THE NEW KING COUNTRY.

Otago Witness, Issue 3117, 10 December 1913, Page 80

THE NEW KING COUNTRY.

SOME ROHEPOTAE PICTURES. THE BUSH AND T?IE PIONEER. By Jas. Cowan. The Main Trunk Railway line is not the best travel-route from which to gather an idea of the progress which the white pioneer is making in the Rohepotae, the immense wild region of ...fern-plains and forest and mountain for which the “King Country’’ is now a misnomer. Hie railway line runs through the Rohepotae for nearly a hundred miles, but, as is the way of railways, it passes for the most part through the least fertile section of it. Ride westward or eastward from the rails at, say, Te Kiiiti, and you shall find magnificent stretches of limestone and volcanic country superior to any of the settled lands in the Waikato Valley. These tracts of first-rate pastoral and agricultural land are practically unsolved by reads —-at any rate roads fit for wheeled tralfic and- the choicest parts you will probably find aie still in Maori hands. 1 here is one fairly good road—good for the King Country, but shocking to the eyes of the man from the well-roadcd South Island —and which leads from Te Kuiti, the commercial heart of tne Rohepotae, out west and south to Awakino and Mokau, on the West Coast. 1 here - s another, fit only for horseback travel nios., of the year, winding west past the Waitonio Caves, and on through the Hautuxu Peak, to Kawhia Harbour; and there is another partially-formed wagon road leading from Otorohanga northwaids to the Puniu River and the old frontier township of Kihikihi. These, with a few short subsidiary roads and horse-tracks, are the setters’ highways in the northern part of the King Country. For the most part they serve country which lies in the watersheds of the Waipa and Mokau and Awakino Rivers. Coming southwaido by rail through the Poro-o-tarao tunnel which pierces the steep dividing range, you are in the rough country which feeds the Upper Wanganui waters, and here you find, by ridiiG over the ranges to the west and south’, a new farming territory which is practically isolated from the rest oi the King Country, the dairying and cattlefattening valley of the Ohura and its tributary valleys. This is in the northern part of the Taranaki provincial district, although by all geographical and topographical rules it should belong to the Auckland land district. Here again the reading is shockingly imperfect; .South Islanders with their good hard, wellformed roads have no conception of the awful mud-channels along which most oi the Rohepotae settlers have at this moment to h<ml their supplies and take their milk to the factory and drive their stock to the far-away market. Most of the good land is a long way from the rail line, but the big-hearted men and women who are to-day reproducing in the backblocks the lives of the dominion’s pioneers of 60 years ago are full of hope for the future. The Ohura is to get its railway, branching off from the Main Trunk in the Ongarue Valiev and connecting with the Taranaki line at Stratford, and the people of Kawhia, similarly, are praying that their light railway will come some day before they die. Tn the meantime they are pegging away in their cow-bails and at their bush-felling and grass-seeding, living a hard, self-sacrificing life such as townkeeping folk cannot adequately realise, but all in the sure and certain faith that some day things will bo vastly different, that they will no longer be mud-insulated from the world for six months in the year, and that the farms which they have literally cut out of the heart of the wilderness will make them independent for their old age and be a solid heritage for their children after them. Who that really knows the back-country settler, his herculean toil, his hundred anxieties, would deny him the freehold of his hardwon holding? “The King Country,” as I have said, is a misnomer in these days. It has not been the King Country for 20 years and past. Old King Tawhiao’s one-time capital, Tokangamutu, is now part of the Te Kuiti, the business centre of the Rohepotae, and the rail line runs through the heart of the Hauhau stronghold of the seventies. For nearly a quarter of a century after the Waikato war, Tawhiao and his fellow Waikatos occupied Rohepotae lands, by sufferance of Ngati-Maniapoto, the hereditary lords of the soil, and you may still see the ruins of their large villages in Te Kuiti Valley and on beautiful Hikurangi Hill, and on the grassy levels of Whatiwhati-hoe, the Place of Broken Paddles, where the Waipa River winds swiftly down past the foot of lofty wooded Mount Pirongia. But the Waikato have long since returned to their old homes down the great river from which they take their name; they even packed up the bones of their great chiefs and ancestors and took them with them when they canoed down to Taupiri and Mercer, chanting their mournful songs of farewell to the “ Nehenehe-nui,” the “ Great Forest of Refuge,” as they called the King Country. And now the Maniapoto, free from the Waikato incubus, arc going on commendably well in the path of civilised progress. It is true that many of them live a too-lu/.y life, dependent cn the rents which they receive from the energetic white settler, but there are others who are farming their own land, grazing their own stock for market, and even taking milk to the creameries. The R< hepotae Native is no fool; he is more likely to “do” the pakeha in a horse deal than be “done” by that pakeha. Not much of the simple romantic barbarian about the average Maniapoto of to-day ! Touching the name Rohepotae, the Native designation for this gr-at roughly circular country stretching from Mavrgatautari and Lake Taupo westwards to the Tasman Sea, and from the Waipa and Puniu rivers southwards to the Wanganui, it may be explained here that the term really means external boundary line; literally ‘‘ the rim of the hat.’’ It

