The Aobelist. A TON OF GOLD OR, THE NARRATIVE OF EDWARD CREWE.

Thames Star, Volume VII, Issue 2123, 23 October 1875, Page 4

The Aobelist. A TON OF GOLD OR, THE NARRATIVE OF EDWARD CREWE.

By W. M. B.

A Tale of Local Interest.

Chapter V.

"Notfov Joseph." Ws soon got the boat over the side, and started for the shore. The Maori pulling, Janson and self looking on, as was correct, as also for the native, the moment the dingy " touched," to get out and give us a baefe ashore. I had my gun with me for the chance of finding some pigeons at the edge of the bush, which here came down to within a short distance of the beach. -At tbis place there is a " flat," a mile or so wide, and then begins a range of hills, mountains almost; i#is the same range that, starting at Cape Colville, runs all the length of that peninsula, and still on far inland to the lake country. We landed just at the gateway or entrance of a "pa" or native stockade, which was built within fifty yards of highwater mark, and only a few feet alcove that level.

«Many natives, elaborately got up with paint and feather?, came to meet us : all shook hands with the " pakeha; " most of them, indeed, knew Janson very well —some, I might say, were his personal friends.

How I did envy my Dutch skipper, who I then thought a prodigy of linguistical knowledge, so well he appeared to talk " Maori," though I had not been in the colony very long before I "knew better, and that he spoke the language execrably : the natives, however, were far too gentlemanly even to sniile,,at any of Janson's mauvais pronunciations.

There were four or five beautifully ornamented war-canoes drawn up on the beach where they had landed.

Believe me, a New Zealander's canoe is a work of art. " Whaka," is the native name, or rather the native generic term, for all canoes, of which there are many different kinds, as tete, pekatu, kopapa, and others answering in variety to our several descriptions of boats, as a " gig," a " whale-boat,'' a " skiff, a " dingy," &c. Look at a Whaka Maori! You cannot suggest an improvement on the " lines; " it is, in fact, the very thing to slip through the water, without causing much perturbation or rippling.

They are not well adapted for very rough, water, though with skilful management, and by carefully watching the weather, they can sail or paddle along the coast from place to place. Except the larger ones, they are made out of one log : the best and most lasting for the purpose is the totara-tree. Canoes are also dubbed out of the kauri, remu, kaikatia, &c.; but no timber is so suitable as the first named. There are totara canoes in the possession of the natives reputed to have been in use upwards of a hundred years." The large war-canoes, whaka taua, are constructed out of five principal pieces, first the main part which has been " dug out" of a huge tree, to which is scarfed, and securely fixed by lashing, projecting pieces of timber, adding some eight feet more of length to either end, and forming stern and stem. Along the sides 5 from end to end, are lashed the top sides.

Above the stern there is a wonderful carved figure-head, while-over the stern, «i lofty piece of fretted carving is placed some sis feet higher than- the gunwale. The top sides, and whole concern is stiffened and held together by thwarts, skilfully fixed and lashed flush, on the top of the gunwale. •■•••"•

The largest attemptat canoe-building I ever- saw was an unfinished one, at Taupo, twenty miles from Auckland. It was hewn out of a monster kauri tree, and would have been, when finished, about nine feet beam, and I forget how many feet over the ""century" this "Great Eastern" of " dug-outs " was to have been in leDgth.

This, however, was an exceptional eft'ort, a folly, a tremendous, waste of muscle, in converting good timber into— chips. A fair sized war-canoe woild measure about ninety feet in length, by five beam, and have thwarts for sixty paddlers, double banked. The New Zealander never uses an outrigger to keep his canoe from capsizing when under canvass, and, consequently, carries less sail in proportion to the size of his craft than do the other Polynesians.

