Page:Tales-of-Banks-Peninsula Jacobson 2ed 1893 cropped.pdf/288

sailed from Otago in the Magnet brig, Captain Bruce—the man I referred to a while ago; you must have heard of him; he died at Akaroa some time ago,—and we cast anchor just inside of the point where the lighthouse now is on the day after Christmas, 1836. And a beautiful place it was! The bush was growing right down to the edge of the water.

“Everything was quiet and untouched by anyone; and I doubt whether men had ever landed, for the pigeons would come and light on your heads, and the kakas weren’t frightened when they saw us. The only thing that was short was water. There was but one pool on the peninsula; and there is only one now, strange to say. You can’t get water anywhere else, and all we get now is from the roofs of the houses. The water in the pool isn’t fit to use excepting for cattle. It took us two days to land our things from the brig. There were a good many things to get ashore, and the try-pots were heavy. At last we got everything out of the Magnet, and she went away.

“There were very few Maoris here in Moeraki. A small party (some nine, all told), under Tongatahara, lived at the point, but none of the present tribe were here. Tongatahara’s people went to Akaroa soon after we came, and during our second season the tribe now living at Moeraki came from Kaiapoi: I mean, of course, the fathers and grandfathers of these Natives; only two or three of the old ones are left. Rauparaha had driven them from their original holdings. It is scarcely correct to call them a tribe, either; they were the remnants of five tribes or hapus—all that were left after Rauparaha’s repeated massacres—and came down here to keep out of his road; since, although he had been badly beaten in Cloudy Bay, they lived in constant dread of his reappearance. It was about 1838 that the