Hard by the Cloud House

by Peter Walker

The legend of Te Hokioi, the extinct giant eagle of New Zealand, leads Peter Walker from a Canterbury sheep run to the Rare Books Room of the British Library and to ‘ sacred' Raiatea in Polynesia, as he uncovers the story of the predator which once ruled over the Southern Alps.Was this bird, whose existence was confirmed by scientists only in 2009, the Rukh of Arab legends? Does that mean that medieval Islamic mariners were once blown far into the Pacific, saw the great raptor and made it back home to tell the tale?From the calamitous encounter of South Island Maori with colonisation to the glories of tenth-century Baghdad, Hard by the Cloud House is a heady mix of history, memoir, science and mythology.

Genres: Nonfiction

288 pages, Paperback

Published April 11, 2024

About the author

New Zealand author Peter Walker began his writing career as a journalist

Reviews

[Neil Stanley · Rating 4 out of 5]

Picked up this book purely by chance at my local bookshop. Had just been published a couple of days earlier - Good Reads, publishing info is incorrect, or just around the wrong way. Paperback was published on 12 April.
As at tour guide in NZ, I had always known about Harpagornis, or the Haast’s eagle and at 12kgs +, knew it had been the world’s largest bird of prey. Te Papa Museum in Wellington had a full-size model of it attacking a giant moa, as well as a pelvic moa bone with marks that fit exactly, the eagle’s talon which are as large as tiger’s claws. Peter Walker traces the history of the discovery of the bones, interspersed with personal experiences hiking in areas where the bones had been found. Sometimes he gets a little sidetracked but this doesn’t really detract from the book. He traces Maori & Polynesian stories of the Pouakai or other, once thought to be, mythological birds. Then there are the stories from 1001 nights of the roc, a giant eagle that attacks Sinbad. The author then investigates stories from the Middle East, India, China, south-east Asia that speak about a giant eagle, many of which say it was found in the unknown south. While it may seem fanciful that Sinbad or other sailors from Middle East reached NZ, they did know Madagascar & maybe Mauritius. When Abel Tasman discovered NZ in 1642, he sailed from Batavia in the Dutch East Indies, sailed first to Mauritius, reprovisioned, then assailed to the east, south of Australia, in the Southern Ocean seeing the south coast of Tasmania, before being blown across the Tasman Sea to the South Island’s West Coast, past the where Harpagornis was known to exist. It is certainly within the bounds of possibility the a Middle Eastern navigator could earlier have been blown along a similar course. The author draws no new conclusions but this well-written book certainly creates food for thought.

[Cally · Rating 4 out of 5]

hugely enjoyable theoretical history of an incredible animal. learnt a lot and the writing was good humoured sincere and well researched.

[Harry · Rating 4 out of 5]

A tough book to categorise, sort of history meets memoir meets semi-conspiratorial speculation. Walker is at his best in New Zealand's and his own history; the book flags a little as he ranges out of his comfort zone and around the world, but he manages to hold our attention.

Perhaps the most interesting thing in this very interesting book is that—in one of those quirks which seem stored up by the dozen in New Zealand's past—Walker brings our attention to the important but more or less unknown korotangi, or korotau, which I and everyone else I've mentioned it to in New Zealand had never heard of before. The korotangi is a stone bird, found under the roots of a fallen tree in the late nineteenth century, which is quite clearly neither a representation of a New Zealand bird nor a Polynesian artefact.


The korotangi, archaeologists agree, was shaped with metal tools—which Polynesians did not use. They generally agree it shows signs of East Asian workmanship. So where did it come from? Tainui tell us that it was a gift. From whom?

