AN EARLY SURVEY

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 05, Issue 77, 13 July 1942, Page 5

AN EARLY SURVEY

AREA IN WAIKATO

LATE MR G. S. WHITESIDE'S

EXPERIENCE

The following interesting reminiscence told by the late Mr G. i?. Whiteside in the N.Z. Surveyor's Journal 1938, will be of interest to

our readers

During the middle 'nineties, while working in the neighbourhood of the Waikato River Heads, I noticed three Maoris riding quickly toward me and beckoning me to halt. As, a short time previously, I had been the means of getting two Maoris sent to prison for six months for pulling up survey pegs, I thought probably the presence of these Maoris meant more trouble. However, their mission was quite friendly. They told me that they had been sent by their Maori king, Mahuta to get me to make a survey for His Dusky Highness. Mahuta had recently purchased an area of about six hundred acres of virgin land eight to ten miles West of Huntly for a farm for his son, and Mahuta washed the boundaries defined. I enquired about a plan of the land and was assured that the king had a good plan. He would find me men and accommodation, but there must be no "Taihoa" about me starting the job. The king wished to get on with improvements. On the appointed day, I was met at Huntly Railway Station by an escort of Maoris with. saddle horses and conveyed triumphantly to Maliuta's camp on his new acquisition. I was treated most royally. A new tent had been pitched for my exclusive use; a bullock had been killed, and I was treated to boiled steak. (I prefer my steak roast or fried). A camp stretcher had been brought along from Huntly for my sole benefit. For years I had had to be content with a manuka bunk with sometimes a little mangemange on top. Three smiling Maori damsels were looking after the cuLinary side of the camp, and twenty stout young men were deputed to be my party of assistants. My first, difficulty arose when I found huta's plan had distances but no bearings on it. Mahuta told me should there be insufficient information on the plan, to proceed to Auckland at his expense, and obtain from the Sudvey Office what was required, but before doing so "get the try." I protracted approximate bearings on the plan and made a start. The block to be surveyed was almost a quadilateral in form. There were three long straight lines or sides, but the other side, as Paddy would say had about eighteen sides to it where it fronted an air line road or intended road. This side was along a tortuous winding main ridge. Fortunately there was a well established starting point at one corner of the survey.

The modus operandi was to run out a trial line on the protractor bearing through the tall manuka and scrub, and at the given distance search for the old peg with my twenty braves Avhose number was sometimes embarrassing to me. Although the original survey had been done about thirty years pieviouslj. mid the pegs were mostly all rotted away the ground marking was almost perfect. The original surveyor had taken the precaution to place around these pegs a mound of earth about nine inches high and eighteen inches in diameter. These simple monuments —now solid ground, weie readily found, anil when the clay was pajred off with a spade, revealed the remains of the old pegs a fool below the ground. It was then an easy matter to cut a straight J between these points. The lines of Euclid, the first Egyptian survey lines must be four feet wide. This ' survey turned out a very simple matter, and we found all the original angle marks, 'lhe king came to my tent every night for a report on the day's progress of the work. On seeing the large number of lines and angles on his ridge roadway boundary, he mentioned that he had heard the calumnious assertion that surveyors Avere paid £1 per angle extra, and the survey charge was often needlessly loaded with angle charges. When I informed Mahuta I had met his late father, King lawliiao at his residence near Pukekawa, | he shook both my hands at once, saying he had met a friend. Taw-f liiao was notable for the tattoo marks around his face. He was a dignified old chieftain, one of Nature's gentlemen. Tawhiao's later years were spent in a resilience which the Government had built for him near Pukekawa. The survey work being completed, I departed, Mahuta asking me to send my account along to him as (Continued in next column)

soon as convenient. However, being very busy at the time, I did not immediately send along my chargeAt the end of a week, the king's three attendants who first interviewed me came along and told me they had been sent by Mahuta to get my "booka baoka" (account). This J; had made out with an elastic scale stretched to its utmost tension of £15. No allowance was made on the charge lor sag, inclination, temperature, elasticity, or reduction to sea level, spirit level, or any other level. The charge was commensurate with the dignity and majesty of a king. Although the distance these Maoris had to travel on horseback was nearly 40 miles, they re-* turned the second day after, with payment in full, with gold sovereigns. Think of that, ye fellow tripod adjusters that have to wait for payment sometimes for years or until some of the block is sold. I met Mahuta again a few weeks afterwards, and he inquired from me' how I liked to work for tli© Maori king. I replied that I had worked for King Dick (as the Hon. R. J. Seddon was sometimes called) j and he was very fine, but King Ma~ huta was "ka pai"—superfine.