TRAILS ROUND TUTIRA LAKE 81 



happen to have been a taua lying concealed amongst reeds and flax on 

 the shore of the lake. Imagining themselves detected and foreseeing 

 the raid would fail, they took their departure. The mahia Tutira 

 the sound-carrying property of the lake surface, or, as Pera rendered it 

 into English, the "Tutira telephone" conveying Te Uaha's hoarse 

 whisper had balked the foray. 1 



The lands immediately north of Paopao-a-toki close to the lake were 

 called Te Puna. Behind this locality, also on flat alluvial ground, where 

 the Papakiri flows into the swamp and loses or rather used to lose itself 

 in morass and peat-bog, are the lands Te Whakapuni a Te Whatu-i- 

 Apiti. There, ere a cut made in modern times had connected the 

 stream with the lake, the bed of the Papakiri terminated in a string 

 of deep blind holes, the surplus water percolating through the swamp in 

 drought as through a sponge or evenly overflowing it in flood. It had 

 been farther blocked by the malice of Te Whatu-i-Apiti, a leading chief 

 of the southern part of Heretaunga, whose principal pa was at Te Roto- 

 a-tara. Besides high birth, Te Whatu-i-Apiti had another claim to fame ; 

 his hair a rare although not a unique occurrence amongst Maoris was 

 red, or as my friend Te Hata-Kani called it, " ginger." He had eaten the 

 eels of Tutira at the large huis gatherings of the Heretaunga people, 

 and like all men who had tasted these delicacies, cast covetous eyes upon 

 the lake producing them. He set out for Tutira during the summer time 

 with a large fighting force. Arriving at the northern end of the lake, 

 and evidently fearing the strength of the Ngati-kuru-mokihi, he did not 

 dare to attack, but decided to divert the stream Papakiri, which flowed 

 into the great marsh, and so cause the lake to decompose -pirau and as 

 a consequence kill the eels. This he did, causing some little time after- 

 wards a frightful stench to arise from the lake. 2 



In the meantime the local people, not much perturbed, watched his 

 doings from a distance. At last, when Te Whatu-i-Apiti saw that the 

 Ngati-kuru-mokihi would neither attack him nor leave their lake, he 

 vacated the district. His embankments were destroyed, and once more 



1 My own experience of the mahia Tutira, fully substantiates this story. In '82, lying 

 awake at Kahikanui awaiting dawn one still morning, I heard our station cook awaking my 

 partner in the hut on Piraunui, distant fully a mile across the lake. The carriage of his voice, 

 every syllable distinct and clear, was the more remarkable as the reveille was uttered into 

 the whare in an opposite direction to that in which I was lying. 



2 I pass the story on as it was told, but would point out for the fair fame of Tutira that its 

 lake is fed from innumerable springs and brooks besides the Papakiri. 



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