# Picturesque New Zealand/Chapter 16

CHAPTER XVI
North Auckland—Up the Wairoa River—Historic Bay of Islands—Charming Whangaroa and its Celebrated Massacre—Kauri Gum—Life in the Back Blocks—Tarts and Pies—A Maori School and Zealous Pupils.
The voyager to New Zealand who lands first at Auckland, and begins his projected tour of the country by setting a course for the vaunted scenes of the south, leaves behind him one of the most interesting parts of the Dominion—North Auckland. Among oversea visitors to Maoriland, North Auckland is not celebrated as a tourist district, and though in guide-books they may read something of its charms, they are more impressed by descriptions of scenery south of it. Yet until this peninsular extension has been toured New Zealand has not been properly seen.
Deeply indented with beautiful harbors and for miles exhibiting bold rocky coasts, this foot of Aotearoa's boot-like shape stretches northwest from Auckland for more than two hundred miles. More than any other part of New Zealand, this is the land of kauri gum and the home of the vanishing kauri, greatest of Niu Tirani's trees. Under the Treaty of Waitangi the sovereignty of Queen Victoria was here proclaimed; here the pakeha's government was first established; here Christianity was first preached to the Maoris; here lived Hongi, "Napoleon of the Maoris," and friend of the ​missionaries; and here raged the first war between Maori and white.
Here, also, where whalers were the first white settlers, civilization in New Zealand had its beginning; yet much of North Auckland still comprises "back blocks." While fertile and spacious districts of the south were developed and grew rich, the sparse white population of the neglected north was left to cry for roads and railways. Even yet North Auckland has relatively few miles of railways.
The longest stretch of railroad it possesses is the Helensville Branch, terminating about seventy-five miles from Auckland. The tourist does not usually go farther on this line than Helensville, a health resort on the Kaipara Harbor, thirty-eight miles from Auckland. There are hot mineral springs here, and through this port passes traffic bound for Wairoa River points.
At this town, en route to the Wairoa River, I boarded a small steamer on the muddy Kaipara River, a tidal stream wriggling into Kaipara Harbor and washing the slimy roots of mangrove trees.
The Wairoa—which also flows into Kaipara Harbor—is the most important river in North Auckland. On its murky waters I saw borne the commerce of many sawmill towns and settlements built along its banks. In its lower ports large steamships and a number of sailing vessels were receiving cargoes of timber, and in midstream tugs with log rafts in tow were constantly plying. In the slimy, slippery mud banks exposed by the ​receding tide logs lay half buried, and when the tide was setting in there was visible the singular spectacle of logs floating up stream from twenty-five to fifty miles above the river's mouth.
Voyaging on the Wairoa was pleasantly informal. No dressy crowd met the steamer when it glided alongside a wharf, but just everyday, work-a-day people. And as for those who caught and made fast the steamer's ropes, they were voluntary wharf-hands or wharf-hands by the captain's request; and sometimes they were obliging officers or deck-hands of lumber carriers, which for a few minutes were used as a connecting link with the wharf beyond.
In these ports the traveler is always welcome, and if he arrives in the late summer, as I did, or in the autumn, he is welcomed with music, not, however, with the outbursts of town bands. In this case the musicians are crickets.
In North Auckland the cricket thrives wonderfully, both on the hearth, or as near as he can get to it, and on the road. Everywhere his cheerful temperament expresses itself in song, now in jubilant solo, again in one grand chorus. Nevertheless, the cricket's chirping performances are not appreciated. Even while filling the earth with melody he has been called hard names; and among other dire visitations threatening him are poisoning and death by turkey's bill.
Yet the cricket is one of the oldest settlers in the country. At least forty years ago he arrived as a ​stowaway from Tasmania, and no one has done more than he to colonize the land. When he sailed from Tasmania "Eastward ho!" was his cry of progress; now it is "Everywhere ho!" With hop, skip, and jump he and his have spread over the land until even in Auckland's Queen Street and Karangahape Road I have heard him at midday above the roar of traffic.
Eighty-five miles north of Helensville is Dargaville, the chief town on the Wairoa. Here I boarded a small steamer for the up-river voyage, terminating at Tangiteroria, thirty-five miles distant. In a scenic way this part of the river was more interesting than that below, yet even here the Wairoa was essentially a commercial stream. To a great extent the beauty that had made the river celebrated had disappeared with the stroke of axe and rake of saw.
