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CH. vii. were of frequent occurrence, and the Government was often appealed to by one or other of the disputants.

From the foregoing Maori narrative we learn that, after the canoe Arawa reached this island, the crew did not form a united and compact settlement at one place, as might have been expected. The names of nine chiefs are recorded who dispersed themselves north and south of the place where the canoe was dragged on shore, each going off in search of lands for himself and his own family.

Of these chiefs three went to Taupo, two to Wanganui, one to Rotorua, one to Mercury Bay, and one to Cape Colville; at the same time leaving behind at Maketu some members of their families. In the third generation two divisions of the family who had been settled about Cape Colville migrated, the one to the Bay of Islands, and the other to Kaipara.

From the narrative above referred to it also appears that the lands thus taken possession of were considered as rightfully belonging to the first occupier and his descendants, and that names were forthwith given to a great many places within the boundaries claimed, these names being frequently such as would make them sacred to the family, from being derived from names of persons or things to which some family sacredness was attached.

The chief of any family who discovered and took possession of any unoccupied land obtained what was called the mana of the land. This word mana, in its ordinary use, signifies power, but in its application to