NOTES OF AN EXCURSION TO MASSACRE BAY.

New Zealand Colonist and Port Nicholson Advertiser, Volume I, Issue 29, 8 November 1842, Page 4

NOTES OF AN EXCURSION TO MASSACRE BAY.

(Extracted from q, letter to England.) (Continued from No. 25J Takaka, Friday.—We were tolerably tired with our ramble by the time we reached the place we had breakfasted at; but, the commodore desiring to reach Motuaka the same night, we all got into the boat, and were soon past the Ranghiata Cliffs and at sea again. We took with us a Maori and his wife. This worthy, who had built a wan e on the further side of the hill we landed beneath, visible a long way off at sea, offered his services as pilot. The mouth of the Motupipi is three or four miles E.S.E. of of the Takaka, which lies towards - the N.W. curve which terminates in the Ranghiata Cliffs, so that in crossing the bay we had passed it out at sea in the morning. All you see of the place thence is a thick level forest of trees, rising like standing corn in a field partly reaped. Three miles from shore we found the water shoaling fast. Our brbwn pilot first pointed in one direction, then another, as the right course in. After failing two or three times, getting the boat aground, the old process of jumping overboard and shoving her afloat again having been as often repeated, the commodore was obliged to take the matter into his own hands, and, after much probing and groping, as it was fast getting dark, we succeeded in finding the channel and entering the river. We landed dry on a low sandy island, producing only a few scattered bushes and turfs of withered brittle weeds or coarse grass, and prepared to pass the night. The surveyors' tent was -pitched with some difficulty, there being no hold for the pegs in the loose sand. While this was going on, others of the party were gathering driftwood from the shore. -A couple of fires were presently illuminating the dark scene; boiling and frying rapidly proceeded. Everybody was tired and hungry, the men wet through besides, so you may guess how we enjoyed our dinner, tea, and supper, condensed into a delightful medley. We sat on logs or on the gtound, round a big fire, and demolished ham as the storekeepers say, with no hejpbutf a .biscuit or slice of bread for a plate; a~clasp-knife;: and fifigers foi; forks, porter, brandy and water, pipes, and tea;ij&sht on simultaneously and satisfactorily tp ; *tfery taste, though dry weeds were our cushions, and our chandeliers the stars, by the by, clouds were fast obscuring. nVe slept on mattrasses on the ground, laid side by side in the tent. Saturday, Sept. 3. —It began to rain heavily ere daylight, and the looseness of the canvas over head (the pegs not holding well) after a while allowed the rain to make its way in. We were up at dawn, and, in spite of the pouring rain, the indefatigable captain was soon up the nearest hill for the view. I regret I did not accompany him, so cannot tell you anything about the valley. Meanwhile the rest of us in the tent were driven first into one corner, then another, to avoid the fast-coming drops, keeping the guns as dry as possible (with numbed fingers), from which attempt we soon desisted as useless, and experiencing the discomfort, as we had the comforts, of bush-living. Everything was packed away with the utmost dispatch and the tent struck. The commodore and party returned soaked; and, as there was no shelter on this spot, and the wind against our return to the schooner, we put oft’ again for Takaka, to take possession of the Maori hut. The trip was cold enough, especially for the wetter of the party; but fires and breakfast soon put everything to rights. At this time it cleared up. The tide not suiting for a trip up the river, the parties separated to amuse themselves according to their fancies. (that rich geniality in a white cravat) and I took our guns to endeavour after some ducks, hoping against hope. We got among the mud-islands, formed by the branched of the river near its mouth, and waded along their banks, down to which woods almost impenetrable extend, the cabbage-palm and tree-fern everywhere luxuriant. But the ducks were far too wide awake to be surprised ; -and when we found ourselves, after an hour or two’s fagging in the hot sun, following a little stream to the river itself, with naked feet on rough stones, and water cold enough, combined with the sunshine, to give a tee-totaller an apoplexy, the sandflies incessantly boring at our legs like drunken sailors in war time at a wine cask, so that slap, splash, stumble —stumble, splash, slap, was the sum total of our proceedings for an hour or two, barring an occasional shot round the corner (where the small branch joined the main one of the rirer) at birds which, when shot, floated in the coolest manner down the rapid and deep stream, under our very noses, as if, even after death, to flout us (we being dog-less)—l am sure the ducks themselves would have shaken their diaphragms (if they had had them)* with laughter, to think of big bipeds calling such work sport. So, whatever was killed, nothing was bagged, except plenty of our unfortunate blood by the sandflies. After more wading and. slushing through mud and water, and hav- ... ing myself, at one time, in stepping over a log under the surface, quietly subsided about three feet, deep Antb' soft mud, where I might have stuck till now, half buried, but for 's op-

