FOOTNOTES:
[19] White man. Literally, "stranger," as opposed to Maori, "native."
[20] Really, He mea hi no Maui, "A thing fished up by Maui."
[21] Mount Egmont.
[22] Metrosideros robusta. It belongs to the myrtle order, and is one of the most ornamental trees in the New Zealand bush.
[23] Clianthus puniceus. New Zealand pea.
[24] A variety of clematis. In the flowering season the effect of the white stars amid the dark green of the overhead foliage is most beautiful.
[25] This was done with a pair of cockle-shells, which in Maoriland represented the volsellae of the Romans, and our modern tweezers.
THE LAND TO WHICH THEY CAME
Where Nature is constantly in a tempestuous mood, where volcanoes spout and earthquakes convulse, and where, on the other hand, "Man comes in with his strife" against Nature herself, comparatively few years may suffice to bring about great changes and to alter the face of a country almost beyond recognition.
Thus, the New Zealand on whose shores the Maori landed differed materially from the New Zealand of to-day. Not only has Nature cruelly destroyed some of the most beautiful of the vestiges of creation, but the white man has cleared off scrubs, eradicated forests, said with effect to the sea, "thus far and no farther," and, by radically altering the original features of the country, has actually influenced the climate.
New Zealand is a land in every way desirable. Save for a trick Nature has of tumbling into convulsions now and then, it is hard to see how any land could have been created more beautiful, more comfortable, more blessed. Not large; indeed, a kind of "Pocket Venus" among countries; for, though there have been smaller, there have been none more beguiling to the senses, more charming to the eye, more responsive to the attentions of its lords. Surely, from such a soil must spring a worthy race.
Before colonisation, and for some time after, New Zealand included only the North Island, the Middle Island,[26] and Stewart Island, and was in area about one-seventh less than that of the United Kingdom. No; not a large country; but packed to overflowing with good and desirable things, and lacking much that is undesirable.
Early in the present century the Cook, or Hervey, Islands were included in the colony; an interesting addition, because Rarotonga, the largest of the group, is said to be the island where the emigrating Maori built some of their canoes for the voyage to Te Ika A Maui, and where they rested when Hawaiki lay far behind them. The new boundaries of the Dominion of New Zealand embrace several other island groups.
Hawaiki lay within the tropics, while the northern extremity of New Zealand is a clear eleven degrees south of Capricorn. As the country tails southward, it falls more within the temperate zone, until, as Stewart Island is reached, the latitude corresponds almost exactly with that of Cornwall in England.
Coming thus from a hot climate to one warm indeed, but cooler than that to which they had been accustomed, it behoved the Maori without delay to make some alteration in their dress. At first they used coverings made from the skins of their dogs; but this was expensive, so they presently began to look elsewhere for what they wanted. Like most peoples unvexed by over-education, they were keen observers, and it was not long before they found the very thing they required.
One day, a certain Te Matanga,[27] The Knowing One, took matters in hand. Winter was coming, and girdles of cocoa-nut fibre would scarcely suffice to keep out the cold. For some time he discovered nothing likely to be useful, and it was in a disconsolate mood that he stood at the edge of an extensive swamp and wondered what was to become of his friends and himself.
The swamp was covered with plants whose like Te Matanga had never seen. Each grew in the fashion of a thick bush; but the leaves—there were no branches—were flat and tapering, yet stiff and irrefragable, while they towered, upstanding, half as high again as the height of a man. Moreover, the leaves were so tough, that Te Matanga had some ado to cut through one with his flint knife. Flowers upon long stalks were in the bushes, and the plant with a red blossom was larger than that which bore a yellow blossom, though both were stately. And, perceiving that there were two varieties of the plant, Te Matanga named the finer Tihore and the larger Harakeke.[28]
When he had prodded here and sliced there, and observed the leaves to be full of strong fibre, Te Matanga immediately perceived that he had found that which he had set out to seek and, his anxiety upon the score of clothing relieved, he began to feel hungry and thirsty. The swamp water did not look inviting and, while he deliberated, he aimlessly plucked a flower and regarded it.
What was this? At the bottom of the floral cup was a considerable quantity of fluid, resembling limpid water.
Not without a qualm, the Knowing One tasted the liquid and found it delicious, resembling water sweetened with honey, or the eau sucrée beloved of Frenchmen. He hesitated no longer, drank off the delightful draught, smacked his lips and drained another flower-cup of its nectar.
