War to the Knife

A day or two before starting, Massinger received a note in a strange handwriting, which ran as follows: —

"Auckland, 14, Shortland Street,"Wednesday.

"Dear Sir,

"My old friend Dr. Lochiel has, I believe, recommended me to you as a guide for the trip to Rotorua and Rotomahana.

"I know the country well, and shall be glad to act, if we can arrange. I don't say that it is too safe in the present state of native feeling, but that is for you to judge. I shall have the pleasure of calling upon you tomorrow morning.

"Yours truly,"Albert Warwick.

"R. Massinger, Esq."

"Why, I thought Dr. Lochiel told me that the guide was a half-caste," said he to himself. "Very well written and expressed. Some men I know, from English public schools, too, could not have written such a note to save their lives. However, I suppose he got some one to write it for him."

He had finished his breakfast, and was digesting it and the contents of the New Zealand Herald, besides trying to reconcile conflicting statements as to the Native Lands Policy, when a visitor was announced.

"Mr. Massinger, I believe," said the stranger, bowing. "My name is Warwick; I presume you received my note yesterday?"

For one moment that gentleman's self-possession almost failed him, but he recovered himself in time to murmur an assent and ask the stranger to take a chair. There was some reason for his surprise.

He saw before him a very good-looking, well-dressed man of about his own age, turned out much as he had often been himself for a day's shooting. A Norfolk jacket, with knickerbockers and worsted stockings, these last exhibiting a volume of muscular calf, above laced-up shooting-boots of great strength and thickness of sole. A wide-brimmed felt hat, and a Crimean shirt, completed attire which was eminently appropriate and serviceable.

"You know the people and the country, as well as the route to these far-famed lakes?" he inquired.

"From my boyhood," answered this perplexing personage, with a perfectly correct, even finished accent, "I have been familiar with both. We have relatives in the Ngapuhi tribe, and I am always glad of an excuse to see some wild life among them. I have occasionally acted as guide to parties of tourists, and not so long ago to His Excellency the Governor and his staff."

"And your remuneration?" queried the tourist, thinking it wise to settle that important question off-hand.

"Oh, say a guinea a day and expenses paid," replied the stranger, in airy, off-hand fashion, as if the trifling amount was hardly worth mentioning. "That is my usual fee. I am fond of these expeditions myself, and in pleasant company; but that one must live, I should be quite willing to go with you for nothing."

"That, of course, is not to be thought of. But it will be an added pleasure to have a companion from whom I can gain information and share a novel experience."

"Thanks very much," said Mr. Warwick, bowing; "and for the baggage, if I might advise, the least possible quantity that you can do with. All beyond will encumber you in the sort of trail before us. I should like to superintend the packing."

"Very grateful, if you will," said Massinger. "Perhaps you would not mind breakfasting with me tomorrow; we could start directly afterwards."

"Most happy. In that case, I shall be here at sunrise, which will give time to arrange the pack, and we need lose none of the best part of the day."

So much being understood, Mr. Warwick bowed himself out, leaving his employer in a state of suppressed astonishment.

"The land of wonders, indeed!" he soliloquized. "The people, as well as the land, seem mysteries and enigmas. Only to look at this man is a revelation. What a handsome fellow he is! – no darker than a Spaniard, with regular features and a splendid figure. He would throw into the shade many of the curled darlings of the old land. One of his descendants, having taken high honours at Christ Church University, is obviously the man Macaulay had in his mind when he created the immortal New Zealander on London Bridge. His accent, his manner, his whole bearing, quiet, dignified, easy. Why, he has quite English club form! And where can he have got it? At any rate, there will be some one to talk to on the way, and as he is a master of Maori as well as English, he will be invaluable as an interpreter."

Preliminaries are hateful things at best, but after the usual hindrances a start was made tolerably early in the day, and ere long our hero was inducted into the peculiarities of forest wayfaring, as at that time practised in New Zealand.

He had scorned the idea of performing any part of it by sea or coach, having heard that all the pioneers, aristocratic or otherwise, had been noted for their pedestrian prowess.

So, with Warwick leading the way with the packhorse, and he himself doughtily surmounting rock or log, or thrusting between brambles and climbers, he realized that he was at length actively engaged in the adventurous experiences he had come so far to seek.

They did not always keep to the rude highways, or accepted tracks of ordinary travellers; Warwick seemed, without bestowing thought or care upon the matter, to journey upon a line of his own. It invariably turned out to be the correct one, as it cut off angles and shortened the distances, always striking points on the main trail which he had previously described. All the available stopping-places on the road were thoroughly well known to him, and between the more desirable inns and accommodation houses, at all of which Warwick was evidently the bienvenu, and the historical localities near which Massinger was prone to linger, no great progress was made. However, time being no object, they wandered along in a leisurely and satisfactory way, Massinger congratulating himself again and again on his good fortune in having secured such a guide and companion.

At Mercer, on their third day out, Mr. Massinger was gladdened with his first sight of the Waikato, that noble river around which so many legends have been woven, on whose banks so much blood has been shed, on whose broad bosom the whale-boat has succeeded the canoe, the steamer the whale-boat. His spirits rose to enthusiasm as they traversed the country between the river and the lakes of Waikare and Rangarui. While at Taupiri, he marked the groves – actual groves, as he exclaimed – of peach and cherry trees planted by the missionaries in past days. Then leaving the river, they entered on the great Waikato plain.

"All this is very pleasant," he said one morning; "though, but for the absence of red-tiled farmhouses and smock-wearing yokels, I might as well be back in Herefordshire. What I am dying to see, is a decent-sized village —kainga, don't you call it? – where I may see the noble Maori with his meremere, his pah, and his wharepuni, in all his pristine glory unsullied by pakeha companionship."

"I think I can manage that for you," replied Warwick, with an amused smile, "between here and Oxford."

"What, more England?" said Massinger. "Why not Clapham and Paddington at once?"

"Well, you must bear with Lichfield," continued Warwick. "We can turn off there and make for Taupo. Before we get there, I can promise you one real Maori settlement, as well as another rather more important, at Taupo on the lake."

"And a chief?" queried the wayfarer. "I must have chiefs. A real Rangatira."

"I believe Waka Nene, warrior, high chief, and ally of England, is on a visit at the first one we come to," said the guide, "and he should satisfy your taste for Maori life."

Their pathway was narrow, chiefly bordered by high ferns, various kinds of low-growing bushes, and when the forest was reached, occasionally blocked by fallen timber, which necessitated a considerable detour, not always accomplished without difficulty, and obstacles which seemed to multiply the fatigues of the journey. Still, the wondrous beauty of the primeval forest had fully repaid him for all difficulties which nature placed in their way. Hundreds of feet overhead, almost hiding the rays of the autumnal sun, and causing Massinger to throw back his head to gaze at their lofty coronets of foliage, rose the royal ranks of the Kauri, the Totara, the Rimu, and the Kahikatea. Unlike the less o'er-shadowed forests in Australia described in his premigratory course of reading, there was but little herbage to be seen between the giants of that unconquered woodland. Ferns, trailers, thorn bushes, often breast-high, more or less aggressive, climbers and parasites, filled up all space beneath the columnar trunks which stretched so far and wide.

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