10 Transactions. — Miscellaneous. 



were spells, and charms, and invocations, recited by their priests — tohmigas — 

 to ensure a good crop ; for this purpose alone a priest of renown was often 

 fetched from a distance and at a high price. Instances, too, are known, in 

 their ancient history, of some of such tohuvgas having been killed by the 

 chiefs, through some alleged, or real, oversight or fault, or omission, in the 

 performance of their ceremonial taboo. All, however, clearly showed much 

 forethought, and that no amount of pains, both natural and supernatural, 

 had been spared, and that their agricultural work was truly with them a 

 labour of love ! 



Nor did their labour end here : there was still the kamara barn, or 

 stove, to be built, and this was almost universally the well made, handsome 

 house of the village ; the one sure to catch the eye of the Em'opean visitor, 

 from its size, shajje, neatness, and profusion of ornamental carved works 

 inlaid with pearl shell (HaUotis) and stained red. Its walls were made of 

 yellow reeds of the Armido, placed neatly together, with a squared plinth 

 of the dark stems of the fern tree set at the base to keep out the rats and 

 wet, while its roof was well secured with loosely twisted ropes, composed of 

 the airy, elastic, climbing stems of the durable mangeinanije fern ( Lyg odium. 

 articulatum ) , and a drain cut round it, to throw off the rain and other waters. 

 Sometimes those stores were also elevated on squared and dubbed and orna- 

 mented posts ; and sometimes even built up in the forks of the main branches 

 of a dead tree. All those storehouses were rigidly tabooed, as were also 

 those few persons who were allowed to visit them for any purpose ; all visits 

 being formal and necessary. The labour bestowed in those early times, 

 before the use of iron, was immense, and they were mostly renewed as to 

 the reed work every year. 



I have already alluded to the large amount of extra heavy labour im- 

 posed upon the Maori cultivators of the soil through the introduction of the 

 pig ; much also arose from the coming among them of the unwelcome Euro- 

 pean rat ! their own little indigenous animal not doing them any harm. I 

 remember when at the Kotorua Lakes, nearly forty-five years' ago, visiting 

 a very large kiimara plantation (that neighbourhood being a principal and 

 noted one of all New Zealand for its fine and prolific kumara crops, said to 

 be owing to the extra warmth of its heated volcanic soil). In the midst of the 

 cultivation was a httle hut (reminding one forcibly of " a lodge in a garden 

 of cucumbers "), and this by night was inhabited by two old men, watchers, 

 who had a great number of flax lines extending all over the plantation in all 

 directions, to which lines shells of the fresh- water mussel fUnio (1 ) inenziesii) 

 were thickly strung in bunches ; these lines were all tied firmly together 

 into one handle of knotted rope, which those two old men had to pull vigor- 

 ously, every few minutes throughout the night, to cause a jingling noise, 



