Kapiti -Isle of Romance

Dominion, Volume 29, Issue 115, 8 February 1936, Page 17

Kapiti -Isle of Romance

(BY

T. F. REILLY.)

TO most New Zealanders Kapiti is known, rather vaguely perhaps, as one of the Government’s bird sanctuaries, and also as an old Maori stronghold; as such it is vaguely interesting, as may be judged by watching the expressions and hearing the remarks' of passengers who gaze across to the island from railway-carriage windows. To tiie visitor, however, Kapiti holds a wonderful diversity of attractions. Scenically and historically there are few places that can rival it. The bird sanctuary, which com-, prises the greater part of the, island, is under the care and supervision of Mr. A. 8. Wilkinson, whose home at Ilangatira, in the middle of the island, can be seen from the mainland in clear weather. Mr. Wilkinson is a keen bird lover and has an intimate knowledge of native plant life; in fact, he is one of New Zealand’s authorities on bird life and its preservation. One could almost say that there is not a bird or plant on Kapiti that Mr. Wilkinson does not know personally, and some of his photographs of the birds, taken at nesting time in particular, \ are certainly unique. The Government is fortunate in having such a conscientious and able officer in charge of the reserve.

The birds are very numerous and extremely tame for the. most part. Everywhere one goes can be heard the songs of the tui and the bell bird, and all day long the dark wooded hills and valleys ring with their delightful music. The most interesting bird on the island, perhaps, is the kiwi, which has increased in numbers in recent years. Pigeons are very plentiful and among other birds which appear io be thriving are the North Island robin, parrakeets, fantails, kingfishers, wild ducks, white-eye and grey warbler,

tomtits and mutton birds. The latter breed on the edge of the western cliffs, where the ground is honeycombed with their burrows. Near the shore is to be found the nesting place of the/little blue penguin. The weka, whicii was liberated on the island many years ago by Mr. Winara Parata, roams in great lumbers. Opossums have been much reduced, and a trapper would have to cover a large area of country to average one a night Continual trapping of rats has been carried out both in the waterfall area and at Rangatira. Experiments with poison have been attended with good results, and, although extreme care has to be exercised when using this method of extermination, so far as is known no birds have been lost through poisoning.

A particularly interesting feature ol bird-life occurred during the nesting season two or three summers ago. For many years a morepork had nested in a hollow kohekohe about a mile from Mr. Wilkinson’s house. One day Mr. Wilkinson went along with a naturalist from Canada who particularly wanted to see ' a morepork’s nest. On his climbing up to the site Mr. Wilkinson .was surprised to iind that a kaka had appropriated the nesting-hole, and that a young kaka and three eggs were in the cavity. The young bird was successfully reared, but the eggs were Saddled. The next season the tree was hot used as a nesting-place by either the morepork or the kaka. The paradise ducks are frequent [visitors to Mr. Wilkinson’s home, ■where they are supplied with food. They live along the coast of the island, and have been seen round the western side by the fishermen. The grey duck that always comes to Rangatira to nest, reared a family and brought them all to the house. Instead of

keeping within the netted enclosure, where the ducklings would have been safe, she took them out on to the flat, consequently she lost the Jot, owing, probably, to wekas. She then flew over to the mainland somewhere near the mouth of the Waikanae River, and made a nest. She used to fly back to Mr. Wilkinson’s house once or twice a day for food. If no one answered her call she would go into the house. She turned up one day with some joung ones about a fortnight old, which had swum all the way from the river—about five miles. These were successfully reared. To hear the morning chorus of the birds on Kapiti is a thrilling and glorious experience. At the break of day the whole island seems to be alive with melodious songsters. One can readily

appreciate now captain cook was struck with the beauty of the early morning song of-.the New Zealand bush: “The ship lay in Queen Charlotte Sound, at a distance of somewhat less than a quarter of a mile from the shore,’’ he wrote, “and in the morning we were’ awakened by the singing of the birds: the number was incredible; and ' they ‘ seemed to strain their throats in ' emulation of each other. This wild melody was infinitely superior to anything that we had ever heard of the same kind; it seemed to be like small bells, most exquisitely tuned, and perhaps the distance, and the water between, might be no small’ advantage to the sound. Upon inquiry, we were informed that the birds here always began to sing two hours after midnight, and continuing their music until sunrise, were like our nightingales, silent the rest of the day.”

