The Lake-Isle of Mokoia

(By Stewart Perry.)

The first sight of Mokoia, set like a jewel in Lake Rotorua is one which it is hard to forget.

Twenty years ago an English traveller wrote:

“Presently we came to a clearing in the forest, where there was a sawmill, in the centre of a little village of workmen's cottages, with a school and tiny church. And soon after that we saw lying far below us, and looking exactly like a land-girt sea, the waters of Rotorua.

“It was girded with blue hills, fringed with green bush, edged with silver sand. Gay little summer clouds had alighted here and there on its surface for a bath, and it lay shimmering in the afternoon sunshine like liquid sapphires at the bottom of a deep sevres bowl.

“We had just time for a glimpse of it before the train turned a corner and shut it in from view until we had run some miles down the hill to its level.”

Still to-day that is how one approaches Rotorua. Leaving the main line at Frankton, the traveller boards a slower train and is just becoming used to the journey when a casual glance out of the window shows him the same handful of liquid sapphires, with the storied island of Mokoia set in the very centre, to set his memory at work groping to catch elusive recollections of what Sir George Grey wrote of the island, of how Domett expanded what Grey told him, and of the tales the Maoris themselves wove about the island.

The shores of the lake are only a few minutes from the Railway Station, and almost lap the famous baths. The traveller's first excursion is generally to some point on the edge of the lake from which he can see Mokoia.

An historic island if there ever was one. Hongi, the Maori Napoleon, performed his greatest feat out of a desire to capture it, when he made his men drag their canoes thirty miles from the coast through dense bush to the shores of Rotorua. Greek history contains a parallel to that feat; and it is to Greek history, or mythology, that one must look for a parallel to the swim of Hinemoa. The Maoris have their own Hero and Leander myth; and even today the Maori guides will relate it to any who ask them.

It was not from a guide that Sir George Grey learned of the legend, but from a chief, and a chief of the very tribe which owned Hinemoa as their princess. Sir George's own words are interesting:

“Attracted by the beauty of the spot, I determined to pass a morning on the island of Mokoia. I proceeded there in a canoe with some friends and two or three natives. Wandering about, I grew weary, and was tempted at last to sit down at the edge of a beautiful warm spring, close to the margin of Lake Rotorua, in which lake the island of Mokoia stands. After a time a native chief came up to me, and knowing my fondness for legends, he told me the beautiful legend of his ancestress Hinemoa, who had landed on the spot where we sat. I was charmed with the tale… . The discovery of this legend, on December 26th, 1849, created a strong sensation of pleasure in many minds in New Zealand. It was not then known, and at first could hardly be believed, that tales, containing so much of romance and poetic beauty, existed in

(From a painting by the late T. Ryan, by courtesy of James Gowan.)
Mokoia Island, Lake Rotorna, North Island, New Zealand.

New Zealand. I shall never forget the pleasure with which my valued friend, Domett, first heard it, and long will live the magnificent poem, ‘Ranolf and Amohia,’ into which his genius has expanded the legend, so fortuitously acquired.”

A great man, this Domett, in New Zealand history, though almost forgotten now. Browning's great friend, he was the “Waring” of the greater man's poem; but not only that, he was the real deviser of our education system, the master-mind in our early land troubles, the inaugurator of our system of land tenure, a Prime Minister of the Dominion, and a fine philosopher and poet, as well as a great satirist.

The legend itself, from which, of course, the poet departs, tells of Tutanekai, the stepson of Whakaue, who lived with his father and brothers on the island of Mokoia. There reached them there a report of the beauty of a high-born maiden called Hinemoa. Tutanekai and each of his elder brothers desired to have her as a wife.

Tutanekai used to play on the trumpet, his friend Tiki on the flute, and in the evenings the sound of their music was wafted across the lake to the village at Owhata, where dwelt the beautiful Hinemoa. Hinemoa's heart leapt when she heard the music, for she knew that the trumpet was the trumpet of Tutanekai. But Hinemoa was so prized by her family that they would not betroth her even to a chief, and Tutanekai, the illegitimate, was held in contempt even by the other sons of his mother. page 21 Yet he dared to confess his love. He told Hinemoa that when she heard the music of the trumpet she must launch and paddle into the night towards it; but night after night went by and she did not come; for her kinsfolk were suspicious and had drawn the canoes high up on the beach. Then one night the music sounded even more sweetly than before, and surged over her like a wave and she made up her mind to swim across to Mokoia.

She placed her clothes on a rock, and took to the water, with three large gourds as floats on each side of her, so that she could rest when she became weary. At last she reached the other bank and lay in a hot pool to warm herself.

To the pool came the servant of Tutanckai, with a calabash to get his master a drink. “Who's there?” called Hinemoa, in the gruff voice of a man, and when the servant answered that he was Tutanekai's man, she told him to give her the calabash; then grew it on the ground and broke it. The servant returned to Tutanekai, who sent him again with a new calabash—and again—but each time “the man in the pool” broke it. At last Tutanekai arose in his wrath and came down himself to the pool. Hinemoa hid behind a rock, but soon allowed herself to be discovered, and her lover lifted her slim brown body from the water.

They went to the house of Tutanekai and reposed there; and thereafter, by the ancient law of the Maoris, they were man and wife. In the morning Tutanekai was missing when the people came from their houses to cook and eat their morning meal, and Whakaue sent a servant to bring him. Peoping through the window of the house the man saw four feet instead of two, and the secret was a secret no longer.

Then Tiki, who played upon the flute, mourned that Tutanekai had a wife while he had none, and Tutanekai went to his father Whakaue and persuaded him to give Tupa, his daughter, to Tiki for his wife.

This is the tale which Domett expanded and elaborated to make his epic. Hinemoa becomes Amohia (the stress in each name is on the third syllable), and the swim to the island is reproduced.

The warm pool in which Amohia warmed herself after her swim has been dubbed Psyche's Bath, and may still be seen on the island, though alas! it no longer deserves the description which Domett applied to it in the words

(Rly. Publicity photo.)
The famous Hongi's Track, near Rotorua, North Island, New Zealand.

which bring this very brief survey to a close:

“It was a sparry basin, smoothly lipped and fringed
With snowy stalactite, just tinged With a faint delicate flush
Like that white rose, the maiden-blush.
The water seemed a liquid piece of heaven—so blue—
Of midmost heaven a lovely piece
Laid bare by a slight breach in the summer-fleece;
And look what sparkling crowds through
Diaphonous azure, fast and ever
Escaping in the mountain's fever
And trembling up with timorous haste to greet
And deck with diamond grail the beauteous guest,
As down she sinks into her lucid nest
And in transparent sapphire makes her warm and liquid nest.”

That famous writer of “thrillers,” Edgar Wallace, was a great smoker. Like so many literary men he sought— and found—inspiration in tobacco. Affixed to a wall of his study he had a big pipe-rack holding perhaps a dozen pipes, and it was his practice before speaking into the dictaphone he always used (he never used a pen) to “load” three or four pipes, so that directly he had smoked out one he could light another, without interrupting his train of thought. But tobacco is just as necessary to brain workers in other walks of life. The harassed business man, the scientist faced with some abstruse problem, and many others find solace in the weed. In all such cases there is nothing like a good comfortable smoke, and no tobacco half so refreshing as “toasted” Cut Plug No 10 (Bullshead), Navy Cut No. 3 (Bulldog), Cavendish, Riverhead Gold and Desert Gold. “Why toasted?” it used to be asked. Now every smoker knows that toasting eliminates the poisonous nicotine (common to all tobaccos) and renders “toasted” pure, sweet, fragrant and very comforting.^*