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THE LONG WHITE CLOUD
AO TEA ROA
By William Pember Reeves
Agent-General In London for New Zealand
1899
[Illustration: Frontispiece.
TE REINGA WATERFALL, GISBORNE
Photo by W.F. CRAWFORD.]
Preface
I believe that there is amongst the people of the Mother Country a
minority, now ceasing to be small, which takes a quickening interest
in the Colonies. It no longer consists merely of would-be investors,
or emigrants who want to inquire into the resources, industries, and
finances of one or other of the self-governing parts of the Empire.
Many of its members never expect to see a colony. But they have come
to recognise that those new-comers into the circle of civilized
communities, the daughter nations of Britain, are not unworthy of
English study and English pride. They have begun to suspect that
the story of their struggles into existence and prosperity may be
stirring, romantic, and interesting, and that some of their political
institutions and experiments may be instructive, though others may
seem less safe than curious. Some of those who think thus complain
that it is not always easy to find an account of a colony which shall
be neither an official advertisement, the sketch of a globe-trotting
impressionist, nor yet an article manufactured to order by some honest
but untravelled maker of books. They ask--or at least some of them, to
my knowledge, ask--for a history in which the picturesque side of the
story shall not be ignored, written simply and concisely by a writer
who has made a special study of his subject, or who has lived and
moved amongst the places, persons, and incidents he describes.
I have lived in New Zealand, have seen it and studied it from end to
end, and have had to do with its affairs: it is my country. But I
should not have presumed to endeavour to supply in its case the want
above indicated had any short descriptive history of the colony from
its discovery to the present year been available. Among the many
scores of books about the Islands--some of which are good, more of
which are bad--I know of none which does what is aimed at in this
volume. I have, therefore, taken in hand a short sketch-history of
mine, published some six months ago, have cut out some of it and have
revised the rest, and blended it with the material of the following
chapters, of which it forms nearly one-third. The result is something
not quite so meagre in quantity or staccato in style, though even now
less full than I should have liked to make it, had it been other than
the work of an unknown writer telling the story of a small archipelago
which is at once the most distant and well-nigh the youngest of
English states. I have done my best in the later chapters to describe
certain men and experiments without letting personal likes and
dislikes run away with my pen; have taken pains to avoid loading my
pages with the names of places and persons of no particular interest
to British readers; and at the same time have tried not to forget the
value of local colour and atmosphere in a book of this kind.
If _The Long White Cloud_ should fail to please a discerning public,
it will not prove that a good, well-written history of a colony like
New Zealand is not wanted, and may not succeed, but merely that I have
not done the work well enough. That may easily be, inasmuch as until
this year my encounters with English prose have almost all taken the
form of political articles or official correspondence. Doubtless these
do not afford the best possible training. But of the quality of the
material awaiting a capable writer there can be no question. There,
ready to his hand, are the beauty of those islands of mid-ocean, the
grandeur of their Alps and fiords, the strangeness of the volcanic
districts, the lavishness, yet grace, of the forests; the mixture of
quaintness, poetry, and ferocity in the Maori, and the gallant drama
of their struggle against our overwhelming strength; the adventures
of the gold-seekers and other pioneers; the high aims of the colony's
founders, and the venturesome democratic experiments of those who have
succeeded them. If in these there is not the stuff for a fine book,
then I am most strangely mistaken. And if I have failed in the
following pages, then let me hope that some fellow-countryman, and
better craftsman, will come to the rescue, and will do with a firmer
hand and a lighter touch the work attempted here.
NOTE OF ACKNOWLEDGMENT
I have to thank Major-General Robley, not only for drawing the
tail-piece to the second chapter, and thereby giving the book a minute
but correct pattern of the Maori _moko_ or face-tattooing, but for
kindly lending me photographs and drawings from which several other
illustrations have been taken. Two or three of the tail-pieces are
after designs in Mr. Hamilton's _Maori Art_. I have also to thank
Mr. A. Martin of Wanganui for his kind permission to use his fine
photograph of Mount Egmont and a view on a "papa" river. Mr. W.F.
Crawford was good enough to put at my disposal his photograph of
the Te Reinga waterfall, a view which will be new even to most New
Zealanders. The portrait of Major Kemp and that of a Muaopoko Maori
standing by a carved canoe-prow were given to me by Sir Walter Buller.
"A New Zealand Settler's Home" was the gift of Mr. Winckleman of
Auckland, well known amongst New Zealand amateur photographers. I have
also gratefully to acknowledge the photographs which are the work
of Mr. Josiah Martin of Auckland, Messrs. Beattie and Sanderson of
Auckland, Mr. Iles of the Thames, and Mr. Morris of Dunedin, and to
thank Messrs. Sampson, Low and Co. for the use of the blocks from
which the portraits of Sir Harry Atkinson and the Hon. John McKenzie
are taken.
