NOTES OF AN EXCURSION TO MASSACRE BAY.

New Zealand Colonist and Port Nicholson Advertiser, Volume I, Issue 21, 11 October 1842, Page 4

NOTES OF AN EXCURSION TO MASSACRE BAY.

(Extracted from a Letter to England.)

I will endeavour to give you an idea of my excursion (which Captain Wakefield invited me to join) to a bay, the disagreeable and now impolitic name of which you -have doubtless often heard, and perhaps been revolted by its brain-smashing and marrow-roasting associations^— I mean Massacre Bay, “ the Murderers 1 Bay of Captain Tasman/’ as Captain Cook calls it. We (that is, Captain Wakefield, , and the surveying party) left Nelson in one of the Company’s Deal boats, on Wednesday evening, August 31. Captain Wakefield had chartered a small schooner for the excursion, which lay outside the harbour. We got on board some time after dusk, after rather more than the usual quantum of bumping and fouling between the boat and the schooner, the former being nearly as large as the latter. The party on board was, of course, far too large for the accommodation afforded by the vessel; so, after hustling each other about a little on deck, knocking our shins against all sorts of wooden projections, stumbling over reposing dogs, who seemed bent on lying down just where they would be surest to trip one up, we descended into the cabin, and made a good meal with butter upon potatoes. One’s appetite here, you will observe, is always like a raging lion, going about seeking* what it may devour, and finding generally pork and potatoes. The next business was going to bed; and, having exhausted our whole stock of punctilious scruples as to occupying the few berths, those who remained “ victors in the friendly contest,” as novelists sav—that is, were left in the cabin bedless — tumbled down upon lockers, or wedged themselves together, by dint of much faith in the accommodating power of specific gravity, on the cabin floor, among blankets, carpet bags, great coats, big dogs, long rambling-limbed puppies, guns, broken pipes, tobacco ashes, &c. &c. This confusion, understand, was not the fruits of conviviality, but the mere result of necessity, so many being crammed in so small -a space ; and short pipes (be it said with due acknowledgment of their many good qualities) having become to the mouths of yoimg surveyors a sort of natural antennae or feelers, which you no more expect to come away from their lips than to see a fly quietly lay aside his proboscis, or a lobster his claw. Next morning we rounded Separation Point, a collection of mountain spurs, which from the sea shows a tiny bay at the extremity, with hilly points projecting to the right and left, one beyond the other, as the promontory they form recedes. The land round Massacre Bay looks, as most of New Zealand appears to do —at least that part of it seen from our gulf—a slip of yellow saud or beach over the light blue still water:— hills upon hills, covered with green fern, interweaving their declivities behind —higher and bolder summits, black with magnificent forests, overlooking the nearer ranges—then a deep ultra-marine coloured sea of rolling peaks, their shoulders caped with jagged, dazzling patches of snow, contrasting beautifully with the violet hue beneath, and the lighter blue of the sky above. Sometimes the fern hills rise precipitously from the water, their low fronts bare, and worn into fantastic rocks and picturesque grottoes and caverns; or you have low gravelly cliffs or rushy swamps in the foreground ; or, when the mountains recede a little, a long low line of forest seems growing blackly out of the very sea, the trunks of the great trees looking from a distance as close as the teeth of a comb. The background, however, which is most striking, is almost always of the same character. Captain Wakefield, and three or four of us, landed behind a little hill, which forms the western horn of a sandy bay, and is almost an island, being connected with the hills Of the interior, which rise again immediately, by a low neck of land. On this level space we found a “ pa,” beautifully situated. It is called Taupo, or Taipo. You do not know, perhaps, what a pa looks Jike. Seen from a distance, it shows only a huddled collection of old grey stakes of irregular height, placed side by side. Nearer, you find they form an enclosure, and have, at regular intervals, a higher post, the top of which is rudely carved into a head, or mere knob. These are crossed by other poles, bound together with flax; or a double fence is made, the interspaces being filled up with rushes or dry fern. The huts or warries stand inside this enclosure; or some have a separate enclosure adjoining or at a little distance from the main one. The best house here was built of reeds, wattled together and bound with flax, roofed and lined with totara bark and coarse grass. It had glass windows and raised wooden bedplaces within, which are rare. Potatoe baskets of matting made of flax, mats, fishing-nets, an iron pot, and the “ Puka-puka,” or Testament and prayer book, were the principal fdrfrituve. Outside, within the enclosure, are platforuis, each raised on four poles, heaped with provisions, the pole being stripped of bark and very smooth, to prevent the rats from climbing them. On other slanting poles, or on the hut’s roof, you see a dusky ashy-red parrot (kaka) or two, climbing and

clutching with their hooked beaks. The natives met us with many grins of welcome and shakes of the hand : nose-nibbing seems to be out of "fashion with the whites, They were all dressed in dirty blankets, which they manage with great decency and even picturesque effect. The chief here is an intelligent-looking man, with black curly liair, high forehead, very full overhanging brows, and bright black eyes. His name Awiko.

