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The New Zealand Railways Magazine, Volume 7, Issue 2 (June 1, 1932)
Pictures of New Zealand Life
Pictures of New Zealand Life
Welcoming the Parson.
There is a pleasing absence of stiffness and ceremony about the country social gathering. Here is a little story which comes to me from the King Country concerning a welcome gathering arranged for the purpose of greeting the new minister in one of the townships along the Main Trunk line.
He was a shy young man, the new pastor, report said, so the ladies of the church were asked particularly to do what they could to put him at his ease and make him feel at home. It is rather difficult, perhaps, to believe that any parson can be shy, considering the fact that he is courageous enough to enter the pulpit and address a critical flock; still, I believe this youthful clergyman really was nervous.
Two girls who had a lively turn of wit resolved to do their little bit towards making the stranger feel at home. They borrowed a perambulator from next door, and enlisted the co-operation of their auntie, a plump and dimpled dame who was as ready for a lark as any of the young ones. They dressed her as a baby, inserted her into the pram—it was a tight fit—and wheeled her along to the afternoon gathering at the church.
The young parson was doing his nervous best to make himself agreeable. He came to the pram, and as in duty bound expressed his admiration of the bouncing infant therein.
“What a wonderful child,” he said, “and so fat and lovely!” He chucked the wonderful child under its well-plumped chin. “You are the mother, I presume?” he said to the smiling maiden who wheeled it. “Yes,” she replied, “and this is my sister.”
“And who is the father?” the reverend one inquired. “I really must get acquainted with all my congregation, you know.”
With a coo of delight the wonderful infant stretched out her arms to the parson and piped out, “Daddy, daddy!”
The Blessing of “Taihoa.”
The late Sir Douglas Maclean, of Napier, told me this story of the policy of patience embodied in the little word “taihoa” which wore down the “purchase resistance” of a Maori chief in the old days. His father, the great Sir Donald Maclean, was anxious to complete the purchase of a block of land for the Government in Hawke's Bay, and the principal chief concerned was disinclined to sell. He rode out to the chief's place, where he was received with the usual greetings and hospitality, and he was given the customary place of honour in the large page 39 wharepuni. He talked with his friend the chief, and repeated his offer to buy the land. He talked with the other folk of the kainga; he discussed with them all the subjects under the sun, and listened to their songs and legends, day after day.
The subject of the land was not discussed after the first day. The chief was politeness itself, as became a Maori rangatira. At last one morning Maclean called for his horse, rolled up his big tartan plaid and prepared to depart. Just as he was about to mount his horse he apparently thought of something he had forgotten. Reins in hand, he turned to the chief and said: “Oh, I suppose it is all right about that land. You'll sell it, won't you?”
“Yes, yes,” said the Maori eagerly; “take it! Take the land; it is yours.”
And so it was settled. The pakeha this time had out-taihoa'd the Maori.
A Hint from Kopu.
Another Donald Maclean story, told me by an old settler of the Wairoa, Hawke's Bay. After the purchase of the Wairoa block of land, Maclean told one of the leading chiefs of the sellers that he intended to make him a present of a horse. “In those days,” said the narrator of the story, “a Maori would give a kingdom for a horse.” But in doing so he forgot his friend Kopu, the principal man at Te Kapu, where the town of Wairoa now stands. When he was leaving the meeting he enquired where Kopu was, and he was told that he was not well, and was in his tent.
Maclean went to the tent, and as he was entering it Kopu caught him by the leg. Next moment he released his hold, saying in apparent surprise: “Oh, Makarini, I thought it was the leg of my horse!” The hint had the desired effect. “Makarini,” on his return to Napier, sent Kopu a horse, and all was well in Te Kapu kainga.
Loot from the Bishop.
My old friend Captain G. A. Preece, N.Z.C., who in his day was Magistrate's Court clerk, then soldier and leader of friendly Maori contingents in the Hauhau War, later Magistrate, and lastly land agent at Palmerston North, was a gallant gentleman, who many times earned his New Zealand Cross. He was full of odd stories of life in the bush and on the warpath. Concerning his career on the Bench—he was R.M. on the East Coast for many years—he told me that he always had a kindly feeling towards youthful offenders, because he was a boy himself once.
“You know,” he said, “I robbed a Bishop once, and I was only sorry because I was found out.” This was the story told in his quiet dryly humorous way:
Back in the old bush days, the Rev. James Preece, Captain Preece's father, was a missionary to the Maoris. He established the first mission station in the Urewera Mountains; that was over eighty years ago. The station was at Ahikereru, close to the present little township of the Maoris at Te Whaiti. There, in the heart of the ranges, little George Augustus Preece was reared. The great Bishop Selwyn was his godfather, and it was after the Bishop that he was named. When George was about four years old Selwyn came tramping in to Ahikereru on one of his arduous visitations, and stayed with the Preeces a few days. The Bishop's camp-gear swag included a small copper kettle for boiling his tea-water; it was always kept brightly polished.
When the time came for the Bishop to pack up and take his departure, the little kettle could not be found. The Preeces searched everywhere in vain. At last the infant George was questioned. He confessed, but quite impenitently, that he had taken a fancy to the beautiful shining kettle and wanted to keep it, so he had hidden it down by the creek until the Bishop went away. It was with great reluctance that he led the family to the place and restored the treasure to the right reverend owner.
There were many things, said Captain Preece, that he had badly wanted in his long life, but none of them so badly as that episcopal tea-kettle that he unsuccessfully looted in his bush infancy from the illustrious head of the Church.
Tapu'd the Fish.
The old Maori law of tapu still operates, but the pakeha usually does not hear of it page 40 unless it affects his own concerns in some way or another. That is the case just now at Chatham Island, where the fish-freezing factory at Kaingaroa has temporarily been closed down because the Maoris will not go out to catch fish. They have voluntarily deprived themselves not only of a staple item of food but of a large part of their earnings, because of their racial law of quarantine and hygiene. Last year a launch crew of eleven men perished in a gale when out fishing off Kaingaroa. As the bodies were not recovered, the Maori view is that the fish fed on them, and so all sea food is unclean until a certain period has passed, in this case two years. The Maori is in this respect far more scrupulous than the pakeha is about his food and the respect to the dead.
When the steamer Wairarapa was wrecked at the Great Barrier Island in 1894, with the loss of 126 lives, the small Maori tribe living on the island, a few miles from the scene of the wreck, tapu'd the fish in their waters for a long period. This, of course, was a serious deprivation of food for a coast-living community, but it was regarded by the people as necessary.
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Relaying Operations On The N.Z.R.
(Photos. A. R. Sayer.) Permanent way men in action on the tracks at Pokeno and Ngongotaha, North Island.
New Zealand Railways Praised
In the course of an interview with a representative of the “Evening Post,” Wellington, Captain Ballantine, the well-known sports writer who visited the Dominion recently gave his impressions of our railways as follows:—
“The railway travelling, and I calculate that I have travelled close on 7,000 miles, was, generally speaking, very comfortable, the main line travelling equalling the best. A great deal could be said of the exceptional variety of scenery viewed from the carriage windows. At times on one side there were great stretches of the ocean, and at other times there were great, high mountains in the distance, their slopes covered with dense bush or an extraordinary variety of ferns.”