OVER THE HUIA-RAU.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 12065, 21 July 1917, Page 2

OVER THE HUIA-RAU.

The Native settlement of Mataatua, in the deep-set valley of Ruatahuna, seemed ft long, long way out of the world, far "longer than the actual forty miles of bush and mountains and gorge C'hieJi rnlisadcd it from the open plains of tho Kangitaiki and the eighty miles which stretched between it and the nearest town, Rotorua. I don't think I have ever ridden into a Maori village that wore so remote and shut-in an aspect, unless perhaps a lonely little kainga of forty people, the last of the Ngafci-Mahaki tribe, which stands on the bank of Jacob's River, far down the harbourless coast of South Westland.

Mataatua was only accessible on horseback; to go any further into the Urewera mountains was impossible except on the native-bred ponies able to walk a log across a creek it' need bo to perform other bush feats that outdo the most astonishing tricks of the circus. To reach Waikare-Moana, the scarcely known lake of great size and wonderful beauty to the south-east, one ,had to travel on foot, and wild and jumbled-up as was the face of tho country between the plains and Ruatahuna, a journey to the mysterious and then unsounded lake lay across an even more formidable and difficult bit of country, the great range of the Huia-rau. No horse could be taken across it when I was in the Urewera Country, at any rate not with any safety to horse or rider. Remembering; the incredibly rugged and broken surtace of that . fcavago comer of New Zealand, a land of cliff-climbing forest r.yd c \""b' , '' v gorges and sharp-topped ridges like the spiney back of a tuatara.. J cannot iepress'a wish that some of the northern members of Parliament and newspaper editors who periodically call upon the Government to open up for settlement " tho fertile virgin country of the L-re-wcra.'' preferably as homes ior returned soldiers, could be set down on some of this edgeways-standing country to knock a living out of it. Scenery apart, the Urewera. region looks best on x..0 map. It is not a place for a European settler. The Moons, In mg iu small kaingas far apart, contrive to exist there" after the manner of , their hard-faring ancestors, but they onl.. manage to do so because they have a wide "extent of bush to range for a square meal. Mountain potatoes, maize, pork and wild birds are thenstaples; when they have money lo upend they ride down to the bush stoics cf the one or two pakehas who have set up tin-roofed shops by tho roadsic e „„1 lay in » «<"' k , " f ,. hi, r biscuit and bully beet and sardines to help out the home faro. Ihe u>pwirrapbv of this ungentled terrain and the unreliable character ot Us soil except iin the valley Hats and terraces here aud there will keep ib almost wholly Maori, and that is perhaps something to be desired in this ago ot free trade in Native lands. Huia-rau lies over yonder, between Ruatahuna and the Lake, interposing a barbarouslv rough backbone, rising nn places to 4000 ft and over, between tne central valleys and kaingas or the U re- , wera and tho deep waters ot \\ aikarenioana. Its name —" Plume of the. Huia "--tells us that a now vanished bird once livened its forests. Ttn_ towering peaks and steep ridges, cut mto by <*niich-liko valleys, the snows that ft uncrossable in winter, and the floods that sent its creeks up in untordnblo r jirin(f torrents, made of it a parapet nnd barrier for the Urewera people on their eastern and southern border. Manv a fugitive, perished in its snows; inanv a war party suffered defeat _hy ambuscade in its gloomy passes. Narrow trails, in places scarcely discernible, crossed its easier sectors; tho ininer-fcr-tiy made pakeha horse track to-day follows one of tho«o olden war tracks. TVervwhere it is blanketed with iorest, f'not.hered in a dense riot of foliage : T3i the dark gorges where the moun-tain-born rivers roar up and-up to tho rocky snine that parts the springs' flow <\ast and west. Some day, no doubt, • oorist motor-ears will swine round its ; d : 77,y cornices and leave a no'~ome trad o r fumes to uualifv the fragrance ov the Maori wood';, Vut that day is a long way ahead of us.

