A MAORI CARVED STONE.

Temuka Leader, Issue 366, 24 March 1881, Page 3

A MAORI CARVED STONE.

At the new camp, on the Pungarere stream, called Rahotu, from the name of an ancient pah on which the present station has been established, is a carved stone —a stone of great size and ponderous weight, whose facial angles are completely covered with old Maori etchings. The usval curves and intricate lines seen on the faces of aboriginals, which are tokens of a custom very soon to become extinet, are reproduced on this rough block of grey stone, which lies on the face of a small hill immediately facing the larger eminence, on which the old Maori defences were, and the Consta bulary defences are. Six feet by five and s half are the approximate dimensions of the block, and it would appear that at one time the whole face of the stone exposed to view had been covered with what might be supposed to be picture writings. “ Bill Stubbs, his mark,” is here reproduced in a different clime, by a different people, for the discovery of the stone by the colonists of New Zealand has led to as much conjecture as the far famed inscription discovered by Mr. Pickwick. Natives know actually nothing of it as a land-inark, or as a gravestone marking the resting place of a chief, but say that had any such memorial stone been in existence, they would have known of it. Tliey conclude that the carvings were made by the man who lived on the spot, chief his people, Wbn .gave his name to the pah, Eahotu; made by him in his idle moments, which were many, for he is, said by your correspondent’s informants to have been the laziest man former generations of aboriginals knew. Work he would not, even for his own sustenance ; but with the lower part of his back a fixture on the ground, he would await a time when his peculiar proclivities would find a fitting area of development. War was his forte, and he would “ hold the fort ” against all comers. Agricultural pursuits he despised, but he was a mighty man of valor, and waited for turbulence to develop the point wherein 1 he shone. As wars were not continuous, although very nearly so, he had “ idle hours,” which Natives conclude were spent in the cutting away of the stone spoken of as a vent to his pent-up energies. Could not, perhaps, some one enlighten us as to the Weka pass inenptiuns in the same manner ? It is very apparent that the propensity to write his name, or leave his mark, is, and has been, as fully alive in the Maori as in the veriest Cockney who defaces some of the most beautiful ot our public parks, Rahotu did it of old, and not a cutting is madc.ina native district winch leaves a large smooth surface of hard earth exposed, but the names of Maoris _mai_he_sgglLm juxtaposition with those