THE DISCOVERY OF TARANAKI.

Taranaki Daily News, 16 December 1921, Page 3 (Supplement)

THE DISCOVERY OF TARANAKI.

THE COMING OF THE WAIKATOS. (Mollie Olsoir, Girls’ High .School, New Plymouth, aged 16 years.) The inhabitants of Taranaki always ! proudly tell strangers that their province is one of great historical interest. To prove the truth of that we have only to think of a few of the events which have taken place during the gradual civilisation of Taranaki from a land of cannibalism to that of one of the most productive provinces of New Zealand. We have only legends to rely upon for our knowledge of the earliest inhabitants of Taranaki. The legends tell us that a tribe supposed to have originated in Hawaiki, came to Taranaki and took possession of part of it, named all the mountains and rivers from Mokau to Patea. After this another tribe, whose chief was Turi, came, and They also named the mountains and rivers of ! Taranaki. They it were who named ; ML Egmont but they did not call it ■ Mt. Egmont; they called it Taranaki, | “the bare, barren peak.” They also named Paritutu and Moturoa. which i means the tall island. Kat er on a tribe, i also supposed to have come from ■ Hawaiki, came in a canoe called the ■ Tokomaru. This tribe, under Manaia, ! their chief, had before this gone, to the ■ Bay of Islands, after which they rounded . the North Cape and came down the West Coast to Waitara. Last Wednesday 1 climbed Marsland I Hill, and, looking towards Waitara, I imagined the arrival of those warriors ! with Manaia at their head, and I ' thought of how adventurous they must : have been coming so many miles to a land of which they knew nothing. Reflecting on their adventurous spirits, made me think of our own English sailors and of the first discovery of New Zealand. The first reference we have to New Zealand is in the log of Tasman, who states that on December 27, 1642, he saw a snow clad mountain resembling to a great extent the peak of Teneriffe. The next white man who records having seen Taranaki was a Frenchman, Captain Marion de Fresne. who. in 1772, named the mountain “Le Pic de Mascarin” after his boat, which was called the “Mascarin.” . As I was standing on the hill Paritutu caught my attention and other thoughts crowded into my brain. 1 thought of the coming of the Waikato natives in 1831. I imagined I saw them coming in their large canoes, and then their landing and telling how they had come for sharks, as sharks were very scarce in their part of New Zealand. The Maoris of New Plymouth must have been very trusting, for they gave them what they wanted, and when they de- ( parted had no suspicion concerning them. But % the Waikato Maoris were spies who had come to find out all they could about the Taranaki, or Ngatiawa tribe, and less than a month later they returned with four thousand men under Te Whero-Whero, the chief of the Waikato tribe. They landed at Waitara. and made their way victorious to the pa at Moturoa, where there were about three hundred and fifty Maoris able to fight and six white men, whose names were Dicky Barrett, Love, Phillips. Billy Bundy, Jack Wright, and George AshWhen the Waikato tribe arrived at New Plymouth, their chief (Te WheroWhero) came to the pa waving his mat as a sign that there should be a truce. Wari Pouri, the chief of the Ngatiawa tribe, came forth from the pa. and the two then, after embracing each other, talked an<l exchanged confidences as if they had been the dearest friends. Te U hero Whero said he did not wish for war, and Wari Pouri agreed because he said how they had both been originally the same race, and their ancestors had been friends, but when Te Whero-Whero definitely asked for a truce the other replied evasively. It was soon shown that Te Whero Whero was not sincere, for within an hour of that time some Waikato natives appeared before the pa dancing a war dance, which some of the Maoris thought meant that they were friendly, but which the white men rightly guess-

