AGAINST VANDALISM. PARITUTU.

Evening Post, Volume LXXV, Issue 35, 11 February 1908, Page 2

AGAINST VANDALISM. PARITUTU.

A VENERABLE ROCK. To some people the New Plymouth Harbour Board's intention of converting Paritutu into rubble sounds a3 sacrilegious a suggestion as for the fracture of Nelson's monument into road metal. One of the gentlemen who is greatly saddened by the projected vandalism is Mr. W. H. Skinner, who was chairman of the New Plymouth Scenery Preservation Commission, and his son, Mr. H. B. Skinner, has written spiritedly in defence of the ancient land-mark which the utilitarians propose to slaughter. "One who has summoned the energy necessary to carry him to the summit of Paritutu on ti sweltering day in midsummer," writes Mr. Skinner, "will not grudge- those frequent drops that have bedewed tho rocky stairway up which he has toiled. He finds himself on a small and more or Jess level platform in which some old-time Maori has dug a number of potato pits. The cliffs on his right hand fall away sheer into the sea, five hundred feet below. Oni the other side tho land embraces the rock about tho knees, lessening the height of the cliffs, but leaving the stronghold as inaccessible as ever. Now the visitor may ses one of the loveliest views in all New Zealand. And to beauty is added that further charm which comes from Maori legend and romance, and from the stern, hard story of the Devon pioneers. Round no other spot in New Zealand does there entwine so Jong and Stirring & history. No other spot, not even tha craters of the Auckland isthmus, can summon from the pnst bo Jong a line of warriors. The talcj, of its battles carries us back to the arrival of the seven canoes, and far boyond its history extends,, thougk now hidden in the mist of time. "Three miles away to the north-east lies New Plymouth, its red roofs gleam-, rng through trees and shrubberies. Beyond it, clear-cut against t£be sky, are the far-off peaks of Tongariro and Buapdiu, with its snowy plume .of stea.m. Hound to the north, beyond the s'imous eurvo of the coast, and tha blue wales of the northern bight, stand the towering walls of the White Cliffs. At thi = distance — thirty miles, perhaps— th3y look like the sails of a gigantic schooner. Beyond them the blue sea-cliffs sweep on in one bold curve till they fade into tho dim outline of Woody 'Head. To the north-east is the Pacific, blue, jripplolcss, and unflecked by any sail. Westward the ring of tho horizon is unbroken, but nearer, almost below the watchers, lie the last fragments of the crater-rim, of which Paritutu is the largest remnant. This broken circle of islets was in Maori times tho refuge, of the women and children when hostile war-parties* wcro abroad. 1 "To tho southward tho coast sweeps away m ' many a curving line of creamy spray,' and the land swells up in rise on rise, brown with new-mown hay and ripening grain, to the blue-green of the forest miles away, and th? giant peak of Egmont. There are in this landscape two chief colours, blue and green, for, in spite of tho drought in other parts, t'»o fields of Taranaki are still green. Through the country one can trace the trades of countless streams, each marked by Hues or patches of the old forest. "Down from the rack battlements, five hundred feet beneath, on the west face, the surgo murmurs over the unnumbered pebbles of a, little bay. Into the bay run the waters of a little spring which 111 more warlike times supplied the garrison with water,., From a small terrace three hundred^ feet above the spjin^, steadying himself by a line of stakes driven into the crumbling face, was I lowered a inaii on whoso shoulders were I ctrapped four* calabashes. . If ho was j mot disabled nor his gourds broken by I falling stones, ho brought back a JHtle water. On 'tho inland side a stretch of simmering sandhills, drifting around yellow and red aad brown hummocks of thirsty clay, creeps up towards the base of Paritutu. ' "Such _ are tho surroundings of tho great rock pinnacle that is now threatened with destruction. But iWe is something niore here than the beauty of ths view, for every foot of the country around is hirtovic ground. From this vantage-point ono may count more than a score of pas whose palisades and gates have long sinee -crumbled into dust, but tho trenches still remind us of the men who built thojn long ago. Nor do these pas include Pukerangiora, or Puke-tapu, or Koru, or Whakarewa, or the great pa of the ' Singing Bird ' a* Weitara, alt of which, famous in song and story, are within a dozen miles. "Below there, where the freezing works stand and tho petroleum derricks disfigure the fields,' is the site of the Mo turoa pd, into which, 6ome eighty years ago, thd whalers threw their carronades when Te Whero-whero and his Waikatos came south for tho last time. That beach has seau the frenzy of the war dance and tha retreat of the northern raiders. It 1 has seen, too, the landing of tho Devon settlers, whose stubborn endurance through scarcity and war and disease is bearing fruit, too late for them, indeed, in the prosperity of 1,0day. A little to tho west of us lies I Waireka, the batlleficld where English Volunteers first met the enemy in open field and showed their metal. In wit. ness whereof tile Taranaki Rifles oarry on thrir colours fhe name 'Waireka.' % "The present harbour miarries were almost depleted by the Railway Department. /The Harbour Board, by its vigorous building policy, has n'eSrly exhausted the remaining stonp. But, when such a landmark is threatcnec', the claims of beauty and of history should j be wel' weighed ' before Paritutu is sacrificed en the altar of utility."