UP THE WAIKATO OF FOOT. From Ngaruawahia. to Cambridge. [By a Tramp.]

Waikato Times, Volume XVI, Issue 1355, 8 March 1881, Page 2

UP THE WAIKATO OF FOOT. From Ngaruawahia. to Cambridge. [By a Tramp.]

Nqaihuwahia. looks improved, and yet less beautiful than in tub old days when I had the pleasure of sleeping in his imperial Maori Majesty's imperial Maori whare, and we had perforce to give up the idea v of sleep and take to pipes to modify the forocity of the fleas ana mosqnitoes, and other* wild beasts who raged in the shades of that pretty river side retreat. The river was . beautiful still, and tho bridge aoros.B it is beautiful, though not equal to the "Whanganui bridge and many in the South Island. The flying and changing shado\vs in the deep gorge beyond the river were as fine as ever, but the trim cottages worthy of a CambVell or Wauxall country gentleman, of one fifty per annum made in the bacon and 'am line, were not worthy of the spot, and did not seem to show that much has been done yet 'towards making this the central spot of the brOad Wails ato district. A far more business lookand go-a-headitive spot is Hamilton. Alighting at a shady mral looking station a passenger is at once seized by one if not more muscular men, in a high state of excitemont, and bundled, as they would themselves say, "holus bolus "into a covered car, and drawn somewhere or other before he can even find himself able to say Jack Robinson. He may be taken to Pearce's Commercial Hotel or to Gwynue's Hamilton Hotel, or he might even find himself whirled off at the utmost speed of four veteran hacks to Cambridge, the next town, about twelve miles aw.iy. Should he ever be hauled out holua bolus at either of tho Hamilton hotels, he will find himself consoled and his wounds bound up, and every thing done that can be done at a reasonable price for a party who is possessed of cash. He will note pretty villas surrounded by bright sweet gardens, indicative of business or well paid pursu its along the road, and in the town he will remark smart substantial banks, thriving stores, with pushing young men, hired expressly to push everything upon everybody visible, and earning their screw most praiseworthily ; the Waikato Timks, a well-conducted and energetic paper, full of interesting local news and well-written, original matter, with advertisements flowing over, will be set before him, and he will be astonished at the advance of such an extent of civilisation upon what was only comparatively a few years ago the depth of a Maori wilderness, but is now a line of thriving settlements connected by tho track of the resistless ironhorse. Passing up the fine broad street of the rising little town, one conies to a bridge of considerable pretensions to substantial build across the beautiful Waikato ; and if he is a man capable of peicciving beauty in anything but a rump steak or a glass ot beer, he will derive a real pleasure from a stroll along it, gazing upon the winding, iushing stream far below, continually changing its tints from the deepest purple to the brightest sparkling green, and reflecting tho smallest white cottage along its banks in its deep bosom. There aie, though, many bridges in New Zealand that surpass this ; and on second acquaintance, I am nob sure that the Waikato is the largest of the New Zealand rivers, whatever other claims it may possess to the title of the finest. Across the river the township is spreading its area rapidly, and the inhabitants seem determined to patronise the most picturesque and lasting of all building materials, accoulmg to modern architects, and to erect the good old red brick bmldmgb that make the country towns of England so homely and comfoi table. Hamilton may, some day, be one of the picture towns of New Zealand, and a growing avenue of vigorous young pines and sycamores will, in a few years more, make an approach to the river as beautiful as an Italian or Southern French biith-place of poets. Mere hard, ugly, practical utility will not be the one and only consideration as with the John Bull of the last century. The white and dusty road to Cambridge passes many trim cottage 3 and paddocks, bordered by tall whitethorn-hedges now decked in all their Autumn glory of bright red berries, and the briars everywhere spreading out their prickly arms covered with most tempting looking scarlet fruit, though schoolboys who have suffered the pangs of vain hope in their early pursuit of " hops and haws,"' will know that they are a suaie and a delusion. The larks were carolling away and the bright green and blue locusts were singing and jumping merrily about, while the little bright blue or the puiple and brown, or red and white butterflies were