Many people have gone to .Kapiti ; hoping to hear there the songs Captain Cook heard on the opposite side of the strait over a hundred years ago. Mr. Johannes C. Andersen in his “New Zealand Song Birds” tells us that he has heard the song, “but only as the ghost of the echo of the great harmonious chorus it might have been.” “At about three o’clock in the morning,” he relates, “whilst darkness was still deep, came the common call, repeated at intervals, one bird starting, another replying from a distance, and another, till the dark wooded hillsides and valleys seemed peopled with musical disembodied voices. . . An unexpected value of the native birds was revealed a. short time ago when a bluegum plantation on the north end caught the fire blight It was quite clear to the owners that the

whole plantation was in danger of extermination. The native birds, however, principally the tui and the bell .bird, discovered in the blight ’Sy. a delectable food. They came in scores, ran up and down the branches of

the trees, and before long the blight had disappeared. The fact that the mosquito is hardly known in the north part of the island, at any rate, is probably due to the abundant bird life. Some fifteen years ago plant life on Kapiti was seriously threatened by the depredations of wild goat, deer and wild sheep. This meant, that bird life, too, was in danger and it was then that a handful of enthusiasts brought the situation to the notice of the pub-

lic, with the result that the Government took action and exterminated these animals. To-day the forest is regenerating and hills and valleys that once were almost bare of undergrowth are now covered with young plant life. ‘Many useful as well as beautiful native plants have been introduced to Kapiti from other parts of New Zealand, Species from

as far away as the Chathams and Kermaders have been planted, and all are doing well. Some of the plants that were put out a few years ago by the aid of the Wellington Acclimatisation Society have made great progress, especially the taupata, of which something like 3000 plants were put round the coast between Rangatita and the south-west corner. A portion of the northern part of the island is still in possession of the descendants of the Native owners. This area is known as Wairorua, where farming is carried on by the wellknown Webber family. The Webbers themselves are among the strictest preservers of native flora and of bird life in particular. Visitors to the homestead can at any time see large numbers of wild ducks swimming in the stream running through the centre of the garden. The same can be said of the tui, and the bell-bird, which frequent the homestead gardens in large numbers. Apart from the sanctuary the main interest of Kapiti. of course, lies in its issociation with the past. Remains of Maori fortifications, burial grounds ind relics of the old whaling stations

are to be found on many parts of the island, mostly on the eastern side, facing Waikanae. It is quite likely that there are large hordes of greenstone treasure scattered here and there, but it is very rarely that any examples are found owing to the stony nature of the country. What a story the lake at the northern end of the island could tell! It was here that many scores were killed by Te Rauparaha’s warriors when they repulsed afi attack from invading tribes in 1822. Historians record that cannibal feasts took place on the shores of this lake and also in the Waiorua Valley. With Kapiti the name of Te Rauparaha is imperlshably linked. He and his famous Ngatitoa captured the island about 1820, after their migration from Kawhia, and thereafter used it’as their chief stronghold and as a rallying point before starting out on their terrible marauding , expeditions. Te Rauparaha is probably the most famous of all Maort chiefs and many stories/are told of his cleverness and strategy. Old try pots on the island remind one that Kapiti was once an important

calculations. Thus pigs and potatoes were respectively represented by “grunters” and “spuds”; guns, powder, blankets, pipes and tobacco, by “shooting-sticks,” “dust,” “spreaders,” “steamers,” and “weed.” A chief was called a “nob”; a slave, “a doctor”; a woman, “a heifer”; a girl, “a titter”; and a child, “a squealer.” Then for different native chiefs they had also private names—such as “Satan.” “the old Sarpeijt,” “the Bully,” “the Badger,” “the Sneak,” “the Greybeard,” "the Murderer,” “the Wild Fellow,” and “the Long-un.” A great deal of stratagem and generalship was shown by the different headsmen in their manoeuvres to be first “alongside.” The headsman would urge his rowers to exertion by encouraging descriptions of the animal’s appearance. “There she breaches! and there goes the calf!” “Give way, my lad; sharp and strong’s the word!— there she spouts again!—give way in the lull!—make her spin through it George, a’n’t two boats’ lengths ahead of us. Hurrah! Now she feels it—pull while the squall lasts! Pull!— go along, my boys!”' After a capture, if the tide was fav-

