A GERMAN MISSIONARY’S TALE Memories From Travels In N.Z. Of 1844

Press, Volume CV, Issue 30971, 29 January 1966, Page 5

A GERMAN MISSIONARY’S TALE Memories From Travels In N.Z. Of 1844

JTROM Wellington we Sailed south to Banks Peninsula . . . This cape is indented by many deep arms which make good harbours. We sailed into one of the more northerly of these; known as Port Cooper then, it is now called Lyttelton.

Mr Tuckett decided to explore the back country, still a deserted wilderness with never a sign of man or beast; he wanted to find out whether the soil was fertile, and especially whether the district would do for the proposed Scottish settlement. To this end, he got together, with the help of his men, an assortment of surveying gear. It so happened that he could not lay his hands on his pocket compass, an absolutely essential item. Having no intention of going exploring, I offered him mine—which had its sequel.

Next day was a Sunday. Early that morning I had been invited by Creed, the Wesleyan missionary, to go with him, if I felt so inclined, to take a service at a Maori kaika, which, according to his informants, was only a few hours away. Of course I felt so inclined: here was a chance to learn something about mission work. Creed understood Maori and the natives pointed out to him, the day before, a certain mountain he had to go up, in order to look down on Port Levy, where their village lay. We duly set out across country and climbed the mountain. I left the routefinding to Creed: he was the one who had been given directions. The climb was not unduly difficult, for a European intending to run sheep there had been burning off scrub; but we did find the mountain rather high: was it the right one? When we at last reached the top, we found ourselves on sheer razorback. A remarkable phenomenon met our eyes on the other side of the mountain.

We are all familiar enough with the clouds above us, and I had occasionally wondered what they would look like from above, drifting over the earth. Such an effect was now spread out before us. We had been travelling up the mountainside in bright sunshine: on the other side the sun blazed down on a sea of cloud, as far as the eye could discern. These clouds were being driven towards our ridge by a stiff breeze, and piling up against it. They towered and toppled, twisting over one another, giving the sunlight full play to sparkle among them in ever-changing rainbow glints. Fitfully, amid this turbulence, appeared mountain peaks, wet, lit like fire by the sun, and as suddenly vanishing. The whole scene made me think of an enchanted bed full of giants’ children walking in the morning, rubbing their eyes, tossing aside the glistening coverlet, peering out here and there, damp 'and rosy-cheeked, only to burrow back among the blankets.

The conjuring trick was short-lived, however. Soon the cloudy turmoil, rolling and billowing up to the razorbacked ridge, poured over it, so that we were overwhelmed. We could hardly see three paces ahead. Hoping it would soon clear, we sat down. The surface of the ground consisted of scree, fragments of shattered stone of just the right chunky size and shape for a little toy wall. The thought was father to the deed. My hands can never keep still when I have nothing to do, and soon my little wall was finished. Then it struck me that playing with stones might not seem a very proper occupation for the Sabbath, so I left off; but yet I could not quite bring myself to knock down the little wall.

As the fog did not seem to want to break up, we got moving once more, scrambling along the razorback wherever we could find reasonable going, and hoped we were heading in the direction of the valley that drops off into the arm of Port Levy, where the kaika was supposed to be. This was where I missed my pocket compass badly, for we could just see a few steps in front of us; it was quite impossible to work out the lie of the land, or pick up any leading spurs. We came upon fearsome piles of rock which loomed fantastically through the foggy halflight. * * *

AT last we heard birds singing, so we deduced that we must be nearing bush and losing altitude; for the high tops had been open country. Soon we reached the edge of the bush, invisible until we were right on top of it In the thick wet fog it looked forlorn and wild. We pushed boldly into it in the hope that once through it we would strike the right gully. The bush was dwarfed, stunted and comparatively open, for on these rocky ridges no tall trees can gain a foothold. We began by

breaking off twigs- here and there, so that (all going well) we would be able to find our way back. As we got deeper inside the bush and further downhill the fog thinned out and the bush became heavier and denser, for below the New Zealand timberline everything from forest floor to canopy is a thick leafy mass, even the undergrowth being of a rusty faded green. At last we reckoned we could see a clearing; but it was only a landslip, where part of the steep mountain face, trees and all, had plunged down into the gully. As this rift was on the same side of the mountain as where we hoped to find the valley leading down to the kaika, we skirted along the side of it, hanging on to trees and branches. * # *

