Evidence of Maori industry

Mr E.C. Shepherd, of Devonport, who returned on Saturday after spending a week grasssowing on his bush property in inland Waikato, says the impression grows more and more on him that not many years before the advent of the Europeans the fastnesses in the district must have been densely populated by Maoris (says the Auckland Star). Especially near the many waterways and lakes are found evidences of the closest settlement. Traces of the Natives are to be found everywhere, and this time he discovered huge heaps of shells, that one time would have been thought to have been deposited there by Nature,

but really they were the freshwater pipi shells that had been carried there by the Maoris. By investigating closely he often found Maori weapons and tools right in the centre of these heaps which had been covered up by the accumulations that were constantly being added. Maori clearings and cultivation show that the Aboriginals were not devoid of the secret of manuring, and that intensive cultivation was very common amongst them, because the soil had been deeply worked. Broken stone axes were very plentiful, and this proved that their implement makers, to supply the demand for tools, could not have been idle men. His last visit, with its discoveries, deeply impressed him, because he realised that what he and other pioneers were trying to do had already been done, and perhaps better, by those who preceded us in the occupation of this fertile country.