BRIGHTER BRITAIN!
OR
SETTLER AND MAORI
IN
NORTHERN NEW ZEALAND.

BY
WILLIAM DELISLE HAY,
AUTHOR OF
"THREE HUNDRED YEARS HENCE," "THE DOOM OF THE GREAT CITY," ETC.

"Queen of the seas, enlarge thyself!

Send thou thy swarms abroad!

For in the years to come,—

Where'er thy progeny,

Thy language and thy spirit shall be found,—

If—

—in that Austral world long sought,

The many-isled Pacific,—

When islands shall have grown, and cities risen

In cocoa-groves embower'd;

Where'er thy language lives,

By whatsoever name the land be call'd,

That land is English still."

Southey.

IN TWO VOLUMES.—Vol. II.

LONDON:
RICHARD BENTLEY AND SON,
NEW BURLINGTON STREET.
1882.

(All rights reserved.)

PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED, LONDON AND BECCLES.

CONTENTS OF VOL II.

BRIGHTER BRITAIN!

[CHAPTER I.]
OUR SPECIAL PRODUCTS.

Northern New Zealand has two special products, which are peculiar to the country, and found nowhere else. They are kauri timber and kauri-gum. When speaking of Northern New Zealand in these sketches, I do not thereby intend the whole of the North Island, as has been previously explained; I mean that northern part of it which may be more properly designated "The Land of the Kauri."

The kauri grows throughout all that part of the old province of Auckland which lies to the north of S. lat. 37° 30' or 38°. It does not grow naturally anywhere south of the thirty-eighth parallel of latitude, nor, I believe, can it be induced to flourish under cultivation south of its natural boundary line.

The kauri is indigenous to this comparatively small section of New Zealand. It is one of the Coniferæ, or pines, and is named by botanists Dammara Australis. The only tree of similar species that affords a timber nearly resembling the kauri, though not of such good quality, is one that is found in Fiji; the Dammara Vitiensis. It may be as well to mention that kauri and Maori rhyme together, and are pronounced "kowry" and "mowry."[1]

The kauri was first brought into notice by Captain Cook, who, it will be remembered, passed many months in New Zealand altogether, and the greater part of the time in the north. He discovered that kauri was superior to Norway pine, or indeed, to any other wood then known, for spars and topmasts of vessels. Other explorers endorsed his opinion of it, and in 1820 the British Government sent a ship, the Dromedary, to New Zealand, for the purpose of obtaining kauri timber. It was then classed high at Lloyd's.

Subsequently a demand for kauri timber arose in Sydney and elsewhere. Some trade in it was established with the Maoris; and little communities of English sawyers settled here and there along the coast of New Zealand. This was one among other causes that led to the colonization of the country in 1840. Thus the kauri holds a place in history, having had its share in making this our Brighter Britain.

The value of the kauri to New Zealand at large, and to the North in particular, can hardly be overrated. It is an important export, being sent to other parts of the colony, to Australia, the South Sea Islands, and elsewhere. In its own country it is used for every purpose to which timber is applicable. The many other trees of the bush are neglected for the sake of it; while it is more plentiful than any of them. Settlers in other parts of the colony, beyond the limit of the kauri's growth, make use of their native timbers, but lament that the cost of transport prevents them from importing kauri, so much superior is it. Wherever it is necessary to bring timber from a distance, as in comparatively treeless Otago for example, kauri is preferred; though it will have to be brought from further away than totara, miro, or matai, which are cut in southern forests.

One may say that the kauri is to Northern New Zealand what the oak has been to England, and even more. There, houses are built of it almost exclusively; it is used in the construction of vessels, for fencing, furniture, and all the more general purposes. And its valuable resin is the kauri gum of commerce; but that I must speak of separately.

Not alone is the kauri monarch in the forests of New Zealand, but it must rank among the royallest trees the earth produces. It grows, for the most part, in forests sacred to itself, not mixing with the common herd of trees. In this respect other kinds of pine are similar. Also, each distinct tract of kauri bush, or forest, contains trees of a certain uniformity of age, consequently of size. In the aggregate vast tracts are covered with it. The largest forest of kauri is that between the Hokianga and the Kaipara waters, which, I believe, is to be put down at nearly a thousand square miles in extent, bush of a more varied description intervening here and there among it. After it come the kauri forests of Mongonui, Whangaroa, and Coromandel.

There are few experiences more impressive to the feelings than to stand alone in the recesses of a kauri forest. Unlike the character of the mixed bush—the forest where trees of many other kinds are found—the kauri bush is weirdly depressing from its terrible monotony. It is solemn, sombre, and gloomy to the last degree. Yet is there a profound majesty about it that awes one in spite of oneself.

The trees stand closely together, not branching out much till near the top. They cover range and gully, mountain and plain, in unbroken succession. At the base they may girth as much as up to fifty feet. Forty feet of girth is not uncommon, and thirty feet is often the average. They soar up straight to a hundred, a hundred and fifty, even to a hundred and eighty feet before branching, and then their leafy crowns, interlaced together, form a canopy through which daylight hardly penetrates.

The boles of these woodland giants are mostly black and smooth, sometimes covered with twigs, though this chiefly in the smaller trees. Supple-jack, bush-lawyer, mounga, various creeper-ferns with magnificent fronds, and sometimes flowering clematis, swing from trunk to trunk and knit the columns together. Below there is not the thick undergrowth that prevails in the varied bush, but a lighter tangle of shrubs. Ferns, among which several varieties like the maidenhair predominate, grow waist-high in rank luxuriance.

The sublime grandeur of a kauri forest is hardly equalled by anything else of the kind in nature. One seems to stand amid the aisles of a mighty temple, shut out from the world and imprisoned amid endless ranks of tremendous columns. Stillness and silence deepen the profundity of gloom around one. The fiercest gale may be raging overhead, and not a leaf is stirred within the dark coverts; only the faint murmur of the foliage far above betrays what is passing. Of life there is nothing visible. The little fantails, the traveller's friends in the bush, hover around one, and they are all one sees, unless it be, perchance, the rapid flash of a rat running up some trunk, or the scuttling of a kiwi or weka amid the fern.

To get some real notion of what these forests are like let us compare them with English woods. The latter bear the palm of beauty, but the former that of grandeur from their very vastness. The largest wood in England is but the size of one dingle in a kauri forest, and is flat and tame contrasted with the hilly ruggedness of the land here. Again, measure the girth of English beeches, oaks, elms, and ashes. The oldest and best grown woods will not give you an average girth of ten feet. Trees girthing fifteen to twenty feet are rare and singular. What is this to the giant kauri?

If we look at height there is another difference. English trees are remarkable for their limbs and branches. Take these away, and the stick that remains seldom averages more than thirty or forty feet. If it reaches to sixty the tree is regarded as something extraordinary. But the splendid dome of foliage, the beautiful spread of boughs, which is the glory of English oak or chestnut, is forbidden to the kauri. Its magnificence resides solely in its stick, which is more like a factory chimney than anything else. You get an impression of immensity, you feel a veritable pigmy as you walk, mile after mile, among trees whose girth is thirty feet, and whose branches only begin a hundred and thirty feet from the ground; while, every now and then, you come upon some patriarch of fifty feet girth and a hundred and eighty feet, perhaps, of stick.

An assertion has been made, that if the present rate of consumption be kept up, some eighty years will see the end of the kauri forests. This may be true, but I do not think it is. I fancy that it is a calculation made in ignorance of the real extent of the kauri bush. Also, that no true idea was conceived of the enormous bulk of the trees, and the countless number of them to be found far back from the rivers, in the less accessible regions of the bush. I think I might say, with quite as much show of reason, that if the present rate of consumption were even doubled, as it doubtless will be, a century may elapse before economy in cutting kauri need be studied.

When working with parties of the Government Land Survey, I had good opportunities for getting some idea of the stupendous supplies of kauri timber. I once counted forty trees on a measured acre. Of these the smallest had a girth of twenty feet, with a stick of about eighty feet in height; the largest might be about double that. We estimated that these trees would yield a million feet of sawn timber. Of course that is an exceptional instance, but it must be remembered that there are hundreds of square miles of kauri bush in the aggregate.

The annual output of the saw-mills is reckoned to be sixty million feet of sawn kauri timber, the value of which may be roughly put at £300,000. Much of this is used up in the colony; but an increasing export trade, amounting in value to £40,000 or £50,000 per annum, is carried on with Australia, Fiji, and the South Sea Islands. There are some twenty large saw-mills in various parts of the kauri forests, and there are other small ones which supply local demands; together these employ a large number of hands.

The largest mill is that at Te Kopura, on the Wairoa river, some forty-five miles above its outfall into the Kaipara harbour. It can turn out 120,000 feet per week. At Aratapu, higher up the same river, there is another mill, turning out 80,000 feet per week. These mills are working on the outskirts of the great Kaipara-Hokianga forest. Vessels drawing seventeen feet of water can come up the Wairoa to load at them. The mill at Whangaroa, on the east coast, ranks next in point of size, turning out sawn timber to the average annual value of £23,000. At Whangapoua, in Coromandel, are two mills, cutting about 160,000 feet per week between them. The cost of their plant was £25,000. The Whangapoua kauri bush extends over some 30,000 acres.

Sawn kauri is sold at the mills at 9s. 6d. to 11s. 6d. per hundred feet. The high freights cause it to cost 15s. to 17s. in the southern ports, and, I believe, it is sold at about the same in Sydney or the Islands. It would not be easy to say what is the average yield of a tree, the difference being very considerable. Some put it down at 10,000 feet, but I am sure that is an under estimate.

A stick of fifty feet length, and thirty feet in circumference at the base, might be reckoned to yield about 20,000 feet of sawn timber. The value of this would be £100. Deducting £40 as the cost of felling, transporting to the mill, and cutting up, a profit of £60 is left. This is a fair example. When a stick of a hundred and fifty feet, with a girth of forty or fifty feet, is in question, both work and profit are larger, of course.

The stump of one of these titanic trees is no small affair. It is big enough to build a small house upon, if sawn flat. I remember once making one of a party of eight, and dancing a quadrille on the stump of a kauri.

There is a variety of the tree known as the mottled kauri. The wood of this is very curious and beautiful, and fetches a high price for cabinet work. It is not very common, and when a big tree of this kind is come upon, it is a source of great gratification to its owner, for it may yield him £500 or £600 of absolute profit.

Felling big trees with the axe is tremendous labour. Till recently it was the only means employed here. Perhaps you may have to cut five or six feet deep into the tree, in order to reach the heart of it. To do this an enormous gash must be made, so large in fact, that scaffoldings have to be erected within it, to permit the workmen to reach their mark. Only two men can cut at the same gash at a time; but frequent shifts are resorted to, so as to "keep the pot boiling." Now, a saw working between portable engines is more generally employed upon the big trees.

When the great stick has been laid prostrate, with a crash that resounds for miles, and a shock that makes the whole hillside quiver, it is cut into lengths, and roughly squared with long-handled axes. Then comes the process of getting it to the mill, which may possibly be a considerable distance off.

The hilly and rugged character of the land nearly always prevents anything like a tramway system being adopted; and, for a long time, trees were only cut where they could be readily run down into the water. But a system has been introduced, by an American bushman, I believe, which is now generally used, and by means of which the largest trees can be got out anywhere in this country of heights and hollows.

The logs are easily collected in the bottom of the nearest gully, as they can be readily sent down the sides of the ranges by means of screw-jacks, rollers and slides. When the sides of the gully have been denuded of their timber, and a huge collection of logs lies piled in the bottom, preparation is made to further their descent to the river. A dam is built right across the ravine below the logs, constructed of timber, earth, stones, and whatever material comes handiest.

When the winter rains commence, the first day or two of continued downpour causes every little water-course to swell into a foaming torrent. The stream in the gully pours down a great volume of water, which, checked by the dam, spreads out behind it into a broad lake that fills all the lower ground. In this flood the mighty logs are borne up, and float upon its surface.

