Meeson. — Ncioly-opened Cave near Sumner. 65 



Although the cave is not so hxrge as that at Moa Point, 

 there is one particular in which its investigation should be 

 more profitable and interesting. The Moa Point cave, in and 

 about which researches and excavations were carried on, under 

 the direction of Sir Julius von Haast, during the spring of 

 1872, had apparently been continuously open for a very long 

 period. The Maoris had occupied it from time immemorial as 

 an occasional dwelling-place for their fishing-parties, and since 

 1839 it had evidently been used by Europeans as a shelter for 

 cattle, or a place of temporary habitation by lime-burners, 

 road-makers, and fishermen. Now, in contrast with this, it 

 must be remembered that it is only a few weeks since the 

 mouth of Monck's cave was first laid open. Forty years ago 

 there were a good number of natives about Banks Peninsula, 

 but they knew nothing of this cave. It had been buried a 

 very long time, perhaps some hundreds of years, before the 

 settling of Canterbury, or the natives in question would have 

 had their traditions about it and its whereabouts. For exactly 

 how many years it had been thus sealed up, secured by a 

 mountain of loose earth and stones from the ravages of 

 successive occupants, we at present cannot say ; indeed, it is 

 difiicult to venture a conjecture on the subject, though it may 

 be possible to do so after a thoroughly careful and intelligent 

 examination of the cave, the deposits therein contained, and 

 the various articles imbedded in those deposits. When it was 

 lately broken into, therefore, the cave was, in all probability, 

 just as it had been left on the morning when the Maori who 

 used it went off on that fishing, hunting, or marauding excur- 

 sion from which he seems never to have returned. Perhaps 

 he was killed in fight, or perished with his frail canoe off the 

 bold headlands to the eastward. He certainly did not die in 

 the cave, or his skeleton would have been found there ; and 

 he just as certainly did not intend to go away without 

 returning, for in that case he would not have left behind him 

 such well-fashioned and, to him, valuable instruments as those 

 which have just been found. Possibly, however, he was not 

 shipwrecked at all, and met with no particular misadventure, 

 but simply found that while he was absent a landslip had 

 occurred which had so completely buried his old home that 

 his superstition or indolence, or both combined, indisposed 

 him to dig a fresh opening to it. There are some circum- 

 stances about the contents of the cave — more especially the 

 kinds of wood and stone of which the tools and other articles 

 are made — that seem to point to the fact that its last occupants 

 were from the North Island. Perhaps they were Maoris who 

 were in the habit of coining so far afield in their canoe or 

 canoes every summer for the purpose of fishing, and hunting 

 the moa. In that case it is easy to conceive that during one 

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