Page:Tales-of-Banks-Peninsula Jacobson 2ed 1893 cropped.pdf/29

brave and generous actions in war, and his wise and kindly counsels in peace. Te Mai hara nui was the Upoko Ariki, or heir to the ancestral honors of Ngai Te Rangiamoa, the noblest family of Ngai Tahu, but he gained still further distinction from the fact that several other noble lines met in his person. As the hereditary spiritual head of the tribe, he was regarded with pecular reverence and respect; the common people did not dare to look upon his face, and his equals felt his sacred presence an oppressive restriction upon their liberty of action, for even an accidental breach of etiquette while holding intercourse with him might involve them in serious loss of property, if not of life. His visits were always dreaded, and his movements whenever he entered a pa were watched with great anxiety by the inhabitants, for if his shadow happened to fall upon a whata or rua (the storehouse for food) while he was passing through the crowded lanes of a town, it was immediately destroyed, with all its contents, because the sacred shadow of the Ariki having fallen upon it, the food became tapu, and fatal to those who partook of it. There was little in Te Mai hara nui’s personal appearance to mark his aristocratic lineage, his figure being short and thick-set, his complexion dark, and his features rather forbidding. Unlike most Maori chiefs of exalted rank, he was cowardly, cruel, and capricious, an object of dread to friends and foes alike. At the same time he was a man of great energy and considerable force of character. He was distinguished during his early years as a traveller, being continually on the move up or down the east coast of this island, engaged in visiting his numerous connections. He was amongst the first to discern the advantages to be secured by encouraging trade with Europeans, and entered keenly himself into business transactions with the traders who came from Sydney to procure flax fibre. To facilitate his