The Unioti Group. 



41 



came as near the idea as the Greek in his Chimaera or Hydra. The figure given in 

 illustration (Fig. 31) is a remarkably fine bit of old carving, in private hands in Auck- 

 land, when I saw it a few years ago. Other carved slabs were found with it buried in 

 a swamp, and on all the carving was of the highest order, although in some places 

 decayed. The designs were often remarkably obscene to the Anglo-Saxon sense, 

 although proper enough to the Maori. 





«:-^i-M 



i>**^ 



..■a'. 



FIG. 35. NEW ZEALANDERS CARVING A POUPOU. 



It may be repeated that the strange figures on the poiipon or other parts of the 

 Maori house represented ancestors, human or divine, of the owner of the house, and 

 the faces bear the iiioko or carved face decoration which was distinct in each head, and 

 cut on the living flesh much as the sculptor carved it on his block of wood. An old 

 Maori could have told who the carved face portrayed from the pattern of the moko. 



Union Group. — We may now return to the mid-Pacific, not far from Samoa, 

 and between that group and the equator in about 9" S. lies the Union Group, consisting 

 of the three low islands Atafu or Oatafu (Duke of York Id. ), Nukunono (Duke of Clar- 

 ence Id.) and Fakaafo (Bowditch). Byron, who discovered Atafu in 1765, reported it 



[225J 



