A SACRED MAT.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXIII, Issue 963, 7 March 1911, Page 3

A SACRED MAT.

WHICH SAVED A LIFE,

The finest sentiment of love and respect on the part of a Maori family was embodied in an episode in connection with the last rites attendant upon the death of the late Mr T. W. McKenzie, of Wellington. When he arrived in Wellington in February, 1840 — before Wellington was Wellington, as a matter of fact —as a boy of thirteen, he went ashore in one of the ship Adelaide’s boats, and with the adventurous spirit of boyhood wandered from the beach at Thorndon into the wilderness of scrub and bush that lay between the harbour front and the hills. Among certain of the Maoris the coming of the white man was the reverse of welcome, and of these, the Chief Porutu, of the Pipitea pa, was one. He saw the boy, and was, it is related, working up to the murder point, when his wife rushed on before him, and covered the boy with a native mat, signitying by the act that he was not to be harmed, and that she wished to adopt him. At once, young McKenzie and the mat became tapu, and the mat has been passed down as an heirloom of the Porutu family. The mat was regarded with great veneration by Porutu’s son, the late E. Piti (Harry Pitt), who was boatman in the Customs service tor many years in Wellington, and when he died it was bequeathed to his son, Mr Pitt, of Waiuui. When the latter heard of the death of Mr McKenzie, on Wednesday, he entrusted the sacred mat to his wife to bring into Wellington, offering to lend the mat for the be-decking of the death chamber until after the funeral. Needless to say, the venerable old mat (said to be over 100 years old), which did such signal service seventy-one years ago, has been viewed with no little emotion by the members of Mr McKenzie’s family, and the offer, so kindly meant, was warmly accepted.—Dominion.