Having found so much, Te Matanga told himself that more should be got from so accommodating a plant and, sure enough, he discovered an edible gum in the roots and leaves. What wonder that, with a winter outfit in view, his thirst quenched and his hunger stayed, clever Te Matanga should assume a few excusable airs when telling his joyous news.
Thus, that Providence which they had not yet learned to know, gave to the Maori food, drink and clothing, all within the compass of one specimen of God's marvellous handiwork.
The plant which Te Matanga found is not related to the true flax, though it serves every purpose to which the other is put. The Pakeha speedily recognised its virtues; in 1906 twenty-eight thousand tons of the fibre were exported from New Zealand.
Great ingenuity was displayed by the Maori in the manipulation of the fibre and its manufacture into many useful articles, from the little baskets in which food was served, and which were never used twice, to the magnificent robe, or "mat," known as the kaitaka, which occupied nearly a year in the making. This was peculiarly the costume of people of consideration, and the gift of one was regarded as a mark of high favour.
Among the many varieties of flax mats, the pureki had an interest all its own, for the makers managed to render it rain-proof, so that it was in a sense the prototype of our mackintosh. One might also say that it was the Maori substitute for khaki; for a native, wrapped in his pureki and squatting upon a barren hillside, was scarcely distinguishable from the boulders surrounding him.
Te Matanga went to work again and experimented with the berries of the tutu or Coronaria, extracting thence a beverage as grateful as that which he had quaffed from the chalice of the flax-flowers. Yet the berries, eaten whole, are poisonous.
The beverages which Te Matanga gave to his countrymen were neither noxious nor degrading. It was the civilised Christian who introduced to the pagan savage that "enemy which steals away men's brains." Left to themselves, the Maori showed no inclination towards intoxicating liquors. Even in later days they proved remarkably temperate, their barter with the Pakeha rarely including a supply of what they characteristically designated "stink-water." They did not even brew the highly stimulating yaqona, so popular with the South Sea Islanders; which is remarkable, since the plant (Piper methysticum) grows wild in New Zealand.
Our wise man also taught his compatriots the value of the edible fern, Pteris esculenta, whose bright-green fronds waved ten feet or more above the ground. The underground stem was cut into plugs and matured, and, this done, was eaten plain, or cakes were baked of the flour beaten out of it.
It was not ordained that the Maori should subsist entirely upon a vegetable diet. Te Matanga searched for something more stimulating and readily found it. He showed his people fat eels in creek and river, while from the sea they drew Mango, the shark, Tawatawa, the mackerel, Hapuku, the cod (not that of northern waters) and a hundred other varieties of fish, which they cooked or dried or smoked. It was sometimes their good fortune to slay great Ikamoana, the whale, and Kekeno, the seal, both of which they ate with relish; while for sauce, Tio, the oyster, sat upon the rocks and gaped while they scooped him from his shell.
The dwellers inland had eels and the delicious little green, whitebait-like Inanga of the lakes to eat with their fern-root and kumara. And well for them it was so; for, with the exception of Pekapeka, the bat, who swept by them in eerie flight when the long-lingering day grew pale about them, not a mammal roamed the plains or haunted the deep woods. Kuri, the dog, and Maungarua, the rat, they also ate; for Maungarua[29] multiplied exceedingly, while Kuri took to the bush and ran wild.
Ngara,[30] the lizard, frisked in the sunshine; but no son of Maui looked upon him if it could be avoided; for Ngara were dread beasts, in whose bodies the spirits of the dead found an abiding-place. Even such stalwarts as Ngahue and Te Turi would blanch at sight of any of that terrible race. Moreover, Taniwha,[31] the great, the horrible, whom to mention was unsafe, and to set eyes upon was to perish, was not he, too, a lizard? Nay; close the eyes and mutter a karakia[32] should Ngara cross your path.
How blessed the Maori were in the absence of other reptiles they did not learn till much later. Australia abounds in snakes, from the huge carpet-snake, cousin to the boa, to the "deaf-adder," whose bite is almost certainly fatal; but in New Zealand, as in Ireland, not even a toad is to be found wherewith to point the sweetness of the "uses of adversity."
The clever men now sought food among the birds, and found on land pigeons, plovers, rails, ducks, quails and parrots innumerable. Of these last, one, the kakapo, was almost as big as a fowl, like which it ran about the ground, feeding; for its wings were short and feeble, and it rarely used them except to fly from a bough to the earth and up again. Conscious of its weakness, it chose the late twilight or the night for its rambles, hiding away during the day. Like so many of the interesting birds of New Zealand, it is now nearly extinct.
