Page:Picturesque New Zealand, 1913.djvu/413

 enough to satisfy the most extravagant story-teller. Any fisherman who can make such a catch as did the man this story concerns certainly deserves some free advertising; and that is what the Maori demigod, Maui, has been getting ever since, as tradition records, he fished the North Island, "The Fish of Maui," from the sea with the jawbone of his grandfather, or, as some accounts have it, of his grandmother. This is the same stalwart who previously belabored the sun with this same mighty bone, and, by crippling te ra, made the days longer.

Had Maui followed his own inclination he would not have become the central figure of a tale which allegorically describes the discovery of a new land. Maui was not fond of fishing, and only relatives' contemptuous references to his idleness caused him to go to sea on this eventful day. Hidden in his mat he carried the jawbone, which he had fashioned into a hook. Seeing no fishing-tackle in his hands, Maui's brethren laughed at him, and asked him how he expected to catch fish without hook and lines.

Unruffled by their sarcasm, Maui continued to urge his brothers to go seaward until they lost sight of land. Then Maui dropped his tackle into the sea, and the jawbone, descending to the ocean's bottom, became fastened in the house of Tonganui, Tangaroa's son. To the accompaniment of cries of terror from his kindred, Maui pulled until "the turbid ocean boils, the mountain-tops are near, and many a whirling vortex roars." Then