VI.
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The express steamer service between the North and South Islands is excellent. There are two lovely steamers, the Rangatira and the Wahine. Both are excellent ships in either of which it is pleasant to travel. Of course, some people are never well in a ship. Colonel Falla (who is the official head) of the Union Steam Ship Company, dearly loves to tell of an elderly female relative of his who went aboard the inter-island express steamer and within an hour was most dreadfully ill, and continued being woefully sick all night. What added to the horror of it all was the fact that no matter how hard she rang for the stewardess, nobody came until six the next morning when a steward put his head in the door.

“Steward, why does nobody answer my bell?” she asked pathetically. “I have been so ill.”

“But, madam,” he said incredulously, “as we did not sail last night, the stewardess has been ashore.”

The steamer had never left the wharf!

After my South Island tour I was very weary and decided I must have a holiday. I unfolded this idea to Hamish.

“But I thought that was a holiday we had in the South Island,” he protested.

“It may have been a holiday for you; but it was not a holiday for me. Now I want to go to some quiet place and …”

“And give a lecture every other night and write about what you see all day.”

“No, Hamish. For once you are wrong. I am going to lie on my back on the beach and contemplate the universe. I am going to invite my soul.”

“Then I gather we are going to a seaside place?”

“Yes.”

“May I ask the name of this place?”

“That is just what I was going to ask you.”

Hamish grinned a schoolboyish grin. “Then it's Otaki!”

So to Otaki we went. And how we loved it! Sometimes we lay on the beach and thought, and sometimes we just lay on the beach. We dug for toheroas and our landlady made them into fritters for us. Oh, toheroa fritters … I could write a poem about them! And as for toheroa soup, rich, green, creamy … Ah!

Otaki beach is just beach and nothing else. An expanse of sand pounded by breakers, it is ideal for surfing and sun-bathing. A mile or so out at sea lies Kapiti Island, now a bird sanctuary, but once the stronghold of Te Rauparaha who used to raid the coast of both North and South Islands. Te Rauparaha was a Maori chieftain who, with 400 of his tribe, settled at Otaki in 1819. Small and ferocious, never was there a more daring, impudent, and savage warrior. For hundreds of miles around he was feared; no one knew when he might not appear in a pa (village), carry off the women, slay and cook the men, leave not a rooftree unburned to tell the tale. Heavily tattooed as to countenance, his furious cruelty was the terror of his neighbours and his face was a thing to make children scream with nightmare. Te Rauparaha! The very name was a whiplash.

But, in 1839, a missionary settlement was established at Otaki, and the warrior chief was the first to be converted. He was, it appears, an extremist in all things. With characteristic impetuosity he threw himself into the faith and works of his new creed. A church must be built for the salvation of souls? Te Rauparaha built it in 1846. It still stands, a unique example of ancient Maori art. The pillars which uphold the roof are totara logs fifty feet high and sunk twelve feet into the ground. How these logs were conveyed to the site is not known. Were they floated down the sea-coast or were they (horrible thought!) brought by captured slaves? (Te Rauparaha was a slave holder in those days.) Be that as it may, there they stand, as sound and straight as on the day they were erected. The walls are lined with rough-hewn planking interspersed with flax weaving. The altar rails are ornate with carving, done in the days when all carving was done with fishbone or stone chisel. No one who is interested in early Polynesian art should miss seeing Otaki Church.

Te Rauparaha was buried at Otaki in 1849, and his turbulent career is commemorated by a chaste white marble statue of him which looks wistfully out to sea to his ancient stronghold, Kapiti Island. Yes, Te Rauparaha is gone. Descendants of his brave bandits now go decorously to Church or to the Maori College close by. Hundreds of them still live at Otaki, but they live in more or less European style. The women wear hats and high heels—except when they get outside the town, when they throw off shoes and stockings and run happy and barefoot where no one may see.

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At Otaki there is nothing to do, and we did it with enthusiasm. In vain did Hamish remind me that I had a Twelve-Month Plan for seeing New Zealand.

