Don’t, if you value your skin, try that on the ongaonga.
The Seven Sleepers
The Port Hills, south-west of Dyer’s Pass,
viewed from the lower slopes of Sugar Loaf, above the Governor’s Bay road
W. A. Taylor, photo
Lower down, however, the way is clear of this bush plague, and we find ourselves under a shady roof of thick foliage, woven of the cool green leaves of the broadleaf, a small puka , the mahoe and kowhai and other minor trees of the Maori bush with much of the kotukutuku , the native fuchsia, now come into flower, with its masses of slender pendulous blossom giving promise of abundant konini berries for the birds. (Like several other New Zealand trees the fruit of the kotukutuku is given a different name from the plant itself.) The graceful lacebark or ribbonwood, too, is here in plenty; there are some beautiful specimens on these hills and slopes, and finest of all perhaps is the grand old houi that overshades the little Maori Church at Rapaki. Aka vines interlace the close-growing trees and here and there present tangling obstacles to a passage along the gully sides. The place lacks the softness of moss and fern underfoot to which we are accustomed in the real bush; nevertheless it has something of the atmosphere of the olden forest wild; grateful bush scents are in our nostrils, the leaf-covering is close, though the trees are not tall, and the twisting character of growth and the matting of creepers help to make compact the tentage of green.
Making north-east with the general curve of the Sugarloaf slopes we leave the first bush patch and, breasting another wild garden of flax, with here and there a cabbage-tree sweetening the air with its creamy flowers, discover a deep trend to the north-west into the main valley. Here, under a steep-to uplift of the ancient igneous rock, curving out above our heads in savage cornices and rude attempts at gargoyles, we look down upon a picture of surprising beauty, one of the many surprises folded in among these Port Hills.
The old Maori Church at Rapaki.
On this side of the Heru-o-Kahukura the range is deeply bitten into by a cup-shaped valley, with one side of the cup, that facing the harbour, cut away for the passage of the old lava streams and now the rainy season watercourses. The inside of the valley, too, is given the semblance of a fan by the numerous converging tributary gullies, separated by grassy and flax-grown ridges. There are perhaps half a dozen of these subsidiary valleys, and each one is filled with a sweet green mass of light bush similar to that behind us. The higher the little valleys, too, the more bush there is; the gully bottoms are hidden everywhere with many tinted foliage, a taller tree here and there protruding its head above its fellows, and these remnants of the ancient forest climb to the very parapets of dark and grey rock that seem to form the main defences of Kahukura’s citadel. The curving lines converge, the shouldering ridges fall away as the now dry watercourses blend into one hundreds of feet below the rocky elbow of ours.