The loss of primeval beauty was somewhat compensated for by the incidents of navigation and port calls. The captain of the Naumai was an all-around man; a busy and a jocular skipper. As we prepared to leave Dargaville at eight o'clock in the morning he helped to load the cargo, and it was he who put out and pulled in the gangway. He also was purser and pilot; in fact, so busy that he ate his dinner of meat and potatoes at the wheel.
As for the cargo, it consisted of boxes and bundles of bread, strings of fresh fish, barrels of beer, about a dozen kerosene cans filled with skid grease, and three pairs of ox yokes. The yokes were discharged at Ounuwahao, ​the bread and fish were for "all along the line," and the beer was destined for Tangiteroria. As shipping clerk the captain gave such orders as, "Meat, bread, and mail go ashore here"; and "Better put old Tommy's corn ashore, too, I suppose."
The running schedules of the Naumai, it appeared from the remarks of a woman passenger, were somewhat variable.
"You are often undecided," said she to the captain, "whether to tarry for your breakfast or have lunch before you leave home to catch the steamer. It is likely to arrive any time between eight and eleven o'clock."
"Well, isn't that near enough?" asked the jocose captain.
When the traveler reaches Tangiteroria, perhaps he will not recognize it as the head of steamer navigation on the Wairoa. I, at least, did not. At a little landing I was leisurely pacing the deck when the captain approached me and said, "This is your destination." Following the beer barrels, I found that Tangiteroria consisted mainly of a little white wharf, an unpainted store of about the same size, and a hotel where beer and a few other things were available and "dinner now on."
Through Tangiteroria passes the route to the Wairua River Falls, "the Niagara of New Zealand," fifty feet high and about two hundred feet wide. The river which feeds these falls is a very prosaic stream before it plunges over the dark walls of Omiru, flowing sluggishly, ​excepting when in flood, between low, clay-capped banks bordered by flax, toitoi and cabbage trees, in a district abounding in tea-tree and common fern.
In this part of North Auckland are extinct volcanoes, red volcanic soil, and rock-strewn acres. Where volcanoes have not poured out their rich compositions, or rivers have not deposited prolific soil, the surface is almost wholly clay. Once it was thought these clay lands were comparatively valueless, but they have been found to be suitable for fruit culture.
In favorable localities oranges, lemons, and limes grow, in some districts grape culture is a success, and in the far north the banana ripens. The New Zealand banana will never be a serious competitor of the South Sea banana; probably it will never be a competitor at all.
In one of the chief fruit districts of North Auckland is the pleasantest and largest town in the peninsula. This is Whangarei, about one hundred and twenty miles north of Auckland, at the head of a harbor twenty miles long. At the beautiful entrance of this harbor are the sharp and shattered heights of Manaia, a limestone mountain which the elements have sculptured into giant fantasies, and round which hover strange legendary tales.
Fifty miles north of Whangarei is the broad island-dotted Bay of Islands, the most historical spot in New Zealand. Here the first white settlements in New Zealand were established and the sovereignty of Great Britain proclaimed. On this bay was the Dominion's ​first capital and the chief rendezvous of Maoriland's whalers. The first war between the colony and its natives was fought here; and on Christmas Day, 1814, Christianity was first preached to the Maoris by the Reverend Samuel Marsden.
On the south side of the harbor, between the encircling hills of a small bay, is Russell, once Kororareka, New Zealand's first capital. Now it is "the old town of Russell." The capital is more than five hundred miles away, and for at least ten years the New Zealand Official Year Book has dismissed it with the brief statement that it "has a good hotel, besides having a post and telegraph office." But Russell can always boast of having been for many years the most important port in the land. In early days its harbor was filled with whaling and trading ships, and on one Christmas Day about seventy-five years ago nearly thirty whalers were in the bay, and more than a thousand members of their crews were ashore at one time.
North of the Bay of Islands is the charming harbor of Whangaroa, celebrated for its delightful nooks and striking configurations. Among the best-known of its curious sculpturings are Mushroom Rocks and the Duke of Wellington's Head. This last-named cliff face is well denominated. It has pronounced eyebrows, a hooked nose, and firmly set lips.
