1849 - Power, W. T. Sketches in New Zealand - CHAPTER. III. APPEARANCE OF THE COUNTRY...

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CHAP. III.

THIS is the worst country I ever saw for field operations. The forest is so thick as to be almost impenetrable: it is everywhere a mass of evergreen trees and shrubs matted and twined together with supple-jacks, creepers, and wild vines. In the whole district there is not one single road, and the tracks by which communication is kept up between the different posts are scarcely broad enough for one man to pass: they are everywhere obstructed by roots, fallen trees, and gullies, and are generally knee-deep in mud. The whole of the country in this neighbourhood appears to be a succession of precipitous hills, and deep, dark, boggy ravines, covered everywhere with a vegetation more dense even than a tropical jungle.

The climate at this time of year is cold and wet.

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with furious gales of wind, so that the soldier becomes dispirited and loses all heart when exposed to such continuous misery and discomfort. The commanding officers become disheartened from the same causes, and from the many natural obstacles that hamper them on all sides; without roads, communication, or information, and with a dispirited force, they lose all energy, and, finding that they can do comparatively little, do nothing at all.

On my way through the "Pukerua Bush" I fell in with a party of four friendly natives, who told me that our people had come up with Rangihaeta on the Pauha mountain above Wainui, and that there had been a skirmish, in which six or eight of the Port Nicholson Ngatiawas had been killed and wounded. I pushed on as fast as I could, and at the end of about nine miles emerged from the bush at Pukerua into some cleared land, where an English missionary had lived, but which was now deserted from fear of the rebels.

The view from the top of the mountain at Pukerua is very extensive and beautiful. In one direction Mount Egmont rears his snowy scalp at a distance of 200 miles; to the westward is the table land of Mana, and the bold highlands of Cape Terawiti; to the south are D'Urville's Island, the peaks

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of Kapiti, and the snowy range of Cook's Alps, almost as stupendous as their European namesakes.

The rest of my way was a painful march over sharp rocks and loose shingle to Peri Peri, from which place to Wainui there is a fine beach, as hard and as smooth as a macadamised road. As I approached Wainui, I could distinctly hear shots in the mountains above, showing that the fighting was still going on, so I quickened my pace in hopes of joining our party before nightfall.

At Wainui I found Capt. Stanley, with a detachment of seamen from the "Calliope" frigate, which was at anchor under Kapiti, at a distance of about five miles. He confirmed the accounts I had heard about the fighting, recommending me at the same time not to attempt to ascend the mountain till the following day, when he with the seamen, and Major Durie with the armed police, intended to join the friendly natives. Both his good intentions and mine were knocked on the head, however, by the arrival of a party of the Wainui people from the scene of action, who told us that the whole force would be down in the course of the evening. Presently the main body made its appearance, all of them apparently in high glee, shouting, laughing, and firing their muskets as they

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came along, till the arrival of the parties bearing the bodies of the dead and wounded changed the laughing shouts into lamentation, and the loud wailing tangi arose from all sides.

It is a thousand pities they came down, as it appears that Rangihaeta had been driven to bay in a position where he was nearly surrounded, and where, with the assistance of the seamen and armed police, who were to have gone up next morning, the whole affair might have been finished, and the rebels extirpated. It would have been an excellent thing, not only from the moral effect, but also from our getting rid of the greatest collection of robbers, murderers, and vagabonds that have ever been brought together in New Zealand. There are among them some of the principal perpetrators of the Wairau massacre, the murderers of the Gillespies and Rush, the marauders of the Hutt, and in fact nearly every obnoxious character in the South.

I heard from Scott and Servantes fearful accounts of the miseries they had endured in the pursuit, and which were of course still harder on the enemy; who, in addition to all other sufferings, were nearly in a state of starvation and almost naked. Ever since the commencement of the re-

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treat from the Horokiwi, they had been exposed to the bitterest weather on the tops of the mountains, in the midst of gales of wind, rain, and snow. It was supposed that many of Rangihaeta's people must have perished from cold and hunger, and this was confirmed by three of his women, who surrendered themselves at Wainui, in the last stage of misery and want. It was reported also that six of the enemy had been taken at Waikanahi, whither they had gone at every risk in the hopes of obtaining food.

