OCEANIC MIGRATIONS. 147 



earliest settlers in the country. Farther inquiries, however, did not 

 support this view. It has been seen that the name of one of the 

 leaders was Rongokako, and one of the places first settled was Tu- 

 ranga, or Poverty Bay. On referring to our list of tribes, we found 

 that that which occupies this bay is termed Wanau-a-Rongokata, 

 "offspring of Rongokata." This name is probably the same as that 

 given above. In taking down at one time, several hundred appella- 

 tives, (the names of the tribes, their localities and their principal 

 chiefs,) it was impossible to avoid some mistakes in spelling, espe- 

 cially as the pronunciation of the natives frequently misleads, the Je 

 being sounded like t, the r like d, and the final vowels slurred over. 

 But this ancestor of one of the largest tribes in New Zealand could cer- 

 tainly not have been a foreigner who arrived in the country only three 

 generations back, when it was fully peopled. This circumstance, 

 together with the fact that Cook, who visited New Zealand only forty 

 or fifty years after the coming of the party with the kumaras, and 

 when the memory of it was still recent, heard the same account of the 

 origin of the New Zealanders, seems to make it certain that the tradi- 

 tion, as first given, is substantially correct. 



It will be observed that the natives speak of Hawaiki as lying to 

 the east. This may be explained by the manner in which the migra- 

 tion probably took place. A fleet of canoes, of the large kind used in 

 war, as is shown by the fact of their having names, set sail (we may 

 suppose) from Savaii to Tonga, between which places a constant 

 communication has been kept up from the earliest times. Before 

 they reached their destination, a gale in the direction of the southeast 

 trades struck them, and obliged them, in order not to be driven 

 towards the Feejee Islands, to lie up to the southwest. In this way 

 they were carried into the zone of westerly winds south of the tropics, 

 and finally brought to New Zealand. It will be observed that this is 

 precisely the manner in which we have been led to suppose that the 

 first emigrants reached the Sandwich Islands, in the opposite direc- 

 tion (ante, p. 130). The last bearing which they could have had of 

 their native country, before they lost their reckoning entirely, must 

 have been when they were driven off to the westward, and it is there- 

 fore not surprising that they should consider it as lying to the east, 

 Kotzebue informs us that Kadu, the native of Ulea, whom he found 

 living on one of the Radack Chain, fifteen hundred miles east of Ulea, 

 supposed himself to be to the west of that island, because he was first 

 driven off in that direction. 



