CoreNso.—On the Maori Races of New Zealand. 397 
(iv.) But even if it were conceded or proved that the New Zealanders 
really came from the Hawaiki of either the Samoan or the Sandwich group, 
the next question would be, Whence came their ancestors ? (Vide infra, 
par. 53.) 
(v.) There is yet another view to be taken of this word Hawaiki, or 
Hawaii, which at least is not wholly unworthy of notice, viz. to consider 
the New Zealand tradition of their emigration thence to New Zealand more 
as a figurative or allegorical myth than anything really historical. Such is 
wholly in keeping with all their other traditionary myths, and with the 
genius of the race; and also with the common legends of all nations. View- 
ing it thus, Hawaiki or Hawaii will no longer mean any particular (if any) 
island, and may prove to be a portion of a still more ancient myth than that 
of the fishing-up of the Northern Island of New Zealand by Maui. Wil- 
liams (r..) says that “one of the Polynesian traditions concerning the 
creation of the world and of the first peopling of it, was, that after the 
island of Hawaii was produced by the bursting of an egg, which an immense 
bird laid upon the sea, a man and a woman, with a hog, a dog, and a pair of 
fowls, arrived in a canoe from the Society Islands, and became the progeni- 
tors of the present inhabitants.” And another account, given by Turner,* 
represents Tangaroa, the great Polynesian J upiter, as rolling down from 
heaven two great stones, one of which became the first land, or island of 
Savaii (or Hawaii) in the Samoan group. Very likely it may yet more 
clearly be seen that this mythical or allegorical Hawaii or Sawaii of those 
two groups, is also the mythical Hawaiki of the New Zealanders—the whole 
being fragmentary portions of the legend of a flood which are found under- 
lying the myths of all ancient races; by whom, however, the universal great- 
ness of the event (as found in the Biblical record) is generally lessened or 
lost sight of ; while the legend itself is contracted into a matter of insular, 
Zealand. Here again, little really valuable of a positive nature can be 
gathered from their traditions. The writer very well knows how cleverly 
the different tribes of New Zealanders contrive to deduce their descent from 
some one of those early (mythical) emigrants; although in so doing they 
diametrically oppose each other in their early genealogies; while others, find- 
ing no means of tacking themselves on to a “ parent stem,” cut the matter 
* “Nineteen Years in Polynesia,” p. 249, ed. 1861. 
