Canoe from New Zealand Reaches a Distant Inhabited
Isle and Returns.

In times long past a company of forty men of the Bay of Islands district went out to sea on a fishing excursion. They were caught in a southerly gale and carried far across the ocean. They at length reached an island inhabited by folk who differed from the Maoris. They were an idle, inactive, and unwarlike people. The forty castaways attacked them with their paddles, killed the men, and appropriated the women. There being but one good-looking woman on the isle, the two principal men of the castaways quarrelled over the possession of her. One claimed her because he was older than the other claimant. On consulting their tohunga on the subject, he proposed to perform a ceremony of divination in order to decide the matter. He did so, and the result was in favour of the elder man. A few months after, however, the man died, and the younger then took possession of the woman.

The island was a small one, and disturbed at intervals by earthquakes. Food was plentiful, but life on the isle became irksome to the castaways on account of the small area of the place, so unlike Aotea-roa (New Zealand). Hence, after living there for some years, they built four large ama-tiatia, or outrigger canoes, and came back to New Zealand, making the land near Whanga-roa, where they settled among their relatives.