THE APHELION OF BRITAIN
1
There are no holy places in New Zealand, none of the worn and curious
trappings of forgotten civilizations to search out and to revere. There
are no signposts which lead the wanderer along, despite himself, in
search of sacred spots; no names which make life worth while. Whom shall
he try to see? Is there a Romain Rolland or a Shaw, or an Emerson to
whom he could bow in that reverence which invites the soul rather than
bends the knee?
There are only boiling fountains and snow-packed ranges and wild-waste
places to which neither man nor beast go willingly. Yet an unknown urge
pushes one on, that urge which from time immemorial has impelled saint
in search of salvation, and age in search of youth, as well as youth in
search of adventure, to the most inaccessible reaches of the world. All
of us bring back accounts of what we've seen, but which of us can answer
why we went?
First impressions in older countries are generally confusing. Ages of
accumulations pile up, covered with the dust of centuries which has gone
through innumerable processes of sifting. But the stranger in the
Antipodes is plunged into a bath of youth. Every aspect of the country
is young. The volcanoes are mostly extinct, but about them lurks the
warmth of the camp fire just died down. In mountain, bush, and plain
something of the childhood of Mother Earth is still felt; at most, an
adolescence, rich in possibilities. One almost feels that the very
rivers are only the remnants of the receding floods after the rising of
the land from beneath the sea. There is nothing old anywhere. Instead of
being disappointed at the apparent paucity of man-made products, one is
greatly surprised that so little and young a country should have so
much. There is room, much room, ample acres which lie fallow, the winds
of opportunity blowing over them, wild with abandon.
New Zealand, as I said, was a kind of resting-place. It was the point
where the lines of interest in the native peoples of the Pacific, and
those of the efforts of the white men, intersected, just as later I was
to find a point of intersection between the white men and the Orientals
at Hongkong. For here the new social life of the South Pacific, and the
remnants of the old races of the Pacific equally divide the attention.
I had some little difficulty locating Auckland from the steamer, so many
suburbs littered the forty miles of irregular bluff which surrounds the
harbor. The homes upon the hills seemed reserved and unambitious. There
were no streams of smoke from factory and mill. One felt, at the moment
of arrival, that were it morning, noon, or night, whatever the season,
Auckland would still be the same, and New Zealand would continue to be
proud of the resemblance the youngest of its cities has for its parent.
All seemed quiet, restful and inactive.
If all these were inactive, not so the human elements. Their rumblings
on localisms were to be heard even before we landed. As a new-comer, I
was made aware of Wellington, the capital, and its winds; of the city of
Christchurch and its plains; of prides and jealousies which provincial
patriots acclaimed in good-natured playfulness. Dunedin's raininess was
said to have been a special providence for the benefit of the Scotch who
have isolated themselves there. The wonders of this place and the beauty
of that broke through the mists of my imagination like tiny star-holes
through the night.
2
I had returned to civilization, and though all my instincts settled into
an assurance which was comforting, a feeling that dengue fever was no
more, that damp and moldy beds and smell of copra would not again be
mingled with my food and slumber, still, I knew I was not a part of it.
Almost immediately my mind began moving spiral-like, outward and upward,
to escape. I was to do it all in a month. I was to see Auckland, with
its neighbor, Mt. Eden, an extinct volcano; I was to visit the other
large cities,--vaguely their existence was becoming real to me,--I was
to penetrate at least some of New Zealand's dangerous bush, to see the
primitive-civilized lives of the native Maories. But, strange to say,
return to civilization had the identical effect on me that return to
primitive life is said to have on the white man. It entered my being in
the form of indolence. I did not want to move. I wanted to rest. To stay
a while in that place, to make myself part of the life of the city, to
remain fixed, became a burning desire with me. And days went by without
my being able to stir myself on again.
The life in the Dominion was conducive to ease and dreaming. Nobody
seemed in any hurry about anything, least of all about taking you in.
Every one went upon a way long worn down by the tread of familiar feet.
The conflicts of pioneer aggressiveness were over. The differences
between the aboriginal and the foreign elements were lost in the
overpowering crowding in of the alien. The stone and wooden structures,
the railways and the piers, the homes wandering along over the hills as
far as the eye could see, completely concealed that which originally was
New Zealand.
