Page:Adventures of Kimble Bent.djvu/100

72 gourd), which were hermetically sealed with the fat of the cooked birds.

One foraging expedition which Bent accompanied was farther afield than usual, up northwards to the great Ngaere swamp, a huge morass near where the present township of Eltham stands, and where dairy cattle now graze on fields that in those days of '66 were seemingly irreclaimable bogs and wildernesses; lagoons, where millions of eels crawled, snake-like, in the ooze, and where countless thousands of wild fowl and water-birds fished and screamed and squabbled all day long. To the edge of the great swamp came the food-hunters; they waded across to the two islets which rose from the middle of the bog—ancient refuge-places of fugitive tribes—and camped there, catching and smoke-drying huge quantities of eels for winter food in the home kainga, and snaring many ducks and other birds. In this primeval spot the beautiful kotuku, the white heron so famous in Maori song and proverb—now never seen in the North Island—then abounded; the white man often admired this graceful bird as he stood on silent watch on the marge of some sedgy pool, then, like lightning-flash, darted his long spear-bill on his prey. The birds were tame, and easily caught, and many were snared and eaten by the foragers. "Ringiringi" captured some on the shores of the lagoon by the simple expedient of a bent supplejack and an arrangement of flax loops, set