Among sea-birds, many of which were eaten, particular choice was made of Titi,[33] the Mutton-bird. These birds flew inland at night, and the Maori, anticipating their coming, would choose a likely spot upon the verge of a cliff and build a row of fires. Behind these they lurked, armed with sticks and, as the birds, attracted by the light, flew past, they were knocked over in immense numbers. As the flesh was oily, they were preserved in their own fat, packed in baskets of seaweed and stored until winter, when they formed a staple and highly flavoured dish. The inland tribes made annual pilgrimages to the coast for the purpose of procuring a supply of mutton-birds.
Of all the birds which the Maori found on their arrival the most singular were those which are either extinct or fast becoming so. These were the Struthidae, or wingless birds,—such as the ostrich, the rhea, and the emu,—which were represented in New Zealand by the gigantic moa[34] and the kiwi.[35]
The moa was long ago exterminated by the Maori, who saw in its huge bulk magnificent prospect of a feast of meat. All that is left of it to-day are bones in various museums, one or two complete skeletons, and a few immense eggs.
There were several species of this bird, the largest of them from twelve to fourteen feet in height; but, huge as they were, they appear to have possessed little power of self-defence, though a kick from one of their enormous legs and long-clawed feet would have killed a man. But, like all wingless birds, they were shy and timid, never coming to a knowledge of their strength; so they fell before a weaker animal, but one of infinitely greater ingenuity.
The bones of birds are filled with air, for the sake of warmth and lightness; but the leg bones of the moa, like those of a beast, and unlike those of any known bird, were filled with marrow.
Diminutive in size, and in appearance even more extraordinary than its cousin, the moa, is the kiwi, as the Maori named the apteryx from its peculiar cry. Several species were plentiful in the Islands, but some of them have become extinct, and the rest are fast disappearing. The Maori attract the bird by imitating its call and, as it is rather stupid, it is easily caught and killed.
The kiwi was served up at table, as were most things in New Zealand which walked or swam or flew; but what gave it surpassing value in Maori eyes was its plumage of short, silky feathers, whose beauty they were quick to recognise, and which they employed in fashioning one of the rarest and most ornamental of their mats (kahu-kiwi).
There was little difficulty about the erection of houses and forts, the building of canoes, the shaping of spears and clubs. Given the ability to construct, there was material in plenty. Throughout the land spread magnificent forests, whose plumed tops waved above trunks uprearing one hundred feet, or more, some of them of an age well-nigh incredible. Few and short appeared the years of man beside the life of the giant kauri[36] which for close upon four thousand years had towered there, stately emperors in a company of kings.[37] How brief the age of their forest court compared with their own—the totara[38] with its eight hundred years of life, the rimu[39] with its six hundred, the matai[40] with its four hundred. What are they beside the dominant kauri? Mortals, looking up to an immortal.
Crowded in those forests primeval were trees bearing wood with capacity for every class of work to which man could put his hand. Trees with wood of iron hardness; trees with wood so soft that it fell away in silky flakes at the touch of the knife; trees with wood of medium consistence, durable as stone; trees whose wood under the hands of the artist-polisher took on a beauty indescribable; trees whose bark was rich in all that the tanner needs; trees which yielded invaluable resin and turpentine; trees which gave up no less valuable tar and pitch; trees which could be reduced to wood-pulp for the making of paper when the time for that should come: all these there were, and more.
So the Maori set to work, building houses and forts, and hewing out canoes. For the last, those who dwelt in the north chose the great trunks of the kauri, often forty feet in circumference, and of such diameter that a tall man with outspread arms could not stretch from rim to rim of the cross section. In the south they used the totara, likewise a pine, and great, but a pigmy beside the imperial kauri.
While the builders built, explorers traced the swiftly flowing rivers from source to sea, or gazed with awe at the snow-capped peaks and glimmering glaciers. Others moved northwards towards those giant mountains from whose cones poured tall pillars of smoke, threatening shadows of dire events to come, or stood upon the shore of a lake, marvelling to find the water hot instead of cold.
Imagine one, agape with curiosity, holding in his hand a dead kuri, designed for dinner. Suddenly, with hiss and roar, a column of water shoots hundreds of feet into the air, almost at his elbow. With a cry of terror he starts back, losing his grip of the dog, which drops into an adjacent pool. Too much afraid to run, our Maori stands trembling, and the spouting column presently falls back into the bowels of the earth. Marvelling, he gropes in the pool for his dinner, and with another yell withdraws his hand and arm, badly scalded. But he has got his dog and, to his amazement, it is cooked to perfection.