VVHEN we finally reached ’’ the bottom of the gully, we found ourselves in a narrow dark gorge with a creek roaring down. The bush was impossible to push through, on account of a tangled mass of lawyer and supplejack and matted scrub: but the stream had cut a deep channel in the bed of the gully in which we could get along more or less upright. The water eddied and swirled round and under great boulders, but we made good progress along the tops of these, only occasionally being forced to wade. Our sojourn in the dark gully and sub-alpine bush would have been a great deal pleasanter if we had had more idea of where we were going, and if our hearts had not pounded away in constant terror at the thought of being hopelessly bushed. We could not shake off a nagging dread that we had climbed the wrong mountain, and that, floundering along in the heavy fog with neither sun nor compass, we had lost our sense of direction in the twists and turns of the mountain ridge. As we probed deeper down the gully, our creek joined others and grew wider and wider. Instead of walking on the rocks, we now had to leap from boulder to boulder, often landing in deep water. We knew quite well that all this boulder-jumping and scrambling was risky, to say the least; for if one of us had slipped and broken his leg, jammed between boulders, we would both have been done for. But Providence, fortunately, was on our side.

After a long trudge down the mountainside by way of the creek-bed, we at last came out of the bush into a widening valley with a level floor. It was a dank and dismal sight, the vegetation having obviously been burnt off in a huge fire not long before. But at least it was open going. In a few patches where there had been scrub we had to shove our way through charred branches and persistent jagged twigs which ripped at our clothes and blackened us from head to foot. Ahead, we saw the opening of the valley—seaward, as far as we could make out; and we still had hopes of finding the kaika there. Evening was coming on by this time, and the sky was still heavily overcast, so that we could not keep track of the sun’s position. At one stage I thought I could just make out a glimmer through a break in the clouds, but a cold shiver went through me: the gleam came from the right—it should have come from the left. * *

YVHEN we got to the end ’ ’ of the valley it was dusk already. We came to a body of water we could not see across, but its shores lacked the firmness of a beach pounded by waves from the open sea. We tasted the water: it was brackish, but not briny. It was borne in upon us that we were standing on the shore of the great Lake Waihora, later known to the English as Ellesmere, which lies at the southern end of Banks Peninsula: our goal was on the north side. Here we were, then, lost, hungry, tired, in a desolate wasteland. Not a trace of human occupation in sight; no shelter; nothing to eat—and the day nearly done. We turned away from the swampy shore, and headed up a mountain spur. Here we got down to our knees and prayed. Missionary Creed prayed aloud in English, which I could also understand; then I prayed in German, which he didn’t understand.

In those days I could not make myself very clear in English, and he was very anxious that I should pray out loud in the language with which I was familiar. After our prayer we took fresh heart. ♦ * *

VUE struck out boldly along ’’ the ridge towards a patch of bush, to look for a camp site. On the way we found a wild turnip plant, which we pulled up and took with us for our supper. It had big leaves but not much of a turnip part underneath. This vegetable had originally been introduced to New Zealand by Captain Cook, and then propagated by the natives; it grows wild all over the place, putting out leaves but no proper starchy root.

