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was able to breathe. He remained in his hiding place till the first fury of the attack was over, and then he swam to a canoe, which remained in the offing waiting to pick up any who might escape. Paora Taki, the old Native Assessor at Rapaki, always maintains that he might have killed Rauparaha on this occasion, if he had been properly armed, but unfortunately on the way up the coast he had been induced by a powerful friend to exchange his gun for a very simple weapon, which was nothing more than a sharp-pointed stake. In the confusion which followed the rush on Rauparaha’s men, both sides got mixed up in one close crowd. Some one brushed roughly past Paora, who, on turning round, saw it was Te Rauparaha himself. He had on a parawai mat, and was walking rapidly towards the water’s edge, with his arms folded across his breast, and holding a greenstone mere in his right hand. Paora, not daring to attack him with the simple weapon he possessed, tried to secure some inferior foe, and the first he encountered was a woman, whom he pushed over and pinned to the sand by a thrust through her thigh; he then called loudly for the loan of a tomahawk to despatch his prey. A passing warrior, attracted by his cries, seized the woman by the hair, and was about to plunge the weapon into her skull, when he recognised her as one of the captured Kaiapoi people. “Why, Paora,” he said, “it is your own aunt.” Poor Paul tried to make amends for his rough treatment of his injured relative by a more than ordinary amount of nose rubbing, the Maori equivalent for kissing. After another successful encounter with their enemies, Ngai Tahu returned home.

Encouraged by the success of the first expedition, known as Oraumoa iti, a second, on a much larger scale, was resolved upon, to be known as Oraumoa nui. Some little time was spent in making prepara-