William Pember Reeves

“ The seamy side of Maori life, as of all savage life, was patent to the most unimaginative observer. The traveller found it not easy to dwell on the dignity, poetry and bravery of a race which contemned washing, and lived, for the most part, in noisome hovels. A chief might be an orator and skilled captain, but, squatting on the ground, smeared with oil, daubed with red ochre and grimly tattooed, he probably impressed the white visitor chiefly as an example of dirt and covetousness. ”

“ Just as a burning forest is a magnificent scene with a dismal sequel, so the saw-miller’s industry, though it finds a paradise and leaves a rubbish-yard, is, while it goes on, a picturesque business. Like many forms of destruction, it lends itself to the exertion of boldness, strength, and skill. The mill itself is probably too primitive to be exactly ugly, and the complicated machinery is interesting when in action, albeit its noises, which at a distance blend into a humming vibration, rise near at hand to tearing and rending, clattering and howling. ”

“ At the top of Arthur's Pass you are among the high Alps. The road winds over huge boulders covered with lichen, or half hidden by koromiko, ferns, green moss, and stunted beeches, grey-bearded and wind-beaten. Here and there among the stones are spread the large, smooth, oval leaves and white gold-bearing cups of the shepherd's lily. The glaciers, snowfields, and cliffs of Mount Rolleston lie on the left. Everything drips with icy water. Suddenly the saddle is passed and the road plunges down into a deep gulf. It is the Otira Gorge. Nothing elsewhere is very like it. ”

“ Though pale and delicate, the tints of the rock are not their least beauty. Grey, yellow, brown, fawn, terra-cotta, even pale orange are to be noted. No photograph can give the charm of the drapery that clothes these cliffs. Photographs give no light or colour, and New Zealand scenery without light and colour is Hamlet with Hamlet left out. How could a photograph even hint at the dark, glossy green of the glistening karaka leaves, the feathery, waving foliage of the lace bark, or the white and purple bloom of the koromiko? ”

“ Between one inlet and another the sea beats on sheer faces of cruel granite. Instantaneous is the change when the gates are entered, and the voyager finds his vessel floating on a surface narrower than a lake and more peaceful than a river. The very throbbing of a steamer’s engines becomes gentler and reaches the ears softly like heart-beats. The arms of the mountains seem stretched to shut out tumult and distraction. Milford, for instance, is a dark-green riband of salt water compressed between cliffs less than a mile apart, and in one pass narrowing to a width of five hundred yards. ”

“ Round about the homestead you will still see the traditional features of colonial station life, the long wool-shed with high-pitched roof of shingles or corrugated iron, and the sheep-yards which, to the eye of the new chum, seem such an unmeaning labyrinth. Not far off will stand the men’s huts, a little larger than of yore, and more likely nowadays to be frame cottages than to be slab whares with the sleeping-bunks and low, wide chimneys of days gone by. ”

“ Even the ordinary free man was simply buried in the ground in a sitting posture and forgotten. But the departure of a chief of rank and fame, of great mana or prestige, was the signal for national mourning. With wreaths of green leaves on their heads, friends sat round the body wailing the long-drawn cry, Aué! Aué! or listening to some funeral chant recited in his praise. Women cut themselves with sharp sea-shells or flakes of volcanic glass till the blood ran down. The corpse sat in state adorned with flowers and red ochre and clad in the finest of mantles. ”

“ It is difficult, perhaps, for those living in the cool and abundantly watered British Islands to sympathise with dwellers in hotter climates, or to understand what a blessing and beauty these continual and never-failing watercourses of New Zealand seem to visitors from sultrier and drier lands. The sun is quite strong enough to make men thankful for this gift of abundant water, and to make the running ripple of some little forest rivulet, heard long before it is seen through the green thickets, as musical to the ears of the tired rider as the note of the bell-bird itself. ”

“ The soft air is full of sunshine, tempered by the ocean haze, and in it groves of karaka-trees, with their large polished leaves and gleaming fruit, flourish as they flourish nowhere else. Neither too hot nor cold, neither large nor impossibly small—they are about two and a half times the size of the Isle of Wight,—the Chathams, one would think, should have nothing in their story but pleasantness and peace. And, as far as we know, the lot of their old inhabitants, the Moriori, was for centuries marked neither by bloodshed nor dire disaster. ”

“ The sunshine falls on patches of gleaming snow and trailing mist, and lights up the grey crags which start out like mushrooms on the barren slopes. On all sides streams tear down over beds of the loose shingle, of which they carry away thousands of tons winter after winter. Their brawling is perhaps the only sound you will hear through slow-footed afternoons, save, always, the whistle or sighing of the persistent wind. A stunted beech bush clothes the spurs here and there, growing short and thick as a fleece of dark wool. ”

“ Sworn enemies are they of tall bracken and stately pines. To their eyes nothing can equal in beauty a landscape of black, fire-scorched stumps and charred logs—if only on the soil between these they may behold the green shoots of young grass thrusting ten million blades upward. What matter the ugliness and wreckage of the first stages of settlement, if, after many years, a tidy farm and smiling homestead are to be the outcome? In the meantime, while under-scrubbing and bush-felling are going on, the axemen build for themselves a slab hut with shingled roof. ”

