330 Essays. 
social state. These laws were wonderfully minute and complex, and must 
have been a grievous burden, from which, by adopting Christianity, they 
might be relieved. Hence it is not to be wondered at that Christianity 
spread rapidly at first among the younger men. All gods being spirits of 
their ancestors who had died, there was no idea involved in the teaching 
of the missionaries repugnant to their sentiments; and their priests, when 
consulted as to the God of the white men, replied, as I have been often told 
by them, “ that Christ was a true God, and more powerful than theirs." 
Traditions which speak of the first colonization of New Zealand by the 
Maori, are to be found among all the tribes, more or less perfeet and 
circumstantial. 
The northern tribes called Ngapuhi have a tradition of one Kupe, who 
made a voyage from an island called Wawauatea to New Zealand, who, 
having circumnavigated the North Island, and given names to different 
places there, returned to his own countrymen, who, in a succeeding gener- 
ation, fitted out an expedition to seek for the land of Kupe, and found their 
way to the North Island, where they remained. These first made the land 
at Muriwhenua, the North Cape, and finally settled at Hokianga, where their 
descendants are now to be found, and are able to deduce pedigree in un- 
broken succession from those first settlers. The present northern tribes, 
however, are also descended from other ancestors, whose canoe first made 
the coast near the East Cape at Waiapu, some of whom migrated to the 
north, and intermarried with those there located. 
Hawaiki is the name of the island most generally referred to by the 
New Zealanders as the place from which their ancestors came. The causes 
which led to the abandonment of Hawaiki are variously related ; but the most 
probable tale is that, a civil war having broken out among their ancestors, 
the weaker party determined to seek a new country, and embarked in several 
canoes, some of which, after a long voyage, reached the coast of New Zea- 
land. ; 
The two most celebrated of these canoes were named Tainui (full tide) 
and Arawa (shark). The latter of them made the land a short distance 
north of Waitemata, the harbour on which Auckland is situated; and a 
sperm whale (paraoa) being discovered stranded on the beach, the place 
obtained the name of Wangaparaoa, or whale port, from that circumstance. 
Tainui first made the land near the East Cape, which was also named 
Wangaparaoa, owing to a similar circumstance; hence we may infer that 
in those early times, ‘when man had not intel them inthese seas, the 
sperm whale frequented the northern coast of New Zealand. 
It will be curious to trace what became of Tainui and its crew after 
atag New Zealand, as it will throw some light on the notions of this 
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