in one of the rambling myths of the maori we are told how the hero rata, wishing to build a canoe, went into the forest and felled a tree. in the old days of stone axes, tree-felling was not the work of an hour, but the toil of days. great, therefore, was rata’s vexation when, on returning to the scene of his labours, he found that the tree had been set up again by magic, and was standing without a trace of injury. much perplexed, the woodcutter thereupon sought out a famous goddess or priestess, who told him that the restoration was the work of the hakaturi, or wood-fairies, whom he must propitiate with certain ceremonies and incantations. rata therefore once more cut the tree down, and having done so, hid himself close by. presently from the thickets there issued a company of small bow-legged people, who, surrounding the fallen tree, began to chant to it somewhat as follows:—
ah! ’tis rata; he is felling
tané’s forest, our green dwelling.
yet we cry, and lo, upspring [77]
chips and splinters quivering.
leap together—life will hold you!
cling together—strength will fold you!
yes—the tree-god’s ribs are bound
now by living bark around.
yes—the trembling wood is seen,
standing straight and growing green.
the return of the war canoe
and, surely enough, as they sang, the severed trunk rose and reunited, and every flake and chip of bark and wood flew together straightway. then rata, calling out to them, followed the injunctions given him. they talked with him, and in the end he was told to go away and return next morning. when he came back, lo! in the sunshine lay a new war-canoe, glorious with black and red painting, and tufts of large white feathers, and with cunning spirals on prow and tall stern-post, carved as no human hand could carve them. in this canoe he sailed over the sea to attack and destroy the murderer of his father.
lovers of the new zealand forest, who have to live in an age when axe and fire are doing their deadly work so fast, must regret that the fairies, defenders of trees, have now passed away. of yore when the maori were about to fell a tree they made propitiatory offerings to tané and his elves, at any rate when the tree was one of size. for, so tregear tells us, they distinguished between the aristocracy of the forest and the common multitude. totara and rimu were rangatira, or gentlemen to whom sacrifice must be offered, while underbrush might be hacked and slashed [78]without apology. so it would seem that when cowley was writing the lines—
hail, old patrician trees so great and good;
hail, ye plebeian underwood!
he was echoing a class distinction already hit upon by the fancy of tattooed savages in an undiscovered island. now all things are being levelled. great tané is dead, and the children of the tree-god have few friends. perhaps some uncommercial botanist or misliked rhymester may venture on a word for them; or some much-badgered official may mark out a reserve in fear and trembling. canon stack, who knew the maori of the south island so well, says that half a century ago the belief in fairies was devout, and that he often conversed with men who were certain that they had seen them. one narrator in particular had caught sight of a band of them at work amid the curling mists of a lofty hill-top where they were building a stockaded village. so evident was the faith of the man in the vision he described that canon stack was forced to think that he had seen the forms of human builders reflected on the mountain-mist, after the fashion of the spectre of the brocken.
okahumoko bay, whangaroa
for myself, i could not have the heart to apply scientific analysis to our maori fairy-tales, all too brief and scanty as they are. it is, doubtless, interesting to speculate on the possible connections of these with the existence of shadowy tribes who may have inhabited parts of new zealand in the distant centuries, and been [79]driven into inaccessible mountains and entangled woods by the maori invader. to me, however, the legends seem to indicate a belief, not in one supernatural race, but in several. in europe, of course, the northern traditions described beings of every sort of shape, from giants and two-headed ogres to minute elves almost too small to be seen. and in the same continent, under clearer skies, were the classic myths of nymphs and woodland deities, human in shape, but of a beauty exceeding that of mankind. so keats could dream of enchanting things that happened
upon a time before the fa?ry broods
drove nymph and satyr from the prosperous woods,
before king oberon’s bright diadem,
sceptre and mantle clasped with dewy gem,
frightened away the dryads and the fauns
from rushes green and brakes and cowslipp’d lawns.
in much the same way do the maori stories vary. one tells us of giant hunters attended by two-headed dogs. another seems to indicate a tiny race of wood elves or goblins. elsewhere the maori story-teller explains that fairies were much like human beings, but white-skinned, and with red or yellow hair, nearly resembling the pakeha. they haunted the sea-shore and the recesses of the hill-forests, whither they would decoy the incautious maori by their singing. the sound of their cheerful songs was sweet and clear, and in the night-time the traveller would hear their voices among the trees, now on this side, now on that; or the notes would seem to rise near at hand, and then recede and [80]fall, dying away on the distant hill-sides. their women were beautiful, and more than one maori ancestral chief possessed himself of a fairy wife. on the other hand, the fairies would carry off the women and maidens of the maori, or even, sometimes, little children, who were never seen again, though their voices were heard by sorrowing mothers calling in the air over the tree-tops.
maori fishing party
sir george grey was the first, i think, to write down any of the maori fairy-tales; at any rate, two of the best of them are found in his book. one concerns the adventure of the chief kahukura, who, walking one evening on the sea-shore in the far north of the north island, saw strange footprints and canoe marks on the sands. clearly fishermen had been there; but their landing and departure must have taken place in the night, and there was something about the marks they had left that was puzzling and uncanny. kahukura went his way pondering, and “held fast in his heart what he had seen.” so after nightfall back he came to the spot, and after a while the shore was covered with fairies. canoes were paddled to land dragging nets full of mackerel, and all were busy in securing the fish. kahukura mingled with the throng, and was as busy as any, picking up fish and running a string of flax through their gills. like many maori chiefs, he was a light-complexioned man, so fair that in the starlight the fairies took him for one of themselves. morning approached, and the fishermen were anxious to finish their work; but kahukura contrived [81]by dropping and scattering fish to impede and delay them until dawn. with the first streaks of daylight the fairies discovered that a man was among them, and fled in confusion by sea and land, leaving their large seine net lying on the shore. it is true that the net was made of rushes; but the pattern and knotting were so perfect and ingenious that the maori copied them, and that is how they learned to make fishing-nets.