A MAORI HIGHLANDER. Regard my old guide and caniping,mt mate Paitini as he stands outside lik whare in the shade of the riiiiu chimp this break o' day, strapping bis " piliau" on his shoulders for the tramp across the Huia-rau to "\\ aikareSe::, twenty miles away. Consider, too, the manner of life he has led, this reformed cateran and Hauhau fighting . man. lean, hard-limbed, s'juare-shoul-d. -.ed, straight-backed brown bushman ' of j-ixtv. with scarcely a hair on his face, aiul certainly not a pound of unheeded flesh on his body. Think what 'o's bcun, 'Thin's what 'o's seen, Thialc of his pension, an' yes. Paitini now draws a pension from a benelicent Government, though certainly not for his military services, which have consistently been anti-Gov-ernment and decidedly anti-pakeha. Not that he's any ihe worse a fellow for that; ho is a thorough-going speei- ' men of the patriotic tribesman at' his best, and his tomahawking service of tho Sixties and Seventies has graven deeply experience of wild men and wild life and taught him self-discipline and restraint, mellowed him and made of him a man of rare ripe wisdom. Paitini ■—tho name means "Poison/' and a tale there is thereto—is a mountaineer of the old battle days, when no Urowera worth his salt but would trudge a hundred miles for the sake of a day's merry gun-plav. Paitini is one of the very few Survivors of tho Urowera company which marched up to the IV.nikato in 1864 and fought side by side with the Kingites against the Imperial troops in the battle of Orakau, where his father was killed and he himself badly wounded. ITe followed Te Kooti, too, on many a fighting trail ; in 1569 lio was one of tho mountain clansmen who served Te Kooti in the foray against Mohaka, Hawked Ear, • and there were few of the tough little campaigns of the Ringa-Tu fanatics in which he did not take a hand.

A Scottish Highlander would sruroly greet in Paitirii a long-severed cousin. The old warrior, like the true Caledonian, can/iot hear tho brooks; his waist-down garment, is usually a shawl worn kilt-wise, hut this morning it is a still scantier affair, an old calico sheet, fastened by a deft turn-in at tho waist which onlv a Maori can make a dependable girding. Barc-hcadrd, bare-footed and bare-legged, a shirt and an ancient jacket his only rloihos beside tho btifili kilt, a ton-tree str.ff in hand and lm flnx-strnppod swag on his. back, Paitini is ready for tho track, a hard old trail-breaker of tho passing generation. INTO THE lUXGES.

Tfc is not yet sunrise, but. as Paitini says, " Kua tangi to kaka"—the kaka parrot has screeched his get-no alarm, and it is time to bo The good Mak urate. otherwise . ?.r : r« Paitini^—a lad.v who has seen some wild l ; fe- herself, for she was To Ivooti's guide on ojio war expedition hereabouts ■—has our bush lations breakfast ready, and after a swig of hot pannikin tea

THE STORY OF A BUSH TRAVERSE. (By JAMES COWAN.) (Written for tho "Star.")

nnd a meal of hard-tack and boiled potatoes we are quickly under way. The track passes the fern-grown parapets of a pa which Whitmore's men iitcrmed in 1869, and where the gentle mountain men, when the column had gone, decorated their palisades with the bead of a white officer. Captain Travers, who was shot in the skirmish. Then Paitini lopes on ahead with the Bilent gliding pace of a Red Indian, and breaks oil" short to the right on the i'oresr. traverse. We go right up a mountain side apparently devoid of a track. The old boy plunges under some low-sweeping boughs and disappears. Following, 1 find him splashing up tho mossy bed of a tiny little hill creek ; that, it seems, is sufficient trail for hint. The forest, dark, damp ami solitary, ami heavy with the scent of vegetable mould and leaves and mosses, is all about us. It is a cave of leaves 'nnd rough-barked iree trunks. In a Jittle while wo .scramble out frorn the mosses and ferns on to a. clear bit of a spur, the Araiwhenua ridge, and see before us the ruined huts of a small deserted village. Halting here for n breather, after tho spurt up the mountain side, there is a far look-out over the winding valley of Ruatahuna, a little oasis of grass and groves and potato-patches and whares in the heart of the great untamed ranges. Hundreds of feet below the shingled roof of the big carved meeting-liouse, "To Whai-a-tc-Motu," built for To Kooti in 1890 or thereabouts, catches the first of the morning sun, and the blue smoke of the cooking liros rises from the Mataatua women's ovens. Then down south-east we go, by the narrow path that often is no path ut all, with the blue ranges of 1 r.patotara and Iluia-rau glooming more grandly over us as we tramp _ our silent way towards them. Paitmi, dour old gunman, is no chatteler oil the marchT ' lO reserves his tongue-flow lor the campfire side when the day s work is done* and the bush supper stowed nwav. But the forest is lively enough'as we wind down to the Waiiti valley through overarching avenues of ta-seiled rirnu pines and crimsonblossoming rata, and the beaut-it ill 1 clumps of the beech-like taw a. Never have I seen or heard the kalca in such numbers as in those Urewera forests, trom Ruatahuna to Waikare-iti. its strident screech is always in one's ears; an imitation ot its call brings a dozen noisy birds flap, piiirr about one's head, I'aitim breaks his" warrior silence to declare testily that the kaka is as big a nuisance as a jabbering woman, and is only to be tolerated when it is cooked. More pleasant is the tui, whose, chime arid chuckle follow us all day long; and tho little riroriro's sum-mer-time trill is seldom stilled. In the valley of Wai-iti wo open out a la tie clearing, and the tiniest and most solitary of "Maori villages, just half a dozen totara-bark-roofed whares, half underground, with the eartli heaped up to the eaves about them. This is for the sake of warmth in the long frosty nights of winter. THE CLIMBING OF PAPA-TOTARA. Leaving the last of tho open spaces behind us, wo make the slow ascent of the t'apa-totara, the first. and 1 esser of the ranges which (intervene between us and the lake. There is a steady climb for over a thousand feet, with many a dip and rise again before tho saddle is topped, fording shallow clattering creeks now and then. We have by now struck the survey track along which the road is to run some day in the farolf future, and the track is reasonably clear for a few m.lcs. On the summit a halt is called, for the pakeha is not the tireless- bushman that Paitini is in spite of sixty years of bush toil and campaigning. There on thohigh saddle, the old man raises his lean tattooed hand and, pointing through a gap in the tall trees away towards the east, utters one word—- " Maungapohatu !" Yonder it rises, sheer from the mass of hugely broken misty blue ranges about it, the Olympus of the Urewera, Maungapohatu, the Rocky Mountain, into an altitude of moie than 4000 ft. It is a huge matv, of limestone swathed in the tall timber everywhere except for the gleaming breaks where the rock shows through the foliage and for the singular grey rocky columns that stand out on its sides. The crest and citadel of the olden tapu mountain, however, are h'dden by the hanging mists. .Maungapohatu, as Pa/tini says, hnn a way of concealing her head from .strangers in a mantle of fog Much nearer our halting-place, but fcnarated from us by a tremendous gulch of bhio gloom, when the trees go feathering down and down until they are drowned in the drifting fog, is a wild upjut of a peak, tho mountain To Poke. This peak is a " rua-koha," a lightning mountain" of fateful onien : ' lightning striking down upon its head is regarded by the people who own the country as a portent of death.

