524 
TE HEUHEU. 
terminated tlie life of this Chief, as well as those of his wives, 
and all his children who were then living with him, together 
with nearly sixty of his tribe. An unusually rainy season 
occasioned a large land slip on the side of the Kakaramea, 
the mountain at the back of Te Rapa, about two miles' 
distance from his residence; this took place nearly two 
thousand feet above the level of the lake, at the gorge of a 
little Alpine valley, through which a considerable stream 
flowed, which, being thus dammed up, in three days formed 
a large and deep lake, which burst its barriers, and with 
irresistible force, swept rocks, trees, and earth with it into 
the lake ; the little settlement was buried with all its inha- 
bitants, excepting a few solitary individuals, who, aroused 
from their sleep by the warning roar of the approaching 
avalanche, fled to the neighbouring hills and escaped ; one 
of the survivors stated, that Te Heuheu arose from his bed, 
(it was about three in the morning,) and exhorted a Chief 
who was his guest to flee, but he refused to go without him, 
both remained, he said it was his reptile god,* who was 
angry with him for having omitted his usual offerings ; he, 
therefore, immediately made one, commenced a supplicatory 
prayer to the angry god, and whilst thus engaged was over- 
whelmed; the once lovely and fruitful valley of Te Rapa was 
buried, in many places more than twenty feet deep ; its 
houses and groves were swept away, and nothing left to 
mark that it had once been the abode of man, but a solitary 
swinging pole, called a morere, which, with a few feet of 
green sward around it, singularly enough escaped. There 
are traditions of two previous landslips in the same neigh- 
bourhood, one at Opotuka, when a hundred persons with 
their houses and fences disappeared in Rotoaira Lake, the 
other at Omohu, a pa near Tokanu not far from Te Rapa, 
when the pa, with one hundred and forty souls in it, was 
swallowed up. 
Te Heuheu's brother caused the body of the Chief to be 
exhumed; nearly one hundred natives were thus employed, 
but the task would have been hopeless, had not the flood 
* A saurian, supposed to reside in lakes, rivers, and under mountains. 
