Immediately southward of the Pass road the land goes easily swelling up into Marley’s Hill, a little higher than our Sugarloaf, and now a story of old-time explaining the meaning of the Maori name of that airy saddle comes to mind.
The original name of the ridge leading southward from Dyer’s Pass, and including Marley’s Hill, says Hone Taare Tikao of Rapaki, is Otu-Tohu-Kai, which being translated is “The Place Where the Food Was Pointed Out.” The tradition is that nearly two centuries ago, when the Ngai-Tahu from the North conquered this part of the country from the Ngati-Mamoe, a chief named Waitai ascended this height from Ohinetahi (now Governor’s Bay), taking with him Manuwhiri and other of the children of the chief Te Rangi-whakaputa who had taken possession of the harbour shores, in order to point out to them the good things of the great Plains. Waitai had already explored the country, and was able to tell of its worth as a home for Ngai-Tahu.
When Waitai and his companions emerged from the bush and topped the lofty round of the range, he halted, and bade them look out over the wide, silent country. He pointed to the reedy lagoons and streams that silvered the flax and tussock desert, where Christchurch City and its suburbs now spread out leisurely and shade off into the rural lands, and said: “Yonder the waters are thick with eels and lampreys, and their margins with ducks and other birds; in the plains beyond there are wekas for the catching.” The Plains, as he showed them, were plentifully studded with the ti-palm, from which the sugary kauru could be obtained. Then, turning in the other direction, he spoke of the fish-teeming waters of the harbour, where flounders, shark, and other kai-matai-tai , “food of the salt sea,” were to be had in abundance. Such were the foods of this Wai-pounamu; and so good seemed the land to those conquistadors as they stood there on the windy height surveying the great new country fallen into their hands, that they decided to remain in so promising a place; and it is their descendants who people Rapaki and other kaingas to-day.
Now we turn and, passing a rugged cornice in the lava wall, descend into the gully to examine for ourselves the tree-covering of old Kahukura’s shoulders. There is a thick growth of flax on the little terraces and steep slopes above the bush, and in one place we force our way through a regular jungle of it, growing so thickly as almost to encourage the idea that a flax-mill would find profitable business here. Some of the tall korari stalks are well in flower and bees are busy; on others the long dark-sheathed buds are just unfolding. Flax-flower honey-water makes a pleasant enough drink, and the Boy Scout tastes and pronounces it good. There is a pretty Maori love-lament in which a girl compares her sorrowing self to this blossom of the flax:
“My eyes are like the wind-waved korari blossoms; when the breeze shakes the flowers down fall the honey showers; so flow my tears.”
A little lower and we are in the bush, taking care as we enter it to give a wide berth to the insinuating Maori nettle, the ongaonga , with its unhealthy-looking light-coloured leaves covered with a thick growth of fine spines or hairs. The Boy Scout sidles warily past those bushes of ongaonga when he is told of its poisonous qualities, and of an experience the narrator had with it years ago in the King Country bush. Away up yonder, in the Ohura Valley, between the open lands of the King Country and Taranaki, the ongaonga grew into tall shrubs, ten or twelve feet high, and its virulence apparently was in proportion to its growth. All of our exploring party were more or less badly stung and suffered the effects for a day or two, but the unfortunate horses suffered most. Two of them went mad with the poisonous stings, which swelled their sides and legs, and a pack-horse actually drowned itself by bolting into a creek and lying down in the water in its desperate need of ease from the pain. Really bad ongaonga stings provoke feverish sickness; and so it is prudent to make a detour on these hill slopes rather than encounter over-closely even these insignificant little specimens. If you are on a steep, slippery slope and reach out for a hand-grip, as likely as not instead of a friendly flax or tussock bunch the ongaonga will be there waiting for you with his devilish little stinging hairs. And don’t attempt to apply to our Maori Land nettle the amiable counsel of old Aaron Hill that was given out to us in our school days:—
Tender handed stroke a nettle
And it stings you for your pains;
Grasp it like a man of mettle,
And it soft as silk remains.