84 Transactions.—Miscellaneous. 
labour was rewarded by the discovery of over 200 Moa bones ; and on my 
return from Australia, in the early part of this month (November, 1875), 
I showed the result of my explorations to Mr. F. T. Cheeseman, F.L.S. 
By offering to act as guide among the muddy mangrove flats, which render 
travelling unpleasant in these parts, I induced him to visit the locality. 
We spent a very pleasant time in observing and striving to read aright 
the story full of charming interest which these relics, implements, and 
tools before you are ever willing to teach. Everything in this world has a 
history, something to tell, or something to teach about what it was, or how 
it came where it is. 
I should like to be able to add, even in a small degree, to the slender 
knowledge we possess of the mode of life and thought of those races whose 
bones, tools, and toys are exhibited. 
Truly we may run back, in fancy, into the past, and think of these early 
men as hunting or fighting, their women loving, and their merry children 
gathering roots, fruits, and berries, or joining cheerfully in the exciting and 
dangerous chase of the gigantic Moa. 
I will content myself, however, with narrating and describing accurately 
the simple facts as observed, leaving it to sarants to propound theories in 
connection herewith. 
From Whangarei Heads, after a few miles walk over the fern-clad hills, 
you reach the extensive Mangrove swamps of Pataua and Taiharuru 
Rivers; crossing the Pataua, about a mile from the sea, follow the north- 
west bank of the river to the mouth, which is bounded on the east by a 
rocky but beautifully wooded hill, 200 feet high, from which the river takes — 
its name.* 
Standing on sand-hills to the south-west, you see the river winding 
down its bed, fully half-a-mile in width from hill to hill. On either side 
are Mangrove flats and Pipi banks, leaving a silver thread of water, fifty 
yards broad, at low tide. Some beautiful Pohutukawa trees line the north 
bank of the river, and amongst them are some grand old specimens—one, 
whose trunk measures twenty-one feet in circumference, has seen some 
hundreds of summers, as the erosion of the shore from the spot where the 
tree first commenced to grow would witness, and Pipi shells form a perpen- 
dicular little cliff there fifteen feet high. 
To the north-west, along the sea coast for thirteen miles and a quarter, 
a fine sandy beach reaches as far as a creek called the Kowhaitahi (Kowhai, 
Sa fortification ; taua, the fighting party. Therefore the word would mean, the 
fort.of the bet eri and a truly impregnable fort it made. The tons of Pipi shells on 
the top add additional evidence as to the use and value of this pa taua in by-gone times. 
raw 
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