THE ORUAITI PA.

Manawatu Standard, Volume XLI, Issue 8542, 24 March 1908, Page 7

THE ORUAITI PA.

Some interesting investigations have been carried out by Mr Hector M'Leod on the site of the Maori pa once situated on Palmer Head, near Seatoun, in Wellington Harbour. Oruaiti pa, as it. was called, was built by the chief Te Rerewa, of the Rangitane tribe, and was the citadel of a populous village that was situated on the Seatoun flat. "In those days naval battles were fought in Evans Bay, and natives came across from the Wairarapa," says the Wellington Post. "The highlands of the South Island were visible on fine days, and in the South Island was the precious coveted greenstone. Th© holders of Oruaiti learned that there wore things as precious as greenstone in the South Island from some Maori voyagers who were blown across the Straits by a fierce southerly. These men, when they landed, were detected by women, and would have been massacred on the spot, but that they told such amazing stories of the fertility of the land in the Marlborough Sounds country, of the abundance and high quality of the fern-root,and that the country was a most desirable one to possess. Their reports were found to be true by the Ngaitahu, who raided the land across the Straits and made in their own, subduing the Mamoe." Tradition records that the Wanganui Natives travelled south with the idea of subduing the Oruaiti pa, and were themselves routed and slaughtered in Worser Bay, five hundred of them falling in one day. In the early days of European settlement various articles of Maori manufacture, such as stcne axes and chisels, flint scrapers and bone fish-hooks, were found on the site of th© old pa, but these have now all disappeared. Pieces of moa bono and moa eggshells have been picked up on the Miramar peninsula, and three people claim to have seen a live specimen of the tuatara lizard. Mr M'Leod states that he saw one of the lizards quite recently, 60 that apparently some of the curious creatures have escaped the massacre that followed the introduction of pigs to New Zealand. Fifty years ago the lizards were plentiful, but since then they have practically disappeared from the mainland.