The sides of the dam, which is angularly shaped, are chiefly supported by logs set up endways as buttresses upon the lower side. To these supports ropes are attached, which are carried up the hillsides out of reach of the water, above the level of the swollen flood pent in by the dam. Then men and horses, or bullocks, haul with sudden and united effort upon the ropes; the chief supports are torn away; the dam breaks down in various places; the waters overflow and stream through the breaches. Or, sometimes, the dam is flushed by breaching it with gunpowder or dynamite. Soon the mass of water moves with irresistible force, breaking down what is left of the dam and sweeping everything before it. Then, in mighty volume, it rushes down the gully, bearing onward with it the great collection of massive logs that it has floated. Sometimes the first flush carries the timber down to the open river. Sometimes the entire process has to be repeated more than once or twice, if the distance be long, or the nature of the ground necessitate it.

When they fall into the river, or inlet of the sea, as the case may be, the logs are brought up by booms ready to receive them. They are then chained together in rafts and floated down to the mill, which, of course, gives upon the water-highway. Often such a flush will constitute a whole year's work, or longer; and will provide a supply of raw material for the saw-mill that will last it as long. But exactly the same process may be practically and profitably carried out for only a few logs, where the gully is not large, and not too far from the river.

Our own special little community are pioneer farmers, of course, and we do not employ ourselves in this way. Still, some of us have in former years acted the part of lumberers, or bushmen proper, when we were working at any jobs that turned up. The work we have is heavy enough in all conscience, but it is light compared to the tremendous labour that bushmen have to get through.

The lowest rate of wages for bushmen is 25s. per week, and all found. But the rate varies, better men getting better wages, the paucity of hands affecting the scale, and strikes for more pay occurring sometimes. I have known the hands of a saw-mill to get as much as seven or nine shillings per day.

Usually there are comfortable barracks for the men employed at a mill; but, when working up in the bush, these are not always available, and the workmen are lodged in huts, or shanties, upon the ground, being in much the same case as we are in our shanty. Their employers supply them with all necessaries, and have to be pretty careful in this respect, as your bushman will not work unless he gets tucker according to a very liberal scale. Beef, mutton and pork, bread, potatoes, kumera and tea he gets in unlimited quantities, besides various other items that need not be catalogued.

Most of our produce is taken by the saw-mills at the market-price. We have even sent them our fat steers and wethers, instead of shipping them to Auckland; and one year we made a good thing by growing cabbages and fresh vegetables for the bushmen. Like English colliers, they look to have the best food going; and, what is more, they get it. Yet it must be remembered that the bushman's work is terribly hard. It needs the employment of all the physical strength and vigour a man has to bestow, and this must be used with a continued pertinacity that is excessively trying.

Kauri-gum—or Kapia, as the Maoris call it—which has been just alluded to, is another peculiar product of this northern extremity of New Zealand. It is not of any practical service to the colonists, as the timber of the tree which produces it is, but it is an export of considerably greater value. It is the solidified sap, or resin of the kauri, but not in a fresh form; it is that resin in a hardened condition found buried in the ground.

There are tracts of country, known as gum-fields, in which the kauri-gum is to be dug up most plentifully. These places are stretches of bleak moorland for the most part, though not invariably. The soil in them consists very much of a heavy yellow clay, loose and friable near the surface. It is impregnated with fragments and particles of gum, which may be found in numerous spots to occur in layers and collections of larger pieces, varying in size up to blocks the size of a man's body. It is not usual to collect pieces smaller than the closed fist—minuter fragments not being considered remunerative to the digger.

The gum is found just below the surface of the ground, and sometimes down to the depth of six or eight feet. The finding of it, collecting and bringing to market, affords a sufficiently profitable occupation to have constituted a distinct class of men, who go by the name of gum-diggers.

Gum-fields are poor lands usually, though some are adapted for settlement. The country lying between Riverhead, Helensville, and Ararimu, which I described when relating our journey up-country, is a fair example of a gum-field. But gum is also found in the kauri forests, round the roots of the trees, especially of old, partly decayed, or wholly dead specimens. It is also to be found pretty generally throughout all the land of the kauri. Of course it cannot be discovered everywhere, or in all soils, but traces of it will be apparent somewhere in any single square mile; and in every sort of land throughout the limit of the kauri's growth, gum will be found here and there. Thus, on our farm and in the surrounding bush, although these are distinctly not gum-lands, there are little patches of ground, of a few acres in extent, whence we have got a ton or two of gum at times.

It is worthy of remark that the fresh resin of the living trees is not of any commercial value. Great masses of gum are often found in forks and clefts of the trees, and about the roots; but of this, only a little of the latter is generally worth anything, the rest being soft and in a condition that renders it valueless. It seems that the gum must be buried underground for a considerable time, an unknown term of years, before it attains the degree of hardness and other qualities that merchants require.

I have been told that the Maoris collect the soft, fresh gum and bury it, so that they or their descendants may dig it up again after sufficient time has elapsed for it to undergo the requisite changes. Whether this is so or not I am unable to say of my personal knowledge. I have never met with any instance of the kind, and have strong doubts as to the forecasting care with which such a tale credits the Maoris. They are certainly not given to providing for a distant future in a general way.

It would seem that the deposits of gum in the soil are all that remains of ancient kauri forests. These must once have covered the open fern-lands, where no trace of them now remains, except rich gum-holes here and there. It would seem that the kauri had, in the course of ages, exhausted the soil on which they grew, of constituents necessary to their growth, and had then naturally died out in such localities. The existing forests are, of course, making new deposits, which will some day be available. Felling the trees necessarily causes a diminution of this, but possibly some means may yet be discovered of rendering the fresh, soft gum equally useful with the semi-fossil kind.

Kauri-gum is very like amber in general appearance, and is similar to it in chemical characteristics; but it is much more brittle, and hence is not of such value for ornaments. Many colonists amuse themselves with carving and polishing trinkets of gum, but they chip too readily to permit of their ever being of value. Kauri-gum has sometimes been fraudulently substituted for amber, but the better specimens of the latter have a yellow tint which is seldom seen in the New Zealand product. Our gum exists of various shades of brown and sherry-colour, both clear and clouded. The most highly-prized variety is colourless like glass, or nearly so, and some is found almost black, not unlike jet. Flies, fragments of moss, and so on, are occasionally seen embedded in it.

Kauri-gum was first brought into notice at the time of the first colonization, in 1840 and 1841. It was then collected chiefly by Maoris, and was sold by them to the store-keepers. Its value at that time was only £5 or £6 per ton; and about a hundred tons was all the annual export for some years.

Since then, however, an increasing demand for it arose in the United States. New York and Boston now take two-thirds of all the gum exported; and of what is sent home to England the greater part is re-shipped thence to American ports. The number of gum-diggers regularly employed is supposed to have exceeded four thousand at times; now they average some two thousand altogether. The amount of the export steadily increased from the first, until, in 1870-71-72, it reached to some fifteen thousand tons for the three years, valued at half a million sterling.

Subsequent to this there was very considerable falling off in the export. The number of diggers decreased, fields were declared worked out, and it was thought that the supplies were exhausted. But after a year or two, it was discovered that gum existed in many places where its presence had been hitherto unsuspected; and it was also made clear that large deposits were often underlying the two or three feet of surface-soil previously worked, on the fields it was thought were exhausted.

A fresh impulse was given to gum-digging, and the amount of the export rose again. In 1878, it stood at 3410 tons; in 1879, at 3247 tons; in 1880, as much as 5500 tons was shipped, valued at £236,500. From 1853 to 1880 inclusive, about 70,000 tons were sent out, export value £2,100,000. It would thus seem that kauri-gum is more plentiful now than ever, while its average value has risen to £43 per ton.

Some American scientist has given it as his opinion that the kauri-gum exported from 1840 to 1880 must have required a forest-growth of ten thousand years to have produced it; but then we know that scientists will go making these rash assertions on the very vaguest premises. How long ago the kauri forests that covered the now open fern-lands died out, it would be hard to say. And how long they had stood before that is an equally difficult problem to solve. Of the trees in the forests now standing we can easily calculate the age. Some of them were already big trees at the period when Julius Cæsar was colonizing the other Britain. Doubtless the forests here were pretty much what they are to-day, when Norman and Saxon and Dane were fighting for the throne.

Gum-diggers receive an all-round price for the gum they bring down to the stores, which fluctuates somewhat in amount. It usually averages about £30 a ton. Before reaching its final market, the gum is cleaned, picked, and carefully assorted and re-assorted into six or eight different classes. The very best of these has been known to sell at £144 per ton in New York; the others at varying prices down to £25 or £20 for the lowest class. The average price is now £43 per ton.

The use to which kauri-gum is put is the manufacture of varnish. At least this is the general theory. It is made into a varnish much resembling that of copal; and gum copal, as the reader will remember, is the product of the Hymenea verrucosa of tropical Eastern Africa, where it is dug from the ground much as kauri-gum is here.

Varnish-making is the assigned use of kauri-gum, but there is a dark suspicion afloat in our Brighter Britain that this is not the only nor the chief one. It is hinted that the Yankees use it to adulterate something or other with, or to fix up some compound of a wholly different kind. I will not say that O'Gaygun is solely responsible for this insinuation, but he certainly fosters it in every way he can.

In the mind of our Milesian ally there exists a profound belief that the principal object in life of an American is to invent new and profitable ways of adulteration, or to discover means of perfecting colossal shams, and thereby defrauding a guileless public, such as ourselves.

For my own part, I disagree with O'Gaygun on this point. Experience has led me to believe that the English manufacturer and trader stand unrivalled in all the arts of adulteration. The Yankee is a babe compared to them at this game. In fact, so far as exports are concerned, it would seem as if the British merchant could not help a greater or lesser measure of chicanery. What the Yankee sends to us is generally good; this in other matters besides hardware.

But O'Gaygun's views are warped, and his conclusions are mainly drawn from the remembrance of one incident, the tale of which he is never weary of narrating.

It seems that, shortly before he came out to New Zealand, O'Gaygun was concerned with others in the exportation from Ireland to America of a certain mineral. It was a heavy, white, glistening earth, which I take to have been witherite, or carbonate of baryta.

This stuff was sold ostensibly for paint-making, and certain Yankee merchants bought up all they could of it. Shipload after shipload went to America, and the Irish speculators were in high glee as the demand for it increased; although such a quantity had been shipped as would have sufficed to have whitewashed the entire two continents.

At last the real destination of the mineral came to light. It was powdered and mixed with flour, which America was then exporting largely to Europe. It made the finest flours heavier, and made seconds rank as first-class. So, according to O'Gaygun, hundreds and thousands of tons of this witherite were eaten by cheated Europe in the form of bread. A whole mountain, so he says, was shipped to the land of the Stars and Stripes; and as much as was sent came back to Europe as flour.

When the thing was blown upon, of course, the export gradually ceased. And I believe that O'Gaygun and his associates were blamed for participation in the fraud. Therefore he, poor, deluded Irishman, has ever since held the Yankee to be of very nature iniquitous in all his dealings. Well, let us hope that kauri-gum is, after all, only an innocent varnish basis, as is generally stated, and that it is not eaten as pork or beans or anything by a too-confiding British public.

The gum-diggers of Northern New Zealand are a peculiar body of nomads. They are recruited from every nation, and from every rank of society, and, like the communities gathered together on Australian or Californian gold-fields, present a strange medley of opposites.

Among them one may come across men who are graduates of the universities. One may find members of noble houses, representatives of historic names; nay, twice I have met men born to titles gum-digging. Then one may find diggers who should belong to professions they have abandoned—civil, military, learned, artistic. Clerks, accountants, secretaries, and shopmen swell the ranks of our Bohemian army. There are guileless peasants, natives of Norfolk or Devon, France or Germany, perhaps; and there are runaway sailors, ex-convicts, tinkers, tailors, printers' devils, pirates, rowdies, negroes, Kanakas, Maoris, Chinamen; a collection of gentlemen educated to every pursuit under the sun, in fact.

Throughout all this heterogeneous assemblage there exists entire equality, but little fraternization. Each man is as good as his fellow; there is no recognized line of demarcation between man and man. Yet gum-diggers are not gregarious as a rule; they are too jealous, each of another's possible luck, to admit of general brotherhood. Generally little gangs associate together and work in company; but it is rare that they do so on communistic principles. More often, each member of the gang works entirely for his own hand, though they may have food and so on in common.

There is precious little feeling of caste, or prejudice on account of different social ranks, remaining to us in this free land. What there is, however, places gum-diggers, as a class, on the bottommost level of society. Not that even that distinction conveys any slight upon individual gum-diggers; it is more a sort of abstract principle, than anything real or practical.

