440 Transactions. — Miscellaneous. 



Ka^Yalla Paipai died some four or five years ago. He must 

 have been over ninety, at least, and by what he said he was 

 about sixteen years old when these birds were killed and eaten ; 

 so that would bring the time to near the beginning of this 

 century. 



I am indebted to Mr. Park for the following extract from 

 an interesting article on the excavation of an ancient inmi at 

 Awamoa, contributed to the Wellington Spectator in 1848 by 

 Mr. Mantell. 



" Last Christmas I camped at the mouth of the Awamoa, 

 a small stream between Kakanui and 0am aru, having found 

 there a few weeks before the umus of the extinct aboriginal 

 tribe of Waitaha, full of bones, stones, &c. ; and devoted a day 

 to digging. The old surface, in which the iimus had been 

 excavated, was buried under a foot of alluvial deposit ; beneath 

 this the old sandy soil was blackened by the mixture of char- 

 coal, large lumps of which were scattered among the chaotic 

 mass. The primeval savages had evidently thrown back into 

 the wnu the remains of each feast, and lighted over it the fire 

 to prepare the next. The disagreeable flavour which the 

 scorched bones must have lent to each succeeding banquet 

 was, we may hope, some slight punishment to them for exter- 

 minating the moa. Their animal food seems to have consisted 

 of Dinoniis (very rare), Fala2)teryx, Notornis, AjHornis, Apte- 

 ryx, Nestor (kaka or kea), cormorants, gulls, ducks, and other 

 small birds; dogs; a small rat; Haliotis, iresh-wixter Unios, &nd 

 other shell-fish; seals, porpoises, sharks, eels, and other fish: 

 so that the bill of fare was varied enough. The bones of 

 all were matted and locked together most intricately, large 

 angular burnt stones (originally round boulders, cracked by the 

 fire) and a wet, black, sandy soil filling all interstices. Here 

 and there we met relics of their dinner-equipage in the shape 

 of large and small fragments of flint, totally different from 

 any in the neighbourhood, and said by my respected friend 

 old Governor Eailway," who formerly lived there, to come from 

 Lake Hawea. Sometimes an ancient aborigine or his dog 

 seemed to have retired to chscuss a tit-bit in solitude, for im- 

 bedded at intervals over the surface of the ancient Icaiha (whose 

 former extent is well marked by the blackened subsoil) we 

 found an odd bone or so : I think the dogs miTst have done 

 this, as the bones were generally foot- and toe-bones, which 

 would probably have fallen to their share. The only human 

 manufacture we found was a small ball of baked clay, the 

 work, most likely, of some ingenious young savage, stopped 

 on the threshold of the invention of pottery by a vindictive 

 tibia thrown at his head by his enraged parent, with a 



* Te "Wharekorari. 



