WeRead Powered by ReaderPub
New Zealand cover

New Zealand

Chapter 6: CHAPTER IV
By William Pember Reeves
Open in WeRead

Explore more books like this:

Travel Writing

About This Book

A panoramic travel narrative that surveys the islands' geography, climate, towns, and colonial society, moving from cities through rural life, sports, and dense forests to geothermal regions, alpine ranges, fiords, and outlying isles. It interweaves careful physical description—lakes, rivers, glaciers, rainforests, and volcanic thermal features—with observations on settler agriculture, Maori villages and customs, and recreational pursuits. Illustrated vignettes and chaptered excursions alternate descriptive natural history with practical remarks for visitors, concluding with concise tourist guidance and reflections on the islands' varied landscapes and seasonal moods.

CHAPTER IV

IN THE FOREST

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
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 without apology. So it would seem that when Cowley was writing the lines—