Page:Tales-of-Banks-Peninsula Jacobson 2ed 1893 cropped.pdf/264

and grass seed is taken to the shipping place, and winds round the base of the hills. There is sand on the borders of the creek. It is a black sand, like that of Taranaki, and is full of metal, which can easily be separated from it by washing. A little out of the road is an interesting ngaio tree, on which a disappointed Maori ended his troubles not many years ago. It appears that he swung grimly in the air, like an old highwayman on a heath, for many a day, but that at last his friends scooped a deep hole in the ground beneath the tree, and, severing the rope by which he was suspended, let him fall into it. These bones, however, were not destined to rest for long, for a medical gentleman of Akaroa wanted a good skeleton, and hearing of this, disinterred it and carried it away in triumph. Maori bones are common in Gough’s, and the sitting-room was once decorated with the bleached skulls, and huge femurs of two grim old warriors, the desecration of whose remains in “Kai Huanga” times might doubtless have caused a thousand deaths. The tapu surrounding them, however, has now lost its power, and the little hands of children have turned into playthings these mouldering frames of mouths and eyes, from which many an order for death and many a glance of hatred may have issued. After passing this “dule tree” one comes to where a wooded valley gives birth to a creek, which here joins the main one. At the junction of the creeks grow a number of wild potatoes. Year after year they spring up with great luxuriance, and when I saw them were in full flower, and doubtless had large tubers underneath. It must be the site of an old Maori garden, and the sandy soil be peculiarly favourable for the growth of the tuber.

Here is a saw mill, which has now been busy for some years cutting the totara, matai, and kahikatea, which abound on the table-land above, known as