“All God's chillun got plans,” I replied lazily. “There is the Roosevelt Plan, and the Five-Year Plan, and the Lloyd George Plan, and many others I will not name. But there is a Five-Million-Year Plan, too. Coral islands are slowly being built up out of the sea. Nebulae are forming into worlds.”

But after a fortnight we were anxious to move on again. And so we came to Palmerston North.

Palmerston is a miniature Christ-church—flat, yet beautiful. Here I met all sorts of interesting people. First there was Mr. Fleck, who makes hand-wrought jewels in exactly the same way that Benvenuto Cellini made them six hundred years ago. His silver and gold wire are drawn by hand; his enamels are baked in a tiny furnace; his precious stones are set in designs of flowers and leaves. He is a true artist, the second of his kind that I have met in New Zealand. The other jewel-craftsman is Reuben Watt, of Auckland.

“Cellini himself,” says Mr. Fleck reverently, “never did more exquisite work than Reuben Watt has done.”

How I respect and love artists who praise each other so wholeheartedly, so unselfishly! It is the mark of the true artist; I have learned to recognise it.

Then there is Linda Bennett. Linda Bennett is a producer for the Little Theatre Society of Palmertston. Petit, auburn-haired, and brown-eyed, she keeps the place alive by administering a series of shocks to the conservative townsfolk. She is a capable little actress and a radical thinker, a charming hostess and a storm-centre of intellectual activity. If Palmerston is convinced that Bernard Shaw is revolutionary and improper, then Linda insists on putting on a Shaw play.

“At heart, my Linda, you are a hooligan,” I told her one day.

She opened her eyes very wide.

“A hooligan? But, Margaret, surely not a hooligan? Why, that is the sort of person who goes around breaking windows …”

“True. And that's what you do. Not glass windows, but mental windows. I approve of it. You let a lot of air and light into stuffy minds. Go on doing it. It is good work.”

Palmerston North is the largest inland city in the North Island. It has a population of 23,000, but one would guess more because the place is so spacious. The roads are wide, the gardens are big and well-kept, and bang in the middle of the town is an eight-acre square, with gardens, fountains, rivulets, statues, band-stand and what-not. This is the centre of commerce; all the shops stand around it, and right through the middle of it there runs, very surprisingly—no, Not a river—a railway! I heard Lord Galway, the Governor-General, make a speech from the bandstand. Suddenly everything had to stop till a train ran along under his nose!

Some of the prettiest homes I have seen in New Zealand are at Palmerston North, and no two houses are alike. Some are heavily gabled in the old English style. Some are flat-roofed and verandah'd a l'Americaine. Others are Moorish, with round-arched doorways and circular windows. And the gardens are beautiful. One sees golden kowhai, purple and white lilac, roses and flowering cherries all set decoratively to give the maximum effect of colour and perfume to garland the charming homes.

It is a self-sufficing little town. It has its own racecourse, opera house (municipally owned), municipal baths, public library, sports stadium, and one of the loveliest parks in New Zealand, which they seem to call The Esplanade. In fact, they do.

“Esplanade suggests a concrete seaside walk,” I protested, humbly.

“Well, what about our river?” It is beside the Manawatu River and has an area of 361 acres of beautiful native bush and gardens. Here one may walk for hours along wooded paths shaded by rata, kawakawa, ngaio, titoki, kowhai, rimu, matipo and dozens of other stately native trees I cannot name. “Esplanade!” Three hundred and sixty-one acres! I ask you …!

In addition to this, Palmerston has Municipal Bowling and Croquet Greens. Apart from the Esplanade, there is Takaro Park, Papaeoia Park, Wahikoa Park, Hokowhitu Park and Milverton Park. I tell you, they're the most treesome people on earth; gardens everywhere!

Oh, and I forget to mention Anzac Park. Can you beat it? It is too much. Let us go. But wait a minute … there is the Tiritea Reserve, too, another park! They'll never stop till they have a park each, one sees that.

