Haast. — On a Moa-hunter Encampment 91 



population, but that they also discovered kitchen middens, with Moa-bone 

 and flint tools. If these traditions can be relied upon, it shows at any rate 

 that the black race, before the arrival of their successors, had been hunting 

 and probably extirpating the Moa. 



So, when relating the tradition of Manaia, Taylor quotes from Sir George 

 Grey: — "When he arrived at Rotuhu, at the mouth of the river Waiters, he 

 stopped there, and behold, there were people, even the ancient inhabitants of 

 the island, but Manaia and his followers slew them. They were killed, and 

 Manaia possessed their abode, he, his sons and his people, of those men that 

 Manaia and his followers slew, that the place might be theirs." According to 

 Taylor, the same is recorded of Turi, who " went on shore and dwelt at Patea 

 and slew the inhabitants thereof" (page 14). 



This aboriginal race was remembered as the Maero and Mohoao, or wild 

 men of the woods (page 15). Enumerating on page 290 the arrival of the 

 original canoes in New Zealand, he adds a footnote to No. 1 2, To Rangi ua mutu, 

 which came to Rangatapu : " On their arrival at that place, they saw stones 

 like English flints and Moa-bones. It is there I also discovered a large 

 quantity of the bones of the Dinornis. The stones were the stone flakes used 

 as knives, which are still there found by the side of the ancient ovens, a proof 

 of their having belonged to a more ancient race than the Polynesian." 



In any case, we have to expand our conceptions considerably as to the 

 time past, when first the original inhabitants, may they have been black or 

 brown, trod the soil of these beautiful islands, in a period dating back long 

 before the so-called emigration from Hawaiki took place. 





Art. IV. — Notes on the Moa-hunter Encampment at Shag Point, Ota go. By 



Canterbu 



Plate III. 



[Read be/ore the Philosophical Institute of Canterbury, 23rd December, 1S74.] 



Mr. F. D. Rich, of Bushy Park, whom I had the pleasure to meet in the 

 middle of April, 1872, in Palmerston, when I was just on the point of return- 



Christch 



ern 



River, nearly across the mouth of that valley, and by which the stream is 



extensive 



middens with Moa-bones were to be found, which appeared to him of 

 considerable interest. As I had already made my arrangements for returning 



