CHAPTER I: FIRST ACQUAINTANCE WITH THE MAORIS. 1842-3.
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OUR MAORIS,
CHAPTER I.
FIRST ACQUAINTANCE WITH THE MAORIS.
1842-3.
WE sailed from Plymouth on St. Stephen's Day, December 26, 1841. People nowadays, who make the Grand Tour round the world in four months, can have little notion what a serious undertaking the voyage to New Zealand seemed to us forty years ago. The land itself was a terra incognita. My own notions were extremely hazy. It was in the Pacific, and might have semi-tropical fruits and flowers. Some years later, a great man, preaching in London on the wants of the Colonial Church, talked of the coral reefs in New Zealand! One thing, however, had been clearly impressed on my mind by my husband, the first Chief Justice, who had sailed nine months before, namely, that the aborigines of our new country were to be cared for and worked for, and this lesson was by example as well as by precept daily brought before all of us on board by Bishop Selwyn. A year or two before, a book had been lent to me, called "Missionary Enterprise in the South Seas," which
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told of the great work done by one brave-hearted man, John Williams, who was afterwards killed by the heathen in Erromanga. I little thought when I read it, and my heart burned within me, that for more than thirty years I was to live in daily intercourse with another branch of the Polynesian race.
We had a quiet, prosperous voyage in a small barque, which would be thought very squeezy nowadays. We had none of the modern luxuries required in steamers,--no fresh bread, no stewardess to wait on us, no delicate fare. But we had compensation of an unusual kind. If we had plain living, we certainly had the opportunity of high thinking. Our party consisted of the Bishop of New Zealand, his two chaplains, both men of great gifts, and other clergymen and students. There were daily classes, after breakfast, for all who wished to learn the native language. There was no printed Maori grammar, only a manuscript grammar and vocabulary, and copies of St. Matthew's Gospel, just printed by the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge. But we had a walking dictionary in a Maori boy, who had been brought to England by a gentleman, and sent to school for two years. He was not a favourable specimen, for he had been the plaything of the servants' hall in holiday time, and had little more than superficial civilisation. He left off English habits, with his English clothes, on landing, and
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never sought for instruction or Christian teaching. However, he was very useful on board, and undertook to teach correct pronunciation, especially of the nasal "nga," so hard to English tongues.
At the end of more than three months we cast anchor in the beautiful harbour of Sydney. The first people who came alongside, to our surprise and pleasure, were New Zealanders. They formed the crew of the harbour-master's boat, and were tall, fine-looking men, dressed in white duck trousers, jackets, and straw hats. They were delighted to be greeted by the Bishop in their own speech. We were detained some weeks in Sydney by damage done to the keel of our vessel, but the Bishop, his chaplain, and I got away at last in a little brigantine. On Sunday evening, May 29, we ran by moonlight along the New Zealand coast, and anchored in Auckland harbour, on a wet, dreary day, May 30, 1842, five months after leaving England. Our house,--a long, low, one-storied cottage,--was perched upon a hill, on which a number of men clothed in blankets were hoeing the stiff clay soil. There was hardly a shrub to be seen then, though a few years later we were embowered in a wealth of trees, English and native, so rapid is the growth in that genial climate.
In a few days the heavy rain ceased, and the sun burst forth as though it had been summer time. How pretty everything looked! The blue water lay
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like a lake below. There was a strip of white shelly beach. The little bay was shut in by sandstone cliffs, and these were overhung by huge forest-trees. A high bank above our garden had one or two tall flax-bushes growing on it, and many ferns. The tall leaves of the flax glittered in the sunlight. To a Londoner born and bred this new home seemed like fairyland. The clear air seemed to quiver and sparkle with light. And then we needed but to go a little way up on to higher ground to see the Gulf of Hauraki stretching far away, with islands dotted about, and the pale blue distant mountains of Coromandel, and the wooded volcanic peak of Rangitoto, and mainland of the North Shore. A few months later our home was still more lovely, for by this time a foreground of grass and English annuals had appeared, and our young apple-trees and the pink flowers of the flax had come into blossom; while all day long the shrill cicala whirred and whizzed in the sun.