I spent one month wandering up and down Auckland's one main street, and
I can assure you it was like no other main street in the world, except
those of every other city in New Zealand. There were the carts and the
cars by day, and the clearing of the pavement of every vehicle for
pedestrian parades by night. There were the carnivals and the fêtes on
Queens Street, and on every other royal highway during the summer
months; and during the two hours which New Zealanders require for lunch,
there was nothing to be done but to lunch too. And then on Sunday nights
there was the confusion of cults and isms each with its panacea for
spiritual and social ills. Nobody was expected to do anything but go to
church; hence the street cars didn't run during church hours, and the
bathing-places were closed. And after ten o'clock it was as impossible
to get a cup of tea outside one's own home as it is to get whisky in an
open saloon in New York to-day.
On the _Niagara_ I had been assured by a young lady from New Zealand
that we Americans didn't know what home life was and that she would show
me the genuine thing when I got to her little country. She did, and I
have been most grateful to her for it. It was sober and clean and quiet,
and I accepted with great satisfaction every invitation offered me,
because it was a thousand times better than being alone on the deserted
streets. But the good Lord was wise when He made provision for one
Sunday a week, as His human creation could hardly endure it more
frequently; and that is what one might say of New Zealand home life. It
is all that is good and wholesome, all that is necessary for the rearing
of unobstreperous young, but red blood should not be made to run like
syrup, though I quite agree with my New Zealand friend that it should
not be kept at the boiling-point, either. Our evenings were usually
spent in quiet chatting on safe generalities interspersed with home
songs and nice cocoa; and at ten o'clock we would separate. I hope that
my New Zealand friends will not feel hurt at what I say. Let them put it
down to my wild-Americanism. But home life on a Sunday evening was not
worth going all the way diagonally across the Pacific to taste.
Hence, a month in Auckland was quite enough for me. By that time the
call of the mountains and lakes had come to me, and in natural beauty
New Zealand can rival any other country of its size I have ever been to,
except Japan. In answering that call I accepted the swagger's account of
how life should be lived and took to the open road. In the year that
followed I filled my memory with treasures that cannot be classified in
any summary. From Auckland in the North Island to Dunedin in the South
Island I journeyed on foot through three long months, zigzagging my way
virtually from coast to coast, dreaming away night after night along the
great Waikato River, holding taut my soul in the face of the mysteries
of the hot-springs districts, and quenching feverish experiences upon
the shores of placid cold lakes and beneath snow-covered peaks of
mountain ranges thirteen thousand feet high; gripping my reason during
long night tramps in the uninhabited bush (forests) or in Desolation
Gully, forty miles from nowhere. I know what wild life in New Zealand
is, as well as tame. It is not all that it used to be when men left
their home lands for that new start in life which Heaven knows every man
is entitled to, considering what our notions of childhood are and the
eagerness of man to pounce upon any one who has not reached
insurmountable success.
[Illustration: DUNEDIN, NEW ZEALAND
From the belt of wild wood that girdles the city]
[Illustration: BRIDGES ARE STILL LUXURIES IN MANY PLACES IN NEW
ZEALAND]
[Illustration: THE FIORDS AND SOUNDS OF NEW ZEALAND
The pride of the Dominion
Post Card. J. B. Series No. 205]
[Illustration: LAKE WANAKA, NEW ZEALAND]
In between I saw the courageous struggles these selfsame men have gone
through and are still enduring in order to make of the whole of New
Zealand what it is as yet only in parts. Those parts are rich farm
lands, with swiftly scouting motor-cars used by great capitalist-farmers
who have more than one station to look after. It is a strange phenomenon
of New Zealand life that the small farm towns are generally much more
alert and progressive than the big cities. The New Zealanders build
houses that look like transplanted suburbs from around New York, and
bring to their villages some of the love of plant life that the
city-dweller is soon too sophisticated to share. They draw out to
themselves the moving-picture theaters, which are now the all-possessing
rage in the Dominion as elsewhere, and read the latest periodicals with
the interest of the townsman. There are over a thousand newspapers in
the Dominion, which for a population of a million is a goodly number,
though one cannot regard this as too great an indication of the
intellectual advancement of the people. Yet literacy is the possession
of the farmer as much as and frequently more than the city-dweller in
New Zealand. His children go to school even if they have to use the
trains to get there; free railway passes on these are accorded by the
Government. And on the whole the farmer's life in New Zealand is richer
than that of most rural communities. But the struggle is still great. I
have seen some who do not feel that the promise is worth it.
