Coromandel; Te Kanawa of Kawhia, and an old tohunga friend of mine in Otakau (who asked me never to write his name, though I might speak it freely) all these have told me of ngarara or taniwha, which they themselves have seen, in various shapes. They were all my friends and they were all truthful men. Some taniwha, they said, were good, others were bad. “Urea” the taniwha of our story, was not only bad, but, like the little girl in the nursery rhyme, he was horrid. Not only was he horrid but he was very, very cunning. He had several smaller taniwha around the district who acted as sentinels and kept him well informed of what was going on. One of them, named Hotaiki, lived in a pool which is to be seen to this day, close to the bridge just outside present day Paeroa. Another of Urea's many sentinels was named Waikino, and gave his name to that village half-way between Paeroa and Waihi. These sentinels kept a very good lookout indeed, and warned Urea whenever any Maori of that district set out to travel to the East Coast. Whatever the purpose of their journey, Urea would go after them, swift and terrible as fire, and gobble them up. Urea, the taniwha of Ruawea, was especially fond of pretty young maidens—as an article of diet. It was this very weakness for gobbling up young maidens which led to Urea's downfall. There was a young tohunga named Hamea who decided that Urea's taste for tasty young ladies was becoming a serious embarrassment to the tribes around that district and it was time he did something about it. It not only made wives scarce for their young men, but that very scarcity made such competition among the remaining maidens as to give them ideas, far above their station. Hamea was a young and ambitious tohunga, with many weighty matters to occupy him. Instead of devoting his time to those matters he was continually being bothered to waste his time in the recital of “atahu” or love charms, a form of karakia or incantation, very much sought after by young men in love when their fancied maiden was playing “hard to get.’ I never found out, to my complete satisfaction just what kind of tohunga Hamea was. Hoane Te Huia says he was a ‘tohunga tatai aorangi’ whose duty it was to read and interpret the stars and their omens, and to guide their navigation when they went to sea. Others said he was a ‘tohunga makite’ or a seer into the future. One chief claimed that Hamea was a ‘tohunga makutu’ who dealt with black magic, and who would, for a consideration, put a fatal spell on anyone who happened to incur your displeasure. As Hamea is held in some veneration by the tribes which knew him best, we could charitably class him as a tohunga of the higher class who dabbled in makutu, if at all, merely as a sideline and to increase his knowledge and his mana. Anyway, I have no doubt that when Hamea set out to put an end to Urea the taniwha, he was glad to have every trick of every grade of tohunga at his command. Urea, as we have already said, was a taniwha of fearsome reputation, and considerably cunning. His motto was, if we may put it in the terms of a famous pakeha proverb, “He who fights not, but runs away, lives to eat maidens another day.” So he withdrew to his cave and sat patiently upon his magic perch to wait until Hamea's other pressing duties drew him away from this particular hunting trip. This is not to say that Urea was a coward, but merely that he realised that what was good clean fun for the tohunga, was not always fun for a taniwha. Hamea the tohunga, in the course of his search, came to that part of the Waihou river where Hotaiki, the sentinel, lurked in his pool. Hotaiki being a minor taniwha, was no more anxious to meet a hostile tohunga than was Urea, but, unable to resist the power of Hamea's magic, he came reluctantly to the surface. “Where is Urea, the greatest of all Taniwha?” asked Hamea. Hotaiki, the sentinel, made the historic reply, “Urea ke nga rua i tana paeroa.” ‘Urea’ is on his long perch’—the long perch of Urea, or in its shortened form, the pae-roa or Paeroa of today. In the course of becoming a tohunga, Hamea had learned many proverbs. One was the “He who eats the kumukumu, (or gournet) in too much of a hurry, is liable to get bones in his throat.” So instead of dashing in to beard the ngarara in its den, he set about thinking up a stratagem by which to lure Urea from his magic cave into surroundings where he would be more vulnerable. By reading the stars, and (some say) by dealing in blacker magic, Hamea conceived a great idea. Knowing Urea's appetite for toothsome young maidens and knowing too that the local supply was becoming daily scarcer, he thought to draw the taniwha away by offering a particularly luscious bait. He caused word to be spread freely around the district that there was a growing superfluity of young and tender maidens among the Tainui people of the Waikato. So, one by one, Urea's sentinels reported to him that everyone was going around saying, “Ka nui te pai te waihine to Waikato” (how fair are the women of Waikato). Urea swallowed the bait hook line and sinker. He decided he would slip across to Waikato, escape this busybody of a tohunga, and try out these reputedly luscious morsels of feminity in the kainga of the Waikato. Now, for some reason or other which was never explained, Urea the taniwha started his journey by following the course of the Waihou river to its mouth, which discharges into the Hauraki gulf at what is now Thames. I have no doubt that he had his own reasons for doing so. Perhaps he thought his departure in an almost opposite direction would conceal his true destination. Or it may have been that he intended to invite some of his fellow taniwha down river to accompany him. Whatever the reason, it died with him. Hamea the tohunga, either by black magic, or white magic, or just everyday observation and common sense, had learned of his route and lay in wait for him