The Magic Screen.

The South Island place-name Kurow, that of the nearest township to the great hydro-electric works on the Waitaki, must have puzzled many people. It is popularly supposed to be Maori, but it looks more like Japanese. Really it is a corruption of Kohurau, the original Maori name of a hill there, which means literally “Many Mists,” a place shrouded in fog. There is a legend of this misty mountain which I have heard from the old Maoris of Moeraki. A warrior chief was once closely pursued there by his enemies, and as he panted his way up the range, with death very close on his heels, he recited an urgent prayer to his gods, a karakia or charm which brought instant response. A dense fog descended and concealed him from his foes and he escaped. These stories of magic mists are heard in many mountainous lands of primitive peoples.

Mention of those convenient clouds that befog pursuers at a critical moment brings up a memory of an old Arawa acquaintance of mine, who gave me a karakia which he had found efficacious himself in his fighting days of the Hauhau campaigns. He said it might be useful to me some day. The spell was called a “huna,” which means to hide or conceal. This is my translation of the brief prayer to the spirits of nature; an appeal to the spiders to weave their webs across the path behind him and to the “people of the earth” to hide him in the ground with them:

“O Spiders, hide my face,
Ants, obscure me from the foe,
O Ruwaimoko,
God of the lower depths,
Come forth from out thy cave
And let me enter it!
Let foemen search around,
Gaze up and down
See nothing but the empty land.”