42 Transactions. — Miscellaneous. 



collected, and, when ready, were carried away for Ngatira.* Hence it was 

 that Ngatha and his people afterwards suffered dreadfully in their fort when 

 besieged through want of water, for the water of the place being outside of 

 the village was soon in the possession of the besieging party, and the people 

 of the fort could not get at it with their calabashes. But the friends and 

 relatives of the foe living in that place took with them their heavy, thick 

 flax-mat garments when they went down to see their relatives;! these they 

 used instead of calabashes to carry up water to the besieged, soaking them 

 in the water (although, after all, scarcely any water remained in the said 

 garments), and when they returned to the fort they wrung the water out for 

 the children and the women, while others desperately chewed and eagerly 

 sucked the loose hanging flax-fringes of the wetted garments, just to moisten 

 a little their parched throats. The water to drink was also the more required 

 through their still eating the dried crawfish, being imjjelled thereto through 

 hunger. For some time they managed miserably in this way ; but at last, 

 on trying it again, they found the armed party (who had become suspicious) 

 watching the water, so that when the women and others went into it to wet 

 their flax garments as before those watchers rushed in upon them, and they 

 fled back to their fort with scarcely any water ! Soon after this the final 

 assault was made, and though the picked band of brave and fearless fighters, 

 Koparakaitarewarewa and his friends, went boldly outside and withstood the 

 besiegers, and that more than once, they v,^ere obliged to give way, being all 

 faint and half-dead through want of water, for it was this alone that slew 

 them. So Ngatira was killed, and Pakaurangi was taken. This battle was 

 called " The death in the wet garments," or, " The death in the time of the 

 wetted garments." The remnant who escaped of this people fled various 

 ways, some went to Kaiora and dwelt there, building a fort f^xi I for them- 

 selves ; some fled further north ; some haunted the neighbourhood of their 



* The crawfish were preserved after this manner : they were taken alive, and in their 

 shells were planted thickly in the bed of a running stream of fresh water, much like 

 shingles are placed on the roof of a house ; there they were kept down under water with 

 stones placed on them. In a day or two they would be taken out, their shells sliiDped 

 easily off, and the flesh hung up separately in the wind on light frame-work stages to dry. 

 The flesh shrunk amazingly in the drying process, and when dried each one was very 

 thin and light, all the legs, etc., having been packed on to the body of the fish in its damp 

 state and there consolidated and compressed, were not now plain, so that each bore no 

 resemblance to its original. When quite dry and hard they were put up in bundles and 

 packed away in baskets, and kept in a dry store. They might well be called fish-cakes. 

 They were greatly prized, especially by the Natives in the interior, to whom presents of 

 them were sometimes sent, who gave potted forest birds in return. 



t Their relations by marriage ; a practice always allowed in then- wars, though highly 

 injurious to both sides, which they also well knew. 



