The Maori Forager.

The Maori of the past generations, such men as the old Urewera bushmen I knew in my forestlore cruises of the ‘nineties, would have relished those fine fat tui, in the bird-taking season. His spearing and snaring methods were sensibly regulated; he had his close seasons for the birds, and the forest continued to furnish him with plenty of kaka parrots and tui and pigeons, year after year. The old bird-snarers told me that they found that the gun frightened the pigeons and the other birds away, and so they continued to use their ancient and noiseless methods.

In the South Island, the Maori explorers and the trans-alpine travellers relied largely on the weka or woodhen for food, as I mentioned in a recent account of routes between the West and East Coasts. There, too, the Maori had a thought for the future.

The old men of Arahura, and also a pioneer explorer of the Coast, told me that in crossing the Southern Alps from one coast to the other an expedition would usually exhaust the supply of weka for the time being; at Maruia, for example, or on the Hurunui transalpine route, they would camp and eat out all the birds procurable about the flats before moving on. For that reason, they would seldom return by the route they had taken, if they were coming back immediately; they would take another pass in order to be sure of a plentiful supply of weka and to give the birds on the first track time to increase again.

There was also the class of bush food termed generally by the Maoris “kai-rakau,” or products of the forest, such as hinau and other berries, and the roots of the ti or cabbage-tree; and the pith of the fern-tree; and sometimes even fungus. The hinau and tawa berries—only found in the lowland forests—had to be subjected to much pounding, steeping and drying before they were fit for food. The early pakeha explorers had often to fall back on some of those forest foods.