The Muttonbirders.

On the 22-miles run across to Half Moon Bay from the Bluff Harbour the visitor to Stewart Island is likely enough to see something of the island men before he is across Foveaux Strait. Oyster-dredging craft work the sea-bed for the famous Island oysters; fishing vessels—usually ketch-rigged, with auxiliary motor power—haul up the blue cod that are the very best sea-fish ever caught.

As we near the Island we see not far away on our port hand the cluster of rocky islands masking the entrance to Paterson Inlet, the rendezvous of the Norwegian steam whaling fleet that works the far southern seas. Here the harpoon-gun-armed killing steamers lie up between seasons, while the mother ships, with huge cargoes of oil in the holds, go all the way round the world to Norway and return in time to lead the hazardous voyage. Yon islands, humped, terraced or rounded, are some of the celebrated Titi or Muttonbird Islands. From the end of March, for six weeks or so every year, the whole native population, centred usually at The Neck, is away on the various petrel islands hunting, killing and cooking the titi. The birds arrive “from parts unknown” in the spring, and these off-shore isles are their breeding places. It is the young birds that are taken for food, when they are preparing to fly away with the old birds before winter comes. Most of the titi are captured in the burrows in which they live in the soft soil. All hands are busily engaged in the work of killing, plucking and cleaning and dry-salting the muttonbirds, which are packed in bags made of sea-kelp, covered again with strips of totara and stowed in Maori flax kits. The containers are made perfectly air-tight and so sealed the titi keep for many months. A taste for titi is not easily acquired; but to the Maori palate it is more agreeable than, say, roast chicken. Certainly it is a healthy page 46 food; muttonbird oil is recommended by the doctors as equal to, if not better than, cod-liver oil. Probably the least agreeable thing about the fishy bird—there is nothing of our mutton in its taste—is the smell while it is being cooked. I suggest that the best plan is to make a haangi, the Maori earth-oven in your backyard, and cook it there. But you can't do that in a flat!