Contents
Chapter I
THE LONG WHITE CLOUD
Chapter II
THE MAORI
Chapter III
THE MAORI AND THE UNSEEN
Chapter IV
THE NAVIGATORS
Chapter V
NO MAN'S LAND
Chapter VI
MISSION SCHOONER AND WHALE BOAT
Chapter VII
THE MUSKETS OF HONGI
Chapter VIII
"A MAN OF WAR WITHOUT GUNS"
Chapter IX
THE DREAMS OF GIBBON WAKEFIELD
Chapter X
IN THE CAUDINE FORKS
Chapter XI
THROUGH WEAKNESS INTO WAR
Chapter XII
GOOD GOVERNOR GREY
Chapter XIII
THE PASTORAL PROVINCES
Chapter XIV
LEARNING TO WALK
Chapter XV
GOVERNOR BROWNE'S BAD BARGAIN
Chapter XVI
_TUPARA_ AGAINST ENFIELD
Chapter XVII
THE FIRE IN THE FERN
Chapter XVIII
GOLD-DIGGERS AND GUM-DIGGERS
Chapter XIX
THE PROVINCES AND THE PUBLIC WORKS POLICY
Chapter XX
IN PARLIAMENT
Chapter XXI
SOME BONES OF CONTENTION
Chapter XXII
EIGHT YEARS OF EXPERIMENT
Chapter XXIII
THE NEW ZEALANDERS
BIBLIOGRAPHY
List of Illustrations
Te Reinga Waterfall
A Western Alpine Valley
The White Terrace, Rotomahana
On a River--"Papa" Country
Maori and Carved Bow of Canoe
A Maori Maiden
Stern of Canoe
Maori Wahiné
Carved Gateway of Maori Village
Mount Egmont, Taranaki
View of Nelson
Sir George Grey
The Curving Coast
War Map
Rewi
Major Kemp
Kauri Pine Tree
The Hon. John Mackenzie
Sir Harry Atkinson
A New Zealand Settler's Home
Picton--Queen Charlotte's Sound
The Hon. John Balance
Te Waharoa. Henare Kaihau, M.H.R. Hon. James Carroll,
M.H.R. Right Hon. R.J. Seddon (_Premier_). Mahuta (_The
Maori "King"_)
Maoris Conveying Guests in a Canoe
A Rural State School
Map of New Zealand
Chapter I
THE LONG WHITE CLOUD[1]
[Footnote 1: Ao-Tea-Roa, the Maori name of New Zealand.]
"If to her share some female errors fall,
Look on her face--and you'll forget them all."
Though one of the parts of the earth best fitted for man, New Zealand
was probably about the last of such lands occupied by the human race.
The first European to find it was a Dutch sea-captain who was looking
for something else, and who thought it a part of South America, from
which it is sundered by five thousand miles of ocean. It takes its
name from a province of Holland to which it does not bear the remotest
likeness, and is usually regarded as the antipodes of England, but is
not. Taken possession of by an English navigator, whose action, at
first adopted, was afterwards reversed by his country's rulers, it was
only annexed at length by the English Government which did not want
it, to keep it from the French who did. The Colony's capital bears the
name of a famous British commander, whose sole connection with the
country was a flat refusal to aid in adding it to the Empire. Those
who settled it meant it to be a theatre for the Wakefield Land
System. The spirit of the land laws, however, which its settlers have
gradually developed is a complete negation of Wakefield's principle.
Some of the chief New Zealand settlements were founded by Church
associations; but the Colony's education system has long been purely
secular. From the first those who governed the Islands laboured
earnestly to preserve and benefit the native race, and on the whole
the treatment extended to them has been just and often generous--yet
the wars with them were long, obstinate, and mischievous beyond
the common. The pioneer colonists looked upon New Zealand as an
agricultural country, but its main industries have turned out to be
grazing and mining. From the character of its original settlers it was
expected to be the most conservative of the colonies; it is just now
ranked as the most democratic. Not only by its founders, but for many
years afterwards, Irish were avowedly or tacitly excluded from the
immigrants sent to it. Now, however, at least one person in eight in
the Colony is of that race.
It would be easy to expand this list into an essay on the vanity
of human wishes. It would not be hard to add thereto a formidable
catalogue of serious mistakes made both in England and New Zealand by
those responsible for the Colony's affairs--mistakes, some of which,
at least, seem now to argue an almost inconceivable lack of knowledge
and foresight. So constantly have the anticipations of its officials
and settlers been reversed in the story of New Zealand that it becomes
none too easy to trace any thread of guiding wisdom or consistent
purpose therein. The broad result, however, has been a fine and
vigorous colony. Some will see in its record of early struggles,
difficulties and mistakes endured, paid for and surmounted, a signal
instance of the overruling care of Providence. To the cynic the tale
must be merely a minor portion of the "supreme ironic procession with
laughter of gods in the background." To the writer it seems, at least,
to give a very notable proof of the collective ability of a colonizing
race to overcome obstacles and repair blunders. The Colony of New
Zealand is not a monument of the genius of any one man or group of
men. It is the outcome of the vitality and industry of a people
obstinate but resourceful, selfish but honest, often ill-informed and
wrong, but with the saving virtue of an ability to learn from their
own mistakes.
From one standpoint the story of New Zealand ought not to take long to
tell. It stretches over less time than that of almost any land with
any pretensions to size, beauty, or interest. New Zealand was only
discovered by Europeans in the reign of our King Charles I., and even
then the Dutch explorer who sighted its lofty coasts did not set foot
upon them. The first European to step on to its shores did so only
when the great American colonies were beginning to fret at the ties
which bound them to England. The pioneers of New Zealand colonization,
the missionaries, whalers, and flax and timber traders, did not come
upon the scene until the years of Napoleon's decline and fall. Queen
Victoria had been on the throne for three years before the Colonial
Office was reluctantly compelled to add the Islands to an Empire which
the official mind regarded as already overgrown.
Yet so striking, varied, and attractive are the country's features, so
full of bustle, change and experiment have its few years been, that
lack of material is about the last complaint that need be made by a
writer on New Zealand. The list of books on the Colony is indeed so
long that its bibliography is a larger volume than this; and the chief
plea to be urged for this history must be its brevity--a quality none
too common in Colonial literature.
A New Zealander writing in London may be forgiven if he begins by
warning English readers not to expect in the aspect of New Zealand
either a replica of the British Islands or anything resembling
Australia. The long, narrow, mountainous islands upon which Abel
Jansen Tasman stumbled in December, 1642, are so far from being the
antipodes of Britain that they lie on an average twelve degrees nearer
the equator. Take Liverpool as a central city of the United Kingdom;
it lies nearly on the 53rd parallel of north latitude. Wellington, the
most central city of New Zealand, is not far from the 41st parallel of
southern latitude. True, New Zealand has no warm Gulf Stream to wash
her shores. But neither is she chilled by east winds blowing upon her
from the colder half of a continent. Neither her contour nor climate
is in the least Australian. It is not merely that twelve hundred miles
of ocean separate the flat, rounded, massive-looking continent from
the high, slender, irregular islands. The ocean is deep and stormy.