As soon as the weather cleared after my arrival, all the Maoris who were working on the land came up with their wives and children to inspect the Ma-nu-hi-ri, i. e., the stranger. One man especially attracted me. He was highly tattooed, and was tall and big, and had such stout legs that we named him at once the Knave of Clubs. Poor fellow, he was a faithful friend to the English; but in the war in 1863
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he became an object of suspicion to the General in command, and was kept a close prisoner for a month or two. He was released when found innocent; but his old mother died insane while in captivity, and our good friend followed her a month or two later. I could by that time spell out a verse or two in the Maori New Testament, but could not understand what they were saying to one another. Only it was evident that their verdict on me was not satisfactory. "She is but a girl; she's only a girl," passed from lip to lip. They had said the same of the Queen when my husband showed them her picture; so there was no cause to be offended. All shook hands with the girl very warmly, and welcomed her to her new home. There were about thirty altogether, men, women, and children, encamped on the ground, and they paid me almost daily visits. We could not communicate save by friendly nods and smiles. They were quite content to sit or squat in the sun, and talk about me and mimic in a good-natured way my efforts to say a few words in Maori. They were specially amused because I could not pronounce the letter "r" clearly. It continually occurs in Maori words, and they would repeat after me, mimicing and softening down the "r" into "w." A worthy London tradesman had given me a box full of common thimbles, scissors, and combs as presents for the natives. Possibly he thought in his simplicity
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that they would be useful to barter with. Being "only a girl," I lavished many of these things on my new friends, though few, if any, knew how to sew or to cut out clothes, and the small slight combs were not fitted to pass through their tangled mops of hair. I grew wiser in time; but perhaps it was as well to begin by being a Lady Bountiful. Our Waikato friends left us as soon as their job was completed, but other parties of natives came and went. The valley below our house, through which ran a little stream, was a favourite camping-place for Maoris who came across from the neighbouring islands and mainland to trade in Auckland. Early on every fine morning we used to watch the little fleet of canoes skim across the harbour with their sails set. Sometimes a red blanket did duty for a sail. When the wind was contrary, ten to twenty men paddled each canoe, which was heavily laden with produce. Their monotonous boat-song sounded very pleasant, and their paddles flashed in perfect time in and out of the water. Many of these crews returned in the evening to their own villages, but those who came from a distance could not get back in one day, and preferred our quiet bay to the neighbourhood of the town. We used to go down when the first hubbub of the landing was over. In a short time, the canoes were drawn up high and dry, their triangular sails set up as tents. The men would be
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busy cutting fern from the hill for their beds, while the women and girls scraped potatoes for the evening meal, or waded with bare legs into the mud at low water to find their favourite shellfish. Soon a fire was blazing, and the pot put on, gipsy fashion. Children swarmed in and out of the rude tents, babies squalled, pigs brought in for sale grunted, shabby-looking curs barked at us, men and women talked at the top of their voices, but through all this confusion we were sure of friendly faces and welcoming smiles. It was pleasant to hear from our open windows the chatter and laughter of the people as they ate their meal al fresco, and, later on in the evening and in the still, early morning, the sounds of hymn and prayer.
Many English say, when they first see New Zealanders, "What an ugly set they are!" Certainly, the women, as is the case in all countries where they have hard work to do, are not beautiful; and their unkempt hair and slovenly dress in these early days impressed one unfavourably; though, even then, I have seen young girls with flowers in their hair, and a native mat wrapped round them, looking very picturesque. The men, as a rule, are well grown and tall; and their warm complexion, bright eyes, and white teeth atone for some homeliness of feature. There was much, of course, in those early days to make any one who did not attempt to learn their
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language, indifferent, if not unfriendly, to the natives. Interesting savages, such as Cowper's gentle Omai and Cooper's Mohican, belong rather to the region of romance. The New Zealanders were just emerging from barbarism, and had in our part of the country only ten years before been wild, impulsive heathen. The old picturesque dress, such as we had seen and admired in Cook's Voyages, had given place to slop trousers and a blanket. A quainter spectacle one could hardly see than a party of men squatting in a half-circle, with their blankets drawn round their bodies, and hiding every part of their faces, except a bit of tattooed forehead and a pair of bright eyes. Then, whatever the habits of this people had been in their warmer ancestral home in the tropics, they eschewed much washing. Hands and blankets betokened that soap was a luxury. Their clothes had a combined scent of fish and tobacco and wood smoke. But we found them on acquaintance to be an independent, rough-mannered, merry, kindly race, often obstinate and self-willed, yet very shrewd and observant, and eager to learn English ways.
