Further down the valley we come to the great Wairakei Geyser which plays for three minutes and then is quiet for eleven. Here is a distant view from 23 the opposite bank of the river; and here we see the geyser at work with great vigour. Notice the curious 24 projection in the foreground of the last picture; it is the trunk of a tree, petrified by the deposit of silica, which is not white here but pale coffee-colour. There is a rainbow, too, in the vapour above, which is unfortunately beyond the capacity of our camera. Other smaller geysers are all round us with deposits of claret-colour, black and yellow, due to the different salts dissolved in the hot water. The ground shakes with the explosions of steam beneath us, and everywhere is heat and vapour; yet all the time the cold waters of the Wairakei River are flowing by within a few feet of us. Scattered over the valley are beautiful lakes and pools of different colours. Here is one of them, the Blue Lake, lying in a corner of an old crater; 25 the perpendicular walls which form the bank in front of us are white striped with orange.
Everywhere in this district volcanic agencies have changed the face of nature. In one part we find long stretches of grey pumice plains, with no vegetation but dusty brown fern. In another part, great deposits of 26 sulphur have been laid down over the earth. It is a country with a beauty of its own, but more attractive to the tourist than to the colonist and settler. It still remains a barrier separating the centres of white settlement and only recently crossed by the trunk line of railway.
It was in this wild country, to which the rail and coach now bring curious visitors from all parts of the world, that not many years ago the Maoris made their last stand against British power. East and west of the lake is the King country of which we hear much in history; except for the tourist it is still in the main left to the Maoris.
In Australia, as we have seen, the real obstacles to settlement were the climate and the character of the country; the aborigines were pushed back into the wilder districts or simply crushed out of existence by the civilisation of the white man. Not so the Maori: he has been a very important element in the life of New Zealand, whether as friend or enemy of the white invader, from the time of the earliest settlers—the whalers of Cook Strait, and the traders, boat-builders, and missionaries of the Bay of Islands which lies on the east coast of the long northern peninsula. The British have been settled in New Zealand barely three-quarters of a century, as the proclamation of annexation dates only from 1840; while the Maori has been in possession for five or six centuries at least and shows no disposition to be crowded out. He was, when first we met him, on a far higher level than the aborigines of Australia.
Who, then, are the Maoris? They are a brown race, a race of seamen who came in their long double canoes from the islands to the north and settled along the neck of North Island—the Fish of Maui as they called it—and at Otago and some few other points in South Island. They brought with them their island customs, especially the division into families and clans which were always fighting among themselves. In New Zealand they found all the materials for their usual mode of existence: timber for their houses and sea-going canoes, native flax for the weaving of clothes, stones for their weapons, as they had no knowledge of metals; and fish everywhere in the rivers, lakes, and seas. So here they built their houses, with little patches of garden for their few vegetables, while the surrounding country was the common possession of the clan, whence they added roots, berries, and wild birds to the larder. Everywhere, in the best positions for defence, were dotted about their fortified enclosures, 27 or pahs, in which they took refuge in the numerous clan feuds. Their religion consisted of a kind of fetichism, and their whole life was subject to the principle of tapu, or taboo as we commonly spell it, a principle common over all this part of the Pacific, and among savage races elsewhere. The Maoris were chivalrous fighters, eloquent orators, and careful preservers of the traditions of their past history. Such was the race which, in the nineteenth century, contested the settlement of the island with us.
Here is a portrait of a chief showing the method of 28 tattooing the face. Here again we see him with his taiaha, or staff of office: he looks civilised enough 29 now; in fact, dressed as he is, he might be mistaken for an Englishman, but doubtless he was very different in the old days. He is nearly ninety years old, and so must have seen the settlement and fighting almost from the very beginning. The building behind the group is a meeting house of the usual Maori shape, though the galvanised iron roof seems scarcely to agree with the elaborate ornamentation of the woodwork. Notice the curious scroll carving on the fetich pillars: it is a favourite design among the Maoris and appears also in the tattooing of their bodies.
We see the Maori here in European dress and we find him entering Parliament and the learned professions, or becoming a successful farmer and grazier in every way as civilised as ourselves. But he is not anxious to be a mere imitator of the white man, as he is intensely proud of his own race and past history. In the remoter districts he still clings to his ancient fashion of life. Here is a typical group, in native dress, and here is the 30 simple private house of a chief. Again we have an interesting portrait of the daughter of a chief, holding 31 her father’s heavy staff; her curious dress is largely made up of the feathers of the wingless Kiwi, which we 32 have already seen.
The Maori dances are among the most interesting of their social customs. We may perhaps see the haka, a survival of the old war-dance, performed by 33 half-clad warriors. It is now a ceremonial dance of welcome. Very different is the poi, the pretty action-dance 34 and song of women and girls, which we may see in the dancing-house of any native village. We notice that the costumes of the dancers are made up of native flax and feathers. The chief native sport is the canoe race, as the water is everything to the Maori. Here is one of the huge dug-out war canoes, hewn from a single 35 tree-trunk, and now becoming somewhat rare; and here again we see his canoe used to mark the grave of a chief. 36
We are now in the district south of the Bay of Plenty and near Lake Rotorua, which we reach by a railway running up the valley of the Thames. Here is a typical scene. In the group before us a woman 37 is smoking a pipe; we may often see the same thing among the peasants of Ireland. Down below, a crowd 38 of Maori children are bathing in the stream, while the tourists watch them from the bridge. The place is called Whakarewarewa, a name rather difficult to pronounce. This is the northern end of the geyser district, which we have already visited. Here we see 39 the tourists again, with their cameras, waiting for the great Wairoa Geyser to start; and here is the geyser 40 playing. Not far away are some Maori women cooking by the steam heat provided by nature. 41
The centre of this region is Lake Rotorua, calm and cold, while all around on its banks are hot springs, geysers and boiling mud-holes. Here, where a few years ago was only bush, or primitive village, a fine modern town 42 has sprung up for the benefit of the tourist in search of beautiful scenery, or the invalid coming to the health-giving waters. Not far away is another lake, Rotomahana, 43 in a huge basin formed by the eruption which destroyed the famous terraces. Here we may enjoy the strange experience of boating on boiling water, with the geysers working all around us. Volcanic activity is everywhere in this wonderful country, and it is only natural that round it have gathered countless Maori legends.