Brst.—Miramar Island and its History. 779 
Авт. 48.— Miramar Island and its History: How Motu-kairangi was 
discovered and setiled by Polynesians, and how, in Times long past, 
ut became Miramar Peninsula. 
By Exspon Best, F.N.Z.Inst.; Ethnologist, Dominion Museum. 
[Read before the Wellington Philosophical Society, 19th October, 1921 ; received by Editor, 
20th October, 1921 ; issued separately, 22nd June, 1923.) 
THE history opens with accounts of episodes in the adventurous lives of 
four famous old Polynesian voyagers, named Kupe, Ngahue, Toi, and 
Whatonga. These old-time ocean-rovers were members of a race that 
d 
close kinship with the natives of Hawaiian Isles, as shown in common 
traditions, ancestors, myths, language, and many other parallels. More- 
over, should the Maori land at Nukuoro Island, in the far-away Caroline 
Group, he would assuredly claim the folk of that island as brothers, so 
closely allied are the dialects of Aotearoa and Nukuoro. Westward and 
southward from Nukuoro, separated by a sea-path of some seven thousand 
miles, lies the remote Easter Island, held by an outpost of the far-spread 
Polynesian race speaking the Maori tongue. 
e men who ranged the vast Pacific Ocean in their lean carvel-built 
craft, who explored its far-flung archipelagoes, and settled so many of its 
innumerable islands, were the men who discovered New Zealand. Century 
after century they sought the unknown, and forced lone seas to give up 
their secrets, Ever listing to the lure of Hinemoana the Ocean Maid and 
to the call of the unknown, ever prompted by love of adventure and the 
mysterious beckoning influence of far sea-horizons, they hoisted their rude 
mat sails on primitive craft, and rode down the endless lilting sea-leagues 
of half a world. 
These were the men who laid do Sea- 1 
followed the rolling ara moana with a fine faith in their 
in those of their old-time gods. They own ways before the 
steady trade-winds; they followed the regular roll of the waves beneath 
clouded skies; they drifted down the long rivers of the ocean as others 
drift down earth-bound rivers. They held their course by the shining 
sun and by pale Hina; they lined their path across the heaving breast 
of the Ocean Maid by the world-old stars above ; they swung their reeling 
prows south of Canopus, and Venus, and the red sun, and so discovere 
these isles of the hidden south. 
wn the sea-roads we still use, who 
own powers and 
: : i f land seen was a white cloud 
they sojourned a while. The first € MOM uh ot Kape of 
