Lest readers should question the dimensions of that quarter of a mile seine, let me say that in quite recent times, up to within the last thirty-five years or so, an old Ngati-Pikiao chief, the late Pokiha Taranui (better known as Major Fox), had a net nearly a mile in length, which was used on special occasions, such as the gathering of food for native meetings; the locality was Maketu village, on the shores of the Bay of Plenty. But those enormous kupengas will never again be hauled through the fish-teeming waters.
From Tikao, too, we hear something of the poetic legend and nature-myth that steep those swart hills above Rapaki. Yon savage Poho of rhyolite, and the peaked and pinnacled cores of old volcanoes that break through the grassy hills for mile after mile, all have their tales of pre-pakeha years, of which we shall chronicle something again. Just now we may content ourselves with the gentler scenes in Rapaki valley, where the kowhai has shed its showers of gold and the pakeha fruit trees in blossom sweeten the soft air deliciously. That patch of ploughed land behind the settlement before long will show the first shoots of kaanga , or maize; there is not much grown in this island except by the Natives. The water-front, in spite of its smart new jetty for the launches, is lonelier than in the old days; for there was a time, long after the war-canoe era, when three long whaleboats were hauled up on the sand where the boulders are piled aside yonder and often these could be seen pulling down to Lyttelton laden with potatoes, corn and fruit. That bit of beach is over-rough; but a little way to the north, under the lee of a wild bit of a rocky headland thick with beautiful light bush, is a gem of a white beach, clean and hard and shining, a sandy alcove that must have been made for picnicking. And from this hillside turn in the road where we get our first glimpse of Rapaki, we may also most fitly take our sunset farewell of the kainga of an artist’s dream.
The sun is over the range, and Tamatea’s gloomy peak is outlined in sharp symmetry against the burning west. In the deep gullies between the spear-head and the ridge of the Sacred Fire the smoky-blue mists are already forming, and wreathing and creeping around the tangled shrubberies of bush that have escaped the general massacre. The harbour lies a sheet of scarcely moving tender turquoise, just a shade lighter than the face of the famous Tikitapu, inaccurately called the Blue Lake by the pakeha ; high beyond the shark’s-teeth of the peaks that someone has named the Seven Sleepers are drawn in soft blue upon the rose of the heaven above, their feet are bathed in violet, and the purple mists swim wraith-like from their hidden hollows. The sun goes, and the delicacy, the tenderness of colour, the fading of landscape details into a haze like the camp-fire smokes of the legendary Patu-paiarehe , weave a veil of faery over the valley and the darkening sea. The little boys and girls of the settlement are still at play around the meeting-hall, and every call and every laugh come clearly through the velvet soft air. Down in a nearer dwelling, a girl is rehearsing a poi -dance song, and the lilt is familiar, the half-sad chant that begins,
“Hoki-hoki tonu mai,
Te wairua o te tau.”
(“Return, return again to me,
The spirit of my love.”)
It is the song crooned by the women and the children in every kainga that, like slumbrous little Rapaki down yonder, sent its young men to use rifle and bayonet beside their pakeha brothers-in-arms on the thundering battlefields half a world away.
Chapter V.
THE “AHI-A-TAMATEA.”