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The New Zealand Railways Magazine, Volume 12, Issue 10 (January 1, 1938.)

The Little Unwanteds

The Little Unwanteds.

At about twenty miles the current becomes perceptibly swifter and the scenery increases in beauty, for the hills begin to close in, forested everywhere, and the river promises to become a gorge. Piko points with his paddle to two knob-like fern-covered rocks, jutting out from the trees on the cliffy southern bank, and says, “See, those are the Children of Tumaro.” The Maori legend is that more than a century ago a canoe-party of Ngati-Maniapoto men, paddling down the river, found two newly-born infants, twins, a boy and girl, lying exposed at the riverside beneath the rocks. They had been deserted—twins are unlucky, triplets a curse, in Maori belief—and as their parents could not be found, the chief of the party, a man named Tumaro, adopted them as his own and gave them the names of Te Kaka and Hineuru. Hence are these rocks called Ngamahanga-a-Tumaro (“The Twins of Tumaro”).