“That's a nice pipe of yours,” remarked a passenger by the Tauranga express to a fellow traveller. The man addressed pulled the handsome silver mounted calabash he was smoking out of his mouth and regarded it fondly. “I won that there in a raffle,” he said, “and I wouldn't take two notes for it.” “Looks worth it, too,” said the other. “I smoke a humble cherry-wood myself” (with a laugh), “but I'm more particular about my tobacco than I am about my pipe.” “Then I reckon you smoke something special?” “I do—the best—Cut Plug No. 10. I'm always smoking but that's alright. No nicotine to worry about in ‘toasted’.” “I believe you,” said the calabash owner, with a grin, “smoke it myself, only mine's Cavendish. But I agree—you can't beat toasted.” It would be interesting to know how often that or something similar is said every day! For there certainly is no tobacco to compare with the real toasted—Cut Plug No. 10 (Bullshead), Cavendish, Navy Cut No. 3 (Bul dog), Riverhead Gold and Desert Gold.^*

(Rly. Publicity photo.)
The “New Zealand Star” at Wellington loading produce for overseas.

page 38 page break

The Railway Bridge which spans the Waikato River at Hamilton, North Island, New Zealand.
(Railway Publicity photos.)
Maoris in their canoes on the Waikato River, at Ngaruawahia, North Island, New Zealand.

These two photographs cover several chapters in transport evolution. Mr. James Cowan has told how, before the outbreak of the Waikato War in 1863, the Maoris objected to the road the soldiers were making. Have we not (said the Maoris) our rivers and our canoes? … Less than fifty years after the Waikato War the Main Trunk railway, traversing the heart of the King Country was complete; Rotorua was linked by rail long before that; and numerous rivers were crossed by such massive bridges as this over the Waikato at Hamilton. Canoe traffic has almost passed. Yet still Ngaruawahia, of regatta fame, can revive old glories.

Famous New Zealanders.

(Continued from page 21 ).

In its beginning the Maori King movement was peaceful and altruistic, and it had the approval of the missionary, Mr. Grace, who saw in it a means of establishing law and order among the tribes, in which the white Government had failed.

The Giver of the Sacred Peaks.

The third chief called Te Heuheu, in direct descent from the first Tu-kino, was originally named Patatai. He was the second son of Heuheu the Great; the eldest son of the chief wife, a young man named Te Waaka —had perished in the landslip.

Patatai was absent in the Rangitoto district of what is now the King Country, at the time of the disaster. When he returned with a large party of Ngati-Maniapoto, to mourn over the awful red clay tomb of his family, he assumed the name Horonuku, which means “Landslide,” or “Swallowed up in the Earth,” in memory of his father. His good old uncle Iwikau died in 1863, and he then took the family name Te Heuheu.

Horonuku went on the warpath at the head of his clan in 1863. He marched off to the Waikato War; and his friend Mr. Grace, on his advice, abandoned the mission station and returned to Auckland, for the safety of his family. “If we are beaten in the war,” he sadly told the missionary, “I may no longer be able to protect you.”

Later, in 1869, Horonuku, against his own wishes, perforce joined Te Kooti in the fighting around the South Taupo country and he narrowly escaped in the battle of Te Porere, where Te Kooti's last redoubt was stormed by the Colonial forces. This entrenchment, overgrown with flax and fern, is close to the present main motor road from National Park railway station past the base of the Tongariro Range. The chief came in and surrendered to Lieut.-Colonel McDonnell a few days after the fight, and Sir Donald Maclean, Native and Defence Minister, had him and his family taken down to Hawke's Bay on a kind of benevolent parole to keep him out of the Hauhau complications until the wars were over; they all returned in 1870.

It is to this chief Te Heuheu Tukino Horonuku that New Zealand owes the nucleus of the wonderful National Park, but the moving power behind the gift was the late Mr. Lawrence M. Grace, the son of Taupo's pioneer missionary. The Native Land Court at Taupo township in 1886 awarded the mountain peaks of Tongariro, Ngauruhoe and Ruapehu to Te Heuheu and his family, because of the intimate tapu associations of the mountains and the Heuheus. The old chief was troubled as to the ultimate fate of his ancestral volcanic peaks. “After I am dead, what will become of these sacred places?” he asked his friend Mr. Grace (who had married his daughter Te Kahui). Mr. Grace suggested that the best plan would be to make them a tapu place of the Crown, a sacred national property under the mana of the Queen. “Yes,” agreed the chief; “let them be a gift to the Government, a sacred gift for ever from me and my people.” And so it was done, with all the necessary formalities, and the mountain tops, an area of 6,500 acres in, all, were deeded to the Crown.

Thus came into being the Tongariro National Park, the area of which was increased from time to time by purchase until it is now a splendid domain of over 150,000 acres.

The Park is a grand memorial to the noble donor and his line, and as is fitting one of the most beautiful of the peaks in the Park bears the family name. This is the North Peak of Ruapehu, which is mapped as Te Heuheu; it is a perfect pyramid seen from the north, a glorious sight under snow.

The Ever-Burning Occupation Fire.

I could narrate many a story of Te Heuheu Horonuku, the Park-giver, who died in 1888, leaving his son, Tureiti te Heuheu, a great friend of mine in the days that are gone, to carry on the mana of the family and clan in his stead. Just one may be recalled; it is the story of the good old chief's splendid retort to an impertinent counter-claimant to parts of the Southern mountain area. It was in the Land Court in Taupo township. Major Kepa te Rangihiwinui, the fighting chief of the Whanganui tribes, asserted that his fires of conquest (raupatu) had burned in South Taupo; his ahi-ka, or “kindled fire” was his title to the land.

Te Heuheu Horonuku heard with rising indignation this speech of Kepa's. He rose and answered him.

“Who are you,” he said, “that speak of your fires of occupation burning in my country? Where is your continuous fire, your ahi-ka-roa [long burning fire]? Where is it? You cannot show it, for it does not exist. Now I shall show you mine! Look yonder”— and he pointed through the open window of the Court-room across the great Lake, southward. A curl of yellow vapour coiled up from Ngauruhoe crater.

“Behold my ahi-ka-roa—my mountain Tongariro! There burns my fire, kindled long ago by my ancestor Ngatoro-i-Rangi. It was he who lit that fire; it has burned there ever since! That is my fire of occupation. Now show me yours!”

No wittier or more forcible argument could be uttered. Kepa and his party were silenced. They found it useless to press their claim. No human hand could light so long-burning a fire of conquest. That is one of a hundred dramatic passages in the grand saga of the sacred mountains.

Taupo Moana and the Volcanoes.
From a water colour drawing by the late Captain T. Ryan, of Taupo. This view of the Lake and the mountains of the Tongariro National Park is from the Red Rocks at Waipahihi, North Taupo.