TRAILS FROM THE COAST TO TUTIRA 67 



ship of the station, a handsome kowhai tree. This great quadrilateral, 

 Te Pa-o-te-ahi-tara-iti, was in bygone days a favourite haunt of the 

 village children, who played on it " King of the Castle " and other 

 games common to children the world over. 



Proceeding, the track passed on the left the locality Wai-hapua, 

 on the right the locality Wai-hara, then on the left Mahia. Here 

 exist several deep pits, near which used to stand a couple of boundary- 

 stones pou-rohe ; these pits ruakumara which are too minute for the 

 storage of any potato crop worth garnering, were probably, as their name 

 denotes, used for kumara. Far to the left, distant perhaps half a mile 

 in the river-bed of the Waikoau, lay the locality Patuna-o-Tamarehe. 

 The low rounded spur or hillock, Te Rua Awai, the ancient burying- 

 ground of the tribe, was next passed on the right. Near-by grew the 

 great ti cabbage-tree (Cordyline australis) on whose branches the 

 bones of the dead were exposed previous to final sepulture. The 

 burial-grounds, the tree, and the pit Piraunui, were alike deeply tapu 

 sacred in ancient times ; nor even now is the recollection of the 

 tapu entirely gone ; old Te Hata-Kani, whose recollections go back some 

 eighty years, and to whom I am indebted for many of these old-world 

 legends, was most circumspect in his perambulations, and though he 

 said nothing, scrupulously forbore to tread on consecrated grounds. 



Here for the present, conjoined on the southernmost shore of 

 Waikopiro, we can leave the trails connecting Tutira with the ocean 

 and the outside world. 



