205 
with green-stone. Strife had not ceased, when Ngaliue returned 
to Hawaiki, and the weaker party, in order to save their lives, 
determined to migrate to Aotearoa, the newly discovered land. 
Other traditions make Kupe the Columbus of the country. 1 
His younger brother Hoturapa had carried off his wife Kura Ma- 
rotina, and Kupe put to sea in the canoe Mataorua in pursuit of 
the fugitives. After a long voyage he landed at Wanganui a-te-ra 
(Port Nicholson on Cook Strait), he proceeded through Cook Strait, 
arrived at Patea; but not finding a single soul anywhere he re- 
turned to Hawaiki , where several canoes were now built and fitted 
out for a voyage to the new country. The canoes were named : 
Arawa (said to have been a double canoe), Tainui, Aotea, Mata- 
atua, Takitumu, Ivurahaupo (alias Kura aupo), Orouta, Panga- 
toru, Tokomaru, Motumotu ahi, Te Rangi ua mutu, Wliaka 
ringa ringa. Each of these canoes has its own tradition, and its 
own wandering heros like the Argonauts of old. The people seem 
to have preserved these first records of their history so faithfully 
and scrupulously, that in relating these traditions they display a 
vivid recollection of the very particulars of the voyage, of the names 
and adventures of the individual leaders , of the places where they 
first landed and settled, as well as of the various plants and ani- 
mals which were brought from Hawaiki at the time . 2 The an- 
cestral records of the different tribes are most carefully traced down 
to the present generation , and to this day the natives show to the 
traveller the supposed remains of the canoes of their ancestors . 3 
1 See Taylor, Te Ika a Mani, p. 116. 
2 According to these traditions the Kumara or sweet potato (Convolvulus Ba- 
tata), the laro ( Arum etculenlvm ), the calabash-plant Hue ( Lagenaria vulgaris), the 
Karaki tree (Corynocarpm Icevigala), the rat Kiore, the Pukeko (Porphyria), and the 
green parrot Kaleariki are said to have been imported from Hawaiki. In fact, all 
these plants and animals still existing in New Zealand deviate strikingly from the 
natural character of the flora and fauna of the country, and are evidently impor- 
ted from the tropics. 
3 A rock with its peak projecting from the sandy downs of Kawhia Harbour 
is pointed by the dwellers on that harbour as the remains of the Tainui-canoe, 
from the intimates of which they date their origin. In Maketu (Eastcoast of North 
Island), — so tradition says, — the canoe Arawa lay “high and dry”; but it was 
burnt, and now there is nothing to be seen but the stone-anchor. Likewise at the 