originated with the celebrated Kingite chief Wahanui 30 years ago. This Maori ■leader had a flying survey made of the King Country borders, and the term was applied to all the land within, which was to be a Maori stronghold for ever—peaceful, but still a stronghold—against the white man. However, it didn’t take 30 years to demolish the “ robe ” of that Kingite Alsatia, and whereas 50 years ago ■the number of white men in the whole of the King Country scarcely numbered a dozen, there is now a population of several thousands-of pakehas, a population which is daily increasing; the remnant of the Maori population is now chiefly half-caste in blood. The races are fusing all right in the Rohepotae without any assistance from philanthropists or Native Ministers. As for the topography of this great territory, with its varying landscape of hill and forest and gentle downs, the thing that impresses the King Country traveller most, perhaps, is the eminent suitability of the land for homes —yeomen’s homes above all things, not huge sheep-stations. No King Country settler needs more than a thousand acres: many will become prosperous on a third of that area when settlement increases. I am speaking now of the good agricultural and pastoral country in the VVaipa and Mokau and Awakino and Ohura watersheds: the rough and poor pumice country nearer the Upper Waikato River and Lake Taupo can, of course, only profitably be settled in much larger Wocks. The picture is in my mind’s eye of the Upper Waipa Valley as it will be 20, perhaps 10 years hence, when from the top of such a commanding hill as Kakapuku—the graceful volcanic cone which you see swelling up in great symmetrical lines as your train approaches the Puniu River —you may look north and south and east and west and behold the whole lovely fertile land covered with homesteads and dairy farms and townships, orchards and gardens, with church-spires rising above the tree-tops in a fashion to delight the eye of the artist. If is a beautiful land now, with its blue hill-cones, the olden craters that ran parallel with the Puniu, its westerly wooded ranges bathed in misty purple, and its shining loops of rivers. But south of the Puniu the green farms are only, here and there, oases in the wilderness of fern and flax, swamp and scrub-grown plains. Even those gently-sloping volcanic heights will bear cultivation. High up on the sides ot old Kakepuku—here the thick fern grows higher than a man’s head—the Maoris used to grow good crops of potatoes, selecting the snug hollows lor their well-sheltered cultivations. And as you ride southwards or westward or eastward you will be able to’ pick out thousands of ideal sites for homes, bountifully favoured in respect of soil, water and sunny aspect. Even now some of tne newly-broken-m homesteads are remarkable for their beauty. 1 know a settler, for instance, who has pitched his permanent camp in a truly charming spot, looking towards the well-sunned north, on a gentle slope that goes down To a cascading stream of purest and clearest water. Along the banks of this stioam he has wisely left a belt of native timber for stock-shelter and for the preservation of the banks and the springs. Above, the knoll behind his house is crowned by castellated masses of limestone, huge crags piled in most picturesque confusion, and overgrown with trailing brush vines, with ancient trees growing out of the niches and crevices; a tapu spot of the olden Maori, for that castled mould, with its caves and natural citadel, was a retreat and refuge in war-time and a final depository for the scraped bones of the tribal dead of a little hapu now almost extinct. Some beautiful karaka and rata trees make a natural park of the lower part of the limestone hill. And spread out in front of the settler’s home is a grand, wide tree country, once all forest and fern, but non green with grass and clover and lively with sheep and cattle, until the bounds of this unused Maori country are reached again, and the sombre fern and the busn lead the eye on to the forested sky-line far away.

The limestone country round about Otorohanga to east and west of the railway line, and stretching thence southwards to the Awakino Valley, near the west coast, is a land of scenic surprise, iou never know what freaks the little rivers will play, or what strange forms the limestone crags and “ kopjes ’ will assume. At one place in the valley of the -Upper Mokau there are a number of singular

“tomos” or natural wells in the limestone formation, all of circular shape, from 10 to 20 feet in diameter, and deep. ihe Maoris poetically call them “Karu-o-te-Whenua,” which means “The Eyes of the Earth.” They are full to the brim with water. Legend says of two of these pools that a long-ago nero, Kai-rangatira by name, having accidentally dropped his hardwood weapon —a taiaha —into it, dived into the well after it. He came up—with his taiaha in hie hand —out of another “karu” close by; the two eyes were connected by a subterranean passage. So says the tribal yarn. At many places in this curious country the streams suddenly disappear like the classic fount of Anethusa; they dive into the underground down some mysterious “tomo,” and as suddenly re-appear to the light of day, may be a mile away. There is a very curious and picturesque place in the now-well-settled district of Makoenui, in the valley of the Awakino, not far from the Mokau’s parallel-flowing stream; a wonderful place in its way. Wo reached it one day by riding up the valley of the Ototohu, a small clear hillstream which flows into the Awakino just opposite Mr George Buckle’s farm. We followed the stream up into Mr Thomas Elliott’s land, and then tethered our horses while we explored the little canon into which the valley suddenly developed. The stream here runs through a deep and narrow gorge, but so smooth was its limestone bed that we walked with ease in the summer-low water channel. Ail at once we came to a spot where a great natural bridge spanned the top of the canon more than a hundred feet above our heads. A mass of earth and rock many

feet thick arched the gorge over; its sides were grown with shrubs and bush-vines and ferns. Clambering to the top by a devious way, we stood upon the natural bridge. We found that it was only one of three such limestone bridges on the Ototohu, one of them 150 ft above the creek bed. And there, as our settler-host had told us, we were able to trace the earthworks of two ancient Maori pas, one on each side of the canon. Each of these pas stood in a position of singular strategic value, on the steep height "that arched up to cross the gulch; the two perfectly commanded the bridge that was the only easy way across the rift for some miles. The name of the rocky fort, the name of the tribe which built it, is lost in the mists of time. All we know is that some warrior-clan carved that strange place to its needs, as a forest stronghold, centuries and centuries ago. Nowadays the natural bridge of the Ototohu is put to a very different use by its pakeha owner. He finds it of much convenience as a short cut for driving his cattle from one side of the valley to the other. A typical illustration this of the change which has come over the face of the Rohepotae!