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Updated: June 20, 2025
Opening from the harbour are sundry great estuaries, resembling the sea-lochs of Western Scotland. They are the Kaipara, the Hoteo, the Oruawharo, the Otamatea, the Wairau, the Arapaoa, and the Wairoa. Several of these have branches. Thus the Pahi, to which we are going, branches out of the Arapaoa. They are fed by creeks that is to say, by freshwater rivers, as one would call them at home.
"The pahi was eighty feet long, broad in the middle, very carefully and neatly planked over inside, forming a rude bulkhead or inner casing, and had a lofty carved stem rising into one or two posts, terminating in a human form. It was in these vessels that we made the long journeys from island to island, the migrations and the descents upon other Polynesian peoples in war.
Its shores present a diminishing perspective of woods; and, as mangroves line the beach on either side, the leafage and the water seem to melt into one another. Five or six miles up, the ranges rise higher and run together, so that the beautiful Pahi appears to lose itself in the forest.
J. Bransby says that the produce of three seeds, which must be reared by heat before planting out, supplied his own table and those of two of his friends from June till the frost killed it. It might be Te Pahi, a famous chief, but it is reported that he died soon after the affair of the "Boyd," in 1809, some time before Rutherford's arrival in New Zealand.
The scene of the spree was, of course, to be our Assembly Hall, although every citizen of Te Pahi township kept open house that night. The Assembly Hall has been already mentioned, but must now be more particularly described. Although the township is all parcelled out into town and suburban allotments, yet, for the most part, it remains in its original bush-covered condition.
We started about five o'clock in the morning, but it is late in the day before we get into the Arapaoa. By taking advantage of the tides, the Lily manages to accomplish ten knots an hour. But the going in and out of different rivers, though we do not go far up any of them, and the various stoppages, short though they be, make it late in the afternoon before we sight Te Pahi.
He is the oldest inhabitant of the township, and was called the Mayor when he dwelt there solitary, a few years ago. Now he is postmaster, storekeeper, justiciary, acting-parson, constabulary, board of works, tax-gatherer, customs officer, farmer, dealer in everything, town clerk, lawyer, doctor, and, perhaps, a score of things beside, as they reckon such in Te Pahi.
Most of the Kaipara district belonged to the Ngatewhatua tribe when we came on the scene; and the early settlers bought their stations from them. We had our korero with the chiefs, and arranged to purchase a block, or section of a block rather, on the Pahi. We selected our location from such a creek to such a creek, and back from the river as far as such and such a range.
"Maru," said the chief, when we sat on the mats at late supper after a return from the lagoon, "it is a pity you were not here when the Tahitians had their 'ar'ia and pahi, our large canoes for navigating on the moana faa aro, the landless sea. The 'ar'ia was a double canoe, each seventy feet long, high in the stern, and lashed together, outrigger to outrigger.
But his presence at the scene was enough to give a handle to his enemies. They accused him to the whalers of participation in the outrage, and these stormed the island pa by night and slaughtered the unsuspecting inhabitants. Te Pahi himself escaped with a wound, but he was soon afterwards killed by the real authors of the Boyd massacre for his known sympathy with the Europeans.
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