ORIGIN OF THE MAORIS.

Lyttelton Times, Volume LXIII, Issue 7562, 29 May 1885, Page 5

ORIGIN OF THE MAORIS.

Judge Fenton, of Auckland, has devoted considerable labour and time to investi- . ■ gating the origin of the Maori race. ' Summing up his conclusions, he says : "It is not part of our undertaking .to ■ enter into any inquiry as to the subsequent ' migrations of this ancient race , amongst the islands of the Pacific., In. such migra- / tions the Maoris have'taken no part. ’ The sum of our investigations, I submit, is—1. That the Maoris are the same people as the Maruts, Moors or" Moris of the Malay Archipelago, the Mahri,, or Homeritai and Himyarites of South Arabia, and that their epbnymic ancestor is Himyar, the third in decent from Joktan, -the son of. Eber, the ( ancestor of the Hebrews; and (2) i that the’ other tribes of Polynesia are . members of the' same great family and nation, branching off; genealogically speaking, from the same stock in'the. epoch of Himyar; and that they all/ under the names of Chaldeans, Babylonians, Cushites, Akkanians, or Ethiopians, dwelt together with representatives of all the Haochic of man in the plains of Shinar' from the very, earliest ages,. speaking a ’language which' bore as much resemblance to the Maori language of to-day as the Aramaic /of Abraham ■’ and . his ancestors does to the existing Hebrew of that patriarch’s descendants—probably much greater resemblance.

“A few years, hence, when the race of men whose varied career we have been following from the time when they waited with Abram in the great city- of TTr, through their periods of grandeur in Southern Arabia, and whose wanderings we have accompanied in the Indian and Pacific Oceans, shall have* disappeared from the face of the earth, their history will possess an interest which no human effort can now excite. We have been present at their cradle in the great Mesopotamian , basin, before the races of men had dispersed themselves oyer the earth, and we or our children will, it can scarcely, be doubted, stand over their grave. Their ancestors were building huge temples in honour of the hosts of Heaven, which they worshipped as gods, and .conducting a gorgeous, though cruel, religion, and were sub- . jects of a splendid empire, whose, literature and libraries still exist, af a time when bur own ancestors were wandering an unknown people in, the regions of Central Asia. Let, then, the 'great English nation treat the remnant of the race with gentle- • ness, and learn from their varied career !■ the transitory nature of all human .greatness.” ' -