The Evening Star SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 28, 1929. NEW ZEALAND EXPLORERS.

Evening Star, Issue 20292, 28 September 1929, Page 14

The Evening Star SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 28, 1929. NEW ZEALAND EXPLORERS.

There are three ways in which history can be compiled by those who come after the events sought to bo recorded. They can take their facts from the lips of survivors of those who have been participants in the events; or from manuscripts and little-known reports, which the dust is apt to cover in special libraries; or they may select and rearrange them from a multitude of books not recondite, but only baffling from their number, as the bee takes its honey from many flowers. The time is past for applying the first method to the early years of New Zealand’s colonisation, the great pity being that it was not more used while the opportunity served. In the last few years there lias been increasing reepurse to the last method, the least valuable of the three. Now Dr J. R. Elder, Professor of History at Otago University, has produced a book which sets an example to students and future historians of how the second method can be employed. Slowly, but with increasing progress, we are getting our New Zealand history into shape for the general reader. Supplementing the large-planned works of the Rusdens and Saunderses there are biographies of the country’s principal makers which are not all so well known as they deservo to bo, and special chapters—almost the last special chapter, it might be thought—have been elaborated and illuminated in the local histories, of which Mr Lindsay Buick’s 1 The French at Akaroa ’ makes the latest example. In writing of ‘ The Pioneer Explorers of New Zealand ’ Dr Elder has found a subject rich in heroic deeds and services to development performed by men whose names present but the vaguest image to the ordinary New Zealander, when they are not unknown, but which deserve to be at least as familiar in this country as that of Horatius, who kept the bridge of old. They did not keep bridges, but they made it possible for men who came after them to build them, and in a country presenting the natural difficulties to communication of Now Zealand that was an inestimable service.

We need not dwell now upon Johnny ” Jones, with whose story Dr Elder commences his volume. Though the account given of him is quite the best we have read, his record as a pioneer is at least well known in Otago, and we might doubt if he is most naturally included as an explorer. Wo must pass lightly the explorations of a whole series of men of note whoso names should mean more than they do to this generation—the long journeys of Bishop SelwyUj and the achievements of Dr Dieffenbach, Von Hocbstetter, Haast, and Hector What wo desire to recall is the hazards and adventures of the first surveyors, in which Dr Elder, working on old departmental reports, tho Geographical Society’s Journals, and like sources, lias found what will be to most people his most novel stories of heroism. The example for exploration was set early in this country’s history. Marsden was an intrepid, traveller. His last visit to New Zealand was made when he was already seventy-three years of age and in failing health. Such was the spirit of the man, however, that, though so feeble that ho had to be carried by Natives in a hammock, his last journey was made from Hokianga, where he had landed, to the mouth of tho Thames, a distance of 200 miles. Fearlessly he moved without European companions among the Maoris, travelling with Native guides through wiki bush country as he pushed up the various rivers whose course he had set himself to explore. It is our own fault, since there are lives of Marsden, if that is unknown to us, but who knows the names—or much more than the names —of Heaphy and Brunner, Whitcornbe and u Louper, and a dozen others, who at peril of their lives first paved the way for communications between Nelson and Westland and Canterbury and tho West Coast?

Those seem short journeys to-day, but distance depends entirely on the difficulties that have to be surmounted. When Brunner and Hoapby, in the late summer of 1846, set out from Nelson, carrying heavy loads, to make their way along the shore of the unknown West Coast, they could travel only three miles a day. As far as the Grey Rivei it was the narrowest rocky course between the cliffs and tho sea. On the land side high, forest-covered ranges blocked all passage, except at points where Maori war parties had cut a path to avoid a jutting point against which the tide beat. At such places steep ascents would bo made, requiring descents later by the bed of some torrent or by means of a supplejack rope over the cliff. Days would be lost waiting for flooded rivers to subside or the surf to leave bare some promontory too steep to climb, and the rivers were crossed on flaxstick rafts. Food was scarce when the stock they bore with them was consumed. It took sixty-two days to make the journey from Nelson to the mouth of the Teremakau, and Heaphy’s journal on the return jour- ’ ney contains such entries as “ found I the- remains of a dead pigeon, the tats

leaving it as we approached, and made soup of it with wild rock parsley

. . . found a dead cormorant, car ried it on, and supped of it with sea •snails.” On a later trek, during which ho descended the Buller River from its source near Lake Rotoiti to the sea, Brunner was eighteen months in the bush, and arrived back half-paralysed from tho drenchings and privations he had endured. At one time seaweed, ana at another time his dog, had to avail for food. It was a serious consideration in those days that the West Coast has a rainfall of lOOin a year. Charles Whitcombe, one of tho Canterbury Government’s surveyors who, with liis companion, Louper, sought a pass from Christchurch across the ranges near the headwaters of the ilakaia, and found that to which his name is now given, could not advance moro than 200yds in a whole day on one occasion down the course of Whitcombe’s River, owing to the obstacles of the route and the weakness caused by semi-starvation. Ho was drowned in trying to cross the Teremakau River when the canoes which ho and his companion had lashed together were swamped, and tho same fate befell more than buo later surveyor. In the North Island, during the Maori Wars and after them, perils of another kind assailed men of this calling when they were sent on semi-military missions or had to work among hostile Natives. “ The pioneer surveyors of tho New Zealand Government,” Dr Elder writes, “ were endowed with the true instinct of the explorer, and faced year by year an arduous task without hope of honour or reward. The dangerous nature of their work and its extreme value to the dominion have never been adequately recognised, but it is certain that these men are not among the least of those who have built up a tradition which should summon the youth of New Zealand to high endeavour and cheerful self-sacrifice on behalf of the State.”