MAURI OF MAUNGAKIEKIE.

Auckland Star, Volume LX, Issue 11, 14 January 1929, Page 6

MAURI OF MAUNGAKIEKIE.

Cold and severe, fashioned in stone, stand* a Mauri in Cornwall Park. The average pakeha passes it by, for he knows not what it is, nor what it was in the far away days before the white man came to the land.* Once the Mauris were many. There was one of traditional fame on the slopes of Pukckohe Hill, and because it was there the pigeons and tuis came to be snared, as the hill was a famous bird-taking ground. The Mauri at Maungakiekie originally came from th<; Northland. The Maoris of the* isthmus erected it at Oinahii Hill near the Three Kings, where it stood for centuries. It was synonymous with fertility. Plentiful were the kumara crops. Maori wahines -wrapped brown arms around it and whispered incantations for the same reason that some European women pray. It wag known to the early Europeans. It was there until some disrespectful young pakehas tumbled it over. For years it lay besida a wire fence until the late Sir John Campbell learned its history and had it shifted and re-ereeted in Cornwall Park. It is a basaltic column, and for all time it will defv the wind and weather. This in brief is the history of the Mauri on the slope where the road winds upward through a plantation of olive trees. For Maungakiekie's own Mauri you must look further afield. Behind the Auckland Infirmary there h a stone outcrop, and it is said that it was the traditional Mauri of the locality. There is also a Mauri at Mount Eden. Near the lower end of the drive there is a gnarled puriri with a lava outcrop at its base, and on that stone the mystic and ceremonial rites were many. '-D.M.