Page:Reminiscences of Earliest Canterbury 1915.pdf/41

 their own fat. During those months (February and March) the Maoris asserted that the eels went to sleep, so they confined their attention then to the taking of wekas. They caught eels from October to January. These they dried. On a certain date the entire tribe, with their preserved wekas and eels, would make for the Mackenzie Lakes. In a successful season each man would have a load of well over a hundredweight. They travelled only some ten or twelve miles a day, sleeping wherever they happened to be at dusk. I saw two of their huts at Lake Tekapo in 1858, though, at that time, they had been blown down.

Somewhere in the beginning of the ’fifties the Maoris stopped going to Mackenzie Country.

I have elsewhere referred to the skill of the old-time Maori in shearing. I can remember a half-caste who worked in our shed for thirty-five years. He was a very powerful man, and an excellent shearer. On one occasion he shore 140 big three-quarterbred sheep in one shearing day. This stood as a record with us in shearing with hand shears.

During the ’forties the Maori method of selling potatoes was to place them in flax