Though each of the big cities in the Dominion has its own special
characteristics, they are all considerably alike. The three chief ones
are all port cities of about 80,000 inhabitants each, and except for the
fact that Dunedin in the far south is essentially Scotch and somewhat
more stolid than the rest, and Wellington in the center is the capital
of the Dominion and therefore suspicious, one may go up and down their
steep hills without any change in one's social gears. The colonial
atmosphere is at once charming and chilling. There is a certain sobriety
throughout which makes up for lack of the luxuries of modern life. But
one cannot escape the conviction that regularity is not all that man
needs. Everything moves along at the pace of a river at low
level,--broad, spacious, serene, but without hidden places to explore or
sparkling peaks of human achievement to emulate. One paddles down the
stream of New Zealand life without the prospect of thrills. One might
be transported from Auckland in the north to Wellington or Dunedin in
the south during sleep, and after waking set about one's tasks without
realizing that a change had been made.
Every city is well lighted; good trams (trolley-cars) convey one in all
directions, but at an excessively high fare; the water and sewerage
systems are never complained of; the theaters are good and the shops
full of things from England and America. There are even many fine
motor-cars. But there are few signs of great wealth, though
comparatively big fortunes are not unknown. It is rumored that
ostentation is never indulged in, as the attitude of the people as a
whole is averse to it.
On the other hand, neither are there any signs of extreme poverty,
though it exists; and slums to harbor it. While the usual evils of
social life obtain, the small community life makes it impossible for
them to become rampant. Every one knows every one else and that which is
taboo, if indulged in, must be carried out with such extreme secrecy as
to make it impossible for any blemish to appear upon the face of things.
In these circumstances, one is immediately classified and accepted or
rejected, according as one is or is not acceptable. Having recognized
certain outstanding features of the gentleman in you, the New Zealander
is Briton enough to accept you without further ado. There is in a sense
a certain naïveté in his measurement of the stranger. He is frank in
questioning your position and your integrity, but shrinks from carrying
his suspicions too far. He will ask you bluntly: "Are you what you say
you are?" "Of course I am," you say. "Then come along, mate." But he
does not take you very far, not because he is niggardly, but because he
is thrifty.
As a result of this New Zealand spirit I found myself befriended from
one end of New Zealand to the other by a single family, the elder
brother having given me letters of introduction to every one of his
kin,--in Hamilton, Palmerston North, Wellington, Christchurch, and
Dunedin. And with but two or three exceptions I have always found New
Zealanders generous and open-hearted. Wherever I went, once I broke
through a certain shyness and reserve, I found myself part of the group,
though generally I did not remain long, because I felt that new
sensations could not be expected.
My one great difficulty was in keeping from falling in love with the New
Zealand girls. Rosy-cheeked, sturdy, silently game and rebellious, they
know what it is to be flirtatious. For them there is seldom any other
way out of their loneliness. Only here and there do parents think it
necessary to give their daughters any social life outside the home. In
these days of the movies, New Zealand girls are breaking away from
knitting and home ties. But even then few girls care to preside at
representations of others' love-affairs without the opportunity of going
home and practising, themselves. Hence the streets are filled with
flirtatious maidens strolling four abreast, hoping for a chance to break
into the couples and quartets of young men who choose their own manly
society in preference to that of expensive girls. I have seen these
groups pass one another, up and down the streets, frequent the
tea-houses and soda fountains, carry on their flirtations from separate
tables, pay for their own refreshments or their own theater tickets; but
real commingling of the sexes in public life is not pronounced.
At the beaches! That is different. There the dunes and bracken are alive
with couples all hours of the day or night during the holiday and summer
seasons. Thence emerge engagements and hasty marriages, nor can parental
watchfulness guard against it.
3
The most difficult thing in all my New Zealand experiences was to
reconcile the latent conservatism of the people with their outstanding
progressiveness. It would be easy to assert without much fear of
contradiction that notwithstanding all the talk of radicalism in the
matter of labor legislation there is little of it in practice in the
Dominion. The reason for this is twofold. First, New Zealand, unlike
Australia and America, was not a rebellious offshoot of England, not a
protest against Old-World curtailment. Quite the contrary, it was made
in the image of the mother country, and natural selection for the time
being was dormant. Furthermore, it was simple for labor to dominate in a
country where labor was to be had only at that premium.
Nowhere in the whole Dominion did I come across concrete evidence of
awakened consciousness on the part of the masses to their opportunities.