Until the nineteenth century there was absolutely no going to and
fro across it. Many plants are found in both countries, but they are
almost all small and not in any way conspicuous. Only one bird of
passage migrates across the intervening sea. The dominating trees of
Australia are myrtles (called eucalypts); those of New Zealand are
beeches (called birches), and various species of pines. The strange
marsupials, the snakes, the great running birds, the wild dogs
of Australia, have no counterpart in New Zealand. The climate
of Australia, south of Capricorn, is, except on the eastern and
south-eastern coast, as hot and dry as the South African. And the
Australian mountains, moderate in height and flattened, as a rule, at
the summit, remind one not a little of the table-topped elevations so
familiar to riders on the veldt and karroo. The western coast of New
Zealand is one of the rainiest parts of the Empire. Even the drier
east coast only now and then suffers from drought On the west coast
the thermometer seldom rises above 75° in the shade; on the other not
often above 90°. New Zealand, too, is a land of cliffs, ridges, peaks,
and cones. Some of the loftier volcanoes are still active, and the
vapour of their craters mounts skyward above white fields of eternal
snow. The whole length of the South Island is ridged by Alpine ranges,
which, though not quite equal in height to the giants of Switzerland,
do not lose by comparison with the finest of the Pyrenees.
No man with an eye for the beautiful or the novel would call Australia
either unlovely or dull. It is not, however, a land of sharp and
sudden contrasts: New Zealand is.
The Australian woods, too, are park-like: their trees, though
interesting, and by no means without charm, have a strong family
likeness. Their prevailing colours are yellow, brown, light green, and
grey. Light and heat penetrate them everywhere.
The cool, noiseless forests of New Zealand are deep jungles, giant
thickets, like those tropic labyrinths where traveller and hunter have
to cut their path through tangled bushes and interlacing creepers.
Their general hue is not light but dark green, relieved, it is true,
by soft fern fronds, light-tinted shrubs, and crimson or snow-white
flowers. Still the tone is somewhat sombre, and would be more
noticeably so but for the prevalent sunshine and the great variety of
species of trees and ferns growing side by side. The distinction of
the forest scenery may be summed up best in the words dignity and
luxuriance. The tall trees grow close together. For the most part
their leaves are small, but their close neighbourhood hinders this
from spoiling the effect. The eye wanders over swell after swell, and
into cavern after cavern of unbroken foliage. To the botanist who
enters them these silent, stately forests show such a wealth of
intricate, tangled life, that the delighted examiner hardly knows
which way to turn first.
[Illustration: A WESTERN ALPINE VALLEY
Photo by MORRIS, Dunedin.]
As a rule the lower part of the trunks is branchless; stems rise up
like tall pillars in long colonnades. But this does not mean that they
are bare. Climbing ferns, lichens, pendant grasses, air-plants, and
orchids drape the columns. Tough lianas swing in air: coiling roots
overspread the ground. Bushes, shrubs, reeds and ferns of every size
and height combine to make a woven thicket, filling up and even
choking the spaces between trunk and trunk. Supple, snaky vines writhe
amid the foliage, and bind the undergrowth together.
The forest trees are evergreens, and even in mid-winter are
fresh-looking. The glowing autumnal tints of English woods are never
theirs; yet they show every shade of green, from the light of the
puriri to the dark of the totara, from the bronze-hued willow-like
leaves of the tawa to the vivid green of the matai, or the soft
golden-green of the drooping rimu. Then, though the ground-flowers
cannot compare in number with those of England or Australia,[1]
the Islands are the chosen land of the fern, and are fortunate in
flowering creepers, shrubs, and trees. There are the koromiko bush
with white and purple blossoms, and the white convolvulus which covers
whole thickets with blooms, delicate as carved ivory, whiter than
milk. There are the starry clematis, cream-coloured or white, and the
manuka, with tiny but numberless flowers. The yellow kowhai, seen
on the hillsides, shows the russet tint of autumn at the height of
spring-time. Yet the king of the forest flowers is, perhaps, the
crimson, feathery rata. Is it a creeper, or is it a tree? Both
opinions are held; both are right. One species of the rata is an
ordinary climber; another springs sometimes from the ground, sometimes
from the fork of a tree into which the seed is blown or dropped.
Thence it throws out long rootlets, some to earth, others which wrap
round the trunk on which it is growing. Gradually this rata becomes a
tree itself, kills its supporter, and growing round the dead stick,
ends in almost hiding it from view.
[Footnote 1: The Alps, however, show much floral beauty, and the
ground-flowers of the Auckland Islands, an outlying group of New
Zealand islets, impressed the botanist Kirk as unsurpassed in the
South Temperate Zone.]
In the month of February, when the rata flowers in the Alps, there are
valleys which are ablaze for miles with
"Flowers that with one scarlet gleam
Cover a hundred leagues, and seem
To set the hills on fire."
But the most gorgeous of all flowering trees, as distinguished from
creepers, is the sea-loving pohutu kawa. When the wind is tossing its
branches the contrast is startling between its blood-red flowers and
the dark upper side and white, downy under side of its leaves.
Like the Australians, New Zealand Colonists call their forest "bush."
What in England might be called bush or brushwood is called "scrub" in
the Colonies.
The wood of many of the trees is not only useful timber, but when cut
and polished is often beautiful in grain. Unhappily, their destruction
goes on with rapid strides. The trees, as is usually the case with
those the wood of which is hard, grow slowly. They feel exposure to
wind, and seem to need the society and shelter of their fellows. It is
almost impossible to restore a New Zealand forest when once destroyed.
