NOTES OF AN EXCURSION TO MASSACRE BAY. [Extracted from a Letter to England.]

Nelson Examiner and New Zealand Chronicle, Volume I, Issue 31, 8 October 1842, Page 123

NOTES OF AN EXCURSION TO MASSACRE BAY. [Extracted from a Letter to England.]

[.Continued from our last.l After this display of brown unction (in matters spiritual), ____ and I took our guns and wandered towards the wood on the hilI slopes, a short distance from the beach, through fern and occasional swamp, in hopes of getting a kaka or two. As usual on such occasions, we got nothing but fatigue and broken shins. It was dark as we reached the pah again. We entered one of the miserable warries : a wood fire was lighted on the ground inside it and, after some chat, potatoes and pipes with the Maories, they all left us but a youth and a boy. The night was cold. We had only two great coats among three of us; brandy there was none ; so, not being able to sleep, we lay awake on the ground, among scraps of withered fern, sticks, and wood ashes, eating at intervals very unacceptable apologies for baked potatoes, (white neckcloth and nose a la Wellington) of course uninterruptedly chatting with the natives, whom he generally addressed by some such familiar appellation as " Old Times," " Young Bricks," &c, and interspersing his questions and observations with snatches of song, the favourite one of which seemed to be of the domestic sentimental kind, and began with the touching words — " My old grandmother used to say Nicks, my dolly, pals, fake away !" &c. Positively, he seemed to get the merrier the more slowly the hours seemed to wear away and the colder it grew (as stars shine brightest on frostiest nights), chirping cricket-like among the ashes of the wood fire, which the Maori boy — who, not being able to retreat to a comfortable distance from the burning logs, on account of the wall, squatted flat against it, his knees under his armpits, his feet almost behind his back, the heels turned forward, just like a frog spitted — would renovate if it flagged, by screwing his large flexible lips into a bellowsnozzle, the hole being apparently in the middle of one cheek, and blowing as if, like the ass in Scripture, he had been snuffing up the east wind for a fortnight previously, and had had it ever since on his stomach. On the other side of the fire, meanwhile, sat smoking, in bronze immoveability, a juvenile member of the party, in uncompromising contrast to the bonhommie of the lively . A goodnatured, kind fellow, with gas in him, too, but which no known machinery seemed capable of evolving and rendering fit for combustion. With the imperturbability of a North American Indian — perfectly indifferent to cold, bitter blinding wood smoke, chatter, apologies for potatoes, or discomfort — he sat and smoked. It really reached the sublime. Such stoical, quiet superiority to circumstance — the sphered spirit sitting aloft, pipe upheld, cloud-borne on tobacco- smoke to a pitch above terrestrial woes — you looked on with a sort of reverence. And yet withal was there on the countenance a kind of profound hopelessness, deeply conscious of the disagreeables the soul would not succumb to. " Tout est fini," you could fancy him saying with Jean Jacques, " pour moi sur la terre. II ne m'y reste plus ni plaisir ni douleur. Me voila, donc, au fond de l'abyme " (of tobaccosmoke or German metaphysics, in a savage's hut in Massacre Bay), " pauvre mortel infortune, mais impassible comme Dieu meme." With lips pursed up, from one corner a whiff of smoke every few seconds, regularly, puff — puff — puff, hour after hour — puff — puff— puff. As you watched him in the uncertain light, your eyes grew, as it were, dazzled with his immoveability and monotony of smoke-emission. Puff — puff — puff. Was it really then a biped without feathers, like the rest of us — had it voice, or utterance, or locomotion? Puff— puff— puff. Or was it merely an illusion, a vision, a dream ? You were half a Berkeleian already. Puffpuff—your flesh crept — perhaps it was a ghost ! Or might it not be some ingenious eight-day smoking machine, which, being once wound up, would go on smoking incessantly, but regularly, for a week to come ? But what if it should run down and let out all the smoke at once ! Puff — puff — puff. There was no saying what it was. Friday. — We were glad enough to get out into the pure dawn. Going on board we met the Deal boat, and, with Captain Wakefield, started in her for Takaka, further round the bay. The morning was beautiful, and with a light breeze we stood across towards Ranghiata Cliffs. These cliffs consist of a long hill, chiefly of limestone, running out a couple of miles or so into the sea. The summit is covered with fern and wood, and the perpendicular faces are feathered with trees. Endeavouring to make straight for the mouth of the river, at the junction of the long cliffs with the lower coast, we got into shallow water. The boat being laden with surveyors' stores and thirteen or fourteen people, was rather deep: we soon got aground. Then, after much ineffectual shoving her along with set oars, the men were obliged to jump out and drag her afloat. Another direction was tried with equal bad luck. We were some miles from the shore, and it was provoking to be so baffled. Out went the men again, mid-deep in clear and very cold water. This happened several times. One of the men, a sturdy, honest fellow, singularly like Henry VIII. in face and general appearance, wandered some distance from the boat in search of deep water. The boat meanwhile had found it, and seemed for a moment inclined to leave him. It was curious to see him standing up to the waist in water, nonplussed and disconsolate, like another Ariadne, in the middle of the sea. We found that the right course was towards the very extremity of the cliffs seaward, the river running out to sea close under them their whole distance, and keeping a deep channel, though all towards the centre of the bay for miles was shoaL Over every part of this space great

