Five hundred miles to the east of Banks’ Peninsula lie the pleasant group called the Chatham Islands. They owe their auspicious name to their luck in being discovered in 1790 by the Government ship _Chatham_. Otherwise they might have been named after Lord Auckland, or Mr. Robert Campbell, or Stewart the sealer, as have others of our islands. They are fabled of old to have been, like Delos, floating isles, borne hither and thither by sea and wind. The Apollo who brought them to anchor was the demi-god Kahu. The myth, perhaps, had its origin in the powerful currents which are still a cause of anxiety to shipmasters navigating the seas round their shores. They are fertile spots, neither flat nor lofty, but altogether habitable. The soft air is full of sunshine, tempered by the ocean haze, and in it groves of karaka-trees, with their large polished leaves and gleaming fruit, flourish as they flourish nowhere else. Neither too hot nor cold, neither large nor impossibly small--they are about two and a half times the size of the Isle of Wight,--the Chathams, one would think, should have nothing in their story but pleasantness and peace. And, as far as we know, the lot of their old inhabitants, the Moriori, was for centuries marked neither by bloodshed nor dire disaster. The Moriori were Polynesians akin to, yet distinct from, the Maori. Perhaps they were the last separate remnant of some earlier immigrants to New Zealand; or it is possible that their canoes brought them from the South Seas to the Chathams direct; at any rate they found the little land to their liking, and living there undisturbed, increased till, a hundred years ago, they mustered some two thousand souls. Unlike the Maori, they were not skilled gardeners; but they knew how to cook fern-root, and how to render the poisonous karaka berries innocuous. Their rocks and reefs were nesting-places for albatrosses and mutton-birds; so they had fowl and eggs in plenty. A large and very deep lagoon on their main island--said to be the crater of a volcano--swarmed with eels. They were clever fishermen, and would put to sea on extraordinary rafts formed of flax sticks buoyed up by the bladders of the giant kelp. Their beaches were well furnished with shell-fish. Finally, the fur seal haunted their shores in numbers, and supplied them with the warmest of clothing. Indeed, though they could weave mantles of flax, and dye them more artistically than the Maori, they gradually lost the art: their sealskin mantles were enough for them. As the life of savages goes, theirs seems to have been, until eighty years ago, as happy as it was peaceful and absolutely harmless. For the Moriori did not fight among themselves, and having, so far as they knew, no enemies, knew not the meaning of war. They were rather expert at making simple tools of stone and wood, but had no weapons, or any use therefor.