THE MAORI CANOE.

Manawatu Herald, Volume II, Issue 30, 5 December 1879, Page 3

THE MAORI CANOE.

« The following interesting particulars respecting Maori canoes are from a paper on the subject by Mr B. 0. Baratow in the hsfc volume of the Transactions of the New Zealand Institute :— " When a tree had been Boleoted, either by an individual rangatira or a hupu who had b«en determined toimild a war canoe, it waa first necessary that a sufficient stock of food to supply the wo>kmen employed upon it should be available. If the tree grew in a place a distance from the pa, a special cultivation as near as possible to the loens operandie might be made for the purpose, otherwise a particular patch of kumara, or other esculent, was planted and set" aside. Then the future canoe had to be draughted ; certain naval architects were the Byroons and Seeds of their day, and were fetched from n distance to dfesign a craft which was required to possess extra speed, and many a deliberation of the eiders took place over the prepared mode], ere tho shape was finally settled. When stone Dies and fire were the only means of felling the tree, the task of bringing down a totnra four or five feet through must have been tedious. The first iron hatches used were those'procured from Captain Cook, and those 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 ironj axes became sufficiently abundant to supersede those of stone entirely. Some care was 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 anoutlying tree of sufficient scantjiflg couijd be found, it was preferred to one as British shipwrights consider' hedge-grown better than plantation oak; yet in most instances the totara or kauri tree stood in the forest miles from the seashore, and so far from cultivation that relays of women were needed to carry up provisions for the work peop le ; a road for hauling out by would also need preparing ; secrecy, too, was often needed, for a hostile tribe would be only too glad either to attack the pa weakened by the absence of many of its men, or to surround and cot off the party while engaged at work. At last, however, incessant, labor has felled the tree, crosscut the log, and dubbed down the cutside to somewhat near its destined shape, and fire and adze hare partially hollowed out the bold, dry rewarewa wood being used for the charring; the amount of charring done at this stugo depending upon the distance to which the canoe has to be hauled and the danger of its splittingonits journey. In peaceable times there is a great feast, and all the friendly neighboring pas cortribnte hands to haul out, by dint of vines over rollers or skids, tho weighty mass. The workmen pull together over the sleepers to the songs of the women; It is not always fated to reach the water. At the foot of the Wairere Hill, Whangoroa Harbor, there lay some years ago, two sides of a 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 steep incline, a vine broke, the canoe rushed headlong to the bottom and split from end to end. A cry of despair from the awe stricken slaves brought the rangatiras to the spot, and instant death was the punishment meted out to the unlucky slaves for their neglect or misfortune.