Meanwhile, Titokowaru wearied for the trail again, unable to rest in this secluded wilderness of the Waitara. His _tapu_ status had been restored by a Waitara priest, with the appropriate _karakias_ and invocations. Gathering together a band of his warriors--the remnant of the once ever-victorious _Tekau-ma-rua_--he paraded them in the _marae_ of the Kawau _pa_, and farewelling his people, took his old place at the head of the _taua_ and led them off in a grand war-dance. A truly savage figure, that stern old chief, as he leaped to the van of his war-party and danced, his sacred _taiaha_ in the air; his waist girt with a coloured shawl, a rich feather cape of native make fastened over the left shoulder and under the right; his grizzled head decked with white plumes. And with loud cries of "_Haere, ra!_ _Haere ra!_" the villagers farewelled the great war-chief as he marched his armed men out of the _pa_ and struck into the forest of the Taramouku, bound for the open lands of South Taranaki and his ancestral home. But it was no longer the war-trail, for Titoko and his henchmen fought no more, but betook themselves to the great camp of Te Whiti the Prophet, who preached peace, and prophesied sundry supernatural ways by which the Maori would come into his own again. * * * * * The minds of these isolated forest-dwellers were saturated with superstition, with strange beliefs that were a reflex of the vast untrimmed places of nature in which they lived. The white man, too, almost came to believe in the tales of saurian-like _taniwhas_ and water-demons, in the _patupaiarehe_ and _maero_, the forest-fairies and forest-giants, in the occult malevolence of the _tapu_ and _makutu_ spells. A story related by Bent is illustrative of the Maori belief, up to quite modern days, in malignant beings which made their homes in lonely waters and in caves--the dreaded _taniwha_. _The tale of the "Taniwha" of the Kopua_: One day--this was in the early "seventies"--an old man named Te Maire left the Kawau landing in his canoe, and paddled down the Waitara to a place called Te Kopua, the site of an ancient village. The object of his expedition was to procure dry resinous strips of the _rimu_-pine for the purpose of making torches to be used in catching _piharau_ (lampreys) in the river at night. After getting the wood he required he started on the return paddle to his home. On the way to the Kawau he disappeared, and was never seen again alive; no doubt he overbalanced and fell into the river while poling his canoe up one of the small rapids near the Kopua.