Now and then we had a visit from a real grand old New Zealand chief, and a most imposing, noble carriage he had. The richly-fringed and ornamented flax mat, thrown over one shoulder, and coming down nearly to his feet, a bunch of white sea-bird's feathers in his ear, and a carved spear or a highly-
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polished greenstone hatchet in his hand, made such a man look fit to be a Homeric hero. Such a chief was old Te Wherowhero, the head of the powerful Waikato tribe. He had been a great warrior in his day, but had always shown a generous and humane spirit, and was a firm friend to the English settlers. This man, trained from childhood to command, and from childhood fed on the very best food, and cared for and waited upon, had a dignity of carriage and stateliness of manner that the ordinary Maori never attained to, and which is fast becoming a thing of the past. One of our first visitors to dinner was a Mr. William Stephenson, a Maori man, who had been for some years at school in Tasmania, and who could speak English very well. I was much amused when, on coming into the drawing-room, our guest looked round and said in a very soft voice, "Oh, ma'am, have you no piano?" Ours was still on board.
Of the town I saw little in early days, for we were two miles off, and there were three steep hills between us and it. There was not much to see. Government House was only a one-storied cottage, standing back from the road. A few wooden houses were dotted about, in which the Government officials lived. There were wooden barracks, which contained about fifty soldiers; a supreme court-house, where the Judge held his court in the week, and which on Sundays was used as a church; a milliner's shop, a blacksmith's forge,
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and two or three stores. Butcher and baker were unknown in those primitive days, for the best of all reasons,--that there was no beef or mutton to sell, and no roads for carts to travel along if there had been. Our furniture, and my husband's clothes and books, had lain for months on the beach after his arrival, and all our flour, and firewood, and groceries had to be brought by boat from the town and left on the beach, till some friendly Maoris carried them up the hill on their backs. We were then, and for some years after, mainly dependent on the natives for firewood, and for pork, fish, potatoes, pumpkins, fruit, Indian corn, and cabbages. It was well for us that we soon learned to speak Maori. Our old Wiltshire gardener would spend a good part of a working-day in haggling at intervals with the owner of a pig. Time was not at all precious to the Maori. He squatted in the sun, wrapped up in mat or blanket, smoked his pipe, or had a comfortable doze; while his pig, tethered by a rope of flax, grunted and winked, and grubbed up and chumped the young roots of the fern. Very often, after long waste of time and temper, pig and his master trotted over the hills again, and our larder was left bare. But as soon as we could talk pretty freely we got the people to agree willingly to weigh or measure all our purchases.
It was a pleasant change. By nature the Maoris enjoy to chaffer as much as Italians do, but their
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strong common-sense made them see the advantage of a fixed rule. The firewood was all stacked in order on the beach, and measured, and never did we find any attempt to cheat or to dispute my husband's word.
The steelyard was a settling of difficulty for all other purchases. For the first year or two we had hardly anything but pork to depend upon, and we grew very weary of it. In vain was it dressed in divers disguises, sometimes divested of its rind and served up as boiled mutton with caper sauce and Swedish turnips! Another time, as stewed veal! It was not a wholesome food, though very different to English pork, as the native pigs roamed freely about in the villages and lived upon fern roots. Butter was very scarce in the early days and cost 4s. 6d. a pound, and milk was not to be had. Our captain, whose experiences of colonial life had been confined to the West Indies, used to tell me how the coloured people would wash one's clothes beside a running stream. This idyllic picture faded away, and in its stead came a tall Irishwoman from the barracks with the conventional basket, who was ready to oblige us at the rate of four shillings a dozen. Our groceries and flour had to be got in in quantities appalling to the mind of a young housekeeper, and we had to wage constant war against rats and weevils. Very often the half-chest of tea or two hundred-
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weight of sugar which had been laid in turned out to be damaged, and for months we had to bear our ill-luck philosophically. Such was the utmost amount of our colonial hardships. Other people who lived in the bush, far away from any town, were in much worse plight.
