1935 - Stack, J. W. Early Maoriland Adventures of J. W. Stack - CHAPTER VI. EAST CAPE, p 150-159

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CHAPTER VI

EAST CAPE

AS we reached the last stage of our journey we were met by a native teacher named Hone, who invited us to his village, as he wished my father to see the church which he had built. His invitation was gladly accepted, and we spent the night at his house, which was built and furnished in the same style as the missionaries' houses. Hone had spent some years at the Paihia mission station, where he learnt carpentering and other useful handicrafts. He was an excellent joiner. Amongst other specimens of his handiwork, which he exhibited with just pride, was a model seaman's chest, with numerous small drawers and compartments. The dovetailing of the joints, and the finished style of the work, was quite equal to anything done by an ordinary English cabinetmaker. The church was a very creditable piece of architecture, and superior to anything we had yet seen, except the large Maori building at Whakato.

When leaving Hone's village in the morning my dear mother, in stepping over a stile, missed her footing, and fell and sprained her ankle so severely that she fainted from the pain. We were all very much alarmed on her account, and it was touching to witness my father's distress, and the

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efforts he made to soothe her pain. He proposed that we should stay at Hone's till her foot was better, but she would not hear of it, and soon recovered sufficiently to enable us to continue our journey. We were now on the banks of the Waiapu River, and in sight of the pa of Rangitukia. It was surrounded by a strong stockade, and contained more than a thousand inhabitants. 1 Large crowds came forth to welcome us in the usual Maori fashion, with waving cloaks and loud cries. We did not make a long halt, my mother's accident being the excuse for hurrying past, and disregarding the hospitable custom of the people, which required them to entertain new arrivals with a feast of the best things which they could set before them. So after much shaking of hands we passed on to our home, about a mile and a half distant.

It had already been reported to my father that the wind had blown the house down. He thought the report due to Maori exaggeration, but sure enough, when we reached it, we found that only one room, which projected from the main building, remained upright and habitable. Into that one room we had to cram till the Maoris put up a thatched building for our use.

The European carpenter employed to erect our house was engaged at the Bay of Islands, where he was supposed to be a competent workman, but being more of a cabinet-maker than a house-builder, he did not brace the building properly, and

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the pressure of the wind on the roof forced the walls outwards more and more till they fell to the ground.

In a place where meat was so scarce, fowls possessed a special value, and it was with feelings of much annoyance that we found the number of our fowls diminishing day by day after our first broods had been reared. As the entrance to the fowlhouse was securely fastened, we knew that they were not being stolen, and suspected that a dog must be the culprit. My father set a trap in such a way, that a dog, entering the fowlhouse through the gap he made, must be caught. A day or two passed without any result, and then one morning one of the Maori servants reported that a dog had been caught and strangled by the trap. A hole was quickly dug, and the body put out of sight. A week or so passed, and nothing was said, but somehow the people at the pa got to know that we had killed a dog, and as the chief Mangai Nui ("Big Mouth") had lost a pet, he came and questioned our servants. Finding from the description given to him that it was his dog we had disposed of, he became very violent and abusive, and shouted at the top of his voice, and in angry tones declared that he would go at once and shoot our horses as utu, or payment for the injury done to him. My father, fearing that he would carry his threat into execution, as he was the great chief of the district, and a man noted for having a vile temper, went off for our friend the chief Mokena, a kindly, merry-hearted man. A great korero, or talk, was held after he arrived, lasting several hours when, to the relief of everyone concerned,

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the angry, self-willed man admitted that the death of his dog, when caught in the act of stealing our fowls, was deserved, and that my father's device to protect his property was quite justified, and from that time forth "Big Mouth" became our friend.

Our second Christmas Day at Waiapu will always be a memorable day to me for several reasons, but chiefly in connection with a great disappointment experienced at dinner time. We had brought with us from Te Papa a pair of Cape geese which had been in our possession for years, but they had never succeeded in producing a single egg, and when the goose died, and the gander alone survived, it was decided at a family council that this bird should be served up for dinner on Christmas Day. When the proper time arrived it was killed and prepared for cooking. The Maori girl told off to roast it was instructed to increase the fire round the camp-oven when she heard the second hymn sung; this always preceded my father's sermon, which usually lasted half an hour. On Christmas Day, when the sermon was finished, and we were singing the concluding hymn, two strange gentlemen entered the room and took their places beside us. My father, not wishing to deprive them of the benefit of a service on such a high festival, which he imagined at the moment was what they had come for, proceeded to repeat the office of Morning Prayers, and most of the sermon he had already delivered before they came in.

