A REMARKABLE MAORI MANUSCRIPT. 



r I ^HE following remarkable manuscript was discovered 

 -*- by the agent of the Public Parsimony Society of New 

 Zealand in March of last year. There is a cavern, the 

 entrance to which is about eight miles from Mt. Pollux, in 

 Otago, in which the agent was hunting for diamonds to 

 sell to Mesdames Vand Erbuilt and Makke, with a view 

 to paying off the British national debt. In one of the 

 dry and dust-covered clefts of the cavern, about a hun- 

 dred and thirty-four miles from the entrance, he came 

 upon a roll which, on examination, proved to be covered 

 with characters of a very peculiar kind, and which, while 

 they seemed to be a form of writing, were totally unin- 

 telligible to the most learned Englishmen in Dunedin and 

 Auckland. It occurred to the Governor, however, that it 

 might be possible the New Zealanders had formerly pos- 

 sessed a written language, all traces of which had hith- 

 erto escaped discovery. He therefore summoned the old- 

 est and gravest of the native arikis of Maui, and demanded 

 whether he could give any account of the document, or the 

 characters in which it was written. The old man at first 

 seemed desirous to deny all knowledge of either; but after 

 urging, and the stimulus of some British threats, he 

 consented to make a revelation of what had for many 

 years been his nation's great secret. The Maories, he 

 said, had formerly employed a written language. They 



