Page:Hawaiki The Original Home of the Maori.djvu/160

148 mentioned. The persistency of these Maori stories, confirmed as they are by Hawaiian traditions, makes it clear that these people were one family—descending from father to son—and I am inclined to think this was the age (the years 700 to 775) in which they lived. To me, the whole series of stories the Maoris have preserved—and they are very numerous—about these heroes, point to the contact with another race, which can be no other than the Melanesian. From what has been said before, it was Fiji and Samoa in which they lived; and one of the Maori stories says that Tawhaki ascended a mountain called Whiti-haua, in which Whiti is the Maori pronunciation for Rarotongan Iti—Fiji. Connected with these heroes are the names Whiti, Matuku and Peka, all given, at different times, as the names of fierce semi-human monsters. In them I see the names of islands, used metaphorically for the people of those islands. Peka is the Tongan name for Bengga, of the Fiji Group, and Matuku is also a well-known name of one of the Fiji islands. In one of the same series of stories is mentioned a place called Muri-wai-o-ata, and this is the name of a stream on the south coast of Upolu, as I quite accidentally learnt when fording it in 1897, with Mr. Churchill and our tula-fale who gave me the name.

Several places in Samoa are also connected with the name of Rata. Dr. Turner says, "Near the place where Fa'ataoafe lived (on the south side of Savai'i) there are two hills, which are said to be the petrified double canoe of Lata. Lata came of old from Fiji, was wrecked there, went on shore, and lived on the land still called by his name in the neighbourhood of the settlement of Salai-lua. He visited Upōlu and built two large canoes at Fangaloa, but died before the deck to unite them had been completed. To Lata is traced the