[THE FRONTIER OF THE KING COUNTRY.]
[CHAPTER I.]
Alexandra—Crossing the frontier—Whatiwhatihoe—The camp—King Tawhiao—The chiefs—"Taihoa."
Alexandra, the principal European settlement on the northern frontier of the King Country, lies about one hundred miles distant from Auckland, and a little less than eight miles to the west of the Te Awamutu terminus of the southern line of railway.
I reached Alexandra along a delightful road lined with the hawthorn and sweetbriar, and through a picturesque country, where quiet homesteads, surrounded by green meadows filled with sleek cattle and fat sheep, imparted to the aspect of nature an air of contentment and quiet repose. Indeed, when doing this journey in a light buggy drawn by a pair of fast horses, it seemed difficult to realize the fact that I was fast approaching the border-line of European settlement, and that a few minutes more would land me on the frontier of a vast territory which formed the last home of perhaps the boldest and most intelligent race of savages the world had ever seen. In fact, when approaching Alexandra from the Te Awamutu road, with its neat white houses, embowered amidst gardens and groves of trees, and with its church-spire pointing towards heaven, I seemed to be entering a quiet English village; and had it not been that the eye fell now and again upon a dark, statuesque figure, wrapped in a blanket, and with a touch of the "noble savage" about it, it would have been somewhat difficult to dispel the pleasant illusion.
The township was not large, and a school-house, two hotels, several stores, a public hall, commodious constabulary barracks surrounded by a redoubt, a postal and telegraph station, a blacksmith's forge, and about fifty houses, built for the most part of wood, formed its principal features of Anglo-Saxon civilization.
On the day following my arrival at Alexandra I left, in company with a native interpreter, for Whatiwhatihoe, to present my credentials to the Maori king. Our ride across the frontier into Maoriland was a most delightful one. The steep, wooded heights of Mount Pirongia had cast off their curtain of mist, and stood revealed in their brightest hues; while the green, rolling hills at its base formed a pleasant contrast with the more sombre, fern-clad banks of the Waipa River, as it wound its devious course from the direction of Mount Kakepuku, which rose above the plain beyond in the form of a gigantic cone. The country for miles around lay stretched before the gaze, forming a varied picture of delightful scenery, and all nature appeared budding into life; while the prickly gorse, with its golden-yellow flowers, encircled Whatiwhatihoe like a chevaux de frise. The primitive whares[5] of the natives imparted a rustic appearance to the scene, as they stood scattered about the country to the south, while, as the eye wandered in the direction of the north, the white homesteads of the settlers served to mark the aukati[6]—frontier-line—separating the King Country from the territory of the pakeha.[7]
The king's settlement of Whatiwhatihoe was situated on the west or opposite bank of the Waipa from Alexandra, and on a broad alluvial plain running along the base of a range of fern-clad hills. As a rule the whares were built entirely of raupo,[8] and were scattered about the flat and on the low hills in its vicinity without any regard to regularity, and while some had a neat and even a clean look, others were less attractive both in their designs and general surroundings. They were mostly oblong in shape, with slanting roofs, which projected a few feet at one end of the building in the form of a recess, where the entrance, consisting of a low narrow doorway, was placed. Windows, in the form of small square apertures, were the exception and not the rule, and consequently the interior of these primitive domiciles was badly ventilated. A few blankets and native mats formed the principal articles of furniture, save where the owner, profiting by the advance of civilization, had gone in for articles de vertu on which the "Brummagem" hall-mark might be distinctly traced.