462 Trans ac tio i is. — Mi see I laneotos . 



2. Of fish they made large store in the summer season by 

 drying them for winter use. 'Of these I would especially men- 

 tion the mackerel {taivataivaoi the Maoris), which they caught 

 in great numbers in their big seine -nets." This fish was 

 managed thus for storing : They gutted them, took off their 

 heads and tails, and split them into halves, and cooked them 

 by steam in large earth-ovens made expressly for the occasion 

 on the sea-beaches, always using a peculiar kind of wood for 

 heating the ovens. When cooked the fish were carefully sepa- 

 rated unbroken, and placed on raised stages to dry in the sun 

 and wind, and when dried packed in large flax baskets for 

 winter use. This fish, once so very plentiful, arriving annually 

 on the shores of New Zealand iii immense shoals (much as it 

 does on the shores of England), has now and for many years 

 past become very scarce. 



Of the smaller kinds of shark (generally known by the 

 common appellative of mango), and also of fresh-water eels 

 (common name tuna), the old Maoris caught and dried great 

 numbers for winter use, and perhaps this is still being done 

 by them in several suitable localities at the North. Of the 

 larger dried eels I have myself eaten, and considered them 

 very good. In drying them they split them down the back, as 

 the Cornish fishermen formerly didthe great sea-eel, or conger, 

 for salting and drying. 



A small, delicate river fish — the manga (of at least two 

 species, yet going together in small shoals, and both distin- 

 guished by the Maoris)- — was also in some places caught in 

 large quantities in the summer season, and carefully dried in 

 the sun for storing. Of these, also, I have frequently partaken 

 in travelling among the Maoris, and liked them very much. 

 My usual plan was to put a handful of them into the iron pot 

 to boil with the potatoes, when the potatoes were nearly quite 

 cooked. [N .B. — There were neither mutton nor sheep in those 

 days.] 



They also dried for winter use large quantities of bivalve 



* Cook's remarks on the great plenty of mackerel lie obtained from 

 the Maoris are worthy of a notice. While at Mercury Bay, in November, 

 1769, Cook writes: "The natives who came to the ship this morning 

 sold us for a few pieces of cloth as much fish of the mackerel kind as 

 served the whole ship's company, and they were as good as ever were 

 eaten." And, again, he subsequently writes : " On the 9th, at daybreak, 

 a great number of canoes came on board loaded with mackerel of two 

 sorts — one, especially, the same with those caught in England. We 



imagined the people had taken a large shoal they were 



very welcome to us. At 8 o'clock the ship had more fish on board than 

 all her people could eat in three days ; and before night the quantity 

 was so much increased that every man who could get salt cured as 

 many as would last him a month." (Voyages, vol. ii., pp. 335, 336, and 

 440.) 



