177">177</a>, <a href="#Page_233">233</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Newspapers, <a href="#Page_22">22</a>, <a href="#Page_23">23</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    New Zealand harriers, <a href="#Page_69">69</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Ngaitahu, <a href="#Page_199">199</a>, <a href="#Page_202">202</a>, <a href="#Page_203">203</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Ngata, Mr. Apirana, M.P., <a href="#Page_45">45</a><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_240" id="Page_240">[240]</a></span></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Ngatimamoe, <a href="#Page_199">199</a>, <a href="#Page_203">203</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Ngatoro, <a href="#Page_115">115</a>, <a href="#Page_116">116</a>, <a href="#Page_146">146</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Ngauruhoe, <a href="#Page_116">116</a>, <a href="#Page_128">128</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Nikau, <a href="#Page_37">37</a>, <a href="#Page_88">88</a></li>
-
-
-<li class="ifrst">    Ohinemutu, <a href="#Page_118">118</a>, <a href="#Page_133">133</a>, <a href="#Page_145">145</a>, <a href="#Page_152">152</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Orchids, <a href="#Page_94">94</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Otira River, <a href="#Page_233">233</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Over-sea trade, <a href="#Page_10">10</a></li>
-
-
-<li class="ifrst">    Palm-lily, <a href="#Page_37">37</a>, <a href="#Page_88">88</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Palm-tree, <a href="#Page_86">86</a>, <a href="#Page_99">99</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Panax, <a href="#Page_88">88</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Paradise duck, <a href="#Page_64">64</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Parrots, <a href="#Page_62">62</a>, <a href="#Page_96">96</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Parrot’s-beak, <a href="#Page_94">94</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Passion-flower, <a href="#Page_94">94</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Pelorus Jack, <a href="#Page_66">66</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Picton, <a href="#Page_233">233</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Pigeon, <a href="#Page_84">84</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Pigs, <a href="#Page_233">233</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Pink and White Terraces, <a href="#Page_136">136</a>, <a href="#Page_137">137</a>, <a href="#Page_150">150</a>, <a href="#Page_164">164</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Poetry, <a href="#Page_21">21</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Pohaturoa, <a href="#Page_126">126</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Pohutu, <a href="#Page_151">151</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Pohutu-kawa, <a href="#Page_37">37</a>, <a href="#Page_87">87</a>, <a href="#Page_91">91</a>, <a href="#Page_192">192</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Polack, <a href="#Page_158">158</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Polo, <a href="#Page_49">49</a>, <a href="#Page_70">70</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Pomaré, Dr., <a href="#Page_45">45</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Potts, Thomas, <a href="#Page_24">24</a>, <a href="#Page_57">57</a>, <a href="#Page_104">104</a>, <a href="#Page_213">213</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Products, <a href="#Page_10">10</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Provinces, <a href="#Page_18">18</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Pukeko, <a href="#Page_63">63</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Pumice, <a href="#Page_120">120</a>, <a href="#Page_121">121</a>, <a href="#Page_124">124</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Puoho, <a href="#Page_201">201</a>, <a href="#Page_202">202</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Puriri, <a href="#Page_88">88</a>, <a href="#Page_90">90</a>, <a href="#Page_91">91</a>, <a href="#Page_93">93</a></li>
-
-
