Maori and Settler Part 15

"Oh, never mind that," Mr. Mitford said; "we shall land at once, and shall have all the morning to talk with them. If you and Mrs. Renshaw will come ash.o.r.e at four o'clock in the afternoon my wife and I will meet you at the landing-place. Or if, as I suppose you would prefer to do, you like to land this morning and have a look at Wellington for yourselves, this is our address, and if you will call at two o'clock, or any time later, we shall be at your service. I would suggest, though, that if you do land early, you should first come round to us, because Jackson may know some place to suit you; and if not, I am sure that he will be glad to accompany you and act as your guide."

"I should not like to trouble--" Mr. Renshaw began.

"My dear sir, you do not know the country. Everyone is glad to help a new chum--that is the name for fresh arrivals--to the utmost of his power if he knows anything whatever about him, and no one thinks anything of trouble."

"In that case," Mr. Renshaw said smiling, "we will gladly avail ourselves of the offer. We should all have been contented if the voyage had lasted a month longer; but being here, we all, I suppose, want to get ash.o.r.e as soon as possible. Therefore we shall probably call at your address in the course of an hour or so after you get there."

Wilfrid and Marion were indeed in such a hurry to get ash.o.r.e that a very few minutes after the Mitfords left the side of the ship, the Renshaws took a boat and started for the sh.o.r.e. Most of the other pa.s.sengers also landed.

"We shall go in alongside the quays in an hour's time," the captain said as they left; "so you must look for us there when you have done sight-seeing. We shall begin to get the baggage up at once for the benefit of those who are in a hurry to get away to the hotels; but I shall be glad for you all to make the ship your home until to-morrow."

For an hour after landing the Renshaws wandered about Wellington, which they found to be a pretty and well-built town with wide streets.

"Why, it is quite a large place!" Wilfrid exclaimed in surprise.

"Different, of course, from towns at home, with more open s.p.a.ces. I expected it would be much rougher than it is."

"It is the second town of the island, you see," Mr. Renshaw said; "and is an important place. Well, I am glad we did not c.u.mber ourselves by bringing everything out from England, for there will be no difficulty in providing ourselves with everything we require here."

After wandering about for an hour they proceeded to the address Mr.

Mitford had given them. It was a house of considerable size, standing in a pretty garden, a quarter of a mile from the business part of the town.

They were warmly received by the Mitfords, and introduced to Mr. and Mrs. Jackson.

"Mr. Mitford has been telling me that you want to get a house, or part of a house, for a few weeks till you look about you and decide where you will settle down," Mr. Jackson said. "I am a land and estate agent, besides doing a little in other ways. We most of us turn our hands to anything that presents itself here. I have taken a holiday for this morning and left my clerk in charge, so I am quite at your service. You will find it difficult and expensive if you take a whole house, so I should advise you strongly to take lodgings. If you were a large party it would be different, but you only want a sitting-room and three bed-rooms."

"We could do with a sitting-room, a good-sized bed-room for my wife and myself, and a small one for my daughter," Mr. Renshaw said; "and take a bed-room out for a few nights for Wilfrid, as he will be starting with a friend to journey through the colony and look out for a piece of land to suit us."

"Then there will be no difficulty at all. You will find lodgings rather more expensive than in England. I do not mean more expensive than a fashionable watering-place, but certainly more expensive than in a town of the same kind at home. House rent is high here; but then, on the other hand, your living will cost you less than at home."

After an hour's search lodgings were found in a house at no great distance from that of Mr. Jackson. It was a small house, kept by the widow of the owner and captain of a small trading ship that had been lost a year previously. The ship had fortunately been insured, and the widow was able to keep on the house in which she lived, adding to her income by letting a portion of it to new arrivals who, like the Renshaws, intended to make a stay of some little time in Wellington before taking any steps to establish themselves as settlers.

"I think," Mr. Jackson said when this was settled, "you are doing wisely by letting your son here take a run through the colony. There is no greater mistake than for new-comers to be in a hurry. Settle in haste and repent at leisure is the rule. Mr. Mitford was saying that he hoped that you might settle down somewhere in his locality; but at any rate it will be best to look round first. There is plenty of land at present to be obtained anywhere, and there are many things to be considered in choosing a location. Carriage is of course a vital consideration, and a settler on a river has a great advantage over one who has to send his produce a long distance to market by waggon. Then, again, some people prefer taking up virgin land and clearing it for themselves, while others are ready to pay a higher sum to take possession of a holding where much of the hard work has already been done, and a house stands ready for occupation.

"At present no one, of course, with a wife and daughter would think of settling in the disturbed district, although farms can be bought there for next to nothing. The war is, I hope, nearly at an end, now that we have ten British regiments in the island. They have taken most of the enemy's pahs, though they have been a prodigious time about it, and we colonists are very discontented with the dilatory way in which the war has been carried on, and think that if things had been left to ourselves we could have stamped the rebellion out in half the time. The red-coats were much too slow; too heavily weighted and too cautious for this sort of work. The Maoris defend their pahs well, inflict a heavy loss upon their a.s.sailants, and when the latter at last make their attack and carry the works the Maoris manage to slip away, and the next heard of them is they have erected a fresh pah, and the whole thing has to be gone through again. However, we need not discuss that now. I take it that anyhow you would not think of settling down anywhere in the locality of the tribes that have been in revolt."

