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The name Kaiapoi belongs to a pretty little country town, noted for its woollen-mill, about the most flourishing of the colony. Kapiti, Rauparaha's stronghold, is just being reserved by the Government as an asylum for certain native birds, which stoats and weasels threaten to extirpate in the North Island.
For thirty tons of flax the Elizabeth was hired to take Rauparaha and a war-party, not to Kaiapoi, but to Akaroa, a beautiful harbour amongst the hills of the peninsula called after Sir Joseph Banks. It lay many miles away from Kaiapoi, but was inhabited by natives of the same tribe. Him Rauparaha determined to catch, for no one less august could be payment for Te Pehi.
From the window of the hotel I saw a few groups of Maories; they looked very ugly and peaceable, with a rude sort of basket made of flax fibres, or buckets filled with whitebait, which they wanted us to buy. There are some reserved lands near Kaiapoi where they have a very thriving settlement, living in perfect peace and good-will with their white neighbours.
Rauparaha, lowered down a sea-cliff, hid among the kelp by the rocks beneath. A canoe was found and brought, and he put to sea. It was over-loaded with fugitives, and their chief therefore ordered half to jump overboard that the rest might be saved. The lightened canoe then carried him to a place of safety. Yet, after the capture of Kaiapoi he showed generosity.
They are now going down into an old river-bed formerly tenanted by the Waimakiriri, which then flowed into Lake Ellesmere, ten or a dozen miles south of Christ Church, and which now enters the sea at Kaiapoi, twelve miles north of it; besides this old channel, it has others which it has discarded with fickle caprice for the one in which it happens to be flowing at present, and which there appears some reason for thinking it is soon going to tire of.
Springing on to land, the invaders ran amongst the bewildered crowd, and slew or captured all they could lay hands on. Then they burned the village. Further south lay a larger pa, that of Kaiapoi. Here the inhabitants, warned by fugitives from the north, were on their guard.
After leaving Rangiora, which is about 8 miles from Kaiapoi, I followed the Harewood road till it became a mere track, then a footpath, and then dwindled away to nothing at all. I soon found myself in the middle of the plains, with nothing but brown tussocks of grass before me and behind me, and on either side. The day was rather dark, and the mountains were obliterated by a haze.
That instance occurred in 1877, when the Rev. H. E. Carlyon of Kaiapoi, a very earnest and devoted man, was found guilty by the Bench of Bishops of erroneous teaching and unlawful practice in regard to auricular confession and the administration of the Holy Eucharist. The cases of Mr.
L drove, F sat on the box, and inside were the ladies, children, and a nurse. Our first stage was to Kaiapoi, a little town on the river Waimakiriri, where we had a good luncheon of whitebait, and rested and fed the horses.
Through the dense drifting smoke many reached the swamps and escaped. Hundreds were killed or taken, and piles of human bones were witnesses many years after to the massacre and feast which followed the fall of Kaiapoi. Nearly seventy years have passed since these deeds were done.
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