The country of the greenstone lies between the Arahura and Hokitika rivers in Westland, a territory by no means easy to invade eighty years ago. The war parties of the Ngatitoa reached it, however, creeping along the rugged sea-coast, and, where the beaches ended, scaling cliffs by means of ladders. They conquered the greenstone district (from which the whole South Island takes its Maori name, Te Wai Pounamou), and settled down there among the subdued natives. Then, one might fancy, the Ngatitoa would have halted. South of the Teremakau valley there was no greenstone; for the stone, _tangi-wai_, found near Milford Sound, though often classed with greenstone, is a distinct mineral, softer and much less valuable. Nor were there any more tribes with villages worth plundering. Save for a few wandering fugitives, the mountains and coast of the south-west were empty, or peopled only by the Maori imagination with ogres and fairies, dangerous to the intruder. Beyond this drenched and difficult country, however, the Ngatitoa resolved to pass. They learned--from captives, one supposes--of the existence of a low saddle, by which a man may cross from the west coast to the lakes of Otago without mounting two thousand feet. By this way, the Haast Pass, they resolved to march, and fall with musket and _meré_ upon the unexpecting Ngaitahu of Otago. Their leader in this daring project was a certain Puoho. We may believe that the successes of Rauparaha on the east coast, and the fall, one after the other, of Omihi, the two stockades of Akaroa, and the famous _pa_ of Kaiapoi, had fired the blood of his young men, and that Puoho dreamed of nothing less than the complete conquest of the south. He nearly effected it. By a daring canoe voyage from Port Nicholson to southern Westland, and by landing there and crossing the Haast Saddle, this tattooed Hannibal turned the higher Alps and descended upon Lake Hawea, surprising there a village of the Ngaitahu. Only one of the inhabitants escaped, a lad who was saved to guide the marauders to the camp of a family living at Lake Wanaka. The boy managed to slip away from the two captors who were his guards, and ran all the way to Wanaka to warn the threatened family--his own relatives. When the two guards gave chase, they found the intended victims prepared for them; they fell into an ambuscade and were both killed--tomahawked. Before the main body of the invaders came up, the Ngaitahu family was far away. At Wanaka, Puoho’s daring scheme became more daring still, for he conceived and executed no less a plan than that of paddling down the Clutha River on rafts made of flax sticks--crazy craft for such a river. The flower stalks or sticks of the native flax are buoyant enough when dead and dry; but they soon become water-logged and are absurdly brittle. They supply such rafts as small boys love to construct for the navigation of small lagoons. And that strange river,