531

swimming towards him; it proved to be the chief Huriarai, who was so much exhausted that he was clubbed to death without making much resistance. Vaha, however, landed some distance off, and creeping upon the sentry killed him while he was bending over the body of his victim. Vaha hastily buried the body of his chief among the rocks ind taking his victim upon his back swam back to his companions on the islet. The people there were without means of making a fire and the body had to be eaten raw. In the morning, when they saw the escape of their comrades from the cave and the desperate fighting on the cliff, they all swam ashore and joined forces.
   The traditions, from this point, are a record of tribal wars, abounding in feats of personal bravery and extraordinary occurrences, but of little value to the history of the island. The discovery of the island by Hotu-Matua and his band of three hundred, together with the landing already referred to, is probably correct and seems natural enough down to the division of the land and the death of the first king. The wars and causes that led to the migration of the people from that unknown land, called Marae-toe-hau, are no doubt based upon a foundation of facts. There is no good reason for doubting the description of the climate of their former home, which would, if accepted, locate it somewhere about the equator, or at all events in the tropics. The heat could not be the effect of volcanic action, or their legends would not state that the crops were burned up by the sun at certain seasons.
   The improbable, not to say impossible, part of the story comes in, where Machaa steals away and lands upon the same island which his brother's party reach two months later, by simply steering towards the setting sun. There is not one chance in a million, that two canoes could sail for thousands of miles, steering by such an uncertain and indefinite course, and strike the same little island. The tradition states that Hotu-Matua found the island uninhabited, and immediately contradicts this, by the ridiculous story of his brother and his followers having been there two months. It is not unlikely that the natives, anxious to maintain the credit of the discovery of the island, attempt to account for the presence of an earlier people in this way. This might account for the killing of one of Machaa's men by the turtle, for it has no possible bearing upon the story, beyond the fact that it would account for Hotu-Matua finding a tomb or burial-place on the beach at Anekena, when he first landed.
   The story of Oroi disguising himself as a servant and sailing for months in an open canoe, filled with naked savages, without his identity being discovered, is too absurd to be considered, beyond ascribing an origin to the enemy or enemies who murdered Hotu-Matua's people, and whose stronghold was on the rocky cliffs near Orongo. One peculiar feature of the tradition is the allusion to the fighting-net, which must have been something after the fashion of those used in old Roman times. These nets are represented to have been square and weighted at the

531