-<li class="ifrst">    Rabbit, <a href="#Page_53">53</a>, <a href="#Page_59">59</a>, <a href="#Page_185">185</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Rata, <a href="#Page_76">76</a>, <a href="#Page_77">77</a>, <a href="#Page_87">87</a>, <a href="#Page_90">90</a>, <a href="#Page_91">91</a>, <a href="#Page_92">92</a>, <a href="#Page_93">93</a>, <a href="#Page_94">94</a>, <a href="#Page_187">187</a>, <a href="#Page_191">191</a>, <a href="#Page_223">223</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Rauparaha, <a href="#Page_190">190</a>, <a href="#Page_199">199</a>, <a href="#Page_201">201</a>, <a href="#Page_203">203</a>, <a href="#Page_215">215</a>, <a href="#Page_217">217</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Recreations, <a href="#Page_49">49</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Red-deer, <a href="#Page_60">60</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Resemblance to Scotland, <a href="#Page_2">2</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Resolution Island, <a href="#Page_186">186</a>, <a href="#Page_187">187</a>, <a href="#Page_196">196</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Rewa-rewa, <a href="#Page_88">88</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Ribbon-wood, <a href="#Page_95">95</a>, <a href="#Page_161">161</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Riding, <a href="#Page_49">49</a>, <a href="#Page_68">68</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    <i>Rifleman</i>, the, <a href="#Page_219">219</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Riggs, Captain Abimelech, <a href="#Page_199">199</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Rimu, <a href="#Page_77">77</a>, <a href="#Page_87">87</a>, <a href="#Page_91">91</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Roa, <a href="#Page_184">184</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    <i>Rodney</i>, the, <a href="#Page_215">215</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Ross, Mr., <a href="#Page_24">24</a>, <a href="#Page_130">130</a>, <a href="#Page_170">170</a>, <a href="#Page_174">174</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Roto-ehu, <a href="#Page_121">121</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Roto-iti, <a href="#Page_121">121</a>, <a href="#Page_144">144</a>, <a href="#Page_156">156</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Roto-kakahi, <a href="#Page_121">121</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Roto-ma, <a href="#Page_121">121</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Roto-mahana, <a href="#Page_118">118</a>, <a href="#Page_120">120</a>, <a href="#Page_121">121</a>, <a href="#Page_133">133</a>, <a href="#Page_136">136</a>, <a href="#Page_137">137</a>, <a href="#Page_140">140</a>, <a href="#Page_141">141</a>, <a href="#Page_143">143</a>, <a href="#Page_145">145</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Roto-roa, <a href="#Page_179">179</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Roto-rua, <a href="#Page_66">66</a>, <a href="#Page_67">67</a>, <a href="#Page_117">117</a>, <a href="#Page_121">121</a>, <a href="#Page_126">126</a>, <a href="#Page_133">133</a>, <a href="#Page_136">136</a>, <a href="#Page_145">145</a>, <a href="#Page_147">147</a>, <a href="#Page_148">148</a>, <a href="#Page_149">149</a>, <a href="#Page_151">151</a>, <a href="#Page_153">153</a>, <a href="#Page_154">154</a>, <a href="#Page_156">156</a>, <a href="#Page_175">175</a>, <a href="#Page_234">234</a>, <a href="#Page_235">235</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Rua, <a href="#Page_159">159</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Ruapehu, <a href="#Page_118">118</a>, <a href="#Page_119">119</a>, <a href="#Page_125">125</a>, <a href="#Page_126">126</a>, <a href="#Page_140">140</a></li>
-
-
-<li class="ifrst">    Salmon, <a href="#Page_65">65</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Saw-miller, <a href="#Page_110">110</a>, <a href="#Page_112">112</a>, <a href="#Page_114">114</a></li>
