Other formats

    TEI XML file   ePub eBook file  

Connect

    mail icontwitter iconBlogspot iconrss icon

The New Zealand Railways Magazine, Volume 5, Issue 7 (December 1, 1930)

[section]

The spa town of Te Arohza, on the banks of the willowed Waihou River in the shadow of a grand mountain range, is a greatly popular place of resort for its beauty of situation as well as for its pleasant warm mineralised bathing springs and its drinking waters. In this article Mr. Cowan tells some little-known Maori legends of Te Aroha which enhance the interest of a visit to the pretty town. The Pakeha town dates back just fifty years; the Maori history of the place covers six centuries.

Fastness of Maori tribes from immemorial times, refuge of broken clans in war, fairy haunt invoked in poetic chants of the Maori, Te Aroha—“Mountain of Loving Greetings”—is a place whose human interest heightens its landscape beauty. This three-thousand-feet wooded blue bastion of the Moehau-Hautere range, that builds a high skyline a hundred miles long in the eastern part of Auckland province, is more than a mere rugged mass of rock and soil and tall timber. It is one of those mountains with a personality, like Taranaki's lone peak, the type of mountain that came naturally into the animistic mythology of the olden race. It looked to them a giant watchman overlooking riverside and valley and plain.

Some people have fancied the name Te Aroha a reference to the love and pity symbolised in the fact that the mountain was a refuge for defeated and hunted tribes in the days of continual warfare. Undoubtedly its ravines and forests often gave secure sanctuary to Maoris retreating from their enemies. But the origin of the name antedates the intertribal wars; and there are definite explanatory traditions.