like that of the rice-growing districts of the south of India, promise
enhanced prosperity as the years go by, Fiji being a locality especially
suitable for the Indian immigrant. It is a place that, during the war,
sent a remarkably large proportion of its manhood to fight for the
allies, those who remained at home also keeping up their end with
spirit. The visitor is told a story, which has the virtue of being
authentic, of an occasion when Suva was without any naval protection.
Its wireless installation picked up signals sent out by the German
raider _Scharnhorst_, showing that this vessel was on its way to attack
the place. Sir Bickham Scott, at that time High Commissioner, rose to
the situation and sent a message into the air for the _Scharnhorst_ to
pick up. It was addressed to Admiral Patey, aboard H.M.S. _Australia_,
the only allied warship which, as the commander of the _Scharnhorst_
knew, might conceivably have been within call. It ran: "Thanks for your
message. Will expect you in the morning." The _Scharnhorst_ presumably
read this and pondered, for Fiji was left alone.
VIII
AUCKLAND
A still, sun-filled autumn morning, with crisp sharp air that made it a
pleasure to be alive, on wide, sheltered mother-of-pearl waters, bounded
by grassy hills, with frequent hummocks and white gleaming cliffs,
greeted the _Renown_ as she neared New Zealand on the morning of the
24th of April, 1920. Dotted over the hills, like sheep at grazing, were
numerous red-roofed country houses, which developed pleasant gardens
with green fields between as the distance decreased. Out of shadowy bays
and inlets crept motor-boats in ones and twos and threes, the numbers
growing as township and village each contributed its quota, so that, by
the time the _Renown_ was amongst them, there had assembled a fleet of
very considerable dimensions decorated with flags and filled with
cheerful men, women and children, soldiers in khaki, wounded in hospital
blue, pretty girls in smart frocks, all clapping, cheering, and laughing
in the most inspiring welcome imaginable.
The Prince climbed to his look-out above the bridge, and waved back a
cheery acknowledgment. Bands struck up in half a dozen of the boats.
Flags leapt up like wind-swept flowers in a herbaceous harbour. The
hubbub grew. Numbers of sailing yachts joined the assemblage. Rowing
boats chipped in, and, by the time the first harbour buoy was reached,
the _Renown_ was sliding along with some hundreds of small craft racing
beside her, in imminent danger of collision alike with her and with one
another. The last headland turned, Auckland itself came into view, a
red-and-white city climbing up the sides of a beautiful, sheltered cove,
with clear, deep water in front, and a green, conical extinct volcano
behind. Coloured bunting fluttered from the rigging of all the vessels
in port, and long vistas of greenery and flags led up the volcano from
the water's edge. One caught glimpses of wide wharves, black with
clustering crowds, and of dark masses of people on the slopes of
Rangitoto, all on the look-out for the arrival of the Prince from Mother
England.
We had arrived at the first of the island continents which had drawn us
all, battle-cruiser, Prince and passengers, half-way round the world.
The ports of call behind us faded into instructive entertainments by the
way. Here was another home of the race, another place in the sun where
the breed throve and multiplied, and developed, under conditions fresh
and far from the source, the man and womanhood we are proud to call
British.
Auckland was an appropriate starting point for the Royal tour. The city
was the capital of the Dominion until 1865 and now has over a hundred
thousand inhabitants. It was founded in 1840 by Captain Hobson, R.N.,
when he added New Zealand to the Empire, the British Government having
characteristically disavowed the action of Captain Cook who set up the
Union Jack in 1779. The place had its godfather in Lord Auckland, the
most distinguished First Lord of the Admiralty in Hobson's time, and
thus a suitable sponser for the second city of a Dominion which owes its
being to the Empire's sea-power. Auckland now has a fine harbour and a
shipping trade of 2-1/2 million tons per annum. It is a place to which
the prosperous sheep farmer looks forward to retiring, as it has
educational opportunities, social amenities, and one of the most genial
climates in the whole Dominion.
The _Renown_ was brought alongside one of the wharves, on which black
top-hats and brilliant uniforms guided the eye to groups which proved to
include the Prime Minister of the country, the Leader of the Opposition,
the members of the Cabinet, the General Officer Commanding, the Mayor of
Auckland, and the President of the Harbour Board. Thus New Zealand
waited to greet the Prince.
At the appointed moment the Governor-General drove up in a motor-car.
The ship was dressed. Bands played, guards on the quarter-deck presented
arms, His Excellency was duly conducted aboard, where the Prince as duly
received him. Later on, with more saluting, a full brass band for the
Governor, and bos'n's whistling for the Prince, the Royal party went
ashore, and New Zealand welcomed her future King. It was a little bit of
England that had gone on board to make a call of ceremony. It was the
whole of New Zealand, heart and hand, that took charge of His Royal
Highness ashore.
