The New Zealand Times (PUBLISHED DAILY.) WEDNESDAY, JUNE 5, 1873.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXIII, Issue 5363, 5 June 1878, Page 2

The New Zealand Times (PUBLISHED DAILY. ) WEDNESDAY, JUNE 5, 1873.

The settlers of Hawke’s Bay have been moved of late by the loss of an old friend in the person of Te Hapdku, a Maori of great rank,'who died at his place, near Te Ante, on the 23rd ult. It is said that if Tb Hapuku could have been persuaded to submit to‘ a surgical operation for the removal or relief of the tumor' on his heck which was the immediate cause of his death, his life might have been prolonged ; but he rejected medical aid i altogether. He,, however, had reached the three score years and ten, and his time, in the natural course, had probably come. He was one of the connecting links between the old New Zealand and the new ; between the stone age and the age of brass; between the taniwha and the lawyer.; He had heard old men tell of the hunting of the moa, whilst some solitary individual of the race was still said to exist within the tapued boundaries ofTongariro; he had eaten whale blubber, and possibly flesh of another kind, cut with a flake of obsidian from the quivering carcass, and he Imd sat at good men’s feasts, armed with a silver fork and a table napkin, upon, a spring-seated ehair, and with his knees under hospitable mahogany. He had gone to a fight in the simple undress which was fashionable in his youth, and to church, in his maturef age, in a suit of irreproachable black; with a paper collar • and : a chimney-pot hat. But of all the changes which in the course'of a long life he had experienced; probably none would touch him more nearly than that between the traditional surroundings of the deathbed of the “Tino Rangatira” of old days, and the condition of mental worry,, besides physical pain, in which his own last hours appear to have been passed. When a great chief took ill, and the Tohunga was.called,in, the ceremony of a special * 1 Tapu” was the flrst step in his treatment ; the patient: was not, only tapued himself, but all those who came, or were permitted to come, within a certain distance of him, were subjected to the ' ceremonial conditions of that, rite. The . patient was not permitted to use his hands even to feed : himself, and when he desired to drink, anattendant made a-funnel or scupper of her tapued hand, and poured water from a calabash through it into his mouth. Decorum, gravity, silence, grief, marked . the demeanor of all whose presence. was permitted, and the last words” were always treasured’as the lessons of wisdom and the guide of the hapu or the tribe. 1 Between the tirde when Tb Hapuku and the Hawke’s Bay natives had parted with a territory to Governor Grey for a few coppers per acre, and the' tinio when it came to, be .regarded as wicked to purchase an acre from a native at the price of many pounds, Hapuku had become rich in land, and in flocks and in herds, and the question of legal succession to his wealth became, at last; one of great interest. The rule of the old Maori chiefs in dealing with worldly goods was, practically, that which is figuratively expressed in the princely motto of the , Courtenays, as Gibbon tells us—“ What wo had we gave ; what we left we lost.’? The heart of the great chief was generous—ho gave, and did not keep. But we have changed all that, and Hapuku, though still open-handed and generous to what in these days would be called a fault, —is said to have died rich.

The politics of Hawke’s Bay are peculiar ; wo touch them, with caution. It may be said, however, generally, that ifchas been disco vered that ad vocacy of the“ rights” of the natives, as well as being morally and politically commendable, may be made a very good business pecuniarily, and that sOme very estimable i gentlemen., have aocordingly do voted themselves,to that work. But even in good work, in . this world, it is not possible to. secure unity of action, and we find that there are hostile camps Of sympathisers; one, ofcourse, the “liberal,,”, and the other, the “ conservative” camp. Detachments of each have been, ’wo! are informed, regularly sent against poor Tn TT AprrTfTT, whose house has been in a condition of perpetual siege duAig his illness. Now, the liberal party have triumphed; now, the conservative., Daily, it is said, for a* long' time, the suffering chief' has executed a new last will; and fntaßUßtj Qftch one revoking and annuli-

ing that which has 7 gone 1 before ; but, finally, wo hear that by barricading the doors and blocking the chimney, the conservatives have triumphed. Mr. Rees, the leader of the liberals, who, at the call of truth and justice, nobly comes forward in every kind of cause,- has - been beaten by a woman, who, as representing the tribe and being highest of rank, is the natural legatee of Te Hapuku. The great success in the case of citizen George Jones may console Mr. Bees, if ho have failed in this instance, even although he was assisted, as before, by the “great medicine;” and it may be hoped that the numerous fees and refreshers necessarily involved in his many free journeyings to To Aute, by rail, will assuage his natural regret at the triumph of the evil principle. The picture which we have of the surroundings of this .good old chief in his last days is not pleasant to contemplate. The redeeming points are the presence of a Christian minister and the knowledge that Te Hapuku passed to his rest with the consolations of religion and the hope of a bright hereafter. Otherwise we venture to think that rapacity and hardeyed selfishness, the handmaidens of civilisation present on the late occasion in their worst form, were less suited to the solemn time than even the tapued and devoted service of the older but more savage period would have been.