94 Transactions,—Miscellaneous, 
So then went forth the loud pealing call to all the towns and villages of 
the Rotorua district. And the tribes assembled on the spot to look at and 
examine their implacable foe. There it lay dragged on to the dry land on 
the river’s side, in appearance very much like a big, common whale. Yet 
it was not exactly like a full-grown old whale ; it was more, in bulk, as the 
calf of a big whale as it there lay. 
They then commenced cutting-up that fish as food for themselves; on 
laying its huge belly wide open there, everything was seen at one dias all 
in confusion, as if it were the centre of a dense forest.* For, going down- 
wards into its vast stomach, there lay the dead, just as if it were an old 
bone-cave with piles of skeletons and bones—bones of those it had swallowed 
in former days. Yes, swallowed down with all their garments about them, 
women and children and men! There was to be seen the enormous heap 
of clothing of all kinds; chiefs’ mats of dogs’ tails and of dogs’ skins—white, 
black, and chequered—with the beautiful woven flax-mats adorned with 
ornamental borders, and garments of all kinds. There were also arms and 
implements of all kindst; clubs, spears, staves, thin hardwood chopping 
knives, white whalebone clubs, carved staffs of rank, and many others, 
including even darts and barbed spears, which the monster had carried off 
with its food. There these arms and implements all were, as if the place 
were a store-house of weapons or an armoury ! 
Then they proceeded to roast and to broil, and to set aside of its flesh and 
fat in large preserving calabashes, for food and for oil ; and so they devoured 
their deadly enemy all within their own stomachs; but all the dead they 
buried in a pit. 
Then every one of those valiant warriors returned to their own homes. 
The name of that village, where they were for a while encamped, was 
Mangungu (i.e., broken bones). 
So much for thy victorious work! O thou all-devouring throat of man, 
that thou shouldest even seek to eat and to hunt after the flesh of monsters 
as food for thee ! 
3. The Killing of Kataore. 
When the fame of those victors who had killed the monster Pekehaua 
reached the various towns and villages of Tarawera, of Rotokakahi, and 
of Okataina, the people there were filled with wonder at the bravery of those 
men who had essayed to destroy that terrible and malicious man-devourer. 
Then they began to think, very likely there is also a monster in the road 
to Tikitapu, because the travelling companies going by that place to Rotorua 
* The words are: “ Koteriu o Tane-Mahuta ;" lit., the hollow stomach, or centre of 
Tane-Mahuta—i.e., the god of forests; Tane-Mahuta being the god of forests. 
1 Ten kinds are here enumerated, all of hardwood and hard white whale's-bone. 
