“the Crest of the Rainbow.”

The saying that the best place to see the mountains is from below, not from their summits, may properly be qualified in its application to our Port Hills by the opinion that the finest view of the craggy range of old volcanic upjuts is that to be had from a few hundred feet below the range crest, on the Lyttelton Harbour side.1 Really to appreciate the special and peculiar beauty of the hills, with their nippled peaks and crags and their age-weathered cliffs, one must travel along the Lyttelton-Governor’s Bay road rather than view the range from the Plains, where the smoothed and settled ridges, like a series of long whalebacks, give little hint of the sudden rocky wildness of the precipitous dip to the harbour slopes.2 There, on the white road that curves along the hillsides well above the waters of the Whanga-Raupo, it is easy to understand something of the fiery history of these hills, when the hollow that now is Lyttelton Harbour was one terrific nest of volcanoes and when the tremendous forces of confined steam and gases hurled whole mountain-tops skyward and helped to give savage shape to the walls of rhyolite rock that stand to-day little altered by the passage of the untold centuries of years.3 Better still, truly to understand this most wonderful part of Canterbury, one should make a traverse of the upper parts of the eastern dip by the new tracks, two or three hundred feet below the pinnacles of the ridge.4 Off5

_C. Beken, photo_]6

the tracks if you care for the exercise there is rock-climbing in plenty and there are scrambles under the low-growing trees and along steep faces hanging on to the flax clumps and the tough-branched _koromiko_.7 And at about this level on the Hills side there are aspects of crag scenery, and crag and woodland combined, that are altogether missed by the stroller who keeps to the beaten track.8 Our Christchurch artists need not go further away than the inner dip of the range, the battered rim of the ancient fire cauldron, for impressions of bold rock faces straightly grand and honeycombed with curious caves, and witchy-looking weathered old trees; pictures that approach grandeur when the storm clouds swirl about the tussock-topped tors of Kahukura, the Rainbow God, giving the dark cores of the olden volcanoes an added height and mystery, or when they drift softly and mistily from the deep gullies between the ridges like steam masses from some hidden geyser.9

The Mitchell Track that winds along northward between the tumbled rocks and among the hill flax gives the explorer a start on his traverse from Dyer’s Pass.10 It begins just opposite the picturesque stone-built tea-house with its swinging signboard and its quaint inscriptions in the saddle of the Pass, and it splendidly opens up the seaward face of the Sugarloaf whose rounded summit lifts directly over us yonder more than 1,600 feet above the harbour level.11 Immediately below us, in the gully that long ago was a channel for lava flow, the rocky depths are softened by the foliage of a fragment of the olden bush, a green covering for the valley floor.12 The valley is more attractive outside, for almost every vestige of the moss and ferns and underbrush has disappeared before grazing stock and the13

background.14

_C. Beken, photo_]15

sudden torrents that have poured down from the ridge to make the little storm-creek flowing into the harbour beside the grassy mound of Pa-rakiraki.16 The lava-builded, notched and caverned walls of the Sugarloaf shoot up above us just here like a parapet, in regularly marked layers; tufts of flax and tussock and wiry veronica beard the face of the old fire-cliffs.17 Looking back at the Pass, just before we round the first bend in the rocky traverse, the cliff makes a terraced halt in its descent, and here on this tussock-grown tiny level, broidered with flax bushes and their honey-sweet _korari_ blossoms, there is an eye-taking prospect of the Dyer’s Pass dip to the soft-blue sunlit harbour and of the black rock-faces and strong folds of the Port Hills southward.18

Immediately southward of the Pass road the land goes easily swelling up into Marley’s Hill, a little higher than our Sugarloaf, and now a story of old-time explaining the meaning of the Maori name of that airy saddle comes to mind.19

The original name of the ridge leading southward from Dyer’s Pass, and including Marley’s Hill, says Hone Taare Tikao of Rapaki, is Otu-Tohu-Kai, which being translated is “The Place Where the Food Was Pointed Out.”20 The tradition is that nearly two centuries ago, when the Ngai-Tahu from the North conquered this part of the country from the Ngati-Mamoe, a chief named Waitai ascended this height from Ohinetahi (now Governor’s Bay), taking with him Manuwhiri and other of the children of the chief Te Rangi-whakaputa who had taken possession of the harbour shores, in order to point out to them the good things of the great Plains.21 Waitai had already explored the country, and was able to tell of its worth as a home for Ngai-Tahu.22

When Waitai and his companions emerged from the bush and topped the lofty round of the range, he halted, and bade them look out over the wide, silent country.23 He pointed to the reedy lagoons and streams that silvered the flax and tussock desert, where Christchurch City and its suburbs now spread out leisurely and shade off into the rural lands, and said: “Yonder the waters are thick with eels and lampreys, and their margins with ducks and other birds; in the plains beyond there are wekas for the catching.”24 The Plains, as he showed them, were plentifully studded with the ti-palm, from which the sugary _kauru_ could be obtained.25 Then, turning in the other direction, he spoke of the fish-teeming waters of the harbour, where flounders, shark, and other _kai-matai-tai_, “food of the salt sea,” were to be had in abundance.26 Such were the foods of this Wai-pounamu; and so good seemed the land to those conquistadors as they stood there on the windy height surveying the great new country fallen into their hands, that they decided to remain in so promising a place; and it is their descendants who people Rapaki and other _kaingas_ to-day.27

Now we turn and, passing a rugged cornice in the lava wall, descend into the gully to examine for ourselves the tree-covering of old Kahukura’s shoulders.28 There is a thick growth of flax on the little terraces and steep slopes above the bush, and in one place we force our way through a regular jungle of it, growing so thickly as almost to encourage the idea that a flax-mill would find profitable business here.29 Some of the tall _korari_ stalks are well in flower and bees are busy; on others the long dark-sheathed buds are just unfolding.30 Flax-flower honey-water makes a pleasant enough drink, and the Boy Scout tastes and pronounces it good.31 There is a pretty Maori love-lament in which a girl compares her sorrowing self to this blossom of the flax:32

“My eyes are like the wind-waved _korari_ blossoms; when the breeze shakes the flowers down fall the honey showers; so flow my tears.”33

A little lower and we are in the bush, taking care as we enter it to give a wide berth to the insinuating Maori nettle, the _ongaonga_, with its unhealthy-looking light-coloured leaves covered with a thick growth of fine spines or hairs.34 The Boy Scout sidles warily past those bushes of _ongaonga_ when he is told of its poisonous qualities, and of an experience the narrator had with it years ago in the King Country bush.35 Away up yonder, in the Ohura Valley, between the open lands of the King Country and Taranaki, the _ongaonga_ grew into tall shrubs, ten or twelve feet high, and its virulence apparently was in proportion to its growth.36 All of our exploring party were more or less badly stung and suffered the effects for a day or two, but the unfortunate horses suffered most.37 Two of them went mad with the poisonous stings, which swelled their sides and legs, and a pack-horse actually drowned itself by bolting into a creek and lying down in the water in its desperate need of ease from the pain.38 Really bad _ongaonga_ stings provoke feverish sickness; and so it is prudent to make a detour on these hill slopes rather than encounter over-closely even these insignificant little specimens.39 If you are on a steep, slippery slope and reach out for a hand-grip, as likely as not instead of a friendly flax or tussock bunch the _ongaonga_ will be there waiting for you with his devilish little stinging hairs.40 And don’t attempt to apply to our Maori Land nettle the amiable counsel of old Aaron Hill that was given out to us in our school days:--41