It is difficult to surmise what the canoes were'like, that the progenitors of the Maori's race navigated across so many thousand miles of ocean, from the mythical Hawaiki to New Zealand. The natives assert that this long voyage was accomplished by their forefathers in many very big canoes, and yet in the story of these aboriginal pioneers, we hear of them dragging one of their canoes, the Tainui, from the Waitemata overland to Manukau, no great distance to be sure, and often done since; but still a feat hardly practicable, if the vessel were of any great size, and without the aid of modern and civilized mean^ind appliances. If, again, they sailed across the ocean in canoes no more seaworthy than those at present in use amongst them, they must have been remarkably lucky in having favourable wind and weather.

For the past half century the natives have had the advantage of European steel tools in the construction of their canoes, notably, the adze, and a one-handed adze formed by lashing a carpenter's plane-iron to a wooden knee-shaped handle, after the same plan as their old-fashioned stone adzes.

To hew a canoe into shape, and dig it out, having the aid of Yankee axes, iron wedges, and good ship-wright's adzes is no small undertaking, but what a labour ! with nothing, save the uncertain aid of fire, hard wood wedges, and tools of "jade." : -The little boat I see in England called a " canoe " is a poor thing that would produce fits of laughter in a "Maori," the long, ugly, two-bladed paddle dipped on each side alternately. What a joke to see any. one at.it,-particularly as' he is thinking, complacently, that he is doing it all so'" splendiferous." ;■•£•■ Fow look at the other picture. A ippajta to carry one or two, eren three at

a pinch, let us say one ; you sit at about a third of the whole length from the stern, your paddle on one side, with an artistically made tool five feet long : be sure as you dig the blade almost perpendicularly into the water that a crisp peculiar sound is procured, and a very slight twist as it rises from immersion steers the craft.

The " pa," in 1 front of which we landed was not much of a fortification, being merely composed of poles of no great size stuck upright in the ground and close together, with a stronger one at intervals, whilst stout pieces of limber were securely fixed horizontally, by a good lashing of " Toro Toro " vine keeping the whole length of wall firm and straight. At the corners and at other places in the structure were wonderful attempts at carving to represent the human form divine; fearful looking, red slained, obscene, grotesque, wooden figures, with a great amount of tongue lolling out of their mouths. All those native sculpturings are remarkably alike —a large oval I face with a hook nose, hardly any arms, and not much length or bulk of legs.

At sundown there was a general assembling of the natives for evening prayers ; and most impressive it was, to see the apparent devotion" of these new converts to Christianity. There might have been forty men, women, and children near the place where we stood. They sang a hymn to "no tune almost," indeed, it seemed to be, then, all discord, though, in fact, a kind of parody on one of our easy church tunes, doctored by the missionaries to suit the Maori's small aptitude at psalmody ; a prayer was read in addition to the hymn, and both at the singing and praying every one seemed very devout, and I said to myself, " Well! these natives must be the most sincere Christian people in the world, they have "the earnest faith of new converts, and are not yet debased by the vices of civiiization.

" How happy they appear to be, lining together like the members of a family. It is true they arc only children in knowledge ; but what is- the good of learning, if it makes men in the long run bad and unhappy ? " I almost wish I was a Maori I surely it would, be easy to be good here ! "

Look at that woman sitting in the doorway of the hut, her face so calm and pure-looking; the man talking to her must be her husband, and those two little people her children. If" she was a " white skin," I feel that she would be " bustling about," a thing I hate. The queen-like creature before me does no such thing, she is quiescent, and regards her husband witSi an abnegativ.e kind of smile on her handsome brown face. No wonder that the missionaries have written such glowing accounts of the people of these islands, for they generally only saw the natives when " on their good behaviour," which good behaviour at proper seasons—with them is quite an art, in the theory and practice of which they are great pioticients. It is the grand unwritten creed in all " Maoridom " that nothing is wrong unless found out, and then the disgrace of the crime, is secondary to the being so foolish a fellow " c kuware" as not to have kept dark his little peccadillo.

