PEEPS INTO THE PAST

Gisborne Times, Volume LXV, Issue 10306, 15 January 1927, Page 4

PEEPS INTO THE PAST

COOK’S FIRST VOYAGE. NEW LIGHT ON DOINGS AND EXPERIENCES. (Specially Written for the “Gisborne Times” by ELSDON BEST, Esq.) * (No. II.)

The work under discussion is a small volume containing a brief account of Cook’s first voyage, published in London in 1771, the year that the Endeavour reached home waters after her first voyage to the Pacific* It is said to have been the journal of a gentleman who rnadte the voyage with Cook, but whose name is not divulged. Presumably it was the work of one of the ship’s officers. cSs‘

Our journal writer mentions that, prior to leaving Tolaga, one inscription was made on a tree near the watering place, and also refers to the friendly behaviour of the Natives. On Wednesday, Nov. Ist, while sailing along the coast, a number of canoes, some forty or fifty, approached the ship. One man made an oration, then procured a stone and threw it gently against the side of the. ship, after pronouncing a few words. This, says t-lie writer, was'apparently a declaration of war, and they all immediately took up their arms. Of the man who stole the garments being towed astern on this occasion, we learn that when a charge of shot was fired at him, he did not desist from his task of plugging the holes in the canoe made by musket halls, hut fherely lifted a hand now and again to rub the place where the shot had. penetrated. A cool customer this. Of the double canoe seen near Whale Island we are told that it was carved and decorated according to their own peculiar manner. This canoe was again seen: “The next morning, however, the same canoe pursued and overtook us about nine o’clock; she carried a sail of an odd construction, which was made from a kind of matting and of a triangular figure; the hypotheneuse, or broadest part, being placed at the top of the mast, and ending in a point at the bottom. One of the angles was marked to the mast, and another to a spar with which they altered its position according to* the direction of the wind, by changing it from side to side.” These interesting details concerning the canoe do not appear in Cook's Journal. This is the only writer who tells us how the kihau or sprit of a sail on a Maori canoe was manipulated.

od of reducing a besieged place was to burn a breach in the stockade defences, and a barrier of dry man aka bush would be about the most dangerous of all materials.

SYSTEM OF RESERVOIRS. We are also given a description of another deserted pa in the same district: “At a little distance this town we saw the remains of a more regular fortification, situated on a high hill, near a pleasant bay. The hill itself was almost inaccessible, and on its top was a level flat, large enough for a- town, which was surrounded by a fence made from spars two feet in circumference, drove deep into the earth, and about twenty feet in height: These were placed in contact with each other, and without them was a ditch about ten feet in breadth : within the fence were several large reservoirs for water, and stages adjoining to the spars for supporting those who were placed to guard the town, which appealed to have been spacious enough to contain two or three hundred houses, though none were then remaining. The sides of the hill were so steep that nobody could ascend them, except by crawling on his hands and knees.”

HOW STOCKADE WAS DUILT. The above account contains two notes of interest; those referring to the water reservoir and the style of stockade. Unfortunately we are not told what t-lie reservoirs were. They were either large wooden vessels, such as,canoes, which were sometimes used for the purpose, or pits sunk in clay or other suitable soil, in some places such reservoirs have been, hewn out of soft rock. A stockade constructed of timber eight inches in diameter, placed side by side, and twenty feet in height, was assuredly not the ordinary method of constructing such defences. Nor does the writer mention the horizontal rails to which the uprights were lashed, and which added vastly to the stability of the structure. The fighting stages were, of course, a common feature of the pa Maori, as they also were of hill forts in Fiji. The remark about long, heavy posts being driven into the earth is an error made by a number of early writers. They were sunk as we sink a fence post and securely tamped.

NATIVES' THE BETTER FISHERMEN. 1 The incidents that occurred on Saturday, Nov. 4, as given in Cook’s Journal, appear under the heading of Friday', Nov. 4, in Becket’s publication at Mercury Bay, of the incident in which a Native was shot for stealing a piece of cloth, our anonymous writer says: “Had we punished every dishonest attempt with equal severity, we must have extirpated the greatest part of the Indians with whom we have had any commerce; for never were people more ignorant or regardless of the principles of natural justice. In his account of the sojourn at the Bay of Islands our writer remarks that their sailors caught hut few fish when drawing their nets, though the Indians caught large quantities in theirs. “Their success was occasioned by watching the approach of the fish who came in large shoals, together with a difference in the form of their series, which were two or three fathoms in depth, and of proportionable length.” One of the most remarkable facts connected with the journal, as published, is the manner in which certain important and interesting occurrences are passed over, no details being given, such as the first landing at Turanganui, for example. Of the interesting fortified places seen at Mercury Bay aud elsewhere on the cast coast of the North Island, no word is said, though details are given of others seen later on, and which are not particularly described by Cook, Banks and Parkinson.

