We see at last what we have long been looking for, hitherto to no purpose, namely, Maoris and their habitations. Brown, gypsey-like people they appear in the distance, wearing ordinary clothes like Europeans, only dirty and ragged usually. Here and there we pass a cluster of their wharès, low down near the beach--brown huts of thatch-like appearance, for they are made of raupo grass. Some of them are very neat, with carved and painted doors and fronts. Near them is usually some fenced-in cultivation, and possibly a rough-grassed clearing, on which may be a few cattle or horses. There are always pigs and dogs visible, and brown naked children disporting themselves on the beach, where canoes are drawn up, fishing nets spread out, and a scaffolding erected to dry shark-meat upon.
Few and far between are these evidences of the native race, and few and far between, also, are evidences of the new nation that is supplanting it. Frere, the statesman, speaking of Spain, said--he loved it because God had so much land there in His own holding. If he could say that of Spain's bare sierras and bleak barrancas, what would he not have said of this land, whose splendid woods and forests clothe the hills and fill the glens with verdure.
Here and there we lie off some settler's station, a white wooden homestead, perhaps with a few outbuildings beside it, perhaps alone; round it the pastures won by the axe and the fire, a mere bite out of the boundless woods behind. At such places "The Crew" paddles ashore in the dingey, or possibly a boat comes off to us, bearing two or three bushmen, who, may be, think that the opportunity for getting a nobbler ought not to be suffered to pass by.
We have three or four townships to call at, places where the Government has set aside a certain tract of land for a future town. A township site is cut up--on paper--into allotments, which are sold, or kept in the Land Office until wanted. From what we see of the Kaipara towns, they are very much in embryo as yet. Te Otamatea, for instance, is a single house and nothing more. This is our ideal of a bush settlement; it is as it should be--not too much humanity and crowd. The house, a rambling, wooden building, is of a good size though, being an hotel and store. Round it are several hundred acres of grass. Sometimes it is very festive, for a large Maori kainga is not far off; and at Te Otamatea a race-course has been made, where the annual races of the Kaipara districts are held.