Hawaii has brought us quite near the coast of America, whose red men
will form the subject of our next chapter. But, before passing on to
the Indians, we must once more return to the neighborhood of
Australia, to the island of New Zealand, which offers some points of
great interest to a student of love and a collector of love-stories.
We have seen that the islands of Torres Straits, north of Australia,
have natives and customs utterly unlike those of Australia. We shall
now see that south of Australia, too, there is an island (or rather
two islands), whose inhabitants are utterly un-Australian in manners
and customs, as well as in origin. The Maoris (that is, natives) of
New Zealand have traditions that their ancestors came from Hawaii
(Hawaiki), disputes about land having induced them to emigrate. They
may have done so by way of other islands, on some of their large
canoes, aided by the trade winds.[193] The Maoris are certainly
Polynesians, and they resemble Hawaiians and Tongans in many respects.
Their ferocity and cannibalism put them on a level with Fijians,
making them a terror to navigators, while in some other respects they
appear to have been somewhat superior to most of their Polynesian
cousins, the Tongans excepted. The Maoris and Tongans best bear out
Waitz-Gerland's assertion that "the Polynesians rank intellectually
considerably higher than all other uncivilized peoples." The same
authorities are charmed by the romantic love-stories of the Maoris,
and they certainly are charming and romantic. Sir George Grey's
_Polynesian Mythology_ contains four of these stories, of which I will
give condensed versions, taking care, as usual, to preserve all
pertinent details and intimations of higher qualities.