James Cowan

“ A clear, bright, moonlight night of summer; a moon that silvered the sharp hill-tops of the broken Maori country, but left black mysterious shadows in the gorges and river valleys that every few miles cut deeply into the rolling fern lands; valleys full of danger and death, for in their depths crept the war-parties of the savage, laying ambushes, planning murder and mutilation. On a gently sloping rise on the open fern lands a hundred white tents, the camp of the pakeha troops, glittered in the full moonlight. ”

“ If you imagine that Margaret had lost anything by her education or was less fitted to make a good home, it is because you never knew her. Instead of being stunted in her growth, broken in constitution, round-shouldered, pale-faced and weak-eyed, the development of her body had kept pace with the expansion of her mind, and she was now in the perfect flower of young womanhood, with body and soul both of generous mold. ”

“ The water-front, in spite of its smart new jetty for the launches, is lonelier than in the old days; for there was a time, long after the war-canoe era, when three long whaleboats were hauled up on the sand where the boulders are piled aside yonder and often these could be seen pulling down to Lyttelton laden with potatoes, corn and fruit. That bit of beach is over-rough; but a little way to the north, under the lee of a wild bit of a rocky headland thick with beautiful light bush, is a gem of a white beach, clean and hard and shining, a sandy alcove that must have been made for picnicking. ”

“ For landscape interest conjoined to the traditional and historic I know of no part of New Zealand more attractive than the zone along the old frontier line of the Waipa country of which Te Awamutu may be described as the metropolis to-day. Beauty of physical configuration! fertility of soil, poetic Maori folklore, memories of the heroic pioneer days, tales of sadness and glory of the war years—all these elements combine to invest the border line of the Waipa and the Rohepotae with a singular value, above all to those who have had the fortune to be reared on this well-favoured land. ”

“ Study the majesty and power of God as exhibited nightly in the starry sky, and learn to revere a being who holds in his hands a million worlds, and not only guides their movements but directs with a heart of love the minutest affairs of all their inhabitants. Look over the broad field of creation, and think of the earth, grand and beautiful as it is, as only one among the vast number of peopled orbs, all swinging in unison, parts of one plan, every one in its day sending forth a song of praise to its maker. ”

“ It looks what it is, the mountain guardian of Rapaki; its presence, grimly grand on dark lowering days when the mists trail about it and give it added height and dourness, is no less overpowering in the night, when it leans over the deep-cut valley of dreams, a huge rugged blade of blackness etched against the sky. And even in this day of sunshine, when every cave and cranny in the Poho-o-Tamatea were searched by the golden light and when the mystery of its fiery birth stood revealed, the great spear-rock still seemed a place of eeriness and tapu . ”

“ A warrior orator would rise, weapon in hand, and throwing off his blanket for freedom of action, go bounding along the marae in front of the assemblage, shouting short, sharp sentences as he taki'd to and fro, his athletic figure untrammelled except for a waist-shawl or short dangling mat, fire in his movements, and ferocity in every gesture and in every cry—the embodiment of belligerent Maoridom in its savage prime. ”

“ The roaring sound of approaching destruction inside the house, the certainty of death outside! What man can bear such wrath of fate?
“Behold! There is one such man! Like an apparition he suddenly stands in front of the door—stands bolt upright—and fires his last two shots at us. Defiance flashes from his eyes even as he sinks under a shower of bullets.
‘The house is one mass of flame—it is near falling—when another Maori bursts from it, gun in hand, and drops pierced by bullets while dauntlessly aiming at the foe. ”

“ To this Thorwald replied:
“Let me ask you, Doctor, if you have not an answer to your question in your own industrial system. Do you not always find men to do every required work, no matter how hard and distasteful it may seem to you? I do not mean that the parallel is exact, but this seems to be governed now, as it has always been, by a dispensation of nature. We are born with different tastes and inclinations. Each one chooses his own occupation, and it comes to pass providentially, just as it did in the olden time, that all do not choose alike.” ”

“ Really to appreciate the special and peculiar beauty of the hills, with their nippled peaks and crags and their age-weathered cliffs, one must travel along the Lyttelton-Governor’s Bay road rather than view the range from the Plains, where the smoothed and settled ridges, like a series of long whalebacks, give little hint of the sudden rocky wildness of the precipitous dip to the harbour slopes. ”

“ The physiographic charm of the country on the north side of the Puniu and the east side of the Waipa River is produced by the gently-rolling lie of the land with its countless sheltered valleys and its well-sunned slopes, with its leisurely-winding streams, with here and there a small lake; the old Maori garden lands of Te Awamutu, Rangiaowhia, Kihikihi, and Orakau, now covered with pakeha farms and tree-groves, with fat flocks and herds, and wearing all the aspect of a comfortable countryside enriched by the tillage of two generations of white farmers. ”

“ The music, for it was sweet music to me, came nearer, and now I could not be mistaken. What joy filled my heart! How impossible to forget that voice! I sat still and let it come. She evidently knew where I was and was coming to find me, pouring forth her heart in the way she knew I adored. Where now were my fears that my heart was growing cold toward her? Could it be possible that I had ever doubted my affection for her since I first heard her sing? Nearer it comes, filling my ears now with its familiar melody, a song without words but full of meaning for one who hears aright. ”