another chief, te kanawa, fell in with the fairies high up on a wooded mountain near the river waikato. this encounter also, we are assured, took place long ago, before the coming of white men. te kanawa had been hunting the wingless kiwi, and, surprised by night, had to encamp in the forest. he made his bed of fern among the buttresses at the foot of a large pukatea-tree, and, protected by these and his fire, hoped to pass the night comfortably. soon, however, he heard voices and footsteps, and fairies began to circle round about, talking and laughing, and peeping over the buttresses of the pukatea at the handsome young chief. their women openly commented on his good looks, jesting with each other at their eagerness to examine him. te kanawa, however, was exceedingly terrified, and thought of nothing but of how he might propitiate his inquisitive admirers and save himself from some injury at their hands. so he took from his neck his hei-tiki, or charm of greenstone, and from his ears his shark’s-tooth ornaments, and hung them upon a wand which he held out as an [82]offering to the fairy folk. at once these turned to examine the gifts with deep interest. according to one version of the story they made patterns of them, cut out of wood and leaves. according to another, they, by enchantment, took away the shadows or resemblances of the prized objects. in either case they were satisfied to leave the tangible ornaments with their owner, and disappeared, allowing te kanawa to make his way homeward. that he did with all possible speed, at the first glimpse of daylight, awe-struck but gratified by the good nature of the elves.
carved house, ohinemutu
a third story introduces us to a husband whose young wife had been carried off and wedded by a fairy chief. for a while she lived with her captor in one of the villages of the fairies into which no living man has ever penetrated, though hunters in the forest have sometimes seen barriers of intertwined wild vines, which are the outer defences of an elfin pa. the bereaved husband at last bethought himself of consulting a famous tohunga, who, by powerful incantations, turned the captured wife’s thoughts back to her human husband, and restored the strength of her love for him. she fled, therefore, from her fairy dwelling, met her husband, who was lurking in the neighbourhood, and together they regained their old home. thither, of course, the fairies followed them in hot pursuit. but the art of the tohunga was equal to the danger. he had caused the escaped wife and the outside of her house to be streaked and plastered with red ochre. [83]he had also instructed the people of the village to cook food on a grand scale, so that the air should be heavy with the smell of the cooking at the time of the raid of the fairies. the sight of red ochre and the smell of cooked food are so loathsome to the fairy people that they cannot endure to encounter them. so the baffled pursuers halted, fell back and vanished, and the wife remained peacefully with her husband, living a happy maori life.
the maori might well worship tané, the tree-god, who held up the sky with his feet and so let in light upon the sons of earth. for the forest supplied them with much more than wood for their stockades, canoes, and utensils. it sheltered the birds which made such an important part of the food of the maori, living as they did in a land without four-footed beasts. tame as the birds were, the fowlers, on their side, were without bows and arrows, and knew nothing of the blow-gun, which would have been just the weapon for our jungles. they had to depend mainly on snaring and spearing, and upon the aid of decoys. though the snaring was ingenious enough, it was the spearing that needed especial skill and was altogether the more extraordinary. the spears were made of the tawa-tree, and while they were but an inch in thickness, were thirty feet long or even longer. one tree could only supply two of these slim weapons, which, after metals became known to the maori, were tipped with iron. when not in use they were lashed or hung in a tree. taking one in hand the fowler would climb up to a platform [84]prepared in some tree, the flowers or berries of which were likely to attract wild parrots or pigeons. then the spear was pushed upwards, resting against branches. all the fowler’s art was next exerted to draw down the birds by his decoys to a perch near the spear-point. that accomplished, a quick silent stab did the rest. many living white men have seen this dexterous feat performed, though it must be almost a thing of the past now. as soon as the maori began to obtain guns, and that is ninety years ago, they endeavoured to shoot birds with them. having a well-founded distrust of their marksmanship, they would repeat as closely as possible the tactics they had found useful in spearing. climbing silently and adroitly into the trees and as near their pigeon or kaka as possible, they waited until the muzzle of the gun was within a foot or two of the game, and then blew the unfortunate bird from the branch. major cruise witnessed this singular performance in the year 1820. birds were among the delicacies which the maori preserved for future use, storing them in tightly-bound calabashes, where they were covered with melted fat. their favourite choice for this process was a kind of puffin or petrel, the mutton-bird, which goes inland to breed, and nests in underground burrows.
a bush road
though no great traveller, i have seen beautiful landscapes in fourteen or fifteen countries, and yet hold to it that certain views of our forest spreading round lakes and over hills and valleys, peaceful and unspoiled, [85]are sights as lovely as are to be found. whence comes their complete beauty? of course, there are the fine contours of mountain and vale, cliff and shore. and the abundance of water, swirling in torrents, leaping in waterfalls, or winding in lakes or sea-gulfs, aids greatly. but to me the magic of the forest—i speak of it where you find it still unspoiled—comes first from its prodigal life and continual variety. why, asks a naturalist, do so many of us wax enthusiastic over parasites and sentimental over lianas? because, i suppose, these are among the most striking signs of the astonishing vitality and profusion which clothe almost every yard of ground and foot of bark, and, gaining foothold on the trees, invade the air itself. nature there is not trimmed and supervised, weeded out, swept and garnished, as in european woods. she lets herself go, expelling nothing that can manage to find standing room or breathing space. every rule of human forestry and gardening appears to be broken, and the result is an easy triumph for what seems waste and rank carelessness. trees tottering with age still dispute the soil with superabundant saplings, or, falling, lean upon and are held up by undecaying neighbours. dead trunks cumber the ground, while mosses, ferns, and bushes half conceal them. creepers cover matted thickets, veiling their flanks and netting them into masses upon which a man may sit, and a boy be irresistibly tempted to walk. aloft, one tree may grow upon another, and itself bear the burden of a third. parasites twine round parasites, dangle in purposeless ropes, or [86]form loops and swings in mid-air. some are bare, lithe and smooth-stemmed; others trail curtains of leaves and pale flowers. trees of a dozen species thrust their branches into each other, till it is a puzzle to tell which foliage belongs to this stem, which to that; and flax-like arboreal colonists fill up forks and dress bole and limbs fantastically. adventurous vines ramble through the interspaces, linking trunk to trunk and complicating the fine confusion. all around is a multitudinous, incessant struggle for life; but it goes on in silence, and the impression left is not regret, but a memory of beauty. the columnar dignity of the great trees contrasts with the press and struggle of the undergrowth, with the airy lace-work of fern fronds, and the shafted grace of the stiffer palm-trees. from the moss and wandering lycopodium underfoot, to the victorious climber flowering eighty feet overhead, all is life, varied endlessly and put forth without stint. of course there is death at work around you, too; but who notes the dying amid such a riot of energy? the earth itself smells moist and fresh. what seems an odour blended of resin, sappy wood, damp leaves, and brown tinder, hangs in the air. but the leafy roof is lofty enough, and the air cool and pure enough, to save you from the sweltering oppressiveness of an equatorial jungle. the dim entanglement is a quiet world, shut within itself and full of shadows. yet, in bright weather, rays of sunshine shoot here and there against brown and grey bark, and clots of golden light, dripping through the foliage, dance on vivid mosses and the root-enlacement of the earth.
