Page:Picturesque New Zealand, 1913.djvu/160

98 Mokoia Island, whither Hinemoa, '"the young lady in love," fled to the arms of Tutanekai, her lover. The romance of these two is the most celebrated of Maori love stories. Hinemoa, the beautiful daughter of Chief Umukaria, lived, say Arawas, in Owhata, a village on Rotorua's eastern shore. On Mokoia, a sacred isle of gods and graven images and industrious, prosperous worshipers, lived the chief Tutanekai, and "Lady Moa" loved him. Tutanekai loved the maiden also, and the two planned a meeting on the island, "and the signal of it was the playing every night of Tutanekai (on his flute) and his bosom friend Tiki's flute."

Hinemoa's relatives were opposed to her union with the young chief, and on learning of the lovers' plan, they dragged ashore all the boats. This misfortune did not dissuade the girl from her purpose, and one dark night she set out to swim to the island, two miles from her home. She reached Mokoia exhausted, and in a warm spring, where she stopped to rest, the musical Tutanekai found her. The two were married, and from them many of the Arawas trace their descent.

Tikitere is an extraordinary attraction in a very ordinary place, ten miles from Rotorua. Its immediate approaches from Rotorua are low brown hills covered with tea-tree and common fern. Until within a few hundred yards of Tikitere nothing phenomenal is visible; nor, unless previously informed, would one look for any strange or uncommon works of nature in such a region. Yet it is one of the busiest corners of the whole