ed the sign of war. The war began between the two tribes, but it was a most peculiar kind of war, for the tribes would fight for a time and then be friendly for a while, until some fresh quarrel broke out and war would again be commenced. During the times of truce between them the Taranaki tribe sold their fire arms and ammunition to the enemy for tobacco and blankets. This tribe also displayed their simplicity by showing the enemy their weak places in the pa during the times of friendship, so that when war began again the ones who were besieging had many advantages. Another disadvantage to the Taranaki tribe was that they quarrelled among themselves. Many of them wished to trust the enemy. There is one instance of two sisters quarrelling, and in the end the married one, to show that she trusted the enemy, went out to join them. She was tomahawked by the treacherous natives and her body put in the only stream from which the besieged were able to obtain water. This, of course, made the river “tapu” to and so their water supply ran short. During this time the Englishmen had had to exercise unending vigilance, for they found they could not trust their allies at all. They would go to sleep if placed on sentry duty, and though all right for a rush they could not stand continued warfare so that the main share of the responsibility fell on the Englishmen. After same time the Waikato natives began to be short of food, but, on the other hand, the few Englishmen were wearied with the struggle, and knew that their only hope of success was to ,bring the war to an end. One advantage they had—they had cannon, while the Waikato tribe had firearms only. The Englishmen elicited their'allies to fight hard, and soon after a peace was made between the two tribes and the Waikatos returned home. Thinking of Paritutu made me think of Mt. Egmont, and as turning. I saw it in all its glory standing alone snowcrowned, 1 wondered how in 183!) Dr. Ernest DiefTenbach had managed to climb it. Dr. Diteffenbach’s description of his ascent came into my mind —how he had set out with Tungutu nga Waikato, the Taranaki chief, who had been living in the mountain forests in order to escape from the Waikato tribes, and how they had followed the Waiwakaiho River. When we think of what the track to the mountain is like to-day it seems unbelievable to believe that it was ever like Dr. Dieffenbach’s description of it. He tells how he could not see the track, but his guide knew it, and how every now and then they would come to some cultivated patch, where potatoes and other vegetables and fruits were giowing.

They had to turn back when they had gone a 4 far as the base of the mountain because of the shortage of their food, but Dr. Dieffenbach was not disheartened. He set out again, this time with a Maori named E’Kake, and, after a hard journey, they successfully gained the summit, where they found the body of a rat, which had evidently been carried there by a, hawk. They reached the summit on 'Christmas Day, but it was December 27 before they arrived back at New Plymouth, thus taking three days to do what we can now do in one hour.

As T half turned and glanced down T saw the white slab of stone marking the grave of Mr. Charles Brown, one of the oldest English inhabitants of Taranaki. This man was a friend of Walter Savage Landor. of Leigh Hunt, of Thomas Hood, and he had a brotherly affection for Keats. On his way out to New Zealand he visited Keat’s grave in Italy. How different must Mr. Brown have found Taranaki from the literary circle in which he moved in London and in Florence! It is supposed that he came out to New Zealand because he thought it would be a better life for his son. Although he was a poet and a musician himself, he showed that he was made of true pioneer stuff during his short life in New Zealand. He died of apoplexy in 1862, and was buried on Marsland Hill. During the Maori war, when the hill was used for a fort, his grave was covered over with grass, and it is only within these last few months that it has been uncovered again. When I next looked around my eye was caught by a white blur in the distance. This was White Cliffs, a place, of great historical interest. As I thought (once more of the terrible massacre there in ISG9, I admired more and more the bravery of the early pioneers in coming to such a land. The story of White Cliffs tells of a tribe, the Ngatimaniapotu, who knew that the British troops had lately been recalled from the fort at Pukearuhe, and, taking advantage of this, they came down to White Cliffs, whbre they tried to entice two Englishmen, Milne and Richards, down on to the shore by telling them there were some pigs down‘there they could have. Milne went at once, and was tomahawked. The natives, among whom was a half-caste named Phillips, then urged Richards to leave the block-house and go down. After some persuasion he did so. and met with the same fate as his companion. At this time Lieutenant Gascoigne and his family were in their potato patch, but when they saw the natives the Lieutenant, giving his youngest child, whom he had been carrying, to his wife, went forward to the natives. They shook hands with him, appearing quite friendly, but when Lieutenant Gascoigne went to open the door he wU.-. killed "from behind. The natives also brutally killed his wife and four small children, and even tomahawked the cat and Vhe dbg. so cruel were they. They then burnt the block-house. The next day the natives saw a man on horseback approaching. They could not recognise him at first, but when he came nearer, saw it was Rev. Whitely. They ordered him to return,

and on his refusal to do so they shot him and his horse. It seems strange that they murdered h(m, as they revered him, but it must have been because he refused to do their will. The next day a young man named McDonald, when passing through White Cliffs, saw the terrible work, and brought the news to New Plymouth. / By the time I had thought of all this it was the time of sunset, and as I once more looked around me and saw the solitary peak reared against the sky, and Paritutu in all the beauty of a golden sunset, I understand why Taranaki was worth fighting for, and it seemed to me one had only to lift one’s eyes to see many places of historical interest.