802 PROCEEDINGS OF SECTION F. 
mean of a very large number of genealogies, at about the year 
1350, or twenty generations back from 1850. Tradition says that 
one or more canoes have left New Zealand since that time for 
Hawaiki, but no certain news has ever been heard of the crews 
since their departure. | Whether they reached any of the islands 
or not, is uncertain ; but none ever came back. We may except 
from this statement the voyage of the canoe Totara-i-keria, which 
left New Zealand only a few years after the arrival of the 
fleet in 1550, for she did return, and was followed back from 
Hawaiki—which probably means here the Central Pacific—by 
a fleet, which was wrecked on Motiti Island, Bay of Plenty, 
New Zealand, during a severe storm. None of the canoes of 
this fleet ever returned to Hawaiki, if we may believe Maori 
traditions. 
If it is true that the Maoris were formerly in the habit of 
making voyages between New Zealand and the Central Pacific, it 
is to be expected that some record of those voyages would be 
found in the traditions of Tahiti, or some of the adjacent islands. 
On this point, I have been on the look-out for many years past, 
but through lack of information as to the Tahitian traditions, had 
made no progress—indeed, had almost given up the hope of ever 
securing any information on the subject—when accident put in 
my way a very extraordinary confirmation of the Maori traditions. 
It will be known to many members of this section, that one of 
the early missionaries to the Society Islands was the Rev. J. M. 
Orsmond, who arrived in Tahiti in 1817. Mr. Orsmond appears 
to have been one of those gentlemen to whom Polynesian scholars 
owe a great debt of gratitude, in that, instead of despising the 
native traditions, he collected a great many, and carefully 
preserved them. These are now in the possession of his grand- 
daughter, Miss Teuira Henry, who is preparing them for publica- 
tion. In the course of a correspondence with that lady, I asked 
her if she could find amongst Mr. Orsmond’s papers, any reference 
to other lands outside the Tahitian group, and mentioned the 
name Aotea-roa as that of New Zealand, asking her to specially 
look for this name. This brought a response which was a delight 
to me, after the years I had been searching for such information ; 
but it was not until further inquiry, and even after a careful 
tracing taken from Mr. Orsmond’s original document had been 
received, that the information was accepted as quite genuine. It 
has already been stated in the former part of this paper that 
Aotea-roa, is the Maori name of New Zealand; the discovery, 
therefore, of this name in the following ancient Tahitian chant, is 
the direct proof of the argument that the Maoris and Tahitians 
were mutually acquainted with their respective homes. By Miss 
Henry’s kind permission I am able to give the Tahitian chant in 
the original, together with her translation. 
