Karanama, the seer, stood up to answer Hunia, and began his speech in a tone of ridicule. “Hunia is like the ti-tree: if you cut him down he sprouts again.” Hunia sat quietly through a good deal of this kind of wit, till at last some epithet provoked him to interrupt the speaker. “What a fine fellow you are, Karanama; you‘ll tell us soon that you‘ve two pair of legs.” “Sit down!” shrieked Karanama, and a word-war ensued, but the abuse was too full of native raciness and vigor to be fit for English ears. The chiefs kept dancing round the ring, threatening each other with their spears. “Why do you not hurl at me, Karanama?” said Hunia; “it is easier to parry spears than lies.” At last Hunia sat down. Karanama, feinting and making at him with his spear, reproached Hunia with a serious flaw in his pedigree--a blot which is said to account for Hunia‘s hatred to the Ngatiraukawa, to whom his mother was for years a slave. Hunia, without rising from the ground, shrieked “Liar!” Karanama again spoke the obnoxious word. Springing from the ground, Hunia snatched his spear from where it stood, and ran at his enemy as though to strike him. Karanama stood stock-still. Coming up to him at a charge, Hunia suddenly stopped, raised himself on tiptoe, shaking his spear, and flung out some contemptuous epithet; then turned, and stalked slowly, with a springing gait, back to his own corner of the ring. There he stood, haranguing his people in a bitter undertone. Karanama did the like with his. The interpreters could not keep pace with what was said. We understood that the chiefs were calling each upon his tribe to support him, if need were, in war. After a few minutes of this pause they wheeled round, as though by a common impulse, and again began to pour out torrents of abuse. The applause became frequent, hums quickened into shouts, cheer followed cheer, till at last the ring was alive with men and women springing from the ground, and crying out on the opposing leader for a dastard. We had previously been told to have no fear that resort would be had to blows. The Maories never fight upon a sudden quarrel: war is with them a solemn act, entered upon only after much deliberation. Those of us who were strangers to New Zealand were nevertheless not without our doubts, while for half an hour we lay upon the grass watching the armed champions running round the ring, challenging each other to mortal combat on the spot. The chieftains at last became exhausted, and the Mission-bell beginning to toll for evening chapel, Hunia broke off in the middle of his abuse: “Ah! I hear the bell!” and, turning, stalked out of the ring toward his pah, leaving it to be inferred, by those who did not know him, that he was going to attend the service. The meeting broke up in confusion, and the Upper Wanganui tribes at once began their march toward the mountains, leaving behind them only a delegation of their chiefs.