Page:Reminiscences of Earliest Canterbury 1915.pdf/17

 devoured the best portions of four working bullocks that had been poisoned by “tu-tu” forty-eight hours before.

The Maoris of old would never show anyone, out of their own tribe, the paths leading to their food supplies. They observed the same secrecy with reference to their tracks. There must have been Maoris on the Peninsula for hundreds of years, and yet they had no tracks as we understand them. No one, save themselves or a most experienced bushman, could follow them, as they were only indicated here and there by a broken twig or slight mark on a tree. One such track was a short cut from Temuka to Mackenzie Country, which they never divulged even after Mackenzie Country was settled. Mr. John Hay, of Lake Tekapo, was the first to discover it.

One year my father grew a crop of wheat, which he stacked in the usual way. When shifting the stack into the barn for flail threshing the Maoris came over in a body, young and old, to assist in killing the rats. From fifty to seventy were collected and put into a heap, and conveyed to the pa. When one was wanted for cooking he was covered with soft clay and put into the fire.