[87]
“the forest rears on lifted arms
its leafy dome whence verdurous light
shakes through the shady depths and warms
proud trunk and stealthy parasite.
there where those cruel coils enclasp
the trees they strangle in their grasp.”
when the sky is overcast the evergreen realm darkens. in one mood you think it invitingly still and mysterious; in another, its tints fade to a common dulness, and gloom fills its recesses. pattering raindrops chill enthusiasm. the mazy paradise is filled with “the terror of unending trees.” the silence grows unnatural, the rustle of a chance bird startles. anything from a python to a jaguar might be hidden in labyrinths that look so tropical. in truth there is nothing there larger than a wingless and timid bird; nothing more dangerous than a rat poaching among the branches in quest of eggs; nothing more annoying than a few sandflies.
the european’s eye instinctively wanders over the foliage in search of likenesses to the flora of northern lands. he may think he detects a darker willow in the tawa, a brighter and taller yew in the matai, a giant box in the rata, a browner laburnum in the kowhai, a slender deodar in the rimu, and, by the sea, a scarlet-flowering ilex in the pohutu-kawa. the sub-alpine beech forests are indeed european, inferior though our small-leaved beeches are to the english. you see in them wide-spreading branches, an absence of underbrush and luxuriant climbers, and a steady repetition of the [88]same sort and condition of tree, all recalling europe. elsewhere there is little that does this. in the guide-books you constantly encounter the word “pine,” but you will look round in vain for anything like the firs of scotland, the maritime pines of gascony, or the black and monotonous woods of prussia. the nikau-palm, tree-fern, and palm-lily, the serpentine and leafy parasites, and such extraordinary foliage as that of the lance-wood, rewa-rewa, and two or three kinds of panax, add a hundred distinctive details to the broad impression of difference.
among the kauri
i suppose that most new zealanders, if asked to name the finest trees of their forest, would declare for the kauri and the totara. some might add the puriri to these. but then the average new zealander is a practical person and is apt to estimate a forest-tree in terms of sawn timber. not that a full-grown kauri is other than a great and very interesting tree. its spreading branches and dark crown of glossy-green leaves, lifted above its fellows of the woodland, like saul’s head above the people, catch and hold the eye at once. and the great column of its trunk impresses you like the pillar of an egyptian temple, not by classic grace, but by a rotund bulk, sheer size and weight speaking of massive antiquity. it is not their height that makes even the greatest of the kauri tribe remarkable, for one hundred and fifty feet is nothing extraordinary. but their picked giants measure sixty-six feet in circumference, with a diameter that, at least in one case, has reached twenty-four. [89]moreover, the smooth grey trunks rise eighty or even a hundred feet without the interruption of a single branch. and when you come to the branches, they are as large as trees: some have been measured and found to be four feet through. then, though the foliage is none too dense, each leaf is of a fair size. from their lofty roof above your head to the subsoil below your feet, all is odorous of resin. leaves and twigs smell of it; it forms lumps in the forks, oozes from the trunk and mixes with the earth—the swelling humus composed of flakes of decayed bark dropped through the slow centuries. there are still kauri pines in plenty that must have been vigorous saplings when william the norman was afforesting south-western hampshire. the giants just spoken of are survivors from ages far more remote. for they may have been tall trees when cedars were being hewn on lebanon for king solomon’s temple. and then the kauri has a pathetic interest: it is doomed. at the present rate of consumption the supply will not last ten years. commercially it is too valuable to be allowed to live undisturbed, and too slow of growth to make it worth the while of a money-making generation to grow it. even the young “rickers” are callously slashed and burned away. who regards a stem that may be valuable a quarter of a century hence, or a seedling that will not be worth money during the first half of the twentieth century? so the kauri, like the african elephant, the whale, and the bison, seems likely to become a rare [90]survival. it will be kept to be looked at in a few state reserves. then men may remember that once upon a time virtually all the town of auckland was built of kauri timber, and that von hochstetter, riding through a freshly burned kauri “bush,” found the air charged with a smell as of frankincense and myrrh.
nor is the totara other than a king of the woods, albeit a lesser monarch than the giant. its brown shaggy trunk looks best, to my thinking, when wrapped in a rough overcoat of lichens, air-lilies, climbing ferns, lianas, and embracing rootlets. such a tree, from waist to crown, is often a world of shaggy greenery, where its own bristling, bushy foliage may be lit up by the crimson of the florid rata, or the starry whiteness of other climbers. the beauty of the totara is not external only. its brown wood is handsome, and a polished piece of knotty or mottled totara almost vies with mottled kauri in the cabinet-maker’s esteem.
for utility no wood in the islands, perhaps, surpasses that of the puriri, the teak of the country. one is tempted to say that it should be made a penal offence to burn a tree at once so serviceable and so difficult to replace. a tall puriri, too, with its fresh-green leaves and rose-tinted flowers, is a cheering sight, especially when you see, as you sometimes do, healthy specimens which have somehow managed to survive the cutting down and burning of the other forest trees, and stand in fields from which the bush has been cleared away.
