A Rocky Mountain Memory.

In Mr. Best's “Maori Eschatology,” a description of death customs, and the native ways of burial and the beliefs concerning death, there is a vivid and touching account of the home-bringing to Maungapohatu of a little girl called Marewa who died at Te Whaiti while he was camped there in 1896. She was borne by a party of men over the ranges to the Tama-kai-moana village at the foot of the Rocky Mountain; she was a rangatira child of that clan of Tuhoe. The parents asked “Te Peehi” to accompany them. On the third day of the march the mourning party ascended the high bleak range of Te Whakaumu in a storm òf snow and sleet:-

“Through a break in the driving storm we see the great rock bluff of Maunga-pohatu far above and ahead of us. The moùrnful sound of the lament for the dead sounds through the drifting snows. The mother of the dead child is crouched upon a rock nearby and gazing across the forest ranges to the storm-lashed mountain. She is greeting the sacred mountain of the fierce Tama - kai - moana clan, the enchanted mountain of many a wild legend, that, as Maori myth has it, gave birth to the dark-skinned people who dwell beneath it, and gathers them to her stony bosom in death. For she is the mana of the clan—she is the Mother of the Children of the Mist.”

“The mother is in the whare potae (the figurative house of mourning). She is mourning for her child and greeting the landmarks of her home. It is a combination of mother-love and the love of primitive man for his tribal lands. Now the summit of the mountain is suddenly covered with a white pall of mist. An old man said, ‘The mountain is greeting for her child.’ The parents of the child are a little apart; they have chanted a lament for their child and greeted their mountain home. Then, as the mountain-brow becomes obscured by the mists, the whole of the people give voice together in an ancient dirge of their race. The bitter sleet and snow, fierce-driven by the winds, pelt the mourners unmercifully. Through the drifting scud we see the great cliffs far ahead, wherein are the caves of the dead, where lie the bones of many generations of the children of Potiki. And then, the storm fiends lashing us, we go down into the darkling valley bèlow.”