Strolling into the karaka groves, we came upon a Maori wooden tomb, of which the front was carved with figures three feet high, grotesque and obscene. Gigantic eyes, hands bearing clubs, limbs without bodies, and bodies without limbs, were figured here and there among more perfect carvings, and the whole was of a character which the Maories of to-day disown as they do cannibalism, wishing to have these horrid things forgotten. The sudden rise of the Hau-Hau fanaticism within the last few years has shown us that the layer of civilization by which the old Maori habits are overlaid is thin indeed.
The flags remained down all day, and in the afternoon we returned to the coast to shoot duck and pukéko, a sort of moor-hen. It was not easy work, for the birds fell in the flax swamp, and the giant swordlike leaves of the Phormium tenax cut our hands as we pushed our way through its dense clumps and bushes, while some of the party suffered badly from the sun: Maui, the Maories say, must have chained him up too near the earth. After dark, we could see the glare of the fires in the karaka groves, where the Maories were in council, and a government surveyor came in to report that he had met the dissentient Wanganuis riding fast toward the hills.
In the morning, we were allowed to stay upon the coast till ten or eleven o‘clock, when a messenger came down from Mr. Buller to call us to the pah: the council of the chiefs had again sat all night—for the Maories act upon their proverb that the eyes of great chiefs should know no rest—and Hunia had carried everything before him in the debate.
As soon as the ring was formed, Hunia apologized for the pulling down of the Queen‘s flag; it had been done, he said, as a sign that the sale was broken off, not as an act of disrespect. Having, in short, had things entirely his own way, he was disposed to be extremely friendly both to whites and Maories. The sale, he said, must be brought about, or the “world would be on fire with an intertribal war. What is the good of the mountain-land? There is nothing to eat but stones; granite is a hard but not a strengthening food; and women and land are the ruin of men.”
After congratulatory speeches from other chiefs, some of the older men treated us to histories of the deeds that had been wrought upon the block of land. Some of their speeches—notably those of Aperahama and Ihakara—were largely built up of legendary poems; but the orators quoted the poetry as such only when in doubt how far the sentiments were those of the assembled people: when they were backed by the hum which denotes applause, they at one commenced with singular art to weave the poetry into that which was their own.
As soon as the speeches were over, Hunia and Ihakara marched up to the flagstaff carrying between them the deed-of-sale. Putting it down before Dr. Featherston, they shook hands with each other and with him, and swore that for the future there should be eternal friendship between their tribes. The deed was then signed by many hundred men and women, and Dr. Featherston started with Captain té Képa, of the native contingent, to fetch the £25,000 from Wanganui town, the Maories firing their rifles into the air as a salute.
The Superintendent was no sooner gone than a kind of solemn grief seemed to come over the assembled people. After all, they were selling the graves of their ancestors, they argued. The wife of Hamuéra, seizing her husband‘s greenstone club, ran out from the ranks of the women, and began to intone an impromptu song, which was echoed by the women, in a pathetic chorus-chant:
“The sun shines, but we quit our land: we abandon forever its forests,
its mountains, its groves, its lakes, its shores.
All its fair fisheries, here, under the bright sun, forever we renounce.
It is a lovely day; fair will be the children that are born to-day; but
we quit our land.