The New Zealand Railways Magazine, Volume 4, Issue 8 (December 1, 1929)
Pan in the Garden
Pan in the Garden.
Round the turn of a path in a beautiful old-fashioned garden in Napier lately I met a tattooed warrior figure who confronted me with a decidedly cannibal-like grin. “Tena koe, you old ruffian,” I said. “I wish you could talk back, I'd like to hear your views on the modern girl and wireless, and railways and a lot of things that weren't invented when you were carved out of a log of totara.”
Pan of Maori Land certainly looked at least a century old. His knock-knees were firmly planted in the ground and one three-fingered hand caressed his lichen-mossed belly; the other held the remains of a club. His neck was stiffened with wire, age-rusted like himself, and a rusty iron cap like a steel helmet had been set on his head to keep the rains from soaking down the cracks into his brains. He looked the most proper of guardian wizards for that historic old garden.
When I get a garden after my own heart, a comfortable garden where everything grows as it chooses and nothing is trim and Dutch-like, I shall get me a Maori golliwog of an Atua like that old lad with the carved face in that Napier garden. If he is newly-carved by a Rotorua artist, Wellington's climate will soon reduce him to satisfyingly weather beaten conditions, and a charge of shot into his front and a tomahawk slash across his nose will give him historic interest for my visitors. I shall call him Te Kooti, and tell my friends it is unlucky to leave the garden without placing an offering of a silver coin at his feet.
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In The Nelson Province, South Island.
The Railway Station at Seddonville.