swarming everywhere in myriads. A rather objectionable colonist, the rabbi, t would poke his head out of the fern and scuttle across the load here and there, or a fine brace of pheasants would ppring with a great flapping and whirling out of the titree scrub. Everything- looked very like a road in old Kent or Devon, as I strolled along. Here and there Borne harvest operations wore boing still vigorously pursued and the thrumming and droning sound of the steam machines across a paddock or two, to soften the rougher noise, forms almost as pleasing and quite as suggestive a refrain as the old harvest home song of former days. Plenty of work and plenty of capital were evident along the road and what with a pleasanb little road side inn just about half way at Tamahere and a friendly chat and a glass of beautiful cool milk at a cottage here and there, with a Bmoke by a musical shady little streamlet, and a long drink and a cool paddle in the flax - bordered pool, the distance, and the heat of the day wore gradually away, and I arrived at Cambridge tired and hjt and dusty, but full of admiration. Beautifully situated in the broad verdant plain of the Waikato bed, with lofty mountains bordering the horizon, amongst which Pirongia towers the monarch, with the noble windingdark blue river rushing past one side, and the bright little gem Lake Koutou decorating its bosom. Cambridge forms a picture as bright and Bofb a3 any ever imagined by that most talented and poetical old lady, Dame Nature, or her most favoured disciples, Claude Lorraine, Turner, Stanfield, or any of the other loving reproducers of the old lady's works. Cambridge is also to be praised for the energy and bustle displayed by those who promote its interests, and have worked to foster its natural advantages. It is a most dashing little town, pushing vigorous and growing like magic under the combined influences of the Native Land Courts, held here periodically when Natives and notes appear in hundreds, and the presence of the Constabulary for some time in the neighborhood, the opening- of fresh lands, the growing of new roads, and so on. It is a 1 flue healthy little town, aad many of its old inhabitants, who for many years haye wasted in vain for th,e good time "coming, have realised their utmost desires at last, and turned in a very pretty pile of cash, and gentleman who have had-to be contented with the husks that the swine did eat Since th 6 day of their birth, are now able to ; gratify their ' highest instincts, and take sights at their fellow men from round ivsafe corner ; bufc there ia nothing to be wondered at, or to go 'into strong convulsions of grovelling admiration over ill the pleasing little town. , lam not as one netable ftesci'iptive writer appears to be^ sneaking round the hotels df host So-and-sb and host What's-his-naine as he , playfully terras them, under the imprea*

- __ __- sion that he is quoting Shakespeare, ana trying indirectly to extract tots by fawning and purring round the legs of the thriving publicans after the manner ot the real old New Zealand journalist, so I am not going tp beslaver the place inordinately. When I got into it it was all agog; some 800 or 1000 natives had come to attend the Land Court, and a crack troupe of burlesque actors or opera bouffe (pronounce ",booff" if you please, without any French accent) had arrived, and beds were at a premium, and everybody in the town apparently inebriated with good fortune, beyond .all. regard for courtsey or decent civility. Host So and 80 and -Host Whats his name with the drivelling old sneaking journalist, who had just got a bed' and a tot presented him by hard fawning, laughed at my nose, as the French say, and one highly respectable old lady proprietress of, ,a boarding house for gentlemen, slammed her door in my face and gnashed her gums at me through the Window, at the first mention of the word " shake down." Only by abject begging was I able to get half a dog kennel and a little straw at last, and was no worse off, than I)iogenes ; and I bear no malic© to Cambridge for refusing my society ; I only hope that as a successful parvenu it will not be silly enough to make use of its plentiful allowance of rope to hang itself. Nothing is so disgnsting as the sight of insolent rioting over first success. Among the Maoris who were visiting the town, were a number of the Ngatiraukaua tribe and a good many of the Rotorua natives. General jabber, rubbing of noses, singing of impromptu songs and indulgence m strong drinks without restraint seemed to lie the order of the day ; the bars were crowded by hundreds of fine, well-grown, handsomely proportioned savages, among the modem school, including some swelhshly