A Missionary Tramper

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31107, 9 July 1966, Page 4

A Missionary Tramper

Richard Taylor:. Missionary Tramper. By A. D. Mead. A. H. & A. W. Reed. 272 pp.

The Rev. Richard Taylor, after obtaining his M.A. degree at Cambridge University in 1835, was accepted by the Church Missionary Society for service overseas. He worked in the Bay of Islands mission from 1839 till his transfer to the Wanganui district in April, 1843. His Wanganui parish, with its headquarters at Putiki, was an extensive one. To quote this book, it “covered the Maori communities along the full length of the river” —a distance of 140 miles—“and the coastai strips north to Hawera and south to Rangitikei.”

Mr Taylor frequently travelled well beyond the bounds of his parish, his journeys on foot taking him to New Plymouth, Auckland, Tauranga and Wellington. As he could not swim, he had to be carried across rivers and swamps by his Maori attend-

ants who were very devoted to him. Sometimes the rivers forded by them were breast high and intensely cold. One of the journeys described in this book is that made by Mr Taylor from Putiki to Auckland in AprilMay of 1849. At the outset he was canoed by Maoris for a fair distance up the Wanganui river, when many difficult rapids had to be negotiated. From a point four miles above its junction with the Ongarue river, he and his party of Maoris walked eastward to Lake Taupo. They then canoed down the Waikato to its mouth, visiting mission stations on the way; and from Tuakau they walked to Auckland.

This was Mr Taylor's first visit to Auckland, says the author, who adds: “his descriptions of the town and surroundings, his visits to leading citizens and his dispute with Bishop Seiwyn on mission policy are full of interest” And yet not a word of Mr Taylor’s diary covering the visit is contained in this narrative. The same may be said concerning his five visits to New Plymouth between 1844 and 1847. On each occasion he spent a number of days in the town; but whatever his diary had to say about the place fails to find a place in this book. His eye-

witness account of the damage caused by the severe earthquake at Wellington in October, 1848 has also been passed over by the author. It is hard to determine what has been the principle of selection in deciding which parts of the diary shall be included and which omitted. If the author’s main purpose has been to show the missionary on the move from place to place, he has certainly done that, chapter by chapter, and in a way that cannot fail to grip the reader. Mr Taylor was not a very robust person. He often suffered from violent headaches and rheumatic pains; and yet it was not unusual for him to travel on foot or on horseback from early morning till late at night, without so much as a morsel of food.

Although this book makes some slight reference to Mr Taylor’s diary entries concerning the fighting which occurred between the Hauhaus and the friendly Maoris in 1864, it gives no account of the assistance he rendered Sir George Grey during March of that year when Sir George came to Putiki to confer with some Maori chiefs. It mentions the Governor’s subsequent meetings with the missionary, and goes so far as to state (p. 248 that the latter “was a member of an official party which went up to Kaiwiki in the steamer, Rangatira.” Though what the official party was doing, or who comprised it, are questions that are left unanswered. A similar obscurity enshrouds other passages in the book. In one or two places it is stated that Mr Taylor spent an evening “in typical fashion”; but no clue is afforded as to what is meant by “typical.” One gathers from this biography that Mr Taylor was a man of extraordinary energy and inflexible purpose; and furthermore, that he was a good all-round pastor to the Maori people. He even extracted their teeth, and on one of his visits to a remote corner of his parish, he distributed New Testaments to all the women who had given up smoking. As the diary is over 100 years old, it naturally contains names of people and places that will need some explaining to the present-day readers. And yet Mr Mead’s book is almost devoid of footnotes, with the result that the reader is sometimes left groping as to the full significance of the facts narrated. At least, where a Maori saying is cited, as on page 108, an English translation should have been given. (In this Maori quotation the word powhatu is wrongly spelt "powatu.”) A section containing “biographical notes” on 32 people mentioned in the book is appended to it The missionaries, C. H. Schnackenberg and S. M. Spencer might well have been included in this section. Incidentally it lists Governor Grey as Sir “George Edward Grey”—an error which stems possibly from the entry he is given in the “Dictionary of New Zealand Biography.” The maps contained in this book do not cover the journeys made by the missionary beyond the bounds of his

parish to Auckland, Tauranga and Wellington. Three of Mr Taylor’s journeys were mapped on the “Historical Atlas” prepared by the Department of Internal Affairs some years ago and still available at the . Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington. They are first his journey with Bishop Selwyn in November, 1843, from Taupo to the Upper Wanganui; second, his journey from the Waitara to Wanganui, via the Taumatmahoe track undertaken in January, 1844; and last the journey of March, 1845, from Wanganui to Taupo and back. As they are all described in this book, the “Historical Atlas” might have been put to good use as a guide to the reader.

A book such as this can never really serve as a substitute for the diaries upon which it is based. A true appreciation of the slow, plodding nature of the journeys described at first hand by the diarist can hardly be gained from such summary accounts as these. Moreover the actual diaries have an intimate and personal quality that no indirect reporting of them can adequately convey. The present book will have served a very useful purpose If it quickens such an interest in the diaries upon which it has drawn, as to lead to their being printed eventually, if only in a series of extracts with helpful commentary.