Still, they are sneered at occasionally by other colonists. It is a favourite theory that, if you should see some particularly haughty swell come out with all the pomp of a first-class passage, some grandiose creature of the scapegrace-fine-gentleman sort, with such airs and dignity as befit a man who feels that the colony was made for him, and not he for the colony, you may chuckle over his probable descent to gum-digging very soon. You have to get out of his lordly path while the air of the quarter-deck is round him, feeling that this humble country is only too much honoured by his mere presence in it. But, in a few months' time, you come across him on the gum-field, in ankle-jacks and ragged shirt, picking up a scanty living. He is Captain Gorgeous Dashabout no longer.

There is a certain charm about gum-digging, particularly to people of unsettled and gypsy-like disposition. You have no boss. You can do as you like; work when you like, and how you like; and lie on your back when it pleases you to do so, without fear of being rowed at by any one. Moreover, with ordinary luck, you can make as good wages as by working on a farm, and that with less actual toil, though possibly some additional hardship.

Gum-diggers must be equipped as lightly as possible. It is commonly said that a blanket, a spade, a gum-spear, a knife, a hatchet, a billy, a pipe, some provisions and tobacco, together with the clothes he stands in, constitute all that a gum-digger needs in the way of outfit. He really cannot afford to possess much more, for he must hump all his belongings on his own back, over mountain and dale, forest and morass. This is one reason why small parties associate together, besides for company. They can then manage to carry a better sufficiency of things with them from camp to camp.

Where proximity to a settlement, a road, or a river permits of it, it is possible for gum-diggers to make their camps pretty comfortable. Often it is not necessary to move camp for months at a time, when the surrounding field is pretty rich in gum-holes. But they are not a provident class, seldom caring for anything beyond the present moment.

The occupation is simplicity itself. Once the prospecting has been accomplished and the district determined on, the party move to it as best they can. Nearly always there is a long tramp through the wilds, with the necessaries on back and shoulders. Then a camp is formed in some favourable spot near a stream; a rude hut is constructed of such material as is at hand; and a store of firewood is cut.

For work, each man straggles about all day by himself, with his spear and spade and sack. He tries every likely looking place with the spear, which is simply an iron rod, sharp at one end, and with a wooden handle at the other. When the end of the spear touches buried gum, there is a peculiar clip or "feel," which the digger knows. Then he digs out the gum, fills his sack, and carries it to camp, continuing to work the same spot as long as it yields anything, when he goes on to look for another. In the evenings he scrapes and cleans the day's take with his knife.

Sometimes a digger will not get a shilling's worth of gum in a whole week's work; sometimes he will find five or six pounds' worth in an hour. Generally speaking, and taking one week with another, he may earn £2 to £4 a week. When enough has been collected and scraped it is carried down to the nearest bush-store or settlement, where it is at once sold. Provisions are bought, and the surplus may be banked, though, in nine cases out of ten, it goes in a "lush up." Some gum-diggers save till they can get down to Auckland, and then they have a high old time of it as long as the money lasts.

It will be seen how this kind of life appeals to the ne'er-do-well. Luck and chance are elements in it; and it is a free, roving, devil-may-care existence. Hence it is that scapegraces take to it so kindly, and prefer its risks and manifest hardships to the steady work of farm-labourers or bushmen.

Gum-diggers seldom make much money. They get a living, and that is about all. Now and then they may do better, but it only results in a "burst." Yet gum-digging has often been a great assistance to settlers. We have taken to it at times, in order to raise a little ready money, when the farm was not paying. Many a small, needy settler has found it a resource to stave off ruin. To energetic and industrious men it offers good wages on the whole, and, as a temporary thing, many such have taken advantage of it.

There are even men among the regular gum-diggers who are superior to their class. These may save all they make, till they have enough to start a small pioneer-farm, or to set up in some handicraft. Thus, in spite of the acknowledged evil repute of the gum-digger, there will be and are, in our Brighter Britain, comfortable homes, whose proprietors will tell you that they are founded and built upon kauri-gum, so to speak.

[CHAPTER II.]
OUR CLASSIC GROUND.

When the history of New Zealand comes to be written, and when a new generation finds time to look back upon the country's past, that also having grown with the coming years, a new want will imperceptibly arise. A desire will develop in people's minds for something to reverence. Out of the crudest materials will be erected monuments to the past, and the older these become the more they will be esteemed, while the events they speak of will come to be regarded as of greater and greater importance. So it has been with England; so it has been in America; so it will be in Australia and New Zealand. Nay, already the first symptoms of the feeling are beginning to appear among us.

America has gathered all the force of sacred memories round Plymouth Rock and Bunker Hill, Manhattan and Yorktown, and other places commemorative of the crises, or romantic episodes, of her history. So, in like manner, shall our descendants find spots connected with the long ago, whose tales shall serve to quicken the glow of patriotic sentiment in their hearts.

Laugh, reader, if you like. The early events of our history seem so trivial to you now. You cannot get up any enthusiasm about them, anyhow. Yet future generations will have another and more generous feeling. A time will come when crowds of tourists, guide-book in hand, will rush from southern cities to "do" those quiet places that now seem utterly forgotten. Take my word for it; that of a man who never romanced!

Probably there will be spots of more or less renown scattered up and down throughout all the country. But the region destined to be most widely known and justly celebrated, held in high regard from its wealth of associations with the earliest days of our history, and esteemed not lightly either for its natural scenery, is that comprised within the three counties of Bay of Islands, Mongonui, and Hokianga. Already, even, this is worthy to be named the classic ground of New Zealand.

Some of our little community in the Kaipara go up into the Bay not infrequently. We have good friends living up in that part, and we go on pleasure as well as on business. Dandy Jack is up there oftenest of any, for he does some trade in those districts in horses and cattle. One or two of us go to help him, and we have, on certain occasions, joined land-surveying expeditions, whose head-quarters were in the Bay. So that, on the whole, we know the three counties tolerably well.

Our route from here lies through the Maungaturoto bush, and up to Mangapai and Whangarei, a distance of forty-and-odd miles. Beyond that is another stretch of about the same distance, before the Kawakawa is reached. The greater part of the way lies through dense forest, but there is a track along which it is possible to ride. This is called a road in these parts, but as the most experienced bushman is apt to lose it altogether on occasions, its actual character may be guessed. I believe Dandy Jack did once accomplish the whole journey to the Kawa-kawa in two days. As a rule, however, it takes us four. The nature of the track is not adapted for quick riding, so that twenty or twenty-five miles is about as much as we can make in the day.

We have to camp out at nights, of course, except the one night we put up at Whangarei, but this is no uncommon experience for us. There are some creeks to be crossed that are rather ugly when full of water; one or two must be swum sometimes. It is a fearful and arduous job to bring cattle along this road, as might be expected. Some are pretty sure to be lost out of the drove, while some will get stuck in the mud of marshes and crossings, and a rare job it is to extricate them.

Once we had a pack-horse with us, laden with stores and utensils for a surveyor's camp. He was led with a rope as we rode. Just at one of the worst parts he broke away and bolted, kicking and bucking as he went, the result being that the baggage went flying in all directions. It took us half a day or more to recapture the horse, and to pick up his scattered load. This will serve to illustrate some of the pleasing incidents of travel in the bush.

On one occasion Old Colonial, Dandy Jack, and I were camped somewhere beyond Whangarei. We were making the journey up to fetch down some cattle. We were in a little dingle beside a small stream. The huge fire was blazing merrily in front, lighting up the tree-trunks with weird effect, and making the shadows of the forest round us seem more profound. Near by our horses were tethered, and we lay, now our supper was done, rolled in our blankets, pipes in mouth, and heads pillowed on our saddles.

We were talking of some improvements that had been recently effected in the settlements, and from that we got to speculating on the future. Dandy Jack was wearily sighing for the good time when there should be a decent road constructed along this route.

"Wonder whether I shall live to see it;" he said.

"Of course you will," replied Old Colonial, who is nothing if not optimistic in his views.

"I tell you what; we shall all live to see not only a good road through this, but farms and settlements and hotels along it!"

"Bravo!" returned Dandy Jack. "Then I'll start a coach to run from Kawa-kawa to Whangarei, and on to Mangawai, or across to Te Pahi, perhaps. Might pick up some trade, don't you think?"

"I reckon your coach would be a failure, old man," continued Old Colonial. "I expect to see a railway one of these days, connecting Auckland with the Bay, and all the places between. Not much room for your coach then!"

"Oh, they'll not make a railroad up here this century."

"I expect they will, though," said our chief, impressively.

"And, look here! I'll tell you what's going to help make business for it. The Bay and Hokianga are our classic ground."

"Classic ground?"

"Certainly. Here are the places where Captain Cook came, and Tasman, and all the early voyagers. Here's where the first missionaries came; where colonization commenced; where British sovereignty was established. Here's where the history of the early days has got to be written. Here's where Hongi lived, and Hone Heke after him; where the first Maori war was fought; where battles were won, and pas stormed, and treaties signed. This is the most illustrious district in the whole colony. Whatever memories we've got date from here. I tell you that streams of tourists will want to come and see these places some day. We ought to make more of them now than we do."

So rhapsodized Old Colonial, after a manner that occasionally affects him, while the forest gleamed redly round us with the reflection of our camp-fire, and a bittern boomed in mockery and remonstrance from a neighbouring swamp. I heard Dandy Jack softly murmuring to the trees—

"Meet nurse for a poetic child;

Land of brown heath and shaggy wood!

Land of the mountain and the flood!"

And when Old Colonial attempted to continue—

"If this isn't classic ground, what is, I should like to know? Posterity will——"

Dandy Jack cut him short with a loud declamation from "Locksley Hall." But I remembered the allusion to classic ground, in spite of our merriment at the time, and, accordingly, it finds effect in this chapter.

The little settlement of Mangapai is much like those we are accustomed to in the Kaipara. It is situated on a creek and inlet of the Whangarei Harbour. But the township of Whangarei itself, some eight miles further north, is in a considerably more advanced stage than anything we can show.

The harbour is something like our Kaipara, only of less extent. It is a considerable inlet of the sea, with Heads at the entrance, some tidal rivers, and creeks navigable for a short distance. There is direct communication by sea with Auckland, kept up by means of sundry schooners and sailing-craft. The large steamer Iona, which plies between Auckland, Bay of Islands, and Mongonui every week, calls at Whangarei Heads on each trip for passengers. A small steamer plies within the harbour itself.

Whangarei township is a remarkably favourable specimen of a bush settlement. It stands on a river, and is about seventeen miles distant from the Heads. The little town occupies a flat, rendered very picturesque by the gardens about the houses, and by a surrounding amphitheatre of bush-clothed heights. There is a church, hotels, stores, schools, mills, streets and roads, even a local newspaper, to bear evidence to the energy and prosperity of the settlers.

The district round about the Whangarei waters is rich soil for the most part, mainly covered with bush in its natural condition. Settlement took place here a good many years before it was begun in the Kaipara, consequently more improvement has been effected. The pioneer farms and homesteads show a surprising amount of comfort. They have lots of grass for pasturage, and two or three thousand acres of plough-lands in the aggregate as well.

Then there are two special industries in the place. One is lime-burning, the product being sent to supply Auckland demands for it. The other is coal-mining. A mine was opened here some years ago, and was afterwards flooded and consequently closed, remaining unworked for some time. It has now again been re-opened, and is in full swing of work, though the operations are only carried out in a small way comparatively.

One would think that the road, so called, connecting two settlements of such relative importance as Whangarei and Kawa-kawa, would be a better one than it is. The distance is between forty and fifty miles, and there is no settlement between. The road is just a track, along which it is possible to ride and drive cattle. A good part of the way lies through heavy bush.

But there is really very little traffic between these places, and what there is can be best transacted by sea. It is the general fashion in a country like this. Each settlement requires water-communication with Auckland, and cares little at present for anything else. A settler makes a road down to the river, or to the settlement on the river, sufficient for his own purposes, and as short as possible. That is all he particularly wants. The necessity for roads between settlements, and to open up the back-country, only grows gradually with time. Of course in other parts of the colony, where there is not water everywhere as in the North, the case is widely different. A good road or a railway is the first and chief thing needed there.

