Quiros, who sailed with Mendana in 1595, and, later on, made another voyage across the Pacific in 1606, spent much time in wondering how the isles received their population. He maintained that, with no compass, the Polynesians could not voyage to any island not in sight from their own Hence he judged that the islands must be close together, or that a great mother-land existed in the south, from which the various islands had been settled, “as otherwise the islands could not have been populated without a miracle.” Nearly three hundred years later Colenso wrote, “I note you seem to adhere to the myth of the Maoris coming to this land; I had thought I had fully exposed that many years ago.” But neither Quiros nor Colenso could do that. Between these two comes James Cook, who saw clearly how the islands had become populated, and puts the case in clear, simple language.

A voyage made by one Uenga, of Samoa, about the twelfth century, extended to Tonga, Tongareva, Rimatara, the Austral Group, Tahiti, and the Paumotus, a jaunt of over three thousand five hundred miles. Tangihia, a voyager of the thirteenth century, made a yet longer one. Starting apparently, from Samoa, he visited Niue, Keppel Isle, the Marquesas, Tahiti, Rapa, the Austral and Cook Groups, Rimatara, and other isles Whiro took a party of settlers to Rarotonga, then sailed to the Marquesas, Tahiti, Rapa, and other places.

In 1616 Le Maire and Schouten encountered a double canoe under sail, out of sight of land, west of the Paumotu Group, with twenty-five men, women, and children on board. These folk had exhausted their water-supply, and were seen to drink sea-water. These natives being unarmed, the Dutch gentlemen had quite a pleasant time shooting them. The historian remarks on the enterprise of natives who “without compass, or any of the aids from science which enable the navigators of other countries to guide themselves with safety, ventured beyond the sight of land”.

In former times the Tongans were in the habit of making frequent voyages to Fiji, which group was reached in three days' sail from Tonga-tapu. They also made voyages to the New Hebrides and New Caledonia Futuna, in the New Hebrides, and Tikopia to the north of that group, are occupied by Polynesians. The Tongans have been the most daring and energetic of Polynesians voyagers in modern times.

Marquesan traditions tell us of voyages made in double canoes to lands to the westward. These vessels carried not only stocks of food and water, but also hogs, fowls, and food plants, and that is how these things were spread over the Pacific. These plants were yams, sweet potatoes, taro, gourd, also the breadfruit, banana, coconut, &c, while the orange was advancing eastward when Europeans began to traverse Pacific waters. Most of these are traced by Candolle to a western source. The animals introduced into New Zealand were the dog and rat, the other food products were the sweet potato, taio, and gourd, possibly the yam. The aute tree was also introduced.

The Maori voyager recognized the influence of ocean currents on navigation, and had his peculiar method of ascertaining their movements. Even as the Great Black River carried many Japanese vessels to the western coast of North America, and its reflux bore one such to Oahu, Hawaiian Isles, in 1833, so did the ocean streams farther south affect the Polynesian voyager. These currents flow in different directions, some for long distances. Thus the branch of the antarctic drift that swerves

westward from the South American coast seems to coalesce with the westward - sweeping equatorial current, the southern branch of which, flowing south of the Tongan Group, passes, under the name of Rossel's Drift, the New Hebrides, on its way to Torres Strait. This helps to explain the arrival of drift canoes at and near the New Hebrides containing waifs from Polynesia. Several such occurrences are on record.

Even as winds assisted our Polynesian voyager in his navigation of Pacific waters, so also did they, in many cases, cause drift voyages, and send many souls down to Rarohenga, the spirit world of the Maori. A few of the many known cases of drift voyages are quoted as illustrating how many islands must have been discovered and settled by their agency. We have already seen that the first and second peoplings of New Zealand were owing to drift voyages—the first directly so, the second indirectly.

Ellis held the curious view that the Polynesians must have originally come from the east, as it would be impossible for them to come from the west against the prevailing winds. And yet he must have known of the fairly frequent communication between the Society and Paumotu Groups, as also other such movements. The south-east trades are by no means constant the year round, as shown by observers as far back as Cook's time. The strong north-west winds that strike the Samoan Group have carried canoes from there as far as the Austral Isles. At the Society Isles the prevailing wind blows from between east-south-east and east-north-east for the greater part of the year, but in December and January the winds are variable, frequently blowing from north-west and west-north-west. Cook tells us that this is the wind by which the natives of the isles to leeward come to Tahiti. Such a wind is often followed by one from the south-west or west-south-west. We have not space to give much data under these heads, but we do know that Polynesians carefully studied wind-conditions. Barstow writes of several weeks of westerly wind at Tahiti, and mentions the case of some Polynesian voyagers he encountered there. Their canoe, containing men, women, and children, had come from the Paumotu Group, to the eastward, in search of some ocean-waifs from that region. They had visited Huahine and other islands, and were compelled to wait over six months at Tahiti for a fair wind to take them home. The Polynesian voyager, indeed, passed much of his time in waiting for fair winds, though that fact would not disturb his equanimity. Possibly this was why he often took his family with him. If he did not live to reach his destination, why, then, his son or grandson might do so.

