In one of the rambling myths of the Maori we are told how the hero Rata, wishing to build a canoe, went into the forest and felled a tree. In the old days of stone axes, tree-felling was not the work of an hour, but the toil of days. Great, therefore, was Rata’s vexation when, on returning to the scene of his labours, he found that the tree had been set up again by magic, and was standing without a trace of injury. Much perplexed, the woodcutter thereupon sought out a famous goddess or priestess, who told him that the restoration was the work of the Hakaturi, or wood-fairies, whom he must propitiate with certain ceremonies and incantations. Rata therefore once more cut the tree down, and having done so, hid himself close by. Presently from the thickets there issued a company of small bow-legged people, who, surrounding the fallen tree, began to chant to it somewhat as follows:— Ah! ’tis Rata; he is felling
Tané’s forest, our green dwelling.
Yet we cry, and lo, upspring [77]
Chips and splinters quivering.
Leap together—life will hold you!
Cling together—strength will fold you!
Yes—the tree-god’s ribs are bound
Now by living bark around.
Yes—the trembling wood is seen,
Standing straight and growing green.
 
THE RETURN OF THE WAR CANOE
And, surely enough, as they sang, the severed trunk rose and reunited, and every flake and chip of bark and wood flew together straightway. Then Rata, calling out to them, followed the injunctions given him. They talked with him, and in the end he was told to go away and return next morning. When he came back, lo! in the sunshine lay a new war-canoe, glorious with black and red painting, and tufts of large white feathers, and with cunning spirals on prow and tall stern-post, carved as no human hand could carve them. In this canoe he sailed over the sea to attack and destroy the murderer of his father.
Lovers of the New Zealand forest, who have to live in an age when axe and fire are doing their deadly work so fast, must regret that the fairies, defenders of trees, have now passed away. Of yore when the Maori were about to fell a tree they made propitiatory offerings to Tané and his elves, at any rate when the tree was one of size. For, so Tregear tells us, they distinguished between the aristocracy of the forest and the common multitude. Totara and rimu were rangatira, or gentlemen to whom sacrifice must be offered, while underbrush might be hacked and slashed [78]without apology. So it would seem that when Cowley was writing the lines—
Hail, old patrician trees so great and good;
Hail, ye plebeian underwood!
he was echoing a class distinction already hit upon by the fancy of tattooed savages in an undiscovered island. Now all things are being levelled. Great Tané is dead, and the children of the tree-god have few friends. Perhaps some uncommercial botanist or misliked rhymester may venture on a word for them; or some much-badgered official may mark out a reserve in fear and trembling. Canon Stack, who knew the Maori of the South Island so well, says that half a century ago the belief in fairies was devout, and that he often conversed with men who were certain that they had seen them. One narrator in particular had caught sight of a band of them at work amid the curling mists of a lofty hill-top where they were building a stockaded village. So evident was the faith of the man in the vision he described that Canon Stack was forced to think that he had seen the forms of human builders reflected on the mountain-mist, after the fashion of the spectre of the Brocken.
 
OKAHUMOKO BAY, WHANGAROA
For myself, I could not have the heart to apply scientific analysis to our Maori fairy-tales, all too brief and scanty as they are. It is, doubtless, interesting to speculate on the possible connections of these with the existence of shadowy tribes who may have inhabited parts of New Zealand in the distant centuries, and been [79]driven into inaccessible mountains and entangled woods by the Maori invader. To me, however, the legends seem to indicate a belief, not in one supernatural race, but in several. In Europe, of course, the Northern traditions described beings of every sort of shape, from giants and two-headed ogres to minute elves almost too small to be seen. And in the same continent, under clearer skies, were the classic myths of nymphs and woodland deities, human in shape, but of a beauty exceeding that of mankind. So Keats could dream of enchanting things that happened
Upon a time before the fa?ry broods
Drove nymph and satyr from the prosperous woods,
Before King Oberon’s bright diadem,
Sceptre and mantle clasped with dewy gem,
Frightened away the dryads and the fauns
From rushes green and brakes and cowslipp’d lawns.