Then most of the finest trees are found on rich soil. The land is
wanted for grazing and cultivation. The settler comes with axe and
fire-stick, and in a few hours unsightly ashes and black funereal
stumps have replaced the noble woods which Nature took centuries
to grow. No attempt is made to use a great part of the timber. The
process is inevitable, and in great part needful, frightfully wasteful
as it seems. But the forest reserves of the Colony, large as they are,
should be made even more ample. Twelve hundred thousand acres are not
enough--as the New Zealanders will regretfully admit when a decade or
so hence they begin to import timber instead of exporting it. As for
interfering with reserves already made, any legislator who suggests
it should propose his motion with a noose round his neck, after the
laudable custom followed in a certain classic republic.
New Zealand is by no means a flat country, though there are in it some
fair-sized plains, one of which--that of Canterbury--is about as flat
a stretch of one hundred miles as is to be found in the world. On the
whole, however, both North and South Islands are lands of the mountain
and the flood, and not only in this, but in the contour of some of
their peaks and coast-line, show more than a fanciful resemblance to
the west of Scotland. But the New Zealand mountains are far loftier
than anything in the British Islands. The rocky coasts as a rule rise
up steeply from the ocean, standing out in many places in bold bluffs
and high precipices. The seas round are not shallow, dull, or turbid,
but deep, blue, wind-stirred, foam-flecked, and more often than not
lit by brilliant sunshine. The climate and colouring, too, are not
only essentially un-English, but differ very widely in different parts
of the Islands. For New Zealand, though narrow, has length, stretching
through 13 degrees of latitude, and for something like 1,100 miles
from north to south. As might be looked for in a mountainous country,
lying in the open ocean, the climate is windy, and except in two or
three districts, moist. It is gloriously healthy and briskly cheerful.
Summed up in one word, its prevailing characteristic is light!
Hot as are many summer days, they are seldom sultry enough to breed
the heavy, overhanging heat-haze which shrouds the heaven nearer the
tropics. Sharp as are the frosts of winter nights in the central and
southern part of the South Island, the days even in mid-winter
are often radiant, giving seven or eight hours of clear, pleasant
sunshine. For the most part the rains are heavy but not prolonged;
they come in a steady, business-like downpour, or in sharp, angry
squalls; suddenly the rain ceases, the clouds break, and the sun is
shining from a blue sky. Fogs and mists are not unknown, but are rare
and passing visitors, do not come to stay, and are not brown and
yellow in hue but more the colour of a clean fleece of wool. They
do not taste of cold smoke, gas, sulphur, or mud. High lying and
ocean-girt, the long, slender islands are lands of sunshine and the
sea. It is not merely that their coast-line measures 4,300 miles, but
that they are so shaped and so elevated that from innumerable hilltops
and mountain summits distant glimpses may be caught of the blue salt
water. From the peak of Aorangi, 12,350 feet in air, the Alpine
climber Mannering saw not only the mantle of clouds which at that
moment covered the western sea twenty miles away, but a streak of blue
ocean seventy miles off near Hokitika to the north-west, and by the
hills of Bank's Peninsula to the north-east, a haze which indicated
the Eastern Ocean. Thus, from her highest peak, he looked right across
New Zealand. The Dutch, then, its discoverers, were not so wrong in
naming it Zealand or Sea-land.
Next to light, perhaps the chief characteristic of the country and its
climate is variety. Thanks to its great length the north differs much
from the south. Southland is as cool as northern France, with an
occasional southerly wind as keen as Kingsley's wild north-easter. But
in gardens to the north of Auckland I have stood under olive trees
laden with berries. Hard by were orange trees, figs, and lemon trees
in full bearing. Not far off a winding tidal creek was fringed with
mangroves. Exotic palm trees and the cane-brake will grow there
easily. All over the North Island, except at high altitudes, and in
the more sheltered portions of the South Island, camellias and azaleas
bloom in the open air. The grape vine bids fair to lead to wine-making
in both islands--unless the total abstainers grow strong enough to put
their foot on the manufacture of alcohol in any form in an already
distinctly and increasingly sober Colony.
But in New Zealand not only is the north in marked contrast with the
south, but the contrast between the east and west is even more sharply
defined. As a rule the two coasts are divided by a broad belt of
mountainous country. The words "chain" and "spine" are misnomers, at
any rate in the South Island, inasmuch as they are not sufficiently
expressive of breadth. The rain-bringing winds in New Zealand blow
chiefly from the north-west and south-west. The moisture-laden clouds
rolling up from the ocean gather and condense against the western
flanks of the mountains, where an abundant rainfall has nourished
through ages past an unbroken and evergreen forest. Nothing could well
be more utterly different than these matted jungles of the wet west
coast--with their prevailing tint of rich dark green, their narrow,
rank, moist valleys and steep mountain sides--and the eastern scenery
of the South Island. The sounds or fiords of the south-west are
perhaps the loveliest series of gulfs in the world. Inlet succeeds
inlet, deep, calm, and winding far in amongst the steep and towering
mountains. The lower slopes of these are clothed with a thick tangle
of forest, where foliage is kept eternally fresh and vivid by rain and
mist. White torrents and waterfalls everywhere seam the verdure and
break the stillness.
Cross to the east coast.
Scarcely is the watershed passed when the traveller begins to enter a
new landscape and a distinct climate. The mountains, stripped of their
robe of forest, seem piled in ruined, wasting heaps, or stand out
bleak and bare-ribbed,
"The skeletons of Alps whose death began
Far in the multitudinous centuries."
Little is left them but a kind of dreary grandeur. The sunshine falls
on patches of gleaming snow and trailing mist, and lights up the grey
crags which start out like mushrooms on the barren slopes. On all
sides streams tear down over beds of the loose shingle, of which they
carry away thousands of tons winter after winter. Their brawling is
perhaps the only sound you will hear through slow-footed afternoons,
save, always, the whistle or sighing of the persistent wind. A stunted
beech bush clothes the spurs here and there, growing short and thick
as a fleece of dark wool. After a storm the snow will lie powdering
the green beech trees, making the rocks gleam frostily and sharpening
the savage ridges till they look like the jagged edges of stone axes.
