﻿62 Transactions. — Miscellaneous. 



their increase must have been extraordinarily rapid, for we find, from tlie 

 legends themselves, that very soon afterwards the people were settled in great 

 numbers in various parts of both islands, and were often engaged in sanguinary 

 wars. 



Indeed those parts of the " Traditions " which purport to give accounts of 

 events immediately subsequent to the migrations, depict the habits and 

 customs of a long-settled people, well acquainted with the topogi-aphy and 

 with the natural productions of the country, affording, in my opinion, irre- 

 spective of any outside considerations, conclusive evidence that the whole of 

 the tales, founded upon the bare recollection or tradition of a foreign origin, 

 are in the nature of historical novels, in which a few real and comparatively 

 recent events are made the ground work of a large amount of fiction, suited 

 to the imaginative and speculative character of the people to whom they were 

 addressed. 



It is unnecessary for me to go any further into detail in criticising these 

 tales in order to satisfy those who choose to peruse them with a reasonable 

 appreciation of the questions which they purport to solve, that so far from 

 solving these questions they are calculated either to check inquiry, or to 

 envelope the matters in point, in deeper mystery and confusion. But whilst I 

 do not hesitate in stating this opinion, we must not therefore assume that these 

 tales are, or rather must necessarily continue to be, without value in connection 

 with the history of the New Zealand race. Indeed, we are under great 

 obligations to Sir George Grey for having recorded them, and if the same 

 care is bestowed in preserving the legendary tales of other branches of the 

 race in other places, we may possibly arrive, in the future, at some reason- 

 able idea of the circumstances which led to their dispersion over the enormous 

 area which they still occupy, and of the means by which that dispersion was 

 effected. 



And now, in closing these remarks, I cannot do better than refer those 

 who are desirous of fuller information on the general question, to Mr. Colenso's 

 valuable " Essay on the Maori Race " (published in the first volume of the 

 Transactions of the New Zealand Institute), in which the foregoing arguments 

 have been anticipated, but only in general terms, and which embodies opinions 

 in which I entirely coincide; and I have no doubt that, even when all the 

 facts which can properly be used in elucidating the mystery in which the 

 origin of the New Zealanders, as a branch of the Malayan race, is at present 

 shrouded, have been collected, and carefully and honestly digested, we shall be 

 obliged to conclude, with the writer of that Essay, that the first occupation of 

 these islands by the race whom we found here, is a very old stoiy indeed. 



