III
Poverty Bay

Captain Cook put in one day;
  Water he sought and food.
The warlike Maoris said him nay.
Empty and dry he sailed away,
Mapping the place as "Poverty Bay,"
  And the name it stuck, for good.

What sort of country was this to which we had come?

To answer this question one must go rather far back; one must imagine the whole area to have been, in quite (geologically) modern times, a sheet of clayey sea deposit that had hardened into a sort of blue-grey rock easily disintegrated by weather into fertile earth.

Ages and ages of rain have gradually cut this soft rock into a system of streams running in very narrow deep valleys, the watersheds of which, often quite narrow ridges, wind about for many miles at heights varying from 500 to 1,500 feet.

Most of the country is exceedingly steep, but in patches here and there, and on some high ridges, where the original formation may have been harder, there is easier country, page 20and here often still remains a great deal of the sterile silicate sand, blown out in time past by enormously super-heated steam from the volcanic region six score miles away. There was even a very slight sprinkling of this sand from the eruption of 1885, of which more anon.

The material brought down from all these gullies and valleys has filled up what was probably an inlet of the sea, and formed a rich flat delta some twenty-five miles by ten. Here the first settlers made their homes, ploughing up the land without much difficulty, and from this flat country fronting the sea they were, at the date of our arrival, only just beginning to adventure forth into the rough fern and bush ranges.

Now this back country was either an impenetrable jungle of high bracken, mixed in places with small trees and other growths (Plate V), or else it was so completely covered with forest of varying height that, except by climbing a tree on a sharp ridge, you could hardly ever get a view out over it (Plate V). But this effort was generally worth while, for spread out below you would be such a diversity of foliage, such a wonderful variety of glossy greenery as you would never by any chance see on this side of the world, varied here and there by a cluster of tree fern tops, a clump page break

Plate IV
In

Plate IV
Out
Dipping Sheep

page 21of the many-headed cabbage palms,¹a dark pine outstanding from the valley bottom, or golden kowhai²flowering on a windy ridge. Moreover, in the fine hot sunshine of one of our winter days, there would be nothing to tell you, looking out from your perch, that you were not in the midst of summer, for all the growth is evergreen.

Under this continuous leafy roof were no extremes of heat, cold or drought; it was a sort of cool, shaded garden-house, often abounding in a delightful variety of ferns, creeping ferns, big spreading ferns with eight-foot fronds, stag's horn ferns, filmy ferns, and three or four sorts of beautiful tree ferns. And here in this even temperature grew the seedling trees which could only live with such protection; in fact, most even of the grown trees needed it, for, having no tap-roots, few of these would flourish long, once you had opened their rooting grounds to the hot sun and drying wind.

In winter the cold air would settle down to the bottom of these narrow bush gullies, and sometimes, when looking down from above, one would see a sort of tide mark of browned tree fern fronds level all round their sides, where the frost had reached a few feet higher than usual. But we never had a frost

¹ Cordyline Australis.

² Sophora tetraptera.

page 22except on a perfectly clear calm night, nor did we ever see snow on the ground except now and then for a few hours on the higher ranges. We often had long spells of perfect weather in our so-called winter. Some friends, who were camped on the coast hills fencing, told me that for eight days in succession, in that season, the sun had risen clear-cut from the far sea-edge.

In the more open country, especially along the ridges, there waved above the tall bracken the pale gold heads of the native pampas grass,¹and I have often, when riding, been drenched with honey from the flower-stems of the hill flax²which stand high above its great bunch of long and smoothly shining blades.

When into these narrow valleys, as would sometimes happen on a cold, still autumn night, there settled a heavy mist, our ride to work over the range next morning was often a glorious experience. Slowly climbing the zig-zag track we had cut, to the top of the high-cleared ridge, we would come almost suddenly out of the mist into the most brilliant sunshine, with rainbow circles in the heavily-dewed grass at our feet, and, below, a dead level floor of silvery mist filling the whole great valley, except where a few high points stood out as wooded islands.

Perhaps, emphasising as it were the strange lonely beauty of the scene, there would be a big hawk slowly circling, or you might hear a musical call from a far ridge, a wild bull taking back his harem to their green bush fastnesses. Sometimes, too, there would be a sort of Brocken spectre, our own shadow away below, imperfectly visible as a vague iridescent dial on the mist, a waved arm showing in it as an indistinct clock-hand.

But when this great still sea of cloud began to break up, when the blue and silver of the rapid river, the brilliant gold of the willows and the emerald grass gleamed in places through the thinning mist, and when its broken masses slowly drifted up the bush valleys below you, their ever-lessening fragments caught and torn by the tops of the scattered pines, there were minutes of beauty never to be forgotten, memories of delight to be carried with you to your dying day.

