A LAMENT FOR NGARO.
Slow wanes the evening star.[36] It disappears
To rise again in more glorious skies,
Where thousands hasten forward to welcome it.
All that is grand and beautiful has no more value to me,
For thou wast my sole treasure! O my daughter!
When the sunbeams played above the waves,
Or glinted through the waving palms,
Secretly, but with joy, we marked thy sportive gambols
By the sandy shores of Awapoka.
Oft in the dawning twilight
I beheld thee, girt in thy simple robes,
And accompanied by the daughters of thy people,
Speed forth, to see gathered the fruit of the Main,[37]
While the maidens from Tikoro[38]
Sought for thee the mussels hid among the rocks,
Braving the blinding surf, and caught for thee
The callow brood of the screaming sea-fowl.
And when at even the tribes
Assembled for the repast,
Beloved companions sought to have thee by their side,
Eagerly contending who should bestow on thee dainties,
That they might win a smile from thy lips;—
But where art thou now? Where now?
Thou stream which still dost ebb and flow,
Flow and ebb no more,
For she that did love thee is gone!
Well is it for the people, as of old,
To assemble at the feast of pleasure!
The canoe still cleaves the air,
And dashes aside the foam of the heaving sea.
As of yore, hovering above the rocky cliffs,
The sea-fowl in clouds obscure the sky!
But the beloved one comes not!
Not even a lock of thy waving tresses
Is left us to mourn over!
The truly paternal interest and attention bestowed by the Government on the destinies of the New Zealanders, and on the means being adopted to raise them morally and materially, as also the repeated asseverations of loyalty, fidelity, and gratitude towards the British nation, which were constantly in the mouth of the New Zealanders (the Gascons of the South, as an English author nicknames them), gave no reason to anticipate that the colony was about to become the scene of a war, which can hardly have any other result than the total extinction of the small remnant of the Maori; for although the English troops have hitherto encountered a severe and protracted resistance, and the Maori, intrenched in their Páhs, required Armstrong guns, bombs, and heavy artillery to be brought against them ere they yielded, yet to the impartial observer the issue of the contest cannot be for a moment doubtful. This unhappy contest originated in the sale of some land in the province of Taranaki, or New Plymouth, on the S.W. shores of the Northern Island. A native, named Te Teira (John Taylor), had sold to Government, under the provisions of the treaty of Waitangi, a small piece of land adjoining New Plymouth. Rangitakí, or as he is better known by his Christian name, Wiremu Kingi (William King), a resolute and powerful chief of the Ngatiawa tribe, opposed the sale, on
the ground that Te Teira had in fact no right to dispose of this land without his consent, and obstructed the surveyors sent by Government to measure the piece of ground. On their being reinforced somewhat later, Kingi took up arms to resist them, and intrenched himself on the property in dispute. How little the Colonial Government intended to encroach upon the Maori privileges, is best shown by the circumstance that the Ngatiawa tribe, and their allies of the Taranaki, are but 3000 in number, men, women, and children all told, who claim as their property districts covering an area of 2,000,000 acres, and during the last twenty years have only cultivated some small patches along the coast. The white settlers also number about 3000, and with the consent of Government have, during that period, purchased 40,000 acres, of which hardly one-fourth part is devoted to agricultural purposes. On 17th March, 1860, Kingi was at last attacked by the English troops under Colonel Gold. This was the commencement of a series of sanguinary combats, carried on with the most desperate obstinacy,[39] and the more serious, as it stands out in singularly bold relief, that the majority of the missionaries, Bishop Selwyn and Archdeacon Hadfield at their head, take part with the Maories, and that the learned justice, Dr. Martin, endeavours to prove that the war has broken out entirely in consequence of a breach of the rights of
property by the Colonial Government, and therefore that the conduct of the recusant chief, so far from being a rebellion, was a bare vindication of right! Nay, it has even been openly stated (and it throws an interesting light upon certain political complications in Europe) that the Protestant missionaries and certain former protégés of the Government are chiefly to blame for the difficulties now existing between the English and the natives. Amongst these adversaries a certain Mr. Davis, formerly official translator and interpreter, a highly-educated but calculating man, who once sung the praises of Sir George Grey, and among other works has published the Maori Mementos,[40] so interesting in a historical point of view, hit upon the clever notion, in company with a Maori named William Thompson, or "The King-maker," of instigating the natives to rebellion. With this object in view, they organized far in the interior, among the tribes hitherto but little civilized, immense popular gatherings, at which in long speeches they always contrived to come back to the assertion that the Maories and not the English were the real lords of the soil, and that they therefore were entitled to be governed by a king selected from among themselves. Thompson, thoroughly versant in the foibles and vanities of his
countrymen, and supported by ambitious, crafty, intriguing foreigners, was speedily master of the situation, and it is much less matter of surprise that in 1858 a king was chosen in the person of Potatáu[41]-te-Whero-Whero, one of the most renowned of the Waikato tribe, than that the Government, from the year 1854, suffered this conduct to go unpunished, and with cool indifference beheld the movement grow in proportion without taking the slightest precautionary measures!
Only by such indulgence, not to say negligence, did it become possible for the native league against the sale of land, and the accompanying King movement, to have attained their present importance, the number engaged in them having risen to a total of 15,000 able-bodied warriors. Since the restrictions recently placed on the importation of weapons and ammunition, there have been imported during the last three years fire-arms, powder, lead, and caps to the value of £50,000, so that we may estimate their present supply of gunpowder at 100,000 lbs. at the least, and the fire-arms, exclusive of those imported at the time of Hongi, at about 20,000 stand.
Already, at Christmas, 1858, when the staff of our Expedition were passing a week or two in Auckland, there was a
noticeable amount of political agitation in various parts of the interior, and we ourselves witnessed some chiefs, friendly to the Government, who before starting for a great Maori meeting near Drury offered to the Governor their good services, and asked his orders. The Maori chiefs, whom Colonel Browne received in his study, could only be distinguished from white men by the wonderfully copious tattooing on their faces, and were in all other respects attired exactly like Europeans. Some wore black round hats and blouses, others wore caps. Only in the flaps of their ears they carried small pieces of green nephrite, while suspended round the neck by a thick chord was the inevitable club-shaped meri-meri, that renowned stone weapon which descends as an heir-loom in families, and is so highly prized that a New Zealander will pay as high as £100 for one. The chiefs candidly remarked that at this gathering the selection of a Maori king would come up for decision, and they therefore wished, as loyal and true subjects of the Queen of England, which they said they always had been and wished to continue, to know from the lips of her representative how they ought to act in such a case. Colonel Browne, who like most of the British settlers in New Zealand seemed to attach but little importance to the whole Maori movement, or, if so, did not like to make it known, simply thanked the chiefs for this renewed expression of their loyal sentiments, adding in the spirit of Maori oratory that "he had already