50 TUTIRA 



decayed. A fourth belt will give us tall blackened boles, still here and 

 there erect, also immense numbers of fallen trunks but partially decayed. 

 This belt must have flourished as green forest within ten or fifteen 

 years of my arrival at Tutira. Nearly one thousand acres of trees must 

 have perished by fire about '65 or 70, for in '82 the date of my 

 arrival a third of the timber was still erect ; thousands of boles, 

 blackened and charred, but still branched, stood perpendicular, 

 eighty or ninety feet high. A fifth belt would include the ranges and 

 give us the growing bush of the present day the last remnant of the 

 primeval forest that once shaded the whole run. 



This slow retreat towards the mountains is not likely to have been 

 caused by change of climate. It is of too recent date to be thus 

 accounted for ; we must seek another reason for the triumph of bracken 

 over woodland. Sometimes I incline to a solution, only the barest 

 outline of which can be given. The latest considerable influx of islanders 

 from outside took place, it is believed, about five hundred years ago. 

 These immigrants from wheresoever they came probably dispossessed 

 tribes neither so virile nor so numerous. There was no bar, therefore, 

 to the rapid increase and multiplication of the dominant race. The 

 ancient Maori was an excellent cultivator, keeping his crop grounds in 

 a high state of tillage, carefully weeded, dug, and hoed. 



Their earliest settlements as an island race were planted on coastal 

 lands. Now wherever man works, one of his most helpful agencies is 

 fire. Maybe the fires of these immigrants five centuries ago began 

 that destruction of the forest, not yet quite complete when Europeans 

 arrived in Hawke's Bay. In dry seasons these fires doubtless ran 

 far beyond the limited Maori clearings ; we can be equally certain 

 that fern took possession of the rich loose mould thus opened to the sun. 

 Furthermore, a fern crop, once established, would, every fourth or fifth 

 season, be sufficiently thick to burn ; the flames would on each occasion 

 destroy a new breadth of timber. Even the small number of seedling 

 trees able to compete with the bracken would never attain to more than 

 four or five years' growth. Thus bracken would take possession of the 

 coastal regions first, then gradually work inland to damper, colder areas. 

 Fire would also be largely used as a means of easy access to inland 

 hunting-grounds. There can be no doubt that the aboriginal forest was 

 destroyed by fire. 



There is equally little room for doubt that if fires, mankind, and 



