W. T. L. Travers, — The Life and Times of Te Rauparaha. 35 



draining are still traceable, and hundreds of large kumera pits are to be seen 

 on the tops of the dry hills all over the northern part of the North Island. 



These pits, in the greatest number, are found in the centre of extensive 

 tracts of uncultivated country, whose natural productions would now scarcely 

 sustain a dozen inhabitants. The extent of the ancient, cultivations with 

 which they are connected is clearly traceable, and what is more remarkable, 

 and undoubtedly indicates the former existence of a large population, is that 

 tracts of land of what the natives consider, as a rule, to be of very inferior 

 quality, were formerlj^ cultivated, leading to the inference either that the 

 population was fully proportioned to the extent of available land, or that 

 these inferior lands were cultivated in consequence of their vicinity to some 

 stronghold, or position of greater consequence, in the eyes of the natives, than 

 the mere fertility of the surrounding country. " These kumera pits," says Mr. 

 Manning, " being dug generally in the stiff clay on the hill-tops have, in most 

 cases, retained their shape perfectly, and many seem as fresh and new as if 

 they had been dug but a few years. They are oblong in shape, with the sides 

 regularly sloped. Many collections of these provision stores have outlived 

 Maori tradition, and the natives can only conjecture to whom they belonged. 

 Out of the centre of one, which I have seen, there is now growing a kauri tree, 

 one hundred and twenty feet high, and out of another a large totara. The 

 outline of these pits is as regular as the day they were dug, and the sides have 

 not fallen in in the slightest degree ; from which, perhaps, they have been 

 preserved by the absence of frost, as well as by a beautiful coating of moss, by 

 which they are everywhere covered. The pit in which the kauri grew had 

 been partially filled up by the scaling off of the bark of the tree, which, falling 

 in patches, as it is constantly doing, had raised a mound of decaying bark 

 round the root of the tree." 



Mr. Manning points out, as further evidence of the former existence of a 

 large population, that each of the hill-forts referred to contained a considerable 

 number of houses. Every native house, as we know, has a fire-place composed 

 of four flattish stones or flags, sunk on their edges into the ground, in which a 

 fire is made to heat the house at night. Now, in two of the largest hill-forts 

 he examined (though for ages no other vestige of a house had been seen) there 

 remained the fire-places — the four stones projecting, like an oblong box, slightly 

 above the ground ; and their position and number clearly denoted that, large 

 as was the circumference of the huge volcanic hill which formed the site of the 

 fortress, the number of families inhabiting it, required the strictest economy of 

 room. The houses had been arranged in streets, or double rows, with paths 

 between them, except in places where there had been only room, on a terrace, 

 for a single row. The distances between the fire-places proved that the houses 

 in the rows must have been as close together as it was possible to build them ; 



