FINDING NEW ZEALAND.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIII, Issue 19415, 25 August 1926, Page 13

FINDING NEW ZEALAND.

AN. AUSTRALIAN'S VISIT. THE COMING OF THE PAKEHA. ANCIENT CHARM OF AKAROA. 1 > • No nr. BY ETHEL TURNER. Who discovered New Zealand ? The question rose idly as some of us leaned over the ship's rail watching the stern coastline emerge from the rosy-purples that dawn had left trailing behind her. Someone ventured "Captain Cook" but was swiftly crushed. "Captain Cook" had only discovered Australia." Someone hazarded "Tasrnan;" then added, "Oh, no, he, discovered Tasmania, of course." And, until a few weeks before, when I began digging into the country's past, I was equally hazy, though I. too, had had a notion that it was one of these gentlemen. The French lay a claim, but not with the vigour of much substantiation. They say that Binot do Gonneville's records show that he sailed from Havre is 1503, landed in a country supposed to be New Zealand, stayed there for several months nnd brought back a native who married one of his relatives. There exists in France a record of this early navigator's voyage written by his grandson in 1663, and named "Memoires touchant I'Etablissement d'une Christienne. dans la Terre Australe." Spain lays a claim. Juan de Fernandez in 1576 sighted Easter Island, it is allowed. The claim—disputed -r-is that he sighted also the Continent of Australia or New Zealand. Tasman's Arrival. No doubt whatever is cast on the fact that the intrepid Dutchman, Tasman;'sent by Van Diemen with the large order that ho was to discover "certain islands of gold and silver supposed to lie cast of Japan," fonnd Tasmania, which he loyally named Van Diemen after his patron. Then he turned cast, and in eight days was staring at some part of the rugged coast line about which we were speculating. He' named the new land "Land of the States"—the States being, of course, Holland. He did not consider it to be one of the gold and silver isles of which he was in search; he thought ho was cruising along a coast of the great Antarctic Continent. The First White Man Ashore. The first to set a foot on shore—that is the first of whom we have undisputed records—was our intrepid Yorkshireman, Captain Cook, in 1769, who effected landings and surveyed the coast, but was fiercely prevented from penetrating inland by the Maoris. Cook formally annexed the land for Great Britain. But j Great Britain was having enough trouble , with her colonies for the moment without adding to the number. Great Britain ■ was at grips with America, struggling so desperately for its independence, With George Washington engaging her fighting light arm, Britain could not stay to listen to James Cook patiently at her left and advising her to take over a brand new colony. For''years she would not trouble. But the land was discovered now and other navigators sailed to its shoresFrench and Spanish ones again: Russian and American. They came back with "tales of the mighty kauri timbers that wouldl make unsurpassable masts, of the flax that was growing everywhere, of the whales along the shores. A series of irregular expeditions from various lands followed in search of such treasures. Trade and Firearms. The'ifaoris, by this, were growing used to the putting in of the white men's—the pakehas' ships. They became less hostile and soon were bartering flax and treasures of various kinds for the marvellous fire-spilling muskets with which they might seek to exterminate neighbouring enemy tribes. Before the ceaseless eindeavottrs of the missionaries (come to seek to undo the mischief of the traders and to teach Christianity) brought a degree of peace, the Maoris, armed with the weapon that was so much deadlier than the worst of their own spears, had vastly reduced their own numbers up and down the islands. Even. 70 years after Cook had fallen dead in a Hawaiian Island at'the hands of a native, not England nor France nor Spain had troubled formally to annex the new land though there were tiny English and French settlements here and there by this. < Half-way down South Island, about 50 miles from where Christchurch lies on its English Canterbury Plains, juts ruggedly out into the ocean Banks Peninsula—Sir Joseph Banks' Peninsula, of course. Nine miles up into the rugged peninsula runs a fiord named Akaroa, so very blue, so very, lovely and unsophisticated that though she meant to stay there only a few hours, this tourist found herself staying on for several days. The French Colony. A Frenchman, in 1838, L'Anglois, captain of a whaler, camo similarly under the spell of the place. He decided on one of the many whaling expeditions despatched from the headquarters, that such a jewel must belong to La Belle France, By gifts and promises he induced the Maoris to undertake to cede all Banks' Peninsula to France: Then ho returned to that country himself, got together a company of 65 emigrants, induced the Government to lend him a ship, the Comte de Paris, and a frigate. L'Aube. commanded by Commodore Lavaud, and set out for Akaroa with all the high hopes of a Pilgrim I Father on board the Mayflower. But tho news of his bold undertaking had reached the Bay of Islands and Captain Hobson. A very short time before the Comte do Paris and the L'Aube came up the blue waters of Akaroa, the British man-o'-war Britomart had glided majestically in and had filed the British flag ;to a new < flagstaff. No. there were no broadsides, no thundering battlebolts flew from the three deckers. (New Zealand is just a little reluctant to admit this, and some of the early accounts rather enjoyed enhancing this affair, but, as a matter of fact, the countries arranged the matter peaceably). The 65 French emigrants settled down in Akaroa, according to their original plan, but it was :.n Akaroa that was now. along with all the rest of New Zealand, : a British colony. Too Good to be True. Captain Anglois, as said, had wanted to give the little place to France. My desire was to carry it back as a gift to Australia, but. to tuck it away secretly somewhere between two mountains and the.sea so that none bat myself and a handful of others could ever find it The truly generous impulse that assails most/ of us<when we find an idea! holiday spot! But, indeed, Akaroa seemed almost too good to be true. Tho roacl—not the best of motor roads bapp:.!y.„ else were the little dreaming place too easily come by of the crowd—ran out from Christchurch first through the flat emerald green plains and between hedges of golden gorse. The hills swelled, fold upon fold, to right and left, not green hills but a strange pale gold—champagne hills they seemed to me, all dotted. over with white sheep and patched with pines. At Hill Top Inn, the car pulled up short. "View!" said the driver laconically. - I can call to mind few, very few such truly lovely scenes. We were on one of the'up-thrust ridges of Banks' Peninsula up-thrust fiercely in the dawn days of the world. Other ridges spread out lo

