JOURNAL

Maori Messenger : Te Karere Maori, Volume 2, Issue 50, 21 November 1850, Page 3

JOURNAL

Of an Expedition Overland from Auckland to Taranaki, by way of Rotorua, Taupo, and the West Coast, undertaken, in the Summer of 1849—50, by His Excellency the Gover-nor-in-Chief' of New Zealand. [Continued from Che "McsscnKer" uTOct. 21 J Thursday, December 20th.—Rose at five, struck the terns, and, having had a cup of chocolate, started at six. After walking over about three miles of fern hills, from which, at several intervals, we obtained various fine views of the country we had left behind us, as well as some very pretty peeps at the.. Wooded gullies which ran down from each side of the razor-back ridge 011 which we were travelling, we entered the forest of Hautere at 7 a.m. The road is called Te Ara Kiore, or the Hat's Road, from its being so narrow and ill-defined, and so difficult lo travel upon, by reason of the kareao, or supple-jack, to pass underneath which one is frequently obliged to bend neaily double. a few miles at t.'ie commencement, the road open, well marked, and by no means difficult travelling, but it soon becomes ill-defined and very thick from the circumstance of its having been so seldom traversed of late years. Almost all oiirnatives were strangers to this part of the country and knew nothing of the road, and had it not been for the broken twigs and branches left by the foremost of our party some of us must often have missed the path. This is a practice which should always be observed by the leaders of a travelling parly in New Zealand, when there is any considerable number of persons in the company, wherever (lie road is at all confused or rendered diflicult to find by numerous crossings, or by being overgrown with fern or oilier scrub, as

llio Maori roads being destitute of sign posts, it often becomes a matter of serious consequence to have the road marked beyond the possibility of a mistake. Travelling through a New .Zealand forest h certainly most dull andj uninteresting to anx one except a botanist, ft i/true tligft/notliiyy can be more beautiful woods, with its noble trees nnd.everlaeting foliage of every conceivable snaue °tT^Sl£3 , " il can anything be more melodious lUffihenioaif/ ing song of the thousands of birds, The sweetness of whose voices has been universally extolled. Hut then when the traveller is in the midst of n dense wood all the beautiful foliage which looks so magnificent when seen from the outside is high above his head, and his view is limited to the trunks of the trees, covered with innumerable species of mosses and endless varieties of ferns, very interesting to a botanist, but not at all attractive to the casual observer, the everlasting supple-jack, that bane of travellers, and a few pale, sickly-looking bushes of underwood which gradually disappear as he penetrates farther into the depths of the forest. Then as to the birds, they are never heard save in the skirts of the wood, and the only sound of life that meets the traveller's car, to break the dull monotonous silence of the forest after he has left the open country a mile or two behind him, is the whistling sound produced by the flight of a stray pigeon, the occasional scream of a solitary kaka, or, now and then, the subdued and (as it might almost bo called) whispering chatter of a pair of the pretty little green parrots called kuktiriki, or powlmitcre, by the natives ; but a singing bird is a thing nut to be thought of beyond the very outskirts of the wood. Sunshine never enters there, save in the shape of a few fugitive beams which now and then struggle through the dense mass of foliage overhead : the consequence is that you are in perpetual twilight from sunrise to sunset ; but this is not the only inconvenience arising from the want of a fair share of the genial warmth of the sun, for the atmosphere has over a damp and chilling feeling and the ground is perpetually moist and sloppy underfoot, even in the driest weather. Then you are sure to be inconvenienced for want of water, and that seriously 100 in some cases, because the road has always to be kept upon a ridge wherever practicable, on account of that eternal kareao, which grows so luxuriantly and interlaces itself so ingeniously into an impenetrable matin all the valleys, that these are carefully avoided as much as possible, in laying out their lines of road, by the natives who, it must be allowed, have a very tolerable natural talent for engineering at which they would soon become pretty expert could the idea once be instilled into their minds that a straight road (where the lie of the country will admit of its being made straight) is the shortest and therefore the most eligible line for a man to lake who wishes to travel from one given point lo another. Hut this is an idea which is only just beginning to dawn upon the minds of (he Maories by seeing the truth of the axiom demonstrated in the roads made by Europeans ; it certainly never occurred to them previously, for the sinuosities of the Maori roads, even when crossing a wide plain, have been remarked by every traveller in New Zealand. ftut I am digressing terribly, and the only excuse that can be offered is that of the exceeding dullness of the road upon which we levelled this day. To return to the journey however : —We were considerably distressed, or rather inconvenienced, this morning, by the absence of water from the cause mentioned above, which appeared to annoy the old chief very much, as whenever we arrived at a place where a gully ran down from the ridge on which we were walking, he would start off with his wife and a pannakin lo search for some. At about ten o'clock we were fortunate enough to come upon a swampy place where we obtained a supply of water sufficient lo make tea, and we accordingly halted for breakfast. At eleven we stalled again, and had not travelled very long before one of our natives discovered by the , dkutUyjl o£ the sun that we were progressing in the wrong direction. The man who made this discovery was near the rear of the party, which being rather numerous was (as is always the case with .a large parly of natives) very straggling. It therefore touk some time lo recall those in advance who were innocently making the best of their way back lo Patetcre under the guidance of a man named Tarawaru (the same who was previously mentioned as being conconccriied in a little disluibancc which diversified the, monotony of our journey up the Thames) who being a native of Kotorua, and belonging to a settlement.on the side of the lake nearest to the spot where the road we were then travelling upon emerged from the wood, was supposed lo be perfectly acquainted with the said road. We were greatly amused at the I rallying this gentleman got from the other natives, but he still persisted that he was i right and was very angry with the others for | doubting his iufulibility, insisting on pursuing i the same road which every body besides him- j self could see must inevitably end in our issu- ' ing from the wood at the exact point at which [ we entered it. lie wasbowever nl last convinced ' by SymomU' compass and we made a ficsh