At Kawa-kawa we are in the Bay of Islands, and consequently within the classic ground. Indeed, south-east of Kawa-kawa is the site of the famous pa of Ruapekapeka, which was a strong native fortress, constructed with a degree of skill, and science almost, that astonished military engineers.

The Kawa-kawa river gives its name to the district. There is a good deal of settlement and pioneer-farming round here and in Pakaru district, but the chief industry of the place is coal-mining. A hundred to a hundred and fifty colliery hands are employed, forming, with their families, a good nucleus of population. Manganese and cement are also mined here.

The seam is twelve and a half feet thick; and the output about three thousand tons a month. There are some half-dozen miles of railway, connecting the mine with a suitable shipping-place, near where the river joins the waters of the bay itself. A fleet of coasters is constantly employed carrying coal to Grahamstown and Auckland. Extensive coal-beds exist in many parts of the North, but Whangarei and Kawa-kawa are the only workings at present. I have seen some carbonized cocoa-nuts extracted from the Kawa-kawa mine, which prove that the cocoa-nut palm must once have grown here, though it does not now.

There is nothing particularly classic about a colliery village, however, although it may be situated in a primeval solitude, and amid woodland scenery, where axe and spade are busy converting the wilds into cultivated farms. The river winds down through grand mountainous tracts, and then we find ourselves on the bosom of the gloriously beautiful bay, the most picturesque and most romantic of all places in the North—more, the home of the first chapters of our history.

I will not go so far as to say that the Bay of Islands is as lovely as Sydney Harbour, nor can I allow that it throws certain choice bits of scenery in the Kaipara and the Hokianga estuaries entirely into the shade. But it certainly is a most picturesque place. The views are so varied, so wholly unique; and the stories connected with every corner of the bay throw such a romantic halo over the whole, that I feel quite justified in endorsing the opinion that the Bay of Islands is, and always must be, the most remarkable place in Northern New Zealand.

The entrance of the bay is guarded by two great rocky headlands, Cape Wiwiki and Cape Brett. These stand some twelve miles apart, and the distance from them to the back of the bay is about twenty miles. But numerous inlets open up into the land, and four considerable creeks, the Keri-keri, Waitangi, Kawa-kawa, and Waitari fall into the bay, forming large estuaries at their junction with it. The promontories, headlands, and indentations of the shores, together with the hundred islands and islets that thickly stud the waters, diversify the scenery very much, and cause you to think, as you sail or row between them, that you are gliding from river into river and from channel into channel, with broad lake-like reaches interspersed.

About fifteen miles from Cape Brett, and on the same side of the bay, a promontory of considerable size juts out. Upon the inner side of this stands Kororareka, capital of the Bay, and its port of entry.

Officialism has recently been trying very hard to alter the name of this place into Russell, which action is much deprecated by settlers, who insist upon retaining the old native name. The reason for the proposed change is not very clear, and why this particular town should have been so singled out is equally inexplicable to the unofficial mind. It seems to be a great pity, in any case, to bestow such names as Smithville, or Russell, or New London upon growing settlements, the future cities of a future nation. It is a pity because they are not distinctive, nor expressive of the country upon which they are grafted. How much better to retain the old native names, which carry with them sound and meaning both original and peculiar. Educated Americans are beginning to find this out, and to regret the loss of an indigenous character, which springs from the vulgarity and confusion of their nomenclature. How much better are such names as Pensacola or Tallahassee, than New Orleans or New York?

In New Zealand native names have been very largely retained, though less so in the south than in the north. But jacks in office are for ever trying to perpetuate their own names, or those of individuals whom they toady, by making them do duty for towns or counties or rivers. It is a "vulgarian atrocity," similar to that which moves a cockney soul to scratch its ignoble appellative upon pyramid or monolith.

In this particular instance, it is a positive shame to hurl such an insulting degradation into our classic ground. Kororareka, under that name, is the oldest settlement in the colony. It is intimately associated with early history. Kororareka—"The Beach of Shells"—was once a native kainga. Then it became a whaling station, and earned notoriety as a piratical stronghold, and the pandemonium of the Pacific. From that it was erected into the first capital of the colony, metropolis and seat of government for all New Zealand, under Mr. Busby, the British resident, and, in 1840, Captain Hobson, the first governor. It was plundered and burnt by Heke and Kawiti, and was a central point of the first Maori war.

Kororareka is a quiet little village now, and is never likely to grow into much more, unless it should become a manufacturing centre. Other places must take the trade of the district eventually. Hence, Kororareka will always rest its chief claim to note upon its past history; so to call it Russell is to spoil its little romance. It is an outrageous vandalism, a nonsensical piece of spite or idiotcy that, in a philological and sentimental sense, is almost to be regarded as a crime.

As you come into sight of Kororareka from the bay, you are favourably impressed by its appearance. The town stands upon a wide flat, bordered by a high beach of white shingle and shells, from the centre of which a large wharf runs out for shipping to come alongside. A street of houses, stores and hotels principally, faces the beach, and gives the place all the airs of a miniature Brighton or Margate. Some other straggling streets run back from this.

The background is a low grassy range, evidently farm-lands. This range shuts out all view of the bay on the other side of the promontory. To the right it merges into the mountain tract that sentinels the Waitari and Kawa-kawa estuaries. On the left rises an abrupt and wooded hill, fissured with many romantic little glens and hollows. From this eminence, to which a road winds up from the town through the woods, a most magnificent view is obtainable. A great part of the panorama of this island-studded harbour lies stretched below one's feet; and on the highest crest is a certain famous flagstaff.

Kororareka is not very large. The resident population is probably not more than two or three hundred. Farming industry round it is comparatively small. Its communication overland with other places is not good, and the hilly character of the contiguous land presents great difficulties in the way of the formation of roads. The place depends on its harbour, which is much used by whalers, who come here to tranship or sell oil, and to take in supplies. Quiet and dead-alive as it seems in general, there are times when a number of vessels are assembled here, and when bustle and business is consequently pretty brisk.

Before settled government and colonization overtook New Zealand, this spot had achieved an unsavoury reputation. Originally a native town, it had gradually become the resort of whaling-ships. Traders established themselves here, and a rowdy population of runaway sailors, ex-convicts, bad characters, and debauched Maoris filled the place. Drunkenness and riot were the general order of things; and it was even said that Kororareka was developing into a nest of pirates. There was no sort of government to restrain the evil, and man's passions, as usual, were transforming a natural Eden into a moral hell.

During these days of anarchy there is no doubt that Kororareka was a sad thorn in the side to the missionaries, who were achieving wonderful results among the native tribes. The wanton profligacy of whites in Kororareka infected their converts, and interfered sadly with the Christianizing of the Maoris. Moreover, other places of a like nature began to spring up here and there on the coasts.

One would have thought that sober, God-fearing men would have hailed the establishment of British government, and would have done much to further colonization. Such, however, was far from being the idea or action of the early missionaries. So far as the missionaries in New Zealand were themselves concerned, they would seem to have turned a very cold shoulder to such of their countrymen as adventured thither, independently of the missions. So we are informed by one or two travellers who visited the country between 1814 and 1840. Nor is this feeling at all to be wondered at, considering the class of men who came to Kororareka. The European adventurers who came to New Zealand then were so generally of a loose and lawless order, that it is scarcely matter for surprise that missionaries should have looked askance at every white man they saw.

This feeling spread to the Societies at home in England, and was, doubtless, much exaggerated among their more zealous, but less large-minded supporters. It became mingled with a desire to preserve New Zealand for its aboriginal race; to convert and civilize that people; and to foster their self-government under the direct influence of the missionaries. And it must be borne in mind that the missionaries were really unacquainted with the extent of the country, and with the actual number of its native inhabitants; while people in England had very vague ideas regarding their antipodes.

A party was formed in England, which has been styled "the Exeter Hall party." The persons adhering to its views did all in their power to prevent English colonization, or English government being established in New Zealand. The merits of the question as between them and their opponents need not concern us now.

The existence of such a place as Kororareka was felt to be a curse to the whole of the South Sea, and did not fail to affect even Sydney, two thousand miles away. There were not wanting some to press upon the Imperial Government the necessity of annexation and of active steps being taken. The Exeter Hall party, however, frustrated their endeavours, actuated thereto by motives that time has shown to have been founded on miscomprehension and mistake.

Guided by the Exeter Hall influence, and by representations made by the missionaries, the Imperial Government took a decided step in 1835. They recognized New Zealand as independent, treated with a confederation of Maori chiefs, and bestowed a national flag upon the country, thus forfeiting the claim acquired from Captain Cook's original discovery. Mr. Busby was appointed to be British resident at Kororareka; as, however, he had no force to act with, he was unable to preserve order in that place, and he had neither influence nor power wherewith to uphold the dignity of his office and of the country he represented.

Persons in England who had been desirous of seeing New Zealand converted into an appanage of the British crown, covered their disappointment by forming an association, styled "The New Zealand Company," much upon the basis of the old East Indian Company. They proceeded to form settlements upon a system of their own; a pioneering expedition being sent out in 1839, and the first body of emigrants landing at Port Nicholson in 1840. Their action, together with the outcry caused by the condition of things at Kororareka, caused the Imperial Government to reverse its former policy.

Another circumstance operated to hasten the Government's decision. French Roman Catholic missions had been established in New Zealand, and were gaining many converts among the Maoris. In 1837 a French nobleman, one Baron de Thierry, purchased a large area in Hokianga, and sought to establish himself there as a sovereign prince. Then the French Government prepared to annex the islands as a possession of France.

In January, 1840, Captain Hobson arrived at Kororareka in command of H.M.S Rattlesnake, instructed to hoist the British standard, which he only succeeded in doing a few hours before a French ship arrived for a similar purpose. Captain Hobson at once found a staunch ally in the person of Tamati Waka, a powerful Ngapuhi chief. By this man's influence the Christianized chiefs of the North were gathered together, and induced to sign the famous Treaty of Waitangi, on March 5, 1840. That instrument is the title-deed of the colony. It was the formal cession of sovereignty to Queen Victoria, by the principal men of the Maori nation.

The missionaries have been severely criticized for the policy and line of action adopted by them, and by the Exeter Hall party at home. Doubtless much might be said on either side, were it in any way desirable to reopen a somewhat bitter controversy. One thing is certain, that nowhere, and at no time, have missionaries of the Church of England, and of the Wesleyan body, found their labours followed by more signal success than in New Zealand; and the zeal, fortitude, and high-souled devotion of the pioneers of the gospel in our Brighter Britain, must surely win the admiration of even the enemies of Christianity.

Not far from Cape Wiwiki, on the northern shore of the Bay of Islands, and half a day's sail away from Kororareka, is a spot of great interest. Sheltered within high craggy headlands, and shut out from the open bay by a rocky and bush-clothed island, is a bright and peaceful little cove. There are but few signs of life here; the place looks almost deserted. A couple of houses are visible, divided by rising ground; and a farm lies round them, bounded by hills wearing the evergreen verdure of the forest.

Walking about this farm, you perceive that it is not of very great extent—a hundred acres or so, probably. But you are at once struck with something that is strange to you, after the pioneer homesteads of the Kaipara. The turf is old and smooth, the fields are drained and level, the ditches are embanked, the hedges full-grown and thick, the imported trees are in maturity. Everything denotes that this is no new clearing. Abundant evidence is all around to testify to the truth of what the hospitable farmer will tell you, namely, that the cultivation here is sixty years old.

This place is Te Puna, ever to be renowned as the site of the first mission, established here by the Rev. Samuel Marsden, in 1814.

The incentives those early missionaries had to go to New Zealand were certainly not of an engaging kind. They knew that the natives were a fierce and bloodthirsty set of savages, that they were constantly at war among themselves, and were addicted to cannibalism. Although some few individuals had visited Sydney, and seemed tractable enough, assuring Mr. Marsden of their good will and power to protect missionaries, yet there was no sort of certainty. The Maoris were known to be badly disposed to strangers, on the whole, and many stories of their treachery were current. Since Marion du Fresne, with fifteen men, was killed by Maoris in the Bay of Islands, there had been various instances of a similar kind. Only a year or two before, the ship Boyd had been seized in Whangaroa Harbour, and her company, numbering fifty persons, had been butchered and eaten.