TOE SECRET PLACES. But wo have to get to the lako tonight, and giant liuia-rau is still before us, lifting his indigo-blue mass oS!Hl!'t into the golden sky. So wo hurry down the Papa-'otara and sot a stout heart to the " stoy brao " of tho main rango. The. kilted patriarch leads the way, stepping upwards and onwards as lightly and softly as a deer, with the case arid tirclessncss that coine of a lifetime spent in bush-hunting and skirmishing and swag carrying up and down these arduous highlands. Every mile of these mountains, indeed every yard almost, is familiar ground to Paitini. Tho wild forest was bis school' and playground, his food preserve and his lighting ground., it has soaked into his soul; his religion is, perhaps, more forest, worship than anything else. Of the sturdy old pagan it could be said with truth enough, as Thorcau wrote.

of the Red Indian: "By tho. wary independence and aloofness of his dim forest life he preserves his intercourse with his native gods, and is admitted from time to time to a rare and peculiar society with Nature."

Paitini was a Ringa-tu, a disciple of the faith of the XTplifted Hand, ILKe all good T 0 Kooti-ite.s, but I imag : «i» from what I know cf him the " Atuas :; of tho bush and the mountains hold his deepest and abiding fear and reverence. I: can scarcely be otherwise with these UrowjTa people, whose lives are so inseparably associated with tho great forest, to an extent scarcely to be conceived of by dwellers in the open places.

j nere tho old man was in his okkn ; campaigning ground. Every log j iincl tree ho knew, every stump; his ; skirmishing and hunting training showj ed in the quick, keen glances he gave around as ho breasted a great tree-butt or a rock which might in the days of tho tomahawk have sheltered an enomy. j Hero wo are in the innermost shrine : and shekinah of the littlo forest fairy gods, tho Patu-paiarehe. Tho damp ground for acres and acres is softly carpeted with tiro tiniest ferns, and thero aro glorious gardens of dew-bead-ed todea superb a and the tall feathry hcruheru, through which wo have often to break our way, so soon do they spread a fairy junglo across a littleused track. The toi, the huge-leaved mountain palm, is her© in its most favoured home. Long trailers of asplenium flaceidum festoon tho great branches under which we stoop to pass; tho plant has a poetic namo in the Maori, "Tho Tresses of Raukatauri,"

who, in legendry, was one of the ladies who invented the poi dance. OVER THE DIVIDE. Just over the lofty brow of Huia-rau we ease ourselves of our swags ior a midday spell, boil the billy, and cat our bully beef and biscuit lunch, five hours out "from Ruatahuna. Waikare-Moana lies two thousand feet below us, but hidden from lis by the forest. And on the march again, although the way is downward, the trail does not make for easy going. It lies down a long leading ridge at first; from this ridge Paitirii points down into a dark, deep gorge on it-lie' right hand side, and pronounces, in his abrupt oracular fashion tho word "Kiripaka." It means quartz, and later I gather front the; old man that this was one_of tho gulches wnere a prospector, risicing Maori displeasure, gathered some speciiyen> of auriferous seeming quartz. "Maybe, some day, we shall hear of a- payable gold discovery in the Urewera Country, but man.v of its gullies and gorges have been scoured by prospectors, sonic a* far agone, indeed, as TB7O.

