Things had altered a good deal since my New Zealand visit of a year or so before. We went across the bush, on the way to Wanganuis river, and passed through thick, jungle-like forest and scenery that made us forget the world behind. I remember we came across one Maori pah where we got the Maoris to stand and have their photographs taken. I played the violin again, as the thick-haired Maori girls chanted and danced. They have many kinds of dances, and the rhythmical movement of their bodies is equal to the weird beauty of the South Sea Island Siva dances.
Some of the Maori girls are exceedingly handsome, but they fade at an early age. I remember one girl who was both handsome and intellectual-looking; her features were delicate and soft, refined through not being too perfect. She had a clear voice, and I extemporised an obbligato on my violin as she sang in the pah. The chiefs and women were enthusiastic in their applause. One ancient chief was thickly tattooed in engraved, ornamental lines and looked exceedingly majestic. He spoke English perfectly, and I was deeply interested in the many things he told us of his younger days. He was a prince by blood and, like the old chief whom I told you of in a preceding chapter, remembered the days when the rival tribes met in battle, or his tribe resented the white man’s encroachment on the tribal lands.
I visited North and South Island and saw many of the geysers. Waimana Geyser is often in eruption and throws up volcanic steam and matter nine hundred feet, and then quiets down. I tramped along in tourist fashion with my gay companion; helped take snapshots, and spoilt a good many! We saw, too, the Waimango Basin, the hot springs and the “Devil’s Frying Pan,” where one could stand up to one’s ankles in fire. We stopped with a guide called Warbuck and had a fine time. From there we travelled everywhere, and camped out for several nights, just for the romance and fun of it. We cooked our potatoes and boiled eggs in the hot springs of the Kerern Geyser, Rotorua.
After that I secured a position as violinist in an orchestra at Auckland and bade Mr Ord Hume good-bye, for soon after he left New Zealand.
I will now return once more to my old Bohemian days. Away from respectability that whitewashes men, back away from the mighty orchestra of moving cogs and wheels, and from the crowds of cold eyes, thirsting for the gold which is necessary to keep them warm in white-collared respectability, back over the seas to the forests of Maori land, to the cry of the curlew and huja in the trees, by the old pahs of Orakan, where Herowera, the old-time warrior, sat by the rushing river waters. His tattooed, engraved face is alive with memories. Once again he tells me of the mighty Rewi Maniapoto and the esprit de corps that bound the tribes together in their fierce battles, when Maoris fought as bravely for their rights as the old Britons still do. Still I fancy I hear pretty Rewaro, the Maori maid, singing her chant as she listens to the old chief’s reminiscences of mighty deeds and battles of yore. In the birch and eucalyptus trees sigh old winds, and from the mysterious gloom of moonlit Arcadia come soft, weird sounds of Maori musical instruments. I could write chapters about the Maoris and their habits, and their wonderful poetic legends of dead chiefs singing in the forest, and maidens made of sea-foam brightly dancing in the glimpsing moonlight of forest rivers. I have seen Maoris stare down the main streets of Masterton and swear that they could see the rivers rushing along in the moonlight, and the canoes bearing the tribes over the swirling falls, while Maori maids, with their beautiful hair lifting in the winds, danced on ghostly, primeval waters.
River Scene in New Zealand
I have felt as they feel when they see the city spires rising over their enchanted lands, for I can dream as they dream and awake to the same reality. Were I to rise, as a man in a dream, and go back across the years and pitch my tent on the old spot in Queensland where I camped, I should be moved on for obstructing the tramcars, and yet I am still a young man, so you will see how great is the change in a few years. I remember my self-made hut home, fashioned by my own hands, my comrade pulling the thick bush grass and boughs for the walls. How happy we were in that little room as the river sang, travelling onward. Just below we picked the ripe yellow oranges from the deep grass under the scented trees, where often my parrot raced me across the slope and flew by me sideways with its cut wing and won the race as I let it pass. I remember how, before the parrot died, it walked up our cabin walls screaming, with its tongue hanging from its beak; how great was my grief as its tiny jewel eyes opened and closed for the last time. That death was the great sorrow of our hut life, and we buried the poor bird, as parents do a beloved child, by the riverside. We went that same night over the slopes to the camp of aborigines, who cheered us up as they danced the corrobboree, while I played the fiddle under the moonlit gums. The old women were as black as ebony, and they also jumped and beat their hands on their skinny thighs, while old and young men, almost naked, whirled round the smouldering camp fire, with their ribs painted white, looking like hideous, screaming skeletons. We gave them cakes of plug tobacco, and in return they would dance. Sometimes they would just begin and then stop and say: “Me no dance, want more baccy first.” I used to answer: “You no dance? Then me no play music.” Then their thick lips would flop together, as they all grinned, and off they would start, whirling round in the old brown Government blankets which they wore over their shoulders something after the cavalier fashion of romantic ages. One old fellow had a tremendous head and was the tribal musician; he played a bone flute, the thigh-bone of some ancestor. He blew four notes on it and played them repeatedly; and the dusky forms chanted and jumped round him, beating their black breasts with their hands. This is how the thigh-bone wailed to the lips of its posterity:
Listen: