White. — A Maori Pa at Lake Te Anau. 513 



ents) who had been reading the statements about the Aus- 

 trahan blacks in a work which is generally considered to be of 

 great authority, and has passed through many editions. To 

 get at the real meaning of the facts we must learn to see in 

 them what the savage sees, and in order to do this we must 

 get out of our own mind-world and into his. We must unlearn 

 before we can begin to learn. It is the lack of this which 

 makes the evidence — or, rather, the opinions — of the mere 

 passing traveller so extremely untrustworthy. As long as he 

 confines himself to telling what he has actually seen, his state- 

 ments, if he be a truthful man, are of value ; but as soon as 

 he begins to talk about what is in the facts, in nine cases out 

 of ten he is sure to go astray. 



" The best way of getting at the meaning of the facts is to 

 go and live with the natives long enough to learn their 

 language, and to thoroughly gain their confidence — say, from 

 ten to twenty years ; but, as this is impossible to all but a very 

 few, the next best way is to get information from the men who 

 are living among them." — {L.c., pp. 150, 151.) 



Abt. LVIII. — A Maori Pa at Lake Te Anati. 



By Taylok White. 



[Read before the Ilawlcc's Bay Philosophical Institute, 12th Jime, 1893.^ 



As I am unaware that any record has been made showing 

 that in comparatively recent times certain Maoris were living 

 on the eastern shores of this lake, and knowing that any signs 

 of Maori habits or customs in the olden time are increasing in 

 value as time rolls on, no matter how seemingly trivial these 

 signs. may be, I will attempt a description of what I saw at 

 the latter end of the year 1859, or early in 1860 — after a lapse 

 of thirty-three years, or thereabouts. 



When visiting my friend, the late Donald Hankinson, Esq., 

 who then had a large cattle -station between the Mararoa 

 Eiver and Lake Te Anau, he took me to the shore of this 

 magnificent lake, the eastern boundary of which consists of 

 rolling downs, at that time covered with fern, and in one place 

 a large flat close to the lake densely covered by manuka scrub, 

 in which already a small herd of his cattle had become feral, 

 taking to this cover immediately a horseman came in view. 

 Mr. Hankinson told me of the remains of an old Maori village 

 on the south side of the Upukarora Eiver at the junction of the 

 lake, but said that a fire had of late years passed over it and 

 33 