portune assistance, we tore our way up the nearest hill, through fern shoulder high. This seems to be thought the worst kind of traveling here, though in my mind not nearly so bad as getting through a supplejack wood, which last operation one can only compare to a snail’s getting through a frozen lawn, or a blue-bottle fly (could his business by remotest possibility lie that way) through the bristles of a welltangled hair brush. We were well ready for dinner when we got back to the warre, which we discussed by the light of a fire in the midst of us, squatting on the earth. We slept on mattrasses on the ground, not without fears that some of the surveyors, who had “ turned in” an hour or two earlier, and were unluckily sleeping on high-raised stretchers, and who, after much coughing and gasping at the quantity of wood smoke which filled the upper part of the hut from the fire we were merrily making, had subsided gradually into a stillness perfectlv awful, might have silently given up the ghost, and would be found next morning as dead as herrings, and as smoke-dried too. How they escaped is to this day a puzzle to me, for every one on entering”the hut found himself forced, will he nill he, to fling himself down on the ground, on pain of instant suffocation. Perhaps the tobacco smoke counteracted the effects of the other, as a second disease repels the first. Luckily they all survived. Sunday.—Cloudy morning. Started early in the Deal boat up the Takaka river. It is deep and broad. # Mr. Tuckett —to whose account, which you have probably seen in some early numbers of the Nelson Examiner , I refer you for a correct statement of quantities of available land, depths of rivers, and all valuable statistics respecting the bay—says twelve feet deep, 2‘oo broad, on the average. We admired the rich Woods on each bank for the latter half of our asbdia. We landed at a native clearance on the, eastfgln bank, where the surveyors intend to fix-thbmselves, about four miles up the river. , jTlie larger trees had been cut down, the smaller were left standing; several raised platforms for provisions stood in the clearance; but no warrie or other sign of inhabitants was visible. Wild cabbage grew plentifully about the river banks. The rain beginning to fall, and the shallowness of the river preventing our further ascent, we returned to the hut. Meanwhile, the wind had increased, and by the time breakfast was finished it blew a gale. We saw we were in for a day of it ; so we retreated into the hut and squatted round the fire, resorting for consolation, according to our different tastes, to patience, .philosophy, or pipes. The view outside was certainly dreary enough: the wind blowing heavily, belabouring the . hut—thp clouds driving in black masses—the sea roar-,, ing—the incessant pel|feg rain bedimming the dark cliffs—the river, no, lodger glossy and green, but swollen and brown; fpaming. round, the shore, hurrying onward great trunks of torn-up trees, which swept heavily ypt swiftly by, tilting and pitching in an irregular, uneasy manner, as if struggling with the -tyrannical stream, and forced along sorely against,their will, into the bay, whence so many of theinpfe-, decessors lifted their ungainly heads, a wide watery desert of black and misshapen snags;— the desolate effect of all these objects was heightened by the perfect solitariness of the scene. So passed the whole of this Sunday; we unshaven Cinderellas grovelling on the ground about the fire, kept horizontal by the solid stratum cf wood smoke filling the upper half of the hut. Dinner, as may be imagined,. was a crowning mercy, a perfect Godsend, under such circumstances, and the singing of the kettle comparable to the music of the spheres. “ God bless the man that invented hunger,” Sancho would have said here —having excellent pork and wild cabbages wherewithal to appease it. We dined by fire-light, plates upon knees:., only we pitied the excellent ; who, to the most bounding animal spirits, the most frank and genial forgetfulness of self —(and a white cravat) —added a peculiar talent for the discovery of gold mountains, which I never saw equalled, and a mortal aversion to pork in every presentable shape? antipathy enough in his nature to maintain such abstinence so consistently was often a puzzle to us; one Would not have thought he had it in him to hate anything so much and so long. Perhaps this acts as a safety-valve, and all the aversions of his being are concentered upon unfortunate porkers, which thus, like the Jewish scape-goats, carry away on their bristles all the evils of his moral nature; or, perhaps (which we sometimes suspected) it is some secret religious observance, the origin of which we could not guess at. Taken in connexion with the neckcloth, it looks mysterious. However, he contrived to get more gas out of cabbage than most men can out of beef.

We slept on the ground as before, walked over by puppies. Monday.—The weather was fine. Pancakes and milkless tea dispatched for breakfast, we bade 'good by’ to the surveyors, and started in the boat on our return to Tata. In an hour or two we w;ere alongside the jElizabeth, which we found had not experienced the slightest ill effect from the gale, she having laid perfectly still and snug under the lee of the island, out of reach of wind and swell. Having been* four nights and

days without change of linen, shaving, &c.,, another luxury awaited' us on board, which we were not slow to avail ourselves of. Some of the natives being on deck, watched our proceedings with curiosity nnd interest, and no little wonder, perhaps, mixed with some pity or contempt. “Wakahi pakeha”—“ Wakahi pakeha” (Dandies the white men!) they kept ejaculating, throwing up their, hands and head as people do when a case \e decided and quite hopeless. We found at anchor here the Nelson Packet , having already from a distance discerned her renowned captain, looming large as he sate in the stern, bearing about the same proportion to his little craft as Venus does to. her shell, or Neptune to his car, in allegorical pictures. This was the first vessel belonging to Nelson Haven; and the captain, every way worthy of the distinguished position of commanding her, as a person who will interest future ages, cannot be passed over without notice, “ A portly man, i’faith, and a pleasing,” as Falstaff says of himself ; very like Louis Phillippe, and as perfect a master of his own business—a lion-like mien, with majestic brows and full cheeks—like a walrus. Alert and active (though large), his are given in man-of-war style, with a sort of dashing, self-satisfied, burly cheerfulness, which shows a mastery and delight in his profession, and, above all, a pride in his craft, which is unto him as a frigate. Every gesture declares him master of the Nelson Packet. On his face sits gravely the important consciousness of drawing four feet water. His boots creak command. Nelson going into Aboukir Bay, on that memorable sundown—Lord Exmouth steering into Algiers —could not have kept a sharper look-out, or displayed more triumphantly the infinite resources of nautical skill, than did our worthy captain in exploring the shallows and worming his way into the river channels of Massacre Bay. Truly might he say with Cato, slightly parodying his words — “ 'Tis not all mortals that command—a frigate; We will do more Sempronius—we’ll deserve to !”

The first piece of news we learnt from Nelson was, that the extraordinary high tide of Sunday had carried away a considerable part of the embankment of the Company’s road from the port to the town. Various were the regrets expressed by. the hearers, of whom Captain "Wakefield was one. Snuff-box in hand, thumb to . nose, his only remark was, with his quietest smile, “ We .can (snuff) put it (snuff, snuff) up again, I suppose.” (To be continuedJ