None of that feverish haste to raise monuments of achievement to
accompany the legislative enactments which have given New Zealand an
illustrious place among the nations. True, the country is young; true,
there are not enough people there to pile creation on creation. But that
is not it. It is that they are not keyed up to any great notions of what
they ought to expect of themselves, but are content with what freedom
and leisure of life they possess.
Throughout the length and breadth of the two islands, islands more than
two thirds the size of Japan, there isn't an outstanding structure of
any great architectural value; there isn't a statue or a monument of
artistic importance; there is hardly a painting of exceptional quality;
nor, with all the remarkable beauty of nature which is New Zealand's, is
there any poetic outpouring of love of nature that one would expect from
a people heirs to some of the finest poetry in the world. Even British
India has its Kipling and its Tagore. With all the excellence of their
efforts to solve the problem of the welfare of the masses, New
Zealanders show no excessive largeness of heart in the sort of welcome
they extend to labor of other lands. Here, it would seem, is a land
where the world may well be reborn, where there is every opportunity for
the correction of age-long wrongs that have become too much a part of
Europe for Europeans to resent them too heartily. Yet what is New
Zealand doing and what has it done in seventy-five years to approximate
Utopia?
This is not meant as a criticism of New Zealand; rather is it meant to
let New Zealand know that the eyes of the world are upon it and expect
much from it. Possession may be nine points of the law; but the
utilization of opportunity which possession entails is the tenth point
toward the retention of that which one has.
Babies are cared for better in New Zealand than any other place in the
world, yet boys and girls still receive that antiquated form of
correction, corporal punishment, and thought of letting the youth find
his own salvation, with guidance only, not coercion, is still alien to
the New Zealand pedagogic mind. Women have had the vote for over
twenty-five years, but the freedom of woman to seek her own development,
to become a factor in the social life of the community apart from the
man's, is still a neglected dream. And young women are dying of ennui
because they aren't given enough to do. The country is fairly rich, with
its enormous droves of sheep, great pastures full of cattle, its
coöperative capitalistic farming-schemes; but the human genius for
beauty and self-expression must find opportunity in Britain or America.
And even the old romance of pioneer life is virtually of the past. In
all my wanderings I came across only one home that made me throw out my
emotional chest to contain the spirit of the pioneer life of which we
all love to hear. It was a house as rough as it was old, laden with
shelving and hung with guns, horns, and lithographs, and cheered by a
blazing open fire,--an early virility New Zealand has now completely
outgrown. The house must have been fifty years old, to judge from the
Scotsman living there. He was keen, alert, and quick, a most
interesting opponent in discussion, most firm in his beliefs without
being offensive. Here, in the very heart of one of the earliest of New
Zealand's settlement districts in the South Island, he lived with his
family; and something of the old sweetness of life, the atmosphere of
successful conquest, obtained. And ever as I dug down into New Zealand's
past, I found it charming. The present is too steeped in cheap machine
processes to be either durable or really satisfying.
Discouraging as this may sound, he who has lived in the little Dominion
and has learned to love its people and their ways, hastens to contradict
his own charges. For in time, as one becomes better acquainted, one
finds a healthy discontent brewing beneath that apathetic exterior. Just
as the Chinese will do anything to "save face" so the Briton will do
anything not to "lose face." He loses much of his latent charm in so
restricting himself, but when assured that a new convention is afoot and
that it is safe for him to venture forth with it, he will do so with a
zest that is itself worth much.
Furthermore, there is in the atmosphere of staid New Zealand life a
passion for the out-of-doors which is worth more than all the Greenwich
Village sentiment twice over. Girls are always just as happy in the open
and more interesting than when indulging in cigarettes and exposing
shapely legs in intellectual parlors. Given twenty million people
instead of one New Zealand would blossom forth into one of the loveliest
flowers of the Pacific.
4
In the Auckland (New Zealand) Art Gallery hangs a picture representing
the coming of the Maories to New Zealand. Their long canoe is filled
with emaciated people vividly suggesting the suffering and privation
they must have undergone in coming across the mainland some four hundred
years ago. Venturing without sail or compass, these daring Polynesians
must have possessed intrepid and courageous natures.
Yet at the time I was in that gallery the place was full of stifled
boyish laughter. A half-dozen little tots, with spectacles and
school-bags, one with blazing red hair, had come to see the pictures.
They were not Maori children, but the offspring of the white race, which
less than a hundred years ago came in their sailing-vessels and
steamers, with powder and lead, and took with comparative ease a land
won by such daring travail.
