Brighter Britain! Part 16

On another occasion Old Colonial had been away in Australia. On his return, Tama and his wife came up to welcome him home again. Old Colonial had brought back presents for all our Maori friends; and he had selected for Tama a silver watch, with a gorgeous guard and seals. This pleased the old fellow mightily; and for three mortal hours did Old Colonial strive to instruct him in how to tell the time, and how to wind it up. He thought at last that he had thoroughly succeeded in enlightening the Maori about his new acquisition. Tama departed with ill-concealed glee, stopping every now and then, as he went, to listen to the watch ticking.

However, the next morning, as we sat at breakfast, Tama appeared, with a serious and sad expression on his face. He would eat nothing; but, drawing Old Colonial aside, communicated to him the distressing intelligence that the watch had _died_ during the night. Without betraying any amus.e.m.e.nt, Old Colonial wound up the watch again, and proceeded to give another lecture on its action to the ancient child.

He went away apparently satisfied, and much lightened in his mind; but we began to have a fear that the watch would prove an injudicious present. The next morning Tama appeared again, with the same sad and serious aspect, this time complicated with a look of intense puzzlement.

He contemplated Old Colonial's hands as he wound up the watch again and set it going. This was a total mystery to the old fellow. He said he had been "doing that" to the watch all night long, talking to it, and telling it not to die. We opined that he had not succeeded in opening the case of the watch, but had sat twiddling the key about the outside of it.

The same thing went on day after day. Tama began to grow weak and ill.

He was haggard with anxiety, spending his days in listening to the regular tick-tick of the watch, and his nights in trying to keep it alive. In vain he sat up with it night after night, holding it in his hands, caressing it, wrapping it in warm clothes, and laying it beside the fire, even, so he told us, reading the Bible and praying for it. In spite of this generous treatment the watch invariably died about five o'clock in the morning. Then the miserable proprietor had to take his boat and row up the eight miles of river that lay between his place and ours.

At last the old fellow began to get a better idea of the hang of the thing. He essayed to wind the watch at night, but failed, and in some indescribable way managed to break the key. Then the charm was dissolved. Feeling that his health was becoming impaired by his devotion to this Pakeha fetish, and that consideration finally overcoming his pride in its possession, he returned the watch to Old Colonial. He said it was "Kah.o.r.e pai;" or, as a Scotsman would put it, "no canny."

Tama keeps the guard and seals to wear on festive occasions. But the watch, no. He has had enough of such silly things. Henceforth, as formerly, the sun will suffice him for a timekeeper. That is not given to dying, nor does it require sitting up with at night and such like attentions, and it manages its own winding up.

We have other Maori neighbours besides Tama and his immediate following.

There are several families living on the different rivers and creeks round about, and with them all we are on friendly terms; with some we are pa.s.sably intimate, though with none quite so affectionately at one as with Tama. Perhaps our next best friends would be found at Tanoa.

Tanoa is a large kainga on the Otamatea river, and lies about sixteen miles across the bush from our farm, or somewhat more by the water-road.

It contains a population of two or three hundred; men, women, and children. This Maori town may be considered the metropolis of the Ngatewhatua tribe.

Tanoa is prettily situated, for the Otamatea, though a larger river than the Pahi, is very picturesque in parts. The kainga lies embosomed in orchards of peach and pear, cherry and almond, and extensive cultivations and gra.s.s-paddocks surround it. Most of the houses are, of course, the usual raupo whares, but there are carpentered frame-houses in the kainga as well.

A Wesleyan mission has been established in this place for about a score of years; and an English minister and schoolmaster reside permanently at it. The former has great influence with his flock, who are fervent Christians to a man. The latter is bringing up the rising generation to a standard of education that would put to shame many a rural village of the old country.

The ariki of the Ngatewhatua lives at Tanoa. He is between forty and fifty, if as much, a very tall and very portly personage. He is a great man, corporeally certainly, and, perhaps, in other ways as well. Arama Karaka, or Adam Clark in Pakeha p.r.o.nunciation, has had more English education than Tama, and is altogether of larger mind. Nevertheless, we do not feel that we can like him quite so well as our dear old barbarian.

