MAORI MEMORIES

Wairarapa Times-Age, 8 March 1940, Page 3

MAORI MEMORIES

EARLY DAYS. i Recorded by J.U.S. for the ‘•Times-Agc.*'i — i Ohinemutu slated by the Maoris to have been so named as the home of a maid who had been "born with one hand " is now a part of Rotorua. Long ago a Maori Pa was situated beside the ' site now occupied by the Lake House i Inn. On a dark winter night an earth tremor was followed by a deafening sound of boiling steam, killing every occupant of the many raupo whares which were all sunk ten feet below the surface of the cold lake. Springs of all degrees of heat and cold were near by in the early days of white settlement. Every day men women and children clothed as Eve and Adam, wore seen revelling in the warm waters with never a thought of shame or harm. Except for clothes, alt were just in the same spirit as our afternoon teas. As a diversion the mon and women in Nature's garb of beauty j would revel in and out of the dense, clouds of warm steam. , Away toward what we know as Tin' | Priest’s Bath was the Urtipa Worn j (heated cemetery I whore bodies wore buried in the earth heated to boiling | point and preserved by sulphurous fi lines. In another open spot a furious bubbling boiling' pool was the scone of “afternoon tea parlies" still in Nature's garb. Stray domestic pigs were everywhere. One would bo seized by the leg. a spear stuck in the throat, a rope attached, thrust for a second in the boiler, scraped clean, back - in the boiler for 30 minutes, then served in fresh green flax kits amid laughter, banter, and chorus of song.