OTAGO MUSEUM

Otago Witness, Issue 3610, 22 May 1923, Page 58

OTAGO MUSEUM

RECENT VALUABLE ACQUISITIONS. Mr E. G. Green, of Abbotsford, has presented to the museum a fragment of an ancient Maori canoe found by him in the sandhills at the month of the Kaikorai stream. It is 9 feet long and 10 inches across. '] ho canoe of which it was orice a pert appears to have been broken up in pre-European times, for the fragment lias been used again for some purpose that can only be conjectured. Two rectangular holes have been cut in it in the ancient Maori manner, though whether for the passage of ropes or of poles for scaffolding is not elixir. Apart from four ancient paddles in our museum, and a hull in the Dominion Museum, Wellington, this fragment is the only known relic of the fleets that existed in these waters at the beginning of the last century. We have evidence that canoes were then numerous, ami it is certain that some of them were very large and that many of them were double. A bailer was dug up near Loch Aseog, Taieri, some years ago. but has since been lost. The late Mr Harwood, of Lower Portobello, possessed the carved figurehead of one of the great canoes which formerly belonged to the Maoris at the Kaik. This interesting piece is stated to have been exhibited in the museum in the ’seventies, presumably on loan. Unfortunately it does not appear ever to have been photographed. Information as to its present whereabout is greatly desired by the museum authorities. The University Museum has received from Mr R. A. Farquharson, formerly Otago Rhodes scholar, who is now Government geologist in British Somaliland, a small collection of Stone Age implements found in that part of Africa. The larger ones are indistinguishable in form and technique from implements derived from the “river drift” of Western Europe, or Jrom the gravels of South Africa, localities from which the museum already possesses representative collections. Of similar type and age are the implements from Poondi, Madras, presented to the museum by Mr Seton Karr. The larger of Mr Farquharson’s implements were found on a hill near the Issutugan River, having apparently been exposed bv the action of the rain. The smaller implements were found over a wider area and are probably much less ancient. They do not bear any close resemblance to European Stone Ago implements. and are probably local varieties of arrow or spear-heads.