484 Transactions. — Miscellaneous. 



stony mountain — alike to summers' suns and winters' frosts 

 in that elevated region — was the undeserved innuendo — ugly 

 joke, or worse — on Mr. Collie. 



At the time of my reading that statement I was absent 

 from town on duty in the interior ; but, as I had known Mr. 

 Collie pretty well, had often admired his large photographic 

 landscape-views of distant and strange places — only obtained 

 through much toil and difQculty, hardship and danger — and 

 frequently had conversations with him in his studio, even 

 concerning that, his last and unfortunate visit to Tongariro, 

 in which he met with his great loss (for he had sought counsel 

 from me on his return to Napier respecting the Maori raid 

 made upon him, and his consequent injury and damage), I 

 was determined to have justice — fair-play — done him. At 

 such times, a quaint distich from Goethe's " Faust," where, 

 in the inimitable scene on the Brocken (blasted mountain- 

 top), in the Walpurgis-night, Mephistopheles accosts one of 

 the old witches riding on a sow, saying, — 



Honour to whom honour is due ; 



Here, mother Baubo, is honour to you, — 



would continually revolve in my mind, causing me even to 

 repeat it over and over, although forty years had elapsed since 

 I last read it in Goethe's work — (possibly this happened 

 through the association of corresponding ideas — connecting 

 what I had been just reading and what I had heard from 

 Mr. Collie with my own trying experiences in that locality 

 forty-five years back) — and I concluded that Mr. Collie should 

 have due honour done him for his courageous and loving artist- 

 visits to Tongariro. For, in those days, and situated as he 

 was- — a stranger with limited means and few friends in this 

 (then) small town — it was a very different thing to carry out 

 such a visit over an unknown and trackless country (much less 

 a repeated one, and after receiving maltreatment from resident 

 Maoris, and enduring severe losses) from what it is now in these 

 modern days — with roads, coaches, inns, store-shops, settlers' 

 houses, and horses ; the Maoris themselves there residing no 

 longer enemies, but much more civilised and quiet, and en- 

 joying " piping times of peace." 



And here I should briefly state that I would have written 

 a letter to the editor of that morning paper already mentioned 

 on my return to Napier, but an acquaintaince of Mr. Collie, 

 residing at Waipawa, took the matter briefly up in a commu- 

 nication of his to that same paper, which I was glad to see ; 

 and soon after a full, plain, and interesting account of what 

 had really taken place at that time of Maori disturbance at To- 

 ngariro, written by Mr. Collie's travelling companion on that 

 occasion (Mr. F. E. Lys), appeared in the columns of the 