Further on in the narrative we are informed that the Natives had had a village at the bottom of the hill, from which they could retire to the hill fort should an enemy force approach the place. In such a lort, says our anonymous writer, the Natives “Always keep in readiness a sufficient quantity of water in reservoirs, and regular piles of spears and stones dispersed along tlu> stage adjoining to the fence, the height of these stages being fitted to afford those on guard ’sufficient shelter behind the fence, and so much elevation as not to be impeded by it in flinging their stones or using their spears, etc.”

CASTLES WITH DRAWBRIDGES. These old-time forts were not described by any of the writer’s co-voy-agers, and the information given Inthe journal keeper is interesting. He proceeds: “Some of these castles, which have not the advantage of an elevated situation to supply those defects are surrounded by two or three wide ditches, with a drawbridge, ■which, though simple in its structure, is capable of answering every purpose:' and within these ditches is a fence, made from spars fixed in the earth after the manner of that which was last described, but with this difference, that they incline inwardly; a circumstance which we thought favorable to the besiegers; but, on communicating this opinion to one of the chiefs, he assured us of the contrary, observing that if the spars should be pointed or inclined outwardly towards the enemy, that inclination would afford the assailants an opportunity of sheltering themselves under their points, from which it might be impossible to dislodge them; and that they would there be able to dig subterraneous passages into the castle. Notwithstanding the above assurance, the Maori did so erect his stockade, in some cases, as to incline outwards, and an old defended position on the northern slope of Somes Island, in Wellington Harbor, possessed such a defence on its western side.

MYSTERIOUS RITES. On Friday, January 12, 1770, the year being misprinted 1760, a note appears concerning the first sight of Mt. Egmont: “We discovered a remarkable peak nearly equal in height to that of Teneriffe, which was covered at its summit with snow.”

On Monday, January 15, as the vessel was passing along the shore line of the Sounds in Cook Straits a village was passed, and our writer tells us that: ‘As we passed the town an old Indian, in a singular kind ot habit, came down to the water-side, attended by several of his countrymen, and there performed some mysterious rites, with a mat and feather, etc.” The rites here referred to would probably he such as a' Native would term Tanioe, or some form of Matapuru. The first is designed to deprive possible enemies of all power to harm the performers, while the second is to ward off all harmful influences.

Of the Native shot by Cook on January 16, we are told that his knee ‘was thereby shattered in pieces,’ but the shattered person bathed tlie wound with salt water, wrapped a mat round it, and remained about the ship. We note here, as in Tasman’s Journal, the use of the objectionable term ‘mat’ to denote a Native garment, a practice still followed bv us.

THE GREAT JOURNEY FROM HAWAIKI. Our writer observes that the Maori tongue closely resembles that of Tahiti, and infers from that fact that one of these places was originally peopled from the other though they are two thousand miles distance, and nothing but the ocean intervenes, which we should hardly believe they could navigate so far in their canoes, the only vessels that they appear to have ever possessed. A goodly number of people, it may be observed, have refused to believe that the ancestors of the Maori crossed two thousand miles of ocean having but one refreshment place, but there is much proof that they did so. f The announcement as to Maori garments that: “Their cloaths are made from the fibres of a. species of silk .grass, wove by knotting or tying the woof together in lines commonly about a quarter of an inch distant” —provided ns with a new name for our native iiax (i’hormiuni). The brief description of the so-called weaving of the Natives is about the most correct given by any early writer on the Maori. Like them also he describes the steaming of food in the Native steam oven as baking, which docs not seem to„ be an appropriate word to employ. This concludes the notes culled from Mr. Rocket’s publication. Some further brief notes arc connected with Maori artifacts, etc:., but the majority of them apoear in other works on tile voyage. The volume is but a meagre one, and the journal is silent as to many interesting events and objects, but it adds a few to those recorded by Cook, Ranks and Parkinson. The fact that the work is scarce and but little known is mv excuse for jotting down the above notes. (To be Continued.)

A FORTIFIED VILLAGE. The writer describes defences of an island pa, or fortified village, at Queen Charlotte Sound that were apparently of an unusual kind. He says: “011 a small island lying S.E. from the place where we anchored, was one of these deserted towns, most pleasantly situated, and consisting of about eighteen houses, placed in a circular- form ; it was surrounded and defended by a wall curiously constructed by driving the two rows ot long stakes or spars into the ground, at convenient distances, and afterwards filling the intermediate space with what we called broom-stuff, being a small kind of brush, made into bundles like faggots, and placed ort end, in double rows, supported by others lying parallel with the ground. In this manner the wall is raised six or seven feet in height, and, notwithstanding the simplicity of the strucure, it is no easily broken ,or destroyed, especially when guarded by men who fight,, not only to preserve freedom and property, but their own bodies from being cruelly butchered and eaten.” Now our writer may have mistaken a manuka hush fence for a defen- • sive stockade, hut 110 person who knows the nature of the defences of an old-time Native pa will admit that the above described harrier was ■meant for defensive purposes. It was probably erected as a protection against high winds. A favored meth-