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Preface

This Book is not a systematic history of the settlement of New Zealand from the beginnings of British enterprise, but is intended to place before the reader some of the salient features of pioneer life, especially in its more adventurous aspects. The real history of our country during the past century was not made in the towns or in the Legislature, but in the country over a prolonged breaking-in period. The settlers' efforts to establish themselves on the land were conditioned by geography, climate, the character of soil and vegetation, and the distribution of the Maori population. Perhaps the last factor was the most important of all in its effect on the acquisition of land. The vast difference between the two islands in the forest and grass covering of the land was the next agent in influencing the character and progress of the settler's work. The small farmer, the man of page vilimited capital, naturally found his field in the North, where the heavy bush, extending almost to the coast in most places, while circumscribing his efforts, gave him a sufficient area of fertile soil which, when cleared of timber, provided him with a living. The man of capital, on the other hand, required a large area for the pastoral enterprise that suited his inclinations and his experience. Hawke's Bay and the Wairarapa were the only parts of the North that enabled him to bring in his sheep flocks at once; in the South the greater part of the Island from North Marlborough to South Otago was at his disposal.

But it was the presence of the Maori and the great bush that chiefly affected the progress of the restless pakeha in the North. The clash of races created the history that has given New Zealand what may be called its heroic genius, the soul that a land wins only by grievous stress and strife and the evocation of poignant human emotions. New Zealand has been a land of vivid life and ennobling adventure. Above all it was a frontier, a land of many frontiers, in a period well within our memories. It is a country where the farmer in the North Island became also a frontiersman, not by page viiseeking and pursuing 'the bright eyes of danger', but because the conditions that imperilled life and delayed his labours were forced upon him by agencies beyond his control and often beyond his understanding. The West of America and the North-West of India are not the only places where frontier history has been made. In New Zealand's smaller landscape all the elements of an often thrilling fight by settler and Maori to hold the land were piled up in a far shorter period than in any American scene.

In this book the opening chapters are given to the description of a typical immigrant family's introduction to New Zealand life from the beginning, where hundreds of questing souls who made up the shipload find themselves in the utter strangeness of ocean surroundings. The newcomers are introduced to bush life, where their farming experience and hereditary love of land make then-lot comparatively easy. They are the right stuff for colonial life. The narrative then ranges over New Zealand from the far North to Otago, but is chiefly concerned with the frontiers. These are the Upper Waikato, the King Country borders, Taranaki, the Bay of Plenty, where the settler, page viiilong after the actual military campaigns with horse, foot, and artillery, was compelled to fight to hold the confiscated land that often by moral right belonged to the Maori. In all this I have drawn chiefly on my own knowledge and experience, the spirit of the environment in which I was reared, and the narratives of my people, pakeha and Maori; for the Ngati-Maniapoto and Waikato and their kindred are as much my own folk from my earliest years as any of my pakeha blood.