CHAPTER XXIX

THE SUN OF PEACE

The colonists had won, and men asked one another how they would use their power. But we who have followed their story know that they had not waited for victory to force them to a generous attitude. We remember how in the very teeth of strife they held out their hands and lifted four of their Maori brethren to places by their side in the Colonial Parliament; so it is not surprising to learn that, almost before the blasts of war had done blowing in their ears, they made room in the Upper House for two chiefs of high rank, who were thenceforth to bear the title of "Honourable," and be for life members of the Legislative Council.

If that were not enough to show the cordial mind of the white men to their brown brothers, the Maori prisoners taken in war were treated for the most part as political offenders and, after a very short period of restraint, allowed to return to their tribes without the exaction of further penalty. Exceptions were naturally made in cases where individuals were proved guilty of actual crime; but, otherwise, everything was done to show the desire of the colony to soften as far as possible all painful memories, to erase all bitterness from the record of events, and to begin the new chapter of their history upon a page inscribed with the great words of a great man, "Liberty and Union, now and for ever, one and inseparable."

As the colonists had never allowed war to hinder them from forging ahead, so, now that peace was assured, they gave rein to their energy and saw to it that their country marched with equal step abreast of the world's progress. As time went on not even that sufficed, and ever and again the old world would stop, agape, while New Zealand confidently adopted political, social or domestic reforms, at which her grown-up relatives were still looking askance as "new-fangled ideas," "dangerous radicalism," and so forth. New Zealand has never been afraid to experiment, and most of her experiments have proved successful, and in their issue "come to stay," if the phrase may be allowed.

One of the earliest products of peace was a large addition to the population, thanks to a policy by which fifty thousand immigrants were introduced into the colony in the two years 1874 and 1875. This policy did not stop there; for the Government, as far as possible, found work for the men whom they introduced, just as they are doing at this day.

Take for instance that large area in New Zealand known as "The King Country," where, as we have seen, the "Land League" so long had sway. This, which includes more than a million of acres of forest-covered land, and that high plateau surrounding old Te Heu Heu's "ancestor," the smoking cones of Tongariro, is only now being reduced to conditions which shall render cultivation possible. To this wilderness the Government sends hundreds of newly arrived immigrants, who are set to work upon the railway which is being carried through it.

The beauty of this region is almost indescribable; and there, too, a man may taste of the experiences of the pioneers and yet miss their greatest hardships. For, if a settler, he works with the certainty of return for his labour; if otherwise, he is paid good wages and is in any case assured of food, for carts carrying bread and meat continually traverse the bush tracks. He is free from the haunting fear that he will awake at some grey dawn to hear the wild yells of blood-lusting savages, or return to his lonely hut to find his wife and children dead upon his hearth. He has no dread of beasts of prey, unlike his brother immigrant in Africa; and he can push his way through breast-high fern or clinging tangle of undergrowth, undismayed lest his heel be bruised by fang of poisonous snake, the terror of his Australian cousin.

The year 1875 saw the abolition of the Provinces Act, in which many had from the first scented danger to the cultivation of a national spirit, and a beginning was made in the following year of the present system of local government, the colony being subdivided into counties and municipal boroughs. The old provincial spirit was not easily quenched, for many were not unnaturally inclined to esteem themselves and their own more excellent than their neighbour and his own. Still, there are very few in New Zealand who will venture to deny that to-day is better than yesterday, although there is at least one "fine old New Zealand gentleman, one of the olden time," who annually brings forward a motion for retrogression to the ancient order of things. Such conservatism is rare in liberal New Zealand, and has few hopes and fewer followers.

A most interesting event occurred in 1877; for Sir George Grey returned to power, not as Governor, but as Premier. He had made for himself a home on an island in the beautiful Hauraki Gulf, and perhaps nothing could have been more fortunate than his presence in the Colony at a time when the new union between Pakeha and Maori required the cement of perfect comprehension to render it irrefragable. Among the colonists there might be disagreement as to Sir George Grey and his policy; among the Maori there was none. To them he was ever the _Kawana nui_ (the great Governor), the man who understood them and who cared to understand them.

