THE GIANTS
Once the volcanoes Taranaki, Ruapehu, and Tongariro dwelled together. That was the time when Tongariro in her wonderful beauty had captured the fiery hearts of the two giants, so that their joy filled the heavens with majestic outbursts and covered the earth with their dark-glowing heart-blood of fiery lava and molten stones.
Softly then answered the gently ascending Steam-column of Tongariro, smiling and swaying, gold-bordered by the setting sun; smiling at both her suitors.
Ah, Tongariro was a woman!
Both, the straight and simple Taranaki and the rugged and strong Ruapehu, their cloud-piercing heads covered with spotless snow, or adorned in their passion-glowing lava-streams, were beloved by Tongariro; but the snows of the winter and the suns of the summer came and went from the first time, to the hundredth time, to the thousandth time, and still Tongariro was undecided whom she would prefer for a husband.
She became the sacred mountain of the Maori people; her beauty captured the hearts of all, so that she became the possessor of the highest tapu, and no foot dared walk upon her, and only the eyes of the new-born were directed towards her; and the eyes of the departing rested full love upon her beauty, whilst they wandered to the Reinga.
A GIANT
The eyes of generations upon generations of man.
Beautiful to behold from all the lands was the great love of the giants; now all covered with glittering snow, now hiding in the clouds and bursting forth, covered with strange and wonderful beauty; now girdling their bodies with clouds and lifting their endless heads into the golden heavens; and now again breaking forth into terrible passions, covering the earth with blackness.
Ah, Tongariro roused the passions of the giants: she made the volcanoes tremble! Their blood of fire and boiling stones shook them, the thundering of their voices, roaring insults at each other, made the earth tremble. Streams of lightning pierced the nights, and black smoke of deadly hate darkened the days, and the ears of man were filled with the roaring hate of the giants, and their wondering eyes beheld the beauty of Tongariro, smiling at both!
At last the two rivals decided to fight for Tongariro!
Now followed days of silence. The giants stood there grim and silent to the world, but they were gathering strength, and were melting stones in their insides, and lit terrible fires, their powerful weapons. So they stood silent and grim; the sun gilding their beautiful garments of snow, and Tongariro smiled at them with her graceful swaying column of steam; and the Maori people looked wonderingly upon the peaceful landscape.
Then a rolling grew into the nights, and rolling filled the days; louder and louder, night after night, day after day—a terrible groaning, damp and deep. Suddenly a crashing thunder shook the earth, and bursting forth from the mouth of Ruapehu a fiery mass of molten stones and black hate and fury fell upon Taranaki, covering him with a terrible coat of fire, whilst the flying winds howled and the melted snow-waters fled thundering down into the valleys.
A beautiful straight form gave the mass of fire and ashes to Taranaki—but he shook in terrible rage! He tore himself out of the ground, shaking the earth and breaking the lands asunder; he tried to fly at Ruapehu, to kill him with his weight. But Ruapehu made the water of his lake, high up in the snows, boil, and, hurling it down, it filled all the rends Taranaki had made in the earth, and burned all the inside of the earth and of Taranaki himself. He now, tearing the air with his roaring cries of pain and thundering howling of rage, threw a tremendous mass of stones at his enemy, and broke the highest cone, the loftiest peak of Ruapehu, so that his looks were not so majestic, and his reach not so far into the skies.
Ruapehu now, in deadly hate, swallowed his broken cone and melted it; he lit terrible fires in his inside, which spread to the lake Roto-aira, so that it rose and boiled, the steam covering all the world and blinding Taranaki. Then Ruapehu filled himself with the boiling water, and, throwing it out of his mouth down upon Taranaki, it filled all the crevices, and it lifted him, for he himself had loosened his bonds with the earth; and now, darkening day into night, he sent the molten mass of his swallowed cone against his enemy, so that he was compelled to retreat: blinded by steam, burned in his inside by the boiling water, and covered with the molten mass of the cone of Ruapehu he himself had broken.
He groaned, and rose, and tumbled, and shook himself; and he felt for a way to the sea to cool his burning pain; howling in unbearable pain he had to run, in order to get out of reach of Ruapehu, deeply hollowing his path through the lands. But his conqueror, Ruapehu, melting all his ice and snow, sent it as boiling water into this deep path, that his enemy might not come back again, for his strength also was exhausted.
On to the sea went Taranaki, and, when his pain had left him a little, he looked back at his conqueror, and saw how his three peaks were again covered with fresh snow, and how he was now the supreme lord over all the lands and the husband of Tongariro. They two were now the arikis over all the land; but it was waste now, and dead, for the terrible fight had killed all the people and the living beings all around. Once more a burst of black anger broke forth from Taranaki, and again it was answered by a wonderful swaying and smiling steam-column from Tongariro; and then he went and wandered along the coast till he had found a place for his sorrow. There he stands now, brooding on revenge.