pohutukawa in bloom, whangaroa harbour
yet none of the three trees named seems to me to [91]equal in beauty or distinction certain other chieftains of the forest. surely the cedar-like rimu—silv? filia nobilis,—with its delicate drooping foliage and air of slender grace, and the more compact titoki with polished curving leaves and black-and-crimson berries, are not easily to be matched. and surpassing even these in brilliance and strangeness are a whole group of the iron-heart family, ratas with flowers blood-red or white, and their cousin the “spray-sprinkled” pohutu-kawa. the last-named, like the kauri, puriri, tawari, and tarairi, is a northerner, and does not love the south island, though a stray specimen or two have been found in banks’ peninsula. but the rata, though shunning the dry mid-eastern coast of the south island, ventures much nearer the antarctic. the variety named lucida grows in stewart island, and forms a kind of jungle in the auckland isles, where, beaten on its knees by the furious gales, it goes down, so to speak, on all fours, and, lifting only its crown, spreads in bent thickets in a climate as wet and stormy as that of the moors of cumberland.
the rata of the south would, but for its flowers, be an ordinary tree enough, very hard, very slow in growing, and carrying leaves somewhat like those of the english box-tree. but when in flower in the later summer, it crowns the western forests with glory, and lights up mountain passes and slopes with sheets of crimson. the splendour of the flower comes not from its petals, but from what kirk the botanist calls “the fiery crimson filaments of its innumerable stamens,” standing [92]as they do in red crests, or hanging downward in feathery fringes. to win full admiration the rata must be seen where it spreads in profusion, staining cliffs, sprinkling the dark-green tree-tops with blood, and anon seeming in the distance to be massed in cushions of soft red. trees have been found bearing golden flowers, but such are very rare.
the rata lucida does not climb other trees. another and even brighter species, the florid rata, is a climbing plant, and so are two white-flowered kinds named albiflora and scandens, both beautiful in their way, but lacking the distinction of the blood-hued species, for white is only too common a colour in our forest flora. the florid rata, on the other hand, is perhaps the most brilliant of the tribe. winding its way up to the light, it climbs to the green roof of the forest, and there flaunts a bold scarlet like the crest of some gay bird of the tropics. it is a snake-like vine, and, vine like, yields a pale rose-tinted drink, which with a little make-believe may be likened to rough cider. rata wine, however, is not crushed from grapes, but drawn from the vine-stem. mr. laing states that as much as a gallon and a half of liquid has dripped from a piece of the stem four feet long, after it had been cut and kept dry for three weeks.
but the most famous rata is neither the vine nor the tree of the south. it is the tree-killing tree of the north island, the species named robusta. its flowers are richer than the southerner’s, and whereas the latter is not often more than fifty feet high, robusta is [93]sometimes twice as tall as that. and it is as strong as tall, for its hard, heavy logs of reddish wood will lie on the ground year after year without decaying. but its fame comes from its extraordinary fashion of growing. strong and erect as it is, and able to grow from the ground in the ordinary way, it prefers to begin life as an epiphyte, springing from seed dropped in a fork or hollow of a high tree. at any rate the tallest and finest specimens begin as seedlings in these airy nests. thence without delay they send down roots to earth, one perhaps on one side of the tree trunk, one on the other. these in their turn, after fixing themselves in the ground, send out cross-roots to clasp each other—transverse pieces looking like the rungs of a rope-ladder. in time oblique rootlets make with these a complete net-work. gradually all meet and solidify, forming a hollow pipe of living wood. this encloses the unhappy tree and in the end presses it to death. many and many a grey perished stick has been found in the interior of the triumphant destroyer. in one tree only does the constrictor meet more than its match. in the puriri it finds a growth harder and stouter than itself. iron is met by steel. the grey smooth trunk goes on expanding, indifferent to the rata’s grasp, and even forcing its gripping roots apart; and the pleasant green of the puriri’s leaves shows freshly among the darker foliage of the strangler.
the rata itself, on gaining size and height, does not escape the responsibilities of arboreal life. its own [94]forks and hollows form starting-points for the growth of another handsome tree-inhabitant, the large or shining broadleaf. beginning sometimes thirty feet from the ground, this last will grow as much as thirty feet higher, and develop a stem fourteen inches thick. not satisfied with sending down roots outside the trunk of its supporter it will use the interior of a hollow tree as a channel through which to reach earth. the foliage which the broadleaf puts forth quite eclipses the leaves of most of the trees upon which it rides, but it does not seem to kill these last, if it kills them at all, as quickly as the iron-hearted rata.
nikau palms
our wild flowers, say the naturalists, show few brilliant hues. our fuschias are poor, our violets white, our gentians pallid—save those of the auckland isles. our clematis is white or creamy, and our passion-flower faint yellow and green. again and again we are told that our flowers, numerous as they are, seldom light up the sombre greens of the forest. this complaint may be pushed much too far. it is true that pale flowers are found in the islands belonging to families which in other countries have brightly coloured members. though, for instance, three or four of our orchids are beautiful, and one falls in a cascade of sweet-scented blooms, most of the species are disappointing. but the array of our more brilliant flowers is very far from contemptible. over and above the gorgeous ratas and their spray-sprinkled cousins are to be reckoned the golden-and-russet kowhai, the crimson parrot’s-beak, veronicas wine-hued or purple, the red mistletoe, the yellow [95]tarata, and the rosy variety of the manuka. the stalks of the flax-lily make a brave show of red and yellow. the centre of the mountain-lily’s cup is shining gold. and when speaking of colour we may fairly take count of the golden glint or pinkish tinge of the toé-toé plumes, the lilac hue of the palm-flower, the orange-coloured fruit of the karaka, and the purples of the tutu and wineberry. nor do flowers lack beauty because they are white,—witness the ribbon-wood loaded with masses of blooms, fine as those of the double cherry, and honey-scented to boot; witness the tawari, the hinau, the rangiora, the daisy-tree, the whau, and half a score more. for myself, i would not change the purity of our starry clematis for the most splendid parasite of the tropics. certainly the pallid-greenish and chocolate hues of some of our flowers are strange; they seem tinged with moonlight and meant for the night hours, and in the dusky jungle carry away one’s thoughts to “rappaccini’s daughter” and “les fleurs du mal.”
