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8
The Frontier Road

History has a way of repeating itself, and the old lessons are often taught again. Roads are the first thing needed in the conquest of a country, and many a road first made by an army long ago has become a motor highway of to-day. The methods of Caesar and his Roman legions in Britain are the present methods of the British troops on the North-West frontier of India in keeping the wild tribes under control. The most effective way to subdue a new rough country is to make roads through it. That rough condition is the best defence of a primitive race. General Wade, who made the famous road through the Highlands of Scotland more than 200 years ago, was strongly opposed by the chiefs of the clans. They foresaw that peaceful penetration by this means was more to be dreaded than actual war. Exactly in the same way the military forces in New Zealand made their conquest sure. Exactly in the spirit of the proud Highland chieftains, the Maori page 64leaders expressed their dread and hatred of the road that wheels could travel.

Our sympathy usually goes to the people whose country is invaded. They have justice on their side as a rule, for they are defending their native land. But we must admire the wisdom of the invading road-makers.

In 1870 Sir Donald Maclean, the great Native and Defence Minister, began a plan of road-making in the interior, which crowned his peacemaking efforts. He used the Armed Constabulary and some of the friendly Maoris for this work. He showed the hostile Maoris that every part of their country could be reached sooner or later by roads, and that they would be wise to make peace and join the pakeha in making use of those roads.

There was still a little war in the Urewera Country, but at last (in May 1872) Te Kooti escaped across the Kaingaroa Plains and reached the shelter of the King Country. Maclean wisely left him alone. Peace was his aim, a peace that would never be broken. He sent the Arawa Contingent to join the white Constabulary in road-making, and in this way the places that were dangerous backblocks at that period were opened up to travellers and pioneer settlers. Maclean had in mind from the first the lessons of history in his native land.

There is a great historical novel, The New Road , written by the late Neil Munro. It should be read by page 65New Zealanders for its description of General Wade's road-making which Maclean took as his pattern.

The historians tell us that General Wade's road never became more than a military highway. 'It is a dead road now,' wrote H. V. Morton, who travelled a part of that twisting mountain road. But our New Zealand roads are different. The Great South Road, which was carried on by the soldiers from Papakura and Drury to the Upper Waikato, is our motor highway to-day, with a few deviations. In many places the old Maori tracks and roads were followed by the pakeha soldier-navvies. The later period of military road-making, from about 1870 to the early eighties, gave us many useful permanent routes of travel. These roads were made chiefly by the Armed Constabulary Field Force and the Maori Contingent. Among them are the roads from Tauranga to Rotorua, thence to Atiamuri and Taupo, and across the high ranges to Napier. The road along the east coast of Lake Taupo was another. The road from Wairoa (Hawke's Bay) to the mountain lake, Waikaremoana, was made in the first place as one of these strategic military routes. In the Upper Waikato much of the pioneer road-making was done by the Armed Constabulary. The present road from Cambridge to Tirau and over the Mamaku Range to Rotorua was first formed by the same force. So was the difficult swamp road between the Waipa settlements page 66and Cambridge. The road across to Kawhia from Alexandra township (now called Pirongia) was made by the Armed Constabulary men in blue in the eighties.

That road to Kawhia, one of the last made by the Force, was a true strategic route, as well as a commercial one. It opened up the last retreat of the conservative Kingites. They regarded Kawhia Harbour as King Tawhiao's own seaport, not to be entered without his permission, and they were downcast and angry when it was made easy of access by the guiding beacons erected at Heads for shipping and by the road carried across the wooded ranges from Alexandra.

In Taranaki Province many frontier and pioneer roads were made by the Armed Constabulary. There were redoubts and stockades in many places, as in the South Auckland country. The Constabulary for all their navvying toil, were ready to drop pick and shovel and axe and take up the rifle again at a moment's notice. We saw much of that Constabulary life on the frontier of Waikato, where redoubts and blockhouses stood like sentries along the pakeha side of the border.

Similar conditions existed to some extent along the Bay of Plenty shores from Tauranga to Opotiki. There were posts of defence at the entrances to several river gorges where the Hauhaus inland, especially Tamaikowha and his fierce fighting tribe page 67Ngai-Tama and the Urewera, descended from the ranges by the Whakatane and other valleys and defiles. Redoubts, stockades, and blockhouses— there are few of them left. They have crumbled, like the great fighting pas of still earlier warfare. But the frontier road lasts, and men pass to and fro upon it, because the road is also a thing of peace.