Bent and a party of about twenty Maoris set out one day from their camp at Oteka, away inland of the Weraroa, on a food-hunting expedition into the great trackless forests in the rear of their hiding-place. They travelled half a day's journey into the rugged bush-country, a lone region where no booted foot had ever trod. They fished for eels in the creeks, and climbed for wild honey wherever they saw the bees buzzing round their hives in the hollow trees. They carried with them _taha_ (calabashes made from the _hué_, or vegetable gourd); these they filled with the honey. When they had collected as much as they could carry, they started on their return tramp to the _kainga_. Bent's _pikau_, or back-load, consisted of about thirty pounds weight of honey in _taha_ and two large eels, all in a flax basket. When the party left their camping-place the white man went on ahead, and was soon out of sight of his companions. After a while he found that he had missed the route by which he had come the previous day. He pushed on and on, hoping every moment to catch sight of a broken branch or a footprint or a tomahawk blaze on a tree that would indicate the trail. He wandered about, up and down hill, crossing creeks, and tearing what little clothes he wore in the tangled bush, until he had not the least idea where he was. He was lost in the forest. Night came on while the lonely white man was still toiling bewildered through the dense woods. He spent the hours of darkness crouched up under a tree, sleeping little, and shivering with the cold, for he was thinly clothed and had no blanket, and no matches or flint and steel with which to light a fire for warmth and cooking. Early next morning Bent climbed a tall _rata_-tree near his bivouac and scanned the wild country round. Nothing but forest, forest everywhere--vast waves of deep verdure sweeping away and away as far as the eye could see. No sign of human life--no guiding landmark. Somewhere beneath that impenetrable pall of green that clothed everything were his people. But where? Ah! What is that blue, thin coil rising slowly out of the forest far ahead, westward? A curl of smoke! A Hauhau camp; perhaps some hunting-party cooking their morning meal. The white man joyfully descended from his tree-perch, and quickly getting into his _pikau_ straps again, set out at as fast a pace as his load would allow him, steering in the direction of the smoke. He toiled on and on, breaking through jungles of undergrowth and clinging vines, over logs and through watercourses, until suddenly he found himself at the foot of a rocky wall which rose perpendicularly above him for about thirty feet.