W. Delisle Hay

“ 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. ”

“ When the sun has set and evening has come, supper over, we sit in the lamp-lit drawing-room, enjoying the sweet intoxication of the ladies' presence. Or we lounge on the verandah outside the open windows, listening to the chat within, hearing around us the whispers of the forest, or the ripple and risp of the moonlit river, gazing at the profound shadows of the wooded ranges opposite, and inhaling the fragrant sweets of the sleeping garden. Peaceful and silent is that starlit night in the bush. ”

“ Forest and mountain form a background to the broad valley through which winds the (really) silver Thames, abounding with fish, its low banks and firm sandy shores rich with a luxuriant shrubbery. Further up, every mile adds to the beauty of the scene around.
And all this great valley, containing a million acres doubtless, is as Nature made it, unmarred by the hand of man, save some little spots here and there, where Maori kaingas are situated, and that limited area which the gold-seeker now calls his own. ”

“ Picture the rough grassy slopes, covered with the standing stumps among the new grass, the rude shanty in the middle of the lower ground, as I have described it, the background of bush-covered heights, with the sun just coming up from behind them into the brilliant sky; and people this scene with the groups of men—Maori and Pakeha, uncouth in appearance as the shaggy cattle that are looking on from a corner of the clearing, or as the clumsy-looking but savage dogs that roam about, or are held in leash by their owners. ”

“ A clearing, hardly to be so designated, for it is merely a space of some few acres where fallen, half-burnt trees lie prostrate, jumbled in inextricable confusion with boulders, rocks, jutting crags, and broken mounds of fresh-turned soil and stone. A handkerchief upon a post, some newly-split and whitened stakes set here and there around the débris, the babble and vociferation of men, those who have got before us, around and about, all sufficiently proclaims that our race is at an end, and that this before us is the prospectors' claim. ”

“ On the summit of the cliffs, on ledges and terraces, down at the bottom of the rocks, filling every little bay, and sweeping down the gullies and ravines, is everywhere abundant the wild foliage of the evergreen forest. Glorifying the rich and splendid scene, diversifying with numberless effects of light and shadow the whole panorama, shining upon the glowing sea, touching the topmost crags with sparkling grandeur, and bathing in beauty the thousand-tinted green of the forest, is the sun, which, on the eastern horizon, is rising clear and bright and steady. ”

“ For example, there is Hau-hau. The principal manifestation in that singular new religion is the ecstasy and excitement into which whole congregations appear to throw themselves. There is something akin to the mesmeric phenomena in the extraordinary gusts of feeling that sweep over a Hau-hau conventicle. The leader works himself up first, and then the rest follow. They shout, they scream, they roll on the ground, they weep, they groan, and, while in this state, appear insensible to every external influence but the strange excitement that possesses them.
Any Maori can die when he likes. ”

“ So much and more a fellow-passenger tells us, while we gaze at the view, inwardly wondering whether wandering artist will ever present this glorious landscape now before us to people at home. But the story must be reserved for another time, until we are able to do justice to it.
At last the Lily is lying right off the beach of Te Pahi township, and her whistle is echoing among the woods on the ranges above, scaring the shags, kingfishers, and rock-snipe on the oyster-beds and beaches. Very speedily, two or three people appear at the township, and one of them puts off in a boat to board us. ”

“ Stores and hotels, primitive but encouraging, hang out their signs to view; and a road, rough but practicable, winds down across the lower ground to Paeroa, the river landing-place, where, too, another township is being nursed into existence. Down below a couple of crushing-mills are already set up and hard at work, belching forth volumes of smoke, that almost hides from my view the turbid, muddy waters of the creek in the gully, as it rolls furiously along. ”

“ It is a novel experience to us to glide along the still reaches among these fluviatile greenwoods. We are embosomed in a submerged forest, whose trees are uniform in height and kind. All round us, like a hedge, is the glossy green foliage, sometimes brushing our boat on either side. And we scare up multitudes of water fowl, unused to such invasion of their solitudes. Wild duck, teal, grey snipe, shags, and many kinds that no one on board knows the names of, start from under our very bows. ”

