been considerable intermingling of the two tribes so that in later years, the Ngāti Mamoe lost their identity as a separate people. Ngāi Tahu were led in the later stages of their campaigns against the Ngāti Mamoe by the sons of the chief Tu Rakautahi. It was he who in the early years of the 18th century fixed the headquarters of the tribe at Kaiapoi (near present-day Kaiapoi), choosing the site mainly for its good defensive position on a promontory of dry land almost entirely surrounded by swamps. There he built a pā that became famous throughout the South Island for its strength and size, and the wealth of its people. The timber for the construction of the pa came from the forests from Woodend to Rangiora. ‘The fortifications consisted of earthworks surrounded by strong palisades. The defences on the land side were strengthened by a broad ditch which extended across the entire front of the pa. Behind the wall of earth was a double row of strong palisades.’. The posts of this palisade were as thick as the mainmast of a ship. Under Tu Rakautahi, the Māori of North Canterbury developed a system of food gathering and barter necessitated by the fact that they could not survive upon the produce of their local cultivations. Abundant food was obtainable in their territory, but much had to be sought much further afield and brought to the centre — at one season from Lake Ellesmere, at others from the Torlesse range, from the lakes of the interior, from Banks Peninsula, or from the open plains. In some of these out-districts the people occupied partly fortified pa's, in others they lived on open kainga of a few huts without fortification, and in still others they had no more than camping shelters. But their base was Kaiapoi, which, with a population of at least 1000 people, was a considerable Māori town, and the permanent home of the most important chiefly families of the Ngāi Tahu. These people were in constant communication with their still numerous kinsmen in the north at Kaikoura (which had an even larger population than Kaiapoi) and also with the large body of the Ngāi Tahu who had gone further south to settle in Otakou. With these more distant districts there developed a system of interchange of gifts of food, which was really a form of trading. From the far south