With these facts before their minds to encourage them, Marsden and his brave companions went unhesitatingly into what must have seemed the very jaws of death, resolved to sow the gospel seed in this virgin wild. In December, 1814, the Revs. Marsden, Kendall, King, and Nicholas landed here at Te Puna. Public worship was held here for the first time on Christmas Day.

At that period there was a large population on the shores and islands of the bay, which has since disappeared or moved elsewhere, for the most part. There would seem to have been a considerable kainga either at or near Te Puna. Here, therefore, land was bought, houses and a church of some kind put up, and the mission duly inaugurated. One of the missionaries was actually accompanied by his wife, and she gave birth to a son shortly after they landed. He was the first white man born in New Zealand, and he still resides near the bay, with other families descended from the same parents. Some of us have often partaken of their hospitality.

There is no mission at Te Puna now, and only the two households for population, but the original mission continued there a good many years. Soon after its origination, another station was opened on the Keri-keri river, about twenty miles from Te Puna. Here there is a stone block-house, which was erected for defence, if necessary. It is now used as a store. There is besides a most comfortable homestead, the residence of a family descended from one of the early missionaries. It is a very pleasant spot, with all the air of an English country grange, save and except that block-house, and other mementoes of the past that our hospitable hosts have been pleased to show us.

Some miles along the shore of the bay, from the point where the Keri-keri estuary opens from it, we come to Paihia, at the mouth of the Waitangi. This is directly opposite to Kororareka, from which it is five or six miles distant. Just down the shore is a villa residence, and one or two other houses, indicating the farm of a wealthy settler. A splendidly situated home that, with its glorious view over the picturesque bay, its surrounding gardens and orchards, and its background of woods and mountains. Here was where the first printing-press in New Zealand was set up.

Near by, but opening upon the Waitangi rather than on the bay, is a deep, dark glen. At the bottom of it, and filling the lower ground, are the wharès and cultivations of a good-sized Maori kainga. There are some frame-houses, too, which show how civilized our brown fellow-subjects are becoming. And from here we can row up the winding Waitangi river to another point of interest.

Some miles above, the influx of the tides is stopped by high falls, just as it also is in the Keri-keri river, close to the old station. Waitangi Falls is the port for all the inland country on this side. There is a young settlement here, and the place is remarkable for being the spot where the famous treaty was signed. Moreover, the falls are well worth looking at.

One of the most interesting stories relating to the Bay of Islands is that of the first Maori war, which was waged around it from 1845 to 1847. It has been related often enough, and I can only find room for some very brief details. Such as they are, they are mostly gathered from the oral narrations of eye-witnesses, both English and Maori, whose testimony I feel more inclined to believe than that of some printed accounts I have seen.

Hone Heke was the leader of one of the sections into which the great Ngapuhi tribe had split after the death of the celebrated Hongi Hika, who expired March 5, 1828. Captain Hobson's friend, Tamati Waka, was chief of another section; while Kawiti, another chief, headed a third. These persons were then paramount over pretty nearly the whole region lying between Mongonui and the Kaipara. They had been among the confederate chiefs whom the British Government recognized as independent in 1835; and their signatures were, subsequently to that, attached to the Treaty of Waitangi.

Shortly after the proclamation of New Zealand as a British possession, Governor Hobson, seeing that Kororareka was unsuited for a metropolis, removed the seat of government to the Waitemata, and there commenced a settlement which is now the city of Auckland. Order had been restored in the former place, but its importance and its trade now fell away.

The Ngapuhi had some grievances to put up with. The trade of the Bay was much lessened; import duties raised the price of commodities; while the growing importance of Auckland gave advantages to the neighbouring tribes, the Ngatitai, Ngapaoa, Waikato, and Ngaterangi, which the Ngapuhi of the Bay of Islands had formerly monopolized. It needed but little to foment the discontent of a somewhat turbulent ruler such as Hone Heke.

In the year 1844 this chief, visiting Kororareka, and probably venting his dissatisfaction at the new regime pretty loudly, was incited by certain of the bad characters, who had previously had it all their own way in the place. They taunted him with having become the slave of a woman, showing him the flag, and explaining that it meant his slavery to Queen Victoria, together with all Maoris. In such a way they proceeded to work up his feelings, probably without other intention than to take a rise out of the Maori's misconception of the matter.

Hone Heke took the thing seriously. He said that he did not consider himself subject to any one. He was an independent chief, merely in alliance with the British, and had signed the Treaty of Waitangi in expectation of receiving certain rewards thereby, which it appeared had been changed into penalties. As for the flag, if that was an emblem of slavery, a Pakeha fetish, or an insult to Maoridom, it was clear that it ought to be removed, and he was the man to do it.

Accordingly, he and his followers then present, marched at once up the hill above Kororareka, and cut down the flagstaff that had been set up there. Then they withdrew quietly enough. The settlers were much disconcerted, having no means of coercing Heke, and not knowing to what this might lead. However, they set the flagstaff up again.

Hone Heke appeared once more with his band, this time in fierce anger. They cut down the restored flagstaff, and either threw it into the sea, or burnt it, or carried it off. Heke also threatened to destroy Kororareka if any attempt was made to fly the British flag again.

H.M.S. Hazard now came up from Auckland, where considerable excitement agitated the young settlement. The flagstaff was again restored, and, this time, a small block-house was built round it, which was garrisoned by half a dozen soldiers.

Now, Hongi Hika, previous to his death, had enjoined a certain policy upon his successors. He had told them never to make war upon such Pakeha as came to preach, to farm, or to trade. These were not to be plundered or maltreated in any way. They were friends whose presence could only tend to the advantage of the Maori. But the English sovereign kept certain people whose only business was to fight. They might be known by the red coats they wore, and by having stiff necks with a collar round them. "Kill these wherever you see them," said Hongi; "or they will kill you."

So Hone Heke sent an ultimatum into Kororareka, to the effect that, on a certain specified day, he should burn the town, cut down the flagstaff, and kill the soldiers. The attack was fixed for night, and it came with exact punctuality. Most of the inhabitants took refuge on board the Hazard and some other craft then lying in the harbour; while these prepared to guard the beach from a canoe attack. Captain Robertson of the Hazard, with some forty marines and blue-jackets, aided also by a party of settlers, took up a position on the landward side of the town.

Hone Heke's own mind seems to have principally been occupied with the flagstaff. The main attack he left to Kawiti, who had joined him, with five hundred men. Heke himself, with a chosen band, crept round unperceived through the bush, and lay in wait near the top of the flagstaff hill, in a little dingle, which is yet pointed out to visitors. Here they lay for some hours, awaiting the signal of Kawiti's attack upon the town below. While in this position, Heke kept his men quiet by reading the Bible to them, expounding the Scriptures as he read; for all these Ngapuhi, whether friends or foes, were professed Christians at that period.

By-and-by, the sound of firing and shouting in the town, together with the blazing of some of the houses, attracted the attention of the soldiers in the little block-house round the flagstaff. Unsuspecting any danger close at hand, they came out on to the hill, the better to descry what was doing below. Then Heke's ambush sprang suddenly up, and rushed between them and the open door of the block-house, thus capturing it, and either killing or putting the startled soldiers to flight instantaneously.

Meanwhile a furious battle was taking place in Kororareka. Captain Robertson and his small force were outflanked and driven in upon the town, fighting bravely and desperately. But the numbers of the Maoris were too great for them to contend with, and Robertson, with half his men, was killed, the rest escaping with difficulty to the ships. Then the victorious assailants rushed upon the devoted settlement, speedily joined by Heke's band on the opposite side. The stores and houses were plundered and set on fire, and soon Kororareka was a charred and smoking heap of ruins, only the two churches being left absolutely untouched. This was the first engagement during the war, and was a decided success for the rebels. The fall of Kororareka took place March 11, 1845; Heke having first cut down the flagstaff in July of the previous year.

The news reached Auckland a day or two later, and something like a panic occurred there. The settlers were armed and enrolled at once, and the place prepared for defence; for it was said that Heke and Kawiti had determined to destroy that settlement as well. Had they been able to march upon it then, it is possible that their attack could not have been successfully withstood, so limited were means of defence at that time.

But Tamati Waka, the stout-hearted friend of the British, led out his section of the Ngapuhi at once, and took up arms against their kinsmen under Heke. He prevented the rebels from leaving their own districts, and thus saved Auckland, allowing time for reinforcements to reach New Zealand, and so for the war to be carried into Heke's own country. All through the campaign he did efficient service on our behalf, contributing much to the final establishment of peace.

Tamati Waka Nene, to give him his full name, had been a savage cannibal warrior in the days of Hongi. On one occasion then he had led a taua, or war-party, of the Ngapuhi far to the south of Hauraki Gulf, destroying and literally "eating-up" a tribe in the Kati-kati district. Subsequently, he embraced Christianity and civilization, but it is evident that the old warrior spirit was strong in him to the last. He was an extremely sagacious and intelligent politician, fully comprehending the advantages that must accrue to his race from British rule. He enjoyed a government pension for some years after the war, and, when he died, a handsome monument was erected over his remains in Kororareka churchyard. It stands not far from where bullet and axe-marks in the old fence still show the spot where Robertson fell.

When Heke found himself pledged to war, he sent intimations to all the settlers living about Waimate, Keri-keri, and the north of the bay, mostly missionary families. He said he had no quarrel with them, and would protect their persons and property if they would trust him. Some remained, and some took refuge in Auckland. Those who stayed were never in any way molested; Heke kept his word to them to the letter. But of those who fled he allowed his men to pillage the farms and houses, by way of utu for not believing him.

As soon as the authorities were in a position to do so, a strong force was sent into the Bay district, to operate in conjunction with Tamati Waka's men in putting down the insurrection. Three engagements were fought, resulting in advantage to the British. The rebels were then besieged in the fortified pa of Ohaeawae, some twenty-five miles inland. No artillery had been brought up, and the consequence was that our troops were repulsed from before this pa again and again, with severe loss. But the victory was too much for the rebels, who suffered considerably themselves, and ran short of ammunition. One night they silently evacuated the place, which was entered next day by the British, and afterwards destroyed. Very similar experiences followed shortly after at the pa of Okaehau.

Finally, in 1847, the insurgents were beleaguered in the pa of Ruapekapeka, situated near the Waitari river. This they considered impregnable, and it was indeed magnificently defended with earthworks and palisades, arranged in such a manner as to excite the wonder and admiration of engineers. A model of it was subsequently made and sent home.

Some artillery had now been got up, with immense labour and difficulty owing to the rugged character of the ground. These guns were brought to bear upon the pa. But the Maoris had hung quantities of loose flax over the palisades, which fell into place again after the passage of a ball, and hid the breach it had made. Thus the besiegers could not tell what they had effected, while the defenders were enabled to repair the gaps unseen.

The pa was taken in rather a curious way. It happened that no engagement had been fought on a Sunday, and the rebels, being earnest Christians, and having—as Maoris have to this day—a respect for the Sabbath, more exaggerated than that of the Scots even, concluded that an armistice was a matter of course. When Sunday morning came, they went out of the pa at the back to hold worship after their manner. Tamati Waka's men, perceiving this, conquered their own Sabbatical leanings, and, finding an opening, rushed into the pa, followed by the British troops. The disconcerted worshippers attempted to retake the pa, but were speedily routed and scattered.

This event terminated the war. The insurgents were broken and disheartened, their numbers reduced, their strongholds captured, and their ammunition exhausted. They soon all laid down arms and sued for pardon. Ever since, all the sections of the rebel tribe have been perfectly peaceable, and take pride in the epithet earned by Tamati Waka's force, "the loyal Ngapuhi," which is now to be applied to the entire tribe.

This first Maori war presents some considerable contrasts to those which had afterwards to be waged with other tribes, in Wellington, Nelson, Taranaki, and Waikato. It was characterized by humanity on both sides, and by an approach to the usages of conflict between civilized peoples. The Ngapuhi had had the missionaries among them longer than any other tribe, and had benefited greatly from their teaching. Some barbarity they still showed, perhaps, but their general conduct was widely different from what it would have been twenty or thirty years before.

