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His calendar was unmarked by fast or festival; he had few opportunities of participating in a joyous Eucharist; there was no colour in his raupo chapel, nor variety in his manner of worship. The home life of the missionary doubtless often presented a picture of domestic happiness. But there were no luxuries.
Before the end of the year it was occupied by Morgan, Preece, and Wilson, who found raupo houses already erected for them by the Maoris. The Thames expedition had proved beyond a doubt that the land lay open to mission enterprise. But the surprises which it offered were not always pleasant ones.
Our simple service over, we said no more. For a time all remained quiet; none seemed willing to interrupt the silence in this strange place and on this still stranger occasion; nothing was heard but the storm, which appeared to be tearing the remainder of the roof from the shed, and the rain rattling against the raupo. The taua seemed as if struck by the fabled wand of some mighty magician!
Tama's place is some seven or eight miles away, down the Arapaoa. He has a very comfortable little kainga, a fenced-in enclosure, wherein are raupo wharès built in the best styles of Maori architecture, with little verandahs in front of them, and curiously carved doors and fronts.
Before long every village round the lake had its raupo chapel; and Chapman himself pressed on southward to Lake Taupo, where the effects of his labours will meet us later on. In the same year Brown and Wilson re-occupied Tauranga, which soon became a particularly powerful centre.
Tanoa is prettily situated, for the Otamatea, though a larger river than the Pahi, is very picturesque in parts. The kainga lies embosomed in orchards of peach and pear, cherry and almond, and extensive cultivations and grass-paddocks surround it. Most of the houses are, of course, the usual raupo wharès, but there are carpentered frame-houses in the kainga as well.
Brown, gypsey-like people they appear in the distance, wearing ordinary clothes like Europeans, only dirty and ragged usually. Here and there we pass a cluster of their wharès, low down near the beach brown huts of thatch-like appearance, for they are made of raupo grass. Some of them are very neat, with carved and painted doors and fronts.
This was carried by the boys, and will be carted along the pine avenue; a good deal is still near the pines, but properly stacked. I see nothing anywhere thrown about, even here not a chip to be seen, all buried or burnt, and the place quite neat though unfinished. House, on the plan of my old house just taken down by Gray, but much larger. Kitchen of good size. Two raupo outhouses. Cow-shed.
On reading this astonishing statement, one's thoughts fly at once to Kinglake's well-known experience in the Arabian desert, when on a Sunday morning he heard distinctly the bells of his village church at Marlen. But there was no illusion here. The bells were chiefly musket barrels, and they hung in actual raupo chapels built by Maori hands!
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