slart.determined for the future to trust ourselves entirely to the compass and our Thames friend, Opila, who had first discovered the error, and who, though lie had never hcen in the wood since lie was almost a child when he travelled the road with a war-patty during the famous llolortia war, really knew a great deal more about it than those who came from Rotorua anil boasled that they were perfectly acquainted with the way. At half past twelve we reached an eminence called Raumatatiki where several trees arc marked with kokowai or red ochre ; this is supposed to he half way between each end of the forest. Here we waited for half an hour till all the natives came up, when we started again the road becoming more difficult and tangled every moment, and the natives grumbling terribly at the weight of their loads. In some places where the wood had been burnt the track became completely lost from huge trees having fallen across the road, nnd from the rankness of the vegetation which invariably springs up spontaneously wherever a clearing has been made in the trees, and which in several places so completely concealed the path that it was some minutes before we could find the right direction in which to proceed. The old chief who always kept ahead and went to search for the road whenever we were at fault began at last to get very tired ; and about half past four having arrived at a place where there was some water he sat down and faiily refused to move any further, so we had no choice but to look out for a place to pitch the tents. Presently the natives began to arrive and Te Heuheu filled his pipe, hut at first they could not strike a light; then when one was achieved, the fire would not burn and there was the poor old man seated on a stump, growling and scolding at every one who •came near him. At last however, we managed to get him some tea, which worked a wonderful change in his spirits; things began to go right again, the pipe smoked like the funnel of a steamer, and the old fellow was soon laughing and joking away as well as the best of us. We had hoped to reach Rotorua this evening, the distance from Patctere, as given by the Bishop being twenty-seven miles, of which we had travelled at least five yesterday evening; hul the losing our way in the forenoon, the great weight of most of the loads the natives had to carry, and the early hour at which we halted caused us to make rather a poor day's march, estimated by us at about fifteen or sixteen mile?. The natives all complained very much of pains in their backs and legs from the weight of their loads, some of which were undoubtedly very heavy; and their mode of curing these pains was by lighting enormous fires and placing the aching part as close as possible to the heat, this they said had the effect of relaxing the muscles and rendering them fit for service on the following day. (To be continued.)