BAY OF PLENTY

Otago Witness, Issue 3832, 23 August 1927, Page 77

BAY OF PLENTY

By

Fergus Dunlop.

for the Otago .Witness.) When Captain Cook, a century and a-half ago, was cruising off the coast of New Zealand, he bestowed two very singular place-names, the one a benediction, the other a curse —the Bay of Plenty and Poverty Bay. The names, no doubt, were dictated rather by the personal feelings of the discoverer than any far-sighted vision of the qualities or possibilities of prosperity of the respective places. On his first landing in New Zealand at Poverty Bay there was hostility on the part of the Natives, a firing of muskets, and a killing; the kindly heart of the sailor was sore within him, and a cloud of melancholy and gloom settled upon the Endeavour and her company. It was in the evening of that day that Dr Banks was moved to record in his diary the close of “ the blackest day in his life,” and the ship, as she cleared the head of the bay and turned to the northward, left in the name the brand of her displeasure upon a locality afterwards to be one of the richest and most prosperous farming districts in the country. The name of “ Plenty ’• we may suppose to have been bestowed upon some glorious summer morning, as the ship, running free on the gentle land breeze, passed by long, gleaming beaches, upon which the white surf rose and fell in lazy hues, and that as the explorer marked the long crimson glories of the pohutukawa in bloom along the shore, and the sunshine gleaming white on the pillar of steam from the island volcano, White Island, through the haze of the still horizon, his heart was glad within him. Tauranga, the principal town of the Bay of Plenty, as it lies dreaming in eternal sunshine amongst the orange groves and apple orchards, seems still to suggest and justify the Captain’s vision. It stands upon a low promontory jutting out into a wide expanse of shallow harbour, fringed with sandy beaches, where white gulls wheel and circle. At dawn and at evening the level floor of the harbour lies always windless and still, but by day and and by night it is rippled by the alternation of the land and sea breezes that on this coast blow nearly all the year round.

But though the prevailing impression of Tauranga and its surroundings now is one of peacefulness and well-being, the place has not always been peaceful. For, though Mr Samuel Marsden and his missionaries settled in the Bay of Islands as early as 1814, and by 1820 had established a settlement and obtained a failmeasure of civilising influence over the Maoris of that district, it was not until 1828 that the Bay of Plenty was first exploited as a field of missionary work. In that year Messrs Hamlin and Davis, in the cutter Herald, made a cruise of exploration through the bay, and landing at Tauranga, selected a site for a mission. The ship was said to have been the first to cruise in those waters since Captain Cook's time, and that these gentlemen travelled with their lives in their hands is indicated by the fact that in the following year, 1829, a" brig, the Hawes, venturing to the coast to trade for pigs and flax, was cut off by the Natives, and her crew killed and eaten.

This crime was perpetrated by a Native chieftain of the unpleasant name of Ngarara, or the ” reptile,’’ and the manner in which punishment descended upon him is typical of the savagery and rough justice of the times, for some traders, settled at the Bay of Islands, deeming proper to make an example of Ngarara, equipped a schooner and sent her down the coast with a well-armed crew of Natives. Ngarara came on board and was hospitably received. He was shown over

the ship, and evinced great curiosity in all he saw. Towards evening he descended into' his canoe to depart. That he was turning over in his mind a scheme

to cut off the schooner and mete out to her people the fate that had befallen the men of the Hawes we may be sure. But his reflections were interrupted by a chief of the Bay of Islands who had been sitting silent, smoking, a musket across his knees. The chief, leaning over the bulwarks and presenting the musket to within a yard of Ngarara, who was not sufficiently acquainted with the use of the weapon to experience any sensations of alarm at this circumstance, pulled the trigger. So, in a sudden and totally unexpected blaze and roar of smoke and thunder, “ obiit Ngarara,” and the tragedy of the Hawes was expiated. In 1864 these same fern hills and sandy

flats witnessed scenes of another character and fighting carried on in accordance with the highest and most romantic traditions of chivalry and honour. It was extraordinary with what gallantry and chivalry the New Zealand Natives fought when pitted against British regulars in the early New Zealand wars. For to the Maori war was an art, and he recognised the soldiers of the line as brothers in the noble profession of arms, and treated them accordingly. For example, the message sent to General Cameron before the assault on the Gate Pa at Tauranga, to the effect that all unarmed persons would be spared in the conflict, as also would soldiers who on the field presented to the enemy the butt of their muskets or the hilt of their swords, sounds more like the proclamation of some mediaeval herald before a tourney than the utterance of the leader of a mob of ill-armed, ill-disciplined, uncivilised savages.

However that may be, the Gate Pa, an oblong fortification placed across a narrow neck of land some three miles or four miles from the township of Tauranga, and held by about 200 rebel Maoris, was attacked in April, 1864, by Colonel Greer and 700 men of the 68th Regiment, with the support of a detachment of the 43rd

Regiment, and some sailors ana marines from the gunboat Esk. A breach having been made by gunfire in the palisades, an assault was ordered in the late afternoon on the 28th. The storming partv. consisting of 300 men of all arms, gallantly rushed the breach, but, huddled together in the opening and in the enclosed centre of the fortification, were shot down helpless and unresisting by the riflemen concealed in pits and earthworks at the flanks of the trenches. No fewer than 10 officers and 25 men were killed, and four officers and 72 men wounded before the retreat was sounded and the remnant of the attacking column retired to their own lines.

The night following the assault was pitchy dark, and at intervals the sentinels and pickets in the British besieging lines heard rustling in the fern and the murmuring and whispering of Maori voices in the darkness. Vainly they fired at the sounds. In the morning the rebel position was empty, save for a few dogs tied in the rifle pits, who by their howling had drowned most other sounds during the night. Ihe rebels had slipped away in the darkness.

It is pleasant to record that the Maoris, before they’ left, placed a small calabash of water beside each wounded soldier. The water was procured by a Native named Henare Taratoa, an educated young Maori who had been trained at a theological college as a deacon, and who crept at imminent risk of his life past the sentries to the springs to fetch it. Unfortunately’ this young man was killed in action a few days later. Such gallantry to a fallen foe is probably without parallel in the history of our wars against savage or semi-savage races.