Page 7 Advertisements Column 4

Gisborne Times, Volume XXIX, Issue 3181, 29 March 1911, Page 7

A strangely shaped log of wood was found by a settler of Kiritehere, near Te Kuiti, on his bush section. Ho investigated the fern-covered mass and found, it to be, to liis astonishment, the hull of a nearly finished Maori canoe, about 40 feet long; burned out of a single gaint tree. Ferns, mosses, fungus, and the accumulation of generations of forest rubbish cleared away with the .slashers and a canoe of totara, perfect with the exception, of a little rot on the outside, lay_ revealed. The makers- .of this ancient dug-out must have been disturbed in their work'—tor they left it unfinished—probably by some marauding war party from down the coast. That the remains are very old was. easily. proven by the charred appearance of the. inside of the canoe, which if appearance tell truly, was burned and dubbed' into shape by little Maori' adzes. The nearest float water is the sea—a mile distant—and! the ok workers of wood 1 and stone would have had to negotiate a. high ridge before reaching their destination.