“ I went to the kainga in the evening, as unobtrusively as possible, to see how the feasting was conducted. Men and women sat, stood, lay, or lounged about, clustering round the fires and ovens every now and then to do some feeding, or laughing, chatting, smoking, and generally enjoying themselves. But, every now and then, some one would set up a loudly-chanted lament, and instantly all would crouch upon the ground in a sitting posture, and, while the tears fell in abundance from their eyes, would wail and rock themselves about in the most terrible anguish of grief, apparently. ”

“ For with the sun come settlers and Maoris from all sides, some brought by boats and canoes upon the river, some galloping on horseback along the beach, others on foot struggling through the woods and across the ranges on either hand, all converging upon the shanty with shouting salutations, that are responded to with loudly demonstrated welcome.
A rough and wild-looking assemblage we are, I make no doubt, yet fitting well into the foreground of the scene, with its rude and incipient civilization insulting the dominant wildness of Nature all around. ”

“ Around you are the varied forms and colours of more than a hundred different shrubs and trees, evergreen, and flower-bearing in their seasons. There is the cabbage-tree palm, with bare shank and top-knot; the nikau palm, with weird and wondrous frondage; the lancewood, upright and slender, with crest of copper-tinted hair-like leaves; the fern-tree, a vast umbrella of emerald green. There is the twisting squirming rata; the gaunt and powerful kahikatea ”

“ Varied are the emotions that take possession of the individuals of our company; but I think there are some among us, more thoughtful or sentimental, perhaps, who, unconsciously to themselves, draw a kind of inspiration from the noble scene. To such there seems, in those majestic cliffs, sea-swept and forest-crowned, first seen as lighted by the rising sun, a nameless sermon preached, a wordless lesson taught, an everlasting poem sung. And our minds and spirits are calmed, refreshed, and invigorated; while in some dim way we grasp ideas that the silent scene irresistibly conveys to us. ”

“ After the fresh excitement has subsided, the men will come back to their work, finding that £2 10s. or £3 a week of wages is better than making nothing out of a claim of one's own.
So we see as much of the place as we can, even climbing up the rugged ranges, and from their wild summits looking down over the whole panorama of the gold-field, with the waters of the firth beyond it, and the bush-clothed heights upon the further shore. And then we find a novel interest in the table d'hôtes at the hotels, with the singularly mingled company assembled at them. Everywhere is a feverish excitement ”

“ And then the hot excitement seizes upon us all, and, as we hear the unmistakable grunting, squealing, and hough-houghing of pigs, we plunge madly down to the scene of action. It is no time for considering one's steps; we go straight for the point where the noise leads us, crashing against trees, stumbling over logs, regardless of every obstacle. We pitch headlong into holes hidden by treacherous banks of ferns; we swing over little precipices by the help of supple-jacks and lianes; we press through thorny bush-lawyers, heedless of the rags and skin we leave behind us ”

“ A Maori would certainly rather die than enter the precincts of a wahi tapu; his terrors would probably kill him if he were so much as touched by a ngarara, or little green lizard. Incredible as it may seem, the Maori were indeed sometimes killed by fear. Instances are on record of individuals who have unknowingly violated the tapu, in some one of its important phases. No one else might be aware of the crime, so that the culprit would have nothing to dread from human justice. But he has been so absolutely terror-stricken, that he has gone straight away into the bush, laid down, and died there. ”

“ There is among us a party, headed by O'Gaygun, who take the position of ultra-conservatives; the object of their conservatism being the keeping alive of all the most primitive usages of the bush. To them anything new is an insult; the introduction of imported comforts and appliances a horrible iniquity. It will be remembered how fierce was O'Gaygun's wrath on the occasion when forks and spoons were brought into the shanty. Now, his sublime indignation was roused to the utmost at the spectacle of such an outrageous incongruity as an umbrella, in the pure and holy atmosphere of our shanty. ”