Out of a multitude of motors the procession to Government House was
formed. The cars proceeded through wide, well-built streets of stone
business houses, smothered in wreaths and flags. Crowds of cheering
people lined the pavement. Upstanding soldiers and cadets in smart khaki
uniforms kept the roadway. The Prince, by now, was standing on the seat
of his motor-car, waving greetings to the crowds, who responded
vociferously. Two equerries, on the front seats, clung to his coat-tail
to prevent his falling out of the vehicle. The Governor-General sat back
with a smiling face alongside. The route led through the city, and out
amongst solid residential houses, standing in gardens brilliant with
variegated chrysanthemums, flaming red salvias, purple bougainvilleas,
and the greenest of shaven lawns, with cedars and palms together
spreading the shade of the north and the south.
Old Government House, which still serves an Excellency from Wellington
on tour, where the Dominion's address was read by the Hon. Mr. Massey,
Prime Minister, with his Cabinet standing by, is a spacious, Georgian
building surrounded by an old-world garden of lawns, shrubs and flowers.
It has a homely charm and beautiful views; it made one think of Surrey,
and must have been left with regret when New Zealand changed her
capital. Thence the route led back through the city to the Town Hall,
which was packed to its utmost capacity with well-dressed people who
gave the Prince a rousing reception. Here more addresses were presented,
and an informal levee was held, everybody present filing past. Large
crowds, meanwhile, waited patiently outside for his reappearance.
Later in the day the Prince was taken to the Domain cricket-ground,
where he reviewed five thousand returned soldiers and cadets and again
received an ovation. This cricket-ground is at the bottom of a shallow
valley, grassy hills forming a natural amphitheatre. Looked at from the
central stand while the review was in progress, the slopes of the
amphitheatre were as if covered with a fine Persian carpet, so thick was
the crowd upon the ground. It was a carpet that had frequent spasms of
agitation, the cheering and hat-slinging, whenever the Prince came near
to it, being exceedingly lively. H.R.H. first went down the lines of the
troops and had a friendly word for every officer and a number of the
men. Later on every man who had been wounded or disabled was presented
to him individually, the Prince going round to search them out himself.
When this had been completed he presented war decorations to those who
had won them at the front. It was nearly dark by the time the last hand
had been shaken and the last word said. The cheering, when it was over,
was something to remember.
The following day was Anzac Sunday, and was taken up with religious
war-services, H.R.H. attending those at St. Mary's Cathedral in the
morning, and at the Town Hall in the afternoon. The Town Hall service
was especially impressive. The Prince, slender in the world-familiar
khaki, stood in the crowded gathering, and as the Dead March was played,
and the Last Post sounded in memory of sons who had fallen, the people
knew him the Empire's symbol of their sacrifice. Perhaps there, where
the women sobbed to see him, he touched the supreme height of his
mission.
The cricket-ground, on the following day, was again the scene of an
enormous gathering. Eight thousand children were here assembled and
went through pretty evolutions and drill. In the terminal figure some
two thousand little girls, attired respectively in red, white and blue
frocks, so grouped themselves as to form, first the word "Welcome," and
afterwards the Union Jack, which waved and rustled as the children bent
and swayed to time given by a mite mounted on an eight-foot stool in
front. The crowd which surrounded the enclosure, on this occasion, was
estimated at thirty thousand.
From Auckland the Prince went south on a train, every part of which,
from the engine to the brake-van, had been built in New Zealand
workshops.
The first thing one realizes starting for anywhere in New Zealand is the
thing that has been a geography wonder since the age of nine, the queer
inversion of the climate. The experience is curious, notwithstanding all
one's submission to the fact since that time, so potent a governor of
associations is a little word. We had arrived at the North Island, where
the climate was warm and sunny like that of Italy. People coming with
more permanent intentions had a way of settling in the South Island to
be under home conditions of temperature, many of them gradually moving
across the Strait to the North Island in pursuit of balmier airs. We saw
the late autumn apples of April here and there ungathered on the trees
about Auckland, and were grateful to escape the imaginative dislocation
of a midsummer Christmas, with sunstroke as the punishment of
over-indulgence. It would be interesting to know in what period of
residence New Zealand undertakes to change one's dreams.
