io8 Voyage of the Novara. 



One of tlio earlier authors respecting these isles of the 

 Antipodes, Richard Taylor, the missionary, relates that in 

 1840 there was living in the village of Para-para, on the 

 road from Kaitaia to Doubtless Bay, an aged New Zealand 

 chief named Hahakai, who was thoroughly conversant with 

 the history of his native land, and used to enumerate twenty- 

 six generations since the first arrival on the island of the 

 ancestors of his tribe. Taylor is of opinion, however, that a 

 number of these generations must be considered as divinities, 

 and that hardly more than fifteen generations or five hun- 

 dred years can have elapsed since the first vagrants from the 

 north settled in New Zealand.* At that period they knew 

 neither the custom of Taboo (the sanctity and inviolability of 

 all things) nor cannibalism, both of which customs they first 

 began to practise in their adopted country. As the aborigines 

 before the arrival of the Europeans possessed no written 

 language, these traditions were usually handed down froiu 

 father to son, while one or more relatives of the more influ- 

 ential families of each tribe were duly set apart to study 



* According to Dr. Thomson ("The story of New Zealand past and present, 

 savage and civiHzed." London. John Murray, 1859), who lived eleven years at 

 Auckland prosecuting his duties as a surgeon in the army, the Maori came to New 

 Zealand, passing by Rarotonga, from Sawaii, the largest of the Navigators' Islands, 

 about the year 1419. This opinion, which is not devoid of probability, is not how- 

 ever incompatible with the Sandwich Islands being the original cradle of the New Zea- 

 landers, and Sawaii only a sort of intermediate station. (See United >States Exploring 

 Expedition 133S-42. Ethnography or Philology, vol. vii., by Horatio Hale, Philadel- 

 phia. Lea and Blanchard, 1846. — The Traditionary Migrations of the New Zealand- 

 ers and the Maori Legends {Die Wundersarjen der Neu-Seeldnder und der Maori 

 i>/y</<os), by C. Schirren. Riga. N. Kymmel, 185G.) 



