Wakefield, Edward (1889) New Zealand After Fifty Years, Cassell & Company, pp. 72-73

In the absence of any more real animals, two mythical ones may be briefly mentioned. These are the taniwha and the kaurehe. Both are aquatic or amphibious in their habits, the taniwha being apparently confined to the North Island and the kaurehe to the Middle Island. The taniwha is a powerful and bloodthirsty monster, frequenting tapu or sacred pools or rivers but sometimes met with in the sea, and devouring persons who profanely violate the sanctity of its haunts or who have otherwise offended the gods. Some years ago, a Maori clergyman of the Church of England on the East Coast reported to the Government that a beautiful and beloved young woman, a member of his flock, had rashly gone to bathe in a tapu pool against his and her friends' entreaties; that she had been missing for some days; and that her body had been found on a rock beside the pool, badly mangled by a taniwha. There is no English name for the taniwha, but it may safely be classed under the generic term of Bogey. The kaurehe has at least a possible existence. It is supposed to be a kind of large otter–as large as a calf, some say–but the evidences of it are far from satisfactory. Several credible observers have described the trail of some such animal on the mud, or smooth, sandy shore of lakes; and the late learned Curator of the Canterbury Museum, Sir Julius von Haast, recorded having heard the movement of some such animal by night when camped beside a lake in Nelson, and having been robbed of a bundle of fish. Shepherds and others in the alpine regions go so far as to declare that they have seen the kaurehe either lying on the shore of the lakes or swimming in the water; but none of their accounts will bear very close examination. The Maoris firmly believe in the kaurehe; but then the Maori mind is not too exacting in its estimate of the value of evidence. But, if any Europeans believe in it at all, it is with that faith which is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.

...

This stupendous Apterix is believed to be wholly exist; though there is no positive reason why it should not yet be found living in some of the hitherto unexplored and all but inaccessible solitudes on the southwest coast of the Middle Island ... Some old Maoris have been heard to declare that they hunted and ate the moa in their youth.

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