Memories Of Pioneer Days The Fort Well

Auckland Star, Volume LXXII, Issue 109, 10 May 1941, Page 3 (Supplement)

Memories Of Pioneer Days The Fort Well

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A POLICEMAN, digging in his garden the other day, according to a "Star" message from Papakura, fell into a longdisused and forgotten well. Fortunately, the well was not deep and was partly filled up with the debris of many years ago. It had been covered over long before the policeman's time and the timbers were too frail for the constable's weight It was supposed that the place had originally been a military camp, in the war-days of 186364. Likely enough; there are scores of such once-populous camp sites throughout the land,

needed; the nearest spring was on the edge of the swamp below. The site of the famous pa of Orakau was about 300 yards away. You will remember its story, how the brave Maori defenders were cut off from their water supply and were half-dead with thirst when they at last charged out of the pa. They had not had time to make sure of water, and they depended on obtaining it by stealing out at night to a spring some distance away in a gully. That was often the weakness of a Maori fighting position. Strong parapets were made, but in the most important detail of water supply they were neglectful. The Thirsty Fighters of Pipiriki. One of the first acts of a leader conducting the siege of a military position is to cut the enemy off from the water supply. In 1865 a small force of men, under the command of Major Brassey, was sent up the Wanganui River to occupy Pipiriki and hold that hill position against the Hauhaus. The pakehas were surrounded by five or six times their number of Maoris, and were presently so closely invested by the tribes, and drawn from as far away as Lake Taupo, that they were cut off from the spring on which they had depended for water. Several times the garrisons of the two small redoubts made bayonet charges to relieve their position somewhat. The Wanganui River ran quite near, a tantalising sight to thirsty men. The Hauhaus drew their lines of trenches between the redoubts and the river. The only wav the Patea Rangers could obtain water was by crawling down through the bushes at night to a spring and bringing up in buckets a scant supply for the next day. They were unable to dig a well deep enough; they were kept busy defending the hill. Brassey's force was at last relieved by a large war-canoe expedition from Wanganui. There was plentv of grog in the besieged defenders' store of rations — the men were served out with three tots of rum a day—but thev would gladly have exchanged most of it for water. An American Episode. Somewhat similar experiences m frontier warfare have been narrated Of besieged outposts and settlements in the old

Indian wars in Kentucky and other pioneer parts of North America. There is a famous example in the story of Betty Zane, who boldly passed through the Indians in ambush who had surrounded the stockade in which she and her friends had shut themselves up. Betty headed the women who formed the bucket-party, carrying water from the spring which was outside the fort. The brave women knew perfectly well that the Indians were close to them, but the besiegers admired their cool and fearless behaviour and they allowed them to fill and carry their buckets unmolested. The Well in Ruapekapeka Pa. When I was on the "historychase" 22 years ago in North Auckland, I carefully explored the scenes of the war at the Bay of Islands and inland, in which Hone Heke and his warriors won every battle but the last one. This last engagement, or rather siege, was fought against the British troops at Ruapekapeka, 20 miles south of the Bay of Islands. The lines of the great fortification, the strongest example of stockade combined with high earthwork and can-non-proof entrenchment ever built by the Maoris, were quite clear in 1919, after the lapse of more than 70 years. Some of the massive puriri posts of the stockade were still standing. A fern-hung pit on the west side proved to be one of the garrison's wells; it corresponded exactly in position to that marked on the map I had, the British naval officer's plan of the pa drawn in 1846. I wont down into this well—not quite so abruptly as the Papakura constable descended into the old camp well—and found at the bottom a pile of mossy posts and battered saplings from the ancient stockade. It was not deep; there was a spring on the west side of the pa there, near the outer trench, and this that great Maori fortbuilder Kawiti had opened up as the main water supply of the garrison. There was another well, now dry and partly filled in, near the middle of the entrenchment. So the skilful old Kawiti had made sure that his stronghold would not be taken because of thirst. Ilown The "Tonio." While discussing this topic if old wells, those strange deep circular pits called by the Maoris "tomo" in our lime-

stone country come to m« M They are exactly Uke J* with natural shafts that 2 as if they had been excavZS by some fairy digger. tS are very numerous in the Kin Country betw«n OtotohZ and Te Kulti and thTS Coast and north of the Mofcm River. The word enters JJJ several place-names, 3U ch a Waitomo. They are tneoun! tered in the interior of man v of the caves; and it is an eerie experience to come sudden)! on such a well, black, myster? ous, opening all unexpertSit at your feet, and toft below the falling of In S known stream. Originally tfi would be revealed to the can! explorer by they are seen by electric £ in all the principal caves. X there are very many "ana" (caves) and "tomo" still await ing ex-ploration. l " Some years ago a youn King Country settler of m acquaintance was busy cleariZ his farm when he lost his doe clown one of those fearful ♦ ol f* tomo is often found at the bottom of a crater-like depression, concealed bv th» fern. The dog, a young 7 one was busy chasing a rabbit when it took the wrong turn ing and dropped down the mysterious pit. Its master heard its pitiful yelping as it fell, trying in vain to stop it. self on the smooth walls Its descent was stopped by a ledee in the well; there it remained howling. The farmer was alone; there was no one to help him if he went to the rescue of his doe But he immediately ran up to his home and returned with a strong rope. He made a loon at one end and tied knots in it at intervals for grips; then making it fast to a tree he went down carefully, until he reached the whimpering doe He had measured the depth bv a preliminary cast and had taken the precaution to fasten a flax basket on his back, a Maori potato kit. With some trouble he persuaded the frantically joyful dog to" enter the basket. Now he had his hands free for the climb to the surface,. With hand-grip and knee-grip, and seeking with his feet for projections in the limestone wall, after tremendous exertion he at last reached the top and the glad open air again. He' was about done As for the dog, it had received the most horrible fright of its young life. That tomo was over forty feet deep-quite enough in the dark.