black roots and trunks of trees (snags) stick up like rocks, and give it a wild and desolate appearance. Shags and ducks are thickly scattered about. We pulled up the river-course beneath the cliffs, and, entering its mouth, landed on the western side, under a steep wooded hill, upon a bank several feet above the water, composed chiefly of sandstone. Here, close to the trees, in the beautiful morning sunlight, a fire was speedily lighted, the kettle set boiling, some very praiseworthy beefsteaks broiled, and capital ham sliced in thicknesses unknown at Vauxhall, upon which, with the addition of some very young onions (for the more delicate of us), and excellent bread, we made such a breakfast as you Londoners would envy. I believe the expedition's chief cook (one of the boatmen), besides all this, in the wantonness of his heart, actually tossed some first-rate pancakes extempore, as if performing triumphal rites of gratitude of some benignant genius of the soil. These discussed, Captain Wakefield and the idle of us (that is to say, he of the Wellington cravat, the Merovingian, and one or two more) started for the highest hill within reach; the captain, with Scotch cap, velveteen shooting-jacket, and walk-ing-stick, leading the way, at a steady and wellmaintained pace, characteristic of the man. We passed a little way up the side of this riverbranch, which runs brightly over a deep bed of stone worn into hollows, and glorious bathingplaces every here and there. We kept round some fern-hills, following their summits, and passed over high flats of a soil almost peat-like, cracked all over, spongy, and full of minute root-fibres, covered with low rushes withered to a deep orange colour. Round northward for a considerable distance from the sea, stretched a kind of low table-land, of little height, intersected by gullies and hollows, more or less frequent, and apparently of similar soil to that we were upon. After a walk of two or three miles, we reached the highest of the series of hills we were ranging, and at once the whole magnificent valley of the Takaka burst upon us. But how to give you an idea of the beautiful scene? I must describe it to you piecemeal, and trust to your fancy to put the parts together. Suppose your eye embraces a half circle from left to right. From aloft on the left sweeps down a green mountain declivity; over it, in the middle distance, rises the great round head of another mountain, like an enormous wave. In the immediate foreground, in the middle of the picture, another hill swells up, its ascending side overlapping the declivity of that on the left; its descending side met again by the far-sweeping ascent of another green mountain on the right. From the top of the round head of the mountain on the left runs the distant faint blue sea-line, till it meets an island consisting of a single long hill. From the right again, in the far distance, stretches a mountain range — dark green in its nearest hills, rich blue in its furthest — running out like a long promontory till it embraces the right end of the distant island-hill. And now imagine the whole wide space between the far-away mountain-range and the green swelling hills along the whole foreground filled up by a magnificent forested valley, its sea-shore curving round from the promontory point, leaving a blue slip of water between itself and the island, and then with its grand clothing of forest-trees stretching away to the bold wave-like hill I told you of in the left middle distance. Fancy this spread of forest in the far distance, with its innumerable lines upon lines of rich verdure, so rugged yet so soft, growing ever closer and more faint till they melt away at the foot of the mountain-range or partly mantle its foremost slopes, — then nearer and nearer swelling and separating into clumps, distinguishable from the other masses, — lastly, into full-foliaged, bulging, individual tree-tops, varied with particular beauties, crowding up, each tree a mass of verdure, from the hollows between the hills at your feet. And then, again, from the distant right, fancy a river approaching, showing itself first in two separated loops — pale bright blue, with silver gravel patches — then again to the left in the foreground, much wider, here in a great curve reflecting strongly the wall of trees on its bank with perfect clearness — there, down in a cleft or pit of verdure, dark, glossy, and brilliant, reflecting nothing at all. Such is the Takaka valley — if words were but forms and colours ! Not to confuse the description more than it already was, I have not mentioned that the island can scarcely be called one at low water (as when we saw it), a wide tract of sand connecting it with the main land, and running, indeed, from the whole shore to a considerable distance seaward. In this sand you see the blue veins of the rivers branching out till they are lost in small ramifications — like leafless twigs— just as the sands at that distance were imperceptibly mingled with the far-away sea. There are two clearances in the forest, one between the two river loops, the other nearer, dotted with stumps of cut-down trees. [To be continued.}

We observe, from advertisements in Scotch papers, that an expedition from the Clyde, for Nelson, under the auspices of the New Zealand Company, is about to take place. Greenock is to become the principal shipping port of Scotland for New Zealand. Purchasers of land forming the expedition to be allowed 25 per cent, on the purchase- money, to be applied in providing a free passage for themselves and families; being allowed at the same time to nominate as many labourers as they choose, these, upon being found to come within the Company's regulations, are to have a free passige in the same vessel. It appears that Nelson has become a decidedly favourite settlement with many colonoists who have already become climatized a» it were in New Zealand. Descriptions ate cent home highly favourable to Nelson and its $uij roundidg country, and we rejoice thatitnwriw all the encomiums bestowed on it. — Gteteffc.