THE MAORI KING'S HEAD-QUARTERS.

Hawke's Bay Times, Volume 19, Issue 1472, 5 November 1872, Page 2

THE MAORI KING'S HEAD-QUARTERS.

The well known Piniha has returned to the Thames after paying a visit to the Maori King at Tokangamutu. He gives the following very interesting desciiption of his trip, which we take from the Southern Cross:—

At Tokangamutu a great number of people are living, apparently in great comfort, and supplied with many of the comforts and some of the luxuries of life. The live stock of cattle, sheep, pigs, peacock*, turkeys, fowls, geese, <fcc, appear ample, and they make very nice cakes from fern root scraped, and mixed with milk, and baked. Here I stopped a month. The ancient style of living is adopted here, and J think it very superior to any other I have seen, and better than Europeans can see in any ol her native district. The King and his wife occupy a house in the centre of the place, the houses'of the other natives surrounding it. Religious services are held daily. The King does not always attend. The whole of the natives are disposed to be friendly towards the Europeans, and will not interlero with the white people unless provoked. The natives are all busy planting their crop«, and do not even dream of war. Te Kooti had been at the Kings place shoitly before we reached there, but was at the time of our return at Mokau, visiting the people before his return to Tokangamutu, where he intends to keep quiet. " The King has culled a meeting of Maoris to be held at Maungatautari next December, to discuss the affairs of the aboriginal inhabitants of the North Island. The King people have plenty of clothes, food, and liquor, and are not at all like what umld be expected in such an isolau-d place as Tokangamutu Some of the King's male subjects are building a boat for him suitable for the Waipa River. The natives. under the control of the King object to a Parliament House being erected in the distiiofc, of which something was said some time ago by the Native Minister. They object to the making of roads android digging in the district. There is no chance of war il* the Europeans do not provoke it. The King commands all his people to keep at peace with the Europeans, but he will not allow roads or gold-mining at Tuhua or Taupo, for, it ho did so, complications might arise between the Maoris and the pakehas. On our way down we saw parties searching foi the bodies of the children of Mr Guilding, who were drowned by the upsetting of a canoe at a point on the river Thames named Te Rae-a-te-Papa. The bodies were not discovered when we left/'