Small wonder if the Maori muttered a karakia, deeming the miracle the work of the demon of the lake. But their fear departed as time went on, and the hot springs and lakes became health-resorts, where they bathed and strove to be rid of the pains and aches their flesh was heir to. Those who dwelt within reach of this marvellous region soon became familiar with its phenomena, and made full use of the natural sanatorium and kitchen.
Other immigrants gathered for ornament the precious greenstone from the Middle Island, with blocks of jade and serpentine; the snow-white breast of the albatross; the wings of birds; the tail plumes of the infrequent huia;[41] the cruel teeth of the shark. They found another use for the greenstone, fashioning it with infinite toil into war-clubs, or mere, too valuable to be used in the shock of battle without safeguard against possible loss. So a hole was drilled through the handle, and a loop of flax passed through, by which the club was secured to the wrist.
How in the world could they pierce that defiant mineral—they, who had neither iron nor diamonds with which to drill a hole? Their method was as ingenious as it was simple. They took a sharp-pointed stick of hard wood and half-way up secured two stones, which acted after the manner of a flywheel. Above the stones two pieces of string were attached, and these, alternately pulled, imparted a rotatory movement to the stick, whose sharpened point at length pierced the sullen stone.
Their travels over, the pioneers returned, to be welcomed with tears of joy, while prayers were chanted and cherished ornaments offered to the gods in thanksgiving for their safe home-coming. They neither embraced nor kissed; nor did they shake hands after the European fashion. They saluted one another in a manner all their own. Bending forward, they pressed their noses together, sniffing strongly the while; and this act of friendly greeting they called the hongi—the verb hongi signifying "to smell."
One drawback to residence in these fortunate islands was the scarcity of animal food—of red meat there was none, save when a dog was slain for the pot. Still, there was food enough—vegetables and fruit, birds and fish, so that starvation was not a common fate, except a man were lost in the dense bush, where never sight or sound of life was seen or heard.
A real evil was the tendency of the earth to tremble, shake and gape, sometimes overthrowing the evidence of years of toil on the part of man, and occasionally slapping Nature herself in the face. In other words, a large part of New Zealand being within the "earthquake zone," the country is convulsed from time to time by shocks of greater or less severity. Since the arrival of the Pakeha there have been severe disturbances, and one or two heavy shocks have occurred, greatly disfiguring the beautiful face of the land.
In the North Island are many dormant craters, which have on occasion sprung into fierce activity, resulting in widespread devastation and some loss of life. The early Maori were fortunate in escaping eruptions of any magnitude, but the North Island, long before their arrival, must have been in a state of intense unrest. The hot springs and lakes, the geysers of Rotomahana and Rotorua, the more than boiling mud among the smouldering hills, the fiercely smoking cones of giant Tongariro, are so many evidences of that terrible time of earth-pang and convulsion, of belching out of smoke and flame and rended rocks, with vomitings of broad rivers of molten lava, which flowed over the land, effacing everything in their course.
This was the land to which the Maori came; a land of "mountain, lake, and stream," which, could it have remained as the Children of Maui found it, must have endured "a thing of beauty and a joy for ever." But the blind forces of Nature and the needs of the white population have done much to alter the face of the country, and have shorn it of some of that loveliness which once was almost universal, but of which much—very much still remains.
If New Zealand is now so surpassingly beautiful, what must it not have been before thousands of acres of noble forest fell before axe and flame; before the mountain, clad from base to summit in primeval growth, stood bare and grey and grim, pierced with a thousand unsightly wounds, deep in which man bends his back and delves for mineral wealth; before the valleys, radiant with the beauty of fern and flower, were trodden into mud by the marching feet of the "army of occupation"; before the rivers, racing towards the shining sea, tumbling merrily among rapids, glissading recklessly over the falls, were chained to the log of commerce, their banks shorn of the fringing green to make way for the houses of the moderns, their pure and limpid waters polluted by the refuse of factories and the filth of towns? If those who have seen it now and love its loveliness could but have seen Maoriland as it was then! There is no help for it. It is inevitable that, when Man steps in, Nature must in large measure lose her sceptre and resign her sway.
Such was the land to which the Maori came—a land with no extremes of heat or cold, though it sometimes showed a little ill-humour and shook down a house or two; a land which gave them most that they could desire and all they really needed, if it denied them overmuch strong animal food; a land in which, but for their turbulent passions and their lust for war, they might have lived out their lives in peace and comfort and almost unqualified happiness; a land of unsurpassed magnificence, of radiant beauty, of unbounded fertility.