Maori history does not contribute very much to the romance of the south-west. A broken tribe, the Ngatimamoe, were in the eighteenth century driven back to lurk among the mountains and lakes there. Once they had owned the whole South Island. Their pitiless supplanters, the Ngaitahu, would not let them rest even in their unenviable mountain refuges. They were chased farther and farther westward, and finally exterminated. A few still existed when the first navigators cast anchor in the fiords. For many years explorers hoped to find some tiny clan hidden away in the tangled recesses of Fiordland; but it would seem that they are gone, like the moa. The whites came in time to witness the beginning of a fresh process of raiding and dispossession--the attacks on the Ngaitahu by other tribes from the north. The raids of Rauparaha among the Ngaitahu of the eastern coast of the South Island have often been described; for, thanks to Mr. Travers, Canon Stack, and other chroniclers, many of their details have been preserved. Much less is known of the doings of Rauparaha’s lieutenants on the western coast, though one of their expeditions passed through the mountains and the heart of Otago. Probably enough, his Ngatitoa turned their steps towards Westland in the hope of annexing the tract wherein is found the famous greenstone--a nephrite prized by the Maori at once for its hardness and beauty. In their stone age--that is to say, until the earlier decades of the nineteenth century--it furnished them with their most effective tools and deadliest weapons. The best of it is so hard that steel will not scratch its surface, while its clear colour, varying from light to the darkest green, is far richer than the hue of oriental jade. Many years--as much as two generations--might be consumed in cutting and polishing a greenstone _meré_ fit for a great chief.[5] When perfected, such a weapon became a sacred heirloom, the loss of which would be wailed over as a blow to its owner’s tribe. [5] See Mr. Justice Chapman’s paper on the working of greenstone in the _Transactions of the N.Z. Institute_. [Illustration: A MAORI CHIEFTAINESS]