W. Delisle Hay

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The Anglo-Maori women are nearly all very graceful and good-looking. There are some among them that are only to be described in the strongest language, as exceedingly beautiful. I have met a voluptuous beauty of this mixed race, an educated and fashionable lady, whose rare and exquisite loveliness might have made her the cause and heroine of another Trojan war. Once I knew one who possessed the most magnificent hair I ever expect to see. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ There would be no need for any one to starve, if he were lost in the forest for months, did he but know the native esculents, even if he were unable to supplement them by catching birds or fish. Almost every Maori—at any rate of the old school—is a good practical botanist and naturalist. He knows the properties and native name of every plant; and he knows the habits of each bird, or fish, or insect, and how to catch it. When the Pakeha condescends to go to the Maori for instruction in these particulars, he will be sure to gain something by it. ”

“ It is not possible for a Maori to talk for five minutes without uttering words, metaphors, and allusions, that to us convey the most revolting and shocking notions, though the speaker is entirely unconscious of anything but the simplest matter of fact. The language, as colloquially used, is full of stumbling blocks to English refinement, and it is for this reason, doubtless, that few settlers' wives and daughters learn it at all, even though they may be living in the midst of Maori. ”

“ 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! ”

“ 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! ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ I hear Dandy Jack and O'Gaygun shout in warning, but the miner has no time to get out of their way. Riding abreast they charge down upon him, utterly regardless of consequences. Over goes horse and man beneath the shock of their rushing steeds, and, a moment later, my nag leaps over the fallen and follows at their heels. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Near as Auckland is, comparatively, the people there know no more about us than the folks at home. I've stuck close to the district, as I like it, and think it's as good as any in the colony. But, you see, other people don't. New-chums, if they hear of the Kaipara at all, learn that it's very hilly, and all bush of one kind or another, and that frightens them; so they go south to the open districts. And then, Government is more interested in getting settlers [Pg 233] elsewhere than here. People are told that there are no roads up here, and that the Maori hold the greater part of the land. ”

“ As we proceed to make the dispositions which secure to us that which we have already named "O'Gaygun's Claim," the row and racket around rings fiercer over the mountain side. Parties of men are arriving every moment on the ground, and proceeding at once to map out rock and bush into squares and parallelograms, and to peg out their several claims. With the prospectors' claim for centre and nucleus, the area of the occupied ground momentarily increases. Above, around, below, we are hemmed in by earth-hungry gold-seekers, who each and all are greedy as starved tigers for their prey. ”