One rule we had to enforce which made us for a time as unpopular among the kinsfolk of those employed as Lord Ashley was in Yorkshire when he carried his Factory Bill. All our firewood was brought by canoes and stacked on the beach by the men. But there was still a long distance to be traversed up a steep hill to bring it to our door, and the women were expected by their husbands to undertake the carrying up of the whole load, some ten or fifteen tons. The Judge insisted that no woman should do this, whereat both men and women resented this infringement on the liberty of the subject. The latter looked on the job as a part of their perquisites. Poor creatures, their backs were bowed early enough by hard field labour.
There was much need of contrivance in those days, for servants were scarce and appliances few. But every one was young and full of life, and no one could afford to laugh at her neighbours. People who had faculty, as the Americans say, made their rooms very pretty at a small cost. Furniture was not to be bought, but packing-cases and empty boxes were plentiful. These made our dressing-tables, and washstands, and
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ottomans, and lounges. A little white muslin and pink calico, and chintz cushions stuffed with scraped flax, made a handsome show.
Auckland was very gay in those early days. The Governor's wife gave a ball in the winter. The weather was very bad, and the roads (if such they could be called) were almost impassable. We heard of one chivalrous husband wheeling his wife up to Government House in a wheelbarrow. Other ladies put on their partners' jack-boots and waded through the quagmire. One friend of mine fell down on her way into a Slough of Despond; but she was not to be daunted, and, after finding refuge at a friend's and getting rid of some muddy garments, went on and danced merrily till the small hours. The hospitality was very hearty, if somewhat rough, and if people had to work all the morning to prepare for their guests, they were sure of their efforts being appreciated.
Our first Auckland newspaper was a very primitive one. For lack of a press, it was printed in a mangle. Type was so scarce that occasionally there was a paragraph in black letter, and as the Government had to borrow all their R's for the use of the Maori Gazette, that letter was lacking throughout!
Our Bishop, after staying a fortnight in Auckland, had gone up to Paihia, in a wretched little vessel, to the Bay of Islands, to await the arrival of the Toma-
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tin. He astonished both the missionary clergy and the natives by the fluency with which he read prayers and preached in Maori. He came down again to Auckland in the Tomatin, after settling Mrs. Selwyn and his large party at the Waimate. She anchored on July 5th, just seven months from the time that she had left Gravesend. The Bishop stayed three weeks, and during his stay consecrated a burial-ground, the land for which was given by the Governor. It was a fine site, on the slope of a wooded valley, with a grand outlook over sea and land. In less than a month from that time our first Governor, Captain Hobson, R. N., was laid to rest there. He was a brave, just, and good man, who had won the confidence of the native people by his kindness and firmness.
"Mother Victoria," wrote the old chief Te Wherowhero to the Queen shortly afterwards; "my object in writing is, send us a Governor for us and the strangers of this island. Let him be a good man: a man of judgment. Let not a 'troubler' come here. Let not a boy come here, or one puffed up. Let him be a good man, as the Governor who has just died." It was a great cloud on the prospect of the little settlement. Both the Governor and Mrs. Hobson were people well fitted to exercise an influence for good upon society.
In the middle of September, my husband sailed in the Government brig on circuit to the southern
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settlements, and as he walked back through the country with the Bishop, he did not reach home till the end of the year,--weary, dusty, travel-worn, after a journey of 800 miles, but in perfect health and good spirits.
