STORIES OF NEW ZEALAND.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVIII, Issue 150, 26 June 1937, Page 2 (Supplement)

STORIES OF NEW ZEALAND.

By JAMES COWAN.

THE UREWERA COUNTRY-CROSSING THE HUIA-RAU RANGE-A TRAMP TO WAIKAREMOAN A.

FTHSr the narrow foot track, then llii- horse trail, next the bushwledgo road, the lonc/hly-niade wagon road, gradually improved, and now thp smooth-surfaced highway for motor cms. Thai is the history of tlic road in most, parts of runland. The easy speedway of the present day was originally a hush trail broken out liy the Maori of long ago. The hooted white man gradually widened the track, and soon found easier ways. The Maori ha hit was to keep'to the ridges, for safely and a lookout over the land; I lie pukchti found easier ways through the \ alleys and across the lower sums. In travelling about New /ealand. you rmiv often see the traces „f old roads, replaced hy the new as the builders found shorter routes and het ter grades.

lii tTi;ir. wilil sand miry of this North Island of New Zealand, the I'rowora Country (Ooreh werra ), the font trail is often just the river hod; it the horse road too. I have ridden down the hod of a hill stream for 11 lonjf ilistance, under the archill;: hrnnehos f>f trees that made it a kind of leafy and watery tunnel. Jt, was the only road on that part of the journey. Then there wore the many river crossings, sometimes fifty in the course of two or throe miles, to avoid cliffs or other obstructions. It was not easy on some of the trails to toll where the way entered or left, the water. In the war day* the Maoris wore often aide to throw their enemies off their trail hy taking particular care not to leave traces when they entered or stepped out of the water in those ravines and valleys. The Mountain Trail.

I our silent way towards them. Paij tini, dour old gunman and mounI taineer, is no chatterer on the j march. He reserves his talk for the I CHinplirc side when the day's work ; is done and the hush supper eaten. | Regard my guide and camping-out j mate as lie strides along at a steady, ! easy pace that seems almost effort- ; less. Jle is sixty years old; he was j horn in*these mountains; he is as | liuieh a part of them as the trees that he lias known from childhood. I A man af the trees and the stormi swept heights. He fought at Orakau | and was wounded there; his father i was killed in the sie.ee of the pa. | lie followed Te Kooti and fought in a score of skirmishes. lie used gun and tomahawk in raids on East Coast settlements, lie is a ]{inga-Tu --a disciple of the Uplifted-Hand l faith. lie is lean, hard-limbed, squareshouldered, straight-hacked; bare- | headed, hare-logged, bare-footed. He ! wears a hush kilt, a hit of a calico : sheet fastened hy a deft turn-in at ! the waist which only a Maori can j make a dependable gilding; a shirt 1 and an ancient jacket; a staff in his hand and his flax-strapped swag on his back. A hard old trail-breaker; we shall not see his like again. Voices of the Bush. The forest is lively with bird-calls, cries and sonars as we go down to the Wai-iti Valley, through arches of j riniii pines and red blossoming rata and tall groves of that beautiful tree the tawa with its great twisty branches and its hanging mosses. The tni's chuckle and "hong" follow us all day. and the little riroriro's .summer time trill is seldom stilled.

Setting out at sunrise on our! tramp to Waikare-uioana. 20 miles' away, l'aitini led the way up that! steep hillside where there was no, sign of a track. It w ;l s one of hi* short cuts. The old warrior plunged ■ under some low-Lending hough* audi disappeared. Following, I found him! splashing up the mossy bed of a j little hill stream. That was trail ! enough tor him. The forest, dark,: damp, heavy with the scent of mossv I mould and leaves and fragrant bark,' was all about us. It was a cave of | leaves and ferns and tree trunks and' interwoven branches and trailing ! creepers. We splashed and .scrambled ■ up tJiat river road; 1 was to have ! more splashing than was comfortable ; before we came to sunset camp that day. The Glen of Ruatahuna. In a little while we came out on I to a clear hill top. and halted a moment after the spurt for a look I back at the home valley we were' leaving. The ruined huts* of a small' deserted hamlet stood on the ridge clearing. Wo looked down on the ] winding valley, an oasis of grass, j potato patches and trees and scattered group* of thatched houses, with the light blue smoke rising from the cooking [daces, a pretty picture of life in the heart of the mountains. They rose in steep peaks I and ranges all around us, those moun- j tains of dark blue, with their trail- | ing mists; wave beyond wave of j forest, an ocean without motion. Then down south-past we go, bv a narrow track that is often no track at all, with the blue ranges looming more grandly over lis as we tramp

But the most plentiful bird is the kaka parrot. Nowhere else have I seen or heard it in such numbers. Its screech is always in one's ears. An imitation of its harsh cry is enough to bring a dozen noisy birds calling and flapping about one's head. Paitini breaks his warrior silence to scohl those screaming parrots for their jabber. When he returns that way, lie threatens, he will fill his swag-kit with them; they are the easiest of all bush birds to capture with snare or spear.

Down in the Valley of Wai-iti there is a small clearing, with a few whares, roofed with strips of totara hark; they are dug in, half underground, with the earth heaped up to the eaves about them. This is for the sake of warmth in the long and hard winter, nights. Wai-iti was a battlefield in 1809. Here the Arawa contingent, lighting on the Government side, had an encounter with Te Kooti's advance guardifrom Waikarenioana. There wae a touch of the old savagery when the Government Maoris paraded before Colonel Whitmore after their light. They flourished the heads of three Urewera men that they had cut off; and they smoke-dried them and carried them home to Rotorua to exhibit in, triumph in their war-dance before tho home folks. The picture on this page shows the bush camp of a Maori party of sawyers, in recent times, in this district. The women are preparing a meal while the men of the family are busy in the eawpit. (Continued on page 351.)

The first foot trail I travelled in the Urewera mountains was the shallow bed of a hill creek. At any rate, that was the beginning of it; there was a great deal more of river road and river crossing before the day was done. It began on the range side at Ruatahuna,' the heart of the mountains, where the horse track from Rotorua ended in those days, forty years ago. Not a wheel had been seen in that remote and primitive valley; there was no road on which' it could run. Mataatua village, the principal place in the long, narrow glen of Ruatahuna (the accent is on the second "a" in this name), was the eapital of the Urewera region. The great carved house built by the tribes for Te Kooti in 1890 stood there. The day before we took the trail for Waikarenioana old Warrior Paitini, who had helped to build it, took me through the house and explained its carved figure* and painted slabs. He narrated that it took the full strength of the assembled follower* of Te Kooti, four hundred men, to place the great painted ridge pole in position; it was a tree trunk 80ft long.