TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION E. 295 



of meauing, and telling tlioirown talo to them, whilst we should 

 ]iot have perceived thevn. 



Many of the discoveries were no doubt made mvoluntarily, 

 such as in cases where canoes have been blown out of their 

 courses, or driven off the land whilst fishing, <tc. ; but all the 

 greater discoveries were made by expeditions fitted out for 

 exploring purposes, generally with a view of finding new lands 

 on which to settle, and in which the people carried with them 

 animals and plants to acclimatise in their new homes. The 

 causes of these expeditions were, in general, wars, quarrels 

 about land, supremacy, or over-population, in which the defeated 

 or weaker party left their old homes to find new ones in places 

 of safety from their enemies. Their traditions make frequent 

 mention of these causes, and some give quite minute particulars 

 respecting them. 



It has not been my purpose to entei' more than inci- 

 dentally into the question of the dates at which the various 

 groups were discovered or became settled, though the informa- 

 tion exists for doing so with some degi-ee of certainty — that is, 

 if M'e allow to the genealogies of the peoi^le the weight that is 

 assuredly their due. The information is not yet complete, but 

 it may be made so, and it is to be hoped that all those who 

 have the opportunity of collecting such information will do so 

 before it is too late. When we come to remember that these 

 genealogies are the only sources from whence the approximate 

 (lates of events in the history of the Pacific can ever be fixed, 

 their importance becomes evident. Many of them from each 

 island are required as a check before reliable deductions can 

 be drawn. It is thus, from the mean of a very large number 

 of genealogies, I have been able to assign twenty-one as the 

 number of generations which have elapsed since the great lickc 

 arrived, and New Zealand was colonised by the Maoris." It 

 has often been said by those who have paid little attention to 

 the matter that these genealogies are of little value, and that 

 they could not be retained in the memory ; but on this subject 

 only those who have studied and compared them can form an 

 opinion. Without going into particulars, for which this is not 

 the place, let me give one instance which will show that by 

 their aid, and by their aid alone, it will be possible to arrive 

 at the relative date of events in Polynesian history. Tlie 

 Maori and the Hawaiian, like many other islanders, have 

 ancestors in common. Tracing the descent from one of their 

 great heroes of old by the genealogies preserved by each of 



* Though tvvent3'-one is the mean number of generations since the 

 Maoris settled in New Zealand, it is right to say that such mean is 

 derived from genealogies belonging to the descendants of all the known 

 original canoes. It is more than probable that the arrival of some of the 

 canoes took place several generations after the first ones recorded. 