For his island home the "Knight of the Kawan" did everything which it was possible for a man so liberal and refined to do. He loved it and adorned its beauty with every fresh charm he could procure. He brought thither the English rose and the Australian eucalyptus, and when Australia shall lament the wholesale destruction of her unique fauna, the sole survivors of the quaint marsupial order shall, perhaps, be found in the isle of the Kawana. This charming spot is to-day a favourite resort of holiday-makers, and Sir George Grey's mansion, bereft, alas! of its hospitable founder, still offers visitors shelter and entertainment.

The eightieth birthday of this remarkable man (whom Queen Victoria honoured with her personal friendship) was celebrated in New Zealand with the utmost enthusiasm, and at his death in 1898 there were not many who grudged him the designation of "The Great Proconsul," or cavilled when St. Paul's Cathedral received the honoured dust of one who was not only an Imperialist but a Nation-maker.

In 1886, Nature arose in violent mood and swept into ruin one of the most romantically beautiful spots in the world, and the most powerful and splendid of New Zealand's many scenic attractions--her justly-named "Wonderland." This was the hot lake of Rotomahana, with its far-famed Pink and White Terraces.

In the volcanic region between the Bay of Plenty on the north and Lake Taupo, with its giant sentinels Ruapehu and Tongariro on the south, is Lake Tarawera, overhung by the volcano of Tarawera, which had never in the memory of the Maori given any sign of eruption. A river of the same name connected the lake with the much smaller basin of Rotomahana, in which the water was hot owing to the numerous thermal springs in its immediate vicinity. Rotomahana was really a crater of explosion, and the principal boiling spring, Te Tarata, descending from terrace to terrace down to the lake, was the greatest marvel in this marvellous region.

Upon the Mount of Tarawera were the graves of many generations of Arawa heroes and chiefs of might; nor dared profane feet disturb their rest for fear of the fiery dragon which, though never yet seen by Maori eyes, kept watch and ward. At the mountain's foot lay the sister lake, into whose waters--green as the stone in far Te Wai Pounamou--flowed the river, charged with a fervent message from hot-hearted Rotomahana with his terraced fringe of white and pink, laced with the blue of pools

which in perfect stillness lie, And give an undistorted image of the sky.

Eighty feet above the warmed water of Rotomahana was the basin of Te Tarata, with wall of clay, thirty feet in height. Its length was eighty feet, its breadth sixty, and it was filled full of exquisitely clear, boiling water, as blue as the sky above the swirl of azure vapour which constantly overhung the wondrous pool.

In the depths, far below the placid surface, sounded ever the rumble and grumble of immense quantities of water on the boil, and the overflow had formed a crystal stairway, white as Parian marble, to the lake beneath. From step to step was the height of a tall man, the breadth of each platform five or six times that measure, and every shining step was an arc of the great circle of which the red-walled crater of Rotomahana was the centre. Each ledge was overhung with stalactites, pure as alabaster, and every platform held its pools of limpid, azure water of all degrees of warmth, in baths whose elegance would have charmed a Roman eye.

On the opposite side of the lake was the spring of Otaka Puarangi, its tranquil blue water confined in a basin little more than half the size of Te Tarata. Its silicious deposits used to "descend from its orifice down to the lake," and were scaled "by a marble staircase, so sharp in its outline, so regular in its construction, and so adorned with graceful borders of evergreen shrubs that it seemed as if Nature had designed it in very mockery of the skill and industry of man."

But on this side the silica was flushed to a delicate rose, and from every step pink wreaths were hung, and garlands of tinted stone, and on every platform flashed the opalescent stalactites, festooning the ledges, midway down, or dropping from azure pool to azure pool until they reached the golden _solfatara_[70] and the rainbowed mud.

One hour after midnight on the 10th of June, men who dwelt or sojourned in this beautiful, dangerous region were awakened by the trembling of the earth and, knowing what that portended, rushed from their houses into the open to see the Mount of Tarawera rent asunder from top to bottom, while from the gaping wound shot up a column of roaring flame, whose capital of smoke and cloud reared itself four and twenty thousand feet above the blazing crater--a beacon of misfortune four miles high.

