Page:Pounamu, notes on New Zealand greenstone (IA pounamunotesonne00robl).djvu/28

 With the largest toki trees of great size were felled, but the process was naturally tedious and lengthy. Maning, writing in Old New Zealand, says: "With rude and blunt stones they felled the giant kauri—toughest of pines; and from it, in process of time, at an expense of labour, perseverance, and ingenuity, perfectly astounding to those who knew what it really was—produced, carved, painted, and inlaid, a masterpiece of art, and an object of beauty—the war canoe, capable of carrying a hundred men on a distant expedition, through the boisterous seas surrounding their island."

Spells (karakia) were pronounced over the larger toki which were used for felling and working timber intended for the making of canoes or the timbers of an important house, in order that they might do the work effectually and that no harm might happen to the work, the workers or the material. In a somewhat similar way a workman when beginning to whakarau or smooth the surface of a canoe would cast a small stone into it to save his knowledge of the art of timber-working from being lost.

Many of the toki of the old Maori had special names given to them and are famous in song and legend. In at least one case a noted weapon changed hands to mark the transfer of land. When in 1856 the land hitherto in the possession of the Maori was sold at Waikawa, to European settlers, the chief, Ropoama Te One, addressed the commissioners in these words as he struck into the ground at their feet a greenstone adze:—"Now that we have for ever launched this land into the sea, we hereby make over to you this axe, Pae whenua, always highly prized because we regained it in battle after it had been used to kill two of our most famous chiefs. Money vanishes and is lost, but this greenstone shall endure as a lasting witness of our act that the