The return to Rukumoana--The forest-village--Bird-snaring and bird-spearing--Bent the canoe-builder--His third wife. At last--about the year 1876--the Upper Waitara was sold to the Government. The white man and his Maori people cried their farewells to Ngati-Maru and journeyed back over the ranges and through the forests to their old lands in the valley of the Patea. Bent was still Rupé's servant. The old chief and his household and some Hauhau relatives, armed, and carrying their belongings on their backs, trudged through the wilderness until they reached Rukumoana, their old-time shelter-camp on the banks of the Patea, about thirty miles from the sea. Here they halted and built their hamlet of saplings and thatch, and an old overgrown clearing was burnt off and planted with potatoes and maize. The party was but a small one. Besides Bent, there were Rupé, his wife, and their two sons; old Hakopa and his wife; and their niece, a girl named Te Hau-rutu-wai ("The Breeze that shakes the Raindrops down"). It was an even lonelier spot than the refuge-camp in the Ngati-Maru country; life here was simple and primitive in the extreme. The people tended their little plots of food-crops, shadowed by the dark forest; they snared and speared the forest birds, they hunted the wild pig, and climbed the hollow trees for wild honey. For nearly two years the _pakeha_-Maori lived with his little tribe in Rukumoana. The ancient customs of the Maori fowler's cult were observed by these bush-dwellers, brown and white. For instance, the first _kaka_ parrot or _tui_ or other forest creature snared or speared in a day's birding was not eaten, but was left, as an offering to the gods of the forest, beside an old _tapu_ canoe which was lying in the bush close to the river-bank. It was a hoary relic, this ancient _waka-tapu_, a carved dug-out covered with long grey moss. It was a small canoe, eight or ten feet long, and had lain there for years and years filled with water. Somewhat similar canoe-shaped troughs, filled with water, stood in various places in the forest; these were filled with water, and were generally placed in spots remote from streams or pools. Above them slip-knot snares were arranged, so that the pigeons and _tui_ and other birds, flying down to quench their thirst after feeding on the _miro_ or _hinau_ or _tawa_ berries, were caught in the nooses, and hung there, flapping and helpless, until the fowlers went round to collect the day's bag. This canoe was called a _waka-whangai_, or _wai-tuhi_. When spearing birds with the long barbed spear of _tawa_-wood, the hunter would take great care to avoid getting any blood on his hands in withdrawing the weapon from the bird's body. Should blood stain the hands--"_kaore e mana te tao_"--the spear would lose its bird-killing powers; it would be an unlucky affair altogether, and the forest-man might as well throw it away. Such were the beliefs of the dwellers in those dim forest-places.