-<li class="isub2">mills, <a href="#Page_101">101</a>, <a href="#Page_102">102</a>, <a href="#Page_103">103</a>, <a href="#Page_105">105</a>, <a href="#Page_106">106</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Scenery, <a href="#Page_5">5</a>, <a href="#Page_6">6</a>, <a href="#Page_10">10</a>, <a href="#Page_52">52</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Scenic reserves, <a href="#Page_105">105</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Selwyn, Bishop, <a href="#Page_3">3</a>, <a href="#Page_128">128</a>, <a href="#Page_158">158</a>, <a href="#Page_214">214</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Settlement, <a href="#Page_8">8</a>, <a href="#Page_41">41</a>, <a href="#Page_160">160</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Settlements, <a href="#Page_18">18</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Settler, <a href="#Page_42">42</a>, <a href="#Page_106">106</a>, <a href="#Page_107">107</a>, <a href="#Page_162">162</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Settlers, <a href="#Page_49">49</a>, <a href="#Page_108">108</a>, <a href="#Page_128">128</a>, <a href="#Page_142">142</a>, <a href="#Page_207">207</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Shand, Mr., <a href="#Page_24">24</a>, <a href="#Page_214">214</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Sheep, <a href="#Page_11">11</a>, <a href="#Page_15">15</a>, <a href="#Page_45">45</a>, <a href="#Page_53">53</a>, <a href="#Page_56">56</a>, <a href="#Page_58">58</a>, <a href="#Page_59">59</a>, <a href="#Page_98">98</a>, <a href="#Page_103">103</a>, <a href="#Page_107">107</a>, <a href="#Page_109">109</a>, <a href="#Page_144">144</a>, <a href="#Page_163">163</a>, <a href="#Page_170">170</a>, <a href="#Page_220">220</a></li>
-<li class="isub2">stations, <a href="#Page_33">33</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Shepherd’s lily, <a href="#Page_95">95</a>, <a href="#Page_161">161</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Shipping companies, <a href="#Page_15">15</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Shipwrecks, <a href="#Page_224">224</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Shooting, <a href="#Page_49">49</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Smith, Mr. Percy, <a href="#Page_24">24</a>, <a href="#Page_104">104</a>, <a href="#Page_116">116</a>, <a href="#Page_119">119</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Snares, <a href="#Page_205">205</a>, <a href="#Page_206">206</a>, <a href="#Page_207">207</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Snaring, <a href="#Page_83">83</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Societies, <a href="#Page_25">25</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Society, <a href="#Page_24">24</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Sophia, the guide, <a href="#Page_141">141</a>, <a href="#Page_147">147</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Sounds, the, <a href="#Page_179">179</a>, <a href="#Page_180">180</a>, <a href="#Page_182">182</a>, <a href="#Page_193">193</a>, <a href="#Page_195">195</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Southern Alps, <a href="#Page_14">14</a>, <a href="#Page_59">59</a>, <a href="#Page_163">163</a>, <a href="#Page_165">165</a>, <a href="#Page_233">233</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Sparrows, <a href="#Page_185">185</a>, <a href="#Page_187">187</a>, <a href="#Page_188">188</a>, <a href="#Page_191">191</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Spearing, <a href="#Page_67">67</a>, <a href="#Page_83">83</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Sport, <a href="#Page_50">50</a>, <a href="#Page_52">52</a>, <a href="#Page_66">66</a>, <a href="#Page_67">67</a>, <a href="#Page_70">70</a>, <a href="#Page_71">71</a>, <a href="#Page_149">149</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Stack, Canon, <a href="#Page_78">78</a>, <a href="#Page_199">199</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    State sanatorium, <a href="#Page_153">153</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Station, <a href="#Page_35">35</a></li>
-<li class="isub2">hands, <a href="#Page_39">39</a>, <a href="#Page_58">58</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Steamship companies, <a href="#Page_10">10</a>, <a href="#Page_19">19</a><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_241" id="Page_241">[241]</a></span></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Stewart, the sea-captain, <a href="#Page_212">212</a>, <a href="#Page_228">228</a>, <a href="#Page_229">229</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Stitch-bird, <a href="#Page_192">192</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Stoats, <a href="#Page_59">59</a>, <a href="#Page_60">60</a>, <a href="#Page_185">185</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Supplejack, <a href="#Page_99">99</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Sutherland Falls, the, <a href="#Page_181">181</a>, <a href="#Page_182">182</a>, <a href="#Page_192">192</a></li>
