This puriri stick over 6 feet high is all that is left of a huge puriri which was once the storehouse of the famous East Coast Chieftainess Hinemattoro. Here it is in the Gisborne Museum as it was handed over for safe keeping by the owners, the Ngati Konohe of Whangara. (Kandid Kamera Craft Photograph.) with this mission came to be known as the Young Maori Party. Its leaders followed different paths. Medical men were naturally interested in the promotion of health, hygiene and diet. They pressed for better living conditions, better sanitation, better water supplies that were available to the people. Solicitors became interested in the type of difficulties facing the Maoris in the use of their lands, but all these activities converged on the one goal a conscious adjustment of Maori society to the changed conditions and standards of life. On every side they encountered obstacles of which the most difficult were rooted in the customs and traditions of their people. The end of the last century found conditions reasonably favourable for the reception of the policies advocated by the Young Maori Party. With youthful enthusiasm and Christian zeal these young Maoris set about the task of reviving their people, curing them of their diseases, teaching the ways of health, stirring their pride in the achievements of their ancestors, bidding them to go forward with hope. They went from one settlement to another instructing and encouraging. They realised that if the Maoris were to survive in the new industrial civilisation, they must work. “The gospel of work” wrote Sir Apirana Ngata, “is final, absolute; there is no alternative for us but to accept it. For if the Maori people do not accept it, and that soon, the race will die off the face of the earth”.

LEO FOWLER RAKAU TAMATEA REKE Somewhere between eight hundred and a thousand years ago, while events of great importance were shaping the destinies of Europe, somewhere, that is about the time the Saxons and the Danes were contesting for a foothold in England, a tiny puriri seed fluttered on to the forest floor in a river valley on the east coast of the north island of New Zealand. As time passed and its branches began to spread, it began to harbour more and more of the bush birds until it knew them all. Kahu the hawk flew high above it, but kokako the crow, kakariki the parrokeet, koko the tui, korimako the bell bird, and many another, visited it and made their nests in it for countless bird-generations. Year after year it saw kohikora and pipiwharauroa, the cuckoos, bring in another spring, and saw them lay their eggs in the nest of poor riro-riro the robin. Kou kou and ruru, the owls kept it company by night. Pihere the robin and pihipihi (which pakehas were later to call the blight bird) were among its especial favourites, for they devoured the minute insects which moles