Page 8 - A Walk from Wellington to New Plymouth

(TOWN OF PETRE WANGANUI S. C. Brees 1849)

“On Monday the 7th we left Wanganui in company with the policeman who carried the mail,
hoping to keep up with him to New Plymouth. It was in the evening when we started and we
expected to reach Mr St HilI's, a missionary, that night who lived 8 miles on the road, and about
one and a half miles from the sea shore. We fortunately met with a soldier who had bought his
discharge and was going to New Plymouth.
This village was nothing to be compared with the one at which we dined and which had much
better buildings and was situated on a considerable eminence. The Chief's house was built of
raupo and reeds worked together with great ingenuity and I suppose 50 ft by 30 with a good
entrance. The chief had a very handsome mare and foal and some young horses but the dogs like
all other native dogs, were the most miserable objects possible to conceive, small half starved
mongrels. We always found the natives civil, generally bought anything we wanted with tobacco
which is frequently used as a circulating medium as money in small transactions. The natives
have become such Jews that at one place they would not give us any water to drink unless we
paid them, which very much disgusted our Irish soldier. A woman with a child came to see us -
the child cried and was as much frightened at us as one of our own children would have been at a
New Zealander. At this village the postman knocked up and said he was mally wal (very ill) and
could not go on, so gave the mail bags to another native whom we did not much like the look of.
He was a fine tall powerful man over 6 ft naked all but a blanket and carried his tomahawk in his
hand. Two or three natives equipped in like manner and the policeman absconded us in the
morning.
Having resaddled our horses we continued our journey for another mile when we were stopped
by another river and had the same trouble again. We again proceeded our guide continually
wanting us to push on and I think wanted to separate Mr Smith and I from the Irishman, knowing
that he might make better bargains, but we determined to keep together and at length he got tired
of waiting for us and went on without us, which we were not sorry for. At about mid-day we