An Island That Was Drowned.

At this low flat island Taporapora (the name suggests a naming after romantic Porapora, in the Society Islands) Rongomai made his home and took a wife from the people of the place. Then he went to live at Manukapua and at Okahukura.

One day he went out fishing in his canoe. It was capsized when crossing the Taporapora Channel opposite the heads, and he was drowned. His death was attributed by his relatives to spells of witchcraft cast on him by his brothers-in-law, who lived on Taporapora. In revenge, the sons of Rongomai, who left for the North, raised a great gale, by their wizardly arts. This storm, with its huge seas, overwhelmed the sandy island Taporapora. It was compeletely destroyed and washed away, and all the people living on it perished. Only shoals and sandbanks now remain.