108 Transactions,.—Miscellancous, 
And this is what he says respecting the New Zealanders, after having 
been some time among them :—“ The perpetual hostility in which these 
poor savages live has necessarily caused them to make every village a fort. 
* * '* These people have neither sling nor bow. They throw the dart 
by hand, and so they do stones; but darts and stones are seldom used 
except in defending their forts. * * * Butit is very strange that the 
same invention and diligence which have been used in the construction of 
places so admirably adapted to defence, almost without tools, should not, 
when urged by the same necessity, have furnished them with a single missile 
weapon, except the lance, which is thrown by hand; they have no con- 
trivance like a bow to discharge a dart, nor anything like a sling to assist 
them in throwing a stone, which is the more surprising, as the invention of 
slings, and bows and arrows, is much more obvious than of the works 
which these people construct, and both these weapons are found among 
much ruder nations, and in almost every other part of the world. The 
points of their long lances are barbed, and they handle them with such 
: trength and agility that we can match them with no weapon but a loaded 
musquet.''* 
Sydney Parkinson has an excellent remark on this subject (excellent in 
more ways than one), which I also quote, in the hope that future writers on 
“the whence of the Maori," will take a note of it. He says—“ Something 
has already been mentioned respecting the language of the New Zealanders, 
and of its affinity with that of the people of Tahiti, which is a very 
extraordinary circumstance, and leads us to conclude that one place was 
originally peopled from the other, though they are at near 2000 miles 
distance, * * * The migration was probably from New Zealand to 
Tahiti, as the inhabitants of New Zealand were totally unaequainted with the 
use of bows and arrows til we first taught them, whereas the people 
of Tahiti use them with great dexterity, having, doubtless, discovered the 
use of them by some accident after their separation; and it cannot be sup- 
posed that the New Zealanders would have lost so beneficial an acquisition 
if they had ever been acquainted with it.” 
It must not be overlooked that two Tahitians (Tupaea and his son 
Taiota) were with them on this oecasion.  Tupaea not only aided the 
English considerably as interpreter, but was often facile princeps during the 
whole of their long stay among the New Zealanders. So, again, on Cook's 
second voyage from Tahiti to New Zealand, he had on board a native of 
Porapora (one of the Society Isles), named Mahine, who came on with him 
io New Zealand. % 
£ Cook's Voyages, Vol. II. p. 815 ; III. 466, 
f Parkinson's Journal, p. 75. 
