Mr. Bushby
Remarked That A Little Quiet Irony Would Frequently Silence
Any One Of These Natives In Their Most Blustering
Moments.
This chief has come and harangued Mr. Bushby in a hectoring
manner, saying, "great chief, a great man, a
Friend
of mine, has come to pay me a visit - you must give him
something good to eat, some fine presents, etc." Mr. Bushby
has allowed him to finish his discourse, and then has quietly
replied by some answer such as, "What else shall your slave
do for you?" The man would then instantly, with a very
comical expression, cease his braggadocio.
Some time ago, Mr. Bushby suffered a far more serious
attack. A chief and a party of men tried to break into his
house in the middle of the night, and not finding this so easy,
commenced a brisk firing with their muskets. Mr. Bushby
was slightly wounded, but the party was at length driven
away. Shortly afterwards it was discovered who was the
aggressor; and a general meeting of the chiefs was convened
to consider the case. It was considered by the New Zealanders
as very atrocious, inasmuch as it was a night attack, and
that Mrs. Bushby was lying ill in the house: this latter
circumstance, much to their honour, being considered in all
cases as a protection. The chiefs agreed to confiscate the
land of the aggressor to the King of England. The whole
proceeding, however, in thus trying and punishing a chief
was entirely without precedent. The aggressor, moreover,
lost caste in the estimation of his equals and this was
considered by the British as of more consequence than the
confiscation of his land.
As the boat was shoving off, a second chief stepped into
her, who only wanted the amusement of the passage up and
down the creek. I never saw a more horrid and ferocious
expression than this man had. It immediately struck me
I had somewhere seen his likeness: it will be found in
Retzch's outlines to Schiller's ballad of Fridolin, where two
men are pushing Robert into the burning iron furnace. It
is the man who has his arm on Robert's breast. Physiognomy
here spoke the truth; this chief had been a notorious
murderer, and was an arrant coward to boot. At the point
where the boat landed, Mr. Bushby accompanied me a few
hundred yards on the road: I could not help admiring the
cool impudence of the hoary old villain, whom we left lying
in the boat, when he shouted to Mr. Bushby, "Do not you
stay long, I shall be tired of waiting here."
We now commenced our walk. The road lay along a
well beaten path, bordered on each side by the tall fern,
which covers the whole country. After travelling some
miles, we came to a little country village, where a few hovels
were collected together, and some patches of ground cultivated
with potatoes. The introduction of the potato has
been the most essential benefit to the island; it is now much
more used than any native vegetable. New Zealand is
favoured by one great natural advantage; namely, that the
inhabitants can never perish from famine. The whole
country abounds with fern: and the roots of this plant, if
not very palatable, yet contain much nutriment. A native
can always subsist on these, and on the shell-fish, which are
abundant on all parts of the sea-coast. The villages are
chiefly conspicuous by the platforms which are raised on
four posts ten or twelve feet above the ground, and on
which the produce of the fields is kept secure from all
accidents.
On coming near one of the huts I was much amused by
seeing in due form the ceremony of rubbing, or, as it ought
to be called, pressing noses. The women, on our first approach,
began uttering something in a most dolorous voice;
they then squatted themselves down and held up their faces;
my companion standing over them, one after another, placed
the bridge of his nose at right angles to theirs, and commenced
pressing. This lasted rather longer than a cordial
shake of the hand with us, and as we vary the force of the
grasp of the hand in shaking, so do they in pressing. During
the process they uttered comfortable little grunts, very
much in the same manner as two pigs do, when rubbing
against each other. I noticed that the slave would press
noses with any one he met, indifferently either before or
after his master the chief. Although among the savages, the
chief has absolute power of life and death over his slave,
yet there is an entire absence of ceremony between them.
Mr. Burchell has remarked the same thing in Southern Africa,
with the rude Bachapins. Where civilization has
arrived at a certain point, complex formalities soon arise
between the different grades of society: thus at Tahiti all
were formerly obliged to uncover themselves as low as the
waist in presence of the king.
The ceremony of pressing noses having been duly completed
with all present, we seated ourselves in a circle in the
front of one of the hovels, and rested there half-an-hour.
All the hovels have nearly the same form and dimensions,
and all agree in being filthily dirty. They resemble a cow-
shed with one end open, but having a partition a little way
within, with a square hole in it, making a small gloomy
chamber. In this the inhabitants keep all their property,
and when the weather is cold they sleep there. They eat,
however, and pass their time in the open part in front. My
guides having finished their pipes, we continued our walk.
The path led through the same undulating country, the whole
uniformly clothed as before with fern. On our right hand
we had a serpentine river, the banks of which were fringed
with trees, and here and there on the hill sides there was a
clump of wood.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 172 of 205
Words from 174085 to 175086
of 208183