MAORI MEMORIES

Wairarapa Daily Times, 5 March 1934, Page 4

MAORI MEMORIES

(By J.H.S. for “The Daily Times.”) THE FLYING VOYAGERS NGA WAKA REREXGA. Imagination or poetic additions to flic traditional narratives of the migration to New Zealand made it difficult to dissect fact from fiction. The stories from Avidelv separated sources agree as to the main details. Our historians naturally fail to reconcile the romantic stories Avitli the actual details. But why dissect the stories of Robert Louis the Beloved or the Tales from Shakespeare .’ Here anil, there a poetic old Alaori narrator introduces an impossible or miraculous tale from Avhich Colcnso alone concludes that the nfigration Avas imaginary. All other historians lun’C faith in the legends, and Avell they may, for the main incidents from Avidely separated sources are in full agreement. These traditions show that about the year 1400 the six canoes Arawa, Tainui, Takitumu, Tokomaru, Mata atua, and Aotea arrived. The Aotea Avas an “outrigger,” all others Avere large double canoes, each carrying about 100 persons. As a precaution against falling birth rate, the number of Avomen in each canoe exceeded the men by ten per cent. All Avere young, vigorous, and comely. # One unique and interesting narrative Avliich had the appearance of fiction, seems now to be confirmed by a discoA'ery of our botanists. The huge Tainui canoe Avas said to have been dragged across the island A’ia Otahuhu to Onehunga and sailed thence to Kawhia, Avhere it is now to be seen turned to stone. From its skids ‘ ‘ made of an exotic Avood” sprang a small grove of strange trees. To-day this tree, classified by botanists as Pomcderris Tainui, is said to be unknown anywhere else in the Avorld. One of the plizzles arising from the .persistent avoAval of Turi the great navigator is that he arrived here by following the directions of a previous visitor “to steer steadily for the rising sun.” If so, they must have come from the West, and not from the South Sea Islands.