“ Fogs and mists are not unknown, but are rare and passing visitors, do not come to stay, and are not brown and yellow in hue but more the colour of a clean fleece of wool. They do not taste of cold smoke, gas, sulphur, or mud. High lying and ocean-girt, the long, slender islands are lands of sunshine and the sea. It is not merely that their coast-line measures 4,300 miles, but that they are so shaped and so elevated that from innumerable hilltops and mountain summits distant glimpses may be caught of the blue salt water. ”

“ The centre of the mountain-lily’s cup is shining gold. And when speaking of colour we may fairly take count of the golden glint or pinkish tinge of the toé-toé plumes, the lilac hue of the palm-flower, the orange-coloured fruit of the karaka, and the purples of the tutu and wineberry. Nor do flowers lack beauty because they are white,—witness the ribbon-wood loaded with masses of blooms, fine as those of the double cherry, and honey-scented to boot ”

“ It is as different to the sharp dry air of the Canterbury ranges as velvet is to canvas; it soothes, and in hot weather relaxes. The black birch with dark trunk, spreading branches, and light leaves, is now mingled with the queenly rimu, and the stiff, small-leaved, formal white pine. Winding and hanging plants festoon everything, and everything is bearded with long streamers of moss, not grey but rich green and golden. Always some river rushes along in sight or fills the ear with its noise. ”

“ Strips of grass are burned off in advance, and dead timber blown up with dynamite. Buckets of water are passed from hand to hand, or the flames are beaten out with sacks or blankets. Seen at night on a burning hill-side, the row of masculine fighting figures stands out jet-black against the red glow, and the wild attitudes and desperate exertions are a study for an artist. Among the men, boys work gleefully; there is no school for them when a fire has to be beaten. Very young children suffer greatly from the smoke with which the air they breathe is laden, perhaps for days together. ”

“ On such a morning from a hill looking northward over league after league of rolling virgin forest I have seen the great volcano, Mount Ruapehu, rear up his 9,000 feet, seeming a solitary mass, the upper part distinctly seen, blue and snow-capped, the lower bathed and half-lost in a pearl-coloured haze. Most impressive of all is it to catch sight, through a cleft in the forest, of the peak of Mount Egmont, and of the flanks of the almost perfect cone curving upward from the sea-shore for 8,300 feet. The sentinel volcano stands alone. ”

“ Very beautiful are the larger geysers, as, after their first roaring outburst and ascent, they stand, apparently climbing up, their effort to overcome the force of gravity seeming to grow greater and greater as they climb. Every part of the huge column seems to be alive; and, indeed, all is in motion within it. Innumerable little fountains gush up on its sides, to curl back and fall earthwards. The sunlight penetrates the mass of water, foam, and steam, catching the crystal drops and painting rainbows which quiver and dance in the wind. ”

“ All things to all men, plausible to the old, magnetic to the young, persuasive among the intellectual, impressive to the weak-minded, Gibbon Wakefield was always more than the mere clever, selfish schemer which many thought him. Just as his fresh face and bluff British manner concealed the subtle mind ever spinning webs and weaving plans, so, behind and above all his plots and dodging, was the high dream and ideal to which he was faithful, and which redeemed his life. ”

“ Milford is barely nine miles long—but how many scenes are met with in those nine! No sooner does the sense of confinement between dark and terrific heights become oppressive than some high prospect opens out to the upward gaze, and the sunshine lightens up the wooded shoulders and glittering snow-fields of some distant mount. Then the whole realm is so utterly wild, so unspoiled and unprofaned. Man has done nothing to injure or wreck it. Nowhere have you to avert your eyes to avoid seeing blackened tracts, the work of axe and fire. ”

“ The sea-god fled to the ocean, where he and his children dwell as fishes. The two gods of plant-food hid in the Earth, and she, forgiving mother that she was, sheltered them in her breast. Only Tu, the god of mankind, stayed erect and undaunted. So it is that the winds and storms make war to this day upon men, wrecking their canoes, tearing down their houses and fences and ruining all their handiwork. ”

“ From the south-west, Aorangi, with the ridge attached to it, resembles the high-pitched roof of a Gothic church with a broad, massive spire standing up from the northern end. When, under strong sunlight, the ice glitters on the steep crags, and the snow-fields, unearthly in their purity, contrast with the green tint of the crawling glaciers, the great mountain is a spectacle worthy of its fame. ”

“ But the Waikato country was flat or undulating, clothed in fern and with only patches of forest. A first-class high road—the river—ran right through it. The sturdy resistance of the natives was due first to their splendid courage and skilful use of rifle-pits and earthworks, and in the second place to our want of dash and tactical resource. Clever as the Maori engineers were, bravely as the brown warriors defended their entrenchments, their positions ought to have been nothing more than traps for them, seeing how overwhelming was the white force. ”

“ Then, though the foliage is none too dense, each leaf is of a fair size. From their lofty roof above your head to the subsoil below your feet, all is odorous of resin. Leaves and twigs smell of it; it forms lumps in the forks, oozes from the trunk and mixes with the earth—the swelling humus composed of flakes of decayed bark dropped through the slow centuries. There are still kauri pines in plenty that must have been vigorous saplings when William the Norman was afforesting south-western Hampshire. The giants just spoken of are survivors from ages far more remote. ”