CoLENSo. — On the Moa. 83 



I cannot possibly tell a lie in this matter to thee (emphatic), and say, I saw, 

 or I heard of it. Those men of olden time, as I have said, never saw * the 

 Moa — that is, its body, its size, its length, its height, its feathers — never 

 once. No man ever heard of the taste of its flesh, and of its appearance ; 

 or of its fat, or its skin, or its being sweet or bitter to the taste. t For if, 

 indeed, those men of old had known anything of the Moa, they would have 

 left that knowledge to be talked of and handed down to the men of after 

 times. But inasmuch as those men of the olden time did not know, there- 

 fore it is most certain that these men who came after them did not know 

 also. Again : you enquire, 'How is it that the Maoris of to-day know these 

 bones which they see to be of the Moa ?' According to my way of thinking, 

 om" old ancestors saw those said bones and called them so, and thus it is 

 that we now know them to be such. But no man of old knew anything 

 more of them, so that they knew it (as) food, or the real living appearance 

 of its bones (when clothed with flesh), which are now seen by us bigger than 

 those of a horse ! Hawea also says. No man of old before the time of 

 Wahotapaturangi knew anything of the food of the Moa, or of its habitat. 

 This phrase, ' the air-eating Moa '(r=?e Moa kaihau), is only a common pro- 

 verbial saying among us ; it is often applied to a man ; a man-moa is such- 

 a-one who turns away h-om his food and lives on air. Again, with reference 

 to the feathers of the Moa, it is said that the feather called the plume of 

 Piopio (Te rau-o-pioiyio ) is from the Moa. When the chiefs of the Maoris 

 die, then this feather is stuck in their hair, and the body so decorated is 

 placed on the raised platform (prepared for it), and the friends and visitors, 

 on seeing it, exclaim, ' Thou art good (or beautiful), plume of Piopio !' 

 Here ends what was said by Hawea and his friends, visitors, about the 

 Moa." 



2. (July 4, 1879.) "Keferring to your further enquiries about the 

 feather of the Moa, called the plume of Piopio, Hawea says, — there is no 

 known body whence came this feather ; the body in which it had been fixed 

 was that of the Moa at the mountain Whakapunake ; it was a feather from 

 it. It was blown hitherwards by the winds, and, on its being seen, drift- 

 ing, it was picked up. When a chief died, that feather was taken and used 

 for head decoration while lying on the ornamented stage, or bier ; and when 

 the corpse was finally borne away, that feather was taken out of the hair 

 and preserved for some other chief who should afterwards die. Hawea 

 also says that the look of this feather was just like that of the Peacock, 

 that it did not differ a bit in its glossiness and variety of colours, in its 



* I believe the true meaning of the verb (kite), here, is — heard of, i.e., knew from 

 relation ; heard it clearly described. 



j- All this is with especial reference to my many separate enquiries. 



