OUR STORYLANDS.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIII, Issue 96, 23 April 1932, Page 1 (Supplement)

OUR STORYLANDS.

OLD RANGIAOWHIA. TRAIL OF SELWYN, GREY ANT> CAMERON. (By J.C.) Mr. Kipling, in one of his printed addresses, remarked on the power of wood smoke to recall to the mind longdead campfires and all the- associations that go -with a bivouac in the wilds. How true that is many a New Zealandcr well knows. Equally potent in my experience is the scent of certain flowers. There is a fragrant magic beyond the power or words in the smell of peach blossom and of hawthorn in flower. To me, at any rate, those in their season are the enchanted scents that, above all others, bring back with a flash scenes of the past and faces and voices long vanished. And even casual mention of certain familiar names, in its turn, brings up mind-pictures of those lovely old places with their groves and their hedges and their fields, as they were in the days of one's youth. At the moment memory is back on the old Upper Waikato trail, and the scene is Rangiaowhia, which is as good an example as can be chosen of what may be called our story places, .possessing histories of singular interest, considering the brief period over which the authentic record extends. Miles of tall hawthorn hedges and countless groves of peach trees scattered about the old settlements and over the fields and along the bush edge; gently sloping grasslands, mounds of vivid green, farmhouses half-hidden in trees, pre-Maori War churches with steeples of antique design; down in the swampy gullies the glint of flax-bordered ponds and lagoons where wild duck swam and pukeko stalked: that was Rangiaowhia of the young 'eighties, onetime Maori garden land, then military settlers' reward, the spoil of conquest. The first generation of white settlers knew not barbed wire. Ditch and bank was the rule, and along the bank a hedge of hawthorn or furze was set. So the flowering way perfumed the breeze along the rough country roads, and Rangiaowhia, the pick of the good Waipa country, was as sweet as any garden in the spring of the year. Roads of History. \ Motorists travelling through those parts to-day may not realise it, but they are traversing exactly the roads along which the history-making army of invasion marched and fought in 1804. That is true, indeed, of the whole of the Great South Road from Auckland for 100 miles. It applies particularly to the road from Te Awamutu eastward to Rangiaowhia, a distance of about three miles. The main road from Te Awamutu to Kihikihi and Orakau has its military story, but along the dueeastward route Cameron's forces had to fight their way. Where wo mount the first rise to the Hairini and Rangiaowhia farmlands, nearly 1000 British bayonets flashed back the sun one hot February day in 1804, and Armstrong guns flung

shells over the heads of the infantry moving to the assault of the Kingites' parapet and trench. The road intersects that hastily-built fieldwork; a fence marks the line to-day. The Colonial Defence Force troopers made one of the few cavalry charges in the wars; the scene of action was just to the right of our road. Tho Forest Rangers went charging up on the left, outpacing the regulars of the 50th in their dash for close-quarters work. A mile further On tne road that breaks oft" at right angles—that way goes the highroad to Cambridge—follows exactly the main street of the old-time Maori town of Rangiaowhia, with the English Church at its. southern end and the Roman Catholic Church on its commanding hill at.the other end. That was the battleground of tho day before the Hairini fight, the scene of Cameron's surprise attack on the great source of food supplies for the strongly entrenched Kingite garrison in Paterangi. The Mission Churcn. All that story is history that should be familiar to every New Zealandcr. The special interest just now lies in identifying the exact scenes of action. They were all well beknown to us who were reared on the old frontier; nowadays it is not easy for strangers to the place, for few of the residents know much of the stirring story of the soil from which they draw their living. But one monument still stands on the now so peaceful battlefield, the English church of the Selwyn period. A picture of the past, that tall-spired wooden church, in its tree-shaded buryingground; the old-time place of worship of the Ngati-Apakura, a once numerous elan of Waikato that has now vanished from existence. This church and the beautiful old Church of St. John's at Te Awamutu survive as memorials to the golden age of missionary mana in Waikato, when the great Bishop's faithful helper, the Rev. John Morgan, was the instructor of the industrious hapus in many a village. The timbers of the Rangiaowhia mission church received many a bullet in the fighting; so, too, did the Catholic church on the hill —it gave place to a new building many years ago. Where Nixon Fell. Near the English church ten Maoris fell in defending one house to the death. It was there that Colonel Nixon, the well-loved commander of the Defence Force Cavalry, received his fatal wound. That hot half-hour's work, a thrilling battle incident in our histories, occurred just within where yonder fence goes at the crossroads. The Church of England Maoris had their village there; the chief of the Catholic section, the Ngati-Hinetu, and many of his people lived close to the Catholic church on the hill, where an avenue of huge old cabbage trees marks to-day the ancient kainga called Te Reinga. We may imagine how desperately the surprised inhabitants of Rangiaowhia (the name means ■ "Beclouded Sky") fought for their homes and lands that day° of 1804. It was the most prized portion of all the rich Waipa country. There were not more than a hundred men in the place on the first day of the invasion, but they put up a stout resistance, and, as Von Tempsky, of the Forest Rangers, recorded in his diary, more than one woman showed that the wahincs could use a double-barrel gun, as well as the men.