Arama rules his little community in paternal and patriarchal spirit. He understands the Pakeha better than many Maoris; and in most things accepts the guidance of his friend, the missionary. He carries on affairs of state in a manner blended of Maori and Pakeha usages. He is, of course, a politician, and takes a leading part in the local elections. But he adheres to Maori customs in their modified and civilized form, and may be called a Conservative in such things.

Arama has a pet theory, on which he often enlarges in picturesque style to such Pakehas as he considers as of more than common note. Pre-eminent among these is Old Colonial. Indeed, our chum is generally looked upon by the Maoris as a sort of chief among the Pakehas of the district. His experience and ac.u.men have made him a general referee among the Kaipara settlers; and, in all important matters, he is usually the interpreter and spokesman between them and the natives. Moreover, he is now the oldest settler in the district; that is, he is not the oldest man, but has been in the Kaipara longer than any other Pakeha, having come here before any settlement had been made in this part. And so he is an old and intimate friend of the Maoris.

To him, then, I have heard Arama discoursing on his project for the regeneration of the Maori race, talking as one chief among men may talk to another. For the ariki is thoroughly aware of the gradual extinction which is coming for his race. He sees and knows that the Maori is dying out before the Pakeha, and his great idea is how the former may be perpetuated.

Says he to Old Colonial, for example, somewhat as follows:--

"Oh, friend! What shall be for the Maori? Where are they now since the coming of the Pakeha? The forest falls before the axe of the Pakeha; the Maori birds have flown away, and strange Pakeha birds fly above the new cornfields; the Pakeha rat has chased away the kiore; there are Pakeha boats on our waters, Pakeha fish in our rivers. All that was is gone; and the land of the Maori is no longer theirs. G.o.d has called to the Maori people, and they go. The souls of our dead crowd the path that leads to the Reinga.

"Lo! the Pakeha men are very many. It is good that they should see our maidens, and it is good that they should marry them. Then there will be children that shall live, and a new race of Maori blood. So there shall be some to say in the time to come, 'This is the land of our mothers.

This was the land of the Maori before the Pakeha came out of the sea.'

"Oh, friend! send your young men to Tanoa, that they may see our maidens, and may know that they are good for wives. The mihonere and the kuremata[7] have taught them the things of the Pakeha. It is good that we should cause them so to marry."

Thus does Arama propound his plan for a fusion between the races. Still more to further it, he proposes to endow certain young ladies of his tribe with considerable areas of land, in the event of any Pakeha--_rangatira_ Pakeha--who may be acceptable to the tribe, offering to marry any of them. We have tried to urge the Little'un, or the Saint, or even O'Gaygun into some such match; but they are shy, I suppose, and do not seem to fancy taking "a savage woman to rear their dusky race."

Yet it would be unfair to call the brunette beauties of Tanoa savages.

_Place aux dames!_ Let us get on to consider the ladies.

Ema, and Piha, and Ana, and Hirene, and Mehere; there they are, the pick and particular flower of all that is beautiful, fashionable, young, and _marriageable_ in Tanoa. Bright and cheerful, neat and comely, pleasant partners at a bush-ball are these half-Anglicized daughters of the Ngatewhatua. They can prattle prettily in their soft Maori-English, while their glancing eyes and saucy lips are provoking the by no means too hard hearts of Pakeha bushmen.

Ah! live in the bush, reader! Live and work from month's end to month's end without even a sight of a petticoat, and then go slap into the middle of a "spree" at some such place as Tanoa or Te Pahi. Then you would appreciate the charms of our Maori belles. Under the influence of music and the dance, supple forms and graceful motions, scented hair and flower-wreaths, smiles and sparkling eyes, the graces of nature not wholly lost under the polish of civilization, you would say our Maori girls were very nice indeed. And so say all of us, _although_ the Saint and the Little'un and O'Gaygun hold aloof from matrimony--as yet.