“ The whole bush-castle was alive and ready. Every man and boy who could shoulder a gun was in the well-hidden firing lines.
The wet mist slightly lifting as the morning light came, the musketeers presently saw dim figures moving out from the dark forest on their front and right and left flanks. Moving quickly, half running, in a cautious, crouching gait, they flitted from tree to tree, and burnt stump to stump, and nearer and nearer to the stockade. ”

“ Now we turn and, passing a rugged cornice in the lava wall, descend into the gully to examine for ourselves the tree-covering of old Kahukura’s shoulders. There is a thick growth of flax on the little terraces and steep slopes above the bush, and in one place we force our way through a regular jungle of it, growing so thickly as almost to encourage the idea that a flax-mill would find profitable business here. Some of the tall korari stalks are well in flower and bees are busy; on others the long dark-sheathed buds are just unfolding. ”

“ To-day, should you visit the large European-built house of the late Te Whiti, the Prophet of the Mountain, at Parihaka, you will see a picture of Te Ua on the wall of the speech-hall, his right hand raised to his shoulder, palm outwards, as if in the act of invoking his gods to turn the pakeha bullets aside—"Hapa! Pai mariré!" And many a deluded Hauhau fell to the rifles of the white men before the Maori confidence in the efficacy of the charm was shaken. ”

“ It seems to me that woman’s surest path to honor and happiness is that marked out for her by nature, a path which she adorns because so well fitted for it, and that to forsake the home and compete with man for the thousand places in the work of the world would be to cast aside the charm of her womanliness and all that makes her what she is, a solace and comfort to all the world. ”

“ Our Christchurch artists need not go further away than the inner dip of the range, the battered rim of the ancient fire cauldron, for impressions of bold rock faces straightly grand and honeycombed with curious caves, and witchy-looking weathered old trees; pictures that approach grandeur when the storm clouds swirl about the tussock-topped tors of Kahukura, the Rainbow God, giving the dark cores of the olden volcanoes an added height and mystery, or when they drift softly and mistily from the deep gullies between the ridges like steam masses from some hidden geyser. ”

“ The two eel-fishers—Bivouac in the bush—A murderous attack—The Waikato's tomahawk—"Ringiringi's" escape.
Far away to the east and north of the great Hauhau council-camp stretched the forest, clothing hill and valley with one endless wavy garment of unvarying green. For weeks one might tramp through these vast, jungly woods and not see or hear sign of man, or of any living thing but the twittering birds in the tree-tops and a stray wild pig rooting in the soft, fern-matted earth or scampering away through the thickets. ”

“ Men have often speculated on the idea that our race will one day fail and the time come when the last generation shall pass away and leave the earth a bare and ugly thing, to continue yet longer its lonely, weary journey around a failing sun. That day the moon has seen. That direful fate the race of moon men have experienced. Some poor being, the last of his kind, was left sole monarch of a dying world, and with the moon all before him where to choose, chose rather to die with the rest and leave his world to cold and darkness. ”

“ Here and there a Maori tree, like our ribbonwood yonder, and a tattered clump of light bush in the gullies or on a rocky cliff-top, to remind us of the different setting when Rapaki was tumultuous with wild Maori life; when tattooed Ngai-Tahu were in fighting flower, and when dense and beautiful forest covered the feet and shoulders of all those dark volcanic crags and tors lifting above us [41] there like so many ruined castles battered by the artillery fire of the gods. A remnant, a morehu , now are tribe and forest; alike they have dwindled to a shadow ”

“ No drill day after day, no parades, no sentry-go, no buttons to polish, and no uniform to mend—surely this savage life had its compensations. When the Maoris had urgent and laborious work on hand they worked like fury, and compelled—with the spur of a tomahawk—the white man to toil with equal industry, if not willingness. Fort-building, trench-digging and timber-felling were undertakings in which the whole strength of the community laboured from dawn till dark, and the chiefs as hard as the common men and slaves. ”

“ Did it ever occur to you, Doctor, that your attitude does not alter the facts? In spite of your unbelief, or indifference if you will, there is a God whose steps are heard throughout the universe, whose hand upholds all worlds, and who looks with loving eyes upon all created beings, even upon those who have the intelligence but not the heart to acknowledge him. ”

“ It is not well to camp there even now, should you have Maori blood in your veins. The flax-clumps and the tauhinu bushes still murmur the name of Ngati-Mamoe, and though pakeha sheep have long grazed over the site of Tauhinu-korokio and pakeha voices make lively the mountain side, the soil holds the mysterious spell of the tapu. Maoris who have camped on the side of the track which goes over the hills there have spent a night of inexplicable discomfort, inexplicable, that is, but for the presence of the tapu and the unseen spirits of Maoridom. ”

“ The people gathered in the middle of the little clearing, and for hours the sound of lamentation rang through the forest, often rising into a wild, heart-breaking shriek as some blanket-draped or mat-kilted woman, her long hair unbound, and her cheeks streaming with tears, cried her keening song for her slain. ”