In much the same way do the Maori stories vary. One tells us of giant hunters attended by two-headed dogs. Another seems to indicate a tiny race of wood elves or goblins. Elsewhere the Maori story-teller explains that fairies were much like human beings, but white-skinned, and with red or yellow hair, nearly resembling the Pakeha. They haunted the sea-shore and the recesses of the hill-forests, whither they would decoy the incautious Maori by their singing. The sound of their cheerful songs was sweet and clear, and in the night-time the traveller would hear their voices among the trees, now on this side, now on that; or the notes would seem to rise near at hand, and then recede and [80]fall, dying away on the distant hill-sides. Their women were beautiful, and more than one Maori ancestral chief possessed himself of a fairy wife. On the other hand, the fairies would carry off the women and maidens of the Maori, or even, sometimes, little children, who were never seen again, though their voices were heard by sorrowing mothers calling in the air over the tree-tops.
 
MAORI FISHING PARTY
Sir George Grey was the first, I think, to write down any of the Maori fairy-tales; at any rate, two of the best of them are found in his book. One concerns the adventure of the chief Kahukura, who, walking one evening on the sea-shore in the far north of the North Island, saw strange footprints and canoe marks on the sands. Clearly fishermen had been there; but their landing and departure must have taken place in the night, and there was something about the marks they had left that was puzzling and uncanny. Kahukura went his way pondering, and “held fast in his heart what he had seen.” So after nightfall back he came to the spot, and after a while the shore was covered with fairies. Canoes were paddled to land dragging nets full of mackerel, and all were busy in securing the fish. Kahukura mingled with the throng, and was as busy as any, picking up fish and running a string of flax through their gills. Like many Maori chiefs, he was a light-complexioned man, so fair that in the starlight the fairies took him for one of themselves. Morning approached, and the fishermen were anxious to finish their work; but Kahukura contrived [81]by dropping and scattering fish to impede and delay them until dawn. With the first streaks of daylight the fairies discovered that a man was among them, and fled in confusion by sea and land, leaving their large seine net lying on the shore. It is true that the net was made of rushes; but the pattern and knotting were so perfect and ingenious that the Maori copied them, and that is how they learned to make fishing-nets.
Another chief, Te Kanawa, fell in with the fairies high up on a wooded mountain near the river Waikato. This encounter also, we are assured, took place long ago, before the coming of white men. Te Kanawa had been hunting the wingless kiwi, and, surprised by night, had to encamp in the forest. He made his bed of fern among the buttresses at the foot of a large pukatea-tree, and, protected by these and his fire, hoped to pass the night comfortably. Soon, however, he heard voices and footsteps, and fairies began to circle round about, talking and laughing, and peeping over the buttresses of the pukatea at the handsome young chief. Their women openly commented on his good looks, jesting with each other at their eagerness to examine him. Te Kanawa, however, was exceedingly terrified, and thought of nothing but of how he might propitiate his inquisitive admirers and save himself from some injury at their hands. So he took from his neck his hei-tiki, or charm of greenstone, and from his ears his shark’s-tooth ornaments, and hung them upon a wand which he held out as an [82]offering to the fairy folk. At once these turned to examine the gifts with deep interest. According to one version of the story they made patterns of them, cut out of wood and leaves. According to another, they, by enchantment, took away the shadows or resemblances of the prized objects. In either case they were satisfied to leave the tangible ornaments with their owner, and disappeared, allowing Te Kanawa to make his way homeward. That he did with all possible speed, at the first glimpse of daylight, awe-struck but gratified by the good nature of the elves.
 
CARVED HOUSE, OHINEMUTU
A third story introduces us to a husband whose young wife had been carried off and wedded by a fairy chief. For a while she lived with her captor in one of the villages of the fairies into which no living man has ever penetrated, though hunters in the forest have sometimes seen barriers of intertwined wild vines, which are the outer defences of an elfin pa. The bereaved husband at last bethought himself of consulting a famous tohunga, who, by powerful incantations, turned the captured wife’s thoughts back to her human husband, and restored the strength of her love for him. She fled, therefore, from her fairy dwelling, met her husband, who was lurking in the neighbourhood, and together they regained their old home. Thither, of course, the fairies followed them in hot pursuit. But the art of the tohunga was equal to the danger. He had caused the escaped wife and the outside of her house to be streaked and plastered with red ochre. [83]He had also instructed the people of the village to cook food on a grand scale, so that the air should be heavy with the smell of the cooking at the time of the raid of the fairies. The sight of red ochre and the smell of cooked food are so loathsome to the fairy people that they cannot endure to encounter them. So the baffled pursuers halted, fell back and vanished, and the wife remained peacefully with her husband, living a happy Maori life.
