604 Transactions. — Miscellaneous. 



pieces, found scattered on the land in places where they have 

 been heated and dried by the sun. 



"Further, it is constantly asserted in the fabulous stories 

 of the tribes of these parts that the greenstone is truly a fish. 

 (But how did it become hardened — stonified?) That fish, the 

 greenstone, is said to have come to this land from abroad [far 

 off on the other side] . On its first coming hither it made 

 Tuhna [island] , when the dark rocky barriers of tuhua 

 [obsidian] grinned fiercely in defiance, showing their teeth ; so 

 greenstone kept off, floating away at a distance, and not 

 coming near the shore until it reached the open space between 

 Whareama and Motuairaka* — that is, to Takiritane. There 

 also the teeth of those rocks showed themselves fiercely. Still 

 floating away at a distance from land, it was finally drifted on 

 shore at Kaikoura, where also is Poutini Arahua, the water in 

 which lies this fish, the greenstone. 



" Here is yet another relation [respecting it] by Himiona 

 te Aka. When the men-workers of greenstone go thither, on 

 arriving at the spot some remain on the shore [banks] , and 

 the man who has been prepared to dive goes [into the water] , 

 taking with him the end of the long rope, the other end being 

 with the men on the bank. He dives and goes right down to 

 shell-sand [to the beds of shell-fish] , to the very bottom. He 

 looks up above, lo ! the greenstone pendent over and above 

 him. Then he casts the rope prepared with a running knot,t 

 and it is secured, and then [th<j greenstone] is dragged out 

 and lies on the bank of the water. It is carried off on [their] 

 shoulders in a litter to the village, and worked up ; and when 

 finished [they] go to dispose of [their] riches. Here ends the 

 information [I have received] concerning the greenstone." 



While the general meaning of these last-written communi- 

 cations may be understood by the English reader, there is 

 much that remains unknown to him, partly owing to the dif- 

 ferent idiom, but mainly to the brief mention of, or merely 

 allusions to, Maori matters, beliefs, customs, and habits, so 

 well known to the Maoris themselves. And it would take 

 some considerable time and much writing fully to explain all 

 those allusions. Not unfrequently has a Maori relation of 

 ancient doings, especially when containing brief notices or 



* On east coast, near Castle Point. 



t The same curious, rare, and highly descriptive term (here-taniwlia) 

 is used here that was used in the account given of the capture of the big 

 and fierce viako shark (Trans. N.Z. Inst., vol. xxiv., p. 448). This 

 further tends to show their fixed belief in the greenstone being a living 

 creature ; ika = a fish. The same name was also invariably given by the 

 old Maoris to bitumen, which was only (and rarely) found in large ab- 

 normal black lumps on the sea-shore, and used by them as a prized 

 masticatory. 