I made arrangements with Urumutu, the chief of Wainui, to furnish the friendly natives with 3000 lbs. of pork, and 300 baskets of kumeras; and I procured some flour and tobacco from Kapiti. I had no money to make these purchases, but Urumutu was perfectly satisfied to take a check payable at Porirua, or Wellington. It was a pleasant instance of candid and unsuspicious trustfulness, particularly as no similar purchases had been made before; and what little knowledge the natives had previously had of government paper, in the shape of debentures, had been anything but profitable to them, or of a character to make them respect official credit.

Aug. 2lst. -- All day long there has been a continual howl over the dead and wounded, and to-

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morrow the bodies will be carried to Waikanahi to have a tangi there: till this is all over, there is no chance of getting a Maori to stir, although we have been reinforced by the arrival of Captain M'Donogh with a strong body of militia.

The government brig made her appearance on the 22nd, bringing a supply of salt provisions and biscuit to form a small depot here. I went off to her, and got a good ducking in going through the surf: this, however, is a trifle, as I don't think I have known what it is to be dry since the first hour I landed at Porirua, either by night or by day. The strange part of it is, that no one takes cold, or suffers in health in the slightest degree from the continual exposure. As the brig was to return to Porirua immediately, and the wind was fair, I determined to run round in her to make arrangements for continuing the supplies.

I reached Porirua the same evening, and started again early the following morning for Wainui on foot, although the weather continued bitterly cold, wet, and blustering. On my way through the Pukerua bush I fell in with two Englishmen, and was surprised to recognise in one of them a quondam poaching acquaintance of Tonbridge, and whom I had not seen since a boy at school, some ten years ago. He told

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me that he had been in the country for six years, and, like all the labouring class, he spoke of it in the most glowing terms. The cheapness of food and clothing, the temperate and healthy climate, the fruitful soil, and various productions, leave scarcely anything for the poor man to desire. I had a painful walk over the rocky shore to Wainui, with a gale of wind and rain in my teeth, and by the time I reached my destination my boots were in shreds, and I was half dead with cold and wet.

Aug. 24th. -- The friendly natives are now encamped outside Wainui Pa, in two long huts, open in front, and not less than 100 feet in length. They were busy, when I visited them on the following day, cleaning their arms, singing "hakas," and making speeches, while waiting till the old women opened the native ovens, which, well filled with pork and kumeras, sent up an appetising steam in all directions. After the feast they had a grand war-dance, in which the Wainui people joined, so that there were not less than 600 performers. It was the most barbarous sight I ever witnessed, and one that utterly defies description. One must suppose hell to have broken loose to imagine such yells, screams, hideous contortions of face and body, firing guns, clashing tomahawks, and frightful sights and sounds. Many

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of the women joined in the dance, nearly naked, throwing up their arms, distorting their faces, and every muscle convulsed like so many frenzied Hecates. An old hag, ugly, and withered as the witch of Endor, with only one eye, and bent nearly double with age and decrepitude, inspired by the discordant sounds, seemed to forget her infirmities, flinging her naked and withered limbs about, rolling her bleared eye, her tongue lolling out from her toothless jaws, making her natural hideousness fiendish and disgusting beyond description.

In the fury of the war-dance yesterday, our friends had breathed nothing but hatred and vengeance, and one might have expected them to breakfast on Rangihaeta and his men without salt this morning; but they are now, on the contrary, as mild as lambs, and one can scarcely imagine that the placid, good-humoured, indolent fellows of to-day are the jumping demons of yesterday. As no entreaties would move them. Captain Stanley, the seamen, and the armed police and militia started this morning for Waikanahi to see if example would have any effect.

Four days have been spent in ineffectual efforts to induce the Maories to move, and Captain Stanley has tried every argument, but to no purpose, although there is no doubt but that a few days' perse-

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verance would be crowned with perfect success. It is a pity, for, from the state of the prisoners, it is evident that the rebels are scarcely able to keep body and soul together, and that by keeping on their track they would be compelled to turn and fight, or separate into small parties and make submission, or escape as they best could.

The change from Wainui to this place has been for the worse in every respect; and the natives are exceedingly sulky, and unwilling to assist us in any way, notwithstanding their promises to the Governor.