As seen from the peaceful little port of Whangaroa the most prominent of the harbor's rock figures are St. Peter's and St. Paul's, each several hundred feet high. ​Of the two, St. Paul's is by far the more impressive. Seen from afar its dome-like summit is wonderfully attractive, and it appears to be higher than it is. This conglomerate of boulders and cobblestones was once a Maori fort. The fortifications disappeared long ago, but away up near the cupola I found proofs of former occupation. Scattered about there were many pipi shells, which suggested that the hill once formed part of the ocean's bed, but which really proved that when Maoris held it as a citadel they ate shellfish.
Historically, Whangaroa Harbor is one of the most interesting places in New Zealand. Here, in 1809, occurred the massacre of the Boyd's crew, one of the most atrocious deeds ever recorded against the Maoris.
The Boyd, a ship of five hundred tons, called at Whangaroa Harbor for kauri spars while en route with the first direct cargo from Australia to England. On board were seventy white passengers and five Maoris who were working their passage to New Zealand. One of these natives was Tara, son of a Maori chief, or, as one historian says, himself a chief. Giving as his excuse that he was sick, this man refused to work, and the captain flogged him twice. To a Maori this was exceedingly degrading, and only blood would bring satisfaction.
As soon as Tara landed he showed his bruised back to his tribe. Immediately revenge was planned, and obtained by treachery, the opportunity for which came when the captain and some of his crew went ashore to ​choose the trees to be felled for spars. The natives, cleverly separating them, murdered and ate them. Then, disguising themselves in the clothes of the massacred, Maoris boarded the vessel at night and killed everybody on it, excepting a cabin boy who had shown kindness to Tara, a woman, and two children. The woman and children were saved by hiding themselves.
The attacking party also suffered. Tara's father and several other natives were killed by the explosion of a barrel of powder they carelessly handled. The explosion also set fire to the ship and totally destroyed it. As for Tara, he ever afterward hated Europeans, and in turn he was disliked by his own people, who undertook to revenge his humiliation because, according to Maori custom, an insult to one Maori was an insult to his entire tribe.
If the whalers on the coast had not resolved to have revenge for this massacre, probably no further consequences would have resulted from this imprudent flogging. But the whalers thirsted for utu also, and attacking the chief whom they erroneously believed responsible for the slaughter, they destroyed his village and killed every native In it, excepting the chief, who escaped.
A result of this vengeance was long and murderous strife between the whites and the Maoris. For three years after the massacre, says one historian, "natives took revenge on any pakeha who fell into their power." The whites retaliated, and, says Gudgeon, "very few ​vessels departed without committing some act of violence."
Nearly two hundred miles north of Auckland, on and at the base of low red hills overlooking a pretty harbor, is the sleepy little town of Mangonui, which some day will be the northern terminus of the North Auckland Main Trunk Railway. Near it are extensive mangrove swamps, slimy nurseries of the sea overrun by tiny crabs. In the swampy districts north of it are some of the richest kauri deposits in New Zealand.
Of all the principal industries of New Zealand the most singular is the kauri-gum industry. Soon after reaching Auckland I heard of gum-stores, gum-merchants, gum-brokers, and of lonely gum-seekers, who pitched their tents in wastes of fern and tea-tree. When I scanned a newspaper I saw paragraphs about gum quotations, and I found gum displayed in many windows. On Customs Street I discovered kauri-gum merchants to be as common as mercers and hatters on Queen Street. Altogether it was quite a gummy place.
Kauri gum exists only in the Auckland Land District, south of which the kauri tree does not grow, and mainly north of Auckland City. In the latter portion of the district so large is the area overturned by gum-diggers that in sections of it which I traversed the whole countryside seemed to have been spaded up. Properly this resinous product is not gum, but it is universally so called in New Zealand. The New Zealand gum is valued chiefly for its ​varnishing-making properties, although it also is extensively used in the manufacture of linoleum. Since 1847 New Zealand has been exploiting its gum deposits, and to date they have yielded more than $80,000,000, or nearly twice as much as has been realized from coal produced within the Dominion in the same time. They still annually yield about $2,500,000, the greater portion of which is contributed by the United States, the heaviest buyer.
When kauri gum was first marketed it sold for only twenty-five dollars a ton; now the average price is about thirteen times greater. The most valuable gum is transparent, which sells as high as six hundred dollars a ton, and often is used as a substitute for amber.
The first gum marketed was extracted much easier than most of that found to-day; it was either on the surface or barely embedded. Next it was found about a foot below the ground; now much of it lies several feet underground. The gum also is obtained by climbing living trees and tapping them,—a hazardous method that is prohibited on Crown lands,—but by far the greater part is obtained from the ground, where from two to four layers are found, indicating the previous existence of as many forests.