The Maori might well worship Tané, the tree-god, who held up the sky with his feet and so let in light upon the sons of earth. For the forest supplied them with much more than wood for their stockades, canoes, and utensils. It sheltered the birds which made such an important part of the food of the Maori, living as they did in a land without four-footed beasts. Tame as the birds were, the fowlers, on their side, were without bows and arrows, and knew nothing of the blow-gun, which would have been just the weapon for our jungles. They had to depend mainly on snaring and spearing, and upon the aid of decoys. Though the snaring was ingenious enough, it was the spearing that needed especial skill and was altogether the more extraordinary. The spears were made of the tawa-tree, and while they were but an inch in thickness, were thirty feet long or even longer. One tree could only supply two of these slim weapons, which, after metals became known to the Maori, were tipped with iron. When not in use they were lashed or hung in a tree. Taking one in hand the fowler would climb up to a platform [84]prepared in some tree, the flowers or berries of which were likely to attract wild parrots or pigeons. Then the spear was pushed upwards, resting against branches. All the fowler’s art was next exerted to draw down the birds by his decoys to a perch near the spear-point. That accomplished, a quick silent stab did the rest. Many living white men have seen this dexterous feat performed, though it must be almost a thing of the past now. As soon as the Maori began to obtain guns, and that is ninety years ago, they endeavoured to shoot birds with them. Having a well-founded distrust of their marksmanship, they would repeat as closely as possible the tactics they had found useful in spearing. Climbing silently and adroitly into the trees and as near their pigeon or kaka as possible, they waited until the muzzle of the gun was within a foot or two of the game, and then blew the unfortunate bird from the branch. Major Cruise witnessed this singular performance in the year 1820. Birds were among the delicacies which the Maori preserved for future use, storing them in tightly-bound calabashes, where they were covered with melted fat. Their favourite choice for this process was a kind of puffin or petrel, the mutton-bird, which goes inland to breed, and nests in underground burrows.
 
A BUSH ROAD
Though no great traveller, I have seen beautiful landscapes in fourteen or fifteen countries, and yet hold to it that certain views of our forest spreading round lakes and over hills and valleys, peaceful and unspoiled, [85]are sights as lovely as are to be found. Whence comes their complete beauty? Of course, there are the fine contours of mountain and vale, cliff and shore. And the abundance of water, swirling in torrents, leaping in waterfalls, or winding in lakes or sea-gulfs, aids greatly. But to me the magic of the forest—I speak of it where you find it still unspoiled—comes first from its prodigal life and continual variety. Why, asks a naturalist, do so many of us wax enthusiastic over parasites and sentimental over lianas? Because, I suppose, these are among the most striking signs of the astonishing vitality and profusion which clothe almost every yard of ground and foot of bark, and, gaining foothold on the trees, invade the air itself. Nature there is not trimmed and supervised, weeded out, swept and garnished, as in European woods. She lets herself go, expelling nothing that can manage to find standing room or breathing space. Every rule of human forestry and gardening appears to be broken, and the result is an easy triumph for what seems waste and rank carelessness. Trees tottering with age still dispute the soil with superabundant saplings, or, falling, lean upon and are held up by undecaying neighbours. Dead trunks cumber the ground, while mosses, ferns, and bushes half conceal them. Creepers cover matted thickets, veiling their flanks and netting them into masses upon which a man may sit, and a boy be irresistibly tempted to walk. Aloft, one tree may grow upon another, and itself bear the burden of a third. Parasites twine round parasites, dangle in purposeless ropes, or [86]form loops and swings in mid-air. Some are bare, lithe and smooth-stemmed; others trail curtains of leaves and pale flowers. Trees of a dozen species thrust their branches into each other, till it is a puzzle to tell which foliage belongs to this stem, which to that; and flax-like arboreal colonists fill up forks and dress bole and limbs fantastically. Adventurous vines ramble through the interspaces, linking trunk to trunk and complicating the fine confusion. All around is a multitudinous, incessant struggle for life; but it goes on in silence, and the impression left is not regret, but a memory of beauty. The columnar dignity of the great trees contrasts with the press and struggle of the undergrowth, with the airy lace-work of fern fronds, and the shafted grace of the stiffer palm-trees. From the moss and wandering lycopodium underfoot, to the victorious climber flowering eighty feet overhead, all is life, varied endlessly and put forth without stint. Of course there is death at work around you, too; but who notes the dying amid such a riot of energy? The earth itself smells moist and fresh. What seems an odour blended of resin, sappy wood, damp leaves, and brown tinder, hangs in the air. But the leafy roof is lofty enough, and the air cool and pure enough, to save you from the sweltering oppressiveness of an equatorial jungle. The dim entanglement is a quiet world, shut within itself and full of shadows. Yet, in bright weather, rays of sunshine shoot here and there against brown and grey bark, and clots of golden light, dripping through the foliage, dance on vivid mosses and the root-enlacement of the earth.