At the attack on Kororareka, a woman and several other fugitives were made prisoners. They were treated kindly, and next day Hone Heke sent them on board the ships in the harbour. A settler informed me that he was once conveying wounded soldiers in a bullock-dray, from the front at Ohaeawae down to the bay. On the road, a party of Heke's men suddenly appeared out of the bush and surrounded them. They were quite friendly, however, grounding their arms for a sociable smoke and chat. They counted the wounded soldiers, giving them fruit, and assisting at the passage of a dangerous creek. At parting, they merely reminded the soldiers that if they came back they would be killed, as they, the rebels, intended to kill or drive away all the red-coats.

Waimate is the most important centre to the north of the Bay of Islands; it lies about ten miles inland from Waitangi Falls. The roads from Waitangi to Waimate, to Ohaeawae and Okaehau, are really good. A buggy might even be driven along them with perfect ease. Only, between Waitangi and Waimate there is a formidable creek, the bridge over which is continually being swept away by floods. Then one must cross by a difficult and shifting ford, and, if the creek be full, it may be necessary to swim one's horse over, as once happened to me, I remember.

On proceeding inland in this district, the ground loses its ruggedness. It is not flat, exactly, but it is only gently undulating, and not so violently broken as in most other parts of the north. The soil is volcanic, the ground mostly open, and much of it splendidly fertile, like that of the Bay of Naples. There are extinct craters and old lava streams here and there; but there has been no evidence of activity in them within the memory of man or of Maori tradition. The district of active volcanoes, solfataras, hot-springs, geysers, and so on, lies beyond the limits of the Land of the Kauri altogether.

Waimate was settled by the early missionaries. It includes lands held by the representatives of three parent Societies. It is a large village, composed of residences that may well be termed villas. Nearly all the inhabitants belong to missionary families, and they form a sort of little aristocracy here to themselves. There is a kind of old-world air about the place: it seems to be standing still while the rest of New Zealand is progressing fast and furiously around it. The people are the soul of kindly hospitality, but they are a little exclusive from the very fact of having lived here all their lives, and of having seen but little of the outside world. For the same reason, and because new settlers do not come up, owing to the land not being readily obtainable, they are somewhat averse from movement, and inclined to jog along in a settled groove.

I know of no place in the colony that presents such a striking resemblance to a quiet, stick-in-the-mud, rural locality of the old country. The Europeans are the gentry, and the Maoris round might pose as the rest of the population.

There is a handsome church at Waimate, but there is no hotel, though there are very good ones at Waitangi and Ohaeawae. There are yards and pens to accommodate a horse, cattle, sheep, and pig-market, which is held here at regular intervals. Waimate is a great farming centre, some of the lands about it having been under the plough for fifty years; still, it is a trifle backward in its modes, the farmers not striving to make a pile, but being content to keep themselves in competence. This may also be esteemed a central point of modern Maori civilization.

There are a number of young families growing up at Waimate, amid the softening influences of its homely refinement. Among them are an unusual number of young ladies. Whatever may be the faults of the place, with regard to its lack of energy and backwardness in farming industry, it redeems them all by the abundant crop of first-class British rosebuds it is raising for the delectation of hungry bachelors.

Well do I remember, once, Dandy Jack rejoining a party of us, who were up at Kawa-kawa on business. There was such a look of beatified content upon his face, that we all exclaimed at it. He told us he had been stopping at a house where there were ten lovely girls, between the ages of fourteen and twenty-six. He had come to bring us an invitation to go and visit there, too. Within half an hour every horse was saddled, and every individual of us, having completed his most killing toilette, was on the road to this bush-nursery of Beauty!

Six or eight miles from Waimate we come to Ohaeawae, a place of very great interest. The most conspicuous object is the beautiful church, whose tall spire mounts from a rising ground in the centre of the settlement. That church occupies the very site of the old pa, and, what is more, it was built entirely at the expense, and partly by the actual labour, of the very Maoris who fought the British here in Heke's war.

With the exception of the principal store and hotel, and possibly of one or two other houses near, Ohaeawae is a Maori town. A few miles further along the road is yet another straggling settlement, whose name I forget, and all is mainly Maori. These natives here are even further ahead than we are in the Kaipara. They have good frame-houses in all styles of carpentering; they have pastures fattening their flocks and herds and droves; they have their ploughs and agricultural machinery; and fields of wheat, potatoes, maize, and what not. They use the telegraph and the post-office for business or pleasure; they have their own schools, police, and handicrafts of various kinds. In short, as a body, they seem quite as much civilized as if they were white instead of brown. I suppose that, round Ohaeawae and Okaehau and Waimate, the Maori may be seen in the highest state of advancement to which he has anywhere attained. But more of him anon.

Between these settlements and the Hokianga waters, the roads become more inchoate again, and one passes through wild land, which gets more and more covered with bush as one proceeds. Hokianga, though it has its history of the early days, in common with the Bay, is far behind it in progress. In fact, Hokianga is a long way less forward than the Kaipara, and there are very few settlers in it. Its principal features are steep and lofty ranges, and a rich luxuriance of forest. The scenery is magnificent.

Winding along down the Waima or Taheke rivers, no eye so dull but must admire the glorious woodland beauties around. Soft green willows sweep the waters, and hide the banks below their foliage like some natural jalousie. Above is a bewildering thicket of beauty. Ferns, fern-trees, fern-creepers, every variety of frond, mingled with hanging masses of white star-flower, pohutukawa trees one blaze of crimson, trees and shrubs of a hundred varieties. And above tower lofty ranges, covered to the topmost summit with dense impenetrable woods, sparkling and gleaming with a thousand tints in the brilliant sunshine and clear atmosphere.

As the boat travels down the stream, teal and wild-duck splash and glide and scuttle and fly before it. The wild birds of the bush, that some will have it are becoming extinct, are here to be seen in greater numbers than anywhere else I know of. Those rare green and scarlet parrots tumble and shriek on the summits of the trees, while the large purple sultana-ducks peep forth occasionally.

Here and there some vista opens, disclosing a little Maori kainga, or the house and clearing of a settler, who thinks more, perhaps, of living amidst such natural beauty than of making a prosaic pile in any less attractive spot. I love the Kaipara, and I am in honour bound to deem Te Puke Tapu on the Arapaoa the acme and perfection of woodland glory—but, in the Hokianga, splendid and magnificent, one forgets other places.

Take that gorge of the main estuary, for example, just above Wirineki, where the Iwi Rua raises its wild peaks, and sends its tremendous shoulders with their ridgy backs and dark ravines, all clothed in overwhelming wealth of forest, rushing down to the blue water. What can one say but that it is simply sublime! As Wales is to Scotland, so is this to the Yosemite.

There is but little industry in Hokianga. There are some sawmills, but they are comparatively small, and do not add very largely to our timber trade. There are some farms, but they, too, are small and doing little. There are schools, but their work is limited.

The principal settlement is Hurd's Point, to which place a steamer comes from the Manukau once a fortnight. It is claimed here that this is actually the oldest settlement in New Zealand, prior even to Kororareka. A man named Hurd came here early in the century, and established a store for trade with the Maoris; sailing vessels from Sydney occasionally communicating with him.

The Point is about sixteen miles from the Heads. There are somewhere about a dozen good houses, two hotels and stores. A gentleman who lives here has even more manifold occupations than our Mayor of Te Pahi. But the population of this, and of the district generally, is mainly Maori, or Maori half-breed. One can trace in Hokianga some reminiscences of the French invasion, of Baron Thierry, and of the Pikopo, as the Maoris term the Roman Catholic mission.

While the civilization of the Maoris has advanced further here and at Ohaeawae than it has almost anywhere else, it is curious that some very primitive kaingas lie to the north of Hokianga. I suppose that nowhere in the North could you find places where there is less of Pakeha civilization and more of ancient Maori manners, than in one or two of these. They are completely secluded, and have scarcely any intercourse with strangers.

At these places I have been hospitably entertained, in true Maori fashion, and have found a large amount of genial, kindly friendliness. Some of the elders had not forgotten Heke's war, in which they had taken part. It seemed to them to be an event of yesterday only. They spoke of it as of something amusing, a good joke on the whole, and without any apparent feeling that there had been anything serious in it.

Yet these people questioned me eagerly about Akarana (Auckland), and things among the Pakeha. I rose into immense dignity among them because I had seen and could describe Te Kwini (the Queen), Te Pirinti Weri (the Prince of Wales), Te Pirintiti Weri (the Princess of Wales), and Te Pikanini (the young princes and princesses). All the inhabitants of the kainga, men, women, and children, gathered round the fire in front of my wharè to hear what I had to tell them. There was no end to their questions, and a sort of rapturous excitement spread among them as I dilated on the subject of our royal family. I think it would be no difficult thing to raise a Maori legion for foreign service. And I am quite sure that nowhere, in all the realm upon which the sun never sets, has Queen Victoria more devoted and enthusiastic subjects than she has among her "loyal Ngapuhi."

Such is a brief, a very brief account of our most interesting region, crammed as it is with mementoes of the past, that will grow dearer and more valued to this country as time recedes from them. I have but glanced at some prominent features. It would take a volume or two to contain all that might be written.

But when that railway which Old Colonial talks of is completed, I intend to write a guide-book to the three counties, with full historical details. It ought to be a good spec., you know, when crowds of tourists are rushing to "do" our classic ground!

[CHAPTER III.]
MAORI MANNERS.

I.

Old Colonial says that no book about Northern New Zealand, past or present, would be complete without some special reference to Maori manners. So, with his larger experience to aid me, I am going to try and depict them, in brief and to a limited extent. Perhaps the best way to begin is by sketching the early history of the race, so far as it is known. Also, we will be pedantic for the nonce, and such words of the native tongue as are used shall be free from European corruptions. Thus, to begin with, there being no "s" in the language, which only consists of fourteen letters, and no plural termination, Maori (pr. mowry) stands for either one or many, and Pakeha (white man, stranger, pr. Pah-kay-hah) signifies either the singular or plural number.[2]

The Maori are a Turanian race, belonging to the Polynesian family of the Malay branch. According to their own traditions, they came to New Zealand from some island in the South Sea, known to them as Hawaiiki. Probably they had migrated in the first instance from the Malay Peninsula. A certain number of large canoes landed the pilgrim fathers of the race on the shores of Ahinamaui,[3] the names of which are remembered, each of the tribes tracing its ancestry to one. The date of this incursion is reckoned to have been about A.D. 1400; the calculation being arrived at by comparison of certain genealogical tally-sticks kept among the tribes.

The Maori would seem to have degenerated from some more civilized condition, as is evidenced by the remains among them of astronomical knowledge, and of a higher political constitution, the basis of which is discoverable in their institution of the tapu. They brought with them to New Zealand the kumera (sweet potato), the taro (bread-root), the hue (gourd), the seeds of the koraka tree, the dog, the pukeko (swamp-hen), and one or two of the parrot tribe. They found in New Zealand an aboriginal race of men, inferior to themselves. They also found several species of gigantic birds, called by them moa, and by naturalists Dinornis, Aptornis, and Palapteryx.

The Maori, of course, made war upon both man and bird, the latter for food from the first, and the former probably for the same purpose eventually. They had succeeded in exterminating both before Europeans had a chance of making acquaintance with them. Bones of the moa are frequently found, and, till recently, it was believed that living specimens existed in the recesses of forest and mountain. But of the aboriginal race no trace remains, unless, as some have thought, there be an admixture of their blood in the few Maori of Otago and Stewart Island.

New Zealand was discovered by Abel Jan van Tasman, in 1642, to whom it owes its name—a name, by the way, that may one day be changed to Zealandia, perhaps, just as New Holland has become Australia, and Van Diemen's Land, Tasmania. The natives received the Dutch navigator with hostility, massacring a boat's crew. He, therefore, drew off and left, merely coasting for a short distance. No one else visited the country until 1769, when Cook arrived in it for the first time.

Captain Cook was likewise received with hostility by the Maori, on his first landing in Poverty Bay. But afterwards, in the Bay of Plenty, Mercury Bay, and the Bay of Islands, he met with better treatment, and was able to establish friendly relations with certain tribes. He spent altogether nearly a year in New Zealand, between 1769 and 1777, in which last year he left for Hawaii, to meet his death there in Kealakekua Bay. He circumnavigated the islands, which had previously been supposed to form part of a great Antarctic continent. He also bestowed upon the Maori the pig and the potato, and has left us some still interesting accounts of what he observed in the country.