In exuding from the trees the gum has solidified into brittle lumps and undergone so many chemical changes that experts can assort it into a score or more of grades. Many of these lumps weigh from fifty to one hundred pounds, and I learned of one that weighed three hundred and sixty pounds.
​In color kauri gum varies from pale yellow to reddish-brown and black. When first taken from the earth its color is obscured by soil, which has to be scraped off before the gum is marketable.
After the industry was fairly started gum digging proved so profitable that it attracted thousands of men. To-day there are five thousand permanent and three thousand casual gum-diggers. The greatest aggregation of diggers are Austrians, who were attracted to New Zealand many years ago by the inspiriting accounts of two sailors and, later, by the success of two Austrian gum-diggers who returned home with $45,000 won by them in a Tattersall's sweep. Usually they work together in gangs of from twenty to thirty, spending the summer in the swamps and the winter on the hills. They work long hours on the fields and spend parts of the mornings and evenings scraping gum in their dilapidated-looking camps.
In his quest for gum the digger works with spear and spade. The spear is a pointed rod from eight to twelve feet long which is thrust into the soil to locate the gum. When a deposit is discovered the spade is used to uncover it. In some places the gum lies so deep that extensive excavations are required, and in very wet swamps hand pumps are employed to draw off the water. In such places digging is very disagreeable.
In good deposits diggers earn from fifteen to twenty-five dollars per week, and for a while sometimes double these sums. At Ahipara a gum-buyer told me that one ​man had earned two hundred and fifty dollars in six weeks.
From the fields, after scraping, in which many women join, the gum is taken to gum depots for sale. At these depots some of the gum is graded, as also to some extent on the fields; but the greater part of it is graded in Auckland, the chief gum-buying and exporting port of New Zealand.
Beyond the gum-fields, away north to New Zealand's land's end, is Te Reinga, "a low point jutting out into the sea, with a sandy beach below." At one time a pohutukawa tree stood there, and down one of its roots, say Maoris, spirits descended into the earth to Reinga's portals. Some Maoris, I learned by inquiry among them, still believe spirits enter the future world at this point.
The passage of spirits to Te Reinga is beautifully told in Judge Maning's translation of the Maori poem, "The Spirit Land." The lines describing the spirits' flight are as follows:—
"To the far North, with many a bend, along the rugged shore That sad road leads, o'er rocks and weeds, whence none returneth more. The weak, the strong, all pass along—the coward and the brave— From that dread track none turneth back, none can escape the grave.
"Passing now are the ghosts of the dead; The winds are hushed, the rude waves hide their head; And the fount flows silently, And the breeze forgets to sigh, ​And the torrents to moan O'er rock and stone, For the dead pass by! Now on the barren spirit track Lingering sadly, gazing back, Slowly moves a ghastly train.
One of the most interesting features of my tour in North Auckland was life in the "back blocks." Of its rural districts one of the most primitive was north of the long, river-like Hokianga Harbor, away in the hills of Broadwood and Herekino and on to the seventy-mile beach of Ahipara. In places rough bush tracks were the only highways, hotels were far apart, and oxen pioneered the way for horses. Here were little farms stocked with a few cows, sheep, and pigs; houses with large exterior chimneys of wood or galvanized iron; blackened clearings, and the smoke of annual forest fires.
In such settlements public amusements are few and infrequent. Therefore when a moving-picture show or a vaudeville company comes to town, it is a great event to the inhabitants, even though the performance be a poor one. It is customary, too, to strengthen the evening's entertainment by following it with a public dance.
Arriving late at Peria one day, I had no sooner sat down in the empty dining room for tea than a young Maori waitress eagerly informed me: "There's going to be a show to-night. I am going to it."
As she spoke her eyes sparkled, she smiled broadly, and in her best dress, new shoes and collar and tie, she ​made a picture that was bound to impress some brown Peria swain before the night waxed pale.
Although North Auckland's remotest districts are compelled by force of circumstances to deny themselves many amusements, they appeared to me to have plenty to eat, especially in Herekino, a little settlement in timbered mountains of the west coast. This hamlet is just the place for picnics; indeed, if I was correctly informed, Herekino's two boarding-houses set picnic tables every day.