[87]
“The forest rears on lifted arms
Its leafy dome whence verdurous light
Shakes through the shady depths and warms
Proud trunk and stealthy parasite.
There where those cruel coils enclasp
The trees they strangle in their grasp.”
When the sky is overcast the evergreen realm darkens. In one mood you think it invitingly still and mysterious; in another, its tints fade to a common dulness, and gloom fills its recesses. Pattering raindrops chill enthusiasm. The mazy paradise is filled with “the terror of unending trees.” The silence grows unnatural, the rustle of a chance bird startles. Anything from a python to a jaguar might be hidden in labyrinths that look so tropical. In truth there is nothing there larger than a wingless and timid bird; nothing more dangerous than a rat poaching among the branches in quest of eggs; nothing more annoying than a few sandflies.
The European’s eye instinctively wanders over the foliage in search of likenesses to the flora of northern lands. He may think he detects a darker willow in the tawa, a brighter and taller yew in the matai, a giant box in the rata, a browner laburnum in the kowhai, a slender deodar in the rimu, and, by the sea, a scarlet-flowering ilex in the pohutu-kawa. The sub-alpine beech forests are indeed European, inferior though our small-leaved beeches are to the English. You see in them wide-spreading branches, an absence of underbrush and luxuriant climbers, and a steady repetition of the [88]same sort and condition of tree, all recalling Europe. Elsewhere there is little that does this. In the guide-books you constantly encounter the word “pine,” but you will look round in vain for anything like the firs of Scotland, the maritime pines of Gascony, or the black and monotonous woods of Prussia. The nikau-palm, tree-fern, and palm-lily, the serpentine and leafy parasites, and such extraordinary foliage as that of the lance-wood, rewa-rewa, and two or three kinds of panax, add a hundred distinctive details to the broad impression of difference.
 
AMONG THE KAURI
I suppose that most New Zealanders, if asked to name the finest trees of their forest, would declare for the kauri and the totara. Some might add the puriri to these. But then the average New Zealander is a practical person and is apt to estimate a forest-tree in terms of sawn timber. Not that a full-grown kauri is other than a great and very interesting tree. Its spreading branches and dark crown of glossy-green leaves, lifted above its fellows of the woodland, like Saul’s head above the people, catch and hold the eye at once. And the great column of its trunk impresses you like the pillar of an Egyptian temple, not by classic grace, but by a rotund bulk, sheer size and weight speaking of massive antiquity. It is not their height that makes even the greatest of the kauri tribe remarkable, for one hundred and fifty feet is nothing extraordinary. But their picked giants measure sixty-six feet in circumference, with a diameter that, at least in one case, has reached twenty-four. [89]Moreover, the smooth grey trunks rise eighty or even a hundred feet without the interruption of a single branch. And when you come to the branches, they are as large as trees: some have been measured and found to be four feet through. Then, though the foliage is none too dense, each leaf is of a fair size. From their lofty roof above your head to the subsoil below your feet, all is odorous of resin. Leaves and twigs smell of it; it forms lumps in the forks, oozes from the trunk and mixes with the earth—the swelling humus composed of flakes of decayed bark dropped through the slow centuries. There are still kauri pines in plenty that must have been vigorous saplings when William the Norman was afforesting south-western Hampshire. The giants just spoken of are survivors from ages far more remote. For they may have been tall trees when cedars were being hewn on Lebanon for King Solomon’s temple. And then the kauri has a pathetic interest: it is doomed. At the present rate of consumption the supply will not last ten years. Commercially it is too valuable to be allowed to live undisturbed, and too slow of growth to make it worth the while of a money-making generation to grow it. Even the young “rickers” are callously slashed and burned away. Who regards a stem that may be valuable a quarter of a century hence, or a seedling that will not be worth money during the first half of the twentieth century? So the kauri, like the African elephant, the whale, and the bison, seems likely to become a rare [90]survival. It will be kept to be looked at in a few State reserves. Then men may remember that once upon a time virtually all the town of Auckland was built of kauri timber, and that Von Hochstetter, riding through a freshly burned kauri “bush,” found the air charged with a smell as of frankincense and myrrh.
