I VISITED many places during my wanderings in New Zealand, among them the beautiful Bay of Akaroa, and many other romantic scenes. The New Zealand bush is wild and grand enough, and the Maoris deeply interested me. I visited one aged Maori warrior, called Matene-Te-Nga. Samoan tattooing was nothing compared to the engraving on his big frame. He spoke English perfectly, but said little. He had kind, deep-set eyes and a wrinkled face that was also deeply carved; indeed he looked like a stalwart bit of brownish Greek sculptural work, covered with hieroglyphics, when he moved with majestic precision. Curves of artistic tattooing joined his stern, straight nose to his chin and upward to his eyebrows. He was the one surviving warrior of a time when New Zealand was a real Maori land, when the beautiful legendary lore of to-day was poetical reality to the land’s original race. Matene had fought with the tribes while fleets of canoes were ambushed in the gulf.
At Rotorua too I interviewed Maoris in their native pah. They wore but few clothes. The girls and women had good-looking, stoical faces.
The Maoris strongly resemble the islanders of the Samoan and Tongan Groups; indeed so pronounced is the likeness that one cannot help thinking that the two races are allied by blood ties, and probably drifted from New Zealand to the Pacific Isles, or vice versa, ages ago. For several weeks I went off on my wanderings, accompanied by my beloved comrade—my violin. I had still a pound or so in my possession, which I intended to keep for the rainy day that would be sure to darken the blue sky of glorious vagabondage. So, while the skies were bright, I made my bed in the bush, and by the light of the moon read Byron’s Poems. I had bought a paper-covered edition of them in Wellington and carried them in my violin-case. Oh! the romantic splendour of those days and nights, when I drank in the Byronic atmosphere. The glorious illusion of youth, the rosy glamour that is not what it seems and seems what it’s not, hung about me, as I sat under the giant karri-trees by the track, or approached the Maori stronghold with Don Juan sparkling in my eyes.
On the west coast ranges, North Island, I came across a “bush-faller’s” camp. I walked across the slope and introduced myself to the solitary occupant, an old Irishman. He turned out to be an interesting and congenial member of the wandering species. His camp was pitched by a creek that led to a lake, the banks of which were surrounded by beautiful ferns, eucalyptus and trees covered with fiery blossoms musical with the moan of bees. As we sat together and sunset touched the lake waters with fire, and primeval silence brooded over the forest, broken only by the weird note of birds, I could easily have imagined that I and my comrade occupied a new continent alone. Parakeets went shrieking across the forest and over the lake; we only saw their shadows in the still water and heard the tuneless beaks scream as they passed overhead and left a deeper silence behind. I stopped with the “bush-faller” one night. “Good-bye, mate,” he said, as he looked up to me with his grateful, round blue eyes and placed my gift in his pocket. He had told me where there was a Maori pah several miles away, and had come stumbling with me through the undergrowth for a long way, to direct me to the track that led to the main road.
That same evening I came across several old whares by a sheet of water, at the foot of a tremendous range of hills that rolled to the southward. It was extremely hot weather, and, as I followed the track round by the water’s edge, I saw the little Maori children paddling by the lake shores as the native women were fishing. On the other side of the lake were several wooden homesteads where some whites lived.
I walked into the Maori village and the children stared stolidly at me as they stood by the shed doors. Presently I came across an old Maori chief sitting under a mangrove. He looked very aged, possibly more so through his face being carved with dark blue tattoo. He spoke English well, and as I approached he welcomed me and said: “Play me your music.” I at once sat down by him and began to talk. As we were speaking a crowd of Maori girls came round us, and some men, who wanted to hear me play the violin. The old chief took me into his dwelling. It was strikingly clean. I saw his wife squatting in the corner, reading a book printed in the Maori language. She was a very ugly old woman and when she smiled revealed bare gums that seemed to reach to her ears. Her hideousness intensified the youthful beauty of the Maori girls, who came rushing into the pah while I was speaking to the old man. They were beautiful girls, with the usual fine eyes, and a marvellous wealth of hair that glistened over their bare shoulders and fell to their bosoms. The sight of them reminded me of my pretty Maori girl, who had long haunted my dreams.
I stayed near that settlement for several days and attended the rehearsal of a canoe dance. The weird beauty of that scene in many ways recalled memories of the fantastic sights I had seen in the South Sea Islands. One night, when the moon was shining over the lake and forest, the Maori girls came forth from the pah, attired in scanty robes of woven grass and flowers reaching to their knees. Across the forest patch in front of the pah they ran with bare feet, waving their arms and singing a chant in their native language. Then lying down in a row, prone, in the deep grass, they moved their bodies and arms as though to imitate canoe-paddling, all the time chanting a Maori melody. It was an unforgettable sight, the moonlight glimpsing over their bodies as the night wind lifted their luxuriant hair. They looked like mermaids paddling in seaweed at the bottom of an ocean of moonlight. All the while the Maori men gazed with admiring eyes.
I heard many Maori songs. They struck me as being full of a wild, poetic atmosphere that suggested tribal battles and the legendary sadness of far-off deeds of passion and love.