-<li class="isub2">Falls to Milford Sound, <a href="#Page_233">233</a></li>
-
-
-<li class="ifrst">    Takahé, <a href="#Page_184">184</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Tané, <a href="#Page_78">78</a>, <a href="#Page_83">83</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Tapu, <a href="#Page_197">197</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Tarata, <a href="#Page_95">95</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Tarawera, <a href="#Page_120">120</a>, <a href="#Page_121">121</a>, <a href="#Page_136">136</a>, <a href="#Page_139">139</a>, <a href="#Page_140">140</a>, <a href="#Page_141">141</a>, <a href="#Page_142">142</a>, <a href="#Page_143">143</a>, <a href="#Page_145">145</a>, <a href="#Page_151">151</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Tasman, <a href="#Page_194">194</a>, <a href="#Page_195">195</a>, <a href="#Page_208">208</a>, <a href="#Page_209">209</a></li>
-<li class="isub2">glacier, <a href="#Page_175">175</a>, <a href="#Page_176">176</a></li>
-<li class="isub2">Sea, <a href="#Page_5">5</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Taupo, <a href="#Page_116">116</a>, <a href="#Page_119">119</a>, <a href="#Page_122">122</a>, <a href="#Page_123">123</a>, <a href="#Page_124">124</a>, <a href="#Page_125">125</a>, <a href="#Page_126">126</a>, <a href="#Page_127">127</a>, <a href="#Page_133">133</a>, <a href="#Page_134">134</a>, <a href="#Page_148">148</a>, <a href="#Page_149">149</a>, <a href="#Page_153">153</a>, <a href="#Page_235">235</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Tawa, <a href="#Page_87">87</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Te Anau, <a href="#Page_177">177</a>, <a href="#Page_178">178</a>, <a href="#Page_179">179</a>, <a href="#Page_187">187</a>, <a href="#Page_192">192</a>, <a href="#Page_233">233</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Te Heu Heu, <a href="#Page_127">127</a>, <a href="#Page_128">128</a>, <a href="#Page_129">129</a>, <a href="#Page_130">130</a>, <a href="#Page_137">137</a>, <a href="#Page_158">158</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Te Kanawa, <a href="#Page_81">81</a>, <a href="#Page_82">82</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Te Kooti, <a href="#Page_219">219</a>, <a href="#Page_220">220</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Terrace, <a href="#Page_140">140</a>, <a href="#Page_143">143</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Terraces, the, Pink and White, <a href="#Page_136">136</a>, <a href="#Page_137">137</a>, <a href="#Page_150">150</a>, <a href="#Page_164">164</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Te Waro, <a href="#Page_151">151</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Thermal Springs District, <a href="#Page_118">118</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Three Kings, the, <a href="#Page_204">204</a>, <a href="#Page_208">208</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Tikitapu, <a href="#Page_121">121</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Timber, <a href="#Page_101">101</a>, <a href="#Page_103">103</a>, <a href="#Page_106">106</a>, <a href="#Page_108">108</a>, <a href="#Page_113">113</a>, <a href="#Page_125">125</a></li>
-<li class="isub2">cutting, <a href="#Page_13">13</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Titoki, <a href="#Page_91">91</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Toé-toé, <a href="#Page_37">37</a>, <a href="#Page_95">95</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Tohunga, <a href="#Page_82">82</a>, <a href="#Page_158">158</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Tongariro, <a href="#Page_116">116</a>, <a href="#Page_119">119</a>, <a href="#Page_126">126</a>, <a href="#Page_127">127</a>, <a href="#Page_137">137</a>, <a href="#Page_146">146</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Totalisator, <a href="#Page_71">71</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Totara, <a href="#Page_77">77</a>, <a href="#Page_88">88</a>, <a href="#Page_90">90</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Tourist Department, Government, <a href="#Page_24">24</a>, <a href="#Page_175">175</a>, <a href="#Page_231">231</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Towns, <a href="#Page_19">19</a>, <a href="#Page_20">20</a>, <a href="#Page_22">22</a>, <a href="#Page_24">24</a>, <a href="#Page_28">28</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    <i>Transactions of the N.Z. Institute</i>, <a href="#Page_24">24</a>, <a href="#Page_116">116</a>, <a href="#Page_200">200</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Tree-felling, <a href="#Page_109">109</a>, <a href="#Page_111">111</a></li>
