88 Transactions. —Miscellaneous. 
The other human remains were of a far more interesting character, and 
consisted of the larger bones of a man and part of a very thick skull, laid 
on and close by the stones of an oven, and, singularly enough, the bones 
were all much charred by fire. I exhibit the trochanter of a thigh bone, and 
also a piece of his enormously thick skull, shewing the effects of fire 
plainly. This charred skeleton was on the lowest bed of hard brown sand 
and was clearly burnt by design. I can hardly believe them to be the 
remains of an over-cooked cannibal feast; but am more inclined to look 
upon it as evidence that these Moa-hunters burnt their dead, as did, for 
example, the lowest races of men in Australia ; a practice, too, which there 
is reason to believe was almost universal among the earliest races of men 
in past times. 
Between Kowhaitahi Creek and Hora Hora River are several Tapu 
grounds of the Maoris, from one of which we brought the skull and thigh 
bone of a large man; further on the sandy beach is backed by soft clay 
hills, with perpendicular face seaward, and which, within half-a-mile of the 
Hora Hora, are composed of a yellow sandy clay, forty feet perpendicular to 
the sea, sloping back on the land side to small swamps, and covered with 
vegetation. In places the wind—having found a little break in the cliff— 
has, here and there, hollowed out three sides of a pit, and blown back 
large quantities of sand, leaving the rounded blue pebbles and stones in the 
ttom, and in some places the sand, blown seaward by the land breeze, 
lodges at the foot of the cliff; nearer still to the Hora Hora the drifting 
sand has gained complete mastery, having destroyed all the vegetation on 
the sand-hills. It has the appearance of shifting alternately to the seaward 
or the land side of the ridge, according to the prevalence of land or sea breezes. | 
On the top of this sand hill, scattered all over the surface, are blue water- 
worn pebbles and a few heaps of shells and sharp oven stones. 
I was once, after a very heavy gale of wind, at this spot, which is not 
tapu, and examined the remains of a cannibal feast, viz.—four large cooking 
stoves, and as many human skeletons close by them. The bones were in 
heaps ; the skulls had rolled a little distance off; one of the skulls was 
pierced with some round instrument, leaving a hole, about an inch in 
diameter, on the crown of the forehead, inclined to the left hand side. This 
spectacle, so suggestive of rough and troublous times, is now hidden from 
view. 
In one of the saddles of this ridge, which is composed of a yellow- 
coloured sand, and still thirty feet high—the hardened brown sand is want- 
ing here; but the adjoining cliffs are of a yellow sandy clay—I found the 
portions of at least three Moas, one large stone axe, but no obsidian flakes. 
(gts ee Tie a ier ese Boia 