Only at nightfall in summer do the mountains take a softer aspect.
Then in the evening stillness the great outlines show majesty; then
in the silence after sunset rivers, winding among the ranges in many
branches over broad, stony beds, fill the shadowy valleys with their
hoarse murmur.
To the flock-owner, however, this severe region is what the beautiful
West is not--it is useful. Sheep can find pasture there. And as the
mountains decline into hills, and the hills into downs and flats, the
covering of herbage becomes less and less scanty. When the colonists
came to the east coast, they found plains and dales which were open,
grassy, almost treeless. Easy of access, and for the most part
fertile, they were an ideal country for that unaesthetic person,
the practical settler. Flocks and herds might roam amongst the pale
tussock grass of the slopes and bottoms without fear either of man,
beast, climate, or poisonous plant.[1] A few wooden buildings and
a certain extent of wire fencing represented most of the initial
expenses of the pioneer. Pastoral settlement speedily overran such a
land, followed more slowly and partially by agriculture. The settler
came, not with axe and fire to ravage and deform, but as builder,
planter and gardener. Being in nineteen cases out of twenty a Briton,
or a child of one, he set to work to fill this void land with
everything British which he could transport or transplant His gardens
were filled with the flowers, the vegetables, the fruit trees of the
old land. The oak, the elm, the willow, the poplar, the spruce, the
ash grew in his plantations. His cattle were Shorthorns, Herefords,
and Devons. His farm horses were of the best Clydesdale and Suffolk
Punch blood. The grasses they fed upon were mixtures of cocks-foot,
timothy, rye-grass, and white clover. When it was found that the red
clover would not flourish for want of penetrating insects, the humble
bee was imported, and with compete success, as many a field now ruddy
with crimson blossom testifies. The common English bee is found
wild in the forest, where it hives in hollow trees, and robs its
competitors--the honey-eating native birds--of much of their food.
The hedges round the fields aforesaid are also English, but with a
difference. The stunted furze which beautifies English commons is at
the other end of the earth a hedge plant, which makes a thick barrier
from five to eight feet high, and, with its sweet-smelling blooms, has
made the New Zealand fields "green pictures set in frames of gold."
The very birds which rise from the clover or wheat, and nest in
the trees or hedgerows of furze or quickset, are for the most part
English--the skylark, the blackbird, finches, green and gold,
thrushes, starlings, and that eternal impudent vagabond the
house-sparrow. Heavy is the toll taken by the sparrow from the
oat-crops of his new home; his thievish nature grows blacker there,
though his plumage often turns partly white. He learns to hawk for
moths and other flying insects. Near Christchurch rooks caw in the
windy skies. Trout give excellent sport in a hundred streams, though
in the lakes they grow too gross to take the fly. Many attempts have
so far failed to acclimatise the salmon. The ova may be hatched out
successfully, but the fish when turned out into the rivers disappears.
The golden carp, however, the perch, and the rainbow trout take
readily to New Zealand. The hare increases in size and weight, and has
three and four leverets at a birth. The pheasant has spread from
end to end of the Colony. The house-fly drives back the loathsome
flesh-fly or blue-bottle, to the salvation of blankets and fresh meat.
The Briton of the south has indeed taken with him all that he could of
the old country.
[Footnote 1: The _tutu_, a danger to inexperienced sheep and cattle,
was not eaten by horses. The berries were poisonous enough to kill an
imported elephant on one occasion. Would that they had done as much
for the rabbit!]
He has also brought a few things which he wishes he had left behind.
The Hessian fly, the wire-worm, the flea, and grubs and scale insects
thrive mischievously. The black and grey rats have driven the native
rat into the recesses of the forest. A score of weeds have come, mixed
with badly-screened grass-seed, or in any of a hundred other ways. The
Scotch thistle seemed likely at one stage to usurp the whole grass
country. Acts of Parliament failed to keep it down. Nature, more
effectual, causes it to die down after running riot for a few years.
The watercress, too, threatened at one time to choke half the streams.
The sweetbriar, taking kindly to both soil and climate, not only grows
tall enough to arch over the head of a man on horseback, but covers
whole hillsides, to the ruin of pasture. Introduced, innocently
enough, by the missionaries, it goes by their name in some districts.
Rust, mildew, and other blights, have been imported along with plant
and seed. The rabbit, multiplying in millions, became a very terror
to the sheep farmers, is even yet the subject of anxious care and
inspection, and only slowly yields to fencing, poison, traps, dogs,
guns, stoats, weasels, ferrets, cats, and a host of instruments of
destruction. In poisoning the rabbit the stock-owners have well-nigh
swept the native birds from wide stretches of country. The weka, or
wood-hen, with rudimentary wings like tufts of brown feathers, whose
odd, inquisitive ways introduce it so constantly to the shepherd
and bushman, at first preyed upon the young rabbits and throve. Now
ferrets and phosphorus are exterminating it in the rabbit-infested
districts. Moreover, just as Vortigern had reason to regret that he
had called in the Saxon to drive out the Picts and Scots, so the
New Zealanders have already found the stoat and weasel but dubious
blessings. They have been a veritable Hengist and Horsa to more than
one poultry farmer and owner of lambs. In addition they do their full
share of the evil work of bird extermination, wherein they have active
allies in the rats and wild cats. On the whole, however, though
acclimatization has given the Colony one or two plagues and some minor
nuisances, it would be ridiculous to pretend that these for a moment
weigh in the scale against its good works. Most of the vegetable
pests, though they may flourish abnormally for a few years in the
virgin soil, soon become less vigorous. With the growth of population
even the rabbit ceases to be a serious evil, except to a few
half-empty tracts. The truth is that outside her forests and swamps
New Zealand showed the most completely unoccupied soil of any fertile
and temperate land on the globe. It seems possible that until about
five or six hundred years ago she had no human inhabitants whatever.
