Page:Rambles in New Zealand.djvu/92

 beautiful scarlet and black fruit, which looked like a blaze of flowers. Here the natives brought me to a pool, saying that I ought to wash, in order to be clean when we came to the Pa, which was close by. I was much amused at this piece of vanity, which I humoured, because it was agreeable to myself, and not that I cared how I looked on my arrival before the critics of Mattamatta. The natives it was evident did not like appearing as guides to a shabby fellow, and thought it would raise their consequence with their friends if I looked more like a great man than was usually the case with their visitors.

Mattamatta is situated on a slight elevation in the middle of the plain, and is a Pa of some consequence. Its chief defence besides the stockades consists in the marshes which almost surround it. There was a mission establishment at Mattamatta, (or as the missionaries call it, Matamata,) but it was abandoned in consequence of the bad conduct of the natives, who robbed the resident missionary (Rev. A. M. Brown, now of Tawranga); they are now very desirous of persuading missionaries to return, but do not deserve to succeed. In consequence of the war-party having drained the population, there were none but old men, young women, and children, in Mattamatta. The women were the best-looking set I ever saw; they were almost all strikingly handsome. The natives of this place have a very indifferent character, so that although it is many years since white men first visited it, there was but one resident at this time, and he was from home. As it is one of the best places in the island for buying pigs, it is evident there must be some truth in the reports of their bad propensities, or more persons would venture there to secure so good a harvest. The native who had charge of this man's house, permitted us the free use of it, as if it had been his own. It was a terribly ruinous place, built many years since, when Mattamatta was a great mart for flax.