White. — On the Flight of the Maru-iwi. 367 



pakeha caused their disappearance), and you can see the 

 dread place which engulfed the fleeing Maru-iwi. 



For some eight or nine years certain Maori people came 

 from about Tara-wera and shore my sheep. They were 

 under the leadership of a young rangatira named Petera, 

 whose father, a chief of considerable influence, was also 

 named Petera, which I suppose to be the Maori of Peter. 

 (The father was probably Petera te Puku Atua, of Eotorua, 

 Arawa Tribe — see pedigree, March number, 1894, vol. iii., 

 of the " Journal of the Polynesian Society," by Major 

 Gudgeon. Henare te Puku x\tua, a chief of Ngatiwha- 

 kane, brother of the latter, formerly Assessor, Native Lands 

 Court, died in August, 1897. His ancestor Taunga came in 

 the "Arawa" canoe twenty-three generations ago.) These 

 Maoris did their w;ork well, and were less trouble than the 

 average pakeha shearer. They brought their own cook, fleece- 

 pickers, and rollers-up, and also their children and dogs. One 

 season they told us about a whole tribe (or most of them) 

 who, when fleeing from their pursuers, walked straight on 

 over the terrible cliff at Glenshea. These people were fleeing 

 from the north by way of Titi-o-kura, and coming to that 

 branch of the Manga-one bounding Glenshea from Eauka- 

 moana (now held by Mr. John More), and it being night-time, 

 they walked straight onward into the empty space, and fell 

 headlong into the depths below. 



Possibly these people, even at that time, had used a well- 

 beaten but very narrow track which led through the tall fern 

 and tutu in a southerly direction along the ridges from the 

 narrow dividing-ridge between the aforesaid creek falling into 

 the Manga-one and the stream which here takes its rise and 

 is a tributary of the Esk or Petane River, the one flowing west 

 and the other to the east. This old Maori track followed on 

 from Titi-o-kura to Puke-tapu and Moteo, and was in use 

 wdien I lived near by. (Now the pakeha roads have altered 

 all this, and the old track has many fences built across it, and 

 is obliterated from all but the memories of the elderly people 

 of both races.) We might assume that the Maru-iwi, when 

 struggling along through the tall fern in the dark, lost the 

 track when nearly arrived at the head-waters of the two 

 streams, and so went to their death over the precipice on the 

 left-hand stream. 