“And my people know that one day he will come back in a straight line, to fight Ruapehu again; and none of my people will ever live or be buried in that lime; for one day he will come back to fight for Tongariro—who knows?”
But the path of Taranaki to the sea is now the Wanganui River.
THE BATTLE
XVII
THE COMING OF THE MAORI.
A long double sailing-canoe, with a connecting platform and a thatched deck-house amidships, put off one day long ago into the Great Ocean of Kiwa from the palm-clad shores of Tahiti the Golden, in the far South Seas. A multitude of brown people stood on the shining beach, with loud cries bidding farewell to the brave band of kinsmen who were adventuring into the vast unknown places in search of a new and wider land. In their midst, leaning on his staff, was the patriarchal chief Hou-mai-tawhiti. Bent by the weight of years was the ancient man, and his long white beard swept his breast. And as the canoe-paddles took the water and she gathered way, a voice of Hou’ was heard crying his poroporoaki, his farewell to the crew. “Go! Go! Depart to your new land. Leave war and strife behind you. Follow not after the God of War; hold to the deeds of Rongo the Peaceful. Haere! Haere! Haere atu ra!”
And then the sails of the great canoe were hoisted, the foresail, the main and the mizzen, for she had three masts—lofty triangular mat-sails with the apex downwards. Like a huge sea-bird she swept across the blue lagoon to the reef-opening; then she bravely mounted up on the great ocean-rollers, te-whare-hukahuka-a-Tangaroa (“the sea-god’s foamy dwelling”). The brisk trade-wind filled her sails, and away she bounded into the south-west, growing smaller and smaller—a mere speck upon the great waters, until she faded from the vision of the keenest watcher on the shore.
This was the Arawa, most famous of all the historic fleet of canoes that voyaged thousands of miles across the Pacific to this new land Ao-tea-roa, the Great White World. Her commander was Tama-te-Kapua (Son of the Clouds), the son of the venerable Hou-mai-Tawhiti. And of Tama’s doings and the perils that befell the Maori Mayflower I shall briefly tell.
Tama-te-Kapua was a bold and cunning man. He invited the high-priest Ngatoro-i-Rangi on board the Arawa to perform the sacred rites appropriate on the occasion of putting to sea, and then refused to allow him on shore again. He carried him off across the ocean to be the Arawa’s priest, knowing that Ngatoro’ was under the protection of the atuas and ancestral spirits of the race, and that he was indeed almost a god in himself.
While crossing the ocean in search of the new land Ao-tea-roa, Tama-te-Kapua clandestinely gained the affections of the lady Kearoa, the wife of Ngatoro-i-Rangi, who had accompanied her husband. When Ngatoro’ discovered this, he resolved to destroy the canoe and all that were on board. So to this end he directed the bow of the Arawa straight towards the Waha-o-te-Parata, the Mouth of the Sea-monster, a terrible whirlpool, or maelstrom, in mid-ocean, which had sucked down many a vessel to destruction. The sea-battered craft entered the outer circle of the maelstrom, swiftly approached the fatal spot where the Ocean God drew down the waters with an awful, roaring noise. The people in their terror cried to Ngatoro-i-Rangi to save them, but he heeded not. Then stood up Ika, one of the chiefs on board, and recited a karakia to Rangi, the Sky God, praying him to save the canoe, te-kaokao-o-Tane, the ribs of Tane the Tree God, and beat down the angry waves of Tangaroa.
But the ears of the gods were closed, and downwards surged the Arawa. The roaring of the Waha-o-Parata grew more terrifying, and the men and women and children on board cried again to Ngatoro-i-Rangi to save them. And the high-priest rose, and in a wild chant he invoked Tangaroa the Ocean God, and called upon many a deified ancestral spirit. Loud pealed his awa-moana, his rhythmic storm-assuaging incantation (beginning “Unuhia, unuhia te pou tapu, ko te pou mua, ko te pou roto”). He besought the gods to draw out the canoe from the dread tumult of water, the sacred canoe that once grew as a tree (pou-tapu) in the enchanted Forests of Tane—to save from the throat of the Ogre of the Depths the ship of Ngatoro’. He called upon the spirits of Ruarangi, of Maui-tiki-tiki-o-Taranga, to descend by the path of Tawhaki the God-man from the heavens, and “clear from perils all the ocean track of Ngatoro’.”
“O Ngahue!
Here am I in Parata’s Mouth.
Rise, O Tangaroa, rise!
Rise, O canoe and glide along!
We gather way;
’Tis a propitious tide;
The danger’s o’er!
(Eké, eké, Tangaroa!
Eké, panuké!
Hui-é!
Taiki-é!)”
