north. On 12 December 1849, George Cooper, travelling with Governor Grey, was taken to one of the springs:

a spring called Te Korokoro o Hura [the throat of Hura], which the natives declared to be boiling and of a salt taste, and that it came from the sea on the East Coast [Bay of Plenty] by a subterraneous passage. It is situated at the foot of Mount Te Aroha, on the Eastern bank of the river. On approaching it, Whakareho who was our guide, instructed me in a Native ceremony for strangers approaching a boiling spring, and my repeating which afterwards afforded much amusement during our stay at Rotomahana. It consists in pulling up some fern or any other weed which may be at hand, and throwing it into the spring, at the same time repeating the words of a karakia of which the following is the translation—

I arrive where an unknown earth is under my feet,

I arrive where a new sky is above me,

I arrive at this land

A resting place for me,

Oh spirit of the earth the stranger humbly offers his heart as food for thee.

The above ceremony which is called ‘Tupuna Whenua’ is used by persons on their first arrival at a strange place, for the purpose of appeasing the spirit of the earth, who would otherwise be angry at this intrusion.²⁰

Cooper also recorded the Maori version of this karakia with notes:

Ka u te Matanuku** Matanuku (synonymous with Nuku, Papa and Papatuanuku) signifies the Earth. It is here used for a place where one arrives for the first time.

Ka u te Matarangi^†† Matarangi signifies the Sky, and is used here for the part of the sky which is over the place at which a stranger arrives, who is therefore said to have a new sky above him.

Ka u ki tenei whenua

^‡ This is a curse according to the old custom, and is applied by the stranger Hei whenuato himself in evidence of his extreme humiliation and perfect submission to the spirit of the place, who could not otherwise be appeased.

Hei kai mau^‡ te ate o te tauhou²¹

Following the karakia, Cooper was able to investigate the spring:

On examining the spring we found that the water was not hot and could hardly be called tepid although it was not quite cold. Neither is it salt at all, but has a strong chalybeate taste, and is highly odiferous of rotten eggs. We found a small quantity of sulphurous deposit in the mud through which the water wells up. The quantity of water emitted is very small, and the place on the whole hardly repays one for the trouble of visiting it, to do which it is necessary to traverse about a quarter of a mile of very broken ground, the greater part of which is a deep quagmire.²²

20.George S Cooper, Journal of an Expedition Overland from Auckland to Taranaki, by way of Rotorua, Taupo, and the West Coast: Undertaken in the Summer of 1849-50 by His Excellency the Governor-in-Chief of New Zealand (Auckland: Williamson and Wilson, 1851), pp 40, 42

21.Ibid, p 41

22.Ibid, p 42