170 Transactions. 



hardship and privation, while the real home is often practically 

 deserted for months at a time, and everything falls to pieces.* 



The Gumpields. 



Partly from the unsatisfactory nature of the land laws, 

 occasionally from the failure of his crops, and very often from 

 an innate love of change of occupation, the Maori throughout 

 the northern district betakes himself to the guinfields. The 

 gumfields are scattered over an immense area, extending from 

 the Waikato to the North Cape. Wherever throughout this area 

 the kauri is growing, or has grown in former times, the gum is 

 found in more or less payable quantities. Surface gum has 

 long since disappeared, and the article has now to be dug from 

 the ground, where it has either exuded from the roots of the trees, 

 or, falling from the tops, has been buried by landslips or by 

 deposits from volcanic eruptions. Gum-digging may be roughly 

 divided into two classes — viz., that on the " winter fields." or 

 the high tea-tree ranges, where the ground is too hard to work 

 in dry weather, and that on the " summer fields," or low swampy 

 situations, where digging would be impossible during the wet 

 season. Unless very hard driven, the Maoris seldom resort to 

 the winter fields, but throughout the summer and autumn they 

 are to be found all over the Auckland Province wherever the 

 ground is in a fit condition to be worked. 



The attraction of gum-digging is, of course, the hope of an 

 immediate cash return, as the gum has a very high commercial 

 value ; but the return in the case of the Maori is usually very 

 trifling. In contrast to the European, and especially the Austrian 

 — who work in a more or less energetic and systematic manner — 

 his operations are of a very desultory and superficial character. 

 At starting he is generally in debt to the store, and the output 

 of gum scarcely pays for the cost of the provisions consumed 

 on the field. Meanwhile the living arrangements are most 

 uncomfortable and unhealthy. The Maoris generally go out in 

 parties — men, women, and children together. A calico tent, a 

 light fiame covered with sacking, or a raupo whare of the rudest 

 description serves as a dwelling for each family. To be out of 

 the wind it is often placed under the shelter of a clump of tea- 

 tree, in some low, moist situation. Living on scanty rations of 

 unaccustomed and unwholesome food, drinking bad water, 

 working all day in the swamp, and exposed at night to the 



* Since this paper was written certain amendments have been made 

 in the land laws, but they have brought no satisfaction. The right of 

 pre-emption guaranteed by the Treaty is not yet recognised, and the pro- 

 ceedings of the Court seem to be more involved and tedious t ban ever. 