the ocean in a kind of fan and between the ridges ran green valleys, and in tb.pi r. valleys ran silver water met here imili there by the blue thrusting of a fibrijl piercing in from the sea. Far below, I'iko a lovely land-locked lake lay Akaroa Biajl- - once the yawning crater of a volcano. On the edg<\ of the blue, blue wabn'Sk the village could be seen nestling ittf rea roofs in bosky growths of green, while, sentinel over it, rose two coppery mountain crags—Brasenose and Purple Peald Then down, down to the harbour rati our road, doubling along steep hills, winding past apple orchards, cherry orchatds', sheep farms, to the village itself it ran, along the edge of the water, as run the roads on Italian lakes, green grass ami .flowers making a dividing rjbbon, while the houses and the close-clippec! mac-rci-carpa hedges and little shops were only on one side. Grass-grown streets cliinheJ the hills—thin, aloof poplars flattering yellow leaves brought Normandy unbidden to one's mind. I was told that, the descendants of the French immigrants ha;l been, in many cases, the planters of. the old-world growth: the poplars, the great chestnuts, the oaks and elms, the olives and almonds and figs, the tangled hedges of Bourbon and damask roses, the heftvy creepers of Provence and Cloth of Gold, the willows—these last named had b?en grown from slips brought by Francois Le Lievre from Napoleon' grave aJ' St. Helena. The Old French Names. In the hillside cemeteries, I found many an ancient date and many a French iqame among the Macgregors and Patersons ami Sinclairs and Collets and the rest-. Lucie a Brocherie I found, and Mary Lemotitiior; Francois Etinne, beloved ftuii* band of Justine Rose Le Lievre, aged 93; Bonnetta Annette Bouriand and many and many another. And some of the streets and places about still bear French names —L'Aube Hill, Duvauehelles,, Lavnutl; Street, Balguerie Valley, Grehau Valley, Le Bon's Bay, I have not room to mention half cif the interests of the little place—such as the monument to Akaroa's Anzacs by which I lingered many a moment; it was so "right," it "belonged" so to the spol; It stood tall and dignified, approached by wide steps, its four slender pillar framing in, not hiding, the blue lake-har-bour and the crumpled hills beyoincl. Eighty-five men had answered the call from this tiny place and their names stood there fast in the stone,—French names , some of them even to-day—Le Lievre, Bo Malmancho, Le Vaillant,. The monument has been surrounded hv a lawn of emerald lose-cut sward with beds running over with tender flowers—■ not public gardener's bedding is hero; ■» some one told trie the mothers and sisters do all of it, and in the spring tulips iitid daffodils and bluebells and pansies smile ' tender remembrance and the blue wavijs, for ever lap v .ind the rugged mountain peaks seems to say, "From my strength, your strength." I shall always be glad that it was )|o Akaroa I went to wonder in some of (he earliest footsteps the white man had made in New* Zealand. \ l(