Her lakes and rivers had but few fish, her birds were not specially
numerous, her grasses were not to be compared in their nourishing
qualities with the English. Of animals there were virtually none.
Even the rat before mentioned, and the now extinct dog of the Maori
villages, were Maori importations from Polynesia not many centuries
ago.
Not only, therefore, have English forms of life been of necessity
drawn upon to fill the void spaces, but other countries have furnished
their quota. The dark eucalypt of Tasmania, with its heavy-hanging,
languid leaves, is the commonest of exotic trees. The artificial
stiffness and regularity of the Norfolk Island pine, and the
sweet-smelling golden blooms of the Australian wattle, are sights
almost as familiar in New Zealand as in their native lands. The sombre
pines of California and the macro carpa cypress cover thousands
of acres. The merino sheep brought from Spain, _viâ_ Saxony and
Australia, is the basis of the flocks. The black swan and magpie
represent the birds of New Holland. The Indian minah, after becoming
common, is said to be retreating before the English starling. The
first red deer came from Germany. And side by side with these
strangers and with the trees and plants which colonists call
specifically "English"--for the word "British" is almost unknown in
the Colony--the native flora is beginning to be cultivated in
gardens and grounds. Neglected by the first generation, it is better
appreciated by their children--themselves natives of the soil.
In the north and warmer island the traveller also meets sharp
contrasts. These, however, except in the provinces of Wellington and
Napier, where the Tararua-Ruahiné spine plays to some extent the part
taken by the Alps in the South Island, are not so much between east
and west as between the coasts and the central plateau. For the most
part, all the coasts, except the south-east, are, or have been,
forest-clad. Nearly everywhere they are green, hilly and abundantly
watered; windy, but not plagued with extremes of cold and heat. Frost
touches them but for a short time in mid-winter.
[Illustration: THE WHITE TERRACE, ROTOMAHANA]
The extreme south and north of the North Island could hardly, by any
stretch of imagination, be called rich and fertile. But the island
demonstrates the "falsehood of extremes," for between them is found
some of the finest and pleasantest land in the southern hemisphere.
Nearly all of this, however, lies within fifty miles of one or other
coast. When you have left these tracts, and have risen a thousand feet
or so, you come to a volcanic plateau, clad for the most part in dark
green and rusty bracken or tussocks of faded yellow. Right in the
centre rise the great volcanoes, Ruapehu, Tongariro and Tarawera,
majestic in their outlines, fascinating because of the restless fires
within and the outbreaks which have been and will again take place.
Scattered about this plateau are lakes of every shape and size,
from Taupo--called Te Moana (the sea) by the Maoris--to the tiniest
lakelets and ponds. Here are found pools and springs of every degree
of heat. Some are boiling cauldrons into which the unwary fall now and
again to meet a death terrible, yet--if the dying words of some of
them may be believed--not always agonizing, so completely does the
shock of contact with the boiling water kill the nervous system. Many
pools are the colour of black broth. Foul with mud and sulphur, they
seethe and splutter in their dark pits, sending up clouds of steam and
sulphurous fumes. Others are of the clearest green or deepest, purest
blue, through which thousands of silver bubbles shoot up to the
surface, flash, and vanish. But the main use of the hot
springs is found in their combination of certain chemical
properties,--sulphur-acid, sulphur-alkaline. Nowhere in the world,
probably, are found healing waters at once so powerful and so various
in their uses. Generations ago the Maori tribes knew something of
their effects. Now invalids come from far and near in hundreds and
thousands, and when the distractions and appliances of the sanitary
stations equal those of the European spas they will come in tens
of thousands, for the plateau is not only a health-resort but
a wonderland. Its geysers rank with those of Iceland and the
Yellowstone. Seen in the clear sunny air, these columns of water and
white foam, mounting, swaying, blown by the wind into silver spray,
and with attendant rainbows glittering in the light, are sights which
silence even the chattering tourist for a while. Solfataras, mud
volcanoes and fumaroles are counted in hundreds in the volcanic zone.
If there were not such curiosities, still the beauty of the mountains,
lakes, streams and patches of forest would, with the bright
invigorating air, make the holiday-maker seek them in numbers. Through
the middle of this curious region runs the Waikato, the longest and on
the whole most tranquil and useful of that excitable race the rivers
of New Zealand. Even the Waikato has its adventures. In one spot it is
suddenly compressed to a sixth of its breadth, and, boiling between
walls of rock, leaps in one mass of blue water and white foam into a
deep, tree-fringed pool below. This is the Huka Waterfall. It is but
one of the many striking falls to be met with in the Islands.
New Zealand is a land of streams of every size and kind, and almost
all these streams and rivers have three qualities in common--they are
cold, swift, and clear. Cold and swift they must be as they descend
quickly to the sea from heights more or less great. Clear they all
are, except immediately after rain, or when the larger rivers are in
flood. In flood-time most of them become raging torrents. Many were
the horses and riders swept away to hopeless death as they stumbled
over the hidden stony beds of turbid mountain crossings in the
pioneering days before bridges were. Many a foot-man--gold-seeker or
labourer wandering in search of work--disappeared thus, unseen and
unrecorded. Heavy were the losses in sheep and cattle, costly and
infuriating the delays, caused by flooded rivers. Few are the old
colonists who have not known what it is to wait through wet and weary
hours, it might be days, gloomily smoking, grumbling and watching
for some flood to abate and some ford to become passable. Even yet,
despite millions spent on public works, such troubles are not unknown.
