THE WAITARA MEETING.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume XIII, Issue 164, 9 July 1878, Page 4

THE WAITARA MEETING.

The reports we have hitherto published of thia meeting bjtvfc b&eu from the " New Zeahnder," &c Ministerial organ. The follomtog is from the cor» respondent of the "New Zealand Times," the 'Opposition paper tn New Plymouth, June 27. My experiences in New Zealand, Sunns? nearly a quarter of a century have been tolerably dreary, but anything more, utterly varied than the last week spent here I find it impossible to conceive. Neither New Plymouth nor Waitara at the best of times are particularly lively spots, but seen under the influence of a pourinp rain and a howling wind continuing almost without intermission day after day for nearly a fortnight, the effect can be better imagined than described. At such a time, too, one feels completely isolated acd cut off from the rest of the world. Flooded rivers prevent communication by land. and a raging «orf is an impassable barrier to landing or leaving by sea. Indeed I know of only one person more deserving of eoropassioa than your correspondent under such circumstances as these. He was a bridegroom expectant, who should have been landed last Sunday for his wedding here, but whom a cruel fate and the steamer Taiaroa kept togainc about within bowshot of Ins bride, and then carried him on sick at lieart— and otherwise—to Auckland instead. Every day for the last week we have pone on in one unvarying and monotonous round. We crowd in the early morning with a host of correspondents and expectant pleasure-seekers into the traits for Waiters, and travel as slowly as steam can take us, to the Bcene of tho native gathering. Arrived there, we plod through the mud to a miserable public-house, its close rooms filled with a noisy, dirty, wet, Brooking crowd of natives of all ages, sizes, and sexes, with their attendant pakehas, and with a place called a billiard room, crammed with young Maori la<?s, swearing nnd drinking and ploying a game called "Devil's pool," a name singularly appropriate to its surroundings. The only refuge from this misery is under (he friendly shade of ! fin umhrelh oufeHe in the pouring rain, or it may be varied by climbing up a slippery hill to the pah close by, where, reclining oo a mat in a miaerahle whare, i lips the notable Rewi—lord of an estate of far greater extent and larger value than many an English earldom — a man who holds in his hands just now the fate and fortunes of several thousand men. Rewi ia a small man, but there is great power in his face* which has a very pleasant but thoughtful expression. He receives his many visitors with extreme courtesy and ng much dignity as hia surroundings will allow; but (be charm of the first impressions gives place to pity when, us at the time I saw him, his little and j only daughter, shoeless, unkempt, clothed in a dirfcy roundabout of calico amoses herself and her father as well with a sixpany pqueaking tpj, and partakes • with him, in common with the other occupants of the whare, of n pancikin of tea. bo called, atrif some loaves of bread tipped ,out from a sack . upon the earthern floor. What n j misfTftble isrce the whole thing seems that Ministers of the British Crown are k,opt hanging about for weeks waffihg in a state of axnious expectancy for an expression of this man's tbougbiß, and that thousands have to be spent in the. endeavor to ascertain and publish to the world what he may be pleased to say or do. . ; However, we manage to kill en hoar with this visit, and gain food for reflection through many an hour more, Which ia a great thing just now. Having paid thia visit, we anxiously inquire the news, whether there is any chance of the meeting coming off, and finding there is not, we visit the extraordioary building which the Government has erected for the Maori visitors to this meeting. It is an enormous lean-to, close boarded on all sides, without any other means of admitting light into the several compartments than the doors, when open, afford. Ifc Burrounds three side of a large open square close by the railway station, and resembles a large cattle abed, except that it is math lees comfortable than decent CBttle sheda usually are. The Maoris evidently do not appreciate the kindness of the Government, for they prefer the old whares ai the pah, or the bouse with the drink and tobacco end the " devil's pool." Tbere being nothing more to see we get through the remaining hours as best we can, and are most thankful to return to New Plymouth by the train at half-past three. This programme, less the visit to Rewi and the inspection of the cattle-shed, has had to be repeated every day until to-day, when the usual routine was broken by the arrival of Borne forty-nine bullocks and horae teams from Pariaka — Te Whiti's pah, near Mr Egmont's— laden with pigs and potatoes, a contribution to the feaat which is the usual accompaniment of meetings like these. The arrival of these drays was certainly a most interesting eight. They came winding down the hill to the Waitara Valley in procession, with a motley collection of drivers, whose bullockwhips kept up a running fire as of small arms in the distance. The leading dray bore, as a banner, a gunny mat on a long ragged pole, suggestive of bags.of jHJgasylsoppdse, and a very fattj Maori, with a email isi flag, rode

up aba down ta preserve the order of the toarcb. As the procession neared the town all the Maoris, meo, women, and ohildreo, turned out, and with waving boughs and hatß and shawls, nnd stamping of feet and shrill cries of welcome, aaloted tke convoy. It seldom talfc to anyone's lot to lfßteto to such an unearthly din. To the cries nnd cbaunta from the bumnu throute, and the violent and regular stamping of many hundred human feet was added the squealing of 100 pigs, as they came humping along in tbe advancing drays, and the forty-nine wbipß of the drivera were cracked with an energy vvitb which, I venture to Bay, the forty-nine whips had never been cracked before. As coon as the drays had drawn up in treble line within the cattle-shed square* the " rangatirae," both pakeba and Maori, retired to the empty store in which the meeting was to he bald, and when Sir George Grey and tbe principal men of boih races had taken possession of the dozen chairs, and the rest of the aesemblege, male and female, had settled themselves comfortably in the straw — the cattle-shed idea evidently running through ihe whole of the preparations, — ihe loDg expectad korero began.