difficulties in running before the north-east winds to New
Zealand from Rarotonga, Savaii or Tahiti. The discovery in the new
land of the jade or greenstone--far above rubies in the eyes of men of
the Stone Age--would at once give the country all the attractiveness
that a gold-field has for civilized man.

[Footnote 1: S. Percy Smith on _The Geographical Knowledge of the
Polynesians_.]

The Maori stories of their migration to New Zealand are a mixture of
myth and legend. Among them are minute details that may be accurate,
mingled with monstrous tales of the utterly impossible. For example,
we are told that one chief, on his canoe first nearing the coast,
saw the feathery, blood-red rata-flowers gleaming in the forest, and
promptly threw overboard his Polynesian coronet of red feathers,
exclaiming that he would get a new crown in the new land. Such an
incident might be true, as might also the tale of another canoe
which approached the shore at night. Its crew were warned of the
neighbourhood of land by the barking of a dog which they had with them
and which scented a whale's carcass stranded on the beach. On the
other hand we are gravely told that the hero Gliding-Tide having
dropped an axe overboard off the shore, muttered an incantation so
powerful that the bottom of the sea rose up, the waters divided, and
the axe returned to his hand. The shoal at any rate is there, and is
pointed out to this day. And what are we to say to the tale of another
leader, whose canoe was upset in the South Seas, and who swam all the
way to New Zealand?

The traditions say that the Maori Pilgrim Fathers left the island
of Hawaiki for New Zealand about the beginning of the 15th century.
Hawaiki is probably one of the "shores of old romance." Other
Polynesian races also claim to have come thence. Mr. Percy Smith gives
good reasons for the suggestion that the ancestors of the Maoris
migrated from the Society Islands and from Rarotonga, and that their
principal migration took place about five hundred years ago. It seems
likely enough, however, that previous immigrants had gone before them.
One remnant of these, the now almost extinct Moriori, colonised the
Chatham Islands, whither they were not followed by the conquering
Maori until the present century. The two most famous of the great
double canoes of the Maori settlers were the Arawa (shark), and the
Tainui (flood-tide). On board thereof, with the men, women, and
children, were brought