scenery around the place I stood was most uninviting and not only so. but calculated to fill the soul with horror. The place has a most barren appearance, while the numerous sea-fowl screaming and the sea roaring in the pride of its might, dashing against the dismal black rocks, would suggest to the reflecting mind that it must have been the dreary aspect of the place which led the New Zealanders to choose such a situation as this for their hell. In this barren landscape where the spirits of the dead gathered, every stream, hill and tree had a special significance for the Maori-and still has for certain elders, such as Hohepa Kanara (Joseph Conrads) of Te Kao, who guided us on our first trip to Te Rerenga Wairua.

TE WAIORA A TANE Modern civilization has marked Cape Reinga with a lighthouse, power-station and wireless masts, appropriate symbols of man's material power over sea, land and air. Only once was this European power over tangible things tested against the supernatural forces of the Maori spirit-world. That was when the lighthouse site was shifted, from inaccessible Motuopao, the island of Cape Maria van Diemen, to Cape Reinga. Bubbling came from a spring in the hillside, high above the spirit's leap. This stream was sacred. Its very name, Te Waiora-a-Tane (Waters-of-life), came from Hawaiiki. The Maoris believed that once the spirit had passed this point, there was no return from unconsciousness back to the land of the living. Here, the spirits underwent the transformation that prepared them for their long journey through the seas to Hawaiki. The waters of Waiora-a-Tane had taken the tapu of unnumbered generations of Maori dead. Moreover, a spiritual cleansing with waters called Te Waiora-a-Tane was a feature in the ceremonial of Maori death and the exhumation of bones in all parts of New Zealand. Te-Waiora-a-Tane bore much of the same relation to the ancient religion of the Maori as the waters of Jordan bear to the Christian rites of baptism. This was the stream the Europeans intended to use for their water supply. As the Maori by that time, had become possibly more Christian than the pakeha, little protest was made. A large concrete reservoir was built, set into the hill beside the track leading down to the lighthouse. It is still there to be seen, but that is all. It is empty, useless, for no sooner was the work finished than the little stream, Te Waiora-a-Tane, disappeared underground, and did not emerge until it reached the safety of the sea, where it bubbles forth in a clear spring at low-tide mark. On white, misty days when the cloud is lying