204 Transactions. 



I here give a few notes concerning a death and burial which I 

 myself witnessed in these parts some nine years ago. When 

 camped in the sylvan vale of Te Whaiti-nui-a-Toi, in 1896, the 

 Tama-kai-moana clan, of Mavmga-pohatu, sent three children 

 to Te Whaiti to attend the Native school at that place. Some 

 time afterwards one of them, a little girl of seven or eight years 

 of age, died at Te Whaiti, and her body was carried back to 

 Mannga-pohatu to be buried with her ancestors. It was in this 

 wise : The old patriarch of the clan accompanied the children, 

 and to a certain extent commended them to my care, hence 

 they spent much of their time at my camp. The fever came 

 to the canon of Toi, and the brown-skinned children of Toi 

 went down before it. Pepuere, of Ngati-apa, and his wife 

 broke out the trail from Te Whaiti. But a few days and 

 bright-eyed Hara followed them in search of the Hidden Land 

 of Tane. Then little Hineokaia passed out on her journey 

 to the swirling weed of Motau, and, lest they be separated, 

 took with her her infant brother, to leave the descendants of 

 Tamatea the Cannibal wailing on the storm - lashed peak of 

 Tara-pounamu. Timoti, of Marakoko, followed his playmates, 

 and Wairama, of the daughters of Kuri, abandoned the world 

 of life. Scarce passed a day but we heard the gun fire which 

 betokened yet another death, and the world was dark to the 

 people of the great forest of Tane. Then Marewa went down 

 into the dark valley and wrestled for many days with death. 

 The kutukutu ahi came — the delirium of fever, a fatal sign to 

 the Maori — and little Marewa was called by her friends who had 

 gone before. 



I was writing in my tent one day when I heard a volley 

 fired just across the river, and I knew that Marewa was about to 

 lift the world-old trail trodden by all the sons of man, even from 

 the days of Tura and of Maui. When I reached the place I 

 found her lying in a tent a little distance from the settlement, 

 her mother by her side, the people collected before the tent. I 

 could see that the child's end was very near. Her father said to 

 me, " Friend, your grandchild has departed." And then, just be- 

 fore she passed away, he bade her farewell from where he stood 

 outside the tent : " Farewell, maid ! Farewell. Go to your 

 ancestors who await you. Go to your playmates. Return to 

 your mother, to Mannga-pohatu, who brought you forth to the 

 world of light. Go to the world of darkness. Farewell," &c. 

 The mother sat wailing by the child's side. Warned by the guns, 

 the people of adjacent places kept coming to join in the lamen- 

 tation. Each one as he or she approached would cry out, " Fare- 

 well, maid ! Farewell." The end came soon. As her mother 

 sat with her hand on the child I saw the poor suffering mite draw 



