THE MAORI CANOE.

Globe, Volume XXI, Issue 1794, 20 November 1879, Page 2

THE MAORI CANOE.

The following interesting particulars respecting Maori canoes are from a paper on the subject by Mr R O. Barstow in the last volume of the " Transactions of the New Zealand Institute :"—" When a tree had been selected, either by an individual rangatira or a hupu who had determined to build a war canoe, it was first necessary that a sufficient Btock of food to supply the workmen employed upon it should be available. If the tree grew in a place distant from the pa, a special cultivation as near as possible to the locus operandi might be made for the purpose, otherwise a particular patch of kumara, or other esculent, was planted and set aside. Then the future oanoe had to be draughted \, certain naval architects were the Bymons and Reeds of their day, and were fetched from a distance to design a craft which, was required to possess extra speed, and many a deliberation of the elders took place over the prepared model, ere the shape was finally settle i. When stone axes and fire were the only means of felling the tree, the task of bringing down a totara four or five feet through must have been tedious. The first iron hatches used were those procured from Captain Cook, and thoie obtained a century ago when Marion's crew were ashore and slaughtered while getting out a spar. Probably it was not till thirty years later that iron axes became sufficiently abundant to supersede those of stone entirely. Some care waa needed that the tree in falling should not be broken or shaken. An accident of this kind is by no means uncommon, and many fine spars are now lost in this way. The destruction of a specially large tree after the labor of felling it had been incurred, must indeed have been a calamity. When an outlying tree of sufficient scantling could be found, it was preferred to one forest grown, as British shipwrights consider hedgegrown better than plantation oak; yet in most instances the totara or kauri tree stood in the forest miles from tho seashore, and so far from cultivation that relays of women were needci to carry up provisions for the workpeople ; a road for hauling out by would also need preparing; secrecy, too, wbb often needed, for a hostile tribe would be only too glad either to attack the pa weakened by the absence of many of ifs men, or to surround, and cut off the party while engaged at work. At last, however, incessant labor has felled the tree, crosscut tho log, and dubbod down the outside to somewhat near its destined shap. l , and fire and adzs have partially hollowed out the hold, dry rewarewa wood being used for the charring ; the amount of charring done at this stage depending upon the distance to which the canoe has to bo hauled and the danger of its splitting on its journey. In peaceable times there is a great feast, and all the friendly ne-ghboring pas contribute hands to haul out, by dint of vines over rollers or skids, the weighty mass. Tne workmen pull together over tho sleepers to the songs of the women. It is not always fated to reach the water. .At the foot of the Wairere Hill, in Whangoroa Harbor, thero lay some years ago, two sides of a mighty canoe which had been fashioned on the elevated plateau above the bay. Whilst a party of some thirty slaves were engaged in lowering it down the stesp incline, a vine broke, the canoe rushed headlong to the bottom, and split from end to end. A cry of despair from the awestricken slaves brought the rangatiras to the spot, and instant death was the punishment meted out to tho unlucky slaves for thfir neglect or misfortune.