THE STANDARD FAMILY MEDICINE.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 8748, 9 October 1906, Page 4

THE STANDARD FAMILY MEDICINE.

DR MORSE'S INDIAN ROOT PILLS SUPERIOR TO ALL OTHERS. The prudent housewife has learnt by experience that Nature occasionally requires some assistance, and that this assistance is being /afforded by prompt recourse to Dr Morse's Indian Root Pills. In thousands of homes the little Amber Bottle in which these Pills are packed is the sole medicine chest, for there are few complaints in which Dr Morse's Indian Root Pills cannot be administered without beneficial results. Many a serious illness may be prevented by the timely use of these Pills, and being purely vegetable they do not weaken, sicken or gripe, and may be taken by the meet delicate woman or the youngest child. Mrs M. Eaton, of Roxburgh, says: — "I have much pleasure in testifying to the efficacy of Dr Morse's Indian Root Pills. A few weeks ago I was taken very ill after eating fish which had been frozen. I had dreadful .pains and swellings. A friend gave me one of your Pills, which entirely carried off all evil • symptoms, and I was all right next day. They are quite painless m their action on the bowels. I have not ceased to recom : mend them to my friends, who also speak in the highest terms of them. If the people would only try them they would never use any others." Dr Morse's Indian Root Pills are a Perfect Blood Purifier and a positive and permanent cure for Biliousness, Indigestion, Constipation, Headaches, Sallow Complexion, Liver and Kidney Troubles, Piles, Pimples, Boils and Blotches, and for Female Ailments. 19

above twenty-five, but she was blind in one eye, her lips were of negroid thickness — such "blubber" lips as seen here and' there among Maori tribes tell their tale of an ancient " Melanesian strain in the blood of the Polynesian immigrants. She was tattooed on the chin, and there was a deeply chiselled blue line on the inner cuticle of her lower lip. .Her hair hung round her face in a tangled mop. "Well," said Bent to himself, "she is no beauty." The woman spoke fiome words of greeting to. Bent, but he steadily gazed on the floor, and said nothing. Then a Maori sitting near-by, who could speak a little English, said, *' This woman wants to marry you I" "Oh. Lord!" exclaimed Bent. " What for? I don't want to get married." An old man draped from shoulders to ankles in a blanket walked up to the white man, and, halting in front of him, pointed to the one-eyed woman. " Pakeha," he eaid, with a quiet grimness in his tone, " this is mj> daughter. You must marry her. (Me moe korua)." Here was a dilemma, indeed ! Bent had nothing to say. He looked at the woman by his side, and she smiled at him as coquettishly as her one good eye allowed. He looked, and the more he looked the less he liked, her. Then he glanced at the dour old father— what a father-in-law ! — and oast his helpless eyes around the crowded meetinghouse. The men were glum and scowling ; one or two of the young girls seemed to perceive the humour of the situation, for they giggled, and then hid their faces in their shawls. Bent eyed his prospective father-in-law again. The old man was impatient. He said again, " Take my daughter as your wife." " Ac," assented Bent, who could see no hope of escape. " I'll take her." So the young soldier was mated, to the satisfaction of everyone but himself. " She wasn't my fancy, to put it mildly," he says, reminiQcently. "But I suppose it was her last chance, and the old man would have tomahawked me if I hadn't taken her. It was just my luck." Mrs Bent's wedding-furnishings, which she bundled a little later, with, determined air, into the corner of the whare assigned, to the white man, were Spartan and primitive in the extreme. They consisted solely of a large plaited whariki sleeping-mat and. a wooden pillow, which, to the white man| seemed alarmingly like some weapon of chastisement. Matrimony amongst the Hauhaus was simplicity itself. Bent, now fully received into the tribe, had a Maori name given to him. It was " Bingiringi." a name he bore for two or three years, until the war

chief Titikowaru rechristened him " Tu-nui-a-moa."

