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Island Love On The Pacific, a non-fiction book by Henry Theophilus Finck |
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Maoris Of New Zealand |
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_ 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.
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