RF Keam: Dissolving dream

R.F. Keam has long been familiar with the Rotorua Lakes district and is the author of an award-winning work, Tarawera, the account of the 1886 volcanic eruption in the area.

His latest book centres on missionary work in the area before the eruption, or as he describes it, "the improbable story of the first Baptist Maori Mission".

Through painstaking research, Keam has managed to open a window, not just on a little-known part of church history but also to offer a broader vista of the social fabric of the latter part of the 19th century.

Not least the initial resistance of the Maori to alcohol and how, despite rules to the contrary, they were nevertheless plied with drink by Europeans who saw profit in such trade.

Into this picture emerged the unlikely figure of William P. Snow, a rather sickly young American from Massachusetts, who reached New Zealand in 1880 with his wife Anstis. His hope was that a short residence in the famed hot springs district in the North Island of New Zealand might benefit his health.

In the event, the abuses of alcohol that he witnessed in Tauranga aroused his humanitarian instincts. He set up, with the help of the Baptist Church in Auckland, a mission centred on Te Wairoa — now the Buried Village — at Rotorua, preaching temperance among the Maori to good effect.

It lasted a bare three years before his death on a ship travelling to Europe. His replacement was far less successful and in 1886 the eruption which destroyed the Pink and White Terraces ended this fleeting piece of history. This book has some tedious detail which would challenge commercial success. But it also possesses a certain charm, enriched with compelling detail about attitudes and happenings of earlier days. Well-produced and illustrated, it is a work that lingers in the memory.
* Professor R.F. Keam is a research associate in the physics department at the University of Auckland

* Physics Department, University of Auckland, $39.95