Te Tohunga/Tradition—Tama-te-Kapua
XVIII
TRADITION—TAMA-TE-KAPUA
long a narrow path through the flowering manuka-shrub led Ngawai; round groaning, rolling, bursting, and steaming mud-craters wound the path, and steam hissed everywhere from out the ground—now on to the latter crater-basins full of boiling water, green, blue, white, and always wonderfully transparent. Out of the middle of the basins rose vast boiling columns out of the unmeasurable depth to the surface, there to burst, bubbling and boiling. A beautiful but terror-inspiring spectacle are these crater-pools: silent, heartless, death-bringing, boiling from all beginning—from the time that Ngatoro-i-Rangi had called them from Hawaiki by his incantations: boiling, boiling, boiling; crowned with a thin cloud of steam, framed by the dripping, overhanging manuka-bushes.
Pitiless, eternal water-graves are these dark-green boiling seas, and the everlasting gargling of the water is like a death-song of lost souls hovering over them.
Dizzily narrow now led the path between two craters. Silently steamed the large basin to the right, its neighbour gargled and bubbled. Suddenly, as if by enchantment, the gargling water disappeared, and a moment afterwards shot a majestic column of water from out of the funnel, the air filling with vast clouds of steam. The whole column then broke in itself together, roaring and splashing; the boiling water overflowed the Geyser-crater and filled the large steaming basin, which is only by a thin wall separated from the Geyser, with a fresh supply of hot water in which the Maoris and their white friends enjoy their bath, their chat, and their smoke, especially when the winds blow down from the snow-fields of the mountains.
During the night the geysers groaned and burst and splashed all around: the noises accompanied the stories of the old friend—sometimes interrupting his murmurings, and sometimes lending power and truth to his words.
radition.
Ngatoro-i-Rangi is the Sun.
Tama-te-Kapua, the cloud invites the Sun to travel in his canoe, and Ngatoro-i-Rangi, coming from the east, follows the invitation and brings his wife, the Earth; for with the rising of the Sun out of darkness rises also the Earth.
During the journey Ngatoro climbs up to the Height of the Midday, tying the earth to him by his sun-rays; but Tama-te-Kapua unties the sun-rays which bind the earth to the Sun—the cloud flies over the earth—and takes her to his wife.
When Ngatoro now suddenly descends from on high, and bursts through the clouds, then is it too late: his rays are too feeble to tie them quickly again to the Earth.
Wrathful over the insult Tama-te-Kapua had done to him, Ngatoro now steers the canoe into the western precipice: the Sun is setting, and night swallows the canoe; and in vain does Tama-te-Kapua call for help from Ngatoro: everything is swallowed in darkness. But at last Ngatoro takes pity and saves the canoe: the Sun ascends again in the East, and steers the canoe against the West, to Ao-tea-roa. Far from Hawaiki now they landed.
Ngatoro takes possession of the land.
Wherever he ascends a hill, he stamps water out of the ground, and he puts the fairies, the Patu-paiarehe, upon the hills.
At last he ascends Tongariro, but his companions, whom he had left behind, saw that he became paler and paler as he reached the summit of Tongariro: the sun was frozen in the ice-cold atmosphere of the sacred mountain. At last, nearly dead, Ngatoro offers incantations to the gods at Hawaiki, and they send the fire to him.
It came through the paths of the Lower World and it burst through the earth on many places: at Roto-ebu, Roto-rua, Tarawera, and at many more places; but at last it ascended Tongariro, and created a volcano, and the fire and heat of the volcano saved Ngatoro-i-Rangi from a frightful death.
“Ngatoro-i-Rangi, my listener is the ancestor of the tribe of the Ngati-tu-wharetoa; we all are the descendants of Ngatoro-i-Rangi, and the sacred Tongariro is the guardian of my people.”
Out of a wonderful spectacle of colours springs the new day into life.
The rising sun condenses the steam which is hanging, a large white cloud, over the landscape. Like granades are the geysers shooting into the mass of steam, and from everywhere is steam ascending thickening the silvery mass, which hangs swaying and broadening, and bordered with a golden rim, over our heads. Under the cloud glitters on the near hill-tops the fresh fallen snow.
Now the heart of our old friend feels also joy and happiness.
On the edge of the warm crater basin he squats, covered in his mat, and looking far into the beautiful day, he commenced his last narrative—
“The bursting open of the gates of heaven”—so finished the old Tohunga his last song of creation—“was the work of Tamatea.
Dim was the light at first, but faster and more powerful became the blows of Tamatea upon the hangi (oven) in which all that was left of Tu-taka-hina-hina, a mighty ancestor of the Maori people, was roasting; and at last his blows burst the gate that closed in the days. And day came, and the full and long day came. The people of the world, now freed from darkness, looked around, and they could see how many had died during the everlasting darkness; and they could see how very few survived.
At last they saw with wonder how Tamatea, instead of Tangaroa, now took the Dawn of Morning in his keeping, and they knew that the time of the Many Days had come, and they cried full of joy and gladness: ‘Truly, Tamatea, this is the Dawn of our days!’”
Then the old friend pointed with a bony finger towards the Sun and spoke no more.
