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Dickey Barrett: with his ancient mariners and much more ancient cannon! At the siege of Moturoa: Being a realistic story of the rough old times in New Zealand, among the turbulent Maoris, and the adventurous whalers, ere settlement took place.

Chapter V. Whara Pori

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Chapter V. Whara Pori.

In Maoiland, chieftainship does not go by entil. Wisley, fighting chiefs are selected from the youths who evince the greatest amount of intrepidity or finesse in the exercise of their various undertakings. It may be in the matter of cultivating, in constructing, in hunting, in fishing; but, perhaps, from more than any other of these pursuits—athletic pastimes. The most showy plant, it is remarked among them, does not always throw of the most vigorous seed. Nature produces the stuff, but the quickening power itself solely comes from Atua [God]. Whara Pori, of whom much will hercafter be said in this story, was the fourth son of the minor chief Tiwhiti, living at Pukeariki [Mount of the Lord], now styled Mount Elliot, New Plymouth, known as where the flagstaff stands. A chief was Whara Pori, admitted on all sides, even to this day, to have been one of the most sagacious of warriors that ever the Maori produced. Yea, at the present time the bare mention of his name still brings always a gleam of pride into the dark, vivid eye of a Ngatiawa, which the memory of no other of their distinguished leaders can, apparently, call forth. In conversation with any of Whara's contemporaries [now, there are few living], or with the progeny of any of those, they are heard to hold him up as having been gifted with a most remarkable thinking power—far beyond the ordinary allowance of any of their kind, and ruefully observe that, had Whara only been their leader twenty years sooner, it would have saved to them quite as many as twenty thousand valuable lives! If it is a garrulous Native, one should get into colloquy with, as many bon-mots and interesting anecdotes will be told of Whara as are, perhaps, in the biographies of any of the most renowned of civilisation. From these stories it has been gathered that Pori was a very great stickler for bodily exercise, and, of course, conversely hostile to inactivity. Despising games wherein neither physical nor brain power was required, and strenuously [gap — reason: unclear]ging the adoption of pastimes which required in execution nimbleness of limbs as well as astuteness of judgment, by all accounts Whara was in the habit of lecturing the Maori severely and unstintedly on their pernicious habit of lying or squatting about so many hours of the page 33 day in absolute idleness, in and about their pahs—telling them straight out that their so-doing begat spiritlessness, shiftlessness, impotency and disease: that their forefathers could never have come all the way from Hawaiki to this land of Aotearoa [New Zealand] had they been people of idle habits, as, such they evidently were now: for which, the kindness of Nature, he attributed, was largely to blame. All the rest which people stood in need of was just as much as would restore exhausted strength. The leaves of sprays do not curl up as long as they can drink-in moisture and light. The Pakeha whalers spend little time at harpooning, yet, for all that, when not positively asleep, their fingers are mostly going, and are not locked like those of the Maori half the time round their bended knees. There is a roguishness—it is said he has remarked—called evil, and devoutness called good; but for my part I prefer an active rogue to a devotional drone.

It was yet ere Whara Pori had arrived at puberty: it was yet, in sooth, ere he was punctured by the cunning artist's tattooing needle; ere that he was admitted to a voice in the staid councils of men, that an understanding was manifested by him which baffled the wisest in their runangi. This is what has been said Whara had done. A carved canoe, which great store had been set upon—thought to have been scuttled while out at sea by a sword-fish, its occupants, whilst hurrying to land for safety, ran into a gut on the west side of Mikotahi Sugar Loaf, where the punctured craft went, afterwards, suddenly down. Unavailing efforts, year after year, had been made to raise this esteemed trophy, and get it once more alloat All they had for their pains was but a sight of her beautifully-carved mouldings and symmetrical contour lying at the bottom of the still blue water, as if derisively taunting their incompetence to recover it from its submerged bed. Finally, everyone got impressed around Moturoa that no run of luck would attend them for as long as ever they were unable to recover their highly-esteemed canoe from where she had, for such an extended period, apparently been most mysteriously protected, behind a high transverse rock.

As time went on, it transpired that the juvenile, Pori, became to be looked upon by his kindred and acquaintances as having gone quite clean porangi [mad]. For days together, it has been said, he betook himself entirely away from the intercourse of any of his fellowkind. It was then, by his kinsfolk, many a time remarked, in low-voiced puzzled consternation, that, on leaving home, upon taking to his secluded haunts, the principal food he carried away with him was nothing more than merely the entrails of the pig! The Maoris, as a rule, deal rather philosophically with any person known to be what is phrased a little bit out, a little bit “touched.” That is—that as long as they are deemed safe—they allow them to have pretty well their own wayward way: therefore, upon this account, Whara's steps in his secluded wanderings were positively never shadowed by anyone curious to ascertain how that it was he passed away the time. “He was like the birds of the forest,” said they, “entirely under the protection of overseeing spirits.”