for a bit of new zealand colour you may turn to colenso’s description of a certain morning in early october when he found himself on a high hill-top in face of mount ruapehu. snow had fallen in the night and the volcano was mantled heavily therewith. the forest and native village on the hill on which colenso stood were sprinkled with white, and, though the rising sun was shining brightly, a few big flakes continued to flutter down. outside the village a grove of kowhai was covered with golden-and-russet blossoms, all the [96]more noticeable because the young leaves were only on the way. suddenly from the evergreen forest a flock of kakas descended on the kowhais, chattering hoarsely. the great parrots, walking out on the underside of the boughs to the very end of the branches, began to tear open the flowers, piercing them at the side of their base and licking out the honey with their brush-tipped tongues. brown-skinned maori boys climbing the trees brought to the naturalist specimens of the blossoms thus opened by the big beaks. the combination of the golden-brown flowers and green forest; the rough-voiced parrots, olive-brown and splashed with red, swaying on the slender branch-tips; and the sunlight gleaming on the white snow, made, with the towering volcano in the background, a picture as brilliant as curious.
whatever the dim flowers, purple fruit, and glossy leaves of many of our plants might lead the imaginative to expect, the number that are poisonous is very small. only two examples are conspicuous, and but one does any damage to speak of. of the noxious pair the karaka, a handsome shrub, is a favourite garden plant, thanks to its large polished leaves and the deep orange colour of its fruit. it has been a favourite, too, with the maori from time immemorial. they plant it near their villages, and they claim to have brought it in their canoes from polynesia. botanists shake their heads over this assertion, however, the explanation of which is somewhat similar to a famous statement by a certain undergraduate on the crux of the baconian controversy. [97]“the plays of shakespeare,” said this young gentleman, “were not written by him, but by another fellow of the same name.” it seems that there is a polynesian karaka in the islands where the maori once dwelt, but that it is no relation of the new zealand shrub. the affection of the maori for the latter was based on something more practical than an ancestral association. they were extremely fond of the kernel of its fruit. when raw, this is exceedingly bitter and disagreeable—fortunately so, for it contains then a powerful poison. somehow the maori discovered that by long baking or persistent steaming the kernels could be freed from this, and they used to subject them to the process in a most patient and elaborate fashion. now and then some unlucky person—usually a child—would chew a raw kernel and then the result was extraordinary. the poison distorted the limbs and then left them quite rigid, in unnatural postures. to avoid this the maori would lash the arms and legs of the unfortunate sufferer in a natural position, and then bury him up to his shoulders in earth. colenso once saw a case in which this strong step had not been taken, or had failed. at any rate the victim of karaka poison, a well-grown boy, was lying with limbs stiff and immovable, one arm thrust out in front, one leg twisted backwards; he could neither feed himself nor beat off the swarm of sandflies that were pestering him. white children must be more cautious than the maori, for though the karaka shines in half the gardens of the north island, one never hears of any harm coming from it. the other plant with noxious [98]properties is the tutu, and this in times past did much damage among live-stock, sheep especially. much smaller than the karaka, it is still an attractive-looking bush, with soft leaves and purple-black clusters of berries. both berries and shoots contain a poison, powerful enough to interest chemists as well as botanists. sheep which eat greedily of it, especially when tired and fasting after a journey, may die in a few hours. it kills horned cattle also, though horses do not seem to suffer from it. its chief recorded achievement was to cause the death of a circus elephant many years ago, a result which followed in a few hours after a hearty meal upon a mixture of tutu and other vegetation. so powerful is the poison that a chemist who handles the shoots of the plant for an hour or two with his fingers will suffer nausea, pain, and a burning sensation of the skin. an extremely minute internal dose makes the nausea very violent indeed. of course, so dangerous a plant does not get much quarter from the settlers, and for this and other reasons the losses caused by tutu among our flocks and herds are far less than was the case forty or fifty years ago. strangely enough the maoris could make a wine from the juice of the berries, which was said to be harmless and palatable, though i venture to doubt it. white men are said to have tried the liquor, though i have never met any of these daring drinkers. though the most dangerous plant in the islands, it does not seem to have caused any recorded death among white people for more than forty years.
on the pelorus river
our flora has oddities as well as beauties. some of [99]its best-known members belong to the lily tribe. several of these are as different from each other and as unlike the ordinary man’s notion of a lily as could well be. one of the commonest is a lily like a palm-tree, and another equally abundant is a lily like a tall flax. a third is a tree-dweller, a luxuriant mass of drooping blades, resembling sword-grass. a fourth is a black-stemmed wild vine, a coiling and twining parasite of the forest, familiarly named supplejack, which resembles nothing so much as a family of black snakes climbing about playfully in the foliage. another, even more troublesome creeper, is no lily but a handsome bramble, known as the bush-lawyer, equipped with ingenious hooks of a most dilatory kind. when among trees, the lawyer sticks his claws into the nearest bark and mounts boldly aloft; but when growing in an open glade, he collapses into a sort of huddled bush, and cannot even propagate his species, though, oddly enough, in such cases, he grows hooks even more abundantly than when climbing.
members of very different families, the pen-wiper plant and the vegetable sheep are excellently described by their names. that is more than can be said for many of our forest trees. one of these, the aké, has leaves so viscous that in sandy or dusty spots these become too thickly coated with dirt to allow the tree to grow to any size. as a variation the para-para tree has normal leaves, but the skin of its fruit is so sticky that not only insects but small birds have been found glued thereto. a rather common trick of our trees is to change the form of their leaves as they grow old. the slim, [100]straight lance-wood, for instance, will for many years be clothed with long, narrow, leathery-looking leaves, armed with hooks, growing from the stem and pointing stiffly downwards. so long, narrow, and rigid are they that the whole plant stands like an inverted umbrella stripped of its covering. later in life the leaves lose both their hooks and their odd shape, and the lance-wood ceases to look like a survival from the days of the pterodactyl. at no time can it look much stranger than two species of dracophyllum, the nei-nei and the grass-tree. save for the extremities, the limbs of these are naked. they reserve their energies for tufts at the tips. in one species these are like long wisps of grass; in the other they curve back like a pine-apple’s, and from among them springs a large red flower having the shape of a toy tree. even the nei-nei is eclipsed by the tanekaha, or celery pine, which contrives to be a very handsome tree without bearing any leaves whatever; their place is taken by branchlets, thickened and fan-shaped. the raukawa has leaves scented so sweetly that the maori women used to rub their skins with them as a perfume. another more eccentric plant is scentless by day, but smells agreeably at night-time. indeed, both by day and night the air of the forest is pleasant to the nostrils. a disagreeable exception among our plants is the coprosma, emphatically called f?tidissima, concerning which bushmen, entangled in its thickets, have used language which might turn bullock-drivers green with envy.
