WILD WANDERINGS FROM "BON ACCORD."

Otago Witness, Issue 2080, 4 January 1894, Page 41

WILD WANDERINGS FROM "BON ACCORD."

Under this heading Mr James Adam, of Tokomairiro, is contributing to the Aberdeen Free Press a series of articles on the early days of the Otago settlement. After explaining the reasons for the choice of his new home in the embryo colonial empire Mr Adam says: — I pass over my voyage thither —a very different matter to a voyage to New Zealand nowadays. Onlandlnglatwhathas since become the city of Dunedin, I chose the section at the corner of High and Princes streets, and, with the help of three natives, I built me a grass house in four days. And when finished I thought more of that housie, let me tell you, than of any house I have ever owned since. MOTLEY VISTORS—THE WANDBREBB. About this time a seal boat came up the harbour one day laden with pigs and potatoes. The crew consisted of men who had run away from whale ships. And whalers then were no rarity, for on one occasion 14 whaleehips were anchored in the lower part of the Otago Harbour. These men were mostly sailors, but not all of them. The sole purpose of their coming to the settlement was to have a regular spree. They did not doubt but that a publichouse would be one of the institutions of the new town (though no provision had been made for such a thiDg in the original scheme of the colony), and their financial arrangement for providing the drink was by sale of the pigs and potatoes hey had in the botttom of the boat. Mr Watson, the publican—where he came from I never knew —soon took in the character of the newcomers. He went down to the beacb, saw the cargo of good potatoes and live pigs, struck a bargain at once; and then the stour began, and it never stopped until the last shilling they had been able to obtain for their cargo was gone.

Two weeks were required to finish this drinking bout, after which the men prepared to return to their own home, .-distant about SO miles from Dunedin, along the coast, ab a boat harbour called Moraki. Before leaving, however, two of these men asked tqe publican if there were any emigrants from Aberdeen, and, learning that I came from "Bon Accord," they at once came to see me. One of the men came from the New Town, and the other from Don street, Old Aberdeen, as he told me. Their names were respectively Donaldson and Jamieson. I -will have something to say of both, taking them in turn as named. Donaldson was an engineer to trade, and had been lost to his family for 19 years. I had the pleasure of opening up communication with his family. He was a fine-looking man, had drifced about the world a good deal, and finally had settled amongst the natives of New Zealand at the place I have named. He and Jack Hughes, and a Frenchman named Philippine, got Maori wives, who helped to support them. Donaldson, in particular, was a moat useful man in the native community. His skill as amechanic often saved his life, for he could build boats for the natives, whose skill in that direction was limited to canoes. These three men for many years literally carried their lives in their hands. Three times the cannibal instincts amongst the natives reasserted themselves so strongly that the fires were actually kindled to cook the Englishman, the Frenchman, and the Scot ; and, but for the love and affection of their- own wives, these European adventurers would certainly have fallen victims and furnished the leading dish at a Maori feast. But more of that by-and-bye. COOKIKG A MAORI FEAST. * It may interest the epicurean to learn the art of high cooking wont to be practised by the Maori race. A circular hole was dug in the earth, 4ft deep and 6ft wide ; this was pitched with stones all round the sides and bottom. An immense quantity of wood was collected, and some turf, and when all was ready the natives followed Mrs Glass's recipe : " First catch your hare and then I cook him." Well, let us suppose the victim in this case is a 2501b pig — a blow with the tomahawk extinguishes life. The fire is kindled, wood piled on for an hour, until the stones are' almost red hot like a baker's oven. The ashes are cleaned out, and " grumphy " pitched into the pit. He is covered with turf and hot ashes, the pipes are lit, and men and women squat round the Maori oven to wait until piggie is done to a turn, and then the feast begins. A PEEILOUS PEEDICAMBNT. Such, substituting in each case a human carcase for the carcase of a pig, was the precise fate designed for the three men I speak of, on no less than three different occasions. And the design was frustrated only by the penetration and fidelity of the dark-eyed, brown-skinned damsels who had consented to share their lives with Donaldsorj, Hughes, and Pbillipine. Here is how the matter went on the first occasion. When the women saw the Maori men cutting and carrying firewood not to their own huts ; when they noted that several Cabinet meetings had been held amongst the chief men in their community, !

