NEW ZEALAND PAST AND PRESENT.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XX, Issue 6667, 31 March 1883, Page 1 (Supplement)

NEW ZEALAND PAST AND PRESENT.

A (:KN-n.r.man who occupied an euiinent position in the early days ol the colony hag placed at our disposal a in inuseript, written for tlu; information of a friend ii I'ingluid, entitled " Random Rcjolleutiuiisof the Karly Days, by a Maori I'akeha. ' V> e quote soioe portions : To the gentlemen and ladies in England who v 'ivo at home at case it may seem that tjje little hand of pioneers who were e:ig ige 1 iu lajing the Validation of a eo'.nny in the uttermost of the earth upwards of fortyeight years igo, burieu out of s.ght of every sign of civilisation :iu.l ol" all the ainenitics of life, iu the miJst of a barbarous people, must have lived a lifj of no amail uiscomiort and privation ; yet, for the youthful and adventurous, fhese early days, with all their privations and primitive simplicity, were by no means "without their charm. S.ciety was then mainly compos cd of a small band of ollicials — most oi them sent down by the authorities of .New South Wales ai the nucleus of the future Civil Service — who squatted temporarily in tents and raupo hats 111 a smal'. bay on the shores oi the Waitemata Harbour. At that time the social world was hardly mere numerous than manv a family party at a ChrKtmay gathering in Knglaud. Spinsterhood was in a minority of one, and the fairer portion of the so-called "upper ten" might be counted on the ting-ii'S of both hands. Female servants were still in the womb of time, and, ; from the highest to the lowest, .ill had to ' it, aim every lady had to be h. r own maid-of-all-work, nurse, and lady's-maul. ' In almost every household a M;.ori man or L woman was employed as factotum, and a f discharged, or more frequently undischarged ship's cook or a runaway sailor " ruled tue roust yet throughout the infant settlement the spirit of Mark Tapiey reigned unnromo anil on >n bouse was the order of

supreme, ana opju nuuae «« uic the day. With the exception of goat's 11 s!>—served up on state occasions to pass tor mutton —• the only animal food was pork, and for t'.vo yeara at leasit pork and potatoes were the staple food of the whole community. English letters reached the colony only at long intervals, and with great irregularity, and were generally five, six, or seven months old, and the incident of most general interest was the arrival of a vessel bringing Knglish letters, and, from the Governor downwards, the whole community were on the alert at the prospect of receiving intelligence from home. At th.it time the embryo capital consisted for the must pai t of huts built of vanpo, reeds, and rushes— til-; first public building being a long raupo shed, which did duty as police-office and post office for six days in the week and as a place of public worship on the seventh ; and tradition has it that ou a certain rainy clay Bis Excellency the Governor might have beeu seen enjoying the friendly shelter of an umbrella while attending service at the vice-rccjal cbapel. When horses, carriages, and sedan-chairs would have beeu an anachronism—there being no roads—to attend a ball or. a dark, wet night, during the prevalence of a boisterous nortli-easterly gale—and in tho»e days a north-easter was a north-easter— was literally the pursuit of dancing under difiiculties ; yet, in the worst weather, the ladies wcru never dauuted, gallantly vvadiug through mud and mire, their '' lit;lit fantantie toes'' being encased in men's jack-boots, while a fortunate few amongst the men thought themselves lucky to be carried, high and dry, oil the back of some goodnatured Maori. Kveu at that early period the lovers of dancing had an opportunity of gritifying their taste at a ball given by the Queen's representative on Her Majesty's birthday. On the occasion of the first Birthday Ball a piano, played by the gracious hostess, with a violoncello accompaniment, vamped with all due gravity by Her Majesty'a then Attorney-General, formed the modoat orchestra. Yet a ball at Governi ment House was then probably as much j ■ enjoyed as the Birthday Ball of yesterday. J : Yet, with all its drawbacks, the social s world was not without its compensations. • Though the settlement was thronged by ; Maoris day and night, locks and bolts were j rusty for want of use, " Mrs. Grundy" was , conspicuous by her absence ; sickness was . unknown ; age was neither seen ner thought > of; children were a dream of the future— 3 a plague or a pleasure to come—and care r was a thing of the past. Though there was r no formal visiting, there, was much friendly 3 social intercourse, gypsy picnics and im--1 promptu dances being the favourite amusef mer.ts. The most friendly feeling at that 3 time existed between the tv:o races, each f finding an advantage in the presence of tho a other. For Beveral years the settlers were , mainly dependent on the natives for food of - various kinds, and Maori labour was the b only labour to bo had, the Maoris becoming i large consumers of flour, sugar, tobacco, - blankets, &c., and in a variety of ways they 1 formed an important feature of the small , community, and, with their tattooed skins, t strange v jalmonts, wild gestures, and outo spoken in an unknown tongue, v gave life and animation to the embryo e capital. liressed in native mats of various o kinds and of divers colours, made of dogif skin, flax, or bird-skiu, their heads decked " with feathers, wearing a shark's tooth or