But I must be careful, for it was in somewhat of the above strain that a fresh and sappy young New Zealander was once holding forth, in a drought-stricken district of Australia to a sun-dried and despairing inhabitant. When there was room for a remark, the old Cornstalk weariedly interjected, "Ah, yes—there used to be scenery here, too—till the goats ate it!"

Though the brake-fern which covered a great extent of country in New Zealand is to all appearance identical with our bracken, it does not, there, turn the beautiful rich autumn brown that it does in England. On the contrary, the old fern remains strong and green till the new fronds push up through it in the spring. It varies in height from a foot, on very poor soil, to the height of your shoulder when riding, on an occasional rich river flat. The old frondage does not quickly rot but remains as a highly inflammable mass underneath. Three seasons' dead fern with a good dry wind will take a roaring fire through anything, and it is by such fires that all fern country is cleared.

In England, which has been for ages stocked, first with deer and then cattle, only that bracken has survived which is not only distasteful to stock, but will stand much continuous cutting. But in New Zealand, where they have never had any education by either game or stock, the innocent young fronds not only remain very palatable, but the parent plant becomes quickly discouraged if they are often devoured, so that if they are eaten down only two or three times in one year, the next season's stocking will often finish the business, and the grass seed you have sown will soon begin to form page 25a satisfactory sward, always assuming that you are dealing with fern alone. For on light soils you have often something to contend with that is by no means so accommodating as bracken.

This is Manuka,¹a very stiff, straight, fine-leaved heather-like shrub, which no stock will touch, growing, in course of time to a height ten or twelve feet. It must have developed its characteristics, I think, in some past age, in a land subject to frequent sweeping fires, probably Australia, as it has evolved special means of survival under such conditions. The seed (the plant starts flowering when only a foot high) is enclosed in little fibrous green capsules, and often remains in them, I think, for several seasons. Then, when a fire comes through and kills all the scrub, the hard stem is left standing, and the little capsule, closely attached to it, having kept the fine seed unharmed, then opens and sheds it thick on the burnt ground beneath, where quickly germinating, it sends up another growth as thick as wheat. And even if you cut it down green, some of the seed will probably get into the sandy soil as the stuff dries and so escape the fire when you burn off.

It has pretty and very numerous small

¹ Leptospermum ericoides

page 26white flowers and a hillside of it in the spring is a fine sight to those who have not to deal with the wretched stuff. For myself, the problem of its extermination has kept me awake many a night.

Our district, when we came to it, was roadless, much of it quite impenetrable by horsemen, and extremely arduous for foot travel. The pioneer surveyors had a very. hard time of it. They generally had to "hump" everything on their backs, including the heavy theodolites, across all sorts of frightful gullies and jungle tangles, and to depend on wild pork and an occasional pigeon to keep them alive. In the high poor country pigs were often scarce, in which case the party had a very thin time.

I remember admiring the pluck of an old surveyor who had just had all his teeth out, and was starting out on a longish "far back" job armed with a sausage machine.

In hill country completely bush-covered, it was no easy thing to find a good road line, even though a one-in-twelve grade was allowed, and steeper ones sometimes winked at. You had to get a sight, if you could, at the next saddle in the ridge, approximate height and distance, and then with axe and slasher, cut trial grades to it along the gully-page 27broken face of the range. And if you had not very thoroughly explored the district ahead, difficulties were very likely to arise I knew one bright genius, who, after laying off some fifteen miles of road, found himself up against a perfectly hopeless precipice. Report says that he sat down and cried, but I know that he gave up "field" work there and then, made a bee-line for home, and confined himself to office work for the rest of his life.

Gradually a few roads were made in our part of the back country, so that we could get our wool out on wheels instead of on packhorse, but most of them even yet are summer roads only, metal being almost unobtainable.

When Captain Cook tried to land here, the natives, well-to-do and independent on their excellent land, resisted him, and he came away without supplies. At a much poorer spot on his way north he was quite otherwise received. He named our place Poverty Bay, and the other, the Bay of Plenty!

As for Poverty Bay seen from a prospective settler's point of view, our friends in Hawkes Bay, where we first landed and made some stay, gave us no very encouraging reports.

The land was good enough, they told us, but the titles were mostly bad.

The place being difficult of access was fifty years behind the rest of the country page 28in civilisation, and was the refuge of all the off-scourings of the colony, who sought to practise there, without social restraint, every kind of irregularity and even vice; the resort of bankrupts, drunkards and every kind of loose liver, and of lawyers of the very worst description, who preyed alike on the ignorance of the native and the innocence of the newcomer; in fact a little hell on earth, and no place at all for decent people.

As it turned out, we had a government title to our land, so that was all right. Nor did we find the people worse than elsewhere, though they certainly did drink. There were only enough queer and free characters to make things amusing, and though rascally lawyers were not scarce, decently honest ones were to be found. We certainly never regretted having adventured to the place, in the face of warnings given.