These Maori maidens are not to be thought of as savages. Far from it.

They can read and they can write, in English as well as Maori. They can read the newspaper or the Bible to their less accomplished papas and mammas. They can cipher and sew; have an idea of the rotundity of the earth, with some knowledge of the other countries beyond the sea. They are fully up in all the subjects that are usually taught in Sunday schools. They can play croquet--with flirtation accompaniment--and wear chignons. Oh no! they are not savages. At least, _I_ should say not.

But far pre-eminent among the young ladies of Tanoa is Rakope. She is the daughter of Mihake, the nephew and heir of Arama, and who is himself a great favourite and good friend of ours. Mihake is a jolly, good-tempered kind of man, very knowing in stock and farming matters, and a frequent guest of ours. His daughter, as Arama is childless, ranks as the princ.i.p.al unmarried lady of the tribe, and most worthy is she to bear such a dignity.

O Rakope! princess of the Ngatewhatua and queen of Maori beauty! how am I to describe the opulence of your charms, your virtues, and your accomplishments? How am I to convey an idea of what you really are to the dull and prejudiced intellects of people in far-off foggy Britain?

Yet have I sworn, as your true knight, O beautiful Rakope! to noise your fame abroad to the four corners of the earth, with the sound of shouting and of trumpets!

Prepare, O reader! with due reverence, with proper admiration, to hear of our Maori paragon.

For she is a beauty, our Rakope; and more, her intelligence amounts almost to what is genius, by comparison with her companions. You can see it in her broad, low brow, in her large, clear, liquid eyes, shaded with their black velvety fringe of lashes. Her features may not be good, judged by Greek art standards; but what do we care about art and its standards here in the bush? We can see that Rakope is beautiful, and we know that she is as good as she is beautiful.

Her colour is a soft dusky brown, under which you can see the blood warming her dimpling cheeks. Her figure is perfection's self, ripe and round and full, while every movement shows some new grace and more seductive curve. Her rich brown hair reaches far below her slender waist, and when it is dressed with crimson pohutakawa blossoms, the orange flowers of the kowhaingutu kaka, or the soft downy white feathers that the Maoris prize, then it would compel the admiration of any London drawing-room. And what is it in Rakope's cheeks and chin, and rare red lips and pearly teeth, that makes one think of peaches and of rosebuds and of honey, and of many other things that are nicest of the nice?

Away, away with your washed-out, watery Venuses, your gla.s.sy-eyed Junos, your disdainful, half-masculine Dianas! Away with all your pretended and pretentious beauties of the older Northern world! We will have none of them. Give us our Rakope, our Rakope as she is, glowing with the rich warm colour, the subtle delicacies of form, and all the luxuriant beauty that is born between the South Sea and the sun!

And is she not clever? Words fail the schoolmaster when he attempts to sound her praises; for she has learnt nearly all that he can teach her.

She is the apple of his eye and the crown of his labours. To hear Rakope sing is to believe in the Syrens; to chat with her and receive her looks and smiles, to dance with her--ah!

She is the pet of the tribe. Men and women, girls and boys are never weary of admiring or caressing or spoiling her. She can coax and wheedle her father and Arama, mihonere and kuremata alike, to do almost anything she desires, and through them she may be said to reign over the Ngatewhatua. She is the delight and darling of all the settlers round.

She is the idyll of our shanty, and our regard for her approaches to idolatry. O Rakope, Rakope! I hope you will some day marry a Pakeha rangatira, and endow him with your ten thousand acres; for if you mate with even an ariki from among your own people, your lot will be but a hard one when age has dimmed the brighter glories of your beauty!

There was a spree at the township; an event that had been looked forward to by everybody for months past. English people are given to a.s.sociating the idea of a "spree" with that of a baccha.n.a.l orgy. Not so we. With us the word is simply colonial for a festivity of any kind, private or public. And whatever may be the primary object of the spree, it is pretty certain to conclude with a dance.