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But, as the time proceeded, what a wonderful surprise? What a veritable eye-opener Whara had in store for them all? which, one morning, made them every bit as thunderstruck-like as though Mount Egmont had been clean bodily shifted down to the bed of the Pacific-Ocean! This was on beholding Whara paddling, by himself, on the tranquil bay in front of them, the very boat which had baffled all their skill: all their ingennity for so many years to raise! Thus it was, as it were, that tables were completely turned, for, in place of Whara proving deficient in judgment, it was with themselves that they began to see the actual deficiency lay: theirs was the distemper, and Whara's complement of that precious endowment, to wit, sound judgment, was relatively much in excess of any of their own. Thus, from that time onward, Whara, it is said, was tapued as the coming leader of all the hapus of the Taranaki tribe: the fighting chief whom one and all should delight to follow! That no time should be lost in effecting the indispensable preliminaries suitable to the exalted functions destined for him to exercise, the artistic tattooers forthwith went to work, pencilling with their needles the exquisite traceries particularly observable on certain sea-shells, over the consecrated juvenile's face, his trunk, and his limbs. The priests giving exhortations to the practice of insensibility to painful endurance, when he, Pori, was all the while undergoing tortures which simply made what was exhorted to be done, impossible. It was while these ghostly officials were essaying to instil the young probationer with the mysterious work that, through himself, the gods had effected, that, irreverently, came this solution of the resusitation of the canoe:

“The boat was raised through no other cause,” he flippantly protested, “than by simply fixing on it a numerous quantity of air-blown bladders.”

What a commentary was this on the much-vaunted advanced engineering skill of civilization? Aye! and no one, in any degree conversant with the stratagems the Maori evinced in the wars of the “sixties,” would be likely either to treat such a feat as being altogether apocryphal. It is generally acknowledged that no primitive race that has as yet been discovered, has been known to come up to the Natives of New Zealand for intelligence; and Whara Pori was, to speak rhetorically, a head and shoulders higher than any in intellectual capacity, together with a somewhat nameless dignity in his bearing.

As an illustration of Whara's mental ability, in the passage of time, at the early age of fourteen, Whara's only son passed away, and the following poetical lament over the departed has been accredited as a fair translation of Whara's pathetic threnody.

Whara Pori's Lament for his only Son.
Tahanatoua! Tahanatoua! Stricken limb of rakau,1
Shrivelled and faded—bent flat to the earth!,
O! my son! benighted my spirit has grown,
Since thou, my only one, so soon's left my side.
page 35 To go to Paerau2, where all our Tapuna3 dwell.
Paerau, where unbreathing Shade's consciousness own,
I had thought thou wouldst been spared to aid my arm,
A-reeling, to send backward, the Waikato north:,
I had thought thou wouldst been spared to bear my shield,
When age, infirmity unto my sinews brought.
Oft, whilst abrooding, hath conjured my mind,
Thoughts that, in coming days, cunningly wouldst thou learn,
The inestimable secret of the Pakeha's Pu,4
Ere Ngatimaniapoto5 hither should appear,
So as to, under feet, those vile dastards tread,
Whose presence as volcano ever ruin spreads.,
My veins Waikato's pitilessness make throb.
The ignoble alone can to a tyrant crawl.
Better divested do an alien's will
Than be enslaved by one of one's own kind.!
O! now, my son, for me is left alone to do,
The work in which I built on having thy support,—
Thee, with Atua's leave, succour mayst still lend
Our dwindled hapu in strife's perilous strait,
May I, when done with Papa6 thee in Heinga7 meet.
Thy coming Here I waited on: There thou ‘It wait on mine.

Shortly following the death of Tahanatoua, when Whara had signalled himself as being the astutest warrior in New Zealand, from Mokau River southward in the North Island, his well, it may he said, became paramount, and, sooth, it may be attributed to Whara's immediate presence, in conjunction with that of Mr Richard Barrett, the altogether unexpected case with which Colonel Wakefield effected a footing so satisfactory at Port Nicholson with the passengers of the ship ‘Tory’ —eight years subsequently, late in 1839.

From time to time, ever since there have been chronicled the experiences of mankind on this lively planet of ours, proletarian offshoots have, in a manner, paralysed with wonder, the diffused peoples, by their overwhelming audacity towards all opposition, with a startling impetuosity, crushing regardlessly under them, old-established principalities and powers, as if, by such periodical onslaughts, Nature were showing disapproval of mismanaged continuity of dominion. Had Whara Pori had scope, he might have even exceeded Tamerlane in extent of subjugation. As it was he did marvels with that which, in a limited sphere, was given for him to do. The part which Whara Pori subsequently takes in this drama, possibly, may atone for thus exclusively here devoting a chapter to a few of the salient points in his earlier and later career.

1 Rakau—tree.

2 paerau—abode of departed.

3 Tapuna—forefathers.

4 Pu—fire-arms.

5 Ngatimaniapoto—Tribe of Waikato.

6 Papa—earth.

7 Heinga—abode of spirits.