PASSING OF A MtE

THE MORIORI PEOPLE

SOLE SURVIVOR DEAD

(Press Association—By Radio.) CHATHAM ISLANDS, March 19. The last of the Moriori r^ee, Tommy Solomon, is dead. . ■

Tommy Solomon was well, known to those- connected with the Chatham Islands trade. A. man of geaerous proportions—his weight ten years ago was said, to be 22 stone—Solo.'jaon was a ge.nial fellow,'and a great favourite with all who knew him.

A eentnry ago the Morioiri fwere a fairly numerous people in th b Chatham Islands, which wore discovered on November. 27,. 1791, by < .tdeufenant' Broughtpn, R>N., attached 'to Vancouver 's. expedition in £h« armed tender Chatham. Lieutenant Bfoughton, who- afterwards landed «nd took formal possession of the islands, described the people •as beiiig "like those- of New Zealand."_^ From 1791 they were not visited, except for whalers who wont there to. r.efit, until 1840, when the ship Cuba was sent to the Chatham Islands by -the iSew Zea-land-Company, ' with Mr., Hanson as agent and Dr. Dioffenbach as naturalist, to purchase the territory; of the native chiefs. ■ " * ,

In IS3I the Morioris were conquered by 800 Maoris who were landed from a European vessel. The natives were almost exterminated, and disea;Be killed most of the remainder. Their language was akin to that of the Maoris., though they differed from the Maoris physically.