isolated as the Mori-ori. Moreover, Rongo is always represented as being very dark, and as possessing raven black hair, characters which, as it appears, distinguished the original inhabitants of the Chathams. My son was unable to obtain any definite information as to the parentage of the Rongo-mai of the Chatham Islands, the sole idea being that he was a very great chief, from whom the first inhabitants were descended. They also said that these original people had immigrated from Hawaiki in consequence of constant and devastating wars, a statement similar to that which is made with respect to the first Maori voyagers to New Zealand. At the time of the arrival of the first immigrants, the principal chiefs of the islands were: Marupuka, who lived at Awa-patiki; Rongopapa, who lived at the Wakuru; Mumuku, who lived at Muriroa; Mamoa, who lived at Tikeri; and Tarangi-mahora-whakina, who lived at Pitt's Island. The first strangers are said to have come in two large canoes, one of which was called the Rangimata, under a chief named Mararoa, and the other the Rangihoana, under a chief named Kawanga-koneke. They say that the people who arrived in these canoes were very numerous, and also came from Hawaiki, but no special reason is assigned for their leaving that place. Mr. Gilbert Mair, in a paper read before this Society, in 1870, mentions five canoes, but in other respects his account tallies a good deal with that obtained by my son. He, however, says that the people of these canoes also left Hawaiki in consequence of inter-tribal wars. The second batch of strangers arrived in a canoe called the Oropuke, under a chief named Mohi, and are said to have come from Awatea, or Arapawa, which is supposed to have been New Zealand, and is stated to have been a cool country. The probability is that the latter canoe did come from New Zealand, for the name Awatea, or Aotea, is that which is said to have been given to New Zealand by its first Maori discoverers. The name Arapawa is also common in New Zealand. Further strength is also added to the supposition, that some of the ancestors of the present people had come from New Zealand, by the fact, that Mr. Shand, on one occasion, heard some old Mori-oris singing a “Karakia,” or song of gladness, upon the completion of a large fishing canoe, during which they used the words “totara,” and “pohutukawa;” and, on being questioned as to those words, they mentioned that they were the names of trees in the country from which some of their ancestors had come. My son also states, that fragments of green-stone, similar to that used by the New Zealand natives, have been found on the islands, under circumstances which forbid the supposition that they were taken over by the Maori invaders of 1836, one of these fragments having been obtained from soil below the root of a tree of considerable size. It is related that the islands were afterwards visited by another canoe,