auckland
the navigators who discovered or traded with our [101]islands while they were still a no man’s land have recorded their admiration of the timber of our forests. the tall sticks of kauri and kahikatea, with their scores of feet of clean straight wood, roused the sailors’ enthusiasm. it seemed to them that they had chanced upon the finest spars in the world. and for two generations after captain cook, trees picked out in the auckland bush, and roughly trimmed there, were carried across on the decks of trading schooners to sydney, and there used by australian shipbuilders. in the year 1819 the british government sent a store-ship, the dromedary, to the bay of islands for a cargo of kauri spars. they were to be suitable for top-masts, so to be from seventy-four to eighty-four feet long and from twenty-one to twenty-three inches thick. after much chaffering with the native chiefs the spars were cut and shipped, and we owe to the expedition an interesting book by an officer on board the dromedary. our export of timber has always been mainly from auckland, and for many years has been chiefly of kauri logs or sawn timber. there has been some export of white pine to australia for making butter-boxes; but the kauri has been the mainstay of the timber trade oversea. other woods are cut and sawn in large quantities, but the timber is consumed within the colony. how large the consumption is may be seen from the number of saw-mills at work—411—and their annual output, which was 432,000,000 superficial feet last year. add to this a considerable amount cut for firewood, fences, and rough carpentering, which [102]does not pass through the mills. and then, great as is the total quantity made use of, the amount destroyed and wasted is also great. accidental fires, sometimes caused by gross carelessness, ravage thousands of acres. “a swagger will burn down a forest to light his pipe,” said sir julius vogel, and the epigram was doubtless true of some of the swag-carrying tribe. but the average swagger is a decent enough labourer on the march in search of work, and not to be classed with the irreclaimable vagrant called tramp in britain. in any case the swagger was never the sole or main offender where forest fires were concerned. it would be correct to say that gum-diggers sometimes burn down a forest in trying to clear an acre of scrub. but bush fires start up from twenty different causes. sparks from a saw-mill often light up a blaze which may end in consuming the mill and its surroundings. i have heard of a dogmatic settler who was so positive that his grass would not burn that he threw a lighted match into a tuft of it by way of demonstration. a puff of wind found the little flame, and before it was extinguished it had consumed four hundred acres of yellow but valuable pasture.
and then there is the great area deliberately cut and burned to make way for grass. here the defender of tree-life is faced with a more difficult problem. the men who are doing the melancholy work of destruction are doing also the work of colonisation. as a class they are, perhaps, the most interesting and deserving in colonial life. they are acting lawfully and in good [103]faith. yet the result is a hewing down and sweeping away of beauty, compared with which the conquests of the goths and vandals were conservative processes. for those noted invaders did not level rome or carthage to the ground: they left classic architecture standing. to the lover of beautiful nature the work of our race in new zealand seems more akin to that of the seljuk turks in asia minor, when they swept away population, buildings and agriculture, and byzantine city and rural life together, in order to turn whole provinces into pasture for their sheep. not that my countrymen are more blind to beauty than other colonists from europe. it is mere accident which has laid upon them the burden of having ruined more natural beauty in the last half-century than have other pioneers. the result is none the less saddening. when the first white settlers landed, the islands were supposed still to contain some thirty million acres of forest. the maori had done a share of destruction by reckless or accidental burning. other causes, perhaps, had helped to devastate such tracts as the canterbury plains and the kauri gum-fields. but enough, and more than enough, was left; indeed the bush seemed the chief barrier to rapid settlement. the havoc wrought by careless savages was a trifle compared with the wholesale destruction brought about by our utilising of the forests and the soil. quod non fecerunt barbari fecere barberini. to-day we are told that the timber still standing cannot last our saw-mills more than two generations, and that a supply which was estimated at [104]forty-three thousand million feet in 1905 had shrunk to thirty-six thousand million feet in 1907. the acreage of our forests must be nearer fifteen than twenty millions now. some of this, covering, as it does, good alluvial soil, must go; but i am far from being alone in believing that four-fifths of it should be conserved, and that where timber is cut the same precautions should be insisted on as in germany, france, india, and some intelligent portions of north america. within the last two years great floods in auckland and hawke’s bay, and, farther south, two summers hot and dry beyond precedent, seem to point the moral and strengthen the case for making a courageous stand on behalf of the moiety we have left of the woods that our fathers thought illimitable.
mount egmont
something has already been done. forty years ago thomas potts, naturalist and politician, raised his voice in the parliamentary wilderness; and in the next decade a premier, sir julius vogel, came forward with an official scheme of conservation which would have been invaluable had he pressed it home. since then enlightened officials, like the late surveyor-general, mr. percy smith, have done what they could. from time to time reserves have been made which, all too small as they are, now protect some millions of acres. in the rainier districts most of this is not in great danger from chance fires. nor is it always and everywhere true that the forest when burned does not grow again. it can and will do so, if cattle and goats are kept out of it. the lavish beauty of the primeval forest may not return, [105]but that is another matter. the cry that government reservation only saves trees from the axe to keep them for the fire may be dismissed as a counsel of despair, or—sometimes—as inspired by the saw-miller and land-grabber. of late years, too, both government and public are waking up to the wisdom of preserving noted and beautiful scenes. many years ago the settlers of taranaki set an example by reserving the upper and middle slopes of their fusiyama, mount egmont. long stretches of the draped cliffs of wanganui river have been made as safe as law can make them, though some still remain in danger, and i am told that at taumaranui, on the upper river, the hum of the saw-mills is ever in your ears. societies for preserving scenery are at work elsewhere, and the parliament has passed an act and established a board for the purpose of making scenic reserves. twenty-five thousand acres have lately been set aside on the board’s advice, and the area will, i assume, be added to yearly.
