and 150 feet long, and the crews of these, wielding their elastic paddles, kept time in a fashion that has won respect from the coxswain of a University eight.  For their long voyages they stored water in calabashes, carried roots and dried fish, and had in the cocoa-nut both food and drink stored safely by nature in the most convenient compass.  In certain seasons they could be virtually sure of replenishing their stock of water from the copious tropical or semi-tropical rains.  Expert fishermen, they would miss no opportunity of catching fish by the way.  They made halting-places of the tiny islets which, often uninhabited and far removed from the well-known groups, dot the immense waste of the Pacific at great intervals.  The finding of their stone axes or implements in such desolate spots enables their courses to be traced.  Canoe-men who could voyage to solitary little Easter Island in the wide void towards America, or to Cape York in the distant west, were not likely to find insuperable difficulties in running before the north-east winds to New Zealand from Rarotonga, Savaii or Tahiti.  The discovery in the new land of the jade or greenstone—­far above rubies in the eyes of men of the Stone Age—­would at once give the country all the attractiveness that a gold-field has for civilized man.

[Footnote 1:  S. Percy Smith on The Geographical Knowledge of the Polynesians.]

The Maori stories of their migration to New Zealand are a mixture of myth and legend.  Among them are minute details that may be accurate, mingled with monstrous tales of the utterly impossible.  For example, we are told that one chief, on his canoe first nearing the coast, saw the feathery, blood-red rata-flowers gleaming in the forest, and promptly threw overboard his Polynesian coronet of red feathers, exclaiming that he would get a new crown in the new land.  Such an incident might be true, as might also the tale of another canoe which approached the shore at night.  Its crew were warned of the neighbourhood of land by the barking of a dog which they had with them and which scented a whale’s carcass stranded on the beach.  On the other hand we are gravely told that the hero Gliding-Tide having dropped an axe overboard off the shore, muttered an incantation so powerful that the bottom of the sea rose up, the waters divided, and the axe returned to his hand.  The shoal at any rate is there, and is pointed out to this day.  And what are we to say to the tale of another leader, whose canoe was upset in the South Seas, and who swam all the way to New Zealand?

The traditions say that the Maori Pilgrim Fathers left the island of Hawaiki for New Zealand about the beginning of the 15th century.  Hawaiki is probably one of the “shores of old romance.”  Other Polynesian races also claim to have come thence.  Mr. Percy Smith gives good reasons for the suggestion that the ancestors of the Maoris migrated from the Society Islands and from Rarotonga, and that their