Ancient Maoris.

Manawatu Standard, Volume IV, Issue 239, 5 September 1884, Page 2

Ancient Maoris.

[Exchange.] To what age can a Maori live ? Judging A perame Koreke, who died the other day at Woodatock,on the West Coast six score years has been reached, but allowance must be made tor the rough calculation of the natives m years gone by. Like Methuselah'^, the length of their years will never I>e determined satisfactorily. There is no doubt, however, that some of the chiefs m the North. If land are extremely ancient and have seen fully a century pass over their heads. We well remember coming across at Tapuaehararu,, m theTaupo country, some years ago,, two old tattooed fellows with heads ns white as snow. They were pointed out to us by an officer of the Armed Constabulary as two of the oldest ' Maoris m the district, and it was with no little surprise we learnt that one was the father of, and thirty years older than the other. We were subsequently in-; troduced to the third generation m the form of a healthy looking dame cf some forty years of age who pointed out a full grown mail as her son. T?jie patriarch of the family assured us that (f nui nui time by his head and that of his son would have been worth a considerable sum m the Sydney market owing to their beautiful facial markings. But curiosities, of this deseriptioa had gone out offashion. On asking what age he was, he pointed to Tbn<rorird, and tried to make us believe that he was as old as the hills." Of course this did not go down, but we. -really believe hie was so aged that he had given up the task of counting his years. And so with many other Maoris born decades before the pakehas ever settled m New Zealand. They were old men then, and are old men atill, but how old they are can say? Aperame Koreke was not a solitary instance of this long lived race, '