“Oh, well,” said the Premier, quietly regarding the deeply-incensed Wahanui, “if it is Waikato’s land we have come to the wrong place.” Then the tall, dignified rangatira Taonui, almost as big a man as Wahanui, arose and said, with angry determination: “It is our land; the sod shall be turned, and turned to-day!” And it was done. Waikato were ousted; literally they had no locus standi; and, baffled and disgruntled, they saw the big work begun and the first step taken in the civilisation of the great Rohepotae. NOTES [1] The full name of Kakepuku is Kakepuku-o-Kahurere, or “The Swelled Neck of Kahurere.” It was so named nearly six centuries ago by Rakataura, the priest and magician of the Tainui people. Rakataura and his wife Kahurere explored all this wild new country from Kawhia eastward and southward, giving names to the features of the landscape as they travelled. The name alluded to the shape of Kakepuku, but in truth it deserves a more poetical one, as, for example, that of Tauranga-Kohu, “The Resting Place of the Mists,” a beautiful place-description belonging to a mountain a few miles to the eastward on the south side of the Puniu. [2] MS. journal lent to the writer by Mr E. Earle Vaile, of Broadlands, Waiotapu. [3] The old man Pou-patate Huihi, of Te Kopua, told the writer: “Before we procured European ploughs we made wooden ones, and these were sometimes drawn by men—Ko te tangata te hoiho tuatahi (Man was the first horse).” Pou-patate also said that when wheat-growing was at its height on the Waipa, before the war, his people received as much as ten or eleven shillings a bushel for the wheat in the Auckland market. [4] Died in Wellington, 1922. [5] The original MS. narrative is in the Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington. [6] Later in the day the Rangers had a skirmish with armed Maoris who occupied the Catholic Church, and drove them out of it, the natives finding that the walls were not bullet-proof. [7] For further details of these episodes see Appendices.