The Bishop came a day or two later, as he had to visit a mission station on the way. It was a great treat to listen to the two friends and fellow-travellers, as they described the beauty and strangeness of the country they had passed through. The ascent up the Manawatu river, which took five days of steady poling against the stream, the river flowing down through a mountain pass between high cliffs, which were clothed with wood from the summit to the water's edge; the happy, peaceful Sunday, passed in a lovely little plain, shut in by woods on all sides save one, where a view opened on a range of distant hills, while below them in a deep valley lay the river, with precipitous wooded banks feathering down to the stream; and many more such word-pictures. They told, too, how, after a march of more than sixty miles over uninhabited country, they came to an island in a small lake surrounded by grassy downs. The whole scene was full of repose, and the barbarous people received them gladly, and brought out their best fare,--wild ducks, lake shell-fish, and potatoes. But the most wonderful account was of all that they had seen in the
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lake district, with its geysers and hot springs. They described to me the many-coloured mud caldrons, the very emblems, the Bishop said, of laziness. A faint steam rose from them, and ever and anon a solitary bubble of gas disengaged itself from the surface, which then returned to its usual dulness. To my husband's mind, they recalled the dismal souls in Dante's "Inferno."
Close beside these, and in strong contrast, are the clear pools and bright-blue, boiling springs, of great depth. There they stood and saw the jets blown up from a narrow orifice in the top of an irregular cone. These cones are pinkish-white, or tinged yellow by crystals of sulphur. They got to windward of one of these cones, and heard the roaring of the caldron, and then up sprang a jet into the air, and shivered into silver foam, accompanied by a volume of white steam.
Below these wondrous cones the people clustered, to cook their fish and potatoes in the steam and in the hot water pools. The men sat, quite at their ease, in the natural baths, playing their native game of draughts, while the lads whirled round on their native swings, and the babies and children dabbled in the pools, and looked as clean and rosy as English little ones.
My husband, in the early days, was away nearly half the year on circuit, and I should have felt very lonely but for the daily intercourse with the native
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people. We saw a great deal of a fine tribe living about forty miles off in the wooded island of Waiheke. They carried on a brisk trade with the English in Auckland, and in the evening always came to camp in our bay. Our great friend was a huge, tall man, named William Jowett. He had been converted from heathenism a few years before by the preaching of some native missionaries from the North of the Island, belonging to a powerful tribe which had ravaged his settlement in old days. As soon as William was baptised his people followed his example. He and his own relatives, two brothers and one sister, were all huge. His wife was very thin and slight, and was much chaffed in consequence by her husband, who called her "Bag-of-Bones." He was a very simple fellow. I once showed him a picture of a lizard in a book published by the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, and he uttered a yell and ran off, and I have seen him shake with disgust and horror at the sight of a living one. There are many superstitions connected with this harmless little creature. Jowett and his relations were a very hospitable, kindly set, and great favourites with our townspeople. They had all set themselves to learn to read and write. A large party of them were camping on the beach below our house when the baby boy of William Jowett's younger brother fell ill. They were all most
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anxious about this child. William had no children so he was a most important little fellow. The mother was young, and ignorant, and wilful; but the father was full of tender care, and trusted us implicitly, obeying every direction. My friend (herself a mother) had the boy on her knee when the grey shadow of death began to pass over its face. Its father at once caught it in his arms, and leaped with it through the open French window, as though he felt its soul needed elbow room; and soon from below in the valley began a terrible piteous wail. The old Bible words, "He lifted up his voice and wept," become a reality to any who have heard the shrill Maori ta-ngi. Our first Governor, Captain Hobson, was quite overcome when he first heard it, and had to go aside and hide himself. It reminded him of the mournful Irish keene. Though we could not save the bonny little chief, the fame of our care and nursing spread abroad, and in a week or two a man from Waiheke was brought in a terrible state of weakness from abscesses; so a rough hut was put up to receive him. My friend and I had as yet little hold of the language, though we could read and translate fairly, and for some time we had to depend on our gardener's young son as interpreter. He had contrived to pick up a few sentences of ungrammatical Maori intermixed with much absurd broken English, which he delivered with great
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assurance in a very loud voice. But our people were willing to teach us, and we wanted to understand them and make them understand us; and in a few months we could communicate readily on ordinary subjects. I did make the mistake of trying to explain the meaning of passages in the New Testament as we read together, but soon found out my folly, as some absurd blunder would set the young people off into fits of laughter.
