60 TUTIRA 



years ago a section of about twenty yards of native footpath, a trail 

 trodden out by naked feet long prior to the advent of the booted settler. 



This old-world track, slightly dished and about eighteen inches 

 in width, used to be one of the most interesting relics of Maori life on 

 the run. It had remained untouched on a soil of grit, dust, and powdered 

 kakahi shell. There had been no inducement for cattle, sheep, or pig 

 to visit this desolate little bluff with its unpalatable stunted bracken 

 and starved danthonia. Alas ! it exists no longer ; like other senti- 

 mental interests dear to the writer, it has been sacrificed to exigencies 

 of station management. Its contour has been defaced, obliterated 

 indeed by cattle. 



Such were the fighting forts and strongholds of the virile hapu who 

 owned Tutira and the adjacent lands. Their way of life was similar 

 to that of every tribe of New Zealand. Their motto, " Ko to ratou pa 

 ko nga rekereke" " their pas were in their heels" was, however, only 

 relatively correct, for until about the 'fifties, as Manning 1 says, no man 

 slept safe who did not sleep armed and within walls. Out of their 

 strongholds every morning marched the men, prepared for all con- 

 tingencies, their womenfolk and children in the rear ; into them every 

 evening retired their owners, the women and children in front, bearing 

 wood, water, and food for the evening meal. 



About the middle of the century a change took place ; an Indian 

 summer of peace prevailed, a brief space between the cessation of tribal 

 warfare and the struggle which from the beginning had been inevitable 

 between the brown race and the white. Missionary influence had 

 quenched the fires of internecine hatred, the war and bloodshed which 

 had seemed until then the normal condition of the land. The tenets 

 of Christianity had widely spread amongst the tribes. Instead of as 

 formerly sleeping within the precincts of the stockaded pas, the natives 

 of Tutira, like their fellows elsewhere, dwelt now " after the manner 

 of the Sidonians, careless" in open villages. The pa had given place 

 to the kainga ; cultivation grounds lay undefended, unfenced, unhidden ; 

 there was no longer need for the concealment of crops nor for their 

 hasty furtive gathering and storage. Heathen names of villages gave 

 place to Christian names ; Johns, Peters, Abrahams, and Isaiahs swarmed 

 in every tribe. During this golden interval between war and war the 



1 Author of ' Old New Zealand,' a volume remarkable alike for its sympathetic appreciation 

 of the Maori character and for its abounding wit. 