A green, rolling land, homely turnip fields, orchards, pasture
containing fine cattle and sheep, pleasant, red-roofed farm-houses,
comfortable country residences, and thriving market towns at frequent
intervals, sped past the train. At Ngaruawahia, two thousand
brown-faced, high-cheekboned Maoris, in European dress, greeted the
Prince from outside the railway fence, men, women and children, hand in
hand, repeatedly bowing to the ground, to slow rhythmic soft-voiced
singing, as the train steamed by. At the same time, a dozen pretty Maori
girls, in flowing white frocks, bare feet, and raven masses of waving
fillet-bound hair, swayed, undulated and step-danced upon a mat upon the
side of the track. These folk were Maori, as often as not, by courtesy
rather than by strict racial description. Few pure-bred Maoris indeed
are now to be found in New Zealand, and it is said that the mixture of
brown and white is here more successful than anywhere else in the world.
At all events one received the impression of a people plastic to the
print of a new civilization, and developing happily in it.
At Hamilton, a town of ten thousand inhabitants, more formal ceremonies
were gone through. The whole place was decorated. The people assembled
in the streets, where they cheered most vigorously. Several hundred
returned soldiers, and a very large number of children, stood in lines
upon the racecourse where they were inspected by the Prince. Several
addresses of welcome were read, that from the local municipality being
presented by Mayor Watt, a prominent Hamilton solicitor and a man of
much influence, also of dramatic instinct it appeared, since he
discarded for this occasion the chains and ermine of his official garb,
in favour of the private's uniform he had worn at the front.
A few stations further on, five hundred children were upon the platform,
singing "God Bless the Prince of Wales," as the train went past. They
had come in from a neighbouring mining-camp to catch a glimpse of the
Royal visitor, who waved to them from his carriage. The flourishing
coal-mining centre of Huntley, where a valuable brown lignite, capable
of being coked, is being raised in large quantities from shafts, some of
which are only three hundred feet deep, was also passed, the inhabitants
assembling along the railway line and cheering as the train went
through. A large experimental farm, where the secret of converting
barren land into fruitful by means of basic slag has been discovered;
cold storage factories where incredible masses of New Zealand mutton are
being preserved for export; and extensive works where pumice, here found
in the scoria of long-extinct volcanoes, is turned into material for the
insulating of boilers, passed in procession before the train. We saw
also peat-swamps, in process of profitable reclamation by means of
drainage, in the valley of the wide Waikato stream.
Presently a second engine was attached to the train, which now crept
slowly upwards, through a tangled wilderness of dense-forested gorge and
mountain canyon, the scenery being of the wildest. The imported spruce,
oak, willow, and ash of the more settled region gave place to feathery
green _punga_ tree-ferns, and stiff brown _tawa_ of indigenous growth.
Clearings were seen at intervals where cultivation struggled with the
grey, bushy _manuka_ scrub; well-kept fields, in the hands of white
settlers, alternating with unkempt jungle, where the easy-going communal
_hapu_ tenure of Maori ownership is still in force.
Suddenly, the scenery opened up, and we saw, in the soft rays of the
setting sun, a wide panorama of blue lake, and olive-green headland,
round the dark, conical Mokoia island, famous in Maori tradition as the
trysting-place to which Princess Hinomaa and her lover Tutanekai swam
across the lake. Here, almost in the shadow of the Tarawera volcano,
which blew up with terrific results to the countryside thirty years ago,
we found the pleasant little station of Rotorua, where an address was
presented and the Prince shook hands with a long line of returned Maori
soldiers.
Visits to the wonderful spouting geysers of this famous neighbourhood,
with Maori receptions and national dances, occupied the next two days,
some of the party also taking advantage of the holiday to catch a number
of very fine lake-trout, creatures which have thriven and multiplied
amazingly since their importation from Great Britain a few years ago.
The Maori dances are a thing by themselves. They are performed by
warriors and maidens in phalanxes. The men, often stout and sometimes
elderly, who in ordinary life may be lawyers, landlords, doctors, or
retail dealers, put patches of black paint on their faces, array
themselves in tassellated _pui-pui_ mat loin-clothes and arm themselves
with slender feather-tufted spears. Then, bare-footed, bare-legged,
bare-backed, and bare-headed, they line up in battalions, and leap and
stamp, stick their tongues out, grimace, slap their knees, emit volleys
of sharp barking shouts, and thrust and swing their spears, in wonderful
time to the music of full string bands. The ladies, many of them
good-looking, with melting brown eyes, well-developed figures, and
graceful carriage, are more restrained in their performances. They are
bare-headed, with long waving hair down their backs, kept in place by a
coloured ribbon round the forehead. They may be dressed in voluminous
brown cloaks of soft _kiwi_ feathers, or in loose, embroidered draperies
of every colour, their feet and ankles, sometimes bare, sometimes
encased in high-heeled American shoes and black lace stockings. They
stand or sit in long lines, singing the softest of crooning songs, the
while swaying, posturing, undulating, or step-dancing in perfect unison,
to represent the movement of paddling, spinning, weaving, swimming, or
setting sail. At the same time they swing white _poi_-balls, the size of
oranges, attached to strings, which form in their swift gyrations gauzy
circles of light around each hand, a charming performance worthy of
Leicester Square.
