sent round by long circuitous routes, and then, in finding out which roads were safe to travel by, they discovered which was the path to be avoided. They found this out also by actual vision, for one party sighted an enormous monster, huge as a hill, but luckily the men were able to make good their escape before they had got close enough to be seized. They fled before an enormous lizard-like creature covered with dreadful spines all moving like the top of a breaking sea full of ridgy hollows and peaks of foam. Its head too was crested as with a great clump of spears. The men trampled and fell over one another in their terror, and some were hurt by their flurried efforts before they could get away.
When the news spread to the Rotorua country and the warriors heard of this great lizard or dragon, one hundred and seventy of them determined to band themselves together and get rid of the monster, They all set to work to weave ropes of the fibrous leaves of the Cabbage tree, and they made all sorts of strong cords and cables, some flat and some round, some eight-stranded, some double-twisted, exhausting their ingenuity in making the most effective ties and bonds. Their chiefs instructed them how to proceed, how they were to go care-
