as the Maori narrator phrased it. It is a matter of regret that some of the earliest settlers did not obtain and leave on record some of the Maori traditions connected with Dunedin and its neighbourhood, which might have been procured in the early days of the settlement from the older chiefs, for few of those now alive can give much information, while the younger natives, like young colonials generally, seem to have little love or veneration for antiquity. Beyond the facts already given, only a few of the native names are now obtainable, and it may prove interesting to some readers to know some of them. The Maoris appear to have been great geographers, in that they bestowed names on every locality, even though its natural features would in our eyes be of but trivial importance. For example, a small creek near Musselburgh they named Kaikarai; the site of the gasworks, where a swampy creek debouched on the bay, was Kaituna; Hillside had the high-sounding name Ko ranga a runga te rangi; Logan's Point was Taurangapipipi; while Mount Cargill or one of the adjacent hills was Whakaari. The latter name has been preserved in Wakari, which is still applied to the further side of the Kaikorai Valley, though it is often mis-spelt Waikari. This mis-spelling of native names, which is far from uncommon where these have been preserved in our neighbourhood, must often occasion anguish to the soul of the Maori scholar; but even in their garbled form they are generally more euphonious than many of the names bestowed by the European settlers. For instance, Waitati, which should be Waitete, is a prettier name than Blueskin, though the latter name is not devoid of association, for it owes its origin to the fact that the chief of the district, Te Hikutu, who was a chief of the Ngatiwairua and Ngaiterangaamoa hapus, was at the advent of the whalers, an old man very much tatooed, which does not appear to have been at all a universal custom amongst the natives of this district, and from this circumstance the British whalers irreverently dubbed the old gentleman old Blueskin, and the name was subsequently transferred to the locality.
No traditions of any incidents which occurred in the immediate neighbourhood of Dunedin are now obtainable, but as showing what manner of men were the original inhabitants of
