MAORI MEMORIES

Wairarapa Times-Age, 27 December 1940, Page 2

MAORI MEMORIES

N.Z. HISTORIAN, (Recorded by of Palmerston North, for the “Times-Age.”) Arthur S. Thomson, surgeon to the 58th Regiment from 1846 to 1859, wrote two volumes which may be regarded as the most unbiased of all our records, free from the partisanship of politics, commerce, and divisional sects. For eleven years he had intimate relationship with the friendly and the enemy tribes, treating all alike without recompense other than the pleasure of healing the sick and wounded. He has long since gone to the Maori ideal future world of Te Reinga, and I have the good fortune to survive him by 80 years, so now am beyond the law, and may freely recall his and my own old time memories, first or second hand. The first Governor of New Zealand was an Irishman who re-named the North, the South, and Stewart Island. New Ulster. New Munster, and New Leinster “because New Zealand, like Ireland, had no toads.” These unpopular names were ignored by the Scotsmen of Otago and soon forgotten. Nearly 50 years later, to their delight “The Little Red Men,” an entirely new species of native frog, Was found on Coromandel Peninsula. The Maori names of the three islands were Hi no Maui (Maui's fish), Wahi pounamu (place of greenstone) and Raki ura or Rang! ura (days of sunshine). The prefix “New” to such places is wrong. Tasman gave us the Dutch name “Zeeland.” Loyal Scots wanted it changed to “South Britain.”