Walker draws a long bow—and never fails to remind us that he's drawing a long bow; he's no Gavin Menzies—but builds a narrative that just about manages to stay on the right side of plausibility suggesting that maybe the "man from the Maghreb" who was blown far off course and encountered a giant bird, later to become the rukh of Sinbad the Sailor, had been blown as far as New Zealand and seen the pouākai (Haast's eagle, in the characterless English rendering) which we know survived into Māori times. And three hundred years later, fascinated with hawks and possessing fine things and with all the power in the world at his command maybe Kublai Khan heard that story, which we know circulated widely, sent an expedition to follow the story of the rukh and witness or capture this giant eagle for himself. And maybe on that expedition to foreign lands speaking foreign languages they brought along a translation aid: a stonewrought representation of the creature they were seeking, which Kublai Khan's navigators and advisors called karutan.

Karutan... Korotan. Te Reo Māori, allergic to words ending in consonants, might render that word as, say, Korota—korotau. Or korotangi.

Maybe.

Walker isn't really here to build an alternate history, although he certainly thinks it's interesting to think about. He's here to broader our idea of New Zealand's place in the world, complicating the pervasive myth of Aotearoa's splendid isolation—the Māori came, in the uncomplicated narrative of most New Zealanders' history, and sort of stayed and didn't talk to anyone from where they came from and then later along came the Europeans and that was that. It's challenging that, more than an insistence that Sinbad's roc was the pouākai, which powers Walker's efforts. He takes us to Raiatea, to Rarotonga, and explores the tracks that bound New Zealand and Polynesia together in earlier times and the theologies and disputes which later separated them.

This is a surprisingly important and powerful addition to the canon of New Zealand history, given its nominal subject. It comes freighted with Walker's impressive and touching prose, placing these islands, in their hemisphere of ocean, within "the pattern in the great web of human doings then weaving in both hemispheres from the White Sea to Cape Horn".

[George Fenwick · Rating 5 out of 5]

such a fun and engrossing read. It’s ostensibly about the Haast Eagle but becomes about so much more - if anything I wanted Walker to refocus a little; the one thing this book lacks is at least a short science-y chapter on how the eagle actually lived before extinction. But as an exploration of myths and legends and history and oceanic navigation, i truly loved this. The mixture of memoir in a book like this usually annoys me but was beautifully done here - you really felt Walker’s connection to the myth of the eagle.

[Angelique Simonsen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting! A whole new perspective!

[Marcus Hobson · Rating 4 out of 5]

A difficult book to classify exactly because of the range of subject matter and the range of imagination. Essentially a wide-ranging investigation into the legend of Te Hokioi, the now extinct giant eagle of New Zealand.
The chapters that worked best were those where seasoned amateur explorers came up from the caves and carverns holding the bones of unknown species, only to be ignored by the men of science and the men from the museums, until at last these experts were forced to concede that there was indeed a native eagle big and strong enough to carry away a human being. I loved the pieces about the MRI scans that confirmed this huge bird was indeed strong enough to fly and that its feet would have been fully able to clasp and carry off large prey.
Equally interesting were the stories of the poor treatment of the native Māori, who lost their land to the dishonest settlers and were swindled out of the true value. Such people had plenty of stories about the vast eagle, if only more had been willing to listen. Some interesting contrasts are achieved by setting the account of the same events as recorded by the different parties. Had there been a few more honest settlers, imagine how different things might have been. One of the main injustices Peter Walker examines is the dispossession of Ngāi Tahu of their lands in the South Island. The number of Royal Commissions that were set up to look into the findings of a previous Royal Commission is frankly staggering. Walker sums it up very well:

It is hard to believe that for more than a hundred years, the government – ‘the Crown’ – which is no more than a number of politicians and civil servants who come on stage for a few years and walk up and down talking, mostly about the public good, then depart to be replaced by more of the same – carefully examined the facts of the Ngāi Tahu claim, generally agreed that a grave wrong had been committed, and then did very little about it.

