MOKAU: BEAUTIFUL BUT UNKNOWN.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIV, Issue 58, 30 August 1911, Page 3

MOKAU: BEAUTIFUL BUT UNKNOWN.

SOME SCENIC WONDHRS WORTH ATTENTION OF NATURE LOVERS.

(By James Cowan in N.Z. Times)

There is an atmosphere of adventure and exploration about the Mokau. It is still undisturbed by the tourist; its forests are almost unbroken; its rapids are untamed. It mar not long remain so, for the records of man come before scenery, and the syndicate that has just bought up a large block of the country on the Mokau's banks hasn't done so for the sake of the beauty of the place, i But for the present it is much as Nature made it. Seventy miles or bo in length from its source to the Tasmart I Sea, the Mokau is navigable for small sea-going steamers for'about twenty-five miles, and for Maori canoes for fortyfive. I have forded it where it is but a small thread of water, cascading down from the Rangitoto Ranges. There it is out in the open fern and limestone lamls. But for the. greater part of its course it flows through the thick forest, deep, except where its numerous rapids break its course. At Totoro, which is as far as the canoe can be taken, it is seventy feet above sea-level. Compared with the Waikato and the Wanganui, its navigable length is not great. It is not nearly so splendid and strong a river as the storied Waikato; nor is its channel so grandly architectured as the"'--upper':,'par.ta'':of. the WSnganui—the Place of Cliffs. But it is unhackneyed, unvulgaiised. You don/t see advertisements for someone's pills on its cliffs—as I did not long ago on a lovely lake in the Rotorua, country. So here we are, in our long dug-out canoe, pushing off from the sandy beaek of the Mokau township, a little Ijfay inside the Heads, bound up-river with, the afternoon's flood-tide. Four of.us, two pakehas and two Maoris, not forgetting the dog, a 'cute Maori mongrel answering to the name of Tangaroa, who has hopped aboard before us anij selected for himself the most comfortable fern cushion in the ship. The Maori kainga comes to see us off; the old Taniora .Wharauroa, the tattooed Kaumatua of the Heads, gives us many.earnest injunctions about the dangerous rapids, in particular the dread Panirau—an ominous name; it means "Many Orphans." However, if the "Mema" and I are strangers as far as the Panirau is concerned we have a couple of good canoe-men who have climbed and shot the waters of Many Orphans many a time. Piko, thin, black-bearded and saturnine of visage, takes the bow paddle; Hauraki, round-faced and big-bodied and correspondingly happy and good-natured, squats in the stern with his steeringpaddle. Our waka, a new canoe, lately cut out of a kahikatea log; thirty feet long and four feet in beam amidships; heavy yet, too new in fact; we had to work our passage in dead earnest those four days we spent aboard her. She needs a crew of six or seven at least to get any speed on. However, she is roomy and comfortable and safe; "the bes' waka on the Mokau," says Hauraki, with some pride. Our swags and foodbags and billy and axe are stowed away, and off we go exploring.

I have mentioned the "Mema." That's pidgin-Maori for Member of Parliament; and as "Te Mema" my fellowpakeha, Mr. William Jennings, is known all over the King Country. He takes his Parliamentary duties in real earnest; I don't suppose there is anothbT M.P. who travels as many hundreds—or is it thousands'—of miles up and down his constituency in the course of the year; or who knows the North Island backblocks so thoroughly. '

PLACE W 7 ITH A PAST. About here, where we embark, is historic ground. Over yonder on the south bank of the river, where the signalstation stands to guide inward-bound vessels over the bar, the house of the signal-man, Mr. Walter Jones (son of the famous "Mokau" Jones) stands on the very spot where a llauluiu niu, or Pai-Marire sacred flagstaff, stood in the days of the 'seventies; it was erected just before the Ngati-Maniapoto warparty under Wetere Te Rercnga and Te Oro set out on their murderous raid on the White Cliffs Armed Constabulary station in 1809, and the warriors danced their fanatic diinee "around it before they marched. At that spot, Te Umute-Hakura, the Government steamer Luna threw the last shells that were fired in the Maori war; this was just after the White Cliffs massacre; a shell knocked over a whare where the signalstation now is, but as all the Maoris had crossed the river when the steamer appeared off the Head* and had gathered at Wahanui's village under the northern cliff, a kainga invisible from the sea, no one was hit. But there are relics here far more ancient that that piece of a shell from the old Luna's gun that Walter Jones showed us the other day. j One of them lies on the sands there, just below our em barking-place: a curious stone, something like an hour-glass in shape, and about four feet long; it is the tnpn anchor or mooring-stonc of the Tainui canoe of five hundred vears ago. Ashore there, ton. we see the remains of the old water-mill where the Maoris ground their corn in the golden days liefore the war, when they grow 'much wheat around the Mokau. Below the green hill Puke-Kiwi on which the mission church once stood, a .stream of clear water runs along a rocky channel cut for it from the spring above; the water that used to turn the busy mill-wheel. But the wheel lies there' broken and the old (lint grindstones lie half-buried in the grass—melancholy symbols of the decay of native industry. Isabella grape vines, grown wild, trail along the ground and festoon the titnki trees and the koromiko bushes; another reminder of the vanished' days when Die missionary and the Maoris lived together under their vines and their peach-trees. 'A quiet, pretty, slumberous spot this Tokomaru flat with its murmuring millstream that works no longer and its ruined mill.