On this occasion "The Pahi Minstrels," who had advertised themselves for long beforehand, were to give a musical entertainment, disguised as n.i.g.g.e.rs. It is, perhaps, unnecessary to explain who these personages were, since it will be remembered that our shanty was given to sending out serenading expeditions. _We_ were the Pahi Minstrels; having laboriously trained ourselves in a certain _repertoire_, and having been reinforced by one or two other amateur instrumentalists.

In the bush a very little is accepted as an excuse for amus.e.m.e.nt. The public festivities of our district are confined to two events in the year--the Otamatea races and the Pahi regatta; so that any addition to these is received with unanimous pleasure and applause. Our present intention had met with a hearty reception.

On the appointed evening, just about sundown and after, there was a grand gathering at the township. All along the beach boats lay drawn up, and the number of people walking about made the place seem quite populous. Of course, everybody was there from our own river, and from Paparoa and Matakohe besides. There were people, too, from the Wairoa settlements, from the Oruawharo, even from Maungaturoto and distant Mangawai. Our hearts sunk into our boots when we saw the prodigious audience that was a.s.sembling to hear our crude attempts at minstrelsy.

Our Maori friends were there in full force. Rakope, Piha, Mehere, and the rest of the girls, a blooming band of native beauty, escorted by a large contingent of their male relatives. All the married settlers round had brought their wives, and--theme of all tongues!--there were actually as many as four young single ladies! This was evidently going to be a spree on a most superb scale. Dandy Jack fairly beamed with rapture, and the gallant O'Gaygun almost burst with the overflow of his exuberant feelings.

The scene of the spree was, of course, to be our a.s.sembly Hall, although every citizen of Te Pahi township kept open house that night. The a.s.sembly Hall has been already mentioned, but must now be more particularly described.

Although the township is all parcelled out into town and suburban allotments, yet, for the most part, it remains in its original bush-covered condition. There is a piece of flat land round the base of the bluff, and this is all under gra.s.s; the half-dozen houses of the citizens, with their gardens and paddocks, being here. But all beyond is bush, with a single road cut through it, that leads up and along the range to Paparoa and Maungaturoto.

When it occurred to us as advisable to build a hall, and when we had subscribed a sum for the purpose, a site was selected further along the beach up the Pahi. Here there is a little cove or bend in the sh.o.r.e, and, just above it, a quarter-acre lot was bought. This was cleared, and the hall built upon it. All around the little patch of clearing the bush remains untouched. A track connects it with the houses on the flat, about a quarter of a mile off; and the beach just below is an admirable landing-place for boats.

The hall is simply a plain, wooden structure, capable of containing two or three hundred people. The Saint, when describing it in a letter home, said it was "a big, wooden barn with a floor to it." However, we voted this statement to be libellous, and cautioned the Saint on the misuse of terms. The Pahi Town Hall is not to be rashly designated with opprobrious epithets. Such as it is, it serves us well, by turns as chapel, court-house, music-hall, and ball-room.

On the night in question the hall was brilliantly illuminated with candles and kerosene lamps. The benches were filled with an eagerly expectant audience, brown and white, who applauded loudly when the Pahi Minstrels emerged from a little boarded room in one corner, and took up their positions on the platform at the end of the hall. Then, for two mortal hours, there was a dismal and lugubrious travesty of the performances of that world-famous troupe which never performs out of London.

But our audience were not captiously critical, and received our well-meant but weak attempts to please them with hearty pleasure and vigorous applause; and when we finally took ourselves off down to the river to wash our faces, every one declared we were a great success, as they busied themselves in clearing the hall for the dancing that was to follow.

It is not my purpose to describe the entire spree. I have merely alluded to it in order to record one of its incidents, which may fittingly conclude this brief account of our Maori neighbours; moreover, it is an ill.u.s.tration of something I said once before about caste and cla.s.s prejudices.

Of the four young English ladies who were present at the spree, three were known to us as the daughters or sisters of settlers in the district. The fourth was a visitor from Auckland, who was staying with some friends in the district, and had come with them to the township.

Miss "Cityswell" I will call her, the name will do as well as another.