Nor is the totara other than a king of the woods, albeit a lesser monarch than the giant. Its brown shaggy trunk looks best, to my thinking, when wrapped in a rough overcoat of lichens, air-lilies, climbing ferns, lianas, and embracing rootlets. Such a tree, from waist to crown, is often a world of shaggy greenery, where its own bristling, bushy foliage may be lit up by the crimson of the florid rata, or the starry whiteness of other climbers. The beauty of the totara is not external only. Its brown wood is handsome, and a polished piece of knotty or mottled totara almost vies with mottled kauri in the cabinet-maker’s esteem.
For utility no wood in the islands, perhaps, surpasses that of the puriri, the teak of the country. One is tempted to say that it should be made a penal offence to burn a tree at once so serviceable and so difficult to replace. A tall puriri, too, with its fresh-green leaves and rose-tinted flowers, is a cheering sight, especially when you see, as you sometimes do, healthy specimens which have somehow managed to survive the cutting down and burning of the other forest trees, and stand in fields from which the bush has been cleared away.
 
POHUTUKAWA IN BLOOM, WHANGAROA HARBOUR
Yet none of the three trees named seems to me to [91]equal in beauty or distinction certain other chieftains of the forest. Surely the cedar-like rimu—silv? filia nobilis,—with its delicate drooping foliage and air of slender grace, and the more compact titoki with polished curving leaves and black-and-crimson berries, are not easily to be matched. And surpassing even these in brilliance and strangeness are a whole group of the iron-heart family, ratas with flowers blood-red or white, and their cousin the “spray-sprinkled” pohutu-kawa. The last-named, like the kauri, puriri, tawari, and tarairi, is a northerner, and does not love the South Island, though a stray specimen or two have been found in Banks’ Peninsula. But the rata, though shunning the dry mid-eastern coast of the South Island, ventures much nearer the Antarctic. The variety named lucida grows in Stewart Island, and forms a kind of jungle in the Auckland Isles, where, beaten on its knees by the furious gales, it goes down, so to speak, on all fours, and, lifting only its crown, spreads in bent thickets in a climate as wet and stormy as that of the moors of Cumberland.
The rata of the south would, but for its flowers, be an ordinary tree enough, very hard, very slow in growing, and carrying leaves somewhat like those of the English box-tree. But when in flower in the later summer, it crowns the western forests with glory, and lights up mountain passes and slopes with sheets of crimson. The splendour of the flower comes not from its petals, but from what Kirk the botanist calls “the fiery crimson filaments of its innumerable stamens,” standing [92]as they do in red crests, or hanging downward in feathery fringes. To win full admiration the rata must be seen where it spreads in profusion, staining cliffs, sprinkling the dark-green tree-tops with blood, and anon seeming in the distance to be massed in cushions of soft red. Trees have been found bearing golden flowers, but such are very rare.
The rata lucida does not climb other trees. Another and even brighter species, the florid rata, is a climbing plant, and so are two white-flowered kinds named albiflora and scandens, both beautiful in their way, but lacking the distinction of the blood-hued species, for white is only too common a colour in our forest flora. The florid rata, on the other hand, is perhaps the most brilliant of the tribe. Winding its way up to the light, it climbs to the green roof of the forest, and there flaunts a bold scarlet like the crest of some gay bird of the Tropics. It is a snake-like vine, and, vine like, yields a pale rose-tinted drink, which with a little make-believe may be likened to rough cider. Rata wine, however, is not crushed from grapes, but drawn from the vine-stem. Mr. Laing states that as much as a gallon and a half of liquid has dripped from a piece of the stem four feet long, after it had been cut and kept dry for three weeks.