THE RIVER ROAD. This quartz creek was the main headwater of the Orangi-tutne-tutu stream —a little river with an outsize name, and a gorge that, too, was many sizes too big for it. We splashed through and along this rowdy creek, and here, as at many other places on the track, it was no easy iob to keep up with the vigorous old Urewera, who moved with a pace so steady, though seemingly so leisurely, that he wa.s often' out of sight in the bush ahead; and at thi> creek crossings it was often extremely difficult to toll where the trail entered the forest again, so thoroughly concealed was it by the boughs that swept, the rushing waters. Quickly descending, wo struck a larger f I renin, .the Hopu-ruahine. which finds its way into tho Whangaruii arm of • Waikarcmoana. In this rocky valley we came to a place where the faint trail i; petered out" altogether; it ended at. tho creek bank and the "other side was a cliff barring all progress that way. "Which way now, Pai?''' the pakeha asked. "This way," said the old man with a grin, as he gave his high-kilted rnpaki a higher hitch about his waist and stepped into the water. ''Rightdown here; the good Maori road." The water was, if anything, colder and the current more .swift than tho rivers on the other side of Tlnia-rau; nnd the pakeha. regretted arrain that lie hadn't sot out in a rapaki like Paitini's, and made resolve that he would wear his trousers in his swag for the return tramp. Down the growlino: creek wo went, the eld bare-legged guide as much at home in the writer as an eel, the pakeha. feeling mere nnd more the clogging weight of soaked clothes. We emerged now niul asain on the, bank where the slop'? was easy, then took to the Hopu-ruahine a train ; T think we crossed find recios-sed it a score of times. If. was tar less trouble to wade down the creek than to seramT»T© along through the trackless thickets ot bush or to attempt the passage or bare cliff faces. Th" wat-'-r was sometimes knee-deep, somet ime.s up to the waist-, and our last crossing, in-t where we opened up length of"felled bush that told im the Inke nrust be near, wa.s at so deep a ford that it was nearly n matter of swimming. BY TEN CAMP FIRE. Wet, tired and lmnsrv. we ridded ourselves of our "pikauV" on the Lake shore at last, just, at sunset. W:;ilcare'< dark waters spread out before us in tho forest-walled bay cf To Apiti, deeply shadowed by tlu> ranges near us, then i far out carrying a steel-like glinuner to I the distant shore. Mountains all about j us, range upon range, and giant o'ui trees spreading their mossv and kiekietufted boughs out over the clear cold waters. Directly opposite us, across the lake, tho last' of the sunset flooded tho scarred and tattooed brow of oM Panekiri, a huge cliff that went up from the immensely dorp waters iu a ; wall of rock well-nigh a thousand feet above tho surface of Wnikare. Its level crest was crowned with a burning aura of crimson reflected from the glowing clouds that lay piled just .-ibove it, and in the light of" the storm-po--tending sunset every groat trench and crack and crevice in that tipper part of tho grimly grand wall stood out nluinly defined, while its "loomy base was lost in the dark unrippled waters. Nov/ the billy was boiling again, and a roaring fire was sending a lively >dow of life and light across the nearer j waters, and we ate end drank, not our fill, but a bush rations measure, and toasted ourselves before the bivouac blaze in our blankets while uur clothes steamed dry again. The branches of a venerablo tawhero tree spread a leafv ! tentage over us; through its leaves 1 ' watched bright Kopu come up clear of j Panekiri's top and saw the soft and ! silvery Pleiades shine, " shedding sweet j influence."

Anc] Paitini—his tongue was loosened with liis bolt, and he was back in ihe scenes of more than thirty years before, when ho carried gun mid" tomahawk over these ranges and dipped n furious paddlo in bis war-canoeing forays on tho groat lake. On yon cape of Matuahu, glooming ghostly against the eastern sky, Paitini and hundreds of hi* fellow-Hauhous lived in their trenched )>a of Matuahu and danced mighty wai dances and waited for the Government war party. Canoo crews tore the lake waters into spray, and the crack of rifles made history about the shores. Nov,- of all the warrior hundreds only n few score remain, and on this Tluiarau side of the Sea of Waikare. with its deep-set. bay after bnv, the only sign and trnoc of hninan life is our lone camp fire blazing at the buttressed foot of that bii tawhero tree.