I was certainly a trifle disenchanted when I thought of all I had heard of their bad ways, and more so, perhaps, nome half an hour afterwards, as Janson mhl I sat at the entrance of'a long tent waiting for the flood tide, he talking and Chaffing some girls who were busy cooking fish and potatoes in a " hangi," when a native man, whom I had observed to s>e in no way behind his neighbours in singing and praying, turning to me, proposed in a stage like whisper (Janson interpreting), that he would dispose of one cf the damsels present to me for —well! we did not trade thi3 time, for word cams that the tide had turned, so we bade an afiectionate good-bye to our new friends, and were pulled off to the schooner.

I may as well say here, for the benefit of those curious in market prices, that the above article might have been bought for, say a double-barrelled gun, a pair of good blankets, and some tobacco, or equally the bargain would have been thought satisfactory—had a horse and a bag of flour been given, the latter necessary to be refilled at certain recurring intervals, and the vendor's pipe fairly supplied.

The arrangement in these transactions rarely implied that the " piece of goods " could be permanently removed from the immediate locality. Asa set-off to the foregoing little inicjuity, I may say that in those times, and, indeed, even to this day—in places—no native ever coiled himself up. in his blanket preparatory to passiDg .the night, without first reading his prayers, aloud, from a book, and even if he could not read, he would still hold the book as if he could, and repeat what he knew so well. If on a journey his book went with him— in general, as certainly as his pipe. White men were lookers-on, at these times, and rather scornful lookers-on, carelessly regarding the devotionalist, whom he suspects —if he accidently bothered himself to think on the subject —as being one-half hypocrite and the other fool.

Within a short half mile of this place, where we had so pleasantly passed the afternoon, about sixteen years afterwards were found some of the richest gold diggings that the world .up to this has ever discovered, and it is a little curious that the native who wanted to "trade" with me as above, and who afterwards was my very good friend, was one of the first, if not the'very first, to point out that gold was likely to be foun&tm the Kuranui Creek.

A party of natives , went ofl' with us to the schooner for the purpose of taking her up the river, and preventing her from "fouling" against certain fishing-stake arrangements, placed at intervals, in the strength, of the stream; This service was rendered, not to save the vessel from injury, but to preserve the stakes from certain destruction, should the schooner drift athwart them.

Janson and I did not care to " turn in," as there was too much noise going on, as with sweeps, and poles, and the dingy ahead, they kept the schooner clear of all obstruction. We had nothing to do, as they entirely took: the management of the vessel into their own hands.

A few miles drift, with a four-knot tide under foot, brought us abreast of a " pa," partly in ruin, and uninhabited, located on the margin of the stream. The river here may be five hundred yards across, and the bush comes down close upon the back of the " pa."

It was at this place that one of those dreadful massacres took place, which certainly proclaimed' savage man to be the most cruel of animals. ' \

The New Zealauder has little or no pity tor the suffering of another, because., p»r«

haps, he does not ieel pain himself so acutely, for civilization tends to bring the nerves to the surface.

A redskin will benr torture better than a white one, as also will a Maori, whose nerves are not so alive as our own, and are wanting, perhaps, in " enccphalon," or the refining process developed through a civilized ancestry.

To return to the " pa." The famous chief '; Hongi," in one of his expeditions sailed up the Thames to this place. He had fire-arms: the people in the "pa " had none : to be without a supply was simply equivalent to a doom of annihilation, as it was in this case. The Maories ashore had a kind of a platform overlooking the river, on which a select party of warriors now danced, protruding their tongues and quivering their hands, to intimidate those afloat.

" Hongi," with great calmness and deliberation, anchored his party nicely within range, and then had as pretty a bit of battue shooting, as ever fell to the luck of a mob of sportsmen.

The poor devils on the platform had never seen, or even, perhaps, heard of a gun before, All this time we are drifting up the river ; no light, or any signs of life ashore except now and then the " Euru's " cry of " more pork ! " or, at longer intervals, the shout of the " Hoa."

At eleven miles from the mouth of the river, some one cooed from the land, and with the unknown voice our natives had much talk; here they left us, and here, also, as the tide was spent, we dropped anchor for the night, and glad we were to turn into our bunks—bunks not over clean and cabin not so sweet-smelling—but as surely as " hunger is the best sauce," so fatigue is the best opiate.

To le continued*