Research source

This is the pinnacle above and to the north of the Hilltop Hotel, on the divide where the traveller gets his…

Date of account: Published 1923
Source: Maori folk-tales of the Port Hills, Canterbury, New Zealand
Reference: Maori folk-tales of the Port Hills, Canterbury, New Zealand · selected passage 21
Rights: public_domain
Language: English
Record updated: 2026-08-25

Record summary

This is the pinnacle above and to the north of the Hilltop Hotel, on the divide where the traveller gets his first sight of Akaroa lying more than a thousand feet below

Published source text

Read the available text below. Archive transcriptions may contain OCR errors; later context is labelled separately. A recorded claim is not a finding that it happened.

Source passage

Source text · mention only

This is the pinnacle above and to the north of the Hilltop Hotel, on the divide where the traveller gets his first sight of Akaroa lying more than a thousand feet below. The _Kaumatua_ gave it as one of his fairy peaks, its Native name is Te U-Kura, and as far as I have been able to ascertain, it bears no official _pakeha_ name. Te U-Kura, he says, is an exceedingly ancient designation; it was a name given by the fairies. It means “The Resting Place of the Ruddy Light.” In his younger days, when he lived at Tikao Bay, on the shores of Akaroa harbour, he frequently observed for himself the peculiar fitness of the Hilltop name. Often at sunset a cloud-cap would rest lightly on the dark skull of the fairy crag, and to this cloud the declining sun would impart a bright red glow, the _kura_ of the Maori. This was a sign to the weather-wise that a nor’-wester was blowing on the Canterbury Plains--a _tohu_, or token, that was seldom astray. “U” means to rest, as a canoe upon the beach. This surely is a name that the _pakeha_ should imprint upon his Peninsula maps.

Historical context

Contextual commentary · mention only

This material belongs to a folklore tradition. Story type, collector, community, transmission and literary editing matter when comparing it with other sources.

Modern context

Contextual commentary · mention only

Lattice compares motifs and reported features without assuming that a traditional being is a biological species or that similar stories document one external cause.

Investigate related details with Anomaly Graph’s account-based search, or read how matching and provenance work.