"Certainly not," Mr. Renshaw said. "I am a peaceful man, and if I could get a house and land for nothing and an income thrown into the bargain, I should refuse it if I could not go to bed without the fear that the place might be in flames before the morning."

"I am bound to say that the natives have as a whole behaved very well to the settlers; it would have been easy in a great number of cases for them to have cut them off had they chosen to do so. But they have fought fairly and well according to the rules of what we may call honourable warfare. The tribesmen are for the most part Christians, and have carried out Christian precepts.

"In one case, hearing that the troops a.s.sembling to attack one of their pahs were short of provisions, they sent down boat-loads of potatoes and other vegetables to them, saying that the Bible said, 'If thine enemy hunger feed him.' Still, in spite of instances of this kind, I should certainly say do not go near the disturbed districts, for one cannot a.s.sert that if hostilities continue they will always be carried on in that spirit. However, things are at present perfectly peaceable throughout the provinces of Wellington and Hawke Bay, and it may be hoped it may continue so. I have maps and plans of all the various districts, and before your son starts will give him all the information I possess as to the advantages and disadvantages of each locality, the nature of the soil, the price at which land can be purchased, and the reputation of the natives in the neighbourhood."

The next day the Renshaws landed after breakfast and took up their abode in the new lodgings. These were plainly but comfortably furnished, and after one of the trunks containing nick-nacks of all descriptions had been opened, and some of the contents distributed, the room a.s.sumed a comfortable home-like appearance. A lodging had been obtained close by for the two Grimstones. The young fellows were heartily glad to be on sh.o.r.e again, for life among the steerage pa.s.sengers during a long voyage is dull and monotonous. Mr. Renshaw had looked after them during the voyage, and had supplied them from his own stores with many little comforts in the way of food, and with books to a.s.sist them to pa.s.s their time; still they were very glad the voyage was over.

When he now told them it was probable that a month or even more might pa.s.s after their arrival in the colony before he could settle on a piece of land, and that during that time they would remain at Wellington, they at once asked him to get them work of some kind if he could. "We should be learning something about the place, sir; and should probably get our food for our work, and should be costing you nothing, and we would much rather do that than loiter about town doing nothing."

Mr. Renshaw approved of their plan, and mentioned it to Mr. Jackson, who, on the very day after their landing, spoke to a settler who had come in from a farm some twenty miles in the interior.

"They are active and willing young fellows and don't want pay, only to be put up and fed until the man who has brought them out here with him gets hold of a farm."

"I shall be extremely glad to have them," the settler said. "This is a very busy time with us, and a couple of extra hands will be very useful.

They will learn a good deal as to our ways here in the course of a month, and, as you say, it would be far better for them to be at work than to be loafing about the place doing nothing."

Accordingly, the next morning the two Grimstones went up country and set to work.

CHAPTER IX.

THE NEW ZEALAND WAR.

For a few days the greater part of the pa.s.sengers who had arrived by the _Flying Scud_ remained in Wellington. Mr. Atherton and the two Allens had put up at the same hotel. The latter intended to go out as shepherds or in any other capacity on a farm, for a few months at any rate, before investing in land. They had two or three letters of introduction to residents in Wellington, and ten days after the arrival of the ship they called at the Renshaws' to say good-bye, as they had arranged to go for some months with a settler up the country. They promised to write regularly to Wilfrid and tell him all about the part to which they were going.

"Mr. Atherton has promised to write to us," they said, "and tell us about the districts he visits with you, and if you and he discover anything particularly inviting we shall at any rate come and see you, if you will give us an invitation when you are settled, and look round there before buying land anywhere else. It would be very pleasant to be somewhere near you and him."

"We shall be very glad, indeed, to see you," Mrs. Renshaw said; "still more glad if you take up a piece of ground near us. Having friends near is a very great point in such a life as this, and it would be most agreeable having a sort of little colony of our own."

"We should have liked very much," James Allen said, "to say good-bye to the Miss Mitfords, but as we do not know their father and mother it might seem strange for us to call there."

"I do not think they are at all people to stand on ceremony," Mrs.

Renshaw said; "but I will put on my bonnet and go round with you at once if you like."

This was accordingly done. Mr. Mitford had heard of the young men as forming part of the little group of pa.s.sengers on board the _Flying Scud_, and gave them a hearty invitation to pay him a visit if they happened to be in his neighbourhood, and the next day they started for the farm on which they had engaged themselves. Two days later there was a general break up of the party, for Mr. and Mrs. Mitford started with their daughters in a steamer bound to Hawke Bay.

"Will you tell me, Mr. Jackson, what all the trouble in the north has been about," Wilfrid asked that evening, "for I have not been able to find out from the papers?"

