baskets. Potatoes had been steam-boiled in other hangis at the same time, and these were carried to the assembly-ground, to be eaten with the manmeat. Bent saw the flesh of the soldier eaten. The man-eaters, he says, all belonged to the Waitotara tribe. Ten of them consumed the pakeha, or as much of him as was borne to the marae; the rest of the people did not share in the feast. Titokowaru himself would not eat human flesh, because of his tapu.
"I noticed," says the pakeha-Maori, "Timoti and Big Kereopa, each with a basket before them, enjoying the meal of human flesh. Timoti grabbed up his portion of meat from his basket, and ate it just as if he were eating a piece of bread."
Then Titokowaru rose and, crying in a loud voice, ordered the people to burn the rest of the corpses, so that they should not defile the marae.
The bundles of clothing from the dead lay on the marae. The Maoris gave Bent three pairs of soldiers' trousers, four shirts, and some boots. "I tell you I was pleased," says the old pakehaMaori, who had no inconvenient scruples on the subject of dead men's clothes; "for a long time I had been wearing only Maori-made garments of flax."
A great pile of wood was collected, heaped up six or seven feet high, and in the evening, as dark-