There is ojiorizontal stratum of coal on the inner cliff here; and on the beach we saw the irregular edges of other apparently almost perpendicular strata. These looked shining black. Pieces knocked off broke like hard clay, and had a reddish tinge mixed with the black. After a little chat with the natives, we went off to the schooner, and, passing several pyramidal rock or islets of very peculiar forms, one of which had a hole right through it, with an arched roof and a column, spreading Gothic-, wise at the top, apparently supporting it, we anchored in two fathoms, between the main land and two high wooded rocky islands. At the upper or western end of this little bay we saw another small pah; and putting off in the boat, observed the natives running down to meet us. It was curious to see them jumping down, hastily folding thur blankets around them; then, when half way across the beach, on a sudden squatting down sideways and quite motionless, their eyes on the ground turned away from us rather than otherwise. So they sat perfectly stone-still till we landed. Then came the grins and the shaking hands all round. Ekkawa is the chief of this place. He was absent, and two relatives of liis seemed the leading men. One of them had a good open face, with regular features, tattooed all over, and thick grey hair. He seemed perplexed, and stared always from one to the other with an anxious but good-natured look, as if trying to follow and understand what was going on, but in vain. The name of him Ehou, Tbs other had a bushy head of hair, of a colour between rust and tow, which contrasted oddly with the close bright blue lines, engine-turned, as it were, on the mahogany ground of his face. Tliis gentleman affected an European dress; On his rusty head was cocked a rustier beaver hat, which I mistook for straw from its colour, with high peaked crown and narrow sloping brim, too small by half for his ferruginous mopcovered pate. A blue frock coat was stretched over his brawny shoulders (in imminent danger of splitting),' the sleeves of which seemed to cramp his arms horribly, his great hands far below the cuffs, evidently expatiating and expanding with delight at their liberation from the restraint of the sleeves. The rest of his dress wds equally correct. ; The women were chiefly of the unattractive kind. The old brown harridan, with more wrinkles in her face than tattoo scores on the men’s, yet all like intricate channels for merryment to run in, with light-coloured closecurling hair, exactly like DanO'Connell’swig, had a most open, inquisitive expression. The young women ran about in dingy shifts —bead necklaces in two or three rows round their necks—the shark’s tooth, set in sealing-wax, fastened in their ears with black ribbon—giggling like mad, all impudence, fun, and ugliness.' Their teeth were all as white as ivory. One young lady, better known at Nelson, was arrayed in bright green and red shawls, and a gown of a gaudy curtain pattern. Every one, old men and maidens, young men and children, smoke, generally “short clays.” A good-looking dark boy strutted about like a miniature chief. Another shuffled along in a single cast-off man’s shoe, as long almost as his leg. Among these uncivilized, we civilized (in our own opinion) squatted or stood familiarly, and completed the picture. Captain Wakefield, with Scotch cap, stick and snuff box, quiet twinkling his eye, and slow smile, nudging the interpreter, in his slow, easy way, to ask this question and that; —as usual, with Merovingian curls down to his shoulders and Charles I. beard, smoking his pipe, lounging and nonchalant , a first-rate fellow, with pale face and hook 7iose over a white neckcloth, scarcely landed ere in most confidential, jovial intimacy with the younger male and female branches of the community, talking away as if English (or Scotch) were the Maories’ mother tongue, intermixing a little broken English to make it more intelligible (as you go over macadamized stones) to those who never heard a word of it, and yet always satisfied with the answer he got, though equally incomprehensible, and managing to keep up an animated chat.

The principle object now was to get a note despatched to Er-iiio, a chief farther north, who was absent. There was some difficulty, the interpreter not knowing how to write or spell Maori. We were amused to see Wakefield obliged to sign the only name the natives know him by, “ Wide-awake.” The note was to bring Erino to an intended general “kororo” of chiefs, on occasion of giving the presents customary on the Company’s taking actual possession of their land. We went on board, diped,

and in the evening , -, and I landed to stroll about the beach. We went to the pa, had talked a little, when one of the women (the old curly-headed beauty . Of seventy aforesaid) came hurrying up to us, beckoning and at the same time making signs to us to be silent. We'

followed her to another wartie (hut), before the door of which between ten and twenty natives sat in a circle. One of them, with much ostentatious gravity, presently, unwrapped a prayer book, and all immediately began, I suppose, the evening prayers. There was something striking, and yet half ludicrous, in the performance. They repeated the different prayers or answers all together, in a half singing tone, very rapidly, and in such perfect timed unison, that if 50 had been present (as we experienced on another, occasion), each word would have been heard, as distinctly as if one person only had pronounced it. The oddest thing was their mode of rattling on the end of each sentence, without drawing breath, as fast as possible, and then at the last word all of one accord discharging their breath in a kind of exhausted panting groan. One distinct general groan was heard, and they charged on again. They went through it with great unction, evidently keeping an eye on us to observe the effect produced, and getting on to a faster gallop, louder utterance, and more explosive groan, when they observed our gravity maintained. When it was over there was a slight pause, then clearing of throats, coughing, hawking, and hemming, as in a white auditory of you antipodean evangelicals.

(To be continued)