"It is a complicated question, Wilfrid. When New Zealand was first colonized the natives were very friendly. The early settlers confidently pushed forward into the heart of native districts, bought tracts of land from the chiefs, and settled there. Government purchased large blocks of land, cut off by intervening native territory from the main settlements, and sold this land to settlers without a suspicion that they were thereby dooming them to ruin. The settlers were mostly small farmers, living in rough wooden houses scattered about the country, and surrounded by a few fields; the adjoining land is usually fern or forest held by the natives. They fenced their fields, and turned their cattle, horses, and sheep at large in the open country outside these fences, paying rent to the natives for the privilege of doing so.

"This led to innumerable quarrels. The native plantations of wheat, potatoes, or maize are seldom fenced in, and the cattle of the settlers sometimes committed much devastation among them; for the Maori fields were often situated at long distances from their villages, and the cattle might, therefore, be days in their patches before they were found out. On the other hand, the gaunt long-legged Maori pigs, which wander over the country picking up their own living, were constantly getting through the settlers' fences, rooting up their potatoes, and doing all sorts of damage.

"In these cases the settlers always had the worst of the quarrel. They either had no weapons, or, being isolated in the midst of the natives, dared not use them; while the Maoris, well armed and numerous, would come down waving their tomahawks and pointing their guns, and the settlers, however much in the right, were forced to give way. The natural result was that the colonists were continually smarting under a sense of wrong, while the Maoris grew insolent and contemptuous, and were filled with an overweening confidence in their own powers, the result of the patience and enforced submission of the settlers. The authority of the queen over the natives has always been a purely nominal one. There was indeed a treaty signed acknowledging her government, but as none of the chiefs put their name to this, and the men who signed were persons of inferior rank with no authority whatever to speak for the rest, the treaty was not worth the paper on which it was written.

"The Maoris from the first exhibited a great desire for education. They established numerous schools in their own districts and villages; in most cases accepted nominally if not really the Christian religion, and studied history with a good deal of intelligence. Some of them read that the Romans conquered England by making roads everywhere through the island, and the natives therefore determined that no roads should be constructed through their lands, and every attempt on the part of government to carry roads beyond the lands it had bought from them was resisted so firmly and angrily that the attempt had to be abandoned. The natives were well enough aware that behind the despised settlers was the power of England, and that if necessary a numerous army could be sent over, but they relied absolutely upon their almost impa.s.sable swamps, their rivers, forests, and mountains.

"Here they thought they could maintain themselves against any force that might be sent against them, and relying upon this they became more and more insolent and overbearing, and for some time before the outbreak in 1860 every one saw that sooner or later the storm would burst, and the matter have to be fought out until either we were driven from the island or the natives became thoroughly convinced of their inability to oppose us.

"At first the natives had sold their land willingly, but as the number of the European settlers increased they became jealous of them, and every obstacle was thrown in the way of land sales by the chiefs.

Disputes were constantly arising owing to the fact that the absolute ownership of land was very ill defined, and perhaps a dozen or more persons professed to have claims of some sort or other on each piece of land, and had to be individually settled with before the sale could be effected. When as it seemed all was satisfactorily concluded, fresh claimants would arise, and disputes were therefore of constant occurrence, for there were no authorities outside the princ.i.p.al settlements to enforce obedience to the law.

"Even in Auckland itself the state of things was almost unbearable.

Drunken Maoris would indulge in insolent and riotous behaviour in the street; for no native could be imprisoned without the risk of war, and with the colonists scattered about all over the country the risk was too great to be run. In addition to the want of any rule or authority to regulate the dealings of the natives with the English, there were constant troubles between the native tribes.

"Then began what is called the king movement. One of the tribes invited others to join in establishing a central authority, who would at once put a stop to these tribal feuds and enforce something like law and order, and they thought that having a king of their own would improve their condition--would prevent land from being sold to the whites and be a protection to the people at large, and enable them to hold their own against the settlers. Several of the tribes joined in this movement.

Meetings were held in various parts in imitation of the colonial a.s.semblies. The fruit of much deliberation was that a chief named Potatau, who was held in the highest esteem, not only by the tribes of Waikato, but throughout the whole island, as one of the greatest of their warriors and wisest of their chiefs, was chosen as king.

"The movement excited much apprehension in Auckland and the other settlements, for it was plain that if the Maoris were governed by one man and laid aside their mutual enmities they would become extremely formidable. At the great meeting that was held, the Bishop of New Zealand, the head of the Wesleyan body, and several other missionaries were present, and warned the Maoris of the dangers that would arise from the course they were taking.

"The warning was in vain, and Potatau was chosen king. Mr. Fenton, a government official, went on a tour among the natives. He found that there was still what was called a queen's party, but the king's party was very much the strongest. For two years, however, things went on somewhat as before, and it was not until 1860, when a quarrel arose over some land in the province of Taranaki, that troubles fairly began. In this district a chief named Wiremu-Kingi had established a sort of land league, and given notice to the governor that he would not permit any more land to be sold in the district. A native named Teira, who owned some land at Waiteira, offered it for sale to the government. After examining his t.i.tle, and finding that it was a valid one, the land was purchased.