--- title: “the Crest of the Rainbow.” — Maori folk-tales of the Port Hills, Canterbury,… · full text with trees description: “the Crest of the Rainbow.”, «Maori folk-tales of the Port Hills, Canterbury, New Zealand» by James Cowan: the whole chapter, every sentence with its dependency tree and pragmatics. It begins: The saying that the best place to see the mountains is from below, not from their summits, may properly be --- [Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg73766/11/) [home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [tales](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/) / [Maori folk-tales of the Port Hills, Ca…](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg73766/) / “the Crest of the Rainbow.” # “the Crest of the Rainbow.” “the Crest of the Rainbow.” of «Maori folk-tales of the Port Hills, Canterbury, New Zealand» by James Cowan: the whole text, 87 sentences and 2983 words. The small number after every sentence leads to its own page with its syntax tree and pragmatics, parsed by Mova itself. **1** [2](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg73766/11/page/2/) 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](1/ "tree and pragmatics") 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](2/ "tree and pragmatics") 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](3/ "tree and pragmatics") 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](4/ "tree and pragmatics") Off[5](5/ "tree and pragmatics") \_C. Beken, photo\_\][6](6/ "tree and pragmatics") 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](7/ "tree and pragmatics") 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](8/ "tree and pragmatics") 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](9/ "tree and pragmatics") 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](10/ "tree and pragmatics") 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](11/ "tree and pragmatics") 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](12/ "tree and pragmatics") The valley is more attractive outside, for almost every vestige of the moss and ferns and underbrush has disappeared before grazing stock and the[13](13/ "tree and pragmatics") background.[14](14/ "tree and pragmatics") \_C. Beken, photo\_\][15](15/ "tree and pragmatics") 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](16/ "tree and pragmatics") 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](17/ "tree and pragmatics") 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](18/ "tree and pragmatics") 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](19/ "tree and pragmatics") 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](20/ "tree and pragmatics") 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](21/ "tree and pragmatics") Waitai had already explored the country, and was able to tell of its worth as a home for Ngai-Tahu.[22](22/ "tree and pragmatics") 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](23/ "tree and pragmatics") 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](24/ "tree and pragmatics") The Plains, as he showed them, were plentifully studded with the ti-palm, from which the sugary \_kauru\_ could be obtained.[25](25/ "tree and pragmatics") 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](26/ "tree and pragmatics") 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](27/ "tree and pragmatics") 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](28/ "tree and pragmatics") 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](29/ "tree and pragmatics") 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](30/ "tree and pragmatics") Flax-flower honey-water makes a pleasant enough drink, and the Boy Scout tastes and pronounces it good.[31](31/ "tree and pragmatics") There is a pretty Maori love-lament in which a girl compares her sorrowing self to this blossom of the flax:[32](32/ "tree and pragmatics") “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](33/ "tree and pragmatics") 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](34/ "tree and pragmatics") 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](35/ "tree and pragmatics") 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](36/ "tree and pragmatics") 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](37/ "tree and pragmatics") 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](38/ "tree and pragmatics") 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](39/ "tree and pragmatics") 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](40/ "tree and pragmatics") 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](41/ "tree and pragmatics") **1** [2](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg73766/11/page/2/) - ← previous: [The Port Hills and Their Names.](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg73766/10/) - next →: [page 2](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg73766/11/page/2/) - ↑ back to [Maori folk-tales of the Port Hills, Canterbury, New Zealand](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg73766/)