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 Governor-in-Chief of New Zealand. [From the Maori Messenger.]

New Zealand Spectator and Cook's Strait Guardian, Volume VII, Issue 542, 12 October 1850, Page 4

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. [From the Maori Messenger.]

(Continued.) c Tuesday, Dec. 11. — Found ourselves, on awaking, this morning, lying in a pool of water, having pitched our tent in a hollow place last night. Rose and moved to higher ground as speedily as possible. It was still raining violently with the wind from the eastward, and the river gradually rising, so that there was no chance of moving that day. Our provi- | sions were found on inspection to be sadly da- ! maged. Tobacco saturated — flour converted into (unbaked) unleavened bread — sugar rapidly assuming the appearance of molasses, — rice threatening to grow, and in short everything which was at all of a perishable nature in a most deplorable condition. We got a temporary shed erected over them as quickly J as possible, and with the assistance of all the tarpaulins we could muster from our bedding, &c, covered them up as well as we could, and had an enormous fire lit under the shed to dry such portions of the biscuit, tobacco, &c, as might still be in a recoverable state, as well as our bedding, agreatpart of which had been j soaked in the night. The Governor bore all ■ our mishaps very stoically, appearing to care ■ very little what became of that which had been j provided for the inner man, but amuse i himself til day in his tent surrounded by Batives, learning their songs, proverbs, ceremonies, &c, &c, in collecting which be takes great interest. For our own part we amused ourselves as best we might in our own little tent, with songs, anecdotes, &c, in which Symonds, the most agreeable companion as well as the best bushman I have met with, as usual took the lead. The natives, however, seemed happier than any of us ; they built themselves houses, or rather large sheds of flax leaves, and the branches of trees, which defied the rain much more effectually than our thin tents, and had the further advantage of containing a fire under the roof which kept every thing free from damp, and drove away mosquitoes, sand-flies, &c. Around these fires they sat all day wrapped in their blankets, smoking their pipes, roasting potatoes, and talking and laughing as if-it were the finest weather imaginable. At four, we had to strike the tents, the river having risen so high as to threaten 3o swamp the encampment; the little creek had also overflowed its banks so that we were attacked in front and rear and our retreat inland effectually cut off. We were therefore obliged to take to the canoes, and move to some high land on the opposite side of the creek, where we were quite beyond the reach of the river, but had no shelter of any kind to break the force of either wind or rain. Even this defect was not without its countervailing advantage, as the more plentiful the supply of fresh air the less were we liable to be pestered by the mosquitoes, — of the two evils which is the least I leave to be determined by those who have travelled in New Zealand in wet weather, and gone through a summer campaign with the Thames mosquitoes. Towards sunset the weather presented slight indications of clearing up, and the first part of the night was without rain. This is the anniversary of the first landing of Captain Cook in New Zealand, and is also the first day of the Auckland summer race meeting. It was a sort of misanthrophic satisfaction to us in all our misery, to think of the state of mind in which the sporting portion of the Auckland community must have been all day. Wednesday, December 12. — It was raining this morning harder than ever, and continued to do so without intermission throughout , the day, so as to preclude the possibility of our proceeding on our journey. We spent the forenoon in much the same manner as yesterday, and dined at three ; after which, as there was an appearance of a slight relaxation in the torrents of rain, we went about two miles down the river to see a spring called Te Korokoro o Hura, which the natives declared to be boiling and of a salt taste, and that it came from the sea on the east coast, by a subterranean passage. It is situated at the foot of Mount To Aroba, on the eastern bank of the river. On approaching it, Whakareho,

who was our guide, instructed me in a native ceremony for strangers approaching a boiling spring, and my repeating which afterwards afforded much amusement during our stay at Rotomahana. It consists in pulling up some fern or any other weed which may be at hand, and throwing it into the spring, at the same time repeating the words of a karakia of which the following is the translation — I arrive where an unknown earth is under my feet, I arrive where a. new iky is above me, I arrive at this land, A resting place for me, Oh i pint of the place the stranger humbly offers his heart at food for thee. The above ceremony which is called " Tupuna Wbenua," is used by persons on their first arrival at a strange place, for the purpose of appeasing the spirit of the earth, who would otherwise be angry at the intrusion. On examining the spring we found that the water was not hot, and could hardly be called tepid, although it was not quite cold. Neither is it salt at all but has a strong chalybeate taste, and is highly odoriferous of rotten eggs. We found a small quantity of sulphurous deposit in the mud through which the water wells up. The quantity of water emitted is very small, and the place on the whole hardly repays one for the trouble of visiting it, to do which it is necessary to traverse about a quarter of a mile of very broken ground the greater part of which is a deep quagmire. Thursday, December 13. — It was squally all night, and rained a great deal. In the early part of the morning however, the rain became more intermittent and though it scill looked very black we determined to quit our present bleak and inconvenient position and push on further up the river. So we started about half past seven and began a weary pull against a heavy flood, but anything we thought was better than wasting our time in such miserable quarters as those we had occupied for the last two days. At a little after 8 down came the rain again in bucketsfull upon our devoted heads, and continued peppering away in the most merciless manner all day so that when we stopped at 2 p.m., at a place called Manawaru, we were completely wet through, and not only were the clothes we wore soaked but all our spare clothing excepting that which had been packed in waterproof tin cases and tarpaulins. As to the provisions they were — i.e. the perishable part of them — totally and irrecoverably ruined, with the exception of one package of tobacco and a bag of su»ar, which were stowed carefully underneath a large pile of other things. We pitched our tents on a hill by the bank of the river, and tumbled ioto bed as quickly as possible with wet fern spread upon the soaking earth for our beds ; and our blankets, &c, though not completely saturated, still so damp as to be very uncomfortable. Clarke and I having our wardrobe packed in carpet bags, without tarpaulins, found on inspection that we had not a solitary article of dry raiment to put on. As for the clothes we had worn during the day, we threw them outside the tent, and left them there till the natives, having finished their houses, could take them away to dry them at their fires. The Governor and Symonds had the laugh at us here, as being experienced bushraen, they had all their clothes packed in waterproof tin cases, and were well supplied with tarpaulins. The weather was so dismal that even the natives could not keep their spirits up, but worked away at their huts in silence, a very unusual mode with them. Upon the whole the general appearance of the canvas was wretched in the extreme. We had a tremendous fire lit in front of our tent, and being so closely packed (literally three in a bed), our blankets were not long in drying upon us, and we soon got warm and quite comfortable, and began singing and chatting in the intervals of smoking and refilling the pipe, till our spirits rose to their natural pitch. It is on such occasions as this, that the real comfort of a pipeful of tobacco is felt ; and it cannot be denied that a pipe is in New Zealand an almost indispensable travelling companion. A good smoke has a soothing and comforting effect, after one has been thoroughly tired by walking, or exposed to the pitiless pelting of a New Zealand rainy day, which can only be appreciated by those who have had such an opportunity of testing its efficacy. Friday, Dec. 14 — Finer, but still looking rather black with slight showers occasionally : wind about north, with some appearance of veering to the westward. As the day wore on, the intervals between the showers became longer and the sun began to get the upper hand in his struggle with the heavy clouds, and to afford us occasional glimpses of the light of his countenance ; so we spread our clothes out upon the fern to dry and got some of our things washed by the native women. On calling for our boots we found that the natives, being anxious to have them nicely dried for us by the morning, had last night placed them rather too close to the fire ; the consequence was, that though they had certainly succeeded in drying them to perfection, w e discovered that they were all burnt, much to our horror and dismay, as it happened unfortunately that the whole party was rather

