418 Geology of 



position o£ the cave, I alluded already to the two lines of boulder 

 deposits running from the western headland in an easterly direction, 

 and gradually diminishing in height and size. Between them and the 

 foot of Banks' Peninsula, near the care, drift sands very soon accu- 

 mulated, by which a quarter of a mile to the east these boulders were 

 gradually covered. About 200 feet east of the cave, the mountainous 

 portion of Banks' Peninsula recedes nearly a quarter of a mile to the 

 south, the low ground being here also covered by drift sand, many acres 

 in extent, the highest points 30 feet above high-water mark. On this 

 flat, first the Moa-hunters, and afterwards their successors, the Shellfish- 

 eaters, had extensive camping grounds. Although in many places the 

 kitchen middens of the older and newer occupants, owing to the 

 changeable nature of the shifting sands, have become mixed up so as 

 in many cases to make it impossible to fix a clear line of demarcation 

 between them ; in other instances that peculiarity of the sands has 

 caused them to be very well preserved, and the space between 

 both sets of beds sharply defined. In the first instance we find that 

 the Moa-hunters had numerous cooking places amongst these dunes, 

 situated often closely together, which after use became filled up to 

 some extent by the refuse of their feasts, whilst very often a larger 

 heap of broken bones, eggshells, etc., had been thrown a few feet from 

 the oven. In other instances they show distinctly that before the 

 shell-fish eating population visited this locality, the refuse heaps of 

 the Moa-hunters had already been covered with sand, and became thus 

 protected from their successors. In another spot, without doubt by 

 rain and wind, a portion of the dunes upon which the refuse heap 

 of the Moa-hunters had been deposited, had become partly destroyed. 

 The same spot had afterwards been used as a camping ground by 

 the Shellfish-eaters, their kitchen middens having been thrown over 

 the side into a hollow, thus covering as it were unconformably the 

 former deposits of human occupancy. 



Thus also here, the distinction in age and character of the beds under 

 review is well established. My friend the Rev. J. "W. Stack to whom 

 I am greatly indebted for most valuable assistance, readily afforded to 

 me during a number of years, in elucidating the ethnological question 

 in respect to former populations, informs us that the native traditions* 

 considered uncertain, ascribe the shell heaps to a tribe Te Eapuwai or 

 Ngapuhi who spread themselves over the greater part of the Island, and 



* From Traditional History of the South Island Maoris, by the Eev. J. W. Stack, Transactions 

 of the 2\ew Zealand Institute, Vol. X., page 61. 