Before we leave this district we must pop up to look at Flock House, which is eight miles from the town of Bulls. After the close of the Great War the sheep-farmers of New Zealand established a fund for the purpose of helping the sons and daughters of British seamen who lost their lives in war service, and for rendering assistance to men who were disabled. The amount contributed was over £160,000, and was known as the “New Zealand Sheepowner's Acknowledgment of Debt to British Seamen Fund.”

About 9,000 acres of land, with buildings on it, were acquired for the purpose of training the boys who were brought out from the Old Country. Another 30 acres were acquired at Awapuni for training English girls in farm and domestic work. These are the Flock House settlements, built on tragedy of the past and hope for the future.

We must not pass Bulls without looking at Ormond Wilson, that scion of an old New Zealand family. Ormond has an Oxford accent, a Hitler lock, and an air of expensive carelessness. He is tremendously aristocratic and exclusive and wealthy.

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Bulls did not get its name from the Cow's Husband, although it is the centre of a thriving dairying district. No, it was named after a pioneer settler, Mr. James Bulls, who owned the land which afterwards became the township. In this district a good deal of flax is grown, and flax-milling is a staple industry of the place.

For the sake of my overseas readers I had better explain that New Zealand flax, or phormium tenax, is nothing like the European flaxes with their little star-like blossoms. In fact, it is as unlike as if it had just, from malice prepense, set out to be different. Ours is a regular viking of flaxes, tall and arrogant, with coarse, dark-green leaves eight or ten feet long, and a flower-stem of fifteen feet or more, crowned with honey-filled blossoms of smoky flame colour—a hardy and tenacious flax flourishing at its best when near to water. The New Zealander is never at a loss for a bit of twine with a flax bush growing near. He has merely to take one of the long leaves and tear a strip from it, and he possesses a piece of string that it is almost impossible to break.

Long before English settlement the flax was used by the Maoris. In “Nicholas's Voyage” (1814) we read that “the natives, after having cut it down and brought it home, green in bundles, scrape it with a large mussel shell, and take the heart out of it, splitting it with their thumb-nails. The outside they throw away, and spread out the rest to dry, which makes it as white as snow. They spin it in a double thread, with the hand on the thigh, and then work it into mats, also by the hand. Three women may work on one mat at a time.”

The making of flax mats is a dying art, and I am sorry to say that it is almost an unappreciated art as far as the pakeha is concerned. Personally, I use and like native mats on the polished floors in my home, and very unusual and distinctive they look with their mosaics of shining green and white fibre. They are cool and clean and aesthetic, but for the most part the Maori weavers get little encouragement outside the pa to pursue this delightful craft.

In the old days, however, flax was the mainstay of the Maori modiste. Before we ruined their eye for beauty in dress, the Maoris wore but two garments, alike for both sexes—a sort of kilt and a cape. The natives were hardy and healthy then—no sleeves, no furs, no phthisis, no pakeha to set them a bad example. Many tribes keep their beautiful flax cloaks, which were dyed and woven into all sorts of intricate designs, as heirlooms.

The history of flax is very romantic, and somewhat humorous. And by a very great pioneer in this country, Samuel Marsden, the missionary, this plant was once described as the “instrument of God in paving the way for Christianity.”

This was the way of it:

When penal colonies were first established in the Dominions it was thought that the flax-manufacturing industry might be introduced as a suitable employment for the convicts of Norfolk Island, where the plant flourished. Governor King was anxious to establish the industry there, but the methods of treatment used by the Maoris were not known. In his report on Norfolk Island, in 1791, he stated: “The flax plant of New Zealand grows spontaneously in many parts of the island. Every method has been tried to work it, but I much fear that until a native of New Zealand can be carried to Norfolk Island the method of dressing the valuable commodity will not be known, and could that be obtained I have no doubt but Norfolk Island would very soon clothe the inhabitants of New South Wales.”