While the Judge was still away on circuit, a man came to pay me a visit who has since become a well-known political character, and was elected a few years ago the honourable Member for Tauranga. He was a wild-looking, handsome fellow, named William Marsh. His home was in the Lake district, in the heart of the country, and this was his first visit to the metropolis. His only garment was a dirty blanket. Now, my husband had made a rule that no Maori should come into the house unless he was dressed in English clothes. Of course, they could always come into our little receiving-room for food or medicine, but they could not be admitted as guests. This rule worked well, and induced habits of cleanliness and self-respect. My friend pleaded hard to be allowed to come in and see the house, and brought forward some good reasons for relaxing the rule in his case.
"He had come from a great distance. He might
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never be in Auckland again. He was a chief in his own place," and so on.
I remained firm, however, and he went away. More than a year after he appeared again, dressed in such a good suit of clothes that I did not recognise him till he reminded me of his previous visit.
"I was very much disappointed," said he, "when you turned me away; but I thought afterwards that you were like Eve, and that I was very like Satan tempting you when Adam was away."
But after he had been fed, and had seen the house and listened to the piano, as he was going away, he whispered to my husband: "Friend, what about that passage in St. James,--'If there come in a poor man in dirty raiment'?" for so the Maori version renders our A. V. "vile."
We had a widow hiding for some time in out house. She was a Christian, named Margaret, and fled to us for protection from her own people, who wanted her to marry a heathen who was not at all acceptable to her. They probably knew where she was hiding, but did not dare to fetch her away by force from our house. After a while they agreed to leave her in peace, and she returned to her own village, which was only a few miles off. She came back in a day or two, bringing a present of Indian corn and sweet potatoes. She gave me the most minute and graphic account of her return home.
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"I returned home. I go into the house of us two, my husband and mine. Then I cry, I cry all night, because he is dead. In the morning, I rise up, I go out, I faint for food; but first I call to my people, and they come, and we cry together. After that I eat." 1
An unfailing source of pleasure to our Maori visitors in those days was to play to them on the piano. The first time Mrs. Selwyn played to an old chief who had never heard of such an instrument, he wondered and wondered, and listened, and put his ear to it, and at last said, "Is there a man inside?"
One of our early friends was a heathen man from a neighbouring village. He was tall and strongly built, with a grim look on his tattooed face. He must have been a formidable foe in a fray. He was always gentle and pleasant in manner to us, and his kind old grizzle-haired wife became quite a friend of ours. The first time we saw her she did not look at her best. A canoe had been upset off the headland near our house, and one or two people drowned. She came over with some other women from the village to which they all belonged to have a "tangi" for
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their dead. She cut her face with a piece of sharpened stone till blood and tears mingled, and rained down her cheeks. Old Kai-pa-ka, her husband, was quite a character. He was very much incensed at a storekeeper in town who had bought potatoes of him, and neglected to pay. He made his plaint to the Judge, who told him he must ask for payment till he got it. A day or two after he came about sunset in great triumph, with the long-owed five shillings tied up in the corner of his blanket. "How did you get paid?" said I. "Mother," said my grey-haired son, "I went in early this morning, and I sat on the step all day long, and I put my head in at the door every few minutes, and said, 'Pay me my money!' and at last they were so tired, they paid me."
He bustled up our hill one evening on his way back from town, and asked us for some large nails. When we asked what he wanted them for, he said they were for his wife's coffin. Of course, we began to bemoan the death of the kind old body. "No," quoth he, "she is not dead, but she will be by the time I get home; and, anyhow, it is a long way to come, and I want to have them ready." The nails were not given, and the wife recovered, and lived for some years longer.
At the end of this year, the Judge returned from another long march through the country, from Wellington to Auckland; and though some part of the way
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could be traversed by canoe, there was a great deal of what Sir Francis Palgrave calls "travel and tramp"; yet, so exactly could the time of march be calculated that the Judge and the Bishop met on a given day beside Lake Taupo, as they had proposed to do many months before. The Judge's travelling companions this time were the Sheriff and Registrar. They had a merry party of natives, who carried a supply of flour, sugar, rice, and biscuits, and some bacon on their backs, besides blankets and a light tent. For the rest, the whole party depended on the hospitality of the Maoris, who in those days gave freely from their stores of potato and fish to the Manuhiri,-- i. e., the stranger. Sometimes a pig could be bought, and the men, however heavily laden before, cheerfully carried a quarter of pork on their backs. Very quaint they looked, scrambling up the hills with a long unskinned hand or leg of "pig" dangling down behind. Great would be the feast at night. But these were rare festivities. Commonly the midday meal consisted of pancakes (minus eggs and milk), made light by the addition of scraped potatoes, and sweetened with brown sugar.
What a bustle and noise there was in the house and out of it when our travellers, with their tail of Maoris, returned! There is a delightful New Zealand word, ra-ru-ra-ru, which can hardly be done into English. It implies hurry-scurry, noise, bustle. But
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then people in England do not really know what a bustle is in a native sense. There must be a native arrival to make the thing understood. First of all, every one talks at the top of his voice, and all at once. The men with their loads on their backs run in and throw them down with as much noise as possible. All their wants must be attended to at once by the mistress, for English servants were not, as a rule, over-friendly to the noisy, grimy fellows. One must give firewood, a pot to cook food in, matches, flour, sugar, tea, bread, potatoes, and pork; and, at last, the party, full of jokes and fun, would run down the hill, to eat and sleep and smoke and rest, and cat again; and there would be a little leisure to welcome the less impatient though not less hungry English travellers.
We were doubly anxious to be liberal after hearing a very good-tempered Maori man contrast the large-handed hospitality of his people to English travellers, with the "one pannikinful" of flour,-- about half a pound,--doled out to him when he visited any one in Auckland.
The story of the journey made me long to have been of the party. They had visited Roto Mahana {Anglice, the Hot Lake), and slept on a little island. The rock on which they lay down was quite warm beneath them. Their food was cooked in steam, which came hissing out of the vents and crevices in
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a mound of rocky fragments. Not many yards off was a pit, from which arose at intervals large blackish bubbles, sobbing as they broke, and sputtering hot mud on the sides. Below, natives up to their necks in the lake were chattering and laughing. The moon was full. As the steam from the hot pools rose out of the hollow, passing quietly upwards out of the turmoil in columns which gradually unrolled and expanded themselves in the calm moonlight, the whole scene appeared to the travellers strangely beautiful and almost preternatural.
Our new Governor and Mrs. FitzRoy began at once, on their arrival, in 1844, to interest themselves warmly in the improvement of the native people. He encouraged the writing of books for them; and a "Life of Peter the Great," and some sketches of the early British and Saxon history, were printed at the Government press and circulated among the people. About this time a short, fat, snub-nosed Maori man, with very thick, stumpy legs, came with some invalids, and stayed on, having attached himself to us, and was always ready to do any little jobs for a consideration. He was so ridiculously like Sancho Panza in "Don Quixote," that he might have sat for the picture, and was of an equally happy, contented spirit. He quite adopted the name of Sancho (I forget his own), and the servants always called
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him by it. He was worthy of his namesake, for he had an insatiable appetite, and used to aggravate the maids by standing close to the kitchen window, flattening his nose against it, while he stared at them all through dinner-time. It chanced that while this hero was with us a great native feast was given by our Maori neighbours. It was only two or three miles off, the Governor and Mrs. FitzRoy were invited to be there, and all Auckland was present. Carriages were luxuries not to be obtained in those days. The Governor, his wife, and many ladies and gentlemen, rode out. Our friend, the protector of aborigines, lent me four tall, well-dressed Maori youths to carry me in a tasty little litter to the spot. It was well worth going to see. We passed between walls of baskets of potatoes piled up on each side to some ten feet in height. The baskets were all made of fresh green flax, woven by the women. After this we came to a long row of poles, on which was hung an immense supply of dried shark (the dogfish split in two), besides baskets of ku-me-ras (sweet potatoes), and other delicacies. There was a great gathering of native people scattered over the plain, and their red and white blankets and handsome mats, and the gay dresses of the English ladies, looked very bright in the sunshine. My "boys," in their white trousers, blue serge shirts, and straw hats, were most respectable
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looking; but just as we reached the centre of fashion, in an unlucky moment, Sancho spied us out, and clad as he was, with only a dirty blanket above his bare, brown, legs, he rushed forward, pushed the front bearer aside, put his shaggy head between the poles, and trotted me triumphantly into the midst of the Court circle!
