Page:Pounamu, notes on New Zealand greenstone (IA pounamunotesonne00robl).djvu/17

 pursuing him, he continued his voyage till he reached the mouth of the Arahura river, where he settled and found the greenstone.

Ngahue was so convinced of its value that he ventured to return to Hawaiki with a cargo of the stone, confident that the service which he was doing his fellow countrymen by bringing so useful a material to their knowledge would ensure their favour and protection. It is said that it was with tools made of Ngahue’s greenstone that the canoes were shaped which carried the first immigrants to New Zealand.

“Every tribe of Maoridom,” says Canon Stack, “valued this jade above everything else, and strove to acquire it. The locality in which it was found was known by report to all, and the popular imagination pictured unknown wealth to the explorer of that region. But the difficulties which beset the journey to this Maori Eldorado were practically unsurmountable, and frustrated the efforts of those who attempted to reach it. The stormy straits of Raukawa (Cook’s) had first to be crossed, and then a land journey of great length and difficulty undertaken over rugged and lofty mountain ranges, so steep in places that the travellers were obliged to use ladders formed of supplejack, or other tough woodbines, to enable them to get past. Pathless and seemingly interminable forests had to be traversed, whose dark shades were made still more gloomy by the incessant rainfall which kept the thick undergrowth of moss and ferns always dripping wet. Deep and rapid rivers had to be crossed either on rafts of dry flax stalks or on foot, the waders being only able to avoid being swept away by the swift current by a number of them entering the water together, and holding on tightly to a pole which they bore across the river in their hands. The scarcity of food throughout