badly provided with that particular article of dress, and a fresh supply could not be procured until our arrival at Taranaki. We contrived, however, by paying them wUh grease, and hammering at the shrivelled parts, till they were battered into something like their original shape, to get them on at last, and they appeared after all as if with care they might still last a few days yet. The river rose still higher last night, and swamped out some Matamata natives (whose «anoe—returning homeward from Thorpes — had overtaken us yesterday), who had encamped by the side of the river just below us, obliging them to come up to our settlement. We were highly amused this morning by a furious disturbance amongst the natives. We bad in the party which had been engaged in Auckland, two or three natives of Rotorua, one of whom named Tarawaru was, though young, a man of some consequence amongst his own people ; he had two young brothers, named Warekino Matena ; the former a lad of about sixteen, being an extremely impudent young fellow, whose education had been completed by a residence of some few months in Auckland* This young gentleman, it appears, had grievously insulted Whakareko, who had lost, in the confusion yesterday afternoon, some of the paddles of his canoe, and on discovering the loss in the morning, said that whoever bad been to blame should pay for the paddles. Upon this Wharekino, who overheard him, said in a jeering tone, " Your beard shall be payment for the lost paddle," when immediately before the words were well out of his mouth, he received a blow on the side of the head and another on the arm, from a log of firewood which the insulted owner of the beard had taken up, which floored him on the spot. He jumped up and ran howling and blubbering to his big brother and the pakehas for protection. Then ensued a scene which no pen can adequately describe, in which Tarawaru and Whakereko were the principal actors. Their rage knew no bounds, and they both rushed up and down, each armed with a huge bludgeon, jabbering and gesticulating furiously, yet neither party liking to be the first to commit a breach of the peace. The principal point at issue seemed to be, whether the beard is a part of the body so sacred as to constitute what Wharekino had said a curse, according to the old native custom. If it were, Whakareko was held to be justified in taking summary vengeance ; but if, as Tarawaru contended, such were not the case, the bloodshed, war, and other direfnl calamities which would ensue were beyond the mind of man to conceive — the famous Rotorua war, which, ten years ago, caused such devastation among the Thames people, was nothing to the consequences which, judging from his threats, would flow from this rash act. When they had gone on in this absurd manner for about half an hour, the dispute was put an end to by a word of interference from the Governor and Te Heuheu. It seemed indeed as if the belligerents were rather pleased than otherwise at the interposition of authority to put a stop to their warlike denunciations. About noon some natives came from a settlement lower down the river, amongst whom was a man named Mauwhare, who is, next to Teraia, the principal chief on the Thames. He told us that a strong pa bad once existed on the top of the mountain opposite to us (Te Aroha Ata), called Nga Tukituki a Hikawera, which had been built by a famous chief, his ancestor, called Ruinga, and had been considered almost impregnable. The posts of it still remain. As an instance of the great distance at which the sound of the pahu,* or ancient native gong, could be heard, he informed us that the pahu in this pa had been heard at Matamata, which is not less than eight or ten miles in a straight line from our present position, which again must be at least four from the top of Te Aroha Ata, making the whole distance which the sound travelled not less than twelve or fourteen miles. The weather cleared up towards evening* and gave us some hope of further improvement to-morrow. (To be continued.)

* The palm, or native gong, was a large piece of oval wood, hollowed out something in the shape of a shallow bowl, and made as thin as possible, upon the principle of the sounding-board. This instrument was hung to a post in the centre of the p», and was sounded (by striking it with a heavy piece of wood), as an alarm in case of attack in time of war, on which occasions only it was used ; and in 1 order to prevent it being sounded by children, or otherwise without reason, it was hung at a. gre* i height, so that the person sounding it had to mount a sort of platform or scaffolding, in order to reach itt