The friendly natives arrived this morning from Uruhi. Each sept divided itself from the main body under its own particular chief, as they approached the Pa, alternately rushing forward, yelling, and firing their guns. In the expenditure of ball cartridge, and carelessness as to its direction, they are not unlike a party of Bedouin Arabs on a jollification of the same kind. At each invitation from the Pa, the different parties would run on about a hundred yards, then suddenly drop on their hams, repeating the ceremonial till a chief went out, who led them with one last unanimous rush to the gates. Muskets were then laid aside, hands shaken, noses rubbed, news talked over; and, while the feast was preparing, a considerable majority sat

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down to indulge in a "tangi," as an expression of their pleasure at meeting. I noticed one old fellow, rather expensively got up, in a gold-laced hat and brown paletot, with a face tatooed like an ancient piece of carved oak, who kept up a series of howls and moans for full a couple of hours, the tears trickling all the while down his venerable nose.

Aug. 28th. -- There seems to be no longer any hope of doing anything against Rangihaeta, as our people suffered too much in their last sojourn in the mountains for us to expect them to repeat the experiment. There is to be a great "korero," or public meeting, at Otaki to-morrow; and to this Captain Stanley has determined to go, and make a last effort. We found an immense assembly of natives, feasting and making long-winded speeches; quite the public dinner style. They were of course very great in talk, expressing the highest opinion of the absent Governor and the English "rangatiras" who were present; in fact, nothing could be more complimentary, unless it was the laudation of their own prowess and wisdom when they came to talk of themselves.

Rangihaeta's sister was present, and addressed the meeting in favour of her absent brother, making, at the same time, some very unparliamentary remarks on the aggressions of the pakehas, and the want of pluck

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of the Maories in not resisting them, as her illustrious brother was doing. An old chief requested her to resume her seat, informing her, at the same time, that she was the silly sister of a sillier brother, and no better than a dog's daughter. He then put it to the meeting whether pigs and potatoes, warm fires, and plenty of tobacco, were not better things than leaden bullets, edges of tomahawk, snow, rain, and empty bellies? All the former, he distinctly stated, were to be enjoyed in the plain; the latter they had had painful experience of in the mountains; and was it to be expected that they -- and he confidently relied on the good sense of the meeting --could be such fools as to hesitate for a moment? The applause of the old chief's rhetoric was unanimous; and it received no slight help from the timely appearance of a procession bearing the materials for a week's feasting. First came a couple of hundred hogs, their throats cut, and grinning from ear to ear; three hundred baskets of eels stewed in Karaka leaves followed, and then innumerable kits of potatoes and kumeras. Here was an end to all our hopes: they were smothered under this titanic heap of comestibles, and could only be released by dint of long and strong efforts of tooth and nail.

Otaki is a most savage place, and gives one a

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better idea of the natives in a state of unmitigated barbarism than anything I have yet seen. Men, women, and children, were all nearly in a state of nudity, or, at best, only wrapped in a mat or blanket, and their only occupations appeared to be gluttonous feasting, licentious revelry, obscenity, and bragging.

The Pa is a very large one, strongly fortified, and adorned with obscene figures, among which the Egyptian symbol of fertility, if not an object of adoration, is so conspicuous as to make it evidently one of admiration. The country between the Pa and the mountains is an exceedingly beautiful grassy plain, wooded in park-like clumps, and with the Otaki river meandering through it, making it one of the loveliest spots I ever saw. As there was nothing to be done here, I took the opportunity of a returning whale-boat to cross over to Kapiti.

Crossed on the following day from Kapiti to Waikanahi in a whale-boat, and was nearly capsized in a squall which split our lug-sail from top to bottom. Arrangements were made this morning for a move, and the militia, after receiving their rations, marched for Porirua, it being found impracticable to make the friendly Maories take to the bush again; and without them our small force could do nothing. We have at any rate the satisfaction of knowing that

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the enemy have been entirely driven out of the district, and, after all the privations and misery they have suffered, it is barely probable that they will venture to repeat their aggressions. Their own mode of warfare is so desultory, and sustained with so little continued energy, that they were quite unprepared for a systematic pursuit that kept them alert at all hours, and, during six weeks of the bitterest winter weather, gave them no repose. Among themselves, two or three days of active exertion are invariably followed by a period of perfect supineness, giving the enemy time to rest and to recover from any loss they may have sustained.

The remainder of our men moved off in the course of the day; and I went on board the Calliope with Captain Stanley, to go round in her to Porirua.

Sept. 1st. -- At the Porirua camp again -- and very seedy. I thought that I was going to have a return of my Chinese acquaintance, "fever and ague;" but it passed off, leaving the old feeling of languor and debility. It has been caused by over-exertion and exposure on a constitution so lately shaken by the fevers and unwholesome climate of China.