‘Take me to your chief,’ said Wake, shuddering, addressing the other warrior, who had stood by in complete indifference while this savage act was performed.
With a lift of the eyebrows that seemed intended to absolve him from all responsibility in the result, the young warrior turned on his heel and guided us through the alternating glare and shadows of the pa.
From the storehouses slaves were busy removing the stores of food accumulated by the slaughtered villagers, and more ghastly burdens were also borne past us in the direction in which we were moving. Now and then our guide paused to exchange a few words with a comrade, and some of these came and stared us in the face or fell in behind, laughing and chattering to one another. One hideous, tattooed face was, I remember, thrust into mine and inspired me with a terror that still returns in nightmare. It was an ancient, evil countenance, with an eye that smouldered and gloated and menaced unutterable things.
Presently we came in sight of several fires, differing from those we had already seen by the circumstance that they did not roar up to a tremendous height, but burned fiercely close to the ground. Dark figures were busy about them thrusting the burning wood more closely together with long sticks. In the red light other groups were at work, bending and chopping at things in their midst.
Our guide threaded his way through these groups with more appearance of haste and uneasiness than he had yet shown, moving in the direction of a somewhat larger fire, around which the main force of the war-party appeared to be assembled. As we neared the outskirts of the ring of warriors, Mr Wake, apparently unable any longer to control his horror and aversion at the scene, pushed past the guide and made his way rapidly among the seated figures, with Purcell close at his heels; until, rounding the huge fire, whose heat demanded the respect of a wide distance, we came on the leaders of the taua, seated together on a slight mound.
I have no actual recollection of the moment when these two intrepid white men, the one sustained by his religious belief, the other by a sense of comradeship and pride of race, thrust themselves unarmed on one of the most ruthless savages the Maori race has known. Indeed, from the moment the hideous face glared at me I doubt if aught else of the happenings of that night impressed itself on my consciousness.
Te Waharoa, though he was not destined to live long after this event, was, at the moment of which I write, at the prime of his manhood and full of bloody honours. He had held back the mighty Te Rauparaha and had been the means of driving him and the Ngatiraukawas to migrate to Cook’s Strait. He had cast down the pride of the Waikatos and the Ngatimaru, and even those most inveterate of sportsmen, the Ngapuhi, who for long years never missed their annual shooting season in the Thames or Waikato, had gone away disgusted, leaving five of their braves crucified to the posts of his pa. In the flush of victory it is conceivable that even a savage may show forbearance in the discussion of a matter wherein opinions are likely to differ, but it must be remembered that at the moment his unexpected visitors made their appearance Te Waharoa had no longer any interest to distract his attention from the fact that he had not eaten since morning; moreover, his ovens were—or shortly would be—full of a delicacy which, so far from appealing to the pakeha palate, was likely to prove a bone of contention between him and them.
The chief was seated on the ground, a great cloak of dog-skin, fastened at his right shoulder, completely concealing the whole of his person and protecting him from the night air, which now, in the fall of the year and on the hill summit, breathed keenly. He gave no greeting to the missionary, who paused, breathless with the haste he had made, in front of him; nor for the space of several minutes did he cease the low-toned conversation he had been carrying on with those around him.
‘Be it so,’ he said at last, and bent his eyes on his visitors.
‘Tena korua, pakeha,’ said he. ‘You have come far. These are times when a man does well to stay where he belongs.’
‘And these people,’ retorted the missionary, waving his hand in the direction of the burning whares, ‘does the chief say that they did well to remain where they belong?’
Te Waharoa nodded appreciation of the retort. ‘They offended me,’ he said shortly. ‘They have ceased to offend. It is enough. What is the pakeha’s business with me?’
‘I come on God’s business, Te Waharoa,’ said Wake. ‘I know nothing of the cause of your enmity towards this people, or of its justice. I came to warn them of your approach, and, failing that, to intercede with you in their behalf. Surely the power to show mercy is the greatest privilege of the conqueror.’
‘The words of the pakeha are good,’ said Te Waharoa stolidly, ‘but his actions have lagged behind. The day is done. Let us now speak of other things.’
‘I can well see that I am too late, chief,’ Wake agreed, with more moderation in his tone, ‘but there is surely something I can yet do for my Master. Give me the slaves you have taken. The dead are past our help, nor do they need it; but suffer the living to go free.’
‘I have heard that the pakeha is averse to the making of slaves,’ replied Te Waharoa, grimly: ‘I have remembered his aversion and made none.’
‘Then your prisoners, chief, let them be brought to me here and we will lead them from the pa, that the sight of their faces may not reawaken your vengeance. The day is done, as you remind me; let its deeds suffice, and peace be established between you and those who remain.’
Te Waharoa sat for a while in silence, as though debating what reply he should make to this request. Around him the principal men of the war-party murmured to one another with looks of amusement in their faces, and presently one leaned forward and said a few words in his chief’s ear.
‘Good,’ said the latter, a cruel smile flickering for a moment at the corners of his lips. ‘Let those who have taken prisoners bring them here, that we may see if the pakeha’s wish can be granted. Go!’
