VI. WANDERERS. By a Son of the Marshes,. Macmillan's Magazine,

THE WANDERERS' RETURN,

MISCELLANY,

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From The Fortnightly Review. THE CHATHAM ISLANDS AND THEIR

ever

STORY.

with the world and civilization. The journey occupies only about sixty hours, but over the five hundred miles that

I PROPOSE, in the following pages, to separate the two lands runs a very give some account of a visit to the Chat-cross-sea, on which I can promise to ham Islands, a small archipelago in the any one longing for a life on the ocean South Pacific Ocean. Being isolated wave, an experience that will go a very and of little commercial importance, long way towards satiating his desires and still undiscovered of Cook, the in that direction. Like all things else, modern, they are rarely, if ever, visited our sixty hours of misery were finally by the traveller; even those living in ticked off, and at sunrise of the 24th the colony nearest to them know little we found ourselves under the lee of the more of them than the name, and be- land in the western hemisphere, on a yond that region I believe scarcely one rippleless sea, and beneath the bluest person in a hundred has ever heard of of skies. Ahead lay two low islands, them. The group consists of about a apparently sloping towards each other dozen islets, lying five hundred miles into the passage between which we east of Bank's Peninsula in New Zea- were steaming. As we approached land, the largest no bigger than the Isle nearer, the two islands resolved themof Wight, and the smallest little more selves into the higher northern and than bare, rocky pinnacles rising out of southern westerly extending horns of the sea, whither the wandering alba- Wharekauri (as the natives call the trosses and other ocean birds come largest member of the group), conhome to nest. Ships homeward bound nected by lower lands forming the from antipodean ports, southing to the enclosing bayleted arch and eastern boundary of Petre Bay, in which our anchorage lay. Running east and west along the northern horn could be seen a chain of pyramidal hills, evidently old volcanic cones, which, though not exceeding seven or eight hundred feet in height, assumed, on account of the lowness everywhere of the surrounding lands, the aspect of mountains. The southern horn, the highest part of the island, sloped gradually up towards the south, without presenting any distinctive summit. From much I had heard I expected to find the Chatham Islands a wild, bleak, and generally uninviting speck of land; instead, I beheld from the deck as we ran close along the southern shores of the bay, broad forest patches of that deep dark hue that belongs to evergreen trees, broken by cultivated fields and wide sheep-pastures, with here and there the characAfter I had waited long for an oppor- teristic wool-shed, marking the settler's tunity of visiting this outlying group, homestead, of which often only a glint the desired occasion at last presented could be caught from amid emboweritself in the beginning of 1892, and I ing creepers and scarlet geraniums. embarked at Port Lyttelton on the 21st Bathed as the whole landscape that of January in the Kahu, the small but morning was in the sunshine of one of seaworthy steamer that keeps these the most perfect of days, it seemed that islanders in touch once in three months to be exiled here out of the "care and

eastward-moving Trades with which to round the Horn, may run close past them without sighting them, for the fogs from the Antarctic generally enshroud them from the traveller's view. I fear the ordinary tourist would find nothing of a sensational character to attract him there. Yet these lone isles are the fragments of an ancient vanished land, in whose caves and cliffs the delving hand may gather broken records which, pieced together, with their disjecta membra gathered out of the islands to the south, and the continents to east and west, tell a story of the southern seas. It tells of geographic ups and downs, and the vicissitudes of a fauna and flora not less full of interest and incident than the tragic histories of human inhabitants, of which these islands have also been the theatre.

confusion of the world," could not be Through the kindness of Mr. Chudaltogether an insupportable durance. leigh, one of the Chatham Island runMy hopes rose that I might find here holders who chanced to be in New another such Arcadia as that charming Zealand at my departure, and of Mr. out-of-the-world retreat in the Indian Kinsey, of Christchurch, I had brought Ocean, the Keeling Islands, which I introductions to most of the settlers, have described elsewhere. Here, how- so that I found a pleasant welcome ever, the larger sphere, the greater scope for independent action, and the different human elements, have evidently interacted differently, and I found on close acquaintance with the islands no such harmonious patriarchate; here we had simply a chip of the colony of New Zealand floated off into the Pacific.

among them, and was hospitably invited by Captain Hood, one of the oldest residents and largest proprietors in Wharekauri, to make his house my headquarters. From him and from several of the neighboring residents, especially Mr. Alexander Shand, who visited me several times during the first few days when I was slowly recovering from the effects of my sea voyage, I received a great deal of very interesting information. Mr. Hood had taken part in some of the more stirring events in the island's history, while Mr. Shand, who was born there, is perhaps the only living authority on the language and traditions of its now nearly extinct original inhabitants.

