616 Transactions. — Miscellaneous. 



don, which was sold about 1880, and were acquired from 

 the purchaser in exchange for a pair of Moriori crania from 

 the Chatham Islands These heads are claimed by the Bay 

 of Islands natives to be those of two of Kawiti's tribe named 

 Moetarau and Koukou, who were killed in a fight which took 

 place about sixty years ago near the site of the present rail- 

 way-station of Opua. They were taken to Te Puna, where 

 they were preserved by an old chief named Muru Paenga, 

 and were afterwards presented to the party of Hokianga 

 natives who had assisted in the fight, by whom they were 

 eventually sold to the captain of a vessel for £20. These 

 were the last heads preserved in the Bay of Islands. 



Art. LXXI. — Some Account of the Earliest Literahire and 

 Maps relating to Neiv Zealand. 



By Dr. T. M. Hocken, F.L.S. 



[Bead before the Otago Institute, 11th September, 1894.] 



What mystery surrounds the origin of the human race ! 

 Weary with the effort to penetrate it, men, both civilized and 

 savage, seek rest in myth, and, after tracing back their 

 ancestry through a chain with many broken links, exclaim 

 that they are descended from the gods. Will the faithful 

 labours of an increasing body of workers ever succeed in 

 casting aside this veil and giving us fact for fable ? Of equal 

 mystery — yet of surpassing interest — are questions relative to 

 the dispersion of the human race throughout the world, and 

 to the history of that race before the time of that high civiliza- 

 tion which, thanks to the labours of these workers, we know 

 existed more than seven thousand years ago. Every year 

 gradually unfolds to our astonished sight the spectacle of a 

 mighty people possessed of all the magnificence and advance- 

 ment of the present day, yet whose monuments have lain 

 buried under a waste of sand and almost unknown for thou- 

 sands of years. Where at that period was located that branch 

 of mankind which to-day we call the Polynesian ? Is it now 

 the degraded remnant of a once-civilized people which occu- 

 pied some lost Atlantis — some continent now buried beneath 

 the Pacific waves? Perhaps, and probably, the tablets and 

 papyri of Egyptian discovery will yield us abundant light on 

 speculations of this sort. We may deem it impossible, because 

 so inconceivable, that Portuguese, Spanish, Dutch, and Eng- 

 lish sailors were really the first to discover the Pacific Ocean, 