the object of these meetings being carefully concealed from them, while stray remarks were heard from the lips of an old hag to the effect that a great feast was about to take pace, they were quick enough to know that mischief was in the air, and that it was time to put Donaldson and bis mates on their guard. Their knowledge of Maori human nature gave them more than an instinctive feeling of what was in contemplation. Prospective widowhood was, no doubt, the last thing they desired to face. The feast in view was a feast in which they could hardly be expected to participate. And so they communicated their surmises and fears, with a statement of the facts they had observed, to the men, who saw plainly enough that they were the destined victims — the persons most deeply interested in the feast in a very real sense 1 Accordingly , when nightfall had come, they took rrieasure3 to put the matter to proof. After dusk they slipped stealthily and promptly away well into the bush and hid themselves. And not too soon. For on that very night all doubts were set at rest. When all was still, and the men supposed to be at rest, an ambuscade was quietly set round their dwelliogs. And then at a given signal the war whoop rang out with startling suddenness from the lips of men wildly excited and thirsting for blood, who came rushing together from their hiding places. The hats were at once entered by an overwhelming force in each case, bnt only to find that for the purpose in hand they were too late — that the birds whose bone 3 they had hoped to pick were flown ; that, in short, to change the figure and point a moral, they had it practically demonstrated that a vital preliminary to cooking jour hare really was " first catch him." THE FUGITIVES' BETUBN, And here let me say — and say it as a matter of actual observation and experience — that the native New Zealander has a good deal of the child in him even yet. Daogle some toy before him, and he must have it, reason or none ; bide it from him for a few days, and he forgets all about it in a way that seems surprising to us. The erstwhile doomed men had got to know this trait of the native character, and reßolved to carry themselves accordingly. They had simply to keep themselves well concealed for a few days until the paroxysm had passed off — the irresistible desir9 to eat once more of the flesh of the " pakeha," or white man. And then Donaldson, Hughes, and Fhillipine could and did return to the Maori camp with a sense of perfect security. All the while their women folk knew of their hiding place, kept them supplied with food, and advised them as to how feeling moved in the community. It was when that feeling began to take the : shape of a general desire for their return that they came back to their old homes as if nothing unusual had happened — as if their lives had never been in the slightest danger in fact. And when the Maoris once more saw them, they were wondronsly pleased: glad, in short, that they bad not eaten them. And naturally so. The men were too useful to lose when the question was dispassionately considered . If they had fled for ever, or if they had filled their stomachs with them and gorged themselves by one deliberate, ponderous " rimraxin' " feast off their flesh, who, then, would have mended their boats or buiided such new ones for them as these men had done 1 A FLEA FOR THE CANNIBAL MAORI. It seems a horrible thing, no doubt, for one human being to eat another, putting humanity, as it does, on a lower platform than that of the beasts of the field. Yet I must be allowed to put in a plea for the Maori in this relation that is not generally taken account of, and one that is fitted so far to modify this aspect of savage life in New Zealand, New Zealand has almost no indigenous products readily adaptable as human food. At one time the Maori" had neither pig nor potato. There was no breadfruit nor pineapple, such as the natives of the Polynesian Islands have; no cocoanut or banana, no berry except the tutu barry, which may in one moment arrest the circula- 1 tion of the blood and cause death. This berry may be eaten for years with seeming impunity by the man who thought he could safely venture what the natives feared, and yet the result be disastrous. A gardener whom I knew ate the tutu beiry for two years, and then became like one mad. He first rushed at a lady he saw, and then dropped down as if dead. A doctor fortunately was on the spot, and opened a vein in his arm, when the blood would scarcely flow, what did come looking to be thick as tar. Even the cattle and sheep died in great numbers from,, eating this berry and its leaves, in the early days of Otago. The only indigenous food of a vegetable nature that the Maori could get in his own land was the fernroot. And though there are 70 different varieties of ferns in New Zealand, it is a most unpalatable diet. In all the circumstances, therefore, one would be disposed to say that-, if there was -a country on the face of the earth in which cannibalism might put in a plea for itself, it was surely New Zealand in Captain Cook's time and after. NATIVE SCENES I HAVE WITNESSED. Of course, all that-is changed now. Still, such changes take their time, and come but gradually. I have attended a prayer meeting conducted by an old man dresstd in native costume, and surrounded by a gathering of natives in which Ihe female element predominated. Yet at that meeting the singing, reading, and prayers were all conducted with the greatest reverence and decorum. Then for another picture with some of the very same characters. I was once invited to a feast which was got up amongst the Maoris at the Otago Heads in honour of a visit thither of Toby, the chief of the Island of Raupnha, in Furneaux Straits. The bill of fare was oontained in two very large pots, one containing boiled potatoes ; the contents of the other were fitted to remind one of the great sheet which the Apostle Peter saw in vision, and which contained " all manner of fourfooted beasts of the earth and wild beasts, and creeping things, and fowls of the air." I would not like to take an oath as to the exact contents of that pot, but, judging from what I saw come out of it before it was half emptied, I do believe there never was such a zoological stew in pot before or since. No sooner bad the old man referred to said grace than Toby, the guest of the evening, btepped up to the big pot and plunged bis hand in, as men do in a lottery bag, to see

what luck he would have. And out it came with a brown parrot banging by one leg in bis fingers. He immediately seized the other leg, and in an iostant the bird was in twain. One half he banded to the belle of the party, and the other half was at his own mouth ere you could have said six. I never saw bones picked so quick or so clear). Long before Toby had finished, half a dozn natives had darted to the pot and helped themselves and others. One brought out a pigeon, another a woodheo, then came parson birds, bits of mutton, of beef, of pork, of rabbit, of sucking pig, and of I know not what else. In the midst of the hilarity, abundant laughter, and fun of various kinds, I was not forgot by any means. Toby and his friends knew that I was not accustomed to eat my food with my fingers, so they brought me a clean plate, a knife and fork, and the wing of a fowl. There was plenty of tea to. drink, and also something stronger, together with bread and a boundless supply of potatoes and fish. . .