NEW ZEALAND. 
87 
aboriginal tribes of Australia and Tasmania. One day, while visiting some native dwellings 
near Hutt, a Maori was pointed out to me as the owner of the land on which he stood. 
In dress, stature, and expression of face, he seemed the exact counterpart of one of our 
Celtic peasants, but of course his complexion was somewhat darker. He was waiting for the 
white man who was to buy his land, and in the meantime enjoyed his clay pipe. 
The house of the Maori, like the cabin of our poorest peasantry, is generally very 
crowded, old and young being confined together in a narrow space. In the hut sh own in 
the sketch we found a number of 
young women, their black hair 
hanging loosely over their shoulders, 
engaged in plaiting mats and 
baskets. They received us with 
that pleasant smile which was 
henceforth to be our welcome 
during the 
Challenger’s 
cruise 
MAORI HUTS OS THE RIVER WAX WHETTU, 
through Polynesia, but, owing to our ignorance of the Maori tongue, conversation was 
necessarily limited. The smaller hut near the principal dwelling is intended for the use 
of mothers when expecting the birth of a child. A third structure supported on poles is the 
provision-store. 
We left Port Nicholson in the afternoon of the 6th July. When outside the port, 
our further progress was stopped by a dense fog, and we anchored for the night. On the 
following day we succeeded in rounding Cape Palliser, a steep promontory called by the 
natives Kawa-Kawa, and the most southern point of North Island. Thence shaping our 
course along the east coast, we sighted the Mahia Peninsula at daybreak of the 9th. The 
evening before, we were favoured with the most brilliant display of phosphorescence it had been 
our good fortune to witness. All around the ship, and as far as the horizon, the sea was 
covered with large luminous patches, literally islands of light. They proved to be dense 
masses of Pyrosoma. One of the specimens fished up with the tow-net was 9-6 inches long, 
and two inches in diameter at the broader end-about double the size of the specimens obtained 
off the west coast of Africa in the first year of the cruise. For several minutes after their 
capture, these strange organisms-as yet, I believe, little known to the naturalist-would at 
the least touch become instantly luminous from end to end, the light having a faint ms 
tino-e The patches visible from the ship would, if joined together, have covered a square 
mile at the very lowest computation, which, allowing fifty individuals to the square yard, 
gives the enormous number of over 150 millions per square mile. The light was so brilliant 
as to literally illumine the whole space enclosed by the horizon. 
“They coiled and swam, and every track 
Was a flash of golden fire.’’ 
This was the second display on so large a scale which had come under our observation, and 
both occurred in the vicinity of land. 
M 