“ Never a fox-hunter that dared have ridden as we rode that day, across a country so rough and shaggy. But our incitement is greater than ever fox-hunter had, for it is a frantic chase for wealth, with all the madness of gambling thrown into it. It is a race whose goal is gold! ”

“ I think I need hardly say that we are not æsthetic here in the bush. In point of fact, we have no sympathy whatever with æstheticism or high art culture. We are, to put it shortly, Goths, barbarians, antithetics, what you will. The country is not æsthetic either; it is too young yet to use or abuse intellectual stimulants. There exists among us a profound contempt for all the fripperies and follies of fashion and civilization. We hold these things to be wrong—to be a sort of crime against manhood. ”

“ For, certain men or women, peculiarly skillful in some special particular, became persons of great renown throughout the land, and their services were sought after by favour, force, and fraud.
The highest branch of art, or, at least, what was esteemed to be such, was the Maori heraldry, and its emblazonment upon the living skin. Artists skilled in this making of the moku—tattooers, as we Pakeha call them—were tremendous dignitaries. Their talents were a gift, were held to be genius, and no means were hesitated at which could secure one of these persons to a tribe. ”

“ The colouring is brighter and more brilliant than it often is in the bush; and there is a more extensive mingling of different trees and shrubs, a more picturesque grouping of forms and tints. There are emerald feathery fern-trees, copper-tinted "lancewoods," with their hair-like tufts, the tropic strangeness of nikau palms, crested cabbage-trees, red birch and white ti-tree, stately kauri, splendid totara, bulky rimu, dark glossy koraka, spreading rata, and half the arboreal catalogue of the country besides. ”

“ All around us was bush—a dense jungle of shrubs and trees. The conical hill on which we stood was thickly clothed, and all round, over the steep, rough ranges, the [Pg 238] abrupt ravines and gullies, with their brawling streams, was spread the one variegated mantle of gorgeous foliage.
Since then I have seen certain of the far-famed forests of the tropics, but I must candidly say that the scenery they offer is, on the whole, far less striking and beautiful than that of the bush of Northern New Zealand. The colouring is not so good; in the mass, it is not so lustrous, nor so varied. ”

“ Our worn-out steeds carry us wearily up and along the steep hill-side, beneath and among the trees that cast their umbrage all over the golden ground. Climbing, struggling, pressing ever onward, we pass the grim defile, and, in the wild and beautiful solitude of primeval nature, we find our goal. ”

“ Quite close to the busy parts, so it seems to us, houses stand in their own wide gardens; the streets and roads are lost amid the embowering foliage of trees and shrubs. The house-structures are built on every conceivable plan, up and down the wooded shores; every builder has evidently been his own architect to a great extent, and there is no lack of elbow-room hereaway.
What surprise us most are the evidences of taste and cultivation and general prosperity everywhere in view. ”

“ 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 [Pg 6] 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. ”

“ Ah! live in the bush, reader! Live and work from month's end to month's end without even a sight of a petticoat, and then go slap into the middle of a "spree" at some such place as Tanoa or Te Pahi. Then you would appreciate the charms of our Maori belles. Under the influence of music and the dance, supple forms and graceful motions, scented hair and flower-wreaths, smiles and sparkling eyes, the graces of nature not wholly lost under the polish of civilization, you would say our Maori girls were very nice indeed. ”

“ Again, Dandy Jack and O'Gaygun are in front of me. Before them rides a regular Thames miner, bestriding a lean and weedy horse of very poor description. It is easy to see, too, that he is not accustomed to the saddle, though he is urging his beast to its utmost, and doing all he knows to get on. We are coursing along the side of a slope, dense ti-tree jungle above and below us, and only a rough narrow way through it. The miner's horse ahead stumbles and trips, grows frightened, and becomes unmanageable, turning broadside on in the narrow path and blocking it. ”