I had heard much of these natives,--idyllic tales of their charm and the
lure of their maidens. Those lovely Maori girls! I expected to see them
crowding the streets of Auckland. But they were conspicuous by their
absence. Occasionally a few could be seen squatting on the sidewalks,
more strangers to the city than I, more outstanding from the display of
color and manner which thronged Queens Street than any American could be
in so ultra a British community as dominates New Zealand. Where are the
Maories? I wondered. Upon their "reservations" like our own Amerinds, or
lost to their own costumes and even to their own blood and color?
I had returned to Auckland from a visit with a friend whose wife was
Maori, in the company of her nephew. He carried with him a basket of
eels as a gift to his mother, and walked up the street with me. At a
corner he was hailed by a dark-skinned man in a well-cut business suit,
and said, "There is my father. I must leave you." In another moment he
was in a large touring car and was whizzed away by his Maori father at
the wheel. No wonder I hadn't been able to see any Maories.
I visited a school where Maori boys are being encouraged to artificial
exercises,--sports, hurdle-jumping, running. I watched them make ready,
eager for the petty prizes offered. Off went their shoes, out went their
chests, expanded with ancestral joy. In their bare feet, still as tough
as in former days before they were induced to buy cowhides, they
skipped over the ground, filled for the moment with the glory of being
alive. Their faces broke out in fantastic, native grimaces and
contortions as though an imaginary enemy confronted them. But alas, they
were seeking him in the wrong direction! The enemy comes with no spears,
and no clang, but he is more deadly. He is not without but within. He
makes them cough. They fall behind.
"They do not last long," said the Briton who was instructing them. "They
are dying rapidly of consumption. As long as we keep them here in school
they are all right. Finer specimens of human physique could not be found
anywhere. But as soon as they return to their _pas_, and live in the
squalor of the native villages, they return to all the old methods of
life and soon go under."
I set out on my tramp through New Zealand. At Bombey, a few days' jaunt
from Auckland, I met an old settler, whose accounts of the great and
last war of the redcoats with the fierce fighters of Maoriland dated
back to our own Civil War, 1861-64. Until that time both Maories and
Britons said, with few exceptions, "Our races cannot mix. One or the
other of us must give away." Naturally, the Maories had the prior claim,
but they finally yielded, surrendering their lands to the aliens at
Ngaruawahia, "The Meeting of the Waters," that little hamlet lying in
the crotch between the beautiful Waikato River and one of its
tributaries. And henceforward, the two races were constrained to meet,
and rush down together into that green sea of human commonalty, albeit
one of them contributes the dominant volume.
Maori legend has it that the Maories are the descendants of the great
_Rangatira_ (chief) who was the offspring of a similarly great _Tanewa_
(shark). He was born in the dark southern caves of the Tongariro
Mountains, and the spirits of their ancestors have always dwelt along
the broad Waikato. Along this river I wandered for many days, but I
found few of the Rangatira's descendants. If one is quiet and alone the
voice of the great Tanewa will call softly through the marsh rushes from
out of the heart of the quivering flax. It is peaceful and encompassing,
modest and almost afraid. I heard it and I am sure those Maories hear it
who are not too engrossed in the scramble after foreign trinkets. It
said: "The last mortal or man descendant of mine will be the offspring
of a Pakeha-Maori (a white man who lives among the Maories) who will
live in the cities and rush about in motor-cars, but I shall remain in
the marshes, the calm rivers, and near the glittering leaves of flax."
A few miles farther on I came to Huntley, and hearing that there was a
native village across the Waikato River, I turned thither by way of the
bridge. I overtook two _wahines_, slovenly, indolent, careless in their
manners. They spoke to me flippantly. They wanted to know if I was bound
for the missionaries' place. This led to questions from me: Why were
they turning Mormon? Which sect did they prefer? But I could obtain
answers only by innuendo. I left these two women behind and found three
others chasing a pig in an open field, three boys bathing a horse in the
deep river. All about the village was strewn refuse; vicious dogs slunk
hungrily about,--neglect, neglect, on every hand. But instead of flimsy
native huts there were wooden shacks with corrugated iron roofs, the
longer to remain unregenerate, breeders of disease and wasters of human
energy.
But the more elaborate native village at Rotorua, at the other end of
the island, where visitors are frequent, was more up-to-date and
cleaner. And on a little knoll was a model of an old Maori _pah_, such
as was used in the days before guns made it possible to fight in ambush
and in the valleys, and brought the sturdy savages down not only from
their more wholesome heights but from their position of vantage as a
race.