Barstow records a drift voyage from Chain Island, east of Tahiti, away west to Manua, in the Samoan Isles. This occurred in 1844, and the boat contained three natives and one white man, the latter being the sole survivor.

Colonel Gudgeon informs us that Polynesians are quite capable of navigating their vessels to any island they may desire to visit, always selecting a favourable season of the year. Also that they had well-known starting-places for each such voyage, and stopping-places at intermediate isles in long voyages. Thus voyagers from Tahiti to New Zealand first made the run to Rarotonga, leaving there in December for the run south-west to New Zealand, calling in some cases at Sunday Island. The return voyage was made in June. This is corroborated by Maori tradition, which states that voyagers left Rarotonga for these shores in the month Akaaka-nui,

equivalent to our December. An old native of the Nga Rauru Tribe stated that Whanga-rei and Whanga-te-au were starting-places for canoes leaving New Zealand for Rarotonga.

Missionary Williams, the man of many voyages in Polynesia, remarks that westerly winds occur about every two months. He sailed from Rurutu to Tahiti, three hundred and fifty miles north-north-east, in forty-eight hours. On another occasion, from a point two hundred miles west of Niue, he sailed, with a fair wind, seventeen hundred miles to the east-ward in fifteen days. In October, 1832, during a voyage from Rarotonga to Samoa, he sailed eight hundred miles in five days without once shifting a sail.

The trade-winds that pass northward of New Zealand would carry Tongan raiders to the New Hebrides, Loyalty Isles, and New Caledonia. In 1793 the expedition in search of La PéArouse saw a canoe on the coast of New Caledonia containing eight Polynesians—seven men and one woman—who spoke the Tongan dialect. They had come from Uvea, in the Loyalty Group, a day's sail distant. Pritchard, in his “Polynesian Reminiscences,” mentions that, in his time, there were living at this Uvea, or Uea, the grandchildren of Tongan castaways who had, in a double canoe, drifted over eleven hundred miles to that isle.

In 1696 two canoes, containing thirty persons of both sexes, drifted nine hundred miles to the Philippines. In 1721 two canoes reached Guam, in the Ladrones, after a twenty-day drift. In 1817 Kotzebue found on one of the Radack Chain a native of the Carolines, one of a party that had made a fifteen-hundred-mile drift due east. Cook, when on his third voyage, found at Atiu some castaways from Tahiti, driven thither when trying to make Raiatea. Of this incident Cook remarked, “It will serve to explain, better than a thousand conjectures … how the islands of the South Seas may have been first peopled”.

Kotzebue tells us of finding a Japanese vessel off the Californian coast in 1815 that had drifted for seventeen months across the Pacific. Only three of her crew of thirty-five were alive. Dillon speaks of a drift voyage of 465 miles made by four Rotuma men who were cast away on Tikopia, a small island north of the New Hebrides. As this island is peopled by Polynesians speaking a dialect closely resembling that of New Zealand, it was probably settled by drift voyagers from the east. The above drift occurred about the year 1800. Dillon states that other drift canoes from Rotuma have reached Tikopia, Fiji, and Samoa.

In 1832 Williams found at Manua, Samoa, a native of Tubuai, in the Austral Group, south of Tahiti. He was one of a party sailing from Tubuai to an adjacent isle. Their canoe, storm-caught, drifted for three months ere it reached Manua, when most of the crew had perished. In such cases the catching of rain-water, and of fish, usually sharks, preserved life in some of the waifs. Coconuts, usually carried in canoes, would presumably furnish some extra water-vessels.

Another recorded drift is that of some natives of Aitutaki, who thus reached Proby's Island, a thousand miles to the westward. Beechey found some natives of Anaa or Chain Island, at Bow Island, Paumotu Group. Three canoes had drifted six hundred miles eastward, two had been lost, while those in the third, owing to a series of accidents and bad luck, had been for three years trying to get home by working from island to island.

On the 8th March, 1821, a canoe reached Raiatea from Rurutu, Austral Isles, after being buffeted about the ocean for six weeks.

Easter Island was resettled by people from Rapa Isle, who are said to have found a strange “long-eared” folk in possession—possibly the authors of the strange script and the stone images of that lone isle.

But enough of drift voyages, for their number is legion. Cases of drift voyages in many directions across the Pacific Ocean are on record. Feckless writers have told us that no drift or other voyage in an easterly direction could have been made by Polynesians, on account of the trade-winds; that no Polynesian could have reached New Zealand; that no Polynesian canoe could carry sea stock for a lengthy voyage; that such canoes were too frail for deep-sea navigation. The hapless Polynesian could not sail out of sight of land because he possessed no compass; he could not traverse the open ocean because it provided no cabbage-trees to tie his canoe to at night! Pretty soon we shall hear that there never was a Polynesian canoe, or a Polynesian to use it if there had been one. The fact of natives occupying all groups and most isolated isles of Polynesia has apparently been viewed by the above writers as a personal injury, hence the evolving of the sunk-continent theory, the sudden disappearance of half a world, leaving a few continental folk clinging desperately to mountain-peaks, somewhat startled doubtless, but by no means downhearted.