-<li class="isub2">ferns, <a href="#Page_38">38</a>, <a href="#Page_88">88</a>, <a href="#Page_191">191</a>, <a href="#Page_223">223</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Tregear, Edward, <a href="#Page_24">24</a>, <a href="#Page_77">77</a>, <a href="#Page_158">158</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Trout, <a href="#Page_66">66</a>, <a href="#Page_67">67</a>, <a href="#Page_109">109</a>, <a href="#Page_149">149</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Tuhawaiki, <a href="#Page_190">190</a>, <a href="#Page_202">202</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Tukoto, <a href="#Page_146">146</a>, <a href="#Page_147">147</a>, <a href="#Page_158">158</a>, <a href="#Page_159">159</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Tutu, <a href="#Page_95">95</a>, <a href="#Page_98">98</a></li>
-
-
-<li class="ifrst">    Union Steamship Company, <a href="#Page_9">9</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    University, <a href="#Page_18">18</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Uriwera, <a href="#Page_159">159</a>, <a href="#Page_235">235</a></li>
-
-
-<li class="ifrst">    Vegetable sheep, <a href="#Page_58">58</a>, <a href="#Page_99">99</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Veronicas, <a href="#Page_37">37</a>, <a href="#Page_161">161</a>, <a href="#Page_223">223</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Vogel, Sir Julius, <a href="#Page_102">102</a>, <a href="#Page_104">104</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Volcanoes, <a href="#Page_6">6</a>, <a href="#Page_120">120</a>, <a href="#Page_234">234</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Von Haast, <a href="#Page_163">163</a>, <a href="#Page_166">166</a>, <a href="#Page_193">193</a></li>
-<li class="isub2">Hochstetter, <a href="#Page_90">90</a>, <a href="#Page_164">164</a></li>
-
-
-<li class="ifrst">    Waikarémoana, <a href="#Page_234">234</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Waikato, <a href="#Page_81">81</a>, <a href="#Page_123">123</a>, <a href="#Page_126">126</a>, <a href="#Page_150">150</a>, <a href="#Page_190">190</a>, <a href="#Page_232">232</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Waikité Geyser, <a href="#Page_150">150</a>, <a href="#Page_151">151</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Waimangu, <a href="#Page_150">150</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Wairakei, <a href="#Page_149">149</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Wairoa, <a href="#Page_145">145</a>, <a href="#Page_146">146</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Wakatipu, <a href="#Page_177">177</a>, <a href="#Page_178">178</a>, <a href="#Page_194">194</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Walkenshaw, Clementina, <a href="#Page_228">228</a>, <a href="#Page_229">229</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Wall, Arnold, <a href="#Page_21">21</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Wandering albatross, <a href="#Page_38">38</a>, <a href="#Page_206">206</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Wanganui, <a href="#Page_105">105</a>, <a href="#Page_125">125</a>, <a href="#Page_128">128</a>, <a href="#Page_234">234</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Weasels, <a href="#Page_59">59</a>, <a href="#Page_60">60</a>, <a href="#Page_185">185</a>, <a href="#Page_186">186</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Webb, <a href="#Page_74">74</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Wekas, <a href="#Page_188">188</a>, <a href="#Page_189">189</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Wellington, <a href="#Page_19">19</a>, <a href="#Page_28">28</a>, <a href="#Page_74">74</a>, <a href="#Page_132">132</a>, <a href="#Page_231">231</a>, <a href="#Page_232">232</a></li>
