"TARE" NELSON.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LII, Issue 4, 29 January 1909, Page 4

"TARE" NELSON.

DLATH OF A WHITE TOHUMU. illS LIFE AXD ADVENTUIiES. TALES OF THE DAVS OF SLAVE TKADINU. lu announcing the ueatii ol Air. C'. E. Nelson, formerly licensee of the Ueyser Hotel, Koloruu, o.le of the best Maori .scholars in the Dominion, the X.Z. limes publishes some iutcrestiug reminiscences by Air. J. Cowan, the experienced journalist wiio is attached to the Tourist Department Mr. Cowan writes that "Tare' (Maori for "Charlie") ) as he was universally known among-; his Maori friends, was an uncommon man with an uncommon history, and with a good deal oi the mystic about him. He ied a quiet books-aad-gaiden existence of late years, but he had lived a very wild, adventurous life, had seen more of the primitive untamed side of mankind than most of us have or ever will. "Tare" was a white tohunga. Fitly years in 2u'W Zealand, most- of the.ii spent in constant intercourse with the native people, hau almost uiaue uuu a Maori in certain respects; particularly in his sympathy with or pernaps insight into tne n.ore austrusc anu oeci.it side of the-Jiaori. "tare' aid not laugu at all the tales of Maori tohuugaisui, oi rnukutu and the like. Mr. .Nelson, when living on the Kiapara, one of the very few white men in those parts, and later ia the Far North, had been scliooied by some of the real old "medicinemen" of the race, and he had strong belief, based on certain actual experiences of which lie did not care to say much except to like-aiindeu investigators, of the mysterious powers of telepathy and projection oi the will possessed and exercised by the tohunga Maori. Jie was particularly learned in native sacerdotal ritual. Kelson's life, for the lirst thirty years of it, was crammed as full of adventure and stirring incidents as any boy s novel. He was a sailor m tne days oi slave-ships and pirates, sk\sailclippers that carried stu'n'-sails rigui up to their royal yards. He was born about seventy-nine years ago, in aweueu. His father was professor of languages in Christiana University (Nielsen was anglicised into "Nelson- wiwn »e settl(S in New Zealand). At the age ol fourteen he went to sea. When about eighteen years of age ue left a whaling ship at San Sebastian, in Brazil, and with a I'ortuguese companion walked to the port of Santos, liu miles away. On tueir tramp through the g/eat forests the two young sailors lived mostly on monkeys, wnicli they shot and baked whole in a coating oi <lav just as Maoris and busnmen oiten cook wild pigeons. At Santos, Nelson shipped on board a Brazilian scnomiu called the Iris, which was engaged m the slave trade. He made three voyages ia tar to the West Coast of Atuca. During this part of his career he saw a good deal of barbarous, brutal lite. His fellow-sailors were, rough men oi many" nationalities, but chielly Latins, or "Bagoe*," as the English sailors call them. , ~ On the third return voyage of Uu "blaekbirder" with her load of slaves, she was chased and captured, alter a day's pursuit, near iue island ot Thomas, by a British warship, the twenty-gun brig Cygnet, which was patrolling the seas on the look-out for slavers. A prize-crew was'put on board the schooner, aad she sailed for Si. Helena in company with her captor. Young Nelson and the sailors were sent on board the brig-of-war. Nelson was in great fear that the Britishers would (liink he was English, because he spoke English very well, having recently come oil a long voyage in an American wlialer his shipmates having told him that if he were adjudged English lie would -most likely be hanged for slaving. <So, in his trepidation, he gave out that he was French, for he spoke that language equally well. The old man used to say, speaking of this involuntary voyage in a warship, that he could hardly sleep at j night for fear the British bluejackets i .would hear him speaking English ia his sleep, and so inform on him. At last he went to the first lieutenant and told him all about himself; and that officer took him to the captain, who said lie found the fair-haired Swedish boy a regular "walking dictionary." When the brig and her prize reached St. Helena (where the siavcr was confiscated to the Crown aad her cargo of 1 .•"black ivory" liberated) young Nelson was sent ashore penniless and friendless, clothed only in a shirt, a pair of dungaree trousers; and a pair of slippers be had made himself. After some experiences on the island, lie got to sea agaii), spent a season in a whaling'vessel, chielly in the vicinity of Crozet Island, in the stormy Southern Ocean, and reached St. Augustine Bay. iu Madagascar. Here he joined a Portuguese vessel and traded along the East African coast, frcm Sofala to Ouiloa".

Leaving the Portuguese at Quiloa, he shipped on board a rougher craft still, an Aval) dhow engaged ill caiTyinir slaves up the African wast to the Bed Sea. He engaged to navigate her to "Sur, a port near Muscat. She had a cargo of eighty negroes on board, the property of the Arab slave-traders. A British man-of-war was lying outside Quiloa, but favoured by a dark night, and laying an easterly course well clear of the land, the young navigator managed to evade her and to carry out his commission. "It was an exciting trip, that," he used to say. "We never knew when we might get nabbed/'' Then, when on the South coast of Arabia, lie saw a good deal of wild Arab life. After various momentous experiences. Xi'lsoti returned to his fatherland, where he stayed on shore in order to perfect himself in his studies. He went .through a course in a Swedish nautical college, passing as master, and also learning ship-designing and building. In the year 1851 he was one of the crew that sailed the Hansa, the first flagship in the German navy to cross the Atlantic from Charleston, I .S.A., to Liverpool, where she was armed with her guns, and then sailed to a German naval port. Nelson served on the warship fulsome time for naval «fiiuiing. At the age of twenty-one he became captain of a Swedish ship. It was just about half a century ago that he came to New Zealand, laudhg at Auckland from a Bremen ship, He went around to Kiapara harbour, and lived there with the Maoris for a while, building and rigging boats for them, and meanwhile learntng the language thoroughly. One of his Maori irieiids and mentors was Te Kalie, o:i<> of tli? oid-timo tohungas, who' lived on Hie hanks of the Northern Wairoa river. Another of his friends was Te Oteine ' Kikokiko, a line old chief and warrior, vlio was'one of the 'earliest friends of the jtliite settlers in the North. In 185)1 Nelson and the Iter. \V. Gitt'«. Wesleyan missionary, were two of the very few pakelias living in the Kiapara district. Taking to sea again, "Tare ran a "whooner in the coastal trade fioiu Auckland,'"itwJ afterwards had a entter in which he traded to the South M-a islands, making cruisei to Fiji, Raratonga, and other groups, m l j"' days when adventures were still to .w found in the isles of Polynesia. Leaving seafaring for good, Captain Nelson took to the theodolite of the surveyor, and did a good deal of land-surveying ill toe Kaipara district. Subsequently lie joined tile Government service as ofheer f«i the purchase of native lands. In this capacity he was instrumental m obt. innii; for the Crown a great deal of n.it "o land in. the North Auckland distrit ■_