Page:Letters from New Zealand (Harper).djvu/43

Rh foliage. In amongst the trees nestled the Maori village, huts built of Toi reeds, flax sticks, well thatched; and some substantial weather-boarded small houses. Quite a peaceful, reposeful place, which perhaps may account for the meaning of the name "Moeraki," i.e. "a place for sleep by day." Maori imagination seems to have seen something specially characteristic in every noticeable nook and corner of nature. The Maories were busy, it was harvest time, and they had cut their crops of wheat and oats, and were at work threshing the grain, in a very primitive fashion; boards set upright in the ground, women and boys on either side with bunches of wheat in their hands, beating out the grain on the edge of the boards.

Welcoming the "Pakeha," i.e. stranger, they left work and gathered round me. I managed to explain that I had come for the horse which "Pihopa Herewini" (Bishop Selwyn) had left with them for Pihopa Harper. Presently a lad brought it, a fine, upstanding, strawberry roan, six years old, bred by a settler in Dunedin from an imported Australian horse. "Dick" was just the sort of animal my Father will need, strong and good-tempered, and a weight carrier. Then, when all were looking at me with the courteous curiosity which marks the Maori, greatly interested in the white man, but always careful not to annoy him by unseemly inquisitiveness, I spied the boy who had taken my ring, so I suddenly held it up in full view of them all, having hitherto had it, on purpose, in my pocket. At once they seized the lad, hustled and shoved him towards me, whacking him severely, till I pleaded for mercy. "He make a tief, he make a tief!" There could be no doubt he had broken one of the unwritten laws of the community and brought