CHAPTER LXIII. THE WAIKATO.
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CHAPTER LXIII.
THE WAIKATO.
IN 1864, when the war in the Waikato was over, though no final victory had been won, and no peace proclaimed, we assumed the power of conquerors, and confiscated in the North Island the lands from which we had driven the fighting Maoris. In this way we took possession of nearly four million acres, and, as regards this territory, we have so far settled the land difficulty that we have held the ground ever since. More than half of these acres are in the province of Auckland, and nearly a million and a quarter lie in the Valley of the Waikato. Now the Waikato tribe were among our enemies. Most of them we have killed, and the rest have receded among a tribe who were still more bitterly inimical to us, the Ngatimaniapoto, --who are still enemies, though at present quiet enemies, who have the king among them, and live according to their own laws, and will not allow our telegraph posts to be put up, --and are altogether a great nuisance to the young colony. But the Waikato tribe, as a tribe, is exterminated.
The acquisition of the Valley of the Waikato, which contains excellent land, was a great thing done. The natives by the treaty of Waitangi, had been declared to be the owners of the land, ---and the difficulty in buying land from them was great. There was trouble in getting it from them unfairly; --more trouble in getting it fairly. But acquisition by war settled all this. A great portion
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FARMING ON THE WAIKATO.
of the acquired land was divided out among military settlers, and the remainder kept for sale to selectors. The military settlers have not generally succeeded as farmers in New Zealand; --but the general process has been successful. After a short period of occupation, the old soldiers were enabled to sell their lands, and have very generally done so. The purchasers have gone upon it with true colonizing intentions, and now the upper part of the Lower Waikato and the Valley of the Waipa which runs into it, the districts round the new towns of Cambridge, Alexandra, Hamilton, and Newcastle, are smiling with English grasses. I was there in 1872; the first occupation of it by Europeans had been in 1865; and the wilderness had become a garden. I do not know that I have ever seen the effects of a quicker agricultural transformation. This has been effected on the land of natives who had been hostile and had fought with us, and who had therefore lost their possessions. Among the Arewas, "the Friendlies," I did not see one cultivated patch of ground.
Coming down the Waikato during our last day's ride, the king's country had been on our left, just over the river. I had been told, and I believe truly, that a European might now travel through it safely if he wore no uniform or were not ostensibly armed. And among the Kingites, as they are now called, a certain amount of agriculture is carried on. They want potatoes and corn, and cannot get them by other means. The question now is whether they shall be allowed to die out on their own territory, --which is claimed by us as British territory, but in which the British law, or the law of the colony, does not run, in which we cannot put up a telegraph wire or make a road, --or whether we shall make good our claims to political dominion? In the meantime the natives in these parts still hold the escaped criminal Te Kooti, in endeavouring to retake whom we have spent something like half a million of money, and may on any day make a raid on our advanced settlers on the Waikato and Waipa. All politicians in New Zealand find consolation at any rate in the reflection, that while the matter is being considered the Maoris are melting. The flour-and-sugar policy, 1 joined with the melting policy, will probably carry the day to the end.
A party of gentlemen from Auckland met me at Cambridge, which is as it were the frontier settlement of civilization in that direction. From thence we were driven by Mr. Quick, that gallant American coach proprietor and true descendant of the great Cobb,
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through Ohaupo to Alexandra, thence to Hamilton, Newcastle, Rangariri, fatally known to British arms during the war, and then on through Mercer and Drury back to Auckland. During the earlier part of this journey, and down to the junction of the Waipa and Waikato at Newcastle, we were for the most part among fields green with English grasses. The fern, which throughout the district had occupied the land, is first burned off, the land is then ploughed, and grass seeds are sown. Then in two years' time it will carry five, six, and on some ground seven sheep to the acre. I saw very little wheat farming, and was told here, --as I was in all parts of the Northern Island, --that it did not pay to grow cereal crops. A man might produce what oats he could use, --and what wheat he wanted if he had a mill near him. But the high rate of wages, --averaging over 4s. a day, --and the cost of transit combined, make the farmers afraid of wheat. Though the land is excellent for the purpose, and the climate not unpropitious, I saw on the road flour, imported into Auckland, on its way up to these agricultural settlements. As in most of the Australian colonies, so in most of the New Zealand provinces, farmers who no doubt know what they are about, are afraid of growing wheat. They cannot get in their seed and get their crops off without hired labour, --and for hired labour wheat at 5s. a bushel will not enable them to pay. The labourer with his 4s. a day will get more out of the crop than the farmer who employs him. Meat is at present the great produce of the Waikato valley, --for sheep and oxen will feed themselves if there be grass, and will then carry themselves kindly to the market. All English fruits grow there, and all vegetables. It is a country of great abundance, --and the day will come when the valley will be yellow with corn.
At Alexandra, which is the European outpost in the direction of the Ngatimaniapoto tribe and the Kingites, ---and which is so near the "King" country that a moderate walk of three or four miles would place you in his Majesty's dominions, --we found a large fort or redoubt in the course of construction. It was being made, we were told, as a place of refuge for the inhabitants, should the king's people ever attempt to make a raid upon the town. "It would be the saving of the lives of all the women and children," said one of my companions. I could not help thinking that I would not like to live in a place where such refuge might be necessary, --and that it was a pity that it should still be necessary in any part of her Majesty's dominions. The inhabitants, however, seemed to fear nothing, and were of opinion that the Kingites would not come
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BACK TO AUCKLAND.
down upon them. I found the feeling to be general throughout the islands that if the property now left to the natives were respected, --not only in regard to those rights of property which belong to individual owners in all civilized lands, but also as to political rights, --if the Europeans should not insist on extending their dominion, as they would do, for instance, if they were to continue their attempts to retake Te Kooti, --then there would be peace; but that the Kingites would surely fight, should we practically assume dominion over the small portion of the Northern Island still left to them. Some time since the Governor thought that it would be expedient that he should meet the king, on friendly terms. But the king thought otherwise, --"What have I to do with the Governor, or the Governor with me?" So there was no meeting.
Rangariri, where the fighting took place in 1863, --where the natives held two redoubts when General Cameron attacked them, and escaped from the one in the night, surrendering the other on the following morning, after a terrible slaughter inflicted on our men, --is on the Waikato, below Newcastle. Here again I saw the crowded graves of British soldiers, and the wooden memorials, bearing the name of each, already mouldering into dust. The redoubts are now but heaps of earth, one of which is already hardly discernible by the remnants of the rifle-pits which remain.
From this, down to Mercer, and nearly as far as Drury, --so called from my old friend and school-fellow, Captain Drury, Lord Byron's godson, who surveyed the coasts in these parts, and selected the site of the capital, --the land is again poor. There is now a railway in course of construction from Auckland up to Mercer, and from thence there is water-carriage by the two rivers to Cambridge and Alexandra. That the colony can afford to make these railways, I will not take upon myself to say. The making of them is a part of that grand go-ahead policy of which Mr. Vogel is the eminent professor. That the Waikato district will be benefited by the railway when it is made there can be no doubt whatever.
I returned to Auckland under Mr. Quick's able guidance, and then my wanderings in these colonies were over. Three days afterwards I shipped myself on board the famous American steamer "Nebraska," Captain Harding, and was carried safely by him as far as Honolulu, among the Sandwich Islands, on my way home.
