FAIRS OF WAIRUKU. 
325 
rally left to the collector. The natives said it was 
principally regulated by the rank or number of 
those who passed over. In order the better to 
accommodate passengers, all kinds of permanently 
valuable articles were received. Some paid in 
native tapa and mats, or baskets; others paid a 
hog, a dog, some fowls, a roll of tobacco, or a 
quantity of dried salt fish. 
The river of Wairuku was also distinguished by 
the markets or fairs held at stated periods on its 
banks. At those times the people of Puna, and 
the desolate shores of Kaii, even from the south 
point of the island, brought mats, and mamaae 
tapa, which is a remarkably strong black or brown 
native cloth, for the manufacture of which the 
inhabitants of Ora, and some of the inland parts 
of Puna, are celebrated throughout the whole 
group of the Sandwich Islands. It is made of a 
variety of the morus papyrifera, which grows spon¬ 
taneously in those parts. These, together with 
vast quantities of dried salt fish, were ranged along 
on the south side of the ravine. The people of 
Hiro and Hamakua, as far as the north point, 
brought hogs, tobacco, tapa of various kinds, large 
mats made of the pandanus leaves, and bundles of 
ai pai * which were collected on the north bank. 
From bank to bank the traders shouted to each 
other, and arranged the preliminaries of their bar¬ 
gains. From thence the articles were taken down 
to the before-mentioned rock in the middle of the 
stream, which in this place is almost covered with 
* Ai pai, (hard food.) A kind of food made of baked 
taro, pounded together without water. When properly 
prepared, it is wrapped in green ti leaves, and tied up in 
bundles containing from twenty to forty pounds each; in 
this state it will remain several months without injury. 