When I sat down at one of their well-laden boards I felt like a boy at a Sunday-School feast. It happened that, being late, I sat alone, and therefore the bounty spread before me was the more impressive. From end to end of the long table were cakes and cookies, but I was most attracted by two large dishes of jam tarts. There were dozens of them. And why such profusion? Was it because the district schoolmaster and his wife and the village doctor boarded there? No, I was assured; it was just a Herekino custom to set a good table.
Jam tarts such as I saw at Herekino are very common in New Zealand, but they and all other pastry tarts are by no means the only kind. In Maoriland there are tarts and tarts.
"The tarts were good," I read in a Queenstown hotel register on the day of my arrival there. The intelligence cheered me, for I interpreted it as a promise of delicious pastry. I was at the hotel several days, yet not in all that time did I see a tart. At last it dawned upon me ​that the writer was referring to young women; for I had been told that in New Zealand it is "his tart" and "her Johnny."
Tarts are very well in their place, but when an American pie-eater finds them usurping the pie, as in New Zealand, he feels like lodging a protest. In the Dominion they have American-built railway cars and locomotives, American plows and binders, American this and American that, but—they have no American pie. True, they have the word, but beyond its application to meat-pies it is a misnomer. In pastry-cooks' shops I sometimes saw what looked like a pie, but it was advertised as a tart.
At hotels they gave me what the menu said was pie, but no self-respecting American pie would recognize it as such. Aside from the meat variety, it is hard to classify so-called pie in New Zealand. There are so many species. One very common sort sprawls all over its plate. Undeniably it is a half-caste, but whether it is a half-caste pie or a half-caste pudding only an expert classifier could tell. This alleged pie half protrudes from its crusty shell. Another sort often comes entirely out of its shell, while there are others that have no shell at all; but as a rule these latter are sheltered at one side by a flaky square or rectangle.
Many New Zealand pies are served in half-developed soup-dishes, or in dishes that are a cross between a soup-plate and a large saucer. A Dunedin pie, served me in one of these hybrid dishes, was six parts apple and one ​part crust; in other words, it was a mound of fruit topped by a thin crust less than two inches square. As a bottom crust apparently had not been mentioned in the recipe, none was discernible.
In Wellington an American chanced to see a real pie, under the cognomen of tart, in the window of a tea-room. Marveling greatly, he stopped to stare, and as he gazed fondly on the pie he wished that he was hungry; but as he was not, he finally tore himself away with the resolution to return when he was prepared to eat. He neglected, however, to note the tea-room's location. For two days he searched before he found it; then into it he strode.
"What kinds of tarts have you?" he asked a waitress.
"Apple, cherry, and black currant," she replied.
"I'll have one of each, please," he ordered, and joyously sat down and ate them then and there.
A dozen miles from Herekino is Ahipara, celebrated for its beach, one of the finest and longest in New Zealand. Ahipara also is a Maori stronghold, and has one of the largest native schools in the country. When I was there this school had more than one hundred pupils, who were instructed by a white man and his wife and two Maori assistants. Although it was a native school, eight or ten white children attended it. In New Zealand mixed attendance in Maori districts is not uncommon, and it is marked by little, if any, friction between Maori and white pupils on account of race distinctions.
​Maori boys and girls like to attend school, and to do so many of them travel astonishingly long distances. In one school an inspector found that in a single week many children had covered one hundred and twenty miles. Heta Harewi, a lad fifteen years old, walked twenty miles every day to attend school in 1910! Another North Auckland Maori youth had an easier way of getting to school. He rode a young bull to the house of instruction.
At Ahipara I saw several Maori boys and girls hurrying to school after it had been called one morning.
"You are late," said I to a boy. "Are you late every day?"
"Yes," he breathlessly answered to my surprise. "I have to come six and a half miles."
The parents of Maori children also show an interest in education. One father rode ninety miles to be present at the examination at which his two children, who were only in the preparatory class, were presented.
The Maori child is just as apt a pupil as the white child, the Secretary of Education informed me, but he labors under a disadvantage. He must first overcome the language difficulty, and he must learn an alphabet nearly twice as long as his own. Naturally, some of his replies to his teacher's queries are of peculiar construction. In explaining the meaning of "angry foes," one boy said: "Angry foes are friends to fight with." In ​estimating distances it is common to say: "Good horse, two miles; bad horse, too far."
WAIRUA FALLS
GUM DIGGERS AT WORK IN KAURI FOREST