512 Transactions . — Miscellaneo us. 



tells about it for seventy-five years at intervals. Will the 

 story come out in its main features the same or altered ? 

 Will they be, in Mr. Eeeves's phrase, "photographed upon 

 the retina of Taniwha's mind's-eye for three - quarters of a 

 century"? Will his proud repetition of the story have been 

 with embellishments or not ? I ask the question in all good 

 faith, as I desire that dwellers in New Zealand who know the 

 Maori should w T eigh the grounds of my scepticism, and, if they 

 can, remove it. Goethe, when old, wrote the story of his 

 youth, and very charming it is ; but he knew how deceptive 

 are the mists of memory, and he called it " Diohtung und 

 Wahrheit." How much Dichtung was there in the mind of 

 Taniwha. 



That lively writer Colonel Mundy, in his entertaining 

 book " Our Antipodes,"* talks about the same Maori : " Tani- 

 wha, who must be about eighty-five years old, and seems 

 nearly imbecile, is considerably over 6 ft. in height and ex- 

 tremely thin, with a physiognomy strongly Jewish — a type 

 by no means uncommon to his countrymen. This old mail 

 describes Captain Cook as he saw him in the year 1769 — a 

 distant date for a living man to look back upon — and mimics 

 a way he had of waving his right hand to and fro whenever he 

 walked. The veteran, then a child of seven or eight years old, 

 has no conception of the meaning of this strange gesture. It 

 remains for us to guess. Our great navigator was sowing 

 the seeds of Europe in the wilds of Ahina Maui — plucking 

 them from his pockets and casting them on promising soil. 

 The potato has never since failed the Maori — it has succeeded 

 the fern-root as his staple food — the munificent bequest of 

 ' poor Cooke,' as the natives call him." 



This interesting passage is worth considering in detail. 

 Is there any evidence that the barque "Endeavour" was 

 provided with an unlimited supply of the " seeds of Europe." 

 The sojourn at Tahiti had been long, and, had there been 

 originally a store of miscellaneous seeds, would it have held 

 out until Mercury Bay was reached ? Did any of the flowers 

 or grain come up ? Cook certainly gave the Maori the potato, 

 and at Mercury Bay, but the stock of potatoes must have 

 been larger than anything else of the kind, for the potato 

 was wanted as a food. Further, it may be noticed that 

 potatoes are not sown, but planted. It cannot be believed 

 that even on the second voyage, made after much talk in 

 England about the duty of communicating the blessings of 

 civilisation to those lacking them, Cook went about throwing 

 seeds promiscuously into unprepared soil. Where Cook sowed 



* la the single volume edition, at page 255. The first edition was 

 published in 1852. 



