66 TUTIRA 



Waikato man began to change. He saw with his own eyes the reptile 

 increasing into a formidable monster. He dared not watch longer, but 

 becoming panic-stricken, took his departure as fast as his legs could carry 

 him, His flight was the signal for the kumi to give chase. Down the 

 cliffs they hurried as fast as they could go. When they reached the 

 " Racecourse " Flat they were seen by Hine-kino, a wise woman or 

 priestess or female tohtmga, who also had considerable power over the 

 kumi. She saw the predicament into which, by pride and presumption, 

 the Waikato man had put himself. Straddling out her legs, she called 

 to him to run between them. The Waikato man his choice the devil 

 or the deep sea did so, with the result that the kumi stayed its chase 

 and returned to its home below Pou-nui-a-Hine. Now, in olden times, 

 except in the case of a wife, it was not proper that a woman should pass 

 over any part of a man ; sitting at night with legs outstretched around 

 the whare fires, a woman about to move across the circle will always for 

 that reason give notice of her intention, the menfolk tucking up their 

 legs to avoid contact. When, therefore, the Waikato man rushed be- 

 tween the legs of the priestess Hine-kino, he lost mana authority, 

 prestige, reputation, the word is hard to translate ; he had sued for 

 protection ; he had forfeited his highly-prized attributes of rank and 

 chieftainship ; no longer would he be recognised as a leader of men 

 in the lands of the Ngai-Tatara. His travelling mana had undergone 

 what the Maoris termed tararo a casting down. 1 



Our track still rising, now passed on to the "Racecourse Flat." 

 Much of these rich washings from the hills above has been worked, 

 the Maoris having taken advantage, as in the case of the burnt bush 

 of the Mangahinahina, of favourable natural conditions. Through its 

 cultivation-patches the track proceeded towards Tutira lake, passing 

 a large square rock upon which has been growing, during my owner- 



1 A well-known instance of this custom occurs in Percy Smith's ' Maori Wars of the Nine- 

 teenth Century': "Te Ao-kapu-rangi, a woman of rank of the Ngati-Rangi-wewehi tribe, 

 being anxious to save her own people when Mokoia was attacked, insisted on going with the 

 taua or war-party. She importuned her husband, and through him Hongi Hika, to save her 

 friends. To this Hongi at last unwillingly consented, making it a condition that all who 

 passed between her thighs should be saved. She was in Hongi's canoe when Te-Awaawa 

 owner of the only musket in the island crept behind a flax bush just where the canoe landed, 

 and fired, knocking Hongi over. Hongi's fall, though protected from a wound by his steel 

 helmet, created a sort of panic, during which Te Ao-kapu-rangi sprang ashore and, quickly 

 making her way to a large house belonging to her tribe, stood with her legs straddled above 

 the doorway, at the same time imploring her people to enter the house, which they did 

 until it could contain no more, and all these were saved ; hence the saying, ' Ano ko te whare 

 whawhao a Te Ao-kapu-rangi' Mike the crowded house of Te Ao-kapu-rangi.'" 