CHAPTER IV. The Hauhau High-Priesfc and His Gods —The "Pai-marire" Faith— "Charming" the British Bullet&TBent's Interview with Te Ua— His Life Tapu'd— Preparing for Battle — Life in a Bush Pa. About this time Kimble Bent became acquainted with a rather notable character, whose name has passed into New Zealand history. This man was Te Ua Haumene, the founder and high-priest and prophet of the Hauhau reli^on, or, more correctly speaking, fanaticism. Te Ua came riding into the Otapawa village one day with a bodyguard of armed men. Bent describes him as a stoutly-built man of between forty and fifty, attired in European clothing, and bearing in his riand a carved " taiaha " — a chief's halbert or broadsword' of. hardwood, flattened at one end in a blunt blade, and sharpened at the other into a tongue-shaped point, and decorated with tufts of red kaka feathers; in a plaited flax belt round his waist was thrust a greenstone " mere." Te Ua was the man who taught the Taranaki rebels the karakia or incantations — some of them a curious medley of Maori aoid English— which they chanted in their wild marches round the sacred Niu in their village squares. These incantations and chants he professed to have heard from supernatural visitants, the spirits who came on the four winds, and from the angel Gabriel^ who spoke in his ear as he lay asleep in his raupo hut and bad© him go abroad and 6pread a new religion, which should band together the tribes of the Maori nation. Many strange tales Bent had heard about the prophet and his wondrous mana. Te Ua had succeeded in imbuing his fanatic disciples with an unquestioning Moslemlike faith in the potency of the Hauhau cult and its accompanying charms and magic formulae. He was the Mahomet of the Taranaki people, and exercised an influence over the bushfighters of Ngatiruanui and allied tribes almost as great as that which Te Kooti, the Chatham Islands escapee, commanded a few years later amongst the warriors of the East Coast. One of the most astonishing instances of the absolute faith tlie Hauhaus reposed in his precepts and his pretences to supernatural power has parallels in the records of the Mahdi's wars in the Soudan, and in other campaigns waged under the banner of Islam, and more recently still in the Zulu rebellion in Natal. He assured his followers that when they went into battle the bullets of the white soldiers would be turned aside in their flight if they but raised their right hands as if warding the ball off, at the same time repeating the words "Hapa! Pai marire!" ( <T Pass over me! Righteousness and^ peace!") The expression "Pai marire" was adopted as on© of the designations of the Hauhau religion ; and the sign of the upraised hand becam© the outward sign and symbol of the warrior faith. To-day, should you visit the fine Euro-pean-built house of Te Whiti, the Prophet ,of the Mountain, at Parihaka, you will see a large picture of Te Ua on the wall of the ''speech-hall," his right hand raised to his shoulder, palm outwards, as if in the act of invoking his gods to turn the pakeha bullets aside — "Hapa! Pai marire!" And many a deluded Hauhau fell to the rifles of the white men before the Maori 'confidence in the efficacy of the charm was shaken, for Te Ua had a very good explanation to offer for any casualties — that if the pakeha. bullet refusedto be waved aside and insisted on entering the body of a " righteous and peaceful " son of the faith, it was because the stricken man had lost faith in the karakia, and, very properly, suffered for his unbelief. A sublimely simple explanation, and one that was perfectly satisfactory to the prophet and everyone concerned, except perhaps the Hauhau who had happened to stop the bullet. Even when the glacis of the Sentry Hill redoubt was strewn with the dead bodies of Hepanaia and fifty of his redpainted braves, the best manhood of Ngatiruanui and Ngaruahine — who fell in a mad charge upon the walled fort in open daylight chanting their "Hapa! Pai marire! Hau!" — the faith in Te I Ua and his charms was but little abated. And. unlike the Moslem warrior, who fought to the death in the certain hope of a speedy translation to Paradise, the Maori fanatic expected no heavenly reward for his faith and his death-despising ferocity. No houris with welcoming arms ; no eternity of fleshly bliss. No, it was just utter blind bravery, a sheer trust in a mad creed of , Death-to-the- Whites and Maori Land for th© Maori Race. So the visit of the high priest of Hauhauism was a great event in the bush-pa. The prophet was received with a "powhiri " or chant and dance , of welcome by the people of the village; then the tangi and the doleful hum of weeping for the dead. The tangi over, the prophet addressed his disciples in the meeting-house ; And ; hearing that there was a white ex-sol-dier in the pa, he sent for Bent. It was a curious interview. The whit© man no longer appeared in the soldier's uniform, which he had worn for some time after deserting, but had taken to the garb of the savage. He was bare-headed and bare-footed. His sole garments were a shirt made of pieces of blanket and a flax mat tied round his waist. He entered the crowded council-house and stood before the prophet. "E noho ki raro" ("Sit down"), said Te Ua ; pointing to the floor-mat in front of him. By the prophet's side was a flax basket containing some potatoes and pork, with which he had been breaking his fast after his journey. This food being appropriated to his use was, of course, "tapu " in the eyes of the assemblage. Te Ua took a potato from the basket, broke, it into two pieces, and gave ono piece to Bent and told him to eat it; the other half he ate himself. "Now," said the prophet, "you are fcaon — your life is safe; no man may harm you now that you have eaten. of my tapu'd food. Men of Tangahoe! This pakeha is my pakeha; and if any other white men should come to us as this man has dene, fleeing from their people and forsaking the pakeha camps tor our pae, you must protect them, for the gods have sent them to us." "You are a Maori now," added Te Ua to Bent, "and you must have a woman to cook your food for you." Bent, in his imperfect Maori, inform-