Red lightning played in fork and spiral about the flaming crags or sheeted the gloomy base, and many miles away from the convulsed mountain streams of fire poured upon the stricken earth. Fire-balls fell, a blazing hail, consuming whatsoever they touched, and burying beneath their increasing weight the remains of lonely hut and crowded native village.

When the pallid light of the winter dawn struggled through the dense veil of falling debris, Tarawera's mount was seen to be shivered as though smitten by the hammer of Thor; Tarawera's lake had risen forty feet, the trees beside its margin buried to their tops in volcanic mud; Tarawera's river and Rotomahana's lovely terraces were gone for ever, submerged beneath an enormous mass of ashes, mud, and stone.

For eighteen hours dust and mud fell continuously, burying fifty feet deep the entire _hapu_ of the Matatu Maori, all save nine, and raining desolation as far as Tauranga on the Bay. Pasture land, grass and fern were burnt bare, and the same volcanic hail which slew the birds in their flight blotted out the food-supply and starved the very rats in the undergrowth.

One hundred and one persons perished in this eruption, which was not only the fiercest and most destructive which New Zealand had known since the coming of the Maori, but was one of the most violent recorded in the story of the world.

From year to year New Zealand strode on, giving her women the franchise as she went, and calling upon them to help her in the conduct of municipal affairs. She seldom marked time, and ever held her head high and preserved a proud distinction of her own among the three and forty colonies or dependencies of the Empire. If she once got a little out of breath through the sheer rush of her onward march, the firm hand of a strong man steadied her, sending her on again, _integris viribus_, with greater speed. In Richard Seddon, a man of immense energy and remarkable gifts, who for thirteen years stood at the head of the State and guided her towards the high status she has now obtained, New Zealand found her man of the hour. Fortunate, too, it was for her that, on the great Premier's untimely death in 1906, so strong a man as Sir Joseph Ward was at hand to take his place.

As the nineteenth century waned to a close, the important question fell to be answered by New Zealand--Should she, or should she not, allow herself to be enrolled among the States of the Australian Commonwealth? Federation had been in the air for a long time, and since 1891 it had been recognised that it must come, and come soon,--as far as Australia was concerned. But would New Zealand take her place among the States?

There were arguments in favour of her doing so from the point of view of commercial and administrative expediency; but there were very many who did not like the idea. These pointed to the thousand miles of ocean which separated their country from the continent of Australia as an argument against inclusion with her great neighbour, and to her remarkable progress as proof that she had learned, and could be trusted to stand alone.

In 1899 the question required an answer; but Mr. Seddon still declared himself uncertain of the popular will, and in 1900 craved the Imperial Parliament to insert an "open door" clause in the Constitution, in order that New Zealand might enter at her own time on equal terms with the other States.

A Royal Commission was then appointed, with the result that, after an exhaustive discussion of the arguments for and against the proposal, and the hearing of voluminous evidence on both sides of the Tasman Sea, the Commission declared emphatically against the submersion of New Zealand's identity in that of the Commonwealth of Australia.

Australia was dubious, and Mr. Reid, Premier of New South Wales, asked, "How long will New Zealand be able to preserve an independent orbit in the presence of a powerful gravitation and attraction, such as a federated Australia must possess?" No one could answer that; but New Zealand was firm, and a reply was to some extent contained in Sir Joseph Ward's later declaration, "I consider this country (New Zealand) is certainly the natural centre for the government of the South Pacific."

So New Zealand elected to stand alone; and, this done, the question immediately arose--Was she, with all her natural advantages, with her remarkable progress, to remain a mere undistinguished unit among the crowd of dependencies, simply one colony among a number of other colonies? The answer came as immediately--No! The New Zealanders determined to find a suitable designation by which their country should be honourably distinguished. What was to be that designation?

It remained for Sir Joseph Ward to answer that In May, 1907, being in London after the Conference of Colonial Premiers, he wrote to Lord Elgin, the Secretary of State for the Colonies, and repeated what he had urged at that historic gathering; that, "having regard to the position and importance of New Zealand, it had well outgrown the 'colonial' stage, and was as much entitled to a separate designation as the Commonwealth of Australia or the Dominion of Canada." He further declared that "the people of New Zealand would be much gratified" if the designation chosen were "The Dominion of New Zealand."

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 70: A pool of smoking sulphur.]