203 
traditions is a hero, as it were, the Hercules of their mythology, 
who achieved great many wonderful exploits. He was their first 
instructor in boat and house building, the inventor of the art 
of twisting flax into cords and snares; he killed the sea-monster 
Tunarua; he is lord of fire and water, and likewise of air and 
sky; among the deities and spirites he is so to say the national 
god. To Maui is due the honour of fishing up the land out of 
the ocean; hence its name the fish of Maui. His hook on this oc- 
casion was the jaw-bone of one of his ancestors. The fish was hardly 
above water, before the brothers of Maui fell upon it, to cut it 
up. Thence originate the mountains and 
valleys and all the irregularities on the 
surface of the country. 
Strange to say, the outlines of North 
Island actually resemble the form of a 
fish, and the natives even designate the 
localities corresponding with the respec- 
tive parts of the fish. The southern 
portion is the head, the northwestern 
part the tail ; Cape Egmont the back- 
fin, East Cape the lower fin. Wanganui 
a-te-ra (Port Nicholson on Cook Strait), 
they say, is the salt-water eye of the fish, Wairarapa (a fresh-water 
lake near Wellington), the sweet-water eye. Rongorongo (the North 
Coast of Port Nicholson) is the upper gill, Te Rimurapa (the South 
Coast) the lower gill; the active volcano Tongariro in the centre of 
the island, and Lake Taupo at its foot are, according to their notions, 
the stomach and the belly of the fish. Certainly an interesting proof 
Te wai punamu, which signifies ^green-stone water 1 ’. The Maori name for Stewart's 
Island is Rakiura, compounded of raki, dry, and ura, fine weather, or brillant sun- 
rise and sunset. Perhaps the natives thus designated the small, southern-most isle, 
because to the inhabitants of North Island the wind, which brings line, clear 
weather with a bright morning and evening-sky, blows from the South. Strange to 
say, however, the natives have no general name for the whole of New Zealand; 
they employ the European word New Zealand, which in the Maori pronunciation 
becomes Nuitireni. Sometimes they say also Nuitereni or Niutereni. 
Tc Ika a Maui. 