Subsequently to Cook's last visit, and in the intervals between his voyages, other explorers touched here. De Lunéville, De Surville, Crozet, D'Urville, and Du Fresne, the French navigators, followed in the footsteps of Tasman and Cook. Then, too, whalers began to call along the coasts; and, by-and-by, traders from Sydney adventured hither for timber, and flax (phormium), and pigs, and smoked heads. But it was a risky thing in those days to do business with the Maori. Any fancied slight or injury was resented most terribly. Several ships were lost altogether, their crews being butchered and eaten; while boats' crews and individual mariners were lost by others.

In 1772, Du Fresne, with fifteen of his men, was killed in the Bay of Islands. He had aroused the wrath of the natives by trespassing on tapu ground; and they also avenged on him an action of De Lunéville's, who had rashly put a chief in irons. In 1809, the ship Boyd was taken in Whangaroa Harbour, and all her company killed, because the captain had flogged a Maori thief. Again, in 1816, we hear of the American brig Agnes meeting with a similar fate in Poverty Bay, or thereabouts.

From the end of last century down to 1840, a few individual white men took up their residence among the Maori here and there. These Pakeha-Maori, as they are called, were runaway sailors, or such as had been shipwrecked or made prisoners, or were wild, adventurous characters who preferred the savage life to the restraints of civilization. They married Maori women, raised families, and conformed to all the native customs, sometimes becoming chiefs and leaders in war. When some fitful intercourse was established with Sydney, these men were the medium of trade, and achieved immense importance in that way. It soon became the fashion among the chiefs of tribes for each to have his own special Pakeha-Maori. Force was sometimes resorted to to obtain these men. They were captured and compelled to remain, while wars between rival tribes were conducted for the possession of them. Rutherford, a survivor of the Agnes, was one such. His experiences of twelve years' residence among the Maori are recorded in Lord Brougham's compilation. Judge Maning has related the tale of another, at a somewhat later date.

In 1814, as has been elsewhere mentioned, the Rev. Samuel Marsden, together with some other missionaries, landed in the Bay of Islands; and from that event, New Zealand's real history may be said to commence.

The story of Marsden's interest in New Zealand is not without a certain romantic element. He was chaplain to the Government of New South Wales. At Sydney he had many opportunities of hearing of New Zealand, and of the terrible race of fighting man-eaters who inhabited it. Traders spoke freely of all they knew, and the barbarities, treacheries, and fearful deeds of the Maori, much exaggerated, no doubt, were matters of common report. Moreover, individual Maori sometimes shipped as sailors on board the vessels that touched on their coasts; and so Marsden was able to judge of the character of the race from the actual specimens he saw. We may be sure that he was favourably impressed by their evident superiority in every way to the black aborigines of Australia.

Marsden was in England in 1809, and there he vainly endeavoured to awaken sympathy on behalf of the Maori, and to persuade the Christian public to make effort for their help. On his return, he noticed, among the sailors of his ship, a coloured man, very sick and dejected. Him he made acquaintance with, finding him to be Ruatara, a Maori of the chieftain rank, belonging to the Ngapuhi tribe.

Ruatara had had an eventful time of it. In 1805, when a mere lad of eighteen, he had shipped on board a whaler, hoping thereby to see something of the world. In her he was treated badly, being marooned on a desert island for some months, and eventually brought back again to New Zealand, without more experience than a whaling cruise in the South Sea could give him.

But, nothing daunted by these vicissitudes, he again shipped on board a whaler, and in her was carried to London. This was the acme of his desires, for his great idea was to see King George. But, all the time the ship lay in dock, Ruatara was scarcely allowed to go on shore, even, and was not permitted to carry his wishes into execution. He appears to have been brutally ill-treated, and was finally turned over to a convict ship, the Ann, bound for Port Jackson. On board of her Marsden sailed, and saw and took this forlorn wretch, ill and disappointed, under his protection.

Arrived in Sydney, Marsden took Ruatara to his own house, and kept him there as his guest for some months, doing his best, meanwhile, we may be sure, to enlighten the mind of the barbarian whom Providence had thrown in his way. Finally, he took means to send Ruatara home to his own country.

The Church Missionary Society, stirred by Marsden's representations, at last sent out a missionary party. But on their arrival in Sydney the members of it hesitated about venturing to New Zealand—the affair of the Boyd, and similar deeds, being just then fresh in the colonial mind. Marsden, however, was not to be daunted.

In 1814 he sent a vessel to the Bay of Islands, loaded with useful presents, and bearing an invitation to Ruatara to visit him once more. It was readily accepted, not only by Ruatara, but also by several other chiefs, including the subsequently famous Hongi Hika, who was uncle to Ruatara. These persons were hospitably entertained by Marsden at his residence at Paramatta. Towards the end of the year, they returned to New Zealand, and with them went Marsden and his companions, landing at Te Puna in December of that year, as has been elsewhere spoken of.

This is the first appearance of the redoubtable Hongi. Both he and Ruatara took the missionaries under their protection, and firmly maintained that attitude as long as they lived. Neither of them embraced Christianity; but Hongi's care for the missionaries is shown in the charge he gave to his successors on his death-bed concerning them, which I have recorded in a previous chapter. Ruatara was a man of much milder disposition than his uncle, though both appeared well-mannered, courteous, amiable, and eminently sagacious when among Europeans. Ruatara would probably have become a convert, had he not died soon after the advent of Marsden.

During this period many of the Maori evinced great desire to travel, and especially to see England and its king. They were ready to undergo any amount of hardship and ill-treatment to accomplish this. Numbers shipped as seamen on board such vessels as would receive them. Sometimes they resorted to amusing tricks in order to get carried to England. Tupei Kupa, for example, a powerful chief in the neighbourhood of Cook Straits, came on board a ship passing along the coast, and resisted all endeavours, even force, to make him return. He was eventually made to serve as a sailor, and seems to have become a general favourite. He resided some time in Liverpool, afterwards being sent home by Government.

Hongi was affected by the same spirit. In 1820 he, accompanied by another chief, Waikato, and under the charge of Rev. Mr. Kendall, visited England. There he was presented to King George, and was made much of. The two chiefs aided Mr. Kendall and Professor Lee in the compilation of the first Maori vocabulary. They returned to Sydney loaded with many and valuable presents.

But in Sydney the true character of Hongi came out. He realized all his property, and converted it into muskets, powder, and ball. With these he sailed joyfully back to his own country. Arrived there, he set about arming his fighting men and instructing them in the use of the new acquisitions. He also became very friendly to such trading vessels as touched on his coasts, giving them cargoes of such produce as the country afforded in return for more arms.

This chief's ambition was to constitute himself king of all New Zealand, just as King George was sovereign over all Britain. His theory of the way to bring this about seems to have been by killing and eating all who opposed the project. There were some thirty tribes of the Maori, and these were divided and subdivided into various little sections. Sometimes a powerful chief was dominant over a large confederation; and, again, each little kainga regarded itself as independent.

Originally, Hongi was ariki (head chief or king) of the Ngapuhi, and ruled over the inhabitants of the districts round the Bay of Islands, and between that and the west coast. As soon as he had returned from England, and had achieved the possession of fire-arms, he converted his previously somewhat loose lordship into a real despotism. He organized a taua (army, regiment, or war-party), and quickly reduced any unruly sections to obedience. Then he attacked the Ngatipo of Whangaroa, the Ngararawa of Whangape, and the Ngaopuri of the North Cape. These he massacred, devoured, and dispersed, swelling the ranks of his army with accessions from among the subdued tribes.

After this, various expeditions, under the command of Hongi, or his sub-chiefs, marched southward to slay and eat all and sundry. The Ngatewhatua, a populous tribe of the Kaipara districts, had to bear the brunt of Hongi's advance, and were almost annihilated. He penetrated a long way south, ever victorious over every one by reason of his superior weapons. There is little doubt that he must have sometimes led an army of as many as five thousand men, mostly armed with muskets. This was a prodigious force for Maori war, irrespective of the enormous advantage of powder and ball over the native merè (battle-axe) and patu (a sort of halberd).

Such was the spirit of the Maori, and such their warlike ferocity, that tribes never thought of submitting peaceably, or fled from superior strength. They always fought first. It is difficult to realize, nowadays, the awful carnage that Hongi instituted. Districts were depopulated, tribes annihilated, men, women, and children, in scores and hundreds, were butchered and eaten; pa and kainga were burnt and destroyed.

Far to the south went the bloodthirsty conquerors, even into what afterwards came to be the province of Wellington. Ngapaoa, Ngatewaikato, Ngatimaniapoto, Ngatiawa, and many another tribe felt the full force of Hongi's lust for conquest. Even to the East Cape his terrible warriors came, decimating Ngateurewera and Ngatiporu. Of these latter they once roasted and ate fifteen hundred, at a single one of their cannibal orgies.

But Hongi did not become king of New Zealand after all. He received a wound in battle, which brought him to his death in 1828. In spite of his propensities for war and cannibalism, both of which, one may say, were hereditary in the Maori blood at that time, Hongi would seem to have possessed many good qualities. His intellect was quick and vigorous, and would have distinguished him among any people. His ingenuity was great, both in overcoming difficulties and in the arts which the Maori used, or that had been taught him by Europeans. His bravery was undoubted, and was mingled with much large-hearted generosity. He had good impulses, and was singularly affectionate to his own family. To him missionaries and white traders owed the first footing they obtained in the country, and the ability to hold their own there afterwards.

From the period of Marsden's first visit the labours of the missionaries began to bear fruit, and Christianity spread, at first slowly, but afterwards with marvellous rapidity and completeness. Soon after Hongi's death a more peaceful era commenced: arms were less often employed; cannibalism was given up among christianized tribes; and peaceful arts were more attended to. In 1823, a Wesleyan mission was established, first of all in Whangaroa; and, in 1837, a Roman Catholic one was commenced in Hokianga. By 1840 the whole of the tribes of the Maori were professedly Christian, and had relinquished their old warlike customs.

In 1864 there arose a singular religious revival among the Maori, known by the name of Hau-hau. This was just at the period when the Waikato war was concluded, and when certain sections of various tribes in the interior had declared themselves independent under a king of their own election. Hau-hau was instituted by some of the old tohunga (priests, prophets, and medicine-men), mainly from political motives. They said that as there was an English Church, a Scottish Church, and a Roman Church, that there ought also to be a distinctive Maori Church. They accordingly set to work to form one.

Hau-hau consists of a frenzied form of Christianity, mingled with some observances taken from the Mosaic Law, and comprehending old heathenish usages grafted upon the new order of things. From the extraordinary excitement its professors manifest, some people have thought that mesmeric influence had a part in it.

Hau-hau became a political movement, being inseparably connected with the "king" rebellion. The Kingite Maori have given a good deal of trouble in former years, but have now been quiescent for long. Their territory occupies Kawhia county on the West Coast, being bounded by the Waikato, Waipa, and Mokau rivers, and the sea. Their numbers are but few.

Till lately these rebels held themselves wholly aloof from intercourse with the outside world, and threatened any one who should enter their territory. At last they began to bring produce to the nearest Pakeha market, and to buy stores, though still maintaining their reserve. In 1881 there arose some dispute about land that had been confiscated after the war, but that had not been taken possession of. There was talk of a furious row between the rebels and the settlers. This was magnified by English newspapers into a "threatened Maori war," an absurd piece of ignorance, truly!

The "war" was put an end to the other day, by a few policemen arresting the "King," in the midst of his dominions and surrounded by his subjects, and conveying him off to durance vile at Wellington. A demonstration of Taranaki volunteers was enough. No blood was spilt; no violence offered.

Maori wars are things of the past entirely. When are British journalists going to awake to that fact? Now, settlers outnumber Maori everywhere ten to one. There are roads and railways and steamers, sufficient to convey constabulary to any riotous neighbourhood pretty quickly. But the great point is that the Maori of the present day are decent, quiet, and orderly folk. They are intelligent, and possess as much civilization as would be found in many rural districts of England, Scotland, and Wales—I will not add of Ireland, too, for fear I should be Boycotted! Maori and settler are on perfectly equal terms, and the former know it; moreover, they are not an homogeneous people, but live scattered in small communities. The Kingites, who are the least civilized, and who profess not to acknowledge our authority, showed what they thought of the possibilities of war by their submission to a party of constables the other day. There is no strength among them to make a war if they wished it, which they are much too sagacious to do. Riots, or brigandage, even, in isolated localities, are less to be feared than similar outbreaks in Lancashire or Staffordshire.