' ed the prophet that he had already been supplied with a wife by the Maoris, but for prudential reasons made no comment on her imperfections. I " That's all right then (E tika ana)," 6aid the "poropiti," who now rose. and began an earnest exhortation to the deeply attentive tribespeople> and Bent retired, feeling that for a while at any rate his head was secure on his shoulders. i During the next few days, before Te. 1 Ua returned to his home at Opunake, on- the coast. Bent had further intor,view6 with the prophet, who treated him witE kindness, and gave him what i was to the runaway a very welcome ' present — some pakeha tobacco. Though something of a madman, like the generality of Maori prophets, Te Ua was of more benevolent spirit than his acolytes, Kereopa and Patara, and their kin. who had. been sent to preach the . gospel of " Pai-marire " to the outer tribes. Had Kereopa, for instance, i come to Otapawa, Bent would, in all probability, have fallen under the , tomahawk as a sacrifice for the savage j ritual of the Niu, and his head would ] have been smoke-dried and carried I over forest-trails from distant tribe to , tribe, or stuck up like a 6carecrow on a i palisade-pole. Bent learnt a good deal of the personal history of the prophet, , and of his peculiar delusions. Te Ua had fought the pakeha soldiers at Nukumaru about a year before this, when a foroe of Hauhaus made a desperate attack on the camp of two thousand British troops, under General Cameron, and. killed and wounded nearly fifty soldiers before they were driven off with the loes of about thirty killed. The outward and visible sign or incarnation ("aria") of Te. tJa's deity was a ruru or owl. This bird is sacred amongst Taranaki Natives; they will not kill or harm one; they say it is an " atua,'' 5 a god, and has a hundred eyes. / An incident which Bent relates as occurring in another bush settlement where he and Te Ua both happened to be staying may be noted as illustrative of the prophet's peculiar respect for his owl-god. Just at dusk, when the evening meal was over, and the night creatures began their roaming 6, an owl flew softly from the trees and settled: above the window of the house in which Te Ua was sitting. "Ha!" said the prophet, when he saw it^ "there is my atua." He recited an incantation, • calling the ruru by name, and when the karakia wa» ended the bird as noiselessly flew back to the forest. Te Ua said nothing more till the next morning, when he announced that he would leave the place at once; Because his owl-god had appeared to him as a warning to return to his home. i Soon after the wandering prophet rode out of Otapawa, word reached th« 1 pa by a spy who had been in the British camp that the soldiers were prepar- ; ing for an advance against the Hauhaus, and that it was probable the hill stronghold, being so close to the white men's base of operations, would shortly be attacked. AH was excitement in the pa when this became known, and preparations j were at once begun to make a stand 1 against the white general. The pali- ! sading of the pa was strengthened with stout timbers from the forest; trenches and rifle-pits were dug within the walls. The Natives worked away like mad, and i Bent with them. He had caught the fever of the moment, and in all 1 but skin was a Maori. He was not at all happy, however, at the news that his old regiment, the 67th, was expected to march on Otapawa, and he heartily • wished himself far away from these scenes of constant commotion and terror. But for the present he was safer with the' Hauhaus than with the men of his own colour and tongue. Day after day passed and the Maoris lay behind their strong stockade waiting for the attack. The underground food store© were well supplied ; water was carried in in "taha" or calabashes made by scooping out the soft inside of the hue-gourd ; bullets were cast and cartridges were made. Then as no troops appeared, and the scouts who kept constant watch on the forest out- j skirts reported that there was no sign of immediae action on the part, of the enemy, the tension of garrison life rej laxed; and the ordinary avocations of the kainga were resumed. Behind the stockade, in a clearing Jiewn and burnt from the heart of the woods, were the : cultivation grounds. Here all the ablebodied men of the fort were . 6et to work, turning up the rich black soil and planting potatoes, kumera and taro. Planting over, the lengthening dap were spent in hunting wild pigs, and in gathering wild honey, which was plentiful in hollow trees iv the forests; or in strolling,' pipe in mouth, about the pa ; playing draughts or the marae in Maori fashion; singing songs and narrating old 6tories and legends. Night and morning thero were long Hauhau prayers, led by the priest of the pa, who was one of Te Ua's apostles. Life in this bush-fort presented to the lonely pakeha a picture of barbaric .simplicity^ in which, indeed, he was the most interesting personality himself. Few of the people had European clothing; the men's working garb was* just a rough flaxrmat hanging from ' the waist to the knees. They lived on the wild foods of tlie forest until their crops were ready for digging; snared kaka, tui and pigeons, and shot or speared the pigs that abounded in the dense woods. Another food-staple was " kaanga-pirau," or maize steeped in water until it was quite decayed. " Tht> smell of this Indian corn," says Bent, with an emphasis begotten of unpleasant memories, " was enough to kill a dog. Nevertheless, I had to eat it, and in time I got used to it." "I had at this time," continues the deserter, recounting his wild days in Otapawa, "no boots, no trousers, no shirt — just Maori mats to cover me, and a mat and blanket for my 1 bed. I had managed to procure some needles and thread, together with\ paper and pencil (I kept up a sort of diary now . and then), and one or t two other little things which I kept in a kit, .thinking that, though I had nothing to sew with the needles and thread, and very little to do with the other belongings, they

might come in useful before very long. One of my greatest troubles was the want of salt; a© for bread, I liad not tasted -any for many inonthe." (To be continued on Monday next.)