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Ground ferns are observed in infinite variety, sometimes of a silvery texture, sometimes of orange-yellow, but oftenest of the various shades of green. Here, too, we make acquaintance with the sweet-scented manuaka, the fragrant veronica, and the glossy-leaved karaka; this last is the pride of the Maoris.
When the Maoris, headed by their chief Karaka Kelly spells it Corockar rushed at them, the seamen beat them off, using their large sealing-knives with such effect that they killed sixteen, and cleared the decks. The remaining natives jumped overboard. A number were swept away by the ebb-tide and drowned.
The ariki of the Ngatewhatua lives at Tanoa. He is between forty and fifty, if as much, a very tall and very portly personage. He is a great man, corporeally certainly, and, perhaps, in other ways as well. Arama Karaka, or Adam Clark in Pakeha pronunciation, has had more English education than Tama, and is altogether of larger mind.
The karaka tree, whose glossy, almost oily-looking leaves were in after days to be seen in every village, was another importation. With these tradition ranks the green parakeet and blue pukeko or swamp-hen, two birds whose rich plumage has indeed something in it of tropical gaudiness, at any rate in contrast with the sober hues of most New Zealand feathers.
Next day the crew, now only fourteen in number, repulsed an attempt made in canoes to take the vessel by boarding, and killed Karaka. Emboldened by this, they afterwards made an expedition to the shore and cut up or stove in all their enemies' canoes lying on the beach. This was on Christmas Eve.
"That's just what I felt, Mas' Don," said Jem, with a perplexed look on his face. "Come, Jem, who's stealing some one else's ideas now?" "Like fruit?" said the tattooed Englishman, coming down to the water's edge. "That depends," said Jem, dubiously. "What is it?" "Karaka," said their new friend, offering a basket of an olive-like fruit. "Good to eat?" "Yes; try it."
No photograph can give the charm of the drapery that clothes these cliffs. Photographs give no light or colour, and New Zealand scenery without light and colour is Hamlet with Hamlet left out. How could a photograph even hint at the dark, glossy green of the glistening karaka leaves, the feathery, waving foliage of the lace bark, or the white and purple bloom of the koromiko?
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