King, who was evidently a wily old bird, not without experience of the native temperament, did not give up hope, but treated them with deference as became their rank. However, although they were royally entertained in his own residence, they would not reveal the coveted secret until King had promised to return them to their homes. When they had obtained this promise they demonstrated the process, which proved to be quite simple.

King personally escorted the two chiefs back to New Zealand and established the friendship of a lifetime with them. The Maoris were impressed with the generous behaviour of their captors. They never forgot it. “Kingi” became a tribal name amongst them in honour of their pakeha friend, and when the first missionaries arrived, in 1814, they found that the memory of this kindness still endured and Governor King's interest in flax had smoothed the way for Christianity. In this way phormium tenax had proved to be “an instrument of God.”

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The natives still make all sorts of “old wives’ remedies” from the flax root—cough cures, corn cures and what-not. They make a splendid waterproof tent of the leaves; indeed, its uses are too numerous to mention. With its tough leaves, which are hard enough to stop a bullet, and its dense foliage, which is high enough to conceal a fugitive, it has been closely associated with the history of the native race, and it appears in many delightful legends.

In less sophisticated days the Maori gallant made his love token of a flax strip. A double slip-knot was formed, which, if tightly pulled, ran into one large single knot. The double knot was presented by the bashful lover to his sweetheart, who signified her consent to this shy, silent proposal, by drawing the two knots into one.

However, as a colonial poet puts it, “Them days 'as gone for ever.” This is the age of commerce, not romance. Thousands of tons of flax are now exported yearly from New Zealand, and the milling, bleaching and preparation of this fibre is done by elaborate mechanical processes.

Flax is grown “commercially,” too, but it has its own idiosyncrasies and has to be humoured. Placed singly and in rows the plants do not thrive too well. A highly educated Maori of my acquaintance told me that the plants don't like this. “They should be placed in groups, not lines,” he said. “They're greg—what-d'you-call-um.”

The man with the bit of blue ribbon on his coat had been telling the bus driver what a terrible thing smoking was. “Take my advice,” he urged, “and give it up my friend!” “Bless yer,” replied the bus driver, “if I was to foller all the advice I get from passengers when I'm driving this here old bus, I'd never live to see another birfday! And now you comes along and wants me to chuck me pipe! Well, I listens affable like to everybody—and then I jolly well pleases meself, see? As for smoking, I smoke Cut Plug No. 10, and like all them reel toasted brands it couldn't 'urt a cat! Likewise if there's better bacca to be 'ad I wan to know where I kin get it.” The man wearing the blue ribbon groaned—and gave it best! There are five brands of “the reel toasted”—Cut Plug No. 10 (Bullshead), Navy Cut No. 3 (Bulldog), Cavendish, Riverhead Gold and Desert Gold. And they're all as harmless as taking a walk! They're toasted!^*

Gregarious! But what does commerce care for the gregariousness of plants? I see that an expert of scientific and industrial research is now growing phormium in large-scale nurseries for comparison and selection. It will be sown by motors and reaped by tractors, and another of the glories of New Zealand will have succumbed to the march of commercial civilisation.

As for me, I shall still use flax mats on my floor so long as I can find some old-timer of a native woman to make them, and I shall grow three flax plants in my garden; three—one for history, two for romance, and three for “greg—what-d'you-call-um.”

Overseas appreciation of railways magazine.

In a letter to Mr. G. H. Mackley, General Manager of Railways, the Rt. Hon. Lord Strathspey writes, inter alia, as under:— “Hylton House, 7th July, 1935. Rottingdean, Sussex.

“Your magnificent Magazine … not only gives much useful information, and is well published, but it is a source of great publicity for New Zealand; and, after all, to-day publicity is one of the greatest factors in our modern life.

“New Zealand is on the other side of the world, therefore she must advertise in order to keep the country amongst the foremost in the world.

“Your valuable Magazine is always read with interest by us all, and then I pass it on to The Royal Empire Society, I being Chairman of the Sussex Branch…. Yours sincerely, Strathspey.”

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