The Hawke's Bay Times. NAPIER, THURSDAY, 16th NOVEMBER, 1865.

Hawke's Bay Times, Volume 6, Issue 324, 16 November 1865, Page 2

The Hawke's Bay Times. NAPIER, THURSDAY, 16th NOVEMBER, 1865.

A solution of an interesting question relating to the antique bell that, our readers will remember, was forwarded to the New Zealand Exhibition by Mr Colenso, has been afforded by the Colombo Observer, and will be found in another column ; as also a letter addressed to a Wellington contemporary on the same subject. Some may feel a little disappointed at the very simple nature of the inscription, as it appears after being read and translated ; but, to our mind, although conveying no more information than the fact that it was “ the bell belonging to the Moheiden Box ” —the Moheiden Box or Bux being a vessel of the Tamils—it is a source of satisfaction that it has been read, as it opens up a very important question connected with the early history of the New Zealanders, and their relation to other races of tho human family. Ever since the publication of the interesting accounts of the inhabitants of the Islands of the South Sea by the great circumnavigator, Captain Cook, these people have engaged a very large amount of public interest, and many and varied have been the theories evolved to account for their existence upon these Islands in a plausible way :—cut off. as it were, from the rest of the habitable world—while possessing an intelligence and a language that might well be supposed to be the remains of a former state of civilization; —a language, showing in its construction and in many of its details a certain degree of connexion with those of other peoples; but, at the same time, isolated from them by the entire absence of written characters. Very many curious and important observations and discoveries have from time to time been made by Missionaries and others, which, if collected and arranged, would be calculated to throw much light on the question of their origin, &c.: but which are, from the want of this, of but little value.

The importance of such an investigation has been already acknowledged by the Government of the Colony, and certain preliminary steps decided on to save, while it is possible to do so, the only data now in existence upon which the above and several other questions of vast importance can be solved, from passing into oblivion, by the publication of a Lexicon of the Maori tongue ; but we presume that other questions relating to the natives l ave caused it to be postponed until now. We believe that some action has been taken by the new Ministry in the same direction, and there is a probability of its being accomplished; but we do not know that anything definite has yet been decided on. Meantime the language is rapidly changing and passing away (for which we are not sorry), which renders it a matter of consequence to the world that all that is valuable to the antiquarian and philologist that can yet be rescued from oblivion, he so rescued and preserved before it be too late to do so.