200 x 144 mm. A view showing the entrance to an elaborate meeting house at Thames, a town S.E. of Auckland on the Firth of Thames. These carved houses, or ‘Whare Whakairo’, embodied an elaborate symbolism in their construction: the house is named after a revered ancestor, and each part of the house is then considered a representation of part of that ancestor’s body: the rafters his ribs, the window his eyes, the ‘kokoru’, the carved frontal effigy, his face, etc. Wirope Hoterini Taipari (1800-80) was a Thames Chief of high rank who was christianized early in life (accepting the baptismal name of Willoughby Shorthand) and became an enlightened and shrewd leader in the European mould.