The New Zealand Railways Magazine, Volume 9, Issue 2 (May 1, 1934.)

The Maori Types

The Maori Types.

One fault which some critics have professed to find in “Ranolf and Amohia” is that Domett idealised the Maori as Fenimore Cooper idealised the Red Indian. I cannot agree with this view, at any rate to any considerable extent. It is not a fault that a writer should select romantic and chivalrous episodes for his principal themes, as Scott did. Domett's Amohia is not overdrawn. There have been many such in, Maori history. Tangimoana, the grand old chief of Mokoia, is a faithful portrait of a typical ariki of the tribe; the original of this character was the great Te Heuheu, of Taupo. There, too, have been such tohungas as Kangapo. The one unconvincing figure is Ranolf, when he begins his long-drawn metaphysical disquisitions. No young pakeha could possibly have made the Maori mind comprehend such abstruse philosophising. But Ranolf was Domett himself, a lay figure on which to hang his Browning-like views on man and the infinite.

Domett knew the sea-life, too, as every colonist did in those days of sailing ships. His description of reefing topsails and of a sudden squall which wrought damage aloft, are graphic and technically accurate. So, too, is the tragic picture of the wreck of Ranolf's ship, in which we recognise the exact story of the loss of H.M.S. “Orpheus” on the Manukau Bar in 1863.

Alfred Domett. (From a photo about 1870).

Alfred Domett. (From a photo about 1870).