and Banks Peninsula, the Waitaha found an abundance of food. On the plains and foothills the finest sort of flax root and ti-palms grew, field rats (kiore) and weka swarmed in the open country. The woods were full of kaka, pigeons and other birds suitable for food. Lakes were covered with water fowl and teemed with eels, silveries and whitebait, and along the coast was an abundance of fish as well as birds of every sort. Classical Māori period Abundance of food, however, eventually proved to be the undoing of the Waitaha, for it attracted other invaders to dispute their possession. About the year 1500 they were destroyed or absorbed by invaders from the East Coast of the North Island, the Ngāti Mamoe tribe. Within 125 years, they occupied the whole east coast of the South Island, including Otago and Southland, where they drove the Waitaha into the back country of the lake district. After holding the land for four or five generations the Ngāti Mamoe in their turn were attacked and finally subjugated by another wave of invaders from the north. These were the Ngāi Tahu, who, although originally settling in the Poverty Bay district on their arrival in canoes, had subsequently moved southwards. In 1627, the Ngāi Tahu had their chief settlement on the shores of Wellington harbour at Hataitai, but began to move over the northern parts of the South Island, which was then the territory of the Ngāti Mamoe. Although there was some small-scale fighting at times, in the first years of the migration, the Ngāi Tahu lived at peace with the Ngāti Mamoe of the Wairau district and intermarried freely with them. Inter-tribal jealousies led in the end, however, to a major battle at Pakihi, just north of the Conway River, in which the Ngāti Mamoe were routed. Thereafter the Ngāi Tahu moved steadily southwards in a campaign of conquest, until after a little more than a generation they had subjugated the Ngāti Mamoe in most of the country of the east coast, as far south as Lake Waihola, south of the Otago peninsula. During this period, when many of the Ngāti Mamoe were a hunted people, some groups of them lived in the caves of the river gorges, as at Weka Pass, Opihi Gorge, and the Upper Waitaki. Drawings on the walls of these 'rock shelters' suggest their occupation. Nevertheless, there appears to have