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38 According to S. Percy Smith, at least seven Hawaikis are known, among them Hawaii, Samoa, Tahiti, and neighboring islands, and Rarotonga. Mr. Smith believes the Hawaiki of the Maoris to be Tahiti and adjoining islands. Maoris themselves say that they came from Tawhiti-nui, but it is doubtful if the first Hawaiki was situated in that part of the world.

Tentatively Mr. Smith has traced the Maoris back to India. Judge Pomander, of Hawaii, held that these Polynesians, and Polynesians in general, were a branch of the Indo-Europeans. Other investigators have traced them to Arabia, thus giving them a Caucasian origin. Professor J. Macmillan Brown has traced them to the Mediterranean's shores. By Judge Francis Dart Fenton the Maoris were accorded kinship with the Sabaians, the most celebrated of all the people of ancient Arabia. The Sabaians were "men of stature," says Jeremiah, and one of their rulers was the Queen of Sheba. The date of the first arrival of the Maoris in New Zealand is not positively known. Judge Fenton says that apparently there were thirteen expeditions to New Zealand of which traditional accounts have been preserved, and others of which only uncertain stories exist. According to Mr. Smith, the original discovery of New Zealand by a Maori was made in the tenth century by Kupe, a high chief of Tahiti. About 1350 A.D. there reached New Zealand a fleet of six double-decked canoes. This is the greatest Maori migration known to-day.