But the most famous rata is neither the vine nor the tree of the south. It is the tree-killing tree of the North Island, the species named robusta. Its flowers are richer than the southerner’s, and whereas the latter is not often more than fifty feet high, robusta is [93]sometimes twice as tall as that. And it is as strong as tall, for its hard, heavy logs of reddish wood will lie on the ground year after year without decaying. But its fame comes from its extraordinary fashion of growing. Strong and erect as it is, and able to grow from the ground in the ordinary way, it prefers to begin life as an epiphyte, springing from seed dropped in a fork or hollow of a high tree. At any rate the tallest and finest specimens begin as seedlings in these airy nests. Thence without delay they send down roots to earth, one perhaps on one side of the tree trunk, one on the other. These in their turn, after fixing themselves in the ground, send out cross-roots to clasp each other—transverse pieces looking like the rungs of a rope-ladder. In time oblique rootlets make with these a complete net-work. Gradually all meet and solidify, forming a hollow pipe of living wood. This encloses the unhappy tree and in the end presses it to death. Many and many a grey perished stick has been found in the interior of the triumphant destroyer. In one tree only does the constrictor meet more than its match. In the puriri it finds a growth harder and stouter than itself. Iron is met by steel. The grey smooth trunk goes on expanding, indifferent to the rata’s grasp, and even forcing its gripping roots apart; and the pleasant green of the puriri’s leaves shows freshly among the darker foliage of the strangler.
The rata itself, on gaining size and height, does not escape the responsibilities of arboreal life. Its own [94]forks and hollows form starting-points for the growth of another handsome tree-inhabitant, the large or shining broadleaf. Beginning sometimes thirty feet from the ground, this last will grow as much as thirty feet higher, and develop a stem fourteen inches thick. Not satisfied with sending down roots outside the trunk of its supporter it will use the interior of a hollow tree as a channel through which to reach earth. The foliage which the broadleaf puts forth quite eclipses the leaves of most of the trees upon which it rides, but it does not seem to kill these last, if it kills them at all, as quickly as the iron-hearted rata.
 
NIKAU PALMS
Our wild flowers, say the naturalists, show few brilliant hues. Our fuschias are poor, our violets white, our gentians pallid—save those of the Auckland isles. Our clematis is white or creamy, and our passion-flower faint yellow and green. Again and again we are told that our flowers, numerous as they are, seldom light up the sombre greens of the forest. This complaint may be pushed much too far. It is true that pale flowers are found in the islands belonging to families which in other countries have brightly coloured members. Though, for instance, three or four of our orchids are beautiful, and one falls in a cascade of sweet-scented blooms, most of the species are disappointing. But the array of our more brilliant flowers is very far from contemptible. Over and above the gorgeous ratas and their spray-sprinkled cousins are to be reckoned the golden-and-russet kowhai, the crimson parrot’s-beak, veronicas wine-hued or purple, the red mistletoe, the yellow [95]tarata, and the rosy variety of the manuka. The stalks of the flax-lily make a brave show of red and yellow. The centre of the mountain-lily’s cup is shining gold. And when speaking of colour we may fairly take count of the golden glint or pinkish tinge of the toé-toé plumes, the lilac hue of the palm-flower, the orange-coloured fruit of the karaka, and the purples of the tutu and wineberry. Nor do flowers lack beauty because they are white,—witness the ribbon-wood loaded with masses of blooms, fine as those of the double cherry, and honey-scented to boot; witness the tawari, the hinau, the rangiora, the daisy-tree, the whau, and half a score more. For myself, I would not change the purity of our starry clematis for the most splendid parasite of the Tropics. Certainly the pallid-greenish and chocolate hues of some of our flowers are strange; they seem tinged with moonlight and meant for the night hours, and in the dusky jungle carry away one’s thoughts to “Rappaccini’s Daughter” and “Les Fleurs du Mal.”
For a bit of New Zealand colour you may turn to Colenso’s description of a certain morning in early October when he found himself on a high hill-top in face of Mount Ruapehu. Snow had fallen in the night and the volcano was mantled heavily therewith. The forest and native village on the hill on which Colenso stood were s............