now and again, in dry, windy summers, the forest turns upon its destroyers and takes revenge. dying, it involves their works and possessions in its own fiery death. a bush-fire is a fine sight when seen on windy nights, burning whole hill-sides, crawling slowly to windward, or rushing with the wind in leaping tongues and flakes that fly above the tree-tops. the roar, as of a mighty gale, the spouting and whirling of golden sparks, the hissing of sap and resin, and the glowing heat that may be felt a mile away, join grandly in furious energy. nothing can be finer than the spectacle, just as nothing [106]can be more dreary than the resulting ruin. a piece of bush accidentally burned has no touch of dignity in its wreck. it becomes merely an ugly and hateful jumble, begrimed, untidy, and unserviceable. a tract that has been cut down and fired deliberately is in a better case. something more like a clean sweep has been made, and the young grass sprouting up gives promise of a better day. but bush through which fire has run too quickly is often spoiled as forest, without becoming of use to the farmer. the best that can be done when trees are thus scorched is for the saw-miller to pick out the larger timber and separate with his machinery the sound inside from the burned envelope. this he does skilfully enough, and much good wood—especially kauri—is thus saved. the simple-minded settler when selling scorched timber sometimes tries to charge for sound and injured portions alike; but the average saw-miller is a man of experience.
tarei-po-kiore
as i have said, fire sometimes sweeps down upon the forest’s enemies and carries all before it: saw-mills and their out-buildings are made into bonfires, and the stacks of sawn planks and litter of chips and sawdust help the blaze. the owner and his men are lucky if they save more than their portable belongings. nor does the fire stop there. after making a mouthful of mills and woodcutters’ huts, it may set out for some small township not yet clear of stumps, dead trunks, and inflammable trash. all depends upon the wind. if the flames are being borne along upon the wings of a strong north-west wind—the [107]“regular howling nor’-wester” of up-country vernacular—very little can be done except to take to flight, driving live-stock, and taking such furniture as can be piled on carts and driven away. fences, house, machinery, garden, and miles of grass may be swept away in a few hours, the labour of half a lifetime may be consumed, and the burnt-out settler may be thankful if the government comes to his aid with a loan to enable him to buy grass seed to scatter on his blackened acres after the long-desired rains have come.
in an exceptionally dry summer—such an extraordinary season as came in january and february of this year—the fire goes to work on a grand scale. in a tract a hundred miles long, thirty or forty outbreaks may be reported within a week. settlers looking out from their homesteads may see smoke and glowing skies in half-a-dozen directions at once. now the blaze may approach from this direction, now from that, just as the wind freshens or shifts. sheep are mustered, and, if possible, driven away. threatened householders send their furniture away, or dig holes in the ground and bury it. when the danger comes too suddenly to give time for anything more, goods are hastily piled on some bare patch and covered with wet blankets. i have read of a prudent settler who had prepared for these risks of fire by excavating a cave almost large enough to house a band of prophets. after three years the fire came his way, and he duly stored away his possessions in the repository. but just as rain does not fall when you take out a large umbrella, so our provident [108]friend found that the fire would not touch his house. he lost nothing but a shed.
morning on the wanganui river
if there appears any fair chance of beating back the flames, the men join together, form a line, and give battle. they do not lightly surrender the fruits of years of toil, but will fight rolling smoke, flying sparks, and even scorching flame, hour after hour. strips of grass are burned off in advance, and dead timber blown up with dynamite. buckets of water are passed from hand to hand, or the flames are beaten out with sacks or blankets. seen at night on a burning hill-side, the row of masculine fighting figures stands out jet-black against the red glow, and the wild attitudes and desperate exertions are a study for an artist. among the men, boys work gleefully; there is no school for them when a fire has to be beaten. very young children suffer greatly from the smoke with which the air they breathe is laden, perhaps for days together. even a londoner would find its volumes trying. now and again a bushman in the thick of the fight reels half-suffocated, or falls fainting and has to be carried away. but his companions work on; and grass-fires are often stopped and standing crops saved. but fire running through thick bush is a more formidable affair. the heat is terrific, the very soil seems afire; and indeed the flames, after devouring trunks and branches, will work down into the roots and consume them for many feet. sparks and tongues of flame shoot across roads and streams and start a blaze on the farther side. messengers riding for help, or settlers trying to reach [109]their families, have often to run the gauntlet perilously on tracks which the fire has reached or is crossing. they gallop through when they can, sometimes with hair and beard singed and clothes smelling of the fire. men, however, very seldom lose their lives. for one who dies by fire in the bush, fifty are killed by falling timber in the course of tree-felling. sheep have occasionally to be left to their fate, and are roasted, or escape with wool half-burnt. wild pigs save themselves; but many native birds perish with their trees, and the trout in the smaller streams die in hundreds.
many stories are told of these bush fires, and of the perils, panics, or displays of courage they have occasioned. let me repeat one. in a certain “bush township,” or small settlement in the forest, lived a clergyman, who, in addition to working hard among the settlers in a parish half as large as an english county, was a reader of books. he was, i think, a bachelor, and i can well believe that his books were to him something not far removed from wife and children. the life of a parson in the bush certainly deserves some consolations in addition to those of religion. well, a certain devastating fire took a turn towards the township in which a wooden roof sheltered our parson and his beloved volumes. some householders were able to drive off with their goods; others stood their ground. the minister, after some reflection, carried his books out of doors, took a spade and began to dig a hole in the earth, meaning to bury them therein. just as the interment was beginning, a neighbour rode up with the news that [110]the house of a widow woman, not far away, had caught fire and that friends were trying to extinguish the burning or at least save her goods. whether the book-lover gave “a splendid groan” i do not know; but leaving his treasures, off he ran, and was soon among the busiest of the little salvage corps, hauling and shouldering like a man. when all was done that could be done he hastened back, blackened and perspiring, to his own dwelling. alas! the fire had outflanked him. sparks and burning flakes had dropped upon his books and the little collection was a blazing pile. i have forgotten the parson’s name and do not know what became of him. but if any man deserved, in later life, a fine library at the hands of the fates, he did. i hope that he has one, and that it includes a copy of mr. blades’s entertaining treatise on the enemies of books. with what gusto he must read chapter i., the title of which is “fire.”
