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down and his pursuers stood round him. When Te Mai hara nui came up, he at once rubbed noses with his relative, and with each of the children; then, without a moment’s warning, he buried his hatchet in the side of the old man’s head, who fell over with a groan; then, withdrawing the hatchet, he struck each of the children on the head, cracking their skulls like birds’ eggs. Then, turning to Te Whakatuka, he said, ‘But for your exclamation I should have spared my cousin and his children, but I could not permit you to boast hereafter that you had either slain or spared any of my family. Our honor demanded their death at my hands.’”

The slaughter at Orehu was very great, and the cannibal feasts that followed lasted several days. It was the last great encounter connected with the Kai-huanga feud, but the last victim was the chief Tau nunu, who was killed by Kaiwhata and Kaurehe at Otokitoki (close to the spring on the small promontory at the mouth of Lake Forsyth). These two persons were accompanying Taiaroa on one occasion to the South, and finding Tau nunu alone, they tomahawked him, together with a woman named Takapau-hikihiki. This murder was never avenged. The appearance of Rauparaha at Kaiapoi put a stop for a time to these internal quarrels, and forced Ngai Tahu to combine together to resist the common foe, and so ended the disgraceful Kai-huanga feud.

But it must not be supposed that these places were then occupied for th first time. One result of the Kai-huanga feud was to drive all who could escape from the destroyed pas to take refuge in the bays on the north-east side of the Peninsula. Those places were then so difficult of access by land, that the refugees who took possession of them hoped to be quite secure from pursuit. In the course of a few