dressed, tolerably behaved fellows, with immense pretensions to the admiration of society in their white coats, bell-topper hats, watchesand boots, but among the elders, containing tattooed old cannibals, whose jaws had rioted in human gravy and human crackling, in simple kilts aud cotton shuts, with ladies in plain cotton gowns and good thick coats of dirt, and nothing more, who were partly excited by drink, and generally inclined for baboon-like jollification and pawing. The following more or less well-known chiefs were about the town, whose Maori names I give, though with the modern pigeon Maori, a sort of ignorant missionary adaptation of European words to Maori pronunciation, one cannot tell now whether any given name is real Maori or only made up like Tommy Walker transformed into Tomate Waka, or Stephen tortured into Tipene, or .Tohnny prettily .shaped into Hone, or Jimmy into Shimmy. However, the following are the names these big bugs are known by : Arekatera, Menehira, Ponawha,Karanama, Tuwhakarara, Parete, Te la Punoke, The Rev. Pomare, Papanui, Hoani Taipua, and a VAiiety of others who swaggered about, ready to rub noses or shout with any pakeha who pretended to know them. In the eveuing there was a little variety imparted to the excitement, by "Host," Raynea, as the great literary star, purring aboxt for a tot, calls the landlord of the National Hotel, who got about 50 ot the natives into a long tent lighted with candles and arranged for spectators on the one side and on the other for the performance of a war dance or haka. It was an -extraordinary sight, certainly not every day to bo seen in civilised life, or in pakeha towns. It began by about a dozen strapping wenches with a white chemise arranged over one shoulder leaving the other bare in the ancient classical toga fashion, and innocent of further attire, standing up along one side of the tent with about a lozen or twenty of the more demonstrative and powerful grimaces of the males, peeled to a state of nature with the exception of a short pair of athlete's drawers or bathing calecons, such as gentlemen delight in when doing their tumbles in ladies' society at Margate or Boulogne, and then launching into a sort of wild improvised rythmic chatint, delivered with murh grinning sarcastic expression, and a good deal of wrinkling of the hose, waving of the hands, bending of the body, and approaohing of the faces of the men to tho^e of the women. The burden of the song was evidently something highly defamatory of the pakeha and at the end of every verse, as it may be called, all joined in with a shout of "Ho ! He !" and a clip of the hands.the time during the song being kept by beating the hands on the thighs cind stamping the feet on tho ground. Some of the native lookers-on in choice pakeha clothei, got so excited by the sight and the sounds that thoy gradually stripped off waistcoats, shirts, braces, boot", and breeches till the : r brown skins appeared in the old pre-Kooki state of shining 1 , greasy moisture, and civilization was pacriiiced for the pleasure of wrinkling their noses slapping their buttocks and howling something awfully humiliatingagainst the pakoha. The excitement waxed fiercer as the dauoo lasted and the bottle was passed round and it must be certainly owned, that there was a tendency to indecency now and then in the actions and the word*. Something of the can can description of gracefulness rejoiced iv by Parisians under similar circumstances, and the great literary star, if he were still purring 1 round Host Raynei for another tofc, would have hidden his face with his hand, aud bashfully uttered some time honoured old joke, or danced a farmer's dance in a sraojk frock with the finger and thumb snapping accompaniment, and zong of beer, or made himself in some way equally delightful company. At about teu o'clock, the performers grew weary of their active exertions, and the spectators grew rather sick of the temperature and the balmy odours of Maori ichor and sharks grease, and the ladies writhed and gesticulated with less and less spirit as tho effects of tke contents of the bottles mado thorn more and more sleepy. The funny men grew solemn and cross, and in fact tho thing began to flag, so the hat was handed round, and the haka was concluded. It was a strange weird sight and sound, almost as curious as is the tangi or weeping ceremony, that I once had the pleasure of beholding not as a mourning 1 , but as a rejoicing performance. Having crept into my dog kennel after this, at day break I shook off the dust of Cambridge from my feet, and cleiired out till soiae more favorable time for beholding its beautien, when theie shall be no Land Court going on, and less excitement.