MAORI MEMORIES

Wairarapa Times-Age, 12 August 1938, Page 2

MAORI MEMORIES

NEW BLENDS AND EXILES. (Recorded by J.H.S. for “Times-Age.”) From 1835 onward, for 30 years or more, there sprang up a class of men and women unknown to the world, unlike any others in history. In the sunkissed bays and nooks, especially along the Eastern coasts of the North Island, there were the sons and daughters of intrepid sailors and whalers, who had linked their lives the young Maori women, sans ceremony. Their sons, inheriting the character of their Maori mothers, and the daughters the nature and appearance of their pakeha fathers. If continued for a few generations, this one-sided mixture would have completely reversed the characteristics, of the sexes. Compelled to an ever busy and frugal life, constantly in touch with nature, free from fads and fashions, and especially in the absence of the degrading influence of alcoholic liquors, these isolated little communities produced some ideals of manhood and noble women. So completely isolated by sea and forest were they that their numbers were not included in our annual statistics, though in at least six such little spots there was a total number of about 800. Another even more exclusive section of pioneers found perhaps in no other country, were highly educated men, living in rough whares on the lake side qr the river bank. Exiles driven to these most distant shores by drink or other social disgrace. About 100 of them were found by chance in several places far from settlement. A military doctor called by canoe to such an isolated spot to minister to a sick man, came into touch with a French nobleman, also a brother of the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, students of Oxford and Cambridge, priests without gowns, and others. In some huts he found well-worn copies of classic literature, down.