Herbert Guthrie-Smith and the Vision of Tutira
‘Every man has his idiosyncrasy: it has been that of the writer for a
lifetime to note small things . . .’ Herbert Guthrie-Smith
Pioneers! O, Pioneers!
Oh, pioneers . . .
When I am very earnestly digging
I lift my head sometimes, and look at the mountains,
And muse upon them, muscles relaxing.
I think how freely the wild grasses flower there,
How grandly the storm-shaped trees are massed in their gorges,
And the rain-worn rocks strewn in magnificent heaps . . . .
It is only a little while since this hillside
Lay untrammelled likewise,
Unceasingly swept by transmarine winds.
In a very little while, it may be,
When our impulsive limbs and our superior skulls
Have to the soil restored several ounces of fertilizer,
The Mother of all will take charge again
And soon wipe away with her elements
Our small fond human enclosures.
If our mountains of Tongariro are included in the blocks passed through the court in
the ordinary way, what will become of them? They will be cut up and sold, a piece
going to one Pakeha and a piece to another. They will become of no account, for the
tapu will be gone. Tongariro is my ancestor, my tupuna, it is my head; my mana centres
around Tongariro.
Te Heuheu Tukino, 1885.
Herbert Guthrie-Smith
1861 - 1940
‘... a record of minute alterations noted on one patch of land.’
To my backwoodsman’s heart, there is . . . something austere, distinguished even,
in the brotherhood of weeds. They are the MacGregors of our artificial highlands
seizing as of right—these hard faced children of the wilderness—conditions they
must yet despise—leaf-mould, sieved peats, sharp sands, and shredded sods . . . .
Centuries of condemnation and oppression have made them what they are . . . .
Theirs has been that sad sharpening of perception that comes to dwellers beyond
the pale, to creatures proscribed, to whom discovery is death. Who can doubt but
that in the process of natural selection and the survival of the fittest, . . . that
garden cress however circumspectly gripped has added a new fury to its seed
ejaculation, that petty spurge beneath its decapitated head has developed a more
sure and certain stem reduplication, that mouse-ear carast has evolved a more
profoundly furtive concealment in the heart of his host? Such are the lowly ways
whereby humble folk may face adversity and perpetuate themselves.
One last word: he hopes that his readers have played the
game, that they have not indulged the practice of
skipping. If this has not been done, if every chapter has
been read, they can rest assured that in examination, as it
were under the microscope, of one sheep station, they
have discovered what there is to be found in all . . . .
Every station in Hawkes Bay has been moulded by a great
rainfall; possesses legends and relics of a splendid
aboriginal race; has been clothed with forest, flax, and
fern; has been subdued by pioneers in desperate straits
for cash and its equilibrium; has had its surface mapped
by stock, its rivers affected by scour, and, lastly, has been
or is in the process of being subdivided into smaller
holdings.
Right & above: Tutira c. 1939
... a brief wrinkling of the epidermis of the
earth, as evanescent as the shrug and stamp of
a fly-pestered ox...
The tenure of these runs was leasehold,
and native leasehold at that; without
exception the titles were flawed; the
land was devoid of grass, the climate
was wet, the access bad, the soil
ungrateful and poor. There was no
compensation for improvements. It
seems impossible now that any
reasonable soul could have believed
there was either money or reputation to
be made out of them. The truth is that
[we] were not reasonable, that [we] did
not think at all. … To this day I am
unsure whether we were splendid
young Britons, empire builders and so
forth, or asses of the purest water.
In those times, to think of an
improvement was to be in love. . . . A
thousand anticipations of happiness
rushed upon the mind – the emerald
sward that was to paint the alluvial flats,
… the spurs over which the fencing was
to run, its shining wire, its mighty
strainers; … the glory of the grass that
was to be.... Oh, those were happy days,
… when every thought was for the run,
when every penny that could be scraped
together was to be spent on the
adornment of that heavenly mistress.
All sheep suffer from nostalgia, but the merino is perhaps the most miserably
homesick beast on earth. Liberated in strange country, a mob of merinos will lie
against the barrier—cliff, river, fence, whatever it may be—blocking their
homeward route. Night after night, day after day, week after week, there they will
camp, resigned to starvation. They will hug the fence-line that debars them from
returning to their old haunts till their droppings are inches deep, until their lank
frames reveal every bone.
Soil erosion on ranges east of Lake Tutira, c.1939
The fenced-off section of bush is the Hanger, circa 1939.
When a block of land passes, as it may do through the
hands of ten holders in half a century, how can long views
be taken of its rights? Who under these conditions can
give his acres their due?
Aue, taukari e, ano te kuware o te Pakeha kahoro nei i
whakaaro ki to mauri o te whenua. Alas! Alas! That the
Pakeha should so neglect the rights of the land, so forget
the traditions of the Maori race, a people who recognised
in it something more than the ability to grow meat and
wool.
‘If this volume has a value, it is because of [its] insistence
on the cumulative effects of trivialities’.