It is difficult, perhaps, for those living in the cool and abundantly
watered British Islands to sympathise with dwellers in hotter
climates, or to understand what a blessing and beauty these continual
and never-failing watercourses of New Zealand seem to visitors from
sultrier and drier lands. The sun is quite strong enough to make men
thankful for this gift of abundant water, and to make the running
ripple of some little forest rivulet, heard long before it is seen
through the green thickets, as musical to the ears of the tired rider
as the note of the bell-bird itself. Even pleasanter are the sound and
glitter of water under the summer sunshine to the wayfarer in the open
grassy plains or valleys of the east coast. As for the number of the
streams--who shall count them? Between the mouths of the Mokau and
Patea rivers--a distance which cannot be much more than one hundred
miles of coast--no less than eighty-five streams empty themselves into
the Tasman Sea, of which some sixty have their source on the slopes
or in the chasms of Mount Egmont. Quite as many more flow down from
Egmont on the inland side, and do not reach the sea separately, but
are tributaries of two or three larger rivers.
It is true that travellers may come to the Islands and leave them with
no notion of a New Zealand river, except a raging mountain torrent,
hostile to man and beast. Or they may be jolted over this same torrent
when, shrunk and dwindled in summer heat to a mere glittering thread,
it meanders lost and bewildered about a glaring bed of hot stones. But
then railways and ordinary lines of communication are chiefly along
the coasts. The unadventurous or hurried traveller sticks pretty
closely to these. It happens that the rivers, almost without
exception, show plainer features as they near the sea.
He who wishes to see their best must go inland and find them as they
are still to be found in the North Island, winding through untouched
valleys, under softly-draped cliffs, or shadowed by forests not yet
marred by man. Or, in the South Island, they should be watched in the
Alps as, milky or green-tinted, their ice-cold currents race through
the gorges.
[Illustration: ON A RIVER--"PAPA" COUNTRY
Photo by A. MARTIN, Wanganui.]
Of forest rivers, the Wanganui is the longest and most famous, perhaps
the most beautiful. Near the sea it is simply a broad river, traversed
by boats and small steamers, and with grassy banks dotted with weeping
willows or clothed with flax and the palm-lily. But as you ascend it
the hills close in. Their sides become tall cliffs, whose feet the
water washes. From the tops of these precipices the forest, growing
denser and richer at every turn, rises on the flanks of the hills. In
places the cliffs are so steep and impracticable that the Maoris use
ladders for descending on their villages above to their canoes in the
rivers below. Lovely indeed are these cliffs; first, because of the
profusion of fern frond, leaf, and moss, growing from everything that
can climb to, lay hold of, or root itself in crack, crevice, or ledge,
and droop, glistening with spray-drops, or wave whispering in the
wind; next, because of the striking form and colour of the cliffs
themselves. They are formed of what is called "Papa." This is a
blue, calcareous clay often found with limestone, which it somewhat
resembles. The Maori word "papa" is applied to any broad, smooth,
flattish surface, as a door, or to a slab of rock. The smooth,
slab-like, papa cliffs are often curiously marked--tongued and
grooved, as with a gouge, channelled and fluted. Sometimes horizontal
lines seem to divide them into strata. Again, the lines may be winding
and spiral, so that on looking at certain cliffs it might be thought
possible that the Maoris had got from them some of their curious
tattoo patterns. Though pale and delicate, the tints of the rock are
not their least beauty. Grey, yellow, brown, fawn, terra-cotta, even
pale orange are to be noted. No photograph can give the charm of
the drapery that clothes these cliffs. Photographs give no light or
colour, and New Zealand scenery without light and colour is Hamlet
with Hamlet left out. How could a photograph even hint at the dark,
glossy green of the glistening karaka leaves, the feathery, waving
foliage of the lace bark, or the white and purple bloom of the
koromiko? How could black-and-white suggest the play of shade and
shine when, between flying clouds, the glint of sunlight falls upon
the sword-bayonet blades of the flax, and the golden, tossing plumes
of the toe-toe, the New Zealand cousin of the Pampas grass? Add to
this, that more often than the passenger can count as he goes along
the river, either some little rill comes dripping over the cliff,
scattering the sparkling drops on moss and foliage, or the cliffs are
cleft and, as from a rent in the earth, some tributary stream gushes
out of a dark, leafy tunnel of branches. Sometimes, too, the cliffs
are not cleft, but the stream rushes from their summit, a white
waterfall veiling the mossy rocks. Then there are the birds. In
mid-air is to be seen the little fan-tail, aptly named, zig-zagging
to and fro. The dark blue tui, called parson bird, from certain
throat-feathers like white bands, will sing with a note that
out-rivals any blackbird. The kuku, or wild pigeon, will show his
purple, copper-coloured, white and green plumage as he sails slowly
by, with that easy, confiding flight that makes him the cheap victim
of the tyro sportsman. The grey duck, less easy to approach, rises
noisily before boat or canoe comes within gunshot. The olive and
brown, hoarse-voiced ka-ka, a large, wild parrot, and green,
crimson-headed parakeets, may swell the list. Such is a "papa" river!
and there are many such.
Features for which the traveller in New Zealand should be prepared are
the far-reaching prospects over which the eye can travel, the sight
and sound of rapid water, and the glimpses of snow high overhead, or
far off--glimpses to be caught in almost every landscape in the South
Island and in many of the most beautiful of the North. Through the
sunny, lucid atmosphere it is no uncommon thing to see mountain peaks
sixty and eighty miles away diminished in size by distance, but with
their outlines clearly cut. From great heights you may see much longer
distances, especially on very early mornings of still midsummer days.
Then, before the air is heated or troubled or tainted, but when night
seems to have cooled and purged it from all impurity, far-off ridges
and summits stand out clean, sharp and vivid. On such mornings, though
standing low down by the sea-shore, I have seen the hills of Bank's
Peninsula between sixty and seventy miles off, albeit they are not
great mountains. Often did they seem to rise purple-coloured from the
sea, wearing "the likeness of a clump of peaked isles," as Shelley
says of the Euganean hills seen from Venice. On such a morning from
a hill looking northward over league after league of rolling virgin
forest I have seen the great volcano, Mount Ruapehu, rear up his 9,000
feet, seeming a solitary mass, the upper part distinctly seen, blue
and snow-capped, the lower bathed and half-lost in a pearl-coloured
haze. Most impressive of all is it to catch sight, through a cleft
in the forest, of the peak of Mount Egmont, and of the flanks of the
almost perfect cone curving upward from the sea-shore for 8,300 feet.