1 greenstone in their ears, and generally carrying a tomahawk, a mere, or a musket, they were daily to be seen, some hawking about pigs, potatoes, fish, firewood, and other articles of merchandise : others lazily loungiug at the corners of the streets, in groups upon the ground, or in still ureater 'numbers 1 ncamped cn .in iieighbourin;; beach, now and then, on the occasion of a recent bereavement, rending the air whh that most heart-breaking of all human siunds, the wail of a native tangi ; or occasionally engaging in' an impromptu mimic war-dance, to the no Email wond~rmeo? of a bitch of gaping immigrants just 1-mded from ti:e latest ship from England. Then, too, the harbour was alive w ; th numerous canoes of all siz.-s, daily arrn ing and departing, skimming smoothly along under a picturesque lateen sail or manned by a lustv crc.v oi swarthy Maoris, flashing their paddles in faultless time, all together as one n) in, anil every now and then striking up some favourite native boat song. Then as many as 1700 canoes entered the port of Auckland in the cour e of a single year, aud 40 causes of the largest class have been seen lying 01-sely packed together on the beach, /.t that time, too, lh>s event of the Auckland R<g..tta was a race between s-.ver.il large war- anocb, each manned by 60 or SO feather-headed Maori w.rrion-, with little or nothing to wear hut their own tattooed brown skins, jus 1 "- i s th y might have beun seen in the days of Capta'n Cook. Hut now i canu i is almo-t as rarely seen as a kiwi ; and these once iar scenes have so completely passed away that already the record oi them reads like a page of ancient history. But these p-aecful, unevuntrul days were of brief duration, and were tollowed by a painful succession of unprofitable Maori wars. To these who can recollect the little settlement in its early infancy, when pork and potatoes were the staple food of the whole commun-ty, and goat's ilesh tvas made to pass < r . mutton, and paper was made to pass i.: money, when the settlers usol t-o assejnule for public worship in a native-built raupo whare, when, in every sense of the word, the Maoris weie lords of tho soil, it must be a na : ter of no small astonishment to lind that New Zealand can now boast nine bii-hops, ministers of religion by the hundred. some eight bundled public schools and some two thousand public school teachers, upwards of fourteen millions <-f sheep, an annual gold export to the value of 'a million sterling and the uat ves now outnumbered (ten to one) )jy tli-j colonising race, But the " day of small thinys" has long since passed away, and the progress of the eolony has more than reilised the expectations of the m st hopeful of it-i founders, and is now progressing by "leaps and bounds," and would now seem to have b--fore it a career of uninterrupted material prosp.-rity. Hut gre;© as may be the present and fl/uture prosperity of the colonising race, an T urobhmi involved in the colonisa-

proimjllJ nnonci - : _ tiun o£ Zealand still r. mains to bo | 1 solved. Are' t!ie Maoris doming to utter ■ ' destruction, iike th-j aborigines of Tasmania, < of vvliom not a single soul remains, or may j a remnant yet be preserved to form a Chris- | tian people V Hitherto all our boasted civilisation has done litt'e towards its satisfactory solution. Cannaba'istn, it is true, J has become txtinct ; the profession of Christiauity has become almost universal: in- ' ■ fantic do is now seldom heard of ; arid a considerable improvement has taken place in the tood and clothing 01 th'i people ; but those advantages liavu been all outweighed by their closer contact with abased civilisa- j tion. Time was, before they wcro brought into v.ith civilised men, and for several year" afterwards, when the Maoris had for every kind of intoxicating liquor a p isitivo dislike, and a drunken native was never to be seeu ; but the curse of intemperance is ii'.w rapidly spreading amongst them throughout the length and breadth of the laud, a:ul the " fire-water" of the " paleface" threatens to destroy them like a , pestilence ; and the question may well b-j asked, " Coming with the Christian missionary in the one hand ;uid with tin; fatal gift of ' lire-water' in the otlv r, has our civilisation brought a blowing or .a ourso on the ab rigines of New Zealand V''—aquedtion that Omniscience aione cui answer. To the Pilgrim K a.'hers of the colony, ociupu'd with the i<jre : s.n£ exigencies ami thorough realities of daily life, vheiemay not have appeared anything to lire the imagination in the eii eumstanees of tb-ir lives ; but in some distant age, when Eiiglieh settlors with English habits and English energy shall have raised New Zealand to tho rank of an independent State exercising a leading influence in the Southern Seas, some future Scotfc or Cooper will bo able to enlist the sympathies ot their readers in the struma and difficulties the perils and difficulties of its then forgotten founders. And when, slowly, but surely, the dark blood of the Maori shall have faded in that of the 11 pale-face," who is destined to replace him, and when the deepened colour in some passing ch< ek shall be the only visible remnant of the dark-skinned race, the history of those isl-nis and the commingling of the two races will be read \wth all the interest of romance.