The story captured him, with its naive charm, when
first he heard it from the lips of a chief, and many should know it.
''Tis odd,' he made the comment, 'how frequently like incidents occur in
the mythology of diverse races. By what means were they communicated? As
I have pointed out, in my compilation of Maori legends, there is one of
Maui, which recalls to you the finding of Arthur, in Tennyson's "Idylls
of the King." The same legendary idea occurs; a child cradled by the sea,
none knowing that it had any other parent.'
'Now, O Governor,' spoke the Maori chief, 'look round you and listen to
me, far there is something worth seeing here.' Sir George was sitting on
the very spot where sat Hine-Moa, the great ancestress of the tribe, when
she swam the lake to join her sweetheart Tutanekai. She was a maiden of
rare beauty and high rank, and many young men desired to wed her. She
found escape from these perplexities in a long swim to her choice,
Tutanekai. But the Maori chief goes forward with the idyll, and must be
followed word for word, as Sir George wrote:--
At the place where she landed there is a hot spring, separated from the
lake only by a narrow ledge of rooks. Hine-Moa got into this to warm
herself, for she was trembling all over, partly from the cold, after
swimming in the night across the wide lake of Rotorua, and partly also,
perhaps, from modesty at the thought of meeting Tutanekai.
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