ori myths--to
the tale, for instance, of the great flood which came in answer to the
prayers of two faithful priests as punishment for the unbelief, the
discords and the wickedness of mankind; then all were drowned save a
little handful of men and women who floated about on a raft for eight
moons and so reached Hawaiki. Of the creation of man suffice it to say
that he was made by Tiki, who formed him out of red clay, or, as some
say, out of clay reddened by his own blood. Woman's origin was more
ethereal and poetic; her sire was a noonday sunbeam, her mother a
sylvan echo. Many are the legends of the hero, Maui. He lassooed the
sun with ropes and beat him till he had to go slower, and so the day
grew longer. The first ropes thus used were of flax, which burned and
snapped in the sun's heat. Then Maui twisted a cord of the tresses of
his sister, Ina, and this stayed unconsumed. It was Maui who went to
fetch for man's use the fire which streamed from the finger-nails of
the fire goddess, and who fished up the North Island of New Zealand,
still called by the Maoris _Te Ika a Maui_, the fish of Maui. He first
taught tattooing and the art of catching fish with bait, and died in
the endeavour to gain immortality for men. Death would have been done
away with had Maui successfully accomplished the feat of creeping
through the body of a certain gigantic goddess. But that flippant and
restless little bird, the fan-tail, was so tickled at the sight of the
hero crawling down the monster's throat that it tittered and burst
into laughter. So the goblin awoke, and Maui died for man in vain.

Such are some of the sacred myths of the Maori. They vary very greatly
in different tribes and are loaded with masses of detail largely
genealogical. The religious myths form but one portion of an immense
body of traditional lore, made up of songs and chants, genealogies,
tribal histories, fables, fairy-tales and romantic stories. Utterly
ignorant as the Maoris were of any kind of writing or picture-drawing,
the volume of their lore is amazing, and is an example of the power of
the human memory when assiduously cultivated. Very great care was,
of course, taken to hand it down from father to son in the priestly
families. In certain places in New Zealand, notably at Wanganui,
sacred colleges stood called Whare-kura (Red-house). These halls had
to be built by priestly hands, stood turned to the east, and could
only be approached by the purified. They