For centuries the Maori voyager was crossing the Southern Ocean between New Zealand and Polynesia; for a very much longer period he was weaving innumerable sea roads across northern oceans. No timid coast paddler was he, but a bold navigator of great oceanic areas, who, ever listing to the lure of Hine-moana, broke through the hanging skies, and lifted every water trail of the Realm of Kiwa.

But we do not like it, and cannot grasp it. For we feared to do these things when in the same culture stage as the Maori, and for long after. Hence our search for lost continents and land bridges, and a special creation of man for Auckland and another for the Great Barrier. Our fears ran to the anger of the gods, ever averse to wild enterprises, and initiative, and a round earth, and other desirable things. The Polynesian voyager who pushed out into the unknown went down the changing centuries as a hero. We would probably have burnt him. We poled a log raft, with anxious hearts, across the raging Thames, but the Maori hewed him a dugout with a sharp stone, tied a top strake to it with a piece of string, dumped his wife and bunch of coconuts into it, and paddled forth to settle an isle beyond the red sunrise.

The voyages of Tama-ahua, Tu-moana, Tuwhiri-rau, Mou-te-rangi, and Pahiko from New Zealand to Polynesia we have no time to discuss—a remark that also applies to two traditions of drift canoes from New Zealand reaching those parts, and returning here.

Though the Maori has long ceased his voyages to Polynesia—for the last we know of took place ten generations ago—yet has much of the adventurous spirit been retained to our own time—the days of the white man. When Ngati-Awa seized the “Rodney” at Port Nicholson, in 1835, to raid and settle the Chatham Isles, they wrote the last chapter in the long, long history of the Maori buccaneers. And is it not on record that these daring Vikings had arranged with an American whaler to transport them to Samoa, when the arrival, cutting-off, and plunder of the “Jean Bart” marred the scheme, and saved Samoa some stirring times.

The Polynesian voyager left the so-called adventurous Turanian folk to longshore traffic, and the isles adjacent to their homes; he passed through the dark-skinned folk of Melanesia, despising them for their colour and

lack of daring; he roamed far and wide over the vast Pacific Ocean, and carried his speech from Nukuoro to the Chathams, from Easter Island to Madagascar.

For the Maori as a voyager feared not the dangers of the deep, known or unknown. He harnessed his gods to the task of assisting him, he traced out the ara moana, the sea roads, over two great oceans for western folk to treasure, and western keels to furrow.

The scene changes. Our Maori voyager has boldly crossed the sullen seas and made his landfall under alien skies. Afar off on the rolling waves of Hine-moana his strained vessel cuts the sky-line. Strained and sea-weary is she, worn and battered from the passage of Te Moana nui a Kiwa. Her land-hungering crew gaze eagerly on green hills, and brown-skinned experts scan the surging surf. The coast swings in nearer, the roar of breakers strikes upon the ear. For this is no fair landing; it is the rolling tai maranga, the leaping surge of Hine-moana dashing wildly against Raka-hore, the iron bounds of her realm placed there by the gods of old.

They call upon the amotawa, the sea expert, wise with the wisdom of those who brave the wrath of the Ocean Maid. He takes command, and all await his orders. The sails are lowered, the paddles hold the tossing craft, or edge her in in search of Hine-tuakirikiri, the fair landing-beach. The steersmen and paddlers are all attention, for this is the tai maranga; a single error shall open the gates of death. The expert knows that, in this sea, eleven ngaru wharau, curling dangerous combers, are followed by the mutu moana, a smooth, rounded, crestless billow, the only one on which the canoe may ride safely to land. He awaits that wave. As it reaches the craft and lifts her, there comes the sharp order, “Kia aronui te hoe!” and instantly every paddle is held stationary in the water, blade broadside on to the sea run. So is the canoe held on the swell of the wave The correct position is for the prow to project somewhat in front of the wave-crest; to allow it to forge ahead or drop behind is to court disaster; the dreaded tai maranga is following and preceding her Hence the order to meet and hold her. Should the canoe show signs of slipping back off the wave, the command, “Kia korewa te hoe!” brings all paddles turned edgewise on to the sea, whereupon she forges ahead on the wave, and is there held with the paddles. Two steersmen at the stern wield long steer-oars (hoe whakatere), two more at the bow manipulate the hoe whakaara. These play an important part in the management of the vessel.

The canoe is now rushing shoreward, poised on the mutu moana, or rounded wave, while every man, vigilant, ready for instant action, watches the swift rush as she leaps to land, and awaits the quick commands of the expert. As the wave grounds, and begins to dissolve, there comes the quick cry, “Kumea te hoe!” and the long bow oars are taken in, while every paddle is plied with fierce energy to impart additional impulse that will carry the canoe well up the beach. As one man, all hands now drop their paddles inboard, leap out, and run her up beyond reach of the next wave—the Maori voyager has made his landing, and upheld the saying of yore, “He ihu waka, he ihu whenua.”

Thus the Maori voyager comes to land, and enters into his rest. But not as you would! He does not paddle ashore, make fast, and go into camp with careless mien and prosaic mind. He steps softly on the flanks of the land, and placates the demons thereof; he conducts solemn ritual