Kua hinga te rata whakamarumaru” (“The sheltering rata tree has fallen to the ground”) is a classic phrase of the Maori in lamenting the death of a chief and leader. The ancient saying came poignantly to the mind with the news of the death of Tahu Potiki, the greatest figure in the Maori world of Taranaki. The pakeha world knew him as the Rev. Robert Haddon, Methodist Missionary. His home was near Normanby. For thirty-five years—half his lifetime—he was a minister; he was a power for moral good and education among his people; and his preachings and influence extended to every Maori district.

But over and above that side of his life and character Tahu Potiki was a great and noble leader of his race. He was a chief by long and sacred lineage of the Ngati-Ruanui tribe; the great warrior Titokowaru was his granduncle. He looked the thoroughbred rangatira. He stood two inches over six feet in height; his weight was sixteen stone; he was as straight as one of his native kahikatea pines to the end of his seventy years of life. Like “poor Tom Bowling” of the song (and a Captain Tom Bowling I knew in life), his form was of the manliest beauty. His features were strong and intellectual; there was a warrior flash in his eyes; yet—again, like Dibdin's sailor, “his heart was kind and soft” to those in trouble and brimming over with aroha for the distressed people of his race. He was utterly unselfish in his life and aspirations; he sacrificed much for the sake of humanity.

“Aroha ki te iwi”—love for the people—was the motivating principle of his long labours.

In one of our talks together in Taranaki I told him it was perhaps a pity he had not been born a generation earlier. Then he would have been in the thick of the Hauhau war, and would have been an active young warrior under Titokowaru, against the pakeha.

“Not a doubt of it,” he agreed, laughing; “I'd certainly have had a hand in all the fighting.” Indeed, this stalwart of Ngati-Ruanui, fiery and determined and brainy, would have made a formidable leader of the tribes who fought so desperately to regain the lands taken from them by arbitrary Government confiscation. We frequently discussed those wars and their causes; and Tahu Potiki took me to see and talk with several of the old warriors who lived in secluded villages.

The Ancient Wisdom.

In his boyhood he was selected for training by his elders in the traditions and the sacred lore of old Maoridom; it was intended that he should succeed them as tohunga and legend-keeper of Ngati-Ruanui. But the Church captured him in his young manhood, and his energies were then directed otherwise. His interests remained broad and diverse, however. He concerned himself with temperance advocacy among the people, and he stoutly championed their land claims. He, like his tribesmen, had suffered greatly by the wholesale confiscations of the Waimate Plains land.

I suggested once to Tahu Potiki that he should be in Parliament representing his people of the Western Maori electorate. That was after the death of Sir Maui Pomare. “No, I couldn't endure the waste of time,” was his reply. General politics did not interest him; he concentrated every hour and every energy on the great work of advancing the welfare and the uplifting of his race. That was always in his mind. He was always grateful for the sympathy and the helping voice and pen of his pakeha friends; and the last letter I received from him was a touching expression of thanks for what I had written in advocating the claims of Taranaki and Waikato to pakeha assistance in their efforts to become successful farmers.

To Hide You From Your Foes.

You never know—you may yet need some effective mask from an enemy; it is convenient even in peace to vanish from the common gaze sometimes. I offer this recipe for emergency use, a huna, or charm, to conceal one from hostile eyes. It was given me many a year ago by my old friend Rangiriri, of Utuhina, Rotorua, who had been in his time a warrior for the White Queen, fighting the Hauhaus on many expeditions. He said he had found the little prayer to Ruwaimoko (shortened to “Moko” in the karakia) of service aforetime in bush skirmishing:—

Pungawerewere, heiheia mai aku mata,
Popokorua, heiheia mai aku mata.
E Moko e!
Tu mai ki waho,
Moku to taua rua.
Titiro ki runga,
Titiro ki raro,
Titiro ki whenua noa atu.

(Translation.)

Spiders, hide my face;
Ants, obscure me from the foe;
Oh, 'Moko, god of the underworld,
Come forth from out thy pit,
And let me enter it.
Search all around,
Gaze up and down. See nothing but the empty land.

The charm appealed to the spirits of the soil to hide the fugitive in the earth with them, and called on the spiders to weave their webs across the path behind him. You may read in the life of Mahomet how he hid in a cave from his enemies and the spiders wove their webs across the mouth of it; this put his pursuers off his trail. The huna also was said to have the effect of raising a friendly fog, to obscure a fugitive from those in chase of him.

A Modern Application.

Now we have new problems, this nervous world of ours. Wanted—a potent charm of science to conceal our country, in the event of war, from prowling enemy cruisers and their winged bombers. The kind of friendly fog required is one that could be turned on by pressing a button at military headquarters here, and called off at will, also a magnetic variety of huna that would bedevil the compass and the whole box of navigating tricks so that never a sign of New Zealand would the enemy see. That would, of course, in its turn create another problem, how to confine its effects to enemy craft, maritime or aerial.