Strong Diet.

Our friend the Maori, for all his acquired pakeha tastes, still relishes his bit of shark. On some of the beaches where Maori land goes down to the sea, long lines of shark suspended to dry in the sun on occasions diffuse a fragrance pleasing to the nostrils of all but the finicky paleface. One of the most favoured haunts of shark and shark-fisher is Ohiwa Harbour, in the southernmost sweep of the Bay of Plenty. The main road from Whakatane and the rail-head at Taneatua to Opotiki skirts the well-sunned well-sheltered shores of this fish-swarming harbour at Kutarere. The Maoris say that the inner shore of Owhakena Island, covering the entrance to the wide shallow bay, is the chief breeding ground of the sharks. Here are to be found the kapetau, the ururoa or long-head, and the mangopare or hammerhead, the three varieties of shark greatly desired for food. The mako-taniwha, the fighting shark which sporting fishermen find such a frolicsome foe, appears to keep more to the outer waters of the bay.

There is a large Maori village at Wainui, on the Ohiwa shore, and here come the Urewera people and their kin for their annual fishing expeditions, for a grand feast and a supply of dried fish for the winter. One year I was down that way there was a catch of about four thousand sharks, made by the full force of the tribe out in boats and canoes. Rakuraku, a grim old tattooed chief of the past generation, and his tall lean warrior brother Netana, were particularly keen on organising these expeditions, a glorious combination of pleasure and food-getting.