“OLD WAIROA”

Gisborne Times, Volume LXIV, Issue 10267, 14 April 1926, Page 5

“OLD WAIROA”

MR LAMBERT’S EAST COAST

STORY,

“PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE.”

Idie wonderful collection of interesting facts concerning Old Wairoa and the East Coast district gathered by Thomas Lambert, formerly Edi tor of “The Wairoa Guardian” lias, together with much fiction, it last made its appearance in book form. It is a substantial volume, comprising no fewer than 800 pages, and runs into approximately 400,(XX) words. .Only the chapters and illustrations are indexed and, consequently, tlie publication is marred from the point of view of the student by the absence of a reference index. Amongst its contents, which are of infinite variety, not the least t oluable section is the illustrations, of which close on 250 are distributed throughout its pages, many not having previously been published. It may at once be said that the volume is a monument to the patience and industry of its author: be presents a very considerable aggregation of stories, opinions, incidents, arguments and legends, all having some bearing, close or remote, on the district which he has known so long and loves so well. If everything else were taken away, tlie information gathered first hand by Mr Lambert would, however, not in itself he sufficient to provide a very pretentious tome. <r old Wairoa” bears much evidence that its author has been a keen collector and liis scrap book must, after many years, have assumed large proportions. To put the matter in another way: the effort has proved ’ too ambitious ancbMhe work would have been more valuable u much that it contains been jettisoned and more care had been taken in marshalling and amplifying what really matters from the point of view of those who take a keen interest in the early history of this portion of the Dominion. Mr Lambert’s trouble has been that he could not confine his activities to Old Wairoa, His desire, to give Wairoa of To-day a big boost would, in other circumstances, be commendable. To devote ' so much space as he has done to its j present day problems and its out- j look does, however, seem out of place | in a publication which, on account of j its high price, 255, cannot be expect- . ed to gain the extensive circulation j which it really thoroughly deserves. *

GROPING IN THE DARK. “The deepest thinker, while becoming engrossed in the subject (Who were tlie earliest migrants?) soon becomes entangled in a maze which fails to .disclose a way out.” In these words, Mr Lambert sums up his own predicament—and it is some predicament ! He does not accept the belief that New Zealand was uninhabited in A.D. 900, when it was visited bv Kupe. According to him, long before the days of Tuhoe Potiki, nearly twenty centuries ago, a very ancient tribe occupied all the lands of Waikaremoana and Ruakituri, as well as down the Waiau to tlie mouth of the Wairoa River. We are told by Mr Lambert also that tho first race to people Aotearoa were tlie Maru-iwi. That they were of Melanesian or negroid extraction he does not feel inclined to accept?. What he prefers to believe is that they were a fair-skinned race. How the Maruiwi could have been settled in the Tuhoe and Wairoa districts twenty centuries ago is far irom plain. , Mr Lambert, indeed, a few, pages later 'on, infers that the Maru-iwi were blown here in canoes some time after Kupe’s arrival, viz A.D. 900! The Maoris—he means, we suppose, the descendants of the early, Maori settlers—l2oo to 1350 A.D.—did not, he says, think much of them and called them the Maru-iwi. Mr Lambert is prepared, as lie. mentions still later on, to believe that New Zealand was inhabited thousands of years ago. According to him, the Maoris were of Aryan descent and go back almost to the Flood. Unhappily he is unable to afford proofs in the Tuhoe land to connect the Maoris with an ancient race that was far removed from savagery.

“THE LAND OF THE FAIRIES.”

As might be expected, Air Lambert pays a lot of attention to that interesting portion of the Dominion, Tuhoe Laud, oi, as it is more widely known, “The Urewera Country.” It is, he points out, generally admitted that the ancestors of the Tulioe and Te Urewera migrated in the Horouta canoe and quotes Air Elsdon Best as his authority for the contention that the Horouta, canoe was in fact the Takitimu and that some of her passengers were black men, who spoke a language different Prom the Alaori. “Wasters of food and property, destroyers of mankind” was a saying applied to the Tuhoe people, who, from their rugged mountains, were won’t to make raids on the lowlands. The Urewera, believed themselves to be the hub of the Alaori universe : hence their hostility to the British invader. That this dark, mysterious country, inhabited, in more recent times, by fierce and untamable Maori tribes, is also noted for fantastic stories of fairy folk is, of course, widely known. According to the author, the present-day remnant of the Tuhoe people speak of a smaller and much more gentle race that once inhabited their land—a race of almost, if not wholly, white-skinned men and women who were called “Te-patu-p-ae arche”—and a race which now lives only in the traditions of its conquerors. Rightly, he regards the fairy people as mythical like the Banshee in Ireland. The late Judge Wilson, by the way, was a firm upholder of the belief that a white tribe, the “Urukehu”, with red hair, lived nine or ten generations ago in the vicinity of Mohaka. In short Air. Lambert claims that New Zealand may have oeen peopled successively by various races before the Great Maori Aligration of 1350 A.D. That stray canoe-loads of Polynesians or Alelanesians may have been cast on these shores even before the days of Kupe is not -.unlikely. But Kupc, from all accounts, saw no evidence in the way of occupation of any kind. What Mr Lambert regards as feasible—that the pre-aboriginals (to use his own designation) were white or fair-skinned, others may be excused for reckoning the reverse.

LAST HOME OE THE AIOA. In the opinion of Mr Lambert, the East Coast of the North Island was the last home of the moa. How hp came to that conclusion is difficult to gather. The story of the discovery of the first traces of that famous extinct bird, and much that is of great interest concerning its habits, is given as compiled by Mr H. Hill, of Napier, and is well-known to most people. Air Hill, incidentally, mentions that he possesses a fossil moa feather that he found at Ormond in pumice mud deposits, which were crowded with leaves and fishes and that must have been deposited there many, many centuries, ago, because they are in the cliffs among the Ormond Hills. Many will agree with AjA Lambert’s suggestion that the moa became extinct before the advent of man in this country, and that its extermination was due to abnormal agencies. Still these claims are likely to be hotly disposed in other quarters. Hardly worth lecordmg is a statement attributed to a Wairoa Native—-that the . lasfc moa v as killed at Lake Waikaremoana. It is oh. a par with the fairy. tale about ;a moa having' been hailed tip in , that district, and retaliating by breaking the

thigh of one of the hunters by a kick I Introduced also is ihe story of the so-called “moa foot-prints found at the mouth of the Waikanae creek. It. would seem to he assumed that they were of the size and shape of an adult human foot. That, ot course, was not so. Yvhilst the belief of Panapa Waihopai is stated, viz, that the prints were those of the legendary Rongokako, omission is made of the popular belief that the prints were cut by an old Native, who found time pass hut slowly! ,it may.,” says Air Lambert, ‘ certainly he accepted as true that the moa and the Alaori were not contemporaneous and that, if the giant bird was ever hunted by man,,,, it was long prior even to the recognised pre-Maori races.” . (To be Continued.) .