“ There are other and newer clearings beyond the ranges and out of sight, but here all that is visible is very much trimmer and neater in appearance than our farm.
Over three parts of the basin the plough has passed. About one-half is under wheat, maize, and other crops, while the grass on the remainder looks wonderfully rich, freed as it is from stumps, drained, and, to a measurable extent, levelled. Cattle, sheep, horses, and pigs are feeding in the paddocks.
We eye the scene with great admiration, and even envy. This is the sort of thing our farm ought to be, and will be. ”

“ Gorge, the spot where the prospectors' claim is known to be, the goal of every hope to-day.
No one dares to leave his horse now for an instant. Those that have any, like ourselves, for the most part remain mounted, restlessly circling about the camp. Every man that could beg, borrow, or steal it, appears to have got a riding-beast of some sort. A few are even bestriding bullocks, judging, probably, that in the general scrimmage and stampede, even those ungainly steeds will distance men on foot. ”

“ Emigrants, being for the most part drawn from among dry-land-living populations, are apt to be daunted by the idea of a long voyage. People would be more ready, perhaps, to contemplate becoming colonists, were it not for that dreaded crossing of the sea which must necessarily be their first step. Their terrors may be natural enough, but they are more fanciful than real; and once overcome, the emigrant smiles at his former self. ”

“ The Maori young ladies are not, perhaps, strikingly beautiful—our Rakope always excepted—but they have good features, plump, graceful figures, and an altogether comely and agreeable tout ensemble. Their white teeth and juicy lips, sparkling eyes and dimpling cheeks, ever-ready smiles and roguish glances, make them a very pleasant sight to see. One loses all distaste for the brown complexion, and even for the two or three lines of moku on the chin, though most of the present generation are without those marks. ”

“ Altogether, the modern emigrant's existence on board ship is a calm, easy, indolent, well-fed, and cheerful interlude of repose, amid the storms and worries of the great battle of life. If existence has been to him hitherto rather hard and thorny than otherwise, he finds the voyage out a pleasant interval of rest and refreshment; and, in any case, it recruits and prepares him to better commence the new life in the colony, with good spirits and high hopes, with invigorated strength, and renewed health in both mind and body. ”

“ The young lady was not considered exactly a belle in the city, perhaps; but the bush receives her as an incarnation of Venus herself. Directly she gets beyond the confines of the city, into the rough, primitive, and inchoate wilderness, she finds herself elevated to a rank she never knew before. Coach-drivers, steamboat-captains, hotel-keepers treat her with a deference and attention that is quite captivating, rude examples of male humanity though they may be. ”

“ But here, an industrious man is always getting nearer and nearer to a home and a competence, won by his toil. Can every one in the old country, no matter how industrious, say that of himself? Is it not too often the poor-house, or the charity of friends, that is the only goal of labouring-class and middle-class alike, in overcrowded Britain? Does patient industry invariably lead to a better fortune for the declining years in England? ”

“ And in the intervals of eating and drinking, we could look about us on the splendid perspective of bush and river, across the clearings, where the air shimmered in the heat, where the crickets whistled and hummed, and where the cattle were lazily lying among the stumps. It was a magnificent picnic, so everybody declared. There never was anything to match it in all New Zealand!
I can fancy, that in days to come, when the full tide of civilization has overtaken this fair country, some of those ladies will be sitting in boudoirs and drawing-rooms talking to their children ”

“ He is scarcely a pioneer farmer any longer. He has made his home, and a beautiful home it is, though shut out, seemingly, from all the world beside. The ranges, dark with woods, sweep round the fertile fields, the river flows below, and beyond it the untouched virginity of forest is again picturesquely apparent. ”

