114 Transactions. 



Islands — they are importations from Hawaiiki, and are of 

 great assistance to Polynesian scholars in tracing with exact- 

 ness the olden homes of our Native race in the Society 

 Islands and the Cook Group. The Maori is as fond as the 

 Anglo-Saxon and the Celt of taking his home-names with 

 him across the sea. Names of this class are : " Rarotonga " 

 (Centre Island, in Foveaux Strait) ; " Arowhenua " or " Aro- 

 whena," near Temuka ; " Motutapu," " Aorangi," " Arahura," 

 "Takitimu," " Hikuraki," &c. The name "Arahura" (the 

 greenstone-bearing river near Hokitika, on the West Coast) 

 is in itself a most interesting reminiscence of Hawaiiki — a 

 story in a word. It is identical with " Ara'ura," the former 

 and classic name of Aitutaki, in the Cook Islands — the group 

 to which Rarotonga also belongs. Many years ago I had occa- 

 sion, in the course of newspaper work, to board a small Native- 

 owned schooner while she was beating up into Auckland Harbour 

 with a cargo of oranges from Aitutaki. She had been wrecked 

 at that island, refloated by the Natives, and renamed by them 

 the " Ara'ura," which I learned from the Maori crew was the 

 original and very ancient name of their island. It was given 

 to the river on the west coast of New Zealand by the early 

 navigator Ngahue. " Takitimu " is another instance of this 

 sort. It is the name of a high range in the south, near Lakes 

 Manapouri and Te Anau, and is also the name of a locality on 

 the tropic Island of Rarotonga. The name, say the Southland 

 Maoris, was given to the mountain by Tamatea, the chief who 

 commanded the "Takitimu" (or "Takitumu") canoe, one of the 

 historic fleet which arrived on these shores from Hawaiiki about 

 six centuries ago, some time after Ngahue's exploring voyage to 

 New Zealand. The mountain is in a sense the Maori Ararat, 

 for it was here that the " Takitimu " canoe is fabled to have 

 found its final resting-place in the days when the ocean flowed 

 over the plains of Southland and washed the feet of the Taki- 

 timus. From some of the Maoris, too, one hears the fanciful 

 legend that the range is the " Takitimu " canoe capsized, meta- 

 morphosed into a gigantic mountain ; in proof of which they 

 point to the abruptly sloping terminals of the range, not unlike 

 the shape of the bow and stern of an up-ended canoe. " Taki- 

 timu " is still an honoured name in the olden home of the Maori. 

 A Native-built schooner of the rough-and-ready home-made 

 type which visited Auckland some years ago from Rarotonga, 

 manned by a white captain and a Maori crew, bore the historic 

 name " Takitumu," and voyaged over the self-same ocean route 

 that Tamatea's Polynesian adventurers took in their much 

 frailer craft six hundred years before. 



A beautiful and very appropriate name is " Motu-rau," the 



