The Caverns of the Dead.

Had the late Ruatapu Kenana, the priest and prophet of the Urewera, died a generation earlier, his body would not have been sealed up in a concrete vault, pakeha fashion. The old Maori way of cave burial prevailed in his mountain land until a few years ago. The prophet's mortal remains would have been carried up the steep side of Maungapohatu, the sacred Rocky Mountain, at whose foot he was born, and would have been hidden away in a deep cave. The upper parts of the tapu mountain are pitted with caves and fissures in the limestone, and these have for centuries been the last resting places of the Urewera; and particularly of the section of that tribe known as Nga-Potiki (The Children), to which Rua belonged.