Our Island Story Waterway of History

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXVII, Issue 23618, 30 March 1940, Page 4 (Supplement)

Our Island Story Waterway of History

By CRAMMATICUS

TT is a peaceful enough scene from the bare hilltop by tho Russell flagstaff. The winding waterways of one of the world's finest harbours look innocent in tho summer sun. The little town under the hill never seems awake. The soft outlines of a score of isles, the fringe of dark bush behind Paihia and the golden brown of Waitangi's lawns seem clean of the sorrows of man. Looks belie. There is no panorama from the Three Kings to Stewart Island so full of human story. The northern skyline from Kerikeri to Oihi saw the beginnings of Maori

Christianity, the square house across the Bay the genesis of our colonial history. The of Ivororareka are under the green gardens below, tho quiet church is pocked with bullet holes. There is not a promontory or island or mainland in all the landscape's sweep, where blurred fortifications do not speak of strife of teeming tribes bevoiul the white man's memory. Every blue channel has threshed to war canoes. Red-coats have flecked the

beaches. , , The Vicar of Waimato North has written the story in ono of the best centennial publications to date. Ho was in a peculiarly appropriate position to do so, as the living heir of the traditions of his church. His vicarage is full of the past, his landscape the first in the island to know hedgerows and trim English crops. "Not a pleasant place," wrote Darwin hastily

of the Bay, "I look back to one bright, spot, and' that is Waimato with its Christian inhabitants." It remained to be proved whether the vicar's pen was equal to the theme. The first half-dozen pages of his terse English will satisfy all readers on this point. Their interest will not flag over two hundred and fifty three.

Partisan? And why not? The heroism of early missionaries has never been sufficiently appreciated in secular history, and there is no country in which the church played so fine a part as in New Zealand. Mr. Ilarcourt does frank justice to. his ancestors. The price of newsprint forbids long quotation, but we may risk a short paragraph. Readers will see the point. Artist Earle, who graced the Bay in the thirties, did not like missionaries, ffe saw Kemp preaching to the natives. "llow much better," lie wrote, "would he have been employed in teaching them how to weld a piece of iron." And now Mr. Harcourt. "The blacksmith would in fact require two pieces of iron, which when ho had welded them, he would presumably break in two again, and so keep the lesson going ad infinitum, or, at least, until the savages acquired tho art of welding. And what then? Little groups of industrious natives welding, welding, welding—cooking pots in which to boil their enemies."

There are, of course, those who will side with the fatuous Mr. Earle. Most readers will acquire a new respect for the men who faced Maoridom with tho Cross. "The Day Before Yesterday": Melvillo Harcourt. (Reed.)