GREAT MAORI FEAST AT REMUERA.

Te Aroha News, Volume VII, Issue 432, 28 December 1889, Page 5

GREAT MAORI FEAST AT REMUERA.

The picture of ' the great feast held at Remuera 'in May,' 1844, and depicted in the pictorial sheet issued with Brett's Auckland Almanac for 1890, has , excited a gdod/deiil of interest. Nobbing could bring' 'more strikingly before the colonists of to-day tho immense progress of the' past fifty yean?.' A good deal of speculation has, of dourse, been provoked on the 1 pointy whether the representation i& an imajfinai-y one or a faithful sketch of the scene. ' Ib may settle some doubts on this point if we explain that the picture is an exact reproduction of a lithographic sheet which was published in 1844 — with this exception, that the original was' printed' in one colour ' only, while the sheet published with Brett's Auckland Almanac is printed in three colours • One objector has urged that more horses me represented in the picture than there wore in Auckland at the time. This statement Mr R. G. Baretow informs us is absurd, a considerable number of horses having been landed long before'lB44. Mr Baratow also mentions an interesting fact with regard to tho cart shown in the picture. Ho says that its occupants were Miss Hulme (now Mrs Barstow), Miss Shepherd (now Mrs Singleton Rochofort), Miss Cooper (daughter of the Collector of Customs at Auckland), and Mrs Berrey (wile of the eheritt'). Mr John Lundon acted as charioteer on the occasion. Mr Barstow says that tho main purpose of the feast was to cement the peace betneen two bribes. Oreat preparations had been made for it, including a very extensive, potato cultivation on tho Remuora side of Mount Hobson, where bhe school^stands'.now and also on the site of Wren's nursery. A gooddeal of uneasiness prevailed in Auckland over the assembly of such a vast number of native?, bub the" feast passed over without disturbance of any sorb, a conspicuous feature in connection with it being the regular observance of religiouß services by the assembled natives.