At the edge of the bush we found the remains of a whata —a platform on a post for storing provisions up high—a sure sign that at some distant time there had been a Maori garden here- Everything had reverted to bush, and there

was no sign of a path. We found an old toppled tree, whose roots, gaunt and hollow as they were, were roomy enough to provide shelter for the pair of us to curl up in. It would have been a chilly camp without a fire, and in view of the sketchy state of our apparel, if I had not by a stroke of luck had the making of a fire on me: flint, steel and tinder. What these were doing in my pocket I have no idea, for I did not have my pipe with me. Such an antiquated method of starting a fire had gone out of favour with the English since the invention of the match, and I myself would have discarded it but for its sentimental associations: this steel set, with its flint-and-tinder wallet decorated by pretty hand with glass beadwork, had been given to me as as keepsake in Hamburg. Without it we would hardly have come through the next few nights on the cold bleak mountain tops. . . . We now made our fire and toasted our turnip top, said grace over it and ate it. After saying our prayers together, we retired into our log to sleep, after banking up enough fire at its entrance to keep us warm. He « *

■JJEXT morning was Monday. As the place had so obviously been an old Maori plantation I went looking for self-sown potatoes, but all I found was a handful of miserable marbles the size of peas. However, my companion succeeded in knocking down a sparrow-sized bird. This trophy we shared and ate, not forgetting grace. We then inspected my firelighting equipment, in case we might have to spend another night out. As it happened we were nearly out of tinder, but Missionary Creed knew his bushcraft: he tore a corner off his shirt tail, scorched it, and so my tinderbox was replenished. Then, after common devotions, we got moving again.

Our idea was to retrace our steps. Boulder-leaping uphill in the creek-bed was much more difficult and timeconsuming than the corresponding down hill progress had been. From time to time we drank great gulps of creek water. This brought on hungry pangs, and the imagination would not keep off the subject of a table heaped with cold deserts—this, howvere, was not unpleasant. Now, as the creeks we followed up hill ran together more and more, it became quite impossible to tell which of them was the branch we had come down. This did not matter much, as they clearly came from the same watershed.

When we reached the top of the razorback we would just have to turn left. After a great deal of wearisome clambering over rocks and boulders, and floundering through pools, we at last got the source of the creek, bypassing the landslide. Now we had to spend half our time breaking our way through the matted growth, and the other half squirming underneath it on all fours, pushing and battling our way uphill. At last we had worked our way right through to the open again; but now a high steep face clad in man-high scrub confronted us. We would have to get ourselves up it to reach the razorback, whose stoney surface supported no plant cover whatever. * ♦ «

QN the slope, however, v where good soil had washed down from the top and lodged there, the scrub was thick and dense where dead sticks and leaf litter persisted from year to year. We just had to smash our way through. Being the tougher (though not the taller), I led uphill, tearing at the scrub with both hands, bending the dense undergrowth aside with my arms; and whenever I had cleared an open space, I gave my companion a hefty shove from behind, then climbed up after him. With each assault we gained a little height, and the scrub thinned out; and in due course we attained the razorback ridge. We now found ourselves on a wild unknown range. Our outlook was circumscribed: a little way above our heads loomed thick fog. It is a grim experience to come out at last on the open uninhabtted tops only to find oneself still astray, with the clouds so near that any travelling will obviously have to be done in virtual darkness. Our hopes that the sky would have cleared by now so that we could get our bearings were dashed to the ground. Scrambling along the ridge, we soon landed ourselves in thick wet fog. Here we were able once more to keep our hunger at bay by drinking water—the clear water shed abundantly by the clouds, and collected in little hollows in the rock. But the daylight was going, it would soon be pitch dark and there was no firewood here.

“QH’SH! Keep still a minute.—”

Yes, praise God, we heard birds singing. Birdsong means bush. We staggered down the slope and at last found the edge of it. The face was so near the vertical that when we had got our fire alight and were bedded down beside it, there was nothing but trees and branches to stop us from rolling over an invisible bluff. Too tired to put up much of a prayer. I fell at once into a heavy sleep. A couple of hours later I woke up refreshed and ready to take over the stoking. The following day, Tuesday, our third day out, we set off again. There was not a scrap to eat where we were. We looked for fuchsia berries, but found so few we gave up. Now we would have to get back on to the summit ridge. Everything was still heavily shrouded in foggy cloud. We were often in doubt when the ridge divided, or seemed to divide, which branch we should take.

