The Uses of Raupo.

The flax and the raupo swamp-reed are two of the most. characteristic and abundant wild plants of the New Zealand landscape. Flax was our earliest item of trade and export; but whatever use can be made of raupo, symbolising the waste places of land? So asks the pakeha enquirer; but the Maori can answer the question, and so, too, can the pioneer settler. Really a little book could be written around the raupo, the unconsidered plant of the marshes and the lagoons, type of the wilderness life like the bittern, the weka, and the hawk. Its associations and its stories are manifold.

To the Maori the existence of a raupo swamp within convenient distance of his home was a necessity of life, a source of food and building material. From the pools and runways among the reeds he obtained his eels, and the raupo sheltered, too, the wild duck and other waterfowl that formed part of his bill-of-fare. The long reed leaves, so light and full of small air cells, made the best of thatching for his house. Easy to cut and carry, and found nearly everywhere, it was the material for walls and roofing. Dried and tied in thick bundles and skilfully fastened on roof and sides it made the snuggest of dwellings, cool in summer and warm in winter. Our early settlers, and the long-service soldiers in New Zealand, well knew the comfort of a whare of raupo.

Then the Maori used the leaves as sail material for canoes. It was the lightest and cheapest of substitutes for canvas, and canoes on lakes and rivers and the sea coast were often wafted along by these triangular shaped sails. There was the hunehune, the down in the red and brown seed-heads, like knobs at the end of the light stems. This was used by many a pakeha housewife in the country for stuffing pillows and mattresses when feathers were scarce. (I remember being sent, when a small boy, to the swamp to gather dry hunehune for my mother, for filling cushions.) As for the root, it was cooked and eaten by the Maori. I have never tasted it, not having been reduced to that condition of starvation, but I am pre-pared to believe the old people's statement that it was edible when there was nothing better on hand. Again, there is the useful-ness of the leaf for the making of poi [gap — reason: illegible] for the popular action dances. So in [gap — reason: illegible] way and another the familiar raupo has place in the economy and the amuseme of the country.