CHAP. VI.] TRADITIONS OF ORIGIN. 85 



that should the traditions and language be to the 

 historian as regards the changes of their inhabitants. 

 Not being preserved to the world by monuments 

 constructed of lasting materials, nor by the art of 

 writing and printing, it is only in their evanescent 

 tales, and in their songs, that a slender clue is 

 offered by which to penetrate into their past history. 

 Although these traditions have neither the literary 

 nor historical value of those of the northern na- 

 tions, the mythology of which is grander, and the 

 events which they commemorate more striking, yet, 

 in an inferior degree, that might be said of the 

 traditions of the Polynesians which Tacitus has 

 written of the ancient Germans : " Celebrant car- 

 minibus antiquis (quod unum apud illos memorise 

 et annalium genus est)," etc. 



Now, these traditions have handed down to us 

 the following facts : 



Before the arrival of the present inhabitants there 

 were no men in the land, and it was covered with 

 forest. Three canoes then came from a distant 

 land, situated to the eastward, the names of which 

 canoes were Arawa, Kotahi-nui, and Matatua. They 

 contained Te-tupuna or Te-kau-matua (ancestors). 

 In the Arawa were the ancestors of the Nga-pui 

 and of the Rarewa, who sat at the head, the Nga- 

 te-wakaua behind them, and the Nga-te-roinangi 

 at the stern. It is a custom to the present day 

 that those engaged in an important enterprise of 

 any kind, whether in peace or war, are "tapu;" 



