I soon passed through the flax-swamp where we for days had shot the pukéko, and coming out upon the wet sands, which here are glittering and full of the Taranaki steel, I took off boots and socks, and trudged the whole distance barefoot, regardless of the morrow. It was hard to walk without crunching with the heel shells which would be thought rare at home, and here and there charming little tern and other tiny sea-fowl flew at me, and all but pecked my eyes out for coming near their nests.
During the day, I forded two large rivers and small streams innumerable, and swam the Ohau, where Dr. Featherston last week lost his dog-cart in the quick-sands, but I managed to reach Otaki before sunset, in time to revel in a typical New Zealand view. The foreground was composed of ancient sand-hills, covered with the native flax, with the deliciously-scented Manuka ti-tree, brilliant in white flower, and with giant fern, tuft-grass, and tussac. Farther inland was the bush, evergreen, bunchlike in its foliage, and so overladen with parasitic vegetation, that the true leaves were hidden by usurpers, or crushed to death in the folds of snakelike creepers. The view was bounded by bush-clad mountains, rosy with the sunset tints.
Otaki is Archdeacon Hadfield's church-settlement of Christian Maories; but of late there have been signs of wavering in the tribes, and I found Major Edwardes, who had been with us at Parewanui, engaged in holding, for the government, a runanga of Hau-Haus, or Antichristian Maories, in the Otaki Pah. Some of these fellows had lately held a meeting, and had themselves rebaptized, but this time _out of_ instead of _into_ the church. They received fresh names, and are said to have politely invited the archdeacon to perform the ceremony.
Maori Church of Englandism has proved a failure. A dozen native clergymen are, it is true, supported in comfort by their countrymen, but the tribes would support a hundred such, if necessary, rather than give up the fertile "reservations," such as that of Otaki, which their pretended Christianity has secured. There is much in the Maori that is tiger-like, and it is in the blood, not to be drawn out of it by a few years of playing at Christianity.