A number of young men sprang up from the ranks below and hurried off around the circle of warriors. Some passed through the lines into the shadows beyond, and for ten minutes or a quarter of an hour the two white men stood waiting while Te Waharoa, his iron visage unvisited by any sign of emotion, preserved an inflexible silence.
At length, one by one, the young men began to return, until the whole of them were assembled, and seeing them thus, without an addition to their number, a mocking laugh broke softly from the lips of the spectators.
‘It is well,’ said Te Waharoa, calmly. ‘The lot of the prisoner is often less desirable than that of the slave.’
‘Then of all these people,’ said Wake, in tones that faltered with emotion, ‘no man, woman, or child remains. For this deed, Te Waharoa’—his voice hardened and his eyes flashed denunciation—‘you shall yet answer, if not on earth, then at the dread day of judgment, when every soul you have sent in blood to its doom shall cry out for vengeance upon you.’
A murmur of wrath, even of horror at words which, to their minds, spelt sacrilege as used against their chief, ran through the group on the hill, but Te Waharoa preserved his calm unruffled.
‘Pakeha,’ he said, ‘your words are as those of a child, who babbles of he knows not what, and therefore I take no heed of them. Yet if children persist in wrong-doing it becomes necessary to punish them; therefore I say to you, Go now, while the road is open. I am tired of your talk.’
The missionary, undaunted by a speech which, with its cold threat, might have brought fear to the bravest heart, was on the point of an impulsive reply, when Purcell laid his hand on his sleeve.
‘Remember, Mr Wake,’ he said in a low voice, and not without a tinge of humour in his tones, ‘that God is a long way off, while the lives of the three of us are in your very hands.’
The missionary paused and seemed, in obedience to the warning of the other, to change what he had been on the point of saying.
‘There is one more word I must say to you, Te Waharoa,’ he said. ‘The dead are at peace, and against their souls you can do no further harm; but wha
t of their bodies? What is the meaning of these fires, the preparing of these great ovens, the sights of horror we have seen as we drew near? Will the great chief, forgetting the word of his pakeha friends, descend to a level lower than that of the beasts, become the perpetuator of a practice which disfigures his noble race and rouses the abhorrence of mankind?’
Hitherto the missionary’s words, but for the one exception I have noted, had been received with indifference or half-scornful amusement, but at this bold indictment of an immemorial custom of the race their brows contracted, and every trace of good-humour vanished from their countenances.
At this period the practice of cannibalism, though still invariably followed by the successful war-party, had already received its death-blow. The disgust of the white man, evidencing itself on the lips of the missionary and the escaped convict alike, had eaten its way less to the conscience than the pride of the Maori, and just as the modern wave of temperance, sweeping irresistibly forward, influences those who are not conscientiously in accord with it to a certain furtiveness in the taking of drink, so was cannibalism becoming a rite to be practised, if not actually in secret, at all events out of the sight of the white man. From this infection (so to call it) of shame to a natural soul-growth of distaste was a matter of very few years, and at the time of which I write every act of cannibalism, so far from confirming and prolonging the monstrous custom, brought it nearer to its end. Shame, however, is an emotion more likely at the offset to inspire anger than repentance, and as my protector looked round the scowling faces of the warriors and heard the mutterings as of a gathering storm, he knew that the lives of all three hung on a thread.
But no change came over Te Waharoa’s face, nor did he appear influenced by the anger of those about him. Only in the depths of his eyes a light burned ominously. ‘Pakeha,’ he said, ‘you have said to me three things. I say to you only one—Go!’
(1914)
Thomas Bracken, from ‘The March of Te Rauparaha’
Rauparaha’s war chant,
Rauparaha’s fame song,
Rauparaha’s story
Told on the harp strings,
Pakeha harp cords
Tuned by the stranger.
Mighty chief of the Ngatitoa,
Sprung from the hero, Hotorua,
First of the braves who left Hawaiki
Over the sea in the great Tainui,
Petrified now by thy shore, Kawhia.
Weird Tainui,
Tapu, Tapu,
Tapu, long ere the pale pakeha
Came to the shrine, adored for ages,
Came to the shrine! oh desecration,
Prying into the things forbidden.
Moan the waves,
Moan the waves,
Moan the waves as they wash Tainui,
Moan the waters of dark Kawhia,
Moan the waves as they sweep the gorges,
Wafting the sad laments and wailings
Of the spirits that haunt the mountains—
Warrior souls, whose skeletons slumber
Down in the caverns, lonely and dreary,
Under the feet of the fierce volcano,
Under the slopes of the Awaroa!
Moan the winds,
Moan the winds,
Moan the winds, and waves, and waters,
Moan they over the ages vanished,
Moan they over the tombs of heroes,
Moan they over the mighty chieftains
Sprung from giants of far Hawaiki!
Moan they over the bones of Raka,
Moan they over the Rangatira
Toa, who founded the Ngatitoa!
Moan they over Wera Wera,
Sire of him,
Sire of him,
Sire of him they called Te Rauparaha!
