Chapman. — On the Working of Greenstone. 523 



tion is more explicitly dealt with. He concluded from the 

 statements of natives that the stone was obtained near the 

 head of Queen Charlotte Sound, and not above one or two 

 days' journey from his ships— an error arising from an imper- 

 fect knowledge of the language, the distance being probably 

 two hundred miles by any available road. His account of the 

 fabulous tales of the natives has already been given. He 

 adds, " As they all agree that it is fished out of a large lake or 

 collection of waters, the most probable conjecture is that it is 

 brought from the mountain and deposited in the water by the 

 torrents. This lake is called by the natives Tavai Poennam- 

 moo — that is, ' The Water of Green Talc ; ' and it is only the 

 adjoining part of the country, not the whole southern island 

 of New Zealand, that is known to them by the name which 

 hath been given to it on my chart." 



This notion of a lake in which the stone was obtained was 

 a source of great confusion to geographers, who before the 

 interior was known placed it on the maps at random, generally 

 about the site of the shallow Taieri Lake, fullv three hundred 

 miles' journey from the true spot. The fables Cook heard are 

 to some extent collected in this paper ; but probably most of 

 them are lost. Cook was probably right in his notion as to 

 the name of the country — so far, at least, that it w'as not 

 originally general — ■and Dr. Shortland bears him out in this ; 

 but in speaking of it in the North Island the term got to be 

 general, and that is now undoubtedly the name of the Island. 

 It was doubtless so called because the greenstone was always 

 got in or about water, either in a river or on the seashore 

 • — not, as Dr. Shortland thought in 1844, about Lake Waka- 

 tipu. 



Major Heaphy describes the mode of searching for it. The 

 Eiver Arahura appears to cut through some veins of this stone, 

 and to bring down fragments of it in the floods. On the sub- 

 sidence of the water the natives wade about searching for it 

 in the bed of the river, and the heightened colour of the stone 

 in the water soon reveals it to them. 



Parties from distant places travelled to Wai Pounamu, the 

 water where the greenstone was found, and this term gradu- 

 ally became the name used by the North Island people to 

 apply to the South Island. Eauparaha, early in this century, 

 pointing to the south, said, as he abandoned his home to begin 

 his famous march, " The people of Kawhia are going- to 

 Kapiti, to Wai Pounamu." 



Dr. Shortland insists that neither Island ever really had a 

 name, and that in the case of the North Island Cook picked up 

 a Maori phrase descriptive of it. White gives an earlier name 

 for the South Island as " The Food-abounding Island." The 



