Hood. — On Changes in the Physical Geography of N.Z. 117 



from the Waitangi north to those swollen by the melting snows of the 

 Ruakine, when Cook Strait with its picturesque sounds did not exist, but, as 

 Mr. Crawford suggests, a river flowed to the east, carrying off the waters from 



the innumerable winding glens that pierced far into the recesses of the 



mountains. 



Putting out from some bay in their large double canoes with matten sails, 

 such as the voyagers came in from Hawaiki, and which w 7 ere still in use 

 amongst the Maori in Tasman's and Cook's time, some families of these Moa- 

 hunters may have been carried by a strong westerly wind to the furthest 

 outlier of the old land, now known as the Chatham Islands, where they still 

 found a genial climate, and large birds of the Moa tribe to supply them with 

 animal food,* and founded the colony of the Morioris, whom we find, as 

 naturally would be expected, had degenerated from their long isolation in this 

 limited country where the means of subsistence were less ample. 



Referring to the speculations regarding times alluded to more remote, it 



certainly is much more agreeable, and at the same time more consistent with the 



evidences we possess, to reflect upon the possible beauties and grandeur of the 

 scenery of New Zealand, and its fitness for animal life in the clays when its 

 olaciers reached their greatest extension, than to shudder at the picture of the 

 «-reat island of desolation with those who would envelope it in a fall of ice and 

 snow. It seems scarcely possible to doubt the long gradual process of sub- 

 sidence which has been going on for ages diminishing the area of this country, 

 the evidences of which are greater as we go to the north and east, as might be 

 expected in a region the foundations of w T hich have been taken away by 

 intense volcanic activity, with occasional local elevations in limited districts. 

 But when we speculate upon its former extent and features we do so only 

 upon probabilities; and, seeing how constantly the progress of discovery causes 

 the abandonment of positions deemed to have been established, theories 

 affecting scientific questions are not safely to be built upon such foundation. 

 Nevertheless, there is no more reason for scepticism regarding the belief that 

 the Moa may have wandered by the banks of the river that debouched in the 

 longitude of the Chathams, than there is to doubt the conclusion of distin- 



* My attention was drawn to the interesting fact of there having been large birds exist- 

 ing in the Chatham group hi former times, by being told by a Maori, born in one of those 

 islands, that large bones were found there ; on my suggesting they might be seal's bones, 

 he said' "No bi< r bird, all the same Moa." It appears that the Morioris have traditions 

 about a great bird, called by them Puoa. Its remains are found from time to time ; the 

 last were discovered at Karewa, a place in the main Chatham, known to the natives as 



Warekauri perhaps in memory of the use in the end made of the kauri canoe which 



brought the ancestors of the Morioris from New Zealand. The leg bones found at Karewa 

 are stated to have been as thick as an average man's wrist. Mr. Shand, a gentleman who 

 has resided there for twenty years, and understands the Moriori dialect, informs me that 

 the name Puoa had reference to its cry, and is pronounced with a deep guttural sound. 

 The Morioris have a song about it, and repeat the first syllable as a chorus, Pu, pu — Pit, 

 pu — Pu, o-a, in a manner which recalls the hollow drumming noise made by the emu. 

 The word is probably a contraction for Pu-pu-moa. 



