A MAORI STRONGHOLD.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume L, Issue 60, 9 July 1907, Page 4

A MAORI STRONGHOLD.

EXPLORATIONS NEAR ROTORUA. Six chiefs of tile Horo Horo natives conducted an equal number of pakehas, including officers of the Tourist Department, to a strange old pah between 12 and IS miles from Rotorua. The pah, Puketapa, stands on a great cliff in a dense forest. One of the exploring party describes the visit in the Rotorua Chronicle:—'-The pah is said to be cut out of solid rock,perpendicularly straight upon its three sides, and was only approachable of old on the fourth side by a single narrow drawbridge over a moat of unknown depth and overhanging rock sides, so that the pah was simply impregnable so long as the few defenders remained within. An ever-bubbling spring of cold water existed within the Rock Pah itself, and carvings of the oM stone axe days used to be stored there for security in the bloody war days of old. Some of these carvings are there to the present day. The chiefs led us across a small fern flat into the bush, through an undergrowth of young makomako and supplejacks, and soon the cry of one of the old chiefs was heard, weird and wild, saluting the next sight, which toomed dimly throught the undergrowth of the forest—two great solid rock columns, smooth to the touch as marble, and polished round as if by human hands, but overgrown in most places by clinging roots of trees, young ratas, the chiefs said, which were planted high up on the tops of the columns by their god ancestors on the completion of their work. These two columns were apparently of great height, but we could not see far up on account of the herbage biding a*clear view. The diameter of the columns was roughly measured and was found to be from 30 to 40 feet. The natives stated that these rock pillars were not built by men's hands but by their god ancestors, and that they are the only means of access to the Great Rock Pah on that side of the hill. The columns reach to the level of the sixth cliff terrace, but do not reach to the cliff itself, and persons after climbing up by the clinging tree roots to the top, had to swing themselves by one of the rata branches over to the terrace. Upon the terrace itself an outpost was maintained, and a great store of boulders, pierced with holes and attached to long bush ropes made from the akc vine, were always on hand and were thrown down apon the invading enemy below with fatal effect. The chiefs were asked by the Government officers if any of those ancient boulders were to be had, and they said some of these were scattered about would probably bear out their statement. And sure enough on turning over some of the moss-covered boulders near the pillars two or three were found with the holes distinctly bored through. Arrangements were made there and then that the chiefs, when convenient, would take a few of these old artillery relics to the Tourist Office at Rotorua.