POOL OF THE PAPUA.

Auckland Star, Volume LIX, Issue 124, 28 May 1928, Page 6

POOL OF THE PAPUA.

The sun was hot in the still, windless valley of the Rangitaiki, and though w# got a trifle wet iu the fording of the deep and Strong river it was some ten miles above the Murupara Bridge on the Rotorua-Urewera country road —boots and trousers soon baked dry when we off-saddled for lunch at the old camping place at Ngahuinga. We let our horses graze for an hour and boiled the billy, and then had the afternoon before us for our ride up to the bush edge at Te lapiri, on the rim of the ranges, a thousand feet abo\e the Ivainsaroa Plain. In a little while we came to the falls of the Wheao. This tributary of the Rangitaiki, flowing through the high fern and tupakihi, poured itself over a broad ledge of rock into a great circular pool surrounded by steep bushy banks. Below, the brimming pool emptied itself iri a series of little rapids towards the main river.

"There she is. there's the old woman," said Harehare, the whitebeard from Murupara. He pointed to a small rounded log, black and polished by water wear, that went circling round and round in the eddies close under the nearer bank. "There's Hine-ngutu. the old kuia. Julie's lasting well, that old woman. - '

Hareliare's story, a legend told all along the Ranyitaiki, was that long ago, a century or so, an aged woman called Hine-ngutu, when carrrying home a load of tire wood on her back one day to the village which once stood here, was hailed by one of her fellow gossips. She turned to answer her, forgetting that she was on the very brink of the great whirlpool below the fall. She tumbled off the narrow track into the furious waters below and she was never seeu again. But a log of wood appeared in 11m poo], circling round and round, and as it seemed to bear a resemblance to a human body the fancy grew that it was poor old Hine-ngutu. Once an attempt was made to haul out the log, but it eluded all lassoos. Old lline dived to the bottom for a while until the fishers desisted. Now, of course, she is tapu through and through, and though she is very much reduced in size by water attrition, she is the same old piece, the visible transubstantiation of Hine-ngutu. Of that there can be no possible doubt, say the Maoris.

As we watched the deep churning basin, with the tapu bit of timber tossing and revolving in the waters a big black shag rose heavily from a projecting branch where it had been watching us. It was the sable-plumaged kind of kawau that the Maori calls "papua"—an interesting word to the philologist, by the way, for it at once suggests an inquiry as to whether its origin has anything to do with Papua, the great Black Island. It circled over the pool, a silent, sombre bird of omen; it settled on a bush on the other side, and sat there, its eves fixed on us.

Our Maori companions said the "papua" was always there. It fished in the Wheao, and it lived beside the mystic pool. "That old fellow,'' said they, "is Hine-ngutu's guardian. He watches the river, he lives alone here. No doubt he is an atua, a god of some sort. Anyhow, it is best not to meddle with him. If we leave him alone he'll leave us alone. Perhaps some foolish pakeha will shoot him some day—and come to grief in the Rangitaiki."

Curious fellow, the Maori, revealing a blending of shrewdness, close observation and an incurably lively imagination. What matter-of-fact pakeha would have identified that bit of log with Hinengutu, or linked up a stray shag with that oldwives' tale of the Wheao whirlpools —»T.C.