Soon wo are well into the Mokau, smoothly flowing, shining under tlie afternoon sun, winding in generous curves round wooded hills, and reflecting all the heauties of the .forest. We, open up some fine reaches us we dig in our sharp-bladed manuka paddles and send our heavy dug-out mvirling along the quiet river. The water is brown, just the hue for a perfect mirror. Ranges green and ranges blue ri-e above the river, all forested to the sky-line. Now the timber grows tall. Rata and kahikatea and rimu trees crowd to the river bank and their forks are hung with bunchy astelias and the long drooping flax-like leaves of kiekie. Bush vines hang down over the stream, and feathery fern-trees rise in soft tiers of frondage one above the other as the hills lift back, and often lean their heads over us as we paddle up close to the bank. Bush blossoms there are, too; the crimson (lowers ot the rata; the white starclusters of the fragile clematis, and the sweet pinky blooms of the koromiko. Wild ducks are startled by our paddlestroke as we round a bend: wild pigeons, blue-breasted, fly from dee to tree and across the broad sin am. seeking (heir favr.rito berries, the mini and the hinau. (i/'and old woods these, and full of birds. One only hopes the Seenerv Commission's repeated recommendations

will be given effect to and the Mokau banks reserved for half a mile at least on each side, "taput," for ever to aboreal beauty and native bird-life.

j PAEPIPI'S STRANGER. V, A story from Hauraki. On our right/hand side of the river, between live and six miles from the Heads, we pass a rocky bluff, called Patokatoka the "rock fort." Its face and summit are hung with outrjutting trees and plumy ferns. In the face of the bluff there is a shallow cave, and close to that cave there is an ancient gnarled and mossy rata tree. This cave, long ago, was the lurking-place of one Paepipi, a cannibal of cannibals. Under the bank, almost hidden from view, floated his light canoe, tied by • flax line to the rata-tree. There Paepipi lived a lonely life because of- his taste for "long-pig."' He wasn't particular whom he ate, so long as the meat was man—or woman. Before he canoed up-river to this spot, Paepipi lived nearer the Heads, not far from where the punt ferry is now, and there he had an unpleasant habit of knocking stray Maori travellers on the head. One day, as Paepipi was out on the river-beach gathering a iasket of pipi .shellfish', a solitary stranger hailed ..him from the opposite'bank, and asked him to bring a canoe over and ferry him across. Paepipi replied, "Wait until I have finished gathering my pipis." Presently he boarded his little canoe and leisurely paddled across. As he pushed off from the shore he called to his wife to heat the stones in the hangi, the earth-made steam-oven, for he was bringing a tauhou back with him, a stranger, to dine. He took the tauhou aboard end paddled back; the man was on a journey between Waikato and Taranaki. Landing, Paepipi led his guest up to his i house, and there he gave him a mat to sit on. "Is the hangi being heated?" he asked his wife. "Yes," she replied, "ia but a little while it will be ready to cook our meal." The stranger looked gratified; he was hungry. Paepipi. presently rose and moving behind the traveller he drew his stone club from his belt, and in another instant the heavy sharp-edged patu had crashed through the stranger's skull. The hangi was ready and that night Paepipi and his wife dined well on the fattest joints of the poor tauhou. It was for him that the' oven had been prepared. The Mema, after listening to this story, opines that Paepipi was a trebledyed treacherous villain. "Oh, no fear;" says Hauraki. "Smart fellow, t'at tangata. T'at te werry good Maori joke."

Even the silent and dour Piko laughs. That's the sort of practical joke he can appreciate.

"Ob, I see," says the Mema. "He was a stranger and Paepipi took him in." "Tat th' way, boss," says Hauraki. THE YELLOW RATA.

The flora of the Mokau grows more beautiful every mile, if that be possible. At one place there is a botanical curiosity, a rata vine with yellow flowers; it climbs a tree on the edge of the bank and flaunts its rare blossoms over us. A quiet clearing, an old Maori settlement, here and there, a little break in the woods, a sawmill, a deserted limeworks. The river is amazingly sinuous, a succession of "S's"; I don't know of a more crooked waterway. But the wonderful curves and loops add to the charm of the voyage, and every bend, every reach, holds a new beauty. Here is a deserted Maori cultivation and villagesite, the old kainga of Oika, gone back to the wilds, overgrown with a lovely wild thicket of young forest and ferns. , Let the tourist come here and. see the fern-trees, the huge feathery canopies of the ponga and the mamaku, upheld by lofty slender pillars, each as graceful as the trunk of a tropical coco-palm; often bowed over the river as if they wished to dip their lovely frondage in its cool waters. Just round Oika, we paddle up a long glassy reach, walled on either side by a soft bank of foliage that dips in the water concealing every vestige of earth and rock, and swelling up into misty blue hills of forest. Every tree, every fern-frond, is painted on the glassy floor. This, indeed', is the Waiwhakaata, the "looking-glass water," of Maori song.. This night, the first of our inland voyage,'we make Kelly's sawmill, on the southern bank, fifteen miles from Mokau township, our camping-place. Our long canoe swings to the sucking current at the landing-place. The morepork calls to us, all night long, as is fitting, considering the native name of this lonely spot, Puke-ruru. which means "The Hill ef the Bush-Owl."