CoLENSO. — On the Ilaori Races of Neio Zealand. 397 



(iv.) But even if it were conceded or proved tBat 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 Avholly 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 Avith 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 HaAvaii 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 (l.m.) 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 Jupiter, as rolling down from 

 heaven tAvo great stones, one of v^^hich became the first land, or island of 

 Savaii (or Hawaii) in the Samoan group. Yery likely it may yet more 

 clearly be seen that this mythical or allegorical HaAvaii or Sawaii of those 

 two groups, is also the mythical Hawaiki of the NeAv 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, 

 national, and special interest, serving to carry back the forms of every-day 

 life into antediluAaan ages ; common proofs of the inventive mind of man 

 ever seeking to understand the why and the wherefore of things around him. 



51. Leaving, however, for a while the further consideration of the place 

 whence the immigrant ancestors of the New Zealanders may have come, let 

 the endeavour now be made to ascertain the time when they arrived in New 

 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. 245, ed. 1861. 



