A VISIT TO NEW ZEALAND

Hokitika Guardian, 21 August 1926, Page 4

A VISIT TO NEW ZEALAND

(By Ethel Turner in the Sydney “Herald.”) THE COATING OF THE ATAOHI. Now. hero was I, an Australian, the crossing accomplished, setting foot for the first time in the land of the Maoris, with my knowledge of the race only of very recent acquisition. True, I had seen men Afarois, inordinately tattooed, leaping high in the air, with tongues hanging out almost to their chests, doing the “haka,” and tntooed ATaori maidens in flax dancing skirts of fringe-like strips that crackled joyously a.s they swayed with poi halls and sang balla’ds about Hinemoa-

But this was in London, where all things.are possible. This was in London before the war. when a village and its inhabitants had been transported bodily from the neighbourhood of Rotorua to make an extra shilling’s worth of sensation for the White City Exhibition.

And, true I had sat on my verandah in Australia and seen long, slender war canoes, filled with dusky Maoris, shooting over the quiet loch-like reaches of Middle Harbour. I had seen the creamy beach of Clontarf edged with wblares and palisadings, while loud beatings on tom-toms and little bursts of song and music had come blowing over the blue waters and up through my gum trees. But this, also, was but a fleeting show, on which one only bestowed a half-indulgent attention. To visit the Maoris in the fastnesses of their own land was an entirely different matter. One began to prepare for the meeting, to begin to read, and then to find myself going step by step from authority to authority, simply carried away by the unexpected absorbing interest. To have gone all these years and to have made no real study of them till now! And they almost at. our door! One eo Id hardly believe it of oneself. Those short articles are not- for those already wise in Maori lore, but merely for those who know as little as I did myself until a few weeks ago, hut who have a certain amount of interest in ihe subject.

A REVIEW. To run rapidly over fife ground: He"e are both the “young'’ lands cK Australia and Xew Zealand occupied in their endeavours to build themselves into mighty nations right on the battlegrounds, and burial-grounds, and villages of a native race, such being man’s wav world without end.

A native race? But, no. No Aus- ' tralian aboriginal or full-blooded Maori is absolutely that. Of the true origin • of Australian natives there is very little known. Some ethnologists derive them from the African negroes; some find affinities for them among the Ainus of Japan, the Khmers and Charns of Cambodia (who always sound to be more like a Gilbert and Sullivan opera than a race). But it- is said that there is most evidence for the theory that Australia had for first inhabitants a Papuan type of man, and down to him drifted in rude hark rafts, a Dravidian people driven from the hills of the Indian Deccan, who, after further migrations, overcame the Papuan type. At least, this theory accounts for the difficult problem of tbe characteristics of the Tasmanian natives, whoso racial affinities are Papuan and not Australian. Just, as the conquering Saxons drove the Celts into "Cornwall and Wales, so it is thought these Dravidians pushed the Papuans further and further down and round Australia until they escaped across Bass Straits in their savage shallops, and made I strongholds in our Apple Isle of to-day, there to confound the ethnologists. I However this may he, not a record, 1 not as much as a folk tale about these j earliest arrivals in Australia. And | even when first discovered by white 1 races thc-aboriginals had apparently I moved no step forward for centuries. They built no dwellings more permanent than hovels of piled logs or bowers of branches; they never cultivated the 1 soil for any kind of food crop, or domj csticatecl any animal (but tbe dog, | which probably came over with them in the canoes). They made of clothing, weapons, ornaments, or cooking, things only what the actual needs for the moment demanded.

To-day our rare contact with the race that we have almost entirely dispossessed affords few of us genuine interest, unless, indeed, we like ethnology for its own sake. NEW ZEALAND NATIVES.

But “ Across the Creek ” it is a very different matter. In the Maoris we have not savages but a branch of the human race possessed for many centures of traditions and arts that point to the fact that they came from one of iiic dominant races of prehistoric times. Their mythology relating to the creation of the world, light, darkness, and all other natural phenomena, will compare with that of the Greeks or ltomans. Their moral code, even centuries ago. was high; for centuries poetry has been like a living thread for them, woven in the web of a daily life. A chief bad to bo an orator and a. poet as well as a strategic warrior and a skilful seaman.

True, they were “ mon-cators,” as were the Australians and Polynesians, 'flic first man killed in battle was invariably eaten after the first fine frenpy of the combat, but with the Maoris the ceremonies of cannibalism bad mostly a ritual origin, and were governed by various strict observances.

It is now generally accepted that Melanesians or Papuans were the original Now Zealand race, and that the Maoris were Polynesians who came and saw them, and returning later in seven war canoes, little by little conquered and replaced them. This migration Maori tradition places at a date not much further hack than five centuries.

So there was New Zealand somewhere about 1-120, lying, a great island country. on tbe blue Pacific, mill reamed of by the smaller island country of Britain Hat was presently to possess it. And undreaming of it!

King Harry of England died and liis son reigned in bis stead. King James of Scotland came out of captivity after 18 years, 'flic French king was gathered to bis forefathers, and the son of Henry named himself King Charles the Seventh of France. On the hills of Domr-emy dreamed and wandered the tiny cnild who was to be known as St. Joan of Are. And none of them, cokings or child, dreamed that there was this far fair island of New Zealand, lying at the moment as convulsed with wars against invaders as were their own. War canoes, warriors, wives, priests,

stone idols, sacred weapons, carvings, Polynesian plants, dogs, and black rats —these had arrived in New Zealand from oversea and made good their footing. The day of the Maori had begun.