Haast. — Address. 47 



wonld occasionally see on posts or smooth rocks, rude representations of 

 men, ships, canoes, and animals drawn by Maori children, but they were 

 always of an ephemeral character — Maori artists confining themselves to the 

 drawing of scrolls, and then always in permanent colours. In looking at 

 the ensemble of these rock-paintings, it is clear that there is some method in 

 the arrangement which at once strikes the eye as remarkable. Some of 

 the principal objects evidently belong to the animal kingdom, and re^Dresent 

 animals which either do not occur in New Zealand, or are only of a 

 mythical and fabulous character. Some of them can easily be recognised ; 

 the meaning of others can only be conjectured. The group in the centre 

 is of a different character, which is difficult to explain, unless we assu.me 

 that it represents implements and portions of dress of a semi-civilised 

 people. Only two rex^resentations of man can be recognised, but they are 

 full of movement and evidently in the act of running away, whilst the figure 

 of the bird is very suggestive. Below these principal groups we find several 

 smaller figures or signs, the meaning of which for a long time considerably 

 puzzled me. I was inclined to believe that they might be a kind of 

 hieroglyphic writing, but unfortunately there were too few of them we 

 thought worth copymg, the greater portion having much faded or broken 

 away. Some of those which were too faint occurred at nine, tlihty, and 

 forty-six feet from the left-hand side. They were sometimes close to the 

 floor of the rock-shelter, but did not go below it, which is of some import- 

 ance to prove that the kitchen middens which had here accumulated were 

 either forming, or had already been formed, when the paintings were 

 executed. The thought struck me at last that these smaller figures 

 resembled the letters of some oriental languages, and that I had seen some- 

 what similar characters published in our " Transactions." The Tamil 

 inscription round the antique bronze bell, now in the possession of the 

 Eev. W. Colenso, in Napier, at once suggested itself to me ; and in com- 

 paring the peculiar figures with the writing on that bell, as given in Mr. 

 J. T. Thomson's interesting paper,* I was at once struck by the marked re- 

 semblance between both. It would be a most curious coincidence and difficult 

 to imagine, that the ancient inhabitants of this island should adopt similar 

 figures, and place them, as it were, below the representations of animals, 

 some of foreign countries, or scenes of life without any meaning ; or should 

 we assume that, as the beU with the Tamil inscription was found in New 

 Zealand, so other objects were secured from the same or another similar 

 wreck, amongst which pictures of animals and adventures of human hfe, 

 with writing below them, were obtained, and which afterwards were copied 



* "Ethnograpliical Considerations on the "Whence of the Maori," by J. T. Thomson, 

 F.E.G.S., " Trans. N.Z. Inst.," IV., 23. 



