down some dark mountain abyss or _torere_. Such
inaccessible resting-places of famous chiefs--deep well-like pits or
tree-fringed chasms--are still pointed out to the traveller who climbs
certain New Zealand summits. But, wherever the warrior's bones were
laid, they were guarded by secrecy, by the dreaded _tapu_, and by the
jealous zeal of his people. Even now no Maori tribe will sell such
spots, and the greedy or inquisitive _Pakeha_ who profanely explores
or meddles with them does so at no small risk.

Far different was the fate of those unlucky leaders who fell in
battle, or were captured and slaughtered and devoured thereafter.
Their heads stuck upon the posts of the victor's _pa_ were targets for
ribaldry, or, in later days, might be sold to the _Pakeha_ and carried
away to be stared at as oddities. Their bones might be used for flutes
and fishing-hooks, for no fisherman was so lucky as he whose hook was
thus made; their souls were doomed to successive stages of deepening
darkness below, and at length, after reaching the lowest gulf, passed
as earth-worms to annihilation.

[Illustration]

Chapter IV

THE NAVIGATORS

"A ship is floating on the harbour now,
A wind is hovering o'er the mountain's brow.
There is a path on the sea's azure floor,
No keel hath ever ploughed that path before."

Nearly at the end of 1642, Tasman, a sea captain in the service of the
Dutch East India Company, sighted the western ranges of the Southern
Alps. He was four months out from Java, investigating the extent of
New Holland, and in particular its possible continuation southward as
a great Antarctic continent. He had just discovered Tasmania, and was
destined, ere returning home, to light upon Fiji and the Friendly
Islands. So true is it that the most striking discoveries are made by
men who are searching for what they never find. In clear weather the
coast of Westland is a grand spectacle, and even through the dry,
matter-of-fact entries of Tasman's log we can see that it impressed
him. He notes that the mountains seemed lifted aloft in the air. With
his two ships, the small _Heemskirk_ and tiny _Zeehan_, he began to
coast cautiously northward, looking for an opening eastward, and
noting the high, cloud-clapped, double range of mountains, and the
emptiness of the steep desolate coast, where neither smoke nor men,
ships nor boats, were to be seen. He could not guess that hidden in
this wilderness was a wealth of