Best. — Maori Forest Lore. 199 



on which to cross goods, the mokihi was used. This was a bundle 

 of dry leaves of raupo, or the flower-stalks of flax, lashed tightly 

 together. A Native would bestride this primitive craft, and use 

 a stick for a paddle. These rude floats were constructed in the 

 form of a boy's tipcat, being brought to a point at each end. 



The Unseen Presence in Forests : Primitive Man in 

 Fellowship with Nature. 



It is a well-known fact that the more primitive races of 

 man are closer in touch with nature than are highly cul- 

 tured peoples. In like manner they retain more primitive 

 modes of thought and expression. The figurative and meta- 

 phorical language, the quaint old-time allegories, of such works 

 as the Bible appeal to the Maori mind more than to ours, 

 and they grasp and understand such language far better than 

 do we. The tree of the forbidden fruit is no real tree to the 

 Maori mind, and he understands full well what Eve's friend, 

 the genial serpent, stands for. For such was the human mind 

 among all peoples in the days when man was young apon the 

 earth. This state of mind is a survival of a still closer fellowship 

 with nature which must have obtained in times long past away. 

 It is a heritage of thought from early man. Such language as 

 we meet with only in old-time works and poetry is the common 

 tongue of the Maori. The Maori is closely in touch with nature, 

 a fact due to their primitive mentality ; their leaning toward 

 anthropomorphic personifications ; their belief that man, ani- 

 mals, birds, fish, trees, &c, are all descended from a common 

 source ; as also to their mode of life — the incessant reliance on, 

 and searching for, the products of forest and stream, wherewith 

 to sustain life. 



It is well known that the original tribes of New Zealand 

 were living in the hunting stage of culture prior to the arrival 

 of the historic fleet. They were a non-agricultural people, or 

 at most possessed only one cultivated product — the gourd- 

 plant. They had to rely on forest, stream, and ocean for their 

 food-supply — a neolithic people with the larder of palaeolithic 

 man. Hence the forest-dwelling tribes, such as Tuhoe, must 

 have been close observers of nature, and would be liable to place 

 great importance upon all phases of nature, to strenuously uphold 

 the cult of forest deities, to people that forest with divers super- 

 natural beings and objects possessing singular affinities with its 

 various denizens, animate and otherwise. They did more : they 

 believed the land itself, and the forest, to be endowed with a 

 certain personality or vital spirit, as we shall see anon. 



But beyond and behind all this, there comes to those who 

 study Maori forest lore the central idea that at some remote 