HAWAIKI
THE JOURNEY
And the mana tapu, the supernatural influence of that awa-moana, and of the Tohunga, was such that the terrific lashing of the sea was calmed, the gaping whirlpool closed again; the great billows ceased to tumble, the heavens grew light, and the canoe sailed on once more in safety over the long heaving swell of the Ocean of Kiwa. Magical indeed was that ringing sea-chant of Ngatoro’, as potent in its peace-compelling numbers as that mermaid’s song of which Oberon discoursed to Puck in A Midsummer Night’s Dream:—
“Thou rememberest since once I sat upon a promontory,
And heard a mermaid on a dolphin’s back
Utter such dulcet and harmonious breath
That the rude sea grew civil at her song,
And certain stars shot madly from their spheres
To hear the sea-maid’s music.”
It was midsummer when the sea-worn pilgrims at last made landfall on the far-extending coast of the Long White World. As they drew close in to the shores, near the East Cape of the North Island, they saw that the cliffs, shining like chalk in the sun, were fringed with beautiful trees, the pohutukawa. Groves of these trees, too, grew right down to the tide-edge, and the rich crimson flowers which covered them were reflected in glowing red (ura) in the calm and glassy waters. Several of the people in the canoe wore red ornaments, relics of Hawaiki, in their hair. On seeing the beautiful red flowers they impulsively threw their own head-ornaments into the sea, and, when they leaped ashore they ran to gather the blossoms of the pohutukawa to deck their hair, only to find to their disappointment that they fell to pieces at a touch.
The first place where they landed was Whanga-paraoa (Whale Harbour), so called because they found a great sperm-whale stranded there. Here were performed the ceremonies of thanksgiving for safe arrival, the offering of seaweed—the spoils of Tangaroa—and of the earth of the new country to the gods. The sacred fire was kindled and the sacred kumara roasted, in burnt sacrifice to the spirits of this vast strange land. They coasted along, and finally hauled the canoe ashore at Maketu, whence they travelled inland, exploring and making homes for themselves. It is their descendants who now people the Geyserland district of Ao-tea-roa, extending from the Bay of Plenty southwards to the great central lake of Taupo. Ngatoro-i-Rangi the high-priest and his wife took up their abode on the island of Motiti. From Ngatoro’ sprang a line of powerful priests of Ariki rank, and one of his direct descendants is Te Heuheu Tukino, the present head chief of Taupo.
Tama-te-Kapua wandered wide and far over the face of the Long White World, and at last made his home on the bold mountainous headland which the pakeha calls Cape Colville, guarding the Hauraki Gulf and its cloud of islands. Here Tama’ died, and here his sons buried him, on the forested ridge of Moehau. On the lofty mountain-top was the chieftain laid to rest, and his sons as they performed the last rites said:
“Let him slumber here, where his spirit can gaze far over the ocean and over the land of Ao-tea-roa. And the winds that sweep across the Great Ocean of Kiwa, they shall ever sing his oriori, his wild lullaby.”
And to this day the mountain-cape where the Captain of the Arawa was buried is called by the Maoris Te-Moe-hau-o-Tama-te-Kapua (Tama’s Windy Sleeping-Place).
XVIII
TRADITION—TAMA-TE-KAPUA
Along a narrow path through the flowering manuka-shrub led Ngawai; round groaning, rolling, bursting, and steaming mud-craters wound the path, and steam hissed everywhere from out the ground—now on to the larger crater-basins full of boiling water, green, blue, white, and always wonderfully transparent. Out of the middle of the basins rose vast boiling columns out of the unmeasurable depth to the surface, there to burst, bubbling and boiling. A beautiful but terror-inspiring spectacle are these crater-pools: silent, heartless, death-bringing, boiling from all beginning—from the time that Ngatoro-i-Rangi had called them from Hawaiki by his incantations: boiling, boiling, boiling; crowned with a thin cloud of steam, framed by the dripping, overhanging manuka-bushes.
Pitiless, eternal water-graves are these dark-green boiling seas, and the everlasting gargling of the water is like a death-song of lost souls hovering over them.
Dizzily narrow now led the path between two craters. Silently steamed the large basin to the right, its neighbour gargled and bubbled. Suddenly, as if by enchantment, the gargling water disappeared, and a moment afterwards shot a majestic column of water from out of the funnel, the air filling with vast clouds of steam. The whole column then broke in itself together, roaring and splashing; the boiling water overflowed the Geyser-crater and filled the large steaming basin, which is only by a thin wall separated from the Geyser, with a fresh supply of hot water in which the Maoris and their white friends enjoy their bath, their chat, and their smoke, especially when the winds blow down from the snow-fields of the mountains.
During the night the geysers groaned and burst and splashed all around: the noises accompanied the stories of the old friend—sometimes interrupting his murmurings, and sometimes lending power and truth to his words.
THE FIRST OFFERING TO THE GODS
