Walsh. — The Winged Pilot of Hawaiki. 129 



country and Hawaiki (probably Tahiti or Rarotonga). An 

 account of several of these expeditions is given by Mr. Elsdon 

 Best in the " Transactions of the New Zealand Institute " (vol. 

 xxxvii, art. ii), but I believe there is no tradition extant as to 

 how the first navigators managed to find their way here, and so 

 were able to give the course to those who followed. 



It is related that Ui-te-rangiora, who lived in Fiji about 

 a.d. 650, after making many voyages of discovery and founding 

 colonies in different parts of the Pacific, found his way to the 

 Southern Ocean ; and that another celebrated navigator, desiring 

 to behold the wonderful things described by his predecessor, 

 actually penetrated to the frozen seas of the Antarctic — "a 

 foggy, misty, and dark place, not seen by the sun" (" Hawaiki," 

 pp. 128, 129). But beyond the Island of Rapa, or Opara, in 

 28° S., about eleven hundred miles south-east of Rarotonga, at 

 one time thickly inhabited by Polynesians, there is, I believe, no 

 mention of any land seen on these voyages. In any case it is 

 quite clear that New Zealand was not visited, or the fact would 

 surely have been mentioned in the circumstantial accounts that 

 have been preserved. 



We are therefore left to speculate as to how the original dis- 

 covery of these islands was made. It may, of course, have been 

 that a party were driven out of their course by wind and 

 weather, and arrived here simply as castaways ; but it is far 

 more likely that they had something to go upon in fixing their 

 objective. 



As already stated, there is, I believe, no tradition that will 

 throw any light on the subject. If a Maori of the present day 

 is asked how the first immigrants found their way to the country, 

 he will either answer that he does not know or that he has never 

 heard, or else he relegates the whole matter to the domain of 

 the supernatural. It was perhaps a taniwha that showed them 

 the course — a fabulous monster often credited with more than 

 human powers and intelligence ; or it might have been one of 

 their atuas or ancestral deities, who, under the form of a shark, 

 a cormorant, or even of a blow-fly, either swam or flew ahead 

 of the canoe, and so led the navigators to their destination. 



A theory advanced by the Rev. Wiki te Paa, of Northern 

 Wairoa, inclines one to believe that a core of truth may be con- 

 tained in this strange myth. It was the annual migration of 

 the kuaka, or godwit (Limosa novce-zealandice), Mr. Te Paa 

 thinks, that led the Hawaikians to believe that lands existed 

 in the direction of New Zealand, and furnished them with a 

 guide on their voyage ; and an examination of the life-history of 

 that wonderful little bird at least gives an air of probability to 

 the idea. 



5 -Trans. 



