A RELATIVE OF THE TANIWHA.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXV, Issue 2056, 29 April 1907, Page 1

A RELATIVE OF THE TANIWHA.

The tuuiwha.thnt fearsome beast of Maori story, has. we suppose, joined the large family of other fabled creatures. One would have liked to keep it, for in the old days it must havo added a spice of interest to bush travel, and the reported appearance in the Poverty Bay district some years ago of a strange unknown animal gave hopes that for once science was to be. confounded by the proved existence of a creature which it had declared to have no existence. But nothing came of the alleged discovery and the tauiwha must be classed with the kelpie, and all the weird beasts oi other lands which arc reported to haunt lonely forest pools and dark bunyip of Australia, seems, however, liunyio of Australia, seems, however, to be more fortunate, for there is apparently some undoscrlbed creature unknown to science which is occasionally heard, and more rarely seen, in remote parts of Australia. It is not, as bush legend asserts, as big ns a bullock, with flaming eyes and nil the other attributes of the creatures seen by bushmen under the influence of back-blocks rum. But it is of a size and appearance which suggest it must be the shyest of animals, or it would assuredly have been observed more frequently. A writer in the Age assorts that he has seen this mysterious inhabitant of the bush three times in less than three years. On the first occasion he was sculling quietly one summer evening along a broad deep stream in the bush wlif.-c a lofty cliff came sheer down in the water. Suddenly he heard a great splash behind his boat, and saw “the surprising spectacle of a long lithe dark-colored body streaking for the depths below.” The writer says be thought ho know all the things that walk, and hop, and creep in the bush, but this one puzzled him. A few months later ho hoard, in almost the same spot, a crackling of the dry twigs on the bank just ahead of the beat, and saw “a long dark body plunge into the water from a small bush and disappear in a swirl. Last year I saw the bunyip once more. It was stretched out on a large dead snag close, to the water. I had got quite close to the thing before it saw or heard me. It was nearly black, and about 3ft Giji or 4ft king. The head was unmistakenbly that of a seal, but more like that of tile mink, and the tail was long and quite unlike the flapper of a seal.” The observer got within three yards of the creature, when it saw the boat, and noiselessly slid into the depths, owing its life, it appears, to the fact that two “re-filled” cartridges both missed fire. Others have seen the animal, but are equally mystified as ■o ifs identify, which still offers, therefore, an interesting problem for the solution*of scientists. In the meantime it is no use to tell some people in Australia that the bunyip is an invention of the black fellow’s imagination, because they have seen it.