FIJI-NEW ZEALAND EXPEDITION 217 
a word used throughout Polynesia to indicate native people or 
aborigines and should not be applied exclusively to the New Zea- 
landers, who came originally from Rarotonga and Tahiti. Mr. 
Best told many interesting things about the famous canoe voyages. 
The first canoes to arrive found New Zealand uninhabited but 
those coming some two hundred years later found the ‘‘Pre- 
Maori’’ on the coast of North Island. These were negroid people 
and probably came from the New Hebrides or New Guinea and 
were regarded as an inferior race, although the Maori immigrants 
intermarried with them. The spiral design so prominent in the 
Maori carvings is entirely unknown in Polynesia where rectilinear 
designs prevailed and still prevail. People do not change their 
traditional designs spontaneously and Mr. Best thought that the 
idea of the spirals was introduced by the pre-Maori race from the 
West where it was, and is, frequently employed, particularly in 
the New Hebrides. Mr. Best has a great quantity of manuscript 
regarding Polynesian ethnology in shape for publication. He is 
a strikingly fine looking man over sixty years old, with an erect 
military bearing and remarkably keen eyes and alert manner. 
I called on the manager of the Government Tourist Bureau, Mr. 
Wilson, who generously promised to send us photographs and 
lantern slides for publicity purposes and to do anything else in 
his power to help us attain the objectives of our visit. 
On August 1 Dr. and Mrs. Stoner arrived in Wellington, ac- 
companied by Mr. Hamilton, who had been helping in the collec- 
tion of birds for our museum, and very efficiently too. 
Mr. J. McDonald, Acting Director of the Dominion Museum 
called in a government auto to take me to the Art Gallery and 
then to Parliament House, a beautiful marble structure of classic 
design, where he showed me the native committee room very ef- 
fectively decorated in Maori designs. We were then joined by 
Mr. Hislop and took a delightful ride to Observation Hill where 
we had a superb view of Wellington with its harbor and other 
environs. The scenery reminds one of Switzerland; many of the 
cottages nestling on the hillsides and in the valleys resembling 
Swiss chalets. The drive offered one enchanting vista after an- 
other. We stopped at Mr. Hislop’s home which commands a 
superb view of forest, or ‘‘bush,’’ mountains, valleys, and a 
glimpse of the distant sea. The house was from an American 
design and really beautiful. I then had the pleasure of meeting 
Mrs. Hislop, and found her a very kind, charming hostess. Then 