Here I met an odd sort of article in the way of human ware. Only
seventeen, he was twice my size, and lazy and pliable in proportion. He
would come into my room and just stay. With a steady, piercing, yet
stolid and almost epileptic stare, cunning, yet not shrewd, not steady,
nor guided by any evident train of thought, he would watch me write. I
was a mystery to him, and he frankly doubted the truth of things I told
him.
First he said I had the build of a prize-fighter; then, perhaps on
thinking it over, he doubted that I had ever done any hard work in my
life. As to himself, he said he loved to break in wild horses. His
father, according to one tale, was wealthy; two of his brothers were
engineers on boats. But he hated study. He was altogether lacking in any
notion of time, but he was not lazy. He was even ready to do work that
was not his to do.
One afternoon he was in a most jovial mood. He was about to have a tent
raised in which he would spend the summer, instead of the hotel room
allotted to the help. He was full of glee at the prospect. Primitive
instincts seemed to waken in him. But there was a sudden
reaction,--whimsical. We had stepped upon the lawn which afforded an
open view across Lake Rotorua.
"Strange, isn't it," he said without any preamble, "how money goes from
one man to another, from here to Auckland and to Sydney? So much money."
He became reminiscent: "Maories didn't know a thing about money. They
were rich. See, across this lake,--that little island,--the whole was
once a battle-field. The Maories went out in their canoes and fought
with their battle-axes. What for? Oh, to gain lands. But now they are
poor. Things are so dead here now. Nothing doing." A moment later he was
called and disappeared. It was the only time he was ever communicative.
The tent had roused in him racial regrets.
One evening he came up to my door and told me there was a dance at the
hall, and that he was going to it. Again that strange revival of racial
memories, but these of hope and prospect, came into his face, "I'm going
to take my 'tart' (girl) with me," he announced. And later in the
evening, as I sat alone, watching the moon rise over the lake, the
laughter of those Maories rang out across the hills.
Though I wandered for many miles, running into the hundreds, the number
of Maori villages and people I came across were few and far between. Yet
records show that once these regions were alive with more than a hundred
thousand fighting natives. At Rotorua, the hot-springs district in the
North Island, the _pah_ was in exceptionally good condition, but it was
so largely because the New Zealand Government has made of the place one
of its most attractive tourist resorts and the natives are permitted to
exact a tax from every visitor who wishes to see the geysers. Elsewhere
the villages are dull, dreary, and neglected: the farther away from
civilization, the worse they get. The consequence is not surprising.
According to the census of 1896, there were 39,854 people of the Maori
race: 21,673 males, 18,181 females, of which 3,503 were half-castes who
lived as Maories, and 229 Maori women married to Europeans. The Maori
population fell from 41,993 in 1891 to 39,854 in 1896, a decrease in
five years of 2,139. But in 1901 it had risen to 43,143, going steadily
up to 49,844 in 1911, and dropping to 49,776 in 1916 on account of the
European war.
There was considerable discussion in the New Zealand Parliament on the
question of whether the Maories should be included in the Draft Act,
most white men declaring that a race which was dying, despite this
seeming increase, should not be taxed for its sturdiest young men in a
war that was in truth none of its concern. But the Maories--that is,
their representatives--objected, saying they did not wish to be
discriminated against. Among the young men, however, I found not a few
who were inclined to reason otherwise. So it was that while I was
talking to the young fellows who were washing their horse in the
Waikato, one of them said to me:
"Yes. Years ago the white men came to us with guns and cannon and powder
and compelled us to give up our warfare, which kept us in good condition
individually and as a race. We put aside our weapons. Now they come to
us and tell us we must go to Europe and fight for them." And he became
silent and thoughtful.
As I came back into Huntly from my visit to the _pah_ I passed the
little court-house, before which was a crowd of Maories. Some of the
_wahines_ sat with shawls over their heads smoking their pipes as though
they were in trousers, not skirts. I chatted with the British Bobby who
stood at the door, asking him what was bestirring Maoriland so much.
"Oh, that bally old king of theirs has been subpoenaed to answer for his
brother. The blighter has been keeping him out of sight so that he won't
be taken in the draft."
"But," I protested--democrat though I was, my heart went out to the old
"monarch"--"can't the king get his brother, the archduke and possible
successor to the throne, out of performing a task that might hazard the
foundation of the imperial line?"