“ We go strolling about the place in little knots, admiring the garden, eating fruit in the orchard, visiting the paddocks to see the stock and the crops, and generally enjoying ourselves after our manner.
Each of our ladies has a little group around her, which goes off separately. The component parts of Miss Fairweather's immediate train may change from time to time; men may come and men may go, as it pleases her; but the gallant O'Gaygun, the devoted Dandy Jack, the obliging Old Colonial, and the fascinating Fiend are ever hovering around her, deferent, attentive, and adoring. ”

“ Then go about freely, get into the bush away from the city, make friends with every one everywhere, and let it be known that you are in search of work. Very soon you will hear of something or other. Take the job, the first that comes in your way, and stick to it till something better turns up. Don't be afraid of it whatever it is; don't imagine anything will hurt you or lower your dignity in the slightest so long as it is honest. Even if they make you a street-scavenger, remember that is better than loafing. ”

“ Knives and forks are distinctly a product of civilization; custom holds us to the use of them. But what are [Pg 140] a sheath-knife and a wooden skewer, if not everything that is needed?
Those ultra-conservatives among our number, those rigid adherents to the most primitive bush-life, of course despise all the refinements of the table. Plates, forks, and spoons are to them degeneracies,—things that no noble bushman needs or requires. They scorn any leanings towards luxury and ease. Give them a life that is totally free from the petty trammels and slavish conventionalities of the old world! ”

“ One may easily imagine that it is difficult to "turn in" on a night when such a fresh excitement fills every mind, but, I suppose, most of us do contrive to get to sleep eventually. With the first break of dawn in the morning there is a stir and commotion all through the ship. Rules are forgotten, and etiquette broken through, as men, women, and children rush hastily on deck to take their first look at our future home. ”

“ If you want an axe that is really good for anything, you must go to America for it. Here, in the bush, all our tools come from the land of the Stars and Stripes. Why it should be so ask English cutlers. English tools and cutlery of all sorts cannot find a sale here; for bitter experience has taught us what inferior and unreliable goods they are. American things never fail us. We do not buy them because they are cheaper, but because they are better. They are exactly what we want, and of sterling quality.
Now, Sheffield can turn out the best hardware in the world, no one can deny that. ”

“ Yonder, a mile or two to starboard, and seeming within a stone's throw, is the land we have come so far to seek. A wall of rock, the northern cliff of New Zealand rises abrupt and imposing from the sea, broken here and there into groups of pillared, pinnacled islets, nobly irregular in outline, piled and scarred, indented and projected, uplifted and magnificent. ”

“ And so to supper, and finally to bed, to sleep, and to dream of the wonders that shall be; [Pg 94] to dream of cathedrals and factories and theatres rising here, and supplanting the forest and scrub around us; to dream of splendid streets along the banks of the Kaipara, but streets which ever end in rocky wooded gullies, down which we plunge incessantly, behind a rushing nightmare that is driven either by a demon or by Dandy Jack. ”

“ In the shops the same sense of equality is noticeable. Shopkeepers and their assistants are not the cringing, obsequious slaves that we know so well in England. There is none of that bowing and smirking, superfluous "sir"-ing and "ma'am"-ing, and elaborate deference to customers that prevails at home. Here we are all freemen and equals; and the Auckland shopman meets his customer with a shake of the hand, and a pleasant hail-fellow-well-met style of manner. ”

“ Below these, again, is a thick jungle of shrubs of many species, masses of creeping-plants [Pg 339] matting the bushes together, or depending from the trees and ferns in infinite profusion and luxuriance.
The late afternoon sun is slanting from behind me, so that when its rays shoot through the branches they light up the scenes in front, and thus the picture I presently witness comes before me with proper artistic effect. I hear sounds of life coming through the trees in advance of me—the sounds of men shouting and yelling in excitement; the noise of dogs barking and yelping ”

“ But, though nature has given us such sublime triumphs of her raw material, these have no history, no spirit. They tell to us no story of the past; and poetry has not crowned them with a diadem of romance. ”