At last to our great relief we children were set free, and went outside to watch the dishing of

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the dinner, which was being cooked out-of-doors a few yards from the house. The air was redolent with what was to us the novel but appetizing smell of roast goose and stuffing, and we were wondering whether it would taste as nice as it smelled. In the meantime my father discovered who our visitors were. One was Captain Richards 2 of the Government brig Victoria, and the other Colonel Godfrey, the Commissioner of Lands, and an old Peninsula officer who had served under the Duke of Wellington. We all gladly took our seats at the table, as both young and old were feeling rather famished. The Colonel sat by my mother, who had before her a boiled ham, and Captain Richards sat by my father, who was to carve the goose. As we children knew all about hams, we took no interest in my mother's dish till Colonel Godfrey undertook the carving of it, when we were startled by hearing him give utterance to "swear words" while praising its quality. He immediately apologized in the politest way for using such words, but his very apology was full of them. My father was too much absorbed in conversation with Captain Richards to notice what was happening at the other end of the table, and when our expectant eyes, which had been momentarily drawn from watching his doings and fixed on those of the Colonel, were again turned towards him, it was tantalizing to see how much more interested he was upon talking than upon carving the goose. At

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last he began the operation in earnest, but the knife, glancing off the over-roasted skin without making any impression, he put more pressure on his carving knife and fork. What was our surprise and disappointment to see the whole breast collapse and fall into an empty cavity like a crushed egg-shell. Every particle of flesh had disappeared in the cooking, and there was nothing of the goose left but a crisp crust of skin and brittle bones, which had to be sent away from the table without our having a chance of tasting what was to have been the chief dish of the day.

After the carpenter who bungled the building of our house was sent away, another man of proved ability was engaged to build one nearer to the pa of Rangitukia, 3 but as the timber for it had first to be sawn in the neighbouring forest, it was nearly two years before it was ready for occupation. In the meantime, our residence being found inconveniently distant from where the Maoris lived, we moved nearer to them and occupied the cottage of three rooms which our first carpenter had brought with him for the use of his own family. It was a frail structure, consisting of a wooden frame covered with sail cloth, painted a dark green colour.

It was to this cottage we welcomed, on 3rd December, 1842, Bishop Selwyn and Chief Justice Martin, who had walked across the island from Wellington. I was too young then to realize what important personages they were, and can only

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remember the stir their arrival caused, and the feelings of awe with which their presence in the house inspired us children. 4 The Bishop asked me how old I was, and when I told him, expressed the hope that when I was ten years of age I would go to his school in Auckland. After a short stay the Bishop and the Judge, accompanied by my father, crossed over the Hikurangi Range at the head of the Waiapu Valley to the Bay of Plenty, by an old war-path much overgrown and often difficult to find. The journey was so dangerous and fatiguing that my father often expressed his wonder afterwards that they ever got through from one coast to the other. He was completely exhausted with the effort, and had to be left to recruit at the first Maori settlement they came to

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in the Bay of Plenty, while the Bishop pushed on to keep his appointments at the mission stations he was visiting. 5 The Bishop's proficiency as a swimmer proved of great service to Rim upon one occasion during this journey. They were travelling along the bank of a river, and laboriously forcing their way through the tangled growth which obstructed the ancient path they followed. It was raining hard, and everyone was drenched to the skin. The Bishop said he could not get wetter if he took to the river, and to the envy of his companions he escaped a toilsome march by jumping into the water and allowing himself to be carried down by the current.

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During my father's absence, extending over many weeks, we were left under the protection of the chief Mokena Kohere, 6 who used to come or send every day to enquire after our welfare. We children were so accustomed to the Maoris that we never felt the slightest fear of them, though we often saw them exhibiting signs of violent passion, and heard them uttering the most bloodcurdling threats to one another. I have often wondered since how my dear young mother, with

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her English training and English ideas, and small experience of the world, could endure the thought of living alone with her little children in the midst of a lawless people who possessed no regular form of government, and all of whom had within the previous seven years taken part in cannibal feasts. Nothing to my mind proves so convincingly her possession of perfect trust in the overruling providence of God. She felt quite safe, because she believed that she was in God's keeping. "I will fear no evil, for Thou art with me."

On my seventh birthday I received my first pocket knife, which possessed two blades. The first use I made of it was to carve a boat out of a piece of wood. While shaping the bows, the blade slipped and was buried in the fleshy part of my right thigh. Fortunately no vein or artery was severed and when I withdrew the blade the gaping wound hardly bled at all. I tied my handkerchief round it, but did not tell anyone about it till long afterwards, for fear the knife should be taken away from me. I had to invent all sorts of excuses for limping about, and had great difficulty in escaping a course of Gregory's powder 7 to cure whatever was causing my paleness and inertness. Owing to the wound not being properly dressed I carry a scar to this day that looks more like the mark of a sword cut, than one made with a penknife.