To read, as we did a short while ago, in influential London newspapers, that war with the Maori was again imminent, strikes us as excessively ludicrous. "Our shanty" even regards it as a dire insult, and there was some talk among us of going to war ourselves—with the fourth estate in England. Anyhow, it shows how little our friends at home really know about this land of the blest and the free. Have there not been books enough written about it yet?

There are, it is true, a good many Maori who adhere to primitive custom. Here and there you may find a kainga, containing from a score to a hundred souls, where there is not much apparent advance from the state of things fifty years back. But even here you will find that men and women turn out in European clothes, on occasions of state; that the children receive schooling of some sort; that there is a surprising degree of intelligence and knowledge of the great world and its ways; and that there is a fervent, and often dogmatic, Christianity among the inhabitants.

On the other hand, there are Maori of a more cultivated condition, and these have no small influence with their less sophisticated compatriots. Maori members sit in both houses of the Legislature; Maori have votes at elections; there are some comparatively wealthy Maori; there are Maori farmers, store-keepers, hotel-keepers, artisans, policemen, postmen, teachers, and clergymen. There are two or three Maori newspapers, partly written by Maori, for Maori to buy and read. They are no longer to be regarded as savages, or as a distinct race, even. They are but one of the classes of our community.

The present total Maori population is no more than 42,819; and the European population is 463,729. In 1874 the Maori numbered 46,016, so they have decreased considerably since then. But it is probable that the numbers six years ago were not taken with the same accuracy as at the last census, so that it would, perhaps, be too hasty to say that the race has decreased by 3000 during the last six years; yet this estimate cannot be very far from the truth.

There is no doubt that the Maori race are dying out, and that with great rapidity. At the beginning of this century—about 1820—the missionaries estimated their numbers to be 100,000, a guess that most likely fell far short of the truth. The frightful slaughtering that followed the introduction of fire-arms had, no doubt, much to do with the diminution of the population, but evidently that can have no effect at the present day; nor have the wars we have fought with certain tribes, subsequent to 1840, been of such a bloody nature as to be set down among the immediate causes of decrease.

It has been too hastily assumed that the Maori were lessening before the advent of Europeans. It has been erroneously supposed that they were half-starved, and that they had no option but to resort to cannibalism. Both conclusions are certainly mistaken ones, I feel convinced.

In the first place, when the Maori came to New Zealand, four or five centuries ago, only a very limited number could have arrived. A long and hazardous voyage must have been undertaken in frail canoes, and it is not to be supposed that an entire nation could have so migrated. Moreover, it is probable that the immigrants were driven here accidentally, by stress of weather, possibly. Otherwise, if they were able to voyage about so successfully in the open ocean, at will, surely they would have kept up communication with "Hawaiiki," or other islands, which we know they did not.

It seems clear, therefore, that but a few people originated the Maori inhabitants of New Zealand, and as these were certainly at one time very numerous, it is apparent that after their coming they had gone on increasing and multiplying. At what period, and for what reason, did this process of increase become checked, and change to one of decrease?

When Europeans first became acquainted with the country, the Maori had by no means occupied the whole of it, or even nearly so, nor had they exhausted its resources for the support of life. They were cannibals; but it has been abundantly proved that they were not so from necessity. Cannibalism was a part of the ceremonial of war and victory—nothing more. It was never looked upon as a mere means of livelihood.

It is true, that the Maori had no animals except dogs and rats, both of which they ate; but flesh is not an absolute necessity of existence. They had fish of many kinds in marvellous profusion; they cultivated assiduously the kumera and taro, alone sufficient for the support of life. Such crops as these hardly ever fail in this climate. Then there was the fern-root everywhere, a regular article of diet with them, and sundry other roots and herbs. Some writers have assumed that when the moa had been hunted down and destroyed, there was no other food available, and so the tribes turned on each other. This is monstrously absurd. There is no evidence to show that moa were ever so plentiful as to have been a principal part of the food-supply. There is plenty of traditional evidence to prove that other and smaller birds were more generally used as diet. There is no proof that the Maori were ever in want of means of subsistence. As matter of fact they were not. They never knew what famine was, in the sense in which it has at times been understood in Western Ireland or the Hebrides.

Now war, at that prehistoric period, was a very different thing from what it afterwards became, when fire-arms were introduced. From the very earliest time, according to their legends, war was the main employment of the Maori. But their wars were not of a kind to cause large devastation. Usually they were Homeric combats, where one or two persons were slain on either side. Vast preparations were made for an event of this kind. Rival tribes mustered all their strength; and, with much ceremony, the taua of each came together at some appointed place. Then for days there was much talking and boasting, and various single duels, resulting in little or nothing. Eventually a general engagement would ensue. Hundreds might take part in it, but rarely were there a dozen or a score of casualties. So we gather from such accounts as have reached us. Incessant though the inter-tribal conflicts were, they were not of such a murderous sort as to cause large general decrease. Extreme old age was a very frequent thing, among even prominent fighting-men, just as now there are numerous very aged Maori.

So, it would seem that neither war nor want were destroying the race before the coming of the Pakeha; consequently it is not surprising to find that the fact of their decreasing at all at that period is no fact, and is but an opinion, a theory, an assumption that appears to be devoid of any foundation whatsoever.

When fire-arms were introduced, general butcheries commenced. Hongi initiated this era. But other tribes eventually obtained the coveted weapon, and then there was a carnival of blood all through the land. Here we find the first real cause for general decrease. These fearful wars must have enormously diminished the numbers of the race.

But when Christianity laid hold of the Maori, and when colonization came after it, there was no longer any reason left for a decrease among the native population, at least, so one would have thought; yet the numbers of the Maori have been growing less and less with startling rapidity. The decrease that is going on now, and that has been going on since 1840, is evidently not owing to war or to want. Other causes for it must be sought for. The first Maori census was taken in 1874, and now another enumeration has been made, showing a considerable falling off since the other. Scarcely an old settler but will tell of districts he knows, where years ago there was a much larger native population than there is to-day. It is evident that, as civilization advances, and as Pakeha grow more numerous in the country, the Maori are disappearing faster and faster.

Many causes have been assigned for this. The anti-alcoholists—of whom we have many eminent and enthusiastic professors in the colony—of course, put drink down as the chief reason. I do not think it is, myself. Some Maori may drink themselves to death, but, so far as my experience goes, I have found them to be remarkably abstemious as a rule. Many Maori will not touch liquor at all; many more will take a little, but decline to drink excessively. As one such remarked to me once—

"Little rum good. Makee jolly, dance, sing! Much rum bad. Makee sleepy, makee head sore, belly sore, all sore!"

A drunken Maori is comparatively rare in the North, at least, as far as my observation goes. I am rather inclined to take medical evidence on the subject of Maori decrease. Certain diseases, introduced by the Pakeha, have spread among them extensively, and work fatally to their constitutions. The women are thereby rendered less capable of maternity, and the children fewer and more sickly.

A good deal of sentiment has been unnecessarily wasted upon this matter. We do not need to raise a cry of lamentation over the departing Maori. Let him go; we shall get on well enough without him! When the ordinary Englishman refers to the matter, he says—

"They're a splendid race, those Maries! and it's a thousand pities they should be dying out so fast!"

With this commonly begins and ends the sum of his knowledge of the matter. Now, the Maori is not altogether such an absolutely superior person. Relatively to some other aboriginal races—the Australian black, for instance, and perhaps most of the North American tribes—the Maori may truly be described as a splendid race; but compared with the Anglo-Saxon, the Maori is nowhere. He cannot match our physical development nor our intellectual capacity, average compared with average.

So, let the Maori go. We do not wish him to, particularly. We are indifferent about the matter. We would not hurry him on any account. Nay, we will even sympathize with him, and sorrow for him—a little. We are content to know that he will make room for a superior race. It is but the process of Nature's sovereign law. The weaker is giving way to the stronger; the superior species is being developed at the expense of the inferior.

In appearance, the Maori strike you favourably. Their features are good, being quite in Caucasian mould, though inclining a little to coarseness. Their heads are well shaped, their bodies and limbs well developed and muscular. They are somewhat long in the back and short in the leg, as compared with Europeans; and both men and women are able to pikau (hump, or carry on the back and shoulders) great weights for long distances.

The colour of the skin varies. In some it is almost a coppery brown, in others a dusky olive. The hair is black or brown, occasionally reddish. The faces are open and intelligent, capable of much expression, and pleasing when in repose. The eyes are large and full, and the teeth naturally of dazzling whiteness and regularity. Some of the young girls are comely and pretty, but as they grow old they often get repulsively ugly.

The average height is perhaps a little over that of Englishmen; but the Maori are seldom over six feet, and not often below five feet six inches. Deformed persons are to be seen in every kainga, where they are looked upon as, to some extent, privileged by their misfortune.

The moku (tattooing) has gone out of fashion, and is seldom seen on young men now, except among very conservative communities. Plenty of the older men, however, show it, and are still proud of it. The women were never marked much, a line or two about the mouth, and on the chin, was all they were allowed.

The moku was not mere ornament or disfigurement. It had a distinct heraldic meaning, and the practice had attained to quite high art. The designs are most elaborate, and were traced with exceeding care. They consist of concentric lines and geometric devices, each pattern having its peculiar signification. The markings are of a blue colour; they are principally displayed on the face and breast; and they are so deeply set that the skin is ridged and furrowed, looking as if carved.

The lower classes had but little moku, the more intricate and elaborate patterns being reserved for men of rank. The higher a chief was, the more elaboration did his moku display. When a man rose in rank, he received additional decoration; just as civilized governments confer orders, crosses, and stars upon distinguished generals or statesmen. Often the face was so covered that even the nostrils, eyelids, and lobes of the ears were adorned with minute tracery.

The operator who was entrusted with the making of the moku, was a man of great importance, though he might be of the lowest rank. The possession of a skilled artist on skin was thought so much of in the old days, that wars were sometimes waged to determine who should benefit by his talent. He was a sort of R.A., and M.R.C.S., and king-at-arms in combination.

This individual had his cases of instruments, little hoe-shaped chisels and gouges and knives, made of sharks' teeth, flint, bone, and wood. Very neat and beautifully finished weapons they were. The pigments consisted of charcoal, a prepared red earth, and the juice of the hinau tree.

The proud and happy patient was laid down on his back, and forcibly held in position by assistants. Then the operator sketched out the pattern on his face with charcoal. Each line or dot was chiselled in with a suitable tool, a wooden hammer being used to send the blade well into the flesh. The blood of course gushed freely forth, and was scraped off with an implement made for the purpose. The pigments were rubbed into the incisions as these were proceeded with. As may well be supposed, the pain was simply excruciating, but it was considered unmanly to flinch from it.

Subsequent inflammation was generally severe, and might last for weeks, while the whole operation would have to be effected bit by bit, over possibly a year or two. To add to the hero's misery, all this while he was tapu, or unclean, and could not touch food with his hands, or live in a wharè (house). Unless he was sedulously attended to by the ladies of his family, as was the proper thing, he would undergo no trifling amount of inconvenience.

The moku served a curious purpose at one time. Clumsy though Maori fingers are, they seem to have a natural aptitude for sketching and carving. So, when the earliest missionaries and others called upon certain chiefs to sign the title-deeds of estates they had bought from them, the Maori did so by drawing little sketches of the moku that adorned their faces. Each said, "That is me, and no one else." These curious autographs are still preserved by the Societies in London.

It was the practice in the old days to preserve the heads of distinguished men who were slain in battle. This was done by smoking and drying them in such a way as to keep the emblazoned skin intact. As soon as traders began to come from Sydney, they were ready to barter valuable commodities for these relics, which commanded high fancy prices among the museums and curio-hunters of Europe.

Great inducements were, therefore, offered to trading Maori to bring heads into market. The product seemed to be going to bring wealth into the country, and industrial enterprise in this direction speedily quickened. Trading tribes went to war on all sides, in order that the supply of heads might be fully up to the demand for them.

When this resource failed, some ingenious and business-like potentate hit upon a splendid device. Procuring the services of a first-class artist, he caused him to adorn a number of slaves with the most elaborate and high-art designs. Nothing was to be spared; they were to be decorated in the grandest style.