THE CAVES.

Press, Volume LXIII, Issue 19140, 25 October 1927, Page 5

THE CAVES.

INTERESTING MAORI RELICS. '■'■'■' '■''!!:"';. known ;,, early reI i,! w lii''li - number of interesting nr- , n.-].\s made l.y tiic .Maoris ivcre found. ; ii!c cave is accessible to the public j from the j.ui.ii,- road, ami the articles 1 ":■ '.uteres! found in it are im view in Jil:e -M;iori M-.-t i. m ~f the Canterbury ; .Mi:.?piiii). Vni-thpr along flic main road ! is Monck's Cave, which is just behind I tli<> I.ranch h, O brigade station. Jt was ■ ot more recent discovery than the Moabone Point ..-ave, and was found in the I eighties when workmen were ob- : taming spoil for the construction of the | tramway Hack. A considerable portion of the front of the cave has been blasted or dug away; when discovered it went much further back than it now does. Following are details of the articles found in these caves. Found in the Caves. Moa-bone Point Cave has been known since the arrival of Europeans. It was explored in 1572 by Sir Julius von Haast who has given an account of it in the Transactions of the Xew Zealand Institute, vol. VII., p. 04. Amongst the objects found in it, and included in the Maori room at the Canterbury Museum, arc flax sandals (used by the South Island Maoris for walking on snow); a \'L'ry large wooden fish hook; a curiously shaped hair-comb; portions of birdspears, several fire-sticks. Of the objects found outside the cave, the most interesting are pieces of stone, partly cut through, for the manufacture of adzes. In the Moa skeleton case at the Museum is a Maori skeleton found in the Moa-bone Point cave. The Maoris used to place their dead cither in a small liousc specially prepared, or else in the fork of a tree, until the flesh had decayed. In about a year the bones were scraped and cleaned, and taken to their last resting place. Usually they were thrown into a deep "chasm, or waterhole, but sometimes they were placed in caves. The exact locality was usually a secret known only to a few, a precaution taken to prevent the bones falling into the hands of an enemy. In Monck's Cave. Monck's Cave was discovered in ISS9 and has been described by Mr Meeson in transactions of the New Zealand Institute, vol. XXII., p. G-l. It evidently had been closed by a landslip during the absence of the inhabitants, and had not been entered till the discovery in ISS9. The most interesting objects found were those made of wood, all made by stone tools, long before the advent of Europeans. There arc used fire sticks, fern-root beaters, and numbers of other small articles; also bone fishhooks, and bird spear heads. Fawa shells, used as paint pots, and boxes in general, as we'll as small pieces of nephrite, some ground, ruid sonic in the rough. A remarkable circumstance was the quantity of human hair found in the cave. Split moa bones, used no doubt for making hooks, were found, but there was no evidence that the inhabitants of the cave ate the moa, except a fragment of moa egg-shell (which is not in the collection at the Museum) still showing the membrane; this may have been obtained from the adjoining Moa-bone Point cave, where egg-shell, with shell membrane, was common.