THE JUNIOR DOMINION

Dominion, Volume 29, Issue 133, 29 February 1936, Page 23

THE JUNIOR DOMINION

Little People of Maoriland, —■ Here it is, Aotca Roa, as you-yourselves see it. The Laud of the Long White Cloud has changed a lot since the ■ time when the Maoris, sailing in search of a nezv land, firstspied its high mountains and its purpling, secret bush. Much of its wild beauty has vanished, but a new beauty has taken its place in some ways. There is the beauty of a warin, red farmhouse roof, shining from a green valley, in place of the scarlet rata of earlier years, and smoke curling from a brick chimney . . . that speaks of peace. And there are other fragments of beauty that you have seen and told about in your letters and stories, here on "Our Own Country’s” page to-day. : The other day I was on a hilltop when a sea-fog rolled dozen the harbour from the Heads, and as it hid all but the tops of the very blue ranges in the distance, I imagined I was in the first canoe, the "Mata-hou-rua” with Kupe, the chief, at its head, and zve had been sailing and sailing for ■many moons. Then slozuly a misty haze on the hlanson was noticed, and at first it was thought to be only a long zvhitc cloud. . . . But, as the boat zvinged onward, purple tops of mountains were dimly seem "Aotca Roa!” the cry ■must have arisen, and a great thrill of thankfulness must have sped among the weary, exhausted Maori people. Then the fog lifted unexpectedly and rolled back again ■into the Heads like the great body of a retreating sed serpent, and I saw the hills and the-ranges in all their own shape again, full of colour because of the crisp dampness that the fog had left behind it. But there, sailing up the harbour, was not Kupe’s zvinged canoe but a great, powerful steamer, and it suddenly zvhistled shrilly, the sound echoing and bound- , ing among the hills. Kupe’s canoe and the great migration is something to wonder at now, when things are made so easy for us—especially travel. My love to each one of you. KIWI. rifts