on the upper wanganui
just as a burning forest is a magnificent scene with a dismal sequel, so the saw-miller’s industry, though it finds a paradise and leaves a rubbish-yard, is, while it goes on, a picturesque business. like many forms of destruction, it lends itself to the exertion of boldness, strength, and skill. the mill itself is probably too primitive to be exactly ugly, and the complicated machinery is interesting when in action, albeit its noises, which at a distance blend into a humming vibration, rise near at hand to tearing and rending, clattering and howling. but the smell of the clean wood is fresh and resinous, and nothing worse than sawdust loads [111]the air. the strong teeth of the saws go through the big logs as though they were cheese. the speed of the transformation, the neatness and utility of the outcome, are pleasing enough. then the timber-scows, those broad, comfortable-looking craft that go plodding along the northern coasts, may be said, without irony, to have a share of “batavian grace.” but the more absorbing work of the timber trade begins at the other end, with the selecting and felling of the timber. after that comes the task of hauling or floating it down to the mill. tree-felling is, one supposes, much the same in all countries where the american pattern of axe is used. with us, as elsewhere, there are sights worth watching. it is worth your while to look at two axemen at work on the tree, giving alternate blows, one swinging the axe from the right, the other from the left. physically, bush-fellers are among the finest workmen in the islands, and not only in wood-chopping contests, but when at work, under contract in the bush, they make the chips fly apace. some of them seem able to hew almost as well with one arm as with two; indeed, one-armed men have made useful fellers. sometimes they attack a tree from the ground; but into the larger trunks they may drive stakes some few feet from the soil, or may honour a giant by building a platform round it. upon this they stand, swinging their axes or working a large cross-cut saw. skill, of course, is required in arranging the direction in which the tree shall fall, also in avoiding it when it comes down. even a broken limb is a serious matter enough in the bush, far from surgical [112]aid. men thus struck down have to be carried on rough litters to the nearest surgeon. in one case the mates of an injured bush-feller carried him in this way fully sixty miles, taking turns to bear the burden. even when a man has been killed outright and there is no longer question of surgical aid, the kindliness of the bushmen may still be shown. men have been known to give up days of remunerative work in order to carry the body of a comrade to some settlement, where it can be buried in consecrated ground. accidents are common enough in the bush. only last year an “old hand” fell a victim to mischance after forty years of a bushman’s life. slipping on a prostrate trunk he fell on the sharp edge of his axe, and was discovered lying there dead in solitude.
wairua falls
when the tree has been felled and cross-cut and the branches lopped off, the log may be lying many miles from the mill. hills and ravines may have to be crossed or avoided. orpheus with his lute would be invaluable to the new zealand saw-miller. the local poet, though fond enough of addressing his stanzas to the forest trees, does not pretend to draw them to follow in his footsteps. nor are our poets on the side of the saw-mills. so bushmen have to fall back upon mechanical devices and the aid of water-power. long narrow tracks are cut, and floored with smooth skids. along these logs are dragged—it may be by the wire rope of a traction machine, it may be by a team of bullocks. over very short distances the logs are shifted by the men themselves, who “jack” them with a dexterity [113]astonishing to the townsmen. mainly, the journey to the mill is made either by tramway or water. where a deep river is at hand, floating timber is a comparatively simple business. but more often the logs have to slide, be rolled or be hauled, into the beds of streams or creeks that may be half dry for months together. to obtain the needful depth of water, dams are often built, above which the logs accumulate in numbers and stay floating while their owners wait patiently for a fresh. or the timber may remain stranded, in shallow creeks or in the reeds or stones of dwindled rivers. at length the rain-storm bursts, the sluices of the dams are hastily opened, and the logs in great companies start on their swim for the sea-coast. a heavy flood may mean loss to farmer and gardener, and be a nuisance to travellers; but to the saw-millers of a province it may be like the breaking-up of a long drought. they rub their hands and tell you that they have not had such a turn of luck for a twelvemonth,—“millions of feet were brought down yesterday!” as the rains descend and the floods come, their men hurry away to loosen barriers, start logs on their way, or steer them in their course. wild is the rush of the timber as it is thus swept away, not in long orderly rafts such as one sees zigzagging along on the elbe or st. lawrence, but in a frantic mob of racing logs, spinning round, rolled over and over, colliding, plunging and reappearing in the swirling water. rafts you may see in the ordinary way being towed down the wairoa river to the kaipara harbour by steam tugs. [114]but in flood-time, when thousands of logs are taking an irresponsible course towards the ocean, the little steamers have a more exciting task. it is theirs to chase the logs, which, rolling and bobbing like schools of escaping whales, have to be caught and towed to some boom or harbourage near the saw-mill for which they are destined. otherwise they may become imbedded in tidal mud, or may drift away to sea and be lost. logs bearing the marks of auckland saw-millers have been found ere now stranded on distant beaches after a voyage of several hundred miles.
like axemen and log-rollers, the river hands who look after dams and floating logs have their accidents and hairbreadth escapes. they have to trust to courage and to an amphibious dexterity, of which they exhibit an ample share. watch a man standing upright on a log huge enough to be a mast, and poling it along as though it were a punt. that looks easier than it is. but watch the same man without any pole controlling a rolling log and steering it with feet alone. that does not even look easy. some years ago, it is said, a mill hand, when opening a dam in a rain-storm, fell into the flood and was swept down among the released timber. amid the crash of tumbling logs he was carried over the dam and over a waterfall farther down stream. yet he reached the bank with no worse injury than a broken wrist! i tell the tale as it was printed in an auckland newspaper.