“Brother Wohlers,” Missionary Creed kept asking, “will this mountain be the end of us?”

“No!” I was always able to answer with easy confidence, “our journey isn’t going to end up here.” Where 1 got this confidence from I don’t know—from God?—anyway, having a tougher constitution perhaps I could put up with more. At all events, my optimistic approach did some good in that it braced my companion mentally when he flagged, , , , Going seriously off course like this was much harder on him than it was on me, for he had a wife and youngster on board the ship, and was heartsick at the thought of the worry he must be causing them.

We could still hold back our hunger by drinking quantities of the clear water that had dripped down into the rocky crevices; but prolonged wandering up and down on the high open tops in that awful cold fog saps a man’s strength sooner or later. * Hi «

T began looking sharply at the ground as we stumbled along the narrow ridges... . “Hold on!” I called at last. “This is where we were on Sunday morning. I built this little wall with my own hands while we were sitting here ” Now we were sure we were only a couple of hours’ march from Port Cooper, where our ship lay at anchor. But now the trouble was to find the right direction in the heavy fog. We picked a route that seemed possible, but were soon brought up standing by a horrible bluff. Shaken, we drew back, and tried another spur running parallel. It led us to the edge of another drop—or so it seemed: up in the high country and in thick fog all ground seems to fall terrifying away. . . . Moreover night was upon us again, and we had to make up our minds to level a camp sight. By good luck we had dropped far enough below the summit to be able to find a few clumps of stunted totara. We set to work breaking off armfuls of twigs. While I was in the middle of doing this, without knowning how it happened, I rolled over fast asleep. My mate finding me in this state, set me right way up, but he had to thump me into a state of sufficient consciousness to tend the fire. As the kindling caught, I handed the job back to him, and fell over again, dead to the world. In an hour or two I sat up fully refreshed, and had no trouble in taking my turn at the fire. ♦ » ♦

QN the Wednesday morning, our fourth day out, we got up and started downhill. We were soon below the cloud limit, and already through the , lower veils of mist we could discern the mirror-like waters of Port Cooper. In a moment we could also pick out the masts of the Deborah. Now we were safe. Nearly at the shore at long last, we saw a boat push off to pick us up. Scratched, blackened from head to foot, our clothes in rags, we were a sight to see. However, after a restrained helping of hot porridge and a good long sleep we were back on our feet again. We did not escape our fair share of criticism, selfimposed and external, for having got ourselves bushed. We certainly had no business going off like that into rough country unguided and without a compass. The direction “just go up that mountain and you can see Port Levy” apparently had not meant us to ascend literally to the summit, but merely to sidle the shoulder.

So much for Banks Peninsula in those days. Now, 34 years later, the rugged hills have already been transformed into good sheep coun-' try. The Europeans have burnt off the useless cover and caused the wilderness to blossom with cocksfoot. . . . Surveyors have long since mapped the mountain complex.

In 1544. a German missionary. J. F. H. Wohlers, set off from the Nelson settlement to look for heathen to convert. The chief surveyor, a Mr Tuckett, had offered him a free passage on the brigantine Deborah, a vessel chartered by the New Zealand Company to find a site for a proposed Free Kirk settlement. Also on board was another missionary, of a Wesleyan raised creed, who was bound for a post at the whaling settlement of Waikouaiti. Early in April, the Deborah called at Port Cooper (Lyttelton), and the two missionaries set off on foot to hold a service at Port Levy.

How they were lost for several days, and how they were saved by prayer, a tinderbox and breaking the Sabbath, are related in the eighth chapter of Wohler's "Erinncrungen aus meinem Lcben ". published in Bremen in ISS3. from which these notes are more or less freely translated by Sheila Natusch. of Wellington.