"King be damned! Wait till we get the blighter in here," said the
servant of the law, pressing his heels into the soft, oozy tar pavement
as he turned scornfully from me.
5
A few days later I was cutting my way through a luxuriant mountain
forest above Te Horoto in the North Island, listening to the melodious
_tui_, the bell-bird, and to the song of the parson-bird in his black
frock of feathers with a small tuft of white under his beak, like the
reversed collar of a cleric. No sound of bird in any of the many
countries I have been to has ever filled me with greater rapture than
did this. There are thousands of skylarks in New Zealand, brought from
England, but had Shelley heard the _tui_ he might have written an ode
more beautiful even than that to the "blithe spirit" he has
immortalized. Yet, like the human natives, these feathery folk have
vastly decreased since the coming of the white man. No wonder Pehi Hetan
Turoa, great chief of a far country on the other side of the island, in
complaining of the decay of his race, said: "Formerly, when we went into
a forest, and stood under a tree, we could not hear ourselves speak for
the noise of the birds--every tree was full of them.... Now, many of the
birds have died out."
Enraptured with the loveliness of the native bush and the clear, sweet
air, I pressed up the mountain side with great strides. Presently I
passed a simple Maori habitation. It was about noon. Seeing smoke rise
out of an opening in the roof, indicating that the owners were at home,
I entered the yard. My eyes, full of the bright, clear sunlight, could
not discern any living thing as I poked my head in at the door, but I
could hear a voice bidding me enter. I stepped into a sort of
antechamber, a large section of the hut with a floor of beaten earth and
a single pillar slightly off the center supporting the roof. Gradually,
as my eyes became accustomed to the subdued light, I saw an aged couple
within a small alcove on the farther side. An open fire crackled in the
center of its floor. The old woman sitting on her bed-space, was bending
over the flame, fanning it to life. The old man, who was very tall, lay
on a mat-bed to the right, his legs stretched in my direction. The two
beds, the fire, and the old couple took up the entire space of the
alcove,--a sort of kitchenette-bedroom affair like our modern "studio"
apartments.
"Where are you from?" asked the old man, after I had seated myself
before the fire. "America," I said. My reply evoked no great surprise in
him.
"The village is quiet," I said. "Where are the people?"
"Oh, down in the valley, working in the fields."
"Don't you go out, too?" I asked.
"Oh, I'm too old now. My legs ache with rheumatism. I go no more. Let
the young fellows work. Stay and have tea with us," he urged.
I looked at their stock. They did not seem to have any too much
themselves, and the old woman seemed a little worried. I knew that the
heart of the hostess was the same the world over, so I assured them I
had had my meal, and only wished to rest a while away from the sun. The
old woman showed relief.
We chatted as cordially as it is possible where tongues cannot fully
make themselves understood. I learned that the man was an old chief. He
could not fall in with the times, acknowledged his inability to direct
the affairs of this strange world, and only asked for rest and quiet,
and the respect due one of his position. He did not expect to live long,
nor did he much care. "These are not days for me," he said with a smile.
He did not speak of the former glories of his race. Doubtless he could
not exactly make up his mind whether to look before or after: if there
were great chiefs before, are there not big M.P.'s now?
The fire was burning low, and I knew that the old woman would have to go
for more wood unless she hurried with the preparation of her meal, and
that as long as I was there I was delaying her. So I rose to go. The old
man excused himself for not rising by pointing to his lame legs. She saw
me to the gate, and as I struck down the road she waved her hand after
me in farewell, and remained behind the screen of trees round which I
veered.
Down in the valley lying almost precipitately below me were a number of
natives working in their fields; but my road led me on to the cities,
and it is there that the future of this race hangs in the balance.
Some months later, while I was living in Dunedin in the far south of the
South Island, the newspapers came out in a way almost American, so
exciting was the bit of news. The editorial world forgot all decorum and
dignity and pulled out the largest type it had on hand. It was announced
that the Maori priest, Rua, was caught. Several persons were wounded and
one, I believe, was killed in the process. The priest was treated with
no respect and little consideration and thrown into prison,--all because
he believed in having several wives as his men-folk always had, if they
were chiefs and priests, and was trying to put a little life into his
race, trying to stir it up to casting out these "foreign devils." He had
built himself a temple that was an interesting work of art, but it holds
worshipers no more, even though the priest has since been released. His
efforts to rouse his people failed. Such efforts are only the reflex
action of a dying race.