-<li class="isub2">Harbour, <a href="#Page_234">234</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Whaka-rewa-rewa, <a href="#Page_147">147</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Whangarei, <a href="#Page_75">75</a>, <a href="#Page_234">234</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Whangaroa, <a href="#Page_75">75</a>, <a href="#Page_234">234</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    White Island, <a href="#Page_115">115</a>, <a href="#Page_116">116</a>, <a href="#Page_117">117</a>, <a href="#Page_119">119</a>, <a href="#Page_140">140</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Wild cattle, <a href="#Page_54">54</a></li>
-<li class="isub2">dogs, <a href="#Page_56">56</a></li>
-<li class="isub2">ducks, <a href="#Page_63">63</a>, <a href="#Page_205">205</a></li>
-<li class="isub2">ducks&mdash;flightless, <a href="#Page_184">184</a>, <a href="#Page_204">204</a></li>
-<li class="isub2">fowl shooting, <a href="#Page_62">62</a></li>
-<li class="isub2">goats, <a href="#Page_52">52</a>, <a href="#Page_53">53</a>, <a href="#Page_54">54</a>, <a href="#Page_104">104</a>, <a href="#Page_191">191</a>, <a href="#Page_223">223</a></li>
-<li class="isub2">parrots, <a href="#Page_84">84</a></li>
-<li class="isub2">pigs, <a href="#Page_54">54</a>, <a href="#Page_55">55</a>, <a href="#Page_109">109</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Wood-fairies, <a href="#Page_76">76</a></li>
-<li class="isub2">pigeon, <a href="#Page_63">63</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Wool, <a href="#Page_10">10</a>, <a href="#Page_11">11</a>, <a href="#Page_12">12</a>, <a href="#Page_15">15</a>, <a href="#Page_34">34</a>, <a href="#Page_221">221</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Working gentlemen, <a href="#Page_48">48</a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">    Wreck of the steamship <i>Elingamite</i>, <a href="#Page_209">209</a></li>
-
-
-<li class="ifrst">    Yachts, <a href="#Page_74">74</a></li>
-
-</ul>
-
-<p><i>Printed by</i> <span class="smcap">R. &amp; R. Clark, Limited</span>, <i>Edinburgh</i>.</p>
-
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_242" id="Page_242">[242]</a></span>
-<div class="figcenter">
-<a href="images/map-large.jpg">
-<img src="images/map.jpg" alt="" width="604" height="800" /></a>
-<p class="center">[Click on map for larger version.]</p>
-<p class="p08 center">MAP ACCOMPANYING “NEW ZEALAND,” by the Hon. W. PEMBER REEVES and F. &amp; W.<br />
-    WRIGHT.  (A. &amp; C. BLACK, LONDON).</p>
-<p class="p08"><i>F. W. Flanagan, delt. Sept 1882.</i></p>
-</div>
-
-<p class="center space-above"></p>
-<div class="transnote">
-  <h2 id="end_note" class="nopagebreak" title="">Transcriber’s Notes</h2>
-  <p>The changes are as follows:</p>
-
-    <p><a href="#Page_viii" title="">Page viii in the index</a>&mdash;Aratiatia changed to Ara-tia-tia.</p>
-    <p><a href="#Page_6" title="">Page 6</a>&mdash;pine-woods changed to pine woods.</p>
-    <p><a href="#Page_10" title="">Page 10</a>&mdash;over sea changed to oversea.</p>
-    <p><a href="#Page_31" title="">Page 31</a>&mdash;axe-men changed to axemen.</p>
-    <p><a href="#Page_35" title="">Page 35</a>&mdash;outdoor changed to out-door.</p>
-    <p><a href="#Page_71" title="">Page 71</a>&mdash;network changed to net-work.</p>
-    <p><a href="#Page_100" title="">Page 100</a>&mdash;lancewood changed to lance-wood.</p>
-    <p><a href="#Page_107" title="">Page 107</a>&mdash;grass-seed changed to grass seed.</p>
-    <p><a href="#Page_124" title="">Page 124</a>&mdash;ARATIATIA changed to ARA-TIA-TIA.</p>
-    <p><a href="#Page_187" title="">Page 187</a>&mdash;sand-flies changed to sandflies.</p>
-    <p><a href="#Page_194" title="">Page 194</a>&mdash;bushrangers changed to bush-rangers.</p>
-    <p><a href="#Page_207" title="">Page 207</a>&mdash;bathing pool changed to bathing-pool.</p>
-    <p><a href="#Page_215" title="">Page 215</a>&mdash;sea birds changed to sea-birds.</p>
-    <p><a href="#Page_215" title="">Page 215</a>&mdash;shell fish changed to shell-fish.</p>
-    <p><a href="#Page_232" title="">Page 232</a>&mdash;mountain-lakes changed to mountain lakes.</p>
-    </div>
-    </div>
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-<pre>
-
-
-
-
-
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