centre of the whaling industry. ' In the early part of last century there were no fewer than seven stations in lull operation on the island, from which a large trade prospered, both in oil and in fiax. The early whalers here apparently gathered a rich harvest. Undeniably they were rough fellows and their life was anything but tame. Even the best of them appear in the first stories of their adventurous careers as ruffians of the sea with a lust for carousals. One historian says: “Drinking .to very great excess was one of the bad habits of the whalers. Their carousals exceeded all the known limit and ordinary habits of drinking. Spirits were supplied from the store in buckets, like water for horses, to the drinkers, who helped themselves by dipping their tin jugs into the liquor. .It was no unusual thing for a few men to have a cask brought them, when the end of it was knocked in and each man drank as much and as long as he could, till he lay down overcome and slept, and when he awoke from his stupor drank again till the quantify was exhausted.” All the principal whaling characters

enjoyed distinctive appellations. like the heroes of the Iliad. One of the chief headsmen was never - called any thing but “the old man.” Another was called “Long Bob”; a third “Butcher Nott”; and a fourth, an American, “Horse Lewis,” to distinguish him from his two brothers of the same name. Then every article of trade with the natives had its slang term, so : that the whalers might converse with : each other respecting a purchase wlth- , out initiating the native into their

ourable, all the- boats of the party would assemble and tow the whale home; if unfavourable, the whale was anchored for the night. Drunken orgies and wild scenes of combat frequently succeeded the return from the chase. It was a practice of the headsmen to meet in the principal whare at supper, and spin long yarns about their old whaling feats, the speed of their new boats, the strength of their crews, and the likelihood of a good season.

In his dealings with the European settlements the whaler very much resembled a sailor off a cruise. After the men had been paid the balance due to them at the end of the season, they went to Wellington or Nelson to spend it. The trade of supplying them and buying their oil naturally fell out of the hands of the Sydney merchants into those of persons at Wellington, who paid them better, and sent the oil direct to England. During the six weeks or two months, Wellington became a Portsmouth in miniature.. ,

An excellent picture of those colourful days is given in Edward Jerningham Wakefield’s “Adventure in New * Zealand,” published in 1845. Every j public house had its fiddle and hornpipe going; a little theatre filled once’ a week; and the weak constabulary force of Wellington suffered from various practical jokes. Boat races, on which heavy bets sometimes depended, came off. and an occasional fight, arising from the profound contempt

which the whaler expressed for the ‘lubber of a jimmy-grant,’ aS he called the emigrant, completed the programme of the amusements during the period.” . An, interesting story of the Kapiti whalers concerns one owner who had a station at Porirua Harbour heads and another on the island. Like some sailors —if one can believe rumour—he had a wife at each port. One day word came to the wife at Kapiti that her husband had another wife at

Porirua. She decided to ascertain the truth.- Tying her baby to her back she swam to / the mainland, Walked down the coast, swam to the entrance to Porirua Harbour and called on the other woman. Finding that the latter had children of an age that undoubtedly established her as the first wife, she abandoned her husband for ever. Mr. James Cowan, the well-known author, in his “Hero Stories of New Zealand,” describes how many, many years ago a young chieftainess Te Rau-o-te-Rangl swam from Kapiti Island to the mainland with her little daughter on her back. Mr. Cowan

heard the story in detail from Te Hau’s only surviving child, the old lady I-leni Te Ran, the half-caste, who was born on Kapiti Island in 1835, and also from Te Whataupoko, the grandson of the great Rauparaha's tohunga. “In the twenties of last century Kahe,” he writes, “Te Rau-o-te-Rangl lived with some of her tribe’s people at Waiorua, a large stockaded village

at the north of Kapiti, in a rocky bay facing the mainland, with the

bird-swarming forests climbing the steep hills at the back. She was . s perhaps 23 or jgg ’ -t

24 years old, and had a tiny daughter of five years named Ripeka. Early one morning in 1826 Te Rau-o-te-Rangi’s man slave, one Patetere, came to her in much agitation to say that he had dreamed a dream of evil omen, a warning from the spirit world. In his vision he beheld a great ope, or army of foemen from the northern mainland assembling and advancing on the island in their war canoes. Kapiti would surely fall, and Ngati-Toa, who were not a numerous tribe, would go into the cannibal ovens of their foes. The slave urged his mistress to fly from the island while there was yet time. ‘Wait a while,’ said Te Rau calmly, ‘wait until they appear; then we shall see.’ .