The sentinel volcano stands alone. Sunrise is the moment to see him
when his summit, sheeted with snow, is tinged with the crimson of
morning and touched by clouds streaming past in the wind. Lucky is the
eye that thus beholds Egmont, for he is a cloud-gatherer who does not
show his face every day or to every gazer. Almost as fine a spectacle
is the sight of the "Kaikouras," or "Lookers-on." When seen from the
deck of a coasting steamer they seem almost to hang over the sea
heaving more than 8,000 feet below their summits. Strangely beautiful
are these mighty ridges when the moonlight bathes them and turns the
sea beneath to silver. But more, beautiful are they still in the calm
and glow of early morning, white down to the waist, brown to the feet
with the sunshine full on their faces, the blue sky overhead, and the
bluer sea below.
If the Southern Alps surpass the Kaikouras in beauty it is because of
the contrast they show on their western flanks, between gaunt grandeur
aloft, and the softest luxuriance below. The forest climbs to the snow
line, while the snow line descends as if to meet it. So abrupt is the
descent that the transition is like the change in a theatre-scene.
Especially striking is the transformation in the passage over the
fine pass which leads through the dividing range between pastoral
Canterbury and Westland. At the top of Arthur's Pass you are among the
high Alps. The road winds over huge boulders covered with lichen,
or half hidden by koromiko, ferns, green moss, and stunted beeches,
grey-bearded and wind-beaten. Here and there among the stones are
spread the large, smooth, oval leaves and white gold-bearing cups of
the shepherd's lily. The glaciers, snowfields, and cliffs of Mount
Rolleston lie on the left. Everything drips with icy water. Suddenly
the saddle is passed and the road plunges down into a deep gulf. It is
the Otira Gorge. Nothing elsewhere is very like it. The coach zig-zags
down at a gentle pace, like a great bird slowly wheeling downwards to
settle on the earth. In a few minutes it passes from an Alpine desert
to the richness of the tropics. At the bottom of the gorge is the
river foaming among scarlet boulders--scarlet because of the lichen
which coats them. On either side rise slopes which are sometimes
almost, sometimes altogether precipices, covered, every inch of them,
with thick vegetation. High above these tower the bare crags and peaks
which, as the eye gazes upwards, seem to bend inwards, as though a
single shock of earthquake would make them meet and entomb the gorge
beneath. In autumn the steeps are gay with crimson cushion-like masses
of rata flowers, or the white blooms of the ribbon-wood and koromiko.
Again and again waterfalls break through their leafy coverts; one
falls on the road itself and sprinkles passengers with its spray. In
the throat of the gorge the coach rattles over two bridges thrown from
cliff to cliff over the pale-green torrent.
In an hour comes the stage where lofty trees succeed giant mountains.
As the first grow higher the second diminish. This is the land of
ferns and mosses. The air feels soft, slightly damp, and smells
of moist leaves. It is as different to the sharp dry air of the
Canterbury ranges as velvet is to canvas; it soothes, and in hot
weather relaxes. The black birch with dark trunk, spreading branches,
and light leaves, is now mingled with the queenly rimu, and the stiff,
small-leaved, formal white pine. Winding and hanging plants festoon
everything, and everything is bearded with long streamers of moss,
not grey but rich green and golden. Always some river rushes along in
sight or fills the ear with its noise. Tree ferns begin to appear and
grow taller and taller as the coach descends towards the sea, where in
the evening the long journey ends.
On the western coast glaciers come down to within 700 feet of the
sea-level. Even on the east side the snow is some 2,000 feet lower
than in Switzerland. This means that the climber can easily reach the
realm where life is not, where ice and snow, rock and water reign, and
man feels his littleness.
Though Aorangi has been ascended to the topmost of its 12,349 feet,
still in the Southern Alps the peaks are many which are yet unsealed,
and the valleys many which are virtually untrodden. Exploring parties
still go out and find new lakes, new passes, and new waterfalls. It
is but a few years since the Sutherland Falls, 2,000 feet high, were
first revealed to civilized man, nor was there ever a region better
worth searching than the Southern Alps. Every freshly-found nook and
corner adds beauties and interests. Falls, glaciers and lakes are on a
grand scale. The Tasman glacier is eighteen miles long and more than
two miles across at the widest point; the Murchison glacier is more
than ten miles long; the Godley eight. The Hochstetter Fall is a
curtain of broken, uneven, fantastic ice coming down 4,000 feet on to
the Tasman glacier. It is a great spectacle, seen amid the stillness
of the high Alps, broken only by the occasional boom and crash of a
falling pinnacle of ice.
Of the many mountain lakes Te Anau is the largest, Manapouri the
loveliest. Wakatipu is fifty-four miles long, and though its surface
is 1,000 feet above the sea-level, its profound depth sinks below it.
On the sea side of the mountains the fiords rival the lakes in depth.
Milford Sound is 1,100 feet deep near its innermost end.
But enough of the scenery of the Colony. This is to be a story, not a
sketch-book. Enough that the drama of New Zealand's history, now in
the second act, has been placed on one of the most remarkable and
favourable stages in the globe. Much--too much--of its wild and
singular beauty must be ruined in the process of settlement. But very
much is indestructible. The colonists are also awakening to the truth
that mere Vandalism is as stupid as it is brutal. Societies are being
established for the preservation of scenery. The Government has
undertaken to protect the more famous spots. Within recent years three
islands lying off different parts of the coast have been reserved as
asylums for native birds. Two years ago, too, the wild and virgin
mountains of the Urewera tribe were by Act of Parliament made
inalienable, so that, so long as the tribe lasts, their ferns, their
birds and their trees shall not vanish from the earth.