[Footnote 8: The gods collectively. Fate.] [Footnote 9: The ocean.] [Footnote 10: Literally, "The Fish of Maui."] [Footnote 11: Heaven and Earth. Short for Papa-tu-a-nuku.] [Footnote 12: This prayer, preserved by tradition, was actually uttered by a chief upon the landing of the exiles from Hawaiki, after Ngahue's second, and final, voyage from his old home.] [Footnote 13: The rainbow.] [Footnote 14: The reference is to the gigantic, wingless bird, now extinct, the Moa--_Dinornis moa_.] [Footnote 15: Good! Hurrah!] [Footnote 16: Sweet potato--_Ipomoea batatas_.] [Footnote 17: _Corynocarpus laevigata._] [Footnote 18: Water-hen--_Porphyrio melanotus_.] CHAPTER II THE MEN WHO CAME The foregoing is more or less traditional among the Maori as to their migration from some other place and settlement in New Zealand. Some facts have been handed down for generations, but the traditions are confused. When the first Pakeha[19] arrived, every Maori believed that certain events had happened in the far past; but there was little agreement as to the manner or sequence in which those events had occurred. Many investigators--notably Sir George Grey--have inquired in the truest spirit of antiquarian research into the traditions of the Maori; and what between the discoveries of such trained observers, the dabblings of the amateur, and the luck of the "rolling-stones," who have picked up a tale here and a legend there, we have a fairly clear account of the coming of the Maori to New Zealand, as far as it is uncertainly known and hazily remembered among themselves. One fact, at least, is established. The Maori pertain to the Polynesian section of the great southern archipelago, not to the Melanesian. Most eminent ethnologists agree that the pure Polynesians are descended through the Malays from a very remote Asiatic stock. No bolder navigators, no more merciless pirates than the Malays ever sailed the sea, and, as they skimmed over the blue in their queer _proas_, their fierce eyes searching the horizon for the sail of some helpless trader, they not infrequently made some hitherto unknown island. Adventurers all, they occupied the place if it were their whim, and mixed with or exterminated the original inhabitants. Thus their stock spread in the course of centuries over all Polynesia, giving populations to Tonga, to the Samoan, Sandwich, Society and other islands, and, more important to our theme, to New Zealand. It is reasonably certain that, apart from haphazard adventure, there was once an emigration on a large scale, and it would seem that the pioneers of Polynesian colonisation left their home in Sumatra for the islands of their choice some nine or ten hundred years ago.