. It
was covered with all manner of beautiful fruits, among which rare birds
sported. They landed, but the trees were shadows. They grasped but could
not hold them. The fruits and the birds were shadows. The men ate, but
swallowed nothing substantial. It was shadow-land. They walked through
all the delights their eyes looked upon, but found no substance. They
returned home, but ever seemed to listen to spirits calling them back to
the island. In a short time all the voyagers were dead.

There is no escape from death. The natives of New Zealand say: "Man
may have descendants, but the daughters of the night strangle his
offspring"; and again: "Men make heroes, but death carries them away."

There are very few legends among the Polynesians concerning the death of
Maui. And these are usually fragmentary, except among the Maoris of New
Zealand.

The Hawaiian legend of the death of Maui is to the effect that he
offended some of the greater gods living in Waipio valley on the Island
of Hawaii. Kanaloa, one of the four greatest gods of Hawaii, seized him
and dashed him against the rocks. His blood burst from the body and
colored the earth red in the upper part of the valley. The Hawaiians in
another legend say that Maui was chasing a boy and girl in Honolii
gulch, Hawaii. The girl climbed a breadfruit tree. Maui changed himself
into an eel and stretched himself along the side of the trunk of the
tree. The tree stretched itself upward and Maui failed to reach the
girl. A priest came along and struck the eel and killed it, and so Maui
died. This is evidently a changed form of the legend of Maui and the
long eel. Another Hawaiian fragment approaches very near to the
beautiful New Zealand myth. The Hawaiians said that Maui attempted to
tear a mountain apart. He wrenched a great hole in the side. Then the
elepaio bird sang and the charm was broken. The cleft in the mountain
could not be enlarged. If the story could be completed it would not be
strange if the death of Maui came with this failure to open the path
through the mountain.

The Hervey Islands say that after Maui fished up the islands his hook
was thrown into the heavens and became the curved tail of the
constellation of stars which we know as "The Scorpion." Then the people
became angry with Maui and threw him up into the sky and his body is
still thought to be hanging among the stars of the scorpion.

The Samoans, according to Turner, say that Maui went fishing and t