AORANGI OR MOUNT COOK?

Timaru Herald, Volume LX, Issue 2358, 1 April 1897, Page 4

AORANGI OR MOUNT COOK?

In the book which he has published in London, Mr Arthur Harper Bays that Aorangi was never a Maori name for Mount Cook. He says :— So far as I could learn from the Maoris of the West Coast who could see Mount Cook and the other great peaks towering up within twenty miles, they had no name for any peak or range except those lower hills on which they ventured. Againthe Maoris had a wholesome' t and deeplyrooted fear of the mountains. None of the old West Coast Natives ever went for from the low country, so it can hardly have been necessary for them to have individual names for the great snowy range. On the East Coast the Maoris could have had little knowledge of this district, as it is so far inland, and most of the South Island Maoris lived near the beach, fom which Mount Cook is only in one or two places visible, and can only be distinguished by persons well acquainted with the peak. It therefore appears that if any Maori name existed it would be known amongst the West Coast Natives, who could, see Mount Cook every clear day within twenty miles of the sea at thin month of the Cook (or Weheka) Kiver. wuile those Natives who lived on the Urey River, and those settled at Jackson Bay in the farsouth, would be able to see it froni nearly every part of the sea coast, standing out in the most unmistakeable manner. In 1885 I had a Maori with me for two months, and a veiy good, fntelligent fellow he was. I asked him one day : " What does Aorangi mean, Bill ?" To which he replied : •• It mean the big white cloud." I said :'* I suppose that is why you call Mount Cook ' Aorangi ?' " 11 Oh, no ; ' Aorangi ' not mountain, 4 Aorangi' big white cloud— here, there," said Bill, pointing out sundry large fleecy clouds. 1 then pressed him on the point, and told him he knew nothing about it, and that " Aorangi " was : the name they had for Mount Cook. But he waxed, quite indignant, saying: " De Maori, he no name the mountains only where he go ; de white man, he name 'em." I afterwards made enquiries from other Maoris, and always had the same reply : that they had 'no name for the high mountains.