JOTTINGS IN POVERTY BAY.

Poverty Bay Standard, Volume II, Issue 195, 12 August 1874, Page 2

JOTTINGS IN POVERTY BAY.

[By a

Recent Visitor.]

From the Otago Witness. See Naples and die, said the Ancients ; see Poverty Bay for good land, said a friend of mine at Napier. Now to see Poverty Bay you have to coast northwards from Napier some eighty miles or so, and this coasting on the East Coast is not pleasant to those who care not for strong breezes and heavy seas. “We shall have a fine night of it,” says our skipper, as we leave the anchorage; “ squally,” he adds, turning his weather eye north-westward, “ but fine.” That it.is squally I can truly verify ; but its fineness seems to me, as I cling to my berth for dear life during the long watches of the night, the exuberant playfulness of an old salt junk. Fine, quotha! Well, every man to his own taste. I know I experienced but very little of this fineness until we opened up Poverty Bay, and were running for our anchorage, early next morning. Then it certainly was fine, gloriously fine, as the bright sun rose in the eastern horizon, and tinged the distant inland peaks witha warm coppery glow. Nor dim, nor red, like God’s own head, The glorious sun uprist.

Standing on the poop leaning over the taffrail, looking abroad on this Turanga district of olden days—the Poverty Bay of more modern times—if given at all to musing, one’s thoughts are apt to take a historical turn. We are looking on the cradle of our history, and on surroundings that have a past

that is written in our annals in letters of blood. Here it was that Cook, sent to carry out the unfinished work of brave old Abel Tasman, the Dutchman, first touched our shores a hundred and some odd years ago. Yonder, in the plain, is Matawhero, the scene of the darkest of the many dark deeds that have given us such a terrible pre-emi-nence amongst English-speaking colonies. It must have been on some such bright October morning as this that the cry of “ Land oh !” came ringing down from his cross-trees, and gladdened the heart of the great navigator; and yet he could not have been himself altogether, or he would not have made so many mistakes as he did throughout the day. To have mistaken this new land for the great Australian continent may be excusable on his part, perhaps, all thing considered ; but to have called it Poverty Bay was such a misapplication of the English language as passes all comprehension, and is excusable only on the supposition that he was suffering from dyspepsia that morning; and later on in the day, when he draws near yon headland to our right, and speculates upon itspalisaded enclosures it is quite refreshing to read the mistake he makes. “ Upon a small peninsula,” he says, “ at the north-east head of the bay, we could plainly see a pretty high and regular paling, which enclosed the whole top of the hill, which was the subject of much speculation, some supposing it to be a park for deer, others an enclosure for oxen and sheep.” Bless his dear old innocent heart! He had reason to change his mind before long. He very soon found out that the occupants of these enclosures were not sheep and oxen, but men who could wield to some purpose their “ War hatchets of green slate, capable of splitting the hardest skull at a blow men who despite his cannon and musketry would come in a canoe, not more than half a dozen of them, and brave him on his quarterdeck, bidding him defiance to his very beard ; men who took from him all he gave them and laughed him to scorn when he asked them for an equivalent; and amongst whom, not until after much cruising up and down the coast, could he effect a landing at last up here a little to the northward at Tologa Bay.

The stout-hearted Cook sailed away after this, and then for many a long year we lose sight of the place and the people; but there are a few old settlers still living in the district who can take us back some thirty or forty years, and tell us much that is interesting enough to justify a more lengthened detail than I have time to give. They tell us that when they first came to settle here, the natives were industrious and very numerous, that they were,by no means, bad neighbours to live amongst, and that certainly they were not the openly immoral lot they now are. They tell us that, in the course of time, as the influence of the chiefs decreased, and the influx of white men increased, their old customs were forsaken, their industry declined, and distrust of the Pakeha took deep hold of them. Then they, tell us of the war. and Te Kooti, and the massacre; but these • are matters, the telling of which must be postponed for another letter. Meantime, the anchor is let go, and there, within bowshot of us, close beside the margin of the sea and the waters of the Waimata awaiting a word or two of description, stands the town of Gisborne, the

turangantti of other days, and to me Turanganui still. It is a town of some six or seven hundred inhabitants, I should say ; a scattered, straggling town, with wide grass-grown streets,and clean comfort-able-looking cottages, and half a dozen stores, and a weekly newspaper. It is a town that has risen and thriven despite of obstacles such as no other town in the colony has, ever before, had to contend asrainst —thriven despite of native difficulties, and cruel massacres, and cold neglect, neglect that down here amongst us would have caused the blood to surge madly in men’s veins, and driven them to open rebellion itself. No roads have ever been formed ; no bridges have ever been built, no improvements of any kind, worth speaking of,have ever been made ; not a shilling of money, in fact, has ever been spent in the place by the people of Auckland, though Auckland has drawn many a thousand pounds of its revenue from it. No telegraphic communication connects it as yet with any other portion of the colony, though no more important position of the colony will be met with in the North Island. A stray steamer visits it now and then ; but the roadstead is open, the surf runs high, and for weeks and weeks together these Bay people, as they love to call themselves, have no intercourse with the outside world. But, notwithstanding all this — notwithstanding isolation, neglect, and turbulent natives —an amount of material progress and prosperity meets you everywhere that speaks volumes for the natural resources of the country. Away overacrossthe river lie the Native settlement and the run of Messrs. Barker & M‘Donald, of Otago. The natives lie and lounge about the streets all day long ; and Barker and M'Donald’srqnlooksbrightand grassy.

[Although the foregoing appeared so recently as July 11th, we opine that the writer has worked up some very old “ jottings ” indeed. Our readers will not fail to discover the discrepancies that exist between the actual state of the Bay now, and the time when the “recent visitor” was here—quite 18 months since—at any rate, it is more than that since a weekly newspaper was issued in Gisborne; apd something more remote than recently, since it was our fate “ for weeks and weeks together to have no more intercourse with the outer world,” than that afforded hv the visit of a “ stray steamer.”—Ed. S. and P. A.]