The Chatham Islands were discovered by Lieutenant William Broughton, of "His Brittannick Majesty's brig

Rounding a bold headland, whose alternate beds of bright red and yellow form a conspicuous blaze of color in the landscape, we dropped anchor a few yards off the shore in front of a high cliff, beneath which, on the beach, stood all that represented the town of Waitangi a particularly cold and uninviting public-house, calling itself a hotel, and a less imposing weatherboard structure incorporating the resident magistrate's court, the post-office, and the jail. As the approximate date Chatham," when parted by a storm of our arrival was known, the shrill from the Discovery on the way to screech of our siren as we drew near Otaheite from New Zealand. The Disapprised the expectant population of covery and the Chatham were then conour presence, so that by the time the veying the expedition sent to explore Kahu dropped her anchor, quite a the north-west coast of North America, crowd, to join which others could be under command of Captain Vancouver. seen hurrying from all sides, had col-"We displayed the Union flag," the lected on the beach to watch our dis- lieutenant reports, "turned a turf, and embarkation and learn the news we brought, for the arrival of the steamer is a real event in the lives of these people which few who have not lived for a time so cut off from the world can realize.

took possession of the island, which I named Chatham Island (in honor of the Earl of Chatham), in the name of his Majesty King George the Third, the 29th of November, 1791." His visit was of short duration, for as the natives, who had never seen a ship before, lost one of their number in resisting his landing, he was anxious not to be the cause of further troubles to them, and so he left hastily without being able to gain much information about his new annexation. He describes the natives he saw as a "cheerful race, numerous and healthy, full of mirth and laughter, dressed in sealskins or mats, and courageous enough to resist his landing.” They called themselves Tuiti, so Dief

fenbach tells us, but the name by this service the whole of the present which they are best known now, and site of Wellington City, to-day worth the term by which they speak of them- millions sterling, for that block of land selves, is Moriori. Some years after was the recompense they first offered. their discovery, the islands became the The relatives of that officer, I suspect, rendezvous of the English and Ameri- rather regret now his inability to forecan sealing and whaling fleets in the see the future. The number of Maoris South Pacific — a disastrous circum- eager to emigrate to the Chatham Islstance in the history of the natives. ands was found too large for the Lord These vessels had from time to time Rodney to accommodate at one time; among their crews numbers of Maoris so, to insure the vessel's return for (the natives of New Zealand), whom those left behind, the mate was dethey had engaged in various capacities tained in New Zealand as a hostage. in that colony. About the year 1834 it The Lord Rodney landed her first load so happened that there were serving on of immigrants, numbering five hundred board one of these whalers which had persons, on the 17th November, 1835, touched at Wharekauri, the chiefs of and in December following the captain two Maori tribes who were then occu- completed his enforced contract by putpying the district where the city of ting the remaining four hundred on Wellington now stands, and who, hav- shore at the same port. These welling been driven thither from their an- armed and powerful intruders seem to cestral regions by the more powerful have walked boldly ashore, and, unWaikato tribe, were living in much dis-opposed, parted the land among them, content. What they saw during the and enslaved the Morioris, glad to find voyage greatly impressed them, and on that the country was really full of kaitheir return they dilated to their people kai, or eatables, as they had been told. on this "island to the eastward teem- In 1840 the group was visited by the ing with land and sea birds of all kinds, New Zealand Company's agent, Mr. mutton birds in crowds in holes in the Hanson, in the Cuba, accompanied by peat, and albatrosses innumerable in Dr. Dieffenbach, the celebrated naturalthe outlying rocks, with fish abundant ist, who afterwards wrote a history of along the coast, and eels swarming in New Zealand. This observer records the lakes. On the land there were for- that the Morioris, who a few years beests of karaka-trees, while the inhab- fore likened themselves to the koriari, itants were numerous, possessed of no or flax-stalks in number, or to the young weapons, and ignorant of how to fight." of the wild grey duck on the great This was evidently to them all in their lagoon, had at the date of his visit dejected frame of mind a land much to decreased to less than ninety souls by be desired and eagerly to be coveted, their five years of slavery. They are but one which they could little hope to the laborers," he says, "and porters of reach in their own canoes. Fortune, their masters, who have no notion of however, seemed to favor them by anything like moderation in the labor sending at this juncture a trading ves- they exact; so that ulcerated backs sel, the Lord Rodney, to their very bent almost double, and emaciated doors. They saw their opportunity paralytic limbs with diseased lungs, are and took advantage of it. Enticing the the ordinary lot of these ill-fated captain to Somes Island on pretence of wretches." The Kaupepe, as the Moritreating with him for a freight of flax oris called their oppressors, had not lying there, they made him a prisoner, only used them as beasts of burden, but and under threat of death compelled as their stalled cattle. The dying remhim to agree to transport them to the nants of the race still tell of that dreadChatham Islands. On their side they ful time when as many as fifty of their bound themselves to supply the ship at ancestors were roasted in a single oven ; their cost with a full freight; but the and when the ghastly sight of the shore captain might have had in payment for laid out with the dead bodies of their

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