In the case of Rotorua ceremonies, performances took place, first on the
lake shore, on ground which emitted clouds of steam in the very face of
the dancers, and afterwards, on a much larger scale, on a wide grassy
plain adjoining, where six thousand Maoris, brought from all parts of
New Zealand, the South Island as well as the North, were encamped in
military bell-tents, a legacy of the war. Here, battalion after
battalion, first of men, then of girls, and finally of the two combined,
performed in quick succession, at least a thousand dancers taking part,
while ten thousand spectators, about half of whom may have been Maoris
or half-castes, and the balance Europeans, looked on and applauded. Here
I suppose if anywhere we saw the pure-blooded Maori, though it seems a
distinction with little difference. Unlike most Orientals, the children
of mixed ancestry continue the traditions of the pure-breeds, put on
their clothes, speak their language and boast their ancestry. One of the
most striking of the figures was where the warriors stole out between
ranks of dancing maidens, to take an enemy unawares, who was supposed to
have been beguiled into believing that he had only women to deal with.
Sir James Carrol and the Hon. Mr. A. T. Ngata, both Maori members of the
New Zealand Parliament, and both distinguished speakers, took a
prominent part in the ceremonies.
The address presented to the Prince by these loyal and attractive people
was characteristically picturesque. It was read, first in English, and
afterwards in Maori, by one of the chiefs, an elderly gentleman of
reverend appearance in fine Kiwi robe, who spoke in a pleasant,
resonant, well-rounded voice. "You bring with you," he said, "memories
of our beloved dead. They live again who strove with you on the fields
of TU in many lands beyond seas. Your presence there endeared you to the
hearts of our warriors. Your brief sojourn here will soften the sorrows
of those whose dear ones have followed the setting sun. Royal son of an
illustrious line, king that is to be, we are proud that you should carry
on the traditions of your race and house. For it is meet that those who
sit on high should turn an equal face to humble as to mighty. Walk,
therefore, among your own people sure of their hearts, fostering therein
the love they bore Queen Victoria and those who came after her. Welcome
and farewell. Return in peace without misgivings, bearing to His Majesty
the King, and to Her Majesty the Queen, the renewal of the oath we swore
to them on this ground a generation ago. The Maori people will be true
till death, and so farewell."
The history of the Maoris is one long record of chivalry and courage,
and their promise is one they will perform.
IX
NORTH ISLAND
Among the telegrams which met the Royal train on its way from Auckland
to Rotorua was one of a character which differed from the rest. The
message was addressed to Rt. Hon. William Massey, that embodiment of
notable ability, kindly good sense and unquenchable spirit whom this
Dominion is so fortunate as to have as Prime Minister, who was on the
train. It announced a general railway strike unless certain demands of
drivers and men, some time pending, were agreed to by the Government. It
was in the form of an ultimatum which expired at midnight, an hour which
found the tour at Rotorua. Against the extreme and humiliating public
inconvenience of the moment thus selected must be placed the immediate
offer of the strikers, to complete the schedule of the Royal train, to
take the Prince in fact wherever he wished to go. While the offer was
declined in the main it was accepted as far as a return journey to
Auckland, where the Prince thus spent several unforeseen days while
matters were being adjusted. The time had to be cut out of later
dispositions. It was spent in private engagements, in the much qualified
sense of the word as it applied to any of the Royal arrangements. The
strike was ultimately settled through the efforts of Mr. Massey, who,
being denied the service of the railroad, drove several hundred miles
over sodden mountain roads, in the worst of weather, from Rotorua to
Wellington to discuss the matter with the men's leaders there. The
settlement did much credit to the forbearance of both sides. It did not
go into the merits of the immediate question, which was as to the rate
of compensation to be paid to the men in consideration of the increased
cost of living, but provided a tribunal, on which the strikers and the
railway management should be equally represented, with a co-opted
neutral chairman, to report upon the merits of the demand, and suggest
the best way of doing justice to all concerned. The acceptance of this
sensible arrangement was largely aided by the New Zealand Amalgamated
Society of Railway Servants, this important organization putting
pressure upon the drivers and firemen to return to work while the
tribunal was taking evidence. The incident afforded interesting proof,
not only of the confidence inspired by Mr. Massey himself, but also of
the reasonableness of the attitude of labour in this part of the world.
Industrial discontent is a more manageable thing in a country where the
great majority of the men own their homes and the half-acre that
surrounds them. The struggle for better conditions is sweetened by the
air of gardens, and every operative has the interest in the general
prosperity that comes of a private stake in it.