But we do not remain in New Zealand in our search for this vast bird of prey in the southern ocean. We also look into the myths and legends of the Middle East and China, finding plenty of evidence there too that these vast birds existed. Was the Rukh of Arab legend the same as New Zealand’s eagle. While it is interesting to speculate about just how many sailors were washed across the open oceans to New Zealand in the centuries when the land had only a handful of settlers, the narrative flow of the book suffers a little once we lose any known characters to keep hold of.
The book has a great title and I enjoyed a little of the explanation about where this came from:

Whaitiri-Matakataka was the goddess of thunder, a terrifying figment of the imagination – hostile, striding the sky, extremely dangerous – who dwelt “far above, and hard by the Cloud House”. The Cloud House was not so much a place in Māori cosmology as a poeticism, although one based on natural observation: since at times clouds are scattered across the sky and at other times none can be seen, it was logical to assume they had a gathering place. This was the Cloud House, Te Ahoaho o Tukapua, which on occasion might even come into view, as a thundercloud, ominously tall, hard-edged, apparently solid like stone.

[William · Rating 3 out of 5]

I am a sucker for these sorts of history mysteries — but I do wish he had have talked to some pros about his theories🥲

[Carol Griffiths · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a strange but thoroughly enjoyable book which is partly about the extinct giant eagle of New Zealand. The author includes many fascinating but seemingly unconnected digressions which include mythology, the history of voyaging and the Arabian Nights.

[Jonathan Natusch · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a strangely glorious book. At a macro level, it's about Haast's eagle, and whether that mighty bird could have been the source of legends such as Sinbad's Rukh. Thankfully though, that's often just a jumping off point - thankfully, as some of the conclusions draw a fairly long bow!
What makes this book so eminently readable, is that Mr Walker uses his over-arching concept as an excuse to go on all sorts of wonderful tangents, from discussions about his childhood in Christchurch, to colonial history, to the author's travels.
Highly recommended!

[Rosie · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was expecting more information about the Haast's eagle in this book. Walker's exploration of the mythology and lore around the eagle has some interesting points but I didn't feel like I learned much. There are some beautifully written passages and some excellent accounts of the early settlement of New Zealand.

[Olivia Yates · Rating 5 out of 5]

Deep dive into niche history, interweaving mythology with religion with colonial narratives with travel journalism. Riveting, more than I expected it to be!

[Amber Aranui · Rating 3 out of 5]

It took me a while to finally finish this book. While it is interesting it did go off on some tangents.

[Joshua McDonald · Rating 2 out of 5]

Peter Walker introduces us to the story of an amazing eagle which it seems, just too little information exists to write a story such as Walker has embarked. So to fill the pages, the author explores seemingly unrelated tangents and has placed himself at centre stage of his adventure to find more content to fill the pages.

From other reviews of this book, it’s clear that the authors approach and writing style doesn’t bother every reader out there. But I am of the opinion that many of the stories and topics which Walker explores hold a great deal of historical and cultural weight. Instead of digging deeper and seeking advice or answers from the families or tribes, it seems Walker digs out just the convenient pieces of information to fit the narrative. In other cases, Walker has stretched the story and made his own assumptions to suit, of which many do not sit well with me. The deeper I read into the book, the more it began to shift from exciting narrative to something which might resemble a salacious expose on anything within a few degrees of separation from Haast’s eagle.

I would be left wondering why Walker decided to write this book, given that he admits to having little connection to or expertise on many of the broad range of topics he covers. However in the early chapters he admits to his own jealousy when reading a headline from a London newspaper about a new discovery of Haast’s eagle. “I should have written this story” he thought, which triggered what some may refer to as a mid life crisis, dropping everything to return home to New Zealand and begin his pursuit of the eagle and this book.

I’ve enjoyed parts of this book and I have learnt some new things about Haast’s eagle and New Zealand history throughout reading. However due to Walker’s approach on writing an exciting or convenient story, rather than an accurate one, I’m hesitant to believe much of what I have learnt. I will be taking it all with a grain of salt. I’d recommend the book to a reader like Nan, who loves hearing about the exciting and sometimes funny history of New Zealand, who wouldn’t let the facts get in the way of a good story. But if like me, you would prefer your history a little more accurate and a little less personal, this book may not be for you.