HILLS OF TE HEUHEU.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVIII, Issue 20976, 12 September 1931, Page 1 (Supplement)

HILLS OF TE HEUHEU.

early ascents.

BY It ATA NG A.

Ruapehu, Ngauruhoe, Tongariro-these three peaks, especially the first, have been prominent in our speech of late, drawing thought from even the remotest corners of our land. A host that has never set foot on their slopes, nor seen so much as a wisp of mist on their hoary heads, knows them now with some sureness. That is what human interest can do, when quickened by a touch that makes the whole world kin. There is something about a search for the lost that leagues all in a seeking sorrow, and when that which is lost is somebody's bairn no heart can be very far from the quest. The story of this quest has awakened memory of others, and the past of these hills of To Heuheu has been peopled again—not by a throng, for of old they were not much trodden, but by as many as are needful to set them in the memorable human records of this land.

At first, they were shunned. Legend alone then gave them visitors, and these are no more than names—the names of those that lit the dread fires on the hilltops and took thence many a kindling flame for other heights. Wraiths, not material mortals, these earliest venturers, and they went into space again as mysteriously as they came. They dwell now only in the mind of a few dim-eyed Maori seers, and it is evil to speak freely of the mystic exploits. But they are omnipotently real in that realm, and it was not so long since awe of them kept profaning eyes away from the sacred summits and made many a dark-skinned brave throw his cloak over his head lest by forbidden looking he should invite some avenging calamity. So these giant hills were for generations set apart in sanctity by a terrible tapu, and it was not until the white man came that fear of them was stayed. Whether any Maori ever scaled them before is to be doubted, though the tale of the great Te Heuheu's bones being given sepulture far up on Tongariro—long after he and sixty of his men were overwhelmed in a devastating landslip at. Te Rapa in 1846 —is good reason for the fact that none, a generation or so ago, would go within a mile of that cone. Bidwill's Feat.

First of the known pakeha climbers was Bidwill. His " Rambles" include a vivid description of this feat. Toiling alone—for his party of native associates could not be persuaded to go near to its base and all the bravest two of them would do was to make a fire at a chosen spot far away in the bush and sit by it till perchance he came back—he made a bee-line for the top, straight up over hillocks and through valleys. The " sea of rocks" and network of solid lava streams gave place at last to a declivity of loose and but for " the idea of standing where no man ever stood before" he would have abandoned exertion.

" The crater," he says of its everactive vent, " was the most terrific abyss I ever looked into or imagined." An eruption caiYie as he made his way down from the steaming summit, but he was too closely heedful of the difficulties of the descent to notice it, though the two awaiting him had seen it and were appalled by the shaking of the ground even at the distant point where they anxiously awaited his return.

That was in early March of 1839, and his undertaking the ascent without Te Heuheu's permission was an embarrassment to Dieffenbach, the naturalist of the New Zealand Company, when he wished to do the like some two years later. He had climbed Egmont, being the first European to stand upon its glittering pinnacle, and Tongariro called him just as wooingly. As was inevitable in those days, he had approached this group of peaks southward from Lake Taupo, and Tongariro lay nearest in his path, but, Maori objections dissuaded him. Te Heuheu, angry still about Bidwill s affront to him, "ariki of the Taupo tribes and lord of all that mountain territory, had put a special ban on the region. He was away on a war excursion to Wanganui; his word, however, was left behind. No pakeha was to go upon " the backbone of our tupuna," and those that warned Dieffenbach made much of Te Heuheu's own white head's resemblance to that of this legendary ancestor solidly depicted up there for all mcri to see. Dieffenbach deemed discretion the better part of mountaineering, too wise to flout the ire of those whose aid he needed in many other ways; he stopped at the foot-hills, leaving the awesome backbone inviolate. Kerry-Nicbolls and Turner. It was Kerry-Nicbolls, traveller of wide renown and lover of heights like Fujiyama, who is thought to have first reached Ruapehu's summit, along with Turner, his trusty aide and interpreter. They began with Tongariro, being undeterred by Maori hostility. M«ch /mow had fallen since the days of Bidwill and Dieffenbach, and by the early eighties the Kingite movement had forbidden encroachment by Europeans within the rim of the hat" that spread far round these peaks. To get inside that robe potae," to traverse the region from to end, were twin purposes of this exnlorer He accomplished both, thanks chieflv to his courage and the experfc tact of Turner, although Sir Geoige Giey s letter of introduction to Tawhiao, thud in the line of Maori kings, availed nothing, and a party of sur ™?°™,, turing just before across the rim had been ruthlessly maltreated. These two, Kerry-Nicholls and 1 urner, made short work of Tongariro but Ruapehu gave them days and nights of wearying trouble. Three horses one for their impedimenta—a word of very literal meaning to them when the horse, hid to be left —took them across to its base They had been in fear of discovei'v and molestation by Maori riders abroad near Tongariro, l' ut 0 » R^ a P eh |' ' hv the route they took, theie was in cident enough and to spare to rnake them forget aught but the hazards of the Climb " " Point Victoria."

How they pierced the forest fringe, how they bivouacked on tl F K. 6 ! Kl,ng ,ni° r shei tent went stoini, till 1 ,| overcame a " very topmost summit of flat; on t-iie . 1 ~ , 11 <n i,i h v the North Island is all veil told by where TheyTitowed desenpt.^ scientific interest , fi not another point they made another locate "» W.ng»b;/U..t places in the eternal sn knowledge that wculd Mpand t forbiddcn they won, that some d. y nnpne(l to the King Country must b P . .. have white mnnjbut c ,» b kbone D f the ?ZZ"'wodd SSm. the, gi<' <** Kingite tribes for a pakeha playground