> “One quiet midnight Patetere’s : dream came true. In the moonlight he saw far away on the sea, in the direction of Otaki, a number of black dots, which gradually grew larger. They were canoes, a whole flotilla of them, apparently paddling slowly so as not to reach their; destination too soon. The slave ran into Te Rau’s whare and roused her. Her husband and her father, and many of the tribe were away on the mainland. T shall go to the mainland,’ she said, ‘but I shall not take a canoe, even the smal-

lest canoe. I shall swim the strait — I shall take my little daughter with me; and I shall rouse the people to

save Kapiti.’ -- “Securely fastening her little child on her shoulder, the brave woman struck out for Ao-marama, the land of light and life*. First Te Rau swam sou tliward along the coast of Kapiti, then, when she judged it was time to make toward the shore, she changed her course boldly across the channel,

reaching the mainland a long distance beyond the Waikanae Beach. Struggling up the beach, she sank down on the firm, white sand and, unfastening her poor little half-perished baby from her stiff and weary shoulders, she clasped it to her thankful breast. Kapiti did not, fall. Its garrison, fighting with the utmost fierceness and desperation, beat off the invaders and took many prisoners, and there were many killed for the cannibal cooking ovens. The reinforcements summoned by Te-o-te-Rangi only came over in time to share in the triumphant war • dances of Ngati-Toa.

“The brave swimmer was a woman of importance in after years. She and her relatives, Topeora, were two of the three women who signed the Treaty of Waitangi in 1840. She was prolific to a degree .unknown in these degenerate days, for she had 20 or 21 children—her daughter, Heni te Ran, was not sure of the exact number. Three or four of the children were to her Maori husband ;the others to a Scottish trader, John Nicoll, whom she married at Paekakariki about 1830. One of these was Mere Naera, who became the mother of the late Sir ( Mani Pomare, and the daughter Ripeka lived to tell children of her own story of how she was borne to safety across the seh on her mother’s toiling shoulders that perilous night of long

ago.” On account of its location and formation, Kapiti' was favoured as an ideal place for look-out men at the whaling stations. Even to-day visitors who climb to the highest point. 1780 feet above seadevel, may be rewarded by the sight of a whale in th? Car distance. Some 18 months ago a whale was attacked by a thrasher .shark, and the hitting of the whale by the shark gave a report which could be heard several miles away. The result of the battle is,not certain; the shark disappeared and the whale came to one of the bays of Kapiti and cruised there, going round in circles for several days. It had suffered considerably in its encounter, but eventually recovered. When the shoals of Warehou frequent the coast the “killer” is often to be seen feeding on

them. Kapiti is well known to many people round about Wellington because of the line fishing to be had off its coasts. Quite recently some people fishing off one of the bays caught a mako shark on an ordinary handline. They were singularly fortunate in their catch, irias much as a blue cod had been hooked and as it was being pulled ashore the shark dived after it and stranded itself. A tight pressure and an attack with staves ended the shark’s career. It was subsequently towed to Mr. Webber’s woolshed, where it was. disembowelled and cut in two. The total weight was 490 pounds. The broadbill swordfish, the marlin and other species of deep-sea fish are vpry plentiful off the island, and it would probably be worth the experiment of a skilled sportsman to test the waters in thorough fashion. This vicinity may one day prove as attractive a fishing ground as the better known Mayor Island and Bay of Pleiity areas. Jafl

There is romance on Kapiti Island. It is a bird sanctuary now, but almost within the memory of our pioneers, its beautifully-wooded valleys reverberated to the sound of whaling carousals and the conquering battle cries of Te Rauparahas’ warriors. Then it was a land of blood and strife; to-day, shrouded in mists in the morning and crystal clear when the sun is high, it is a haven of peace.