Maori Wheat-farmers. Wo may picture also the well-tilled, well-ordered aspect of the group of settlements of these industrious clans, with 20 years of agricultural development under John Morgan's paternal guidance. Hero came Governor Grey in 1848 and IS4IJ, visiting his loyal wheatfarmers and encouraging them in the arts of civilisation. The Government sent an Englishman, Tommy Power, •to instruct the people in ploughing and other farm work. I remember the old man well in his after-years at Kihikihi. Down on the damnicd-up water courses in the swampy valleys to the west and east of the cultivated hills there were two flouiinills driven by water power, and in these tho wheit grown on the farms was ground. On the Pekapekarau Creek, the outlet of the swamp and lagoons on the west, draining out to the slow Mangapiko River, thero was the first flourmill built in the Waikato. The flour ground here was bagged by parties of women and girls; it was carted by tho men to the Waipa River at Te Rore and thence was taken by canoe to the Lower Waikato, portaged to the Manukau at Waiuku and so to the Auckland market. Love to "Kawana Kerei." So in one way and another NgatiApakura and Ngati-Hinetu and their kin were in a fair way along the road of pakeha progress long before the war. The regard they entertained for Governor Grey was' poetically testified to in their address of farewell to him when he was leaving New Zealand in 1853. Kahawai and his fellow-members of the Catholic Church at Rangiaowhia wrote in terms of sorrow and affection, recalling the great kindness which Governor Grey had manifested towards tho people of the place, and tho gifts of ploughs, horses, carts and other property which had enabled the Maoris to assimilate some of the usages of the pakeha. "You have made our lands important. Our love to you and our remembrance of you .will not cease; no, never. Go hence, O friend, go to the Queen and carry with you our love to her in return for the gifts which we have in our possession. If the Queen should send another governor, let his love for the Maoris be like yours, and we will repay him with our love." Another chief, Hori tc Warn, wrote: "Our love for you is great because you have shown us much kindness. You have elevated us and provided teachers to instruct our children and implant good principles in their hearts." And 10 years later the Governor was launching an army against those once so loyal folk of Rangiaowhia, and presently Hoani Papita ("John the Baptist") and his people were flying for their lives to tho swamps and ranges, leaving their beautiful village a ravaged and bloodstained ruin, and never again were they to worship in their pretty churches or gather the fruits of the good soil. Land and cultivations and all passed to tho pakeha for ever. For in Kawana Kerei's absence in South Africa, Rangiaowhia had become the centre of Maori Kiugite politics; and gun and tomahawk displaced the peaceful age symbolised by Tommy Power's plough. The old, old Empire story —"Wo broke a king and wo built a road." Take it easy over that road if you go that way, and look about you; it is worth a few minutes' delay to gather a memory of this little corner of storyland that centres in the old Sclwyn church of Rangiaowhia.