Echoes of the craggy reeks,
Echoes of the rocky peaks,
Echoes of the gloomy caves,
Echoes of the moaning waves,
Echoes of the gorges deep,
Echoes of the winds that sweep
O’er Pirongia’s summit steep,
Chant the Rangatira’s praise,
Chant it in a thousand lays,
Chant the Rangitira’s fame,
Chant the Rangitira’s name,
Te Rauparaha, Te Rauparaha!
(1890)
A New Zealand Literature?
Alexander Bathgate, ‘Faerie’
Why have we in these isles no fairy dell,
No haunted wood, nor wild enchanted mere?
Our woods are dark, our lakelets’ waters clear,
As those of any land where fairies dwell.
In every verdant vale our streamlets tell
Their simple story to the list’ning ear,
Our craggy mountains steep are full of fear—
E’en rugged men have felt their awful spell.
Yet lack they glamour of the fairy tale,
Nor gnome nor goblin do they e’er recall,
Though Nature speaks, e’en in the wind’s sad wail
Who shall give meaning to Her voices all?
The poet’s art,—as yet without avail,—
Must weave the story of both great and small.
(1890)
Jessie Mackay, Introduction to New Zealand Rhymes Old and New
New Zealand is a country of mountains and minor poets. The reason why New Zealand, unlike Australia, neglects her own poets is understood to be not a matter of economy, but of technique, each man fearing to lose his own style in overstudy of his neighbour’s, and therefore doing what in him lies to achieve a splendid mental isolation. Where home madebread is the fashion the baker leads a sorry life.
But to speak seriously, so young a country may fairly plume herself at least on the volume of the literary output during her half-century of civilised life; While the more vivid and enduring of these pages have enriched the shrines of adventure and science, it is doubtful whether the pioneers of any other young land have ever produced more work of a purely imaginative sort, especially in verse. And fortunately the quality of that verse has not to be taken solely on her own valuation; her first and only national anthology, published a year ago, has been so kindly greeted by critics over seas as to strengthen the hope that though as yet ‘her pipe is small’, the notes of it are sweet and true within their limited range. New Zealand verse differs from the semi-tropical and wholly Antipodean flower of Australian poesy. The former grafted itself on the good old Saxon stem; the latter just ‘growed’ like Topsy. The New Zealand pioneer poet beached his boats; the Australian burnt his boats. Which did more wisely time alone can show. So far as Nature and the trend of historical happenings went, the New Zealander was the darling of the gods, and he soon found it out. His ’prentice hand has been tried liberally on the strange new fire and Alp world, and the stranger old Maoridom he saw around him. Strangest of all, in its quick growth, is the new social order and polity the New Zealand nation-builder constructed in his vivid environment. This new order also begins to reflect itself in national verse, notably and naturally in that of William Pember Reeves, himself at once a nation-builder and poet.
Since already some half dozen passable booklets might be compiled on as many special phases of New Zealand verse, some critics may pronounce this a colourless collection. But reflection will show that topical verse, however apt and bright, Maori themes, however novel and picturesque, and argot poetry, however forcible within its occult limits, could not be presented before outland readers without annotation wholly beyond our present scope. Moreover, while the limits of space barred out many good native authors, much excellent work not of the country though done in the country has been excluded. Thirty years of colonising did not make Alfred Domett a New Zealander, nor incorporate his undoubtedly fine poetry in the mass of less distinguished but more national later verse. On the other hand, prominence has been given to the early links binding New Zealand art and sentiment to those of the beloved Motherland; and the aim has been through
out to dwell on the quiet but everlasting verities on which English poetry anchors. Wherever this booklet may travel, it will be among the children of Caedmon’s, Chaucer’s, and Tennyson’s readers:
… All taught to prize those English words, Faith,
Freedom, Heaven and Home.
(1907)
A.G. Stephens, ‘The Maidens of Maoriland’
They are healthy girls in Maoriland, and their verse is usually a regular and healthy secretion. On Sunday evening, after church, is a favourite composition time. Then you may see the plump and rosy maiden, aet. 17 to 25, a little withdrawn from the massed family polishing off the idea that came when she wasn’t listening to the sermon. The metre may be borrowed from the hymn-book; the matter from The Otago Witness and Annie S. Swan; the noble and uninspiring sentiment is all the maiden’s own. And the Muse of Comedy smiles, noting the shadow of knickerbockers on the paper. Next Saturday week, if one is fortunate there will be a small illumination of the poet’s corner of The Canterbury Times or The Otago Witness; and ‘Perdita’ or ‘Celia’ will glow, and dream and wonder if He will see it, and what He would say if He knew, and whether—.
After marriage the secretion ceases; but ‘Celia’ is faithful to The Otago Witness, and presently a birth-notice illuminates another corner of the paper. Another ‘Celia’ is launched to write verse in the shadow of next generation knickerbockers; and … such is the idyll of Maoriland life. Literature, with its thrills and flushes and pangs, being necessarily another matter altogether.
(1903)
Katherine Mansfield, ‘Out here it is the Summer time’
Out here it is the Summer time
The days are hot and white
The gardens are ablaze with flowers
The sky with stars at night.
And [illeg.] past my [illeg.] bed